The Straw Men 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead, Blood of Angels. Michael Marshall
‘Hello, Ward,’ my mother said, softly. ‘I wonder how old you are now.’
She glanced over the camera, presumably at the sleeping shape in the bed. ‘I wonder how old you are,’ she repeated, and there was something in her voice that was sad and off-key.
My father was still looking into the camera. He was maybe five, six years younger than I am now. He, too, spoke quietly, but without a great deal of affection in his eyes.
‘And I wonder what you’ve become.’
White noise. Someone clanked past my hotel room with a trolley.
I didn’t pause the tape. I couldn’t move.
The last scene was from 8mm, too, but the colours were more faded, washed out, pale surfaces bleached to pure light. Dark hairlines and spots popped and flickered all over the screen, making movements behind them feel measured and distanced.
A blaze of hazy yellow sunshine through a big window. Outside, trees rushing past, leaves blurred into sound. The steady beat of a train, and some other quiet noise I couldn’t place.
My mother’s face, younger still. Hair shorter, and black with lacquer. Looking out of the window at the passing countryside. She turned her head, looked at the camera. Her eyes seemed far away. She smiled faintly. The camera was slowly lowered.
Abrupt cut to a wide city street. I couldn’t tell where it might be, and my attention was caught by the shapes and colours of the cars parked by the sides of the road, and the clothes worn by the few passers-by. The cars had panache, the suits didn’t, the dresses were on the short side. I didn’t know enough about such things to date it on the dime, but I guessed we were now back in the late ’60s.
The camera moved forward at an even walking pace. Every now and then the back of my mother’s head wandered into the left side of the frame, as if my father was slightly behind her and to the right. It wasn’t obvious what he was supposed to be recording. It wasn’t an especially interesting street. There was what looked like a department store on the right, and a small square on the left. There were leaves on the trees, but they looked tired. He kept the camera high, panning neither up nor down nor to the sides. They made no attempt to point anything out, or to communicate with each other. After a while they crossed a road and then turned off down a cross street.
Cut to a different street again. This was a little narrower, as if further from the centre of town. They seemed to be walking up a steep hill. My mother was in front of the camera, seen from the shoulders up. She stopped.
‘What about here?’ she said, turning. She was wearing sunglasses now, businesslike. The camera hesitated for a moment, and wobbled, as if my father had taken his eye from the lens to look around him.
His voice: ‘A little further.’
Onwards they walked, for perhaps another minute. Then stopped again. The camera panned round, giving a tantalizingly quick panorama of what seemed to be the top of a rise in the middle of a hilly city, tall buildings either side of the street. Signs at ground level declared the presence of grocery stores and cheap restaurants, but the windows above looked like those of apartments. People stood outside the stores, assaying produce, wearing hats; others walked in and out of the stores. A busy neighbourhood, coming up for lunchtime.
Mother looked back at the camera and nodded. It was her call. She made it, reluctantly.
Cut to later in the day. A slightly different view, but the top of the same hill. Where before it had been morning light, now the shadows were longer. Late afternoon, and the streets were nearly empty. My mother was standing with her arms down by her sides. An odd gurgling sound came from somewhere out of shot, and I realized it was similar to the noise I’d heard on the train.
There was a little movement of the camera, as if my father had reached out to touch something. Then my mother moved forward a little way, or he stepped back. A harsh release of breath from my father.
And then, thirty-five years later, from me.
My mother was holding the hands of two very young children, one on either side. They looked to be the same age, and were dressed to match, though one wore a blue top, the other yellow. They appeared little more than a year old, perhaps eighteen months, and tottered unsteadily on their feet.
The camera zoomed in on them. One’s hair was cut short, the other slightly longer. The faces were identical.
The camera pulled back out. My mother let go of the hand of one of the children. The one with the longer hair and yellow top, a little green satchel. She squatted next to the other child.
‘Say goodbye,’ she said. The child in blue looked at her dubiously, uncomprehending. ‘Say goodbye, Ward.’
The two children looked at one another. Then the one with the short hair, the child that must have been me, glanced back at his mother for reassurance. She took my hand, and lifted it up.
‘Say goodbye.’
She made my hand wave, then took me in her arms and stood up. The other child looked up at my mother then, smiled, held his or her arms to be lifted, too. I couldn’t tell, not for sure, what sex it might be.
My mother started walking down the street.
She walked at an even pace, not hurrying, but not looking back. The camera stayed on the other child, even as my father walked away after my mother down the hill. They left it standing there.
The child got further and further away, silent at the crest of the rise. It never even cried: at least, not until we were too far away for the sound to be heard.
Then the camera turned a corner and it was gone.
The image cut back to white noise, and this time nothing came afterwards. Within a minute the tape turned itself off, leaving me staring at my reflection in the screen.
I fumbled for the remote, rewound, paused. Stared at the frozen image of a child, left standing at the top of a hill, my hands held up over my mouth.
The slot opened. A dim light shone down from above.
‘Hello, my dear,’ the man said. ‘I’m back.’
Sarah could not see his face. From the sound of his voice, it appeared he was sitting on the floor just behind her head.
‘Hello,’ she said, her voice as steady as she could make it. She wanted to shrink away from him, put just an extra inch of distance between them, but couldn’t move even that much. She fought to remain calm, to keep to her plan of sounding as if she didn’t care. ‘How are you today? Still insane, I guess.’
The man laughed quietly. ‘You’re not going to make me angry.’
‘Who wants you angry?’
‘So why do you say these things?’
‘My mom and dad are going to be worried sick. I’m scared. I may not be that polite.’
‘I understand.’
He was silent then, for a long time. Sarah waited.
Perhaps five minutes later, she saw a hand reaching out over her face. It held a glass of water. Without warning, he slowly tipped it. She got her mouth open in time, and drank as much as she could. The hand disappeared again.
‘Is that it?’ she said. Her mouth felt strange, clean and wet. The water had tasted the way she had always expected wine to, from the way grown-ups made such a big deal of it and rolled it around in their mouths like it was the best thing they had ever tasted. In fact, in her experience, wine generally tasted like something was wrong with it.
‘What else were you expecting?’
‘You want me to stay alive, then you’re going to have to give me something more than water.’