A Season For Everything by Matthew Fairman (e reader txt) 📖

It was gone. Beaton grabbed the blood stained sheet and knotted it around his hand, shaking and mopping it about the floor. As if somehow Mrs Gream could be shaken out like a small rodent from within. He lifted the pallet and threw it across the floor, kicking at a stack of rotten tea chests. Thats when he heard the muted whimper. She was crouched in the corner. Jammed between the wall and the broke down shelving unit, huddled into herself, her hooded head resting on one shoulder.

He felt at that moment like he was loosing his grasp. Like a boat in a storm. The tethers and ropes that bound and held his life on course were running through his hands and unravelling into finer and finer strands. Fibres too fine to catch. Once they were gone he would have no control, no direction. He enjoyed it, that was the problem. He actually enjoyed to feel that power of life over death but he had always pretended to himself that he was only half responsible. That he had had no choice, like a child who throws stones at passing cars and is surprised when he causes an accident. He had relieved himself of all the consequences that resulted from his actions. To push a person from a cliff, to drop a stone upon a head, it didn’t seem to the same as choking out a persons life with your bare hands. He had killed animals before. That was how he had first felt the thrill of life over death. He started small, plucking the legs from the water boatman. Watching them sink. Then it was the frogs. Caught in fishing nets, trapped inside plastic bags. Swung against the trunks of trees or squashed beneath a bicycle wheel.He would spend hours in the garden trapping the fledgling birds in the springtime. It wasn’t simply the sort of thing that nasty little boys do, it was also more than that. It thrilled him to his core. He was obsessed by it, he thought about it, planned it. Concocting new ways to kill the creatures that God had given to him to do as he wished. that was how he thought of them, each life a gift to be taken. Springtime was his season for killing. For a while he had stopped but he never forgot, it never went away. He simply learned to hide it. He fantasised, dreamed of something bigger. Something more substantial.

He had cornered a rabbit once. He had spotted at the top of a large sloping meadow. Normally he would have o chance with a rabbit. They saw him coming from a mile away. He chased it, not thinking in any way that he would catch it. The rabbit bounded along the hedgerow looking for a way to escape but it was clearly in difficulty. Trying to force itself through the dense unbroken thicket. He rushed at the animal, it doubled back trying to flee back down the slope of the field. Beaton couldn’t understand what it was thinking. Then he saw it’s face, it was a seething mass of lumps. Its eyes swollen shut, the creature was blind, infected with the Myxomatosis virus. He grabbed it by the hind legs, it squirmed and bucked. He ran with it held out at arms length, the blind animal squirming in his grip to get free. In the corner of the field by the railway track was an old army pill box. Abandoned after the war, it was a place that he and his friend used as a meeting place and a den. Running, he swung the Rabbit, spinning like a shot putter, dashing its brains out against the wall of the concrete bunker. He threw the carcass inside the pill box. He returned a few days later with his friend. The body had been mauled and gored by a fox. He never mentioned to his friends that it was he who had left it there. He was secretly proud but later he felt ashamed by their disgust at his handiwork.

Then one day, when Beaton was fourteen, everything changed. He had been in the quarry, he shouldn’t have been there. He wasn’t allowed. Some older kids had recently climbed up onto one of the overhanging trees and hitched up a rope swing. It hung perilously in front of one of the steepest pitt, swinging out in an arc above a steep drop. Beaton had seen it and had been thinking about it and nothing else all that week. He stood at the edge holding the rope tight and looking down. His stomach felt butterflies like when he was up on the diving board at the swimming pool. There came the sound of something crashing through the undergrowth behind him. He spun round, in front of him was a god looking young boy roughly his age, maybe a little older. Next to him on a leash was a dog, it was still a puppy, not more than maybe six months old.

‘Hi’ said the boy

‘Err Hi’ Said Jonathan, clearly both of them had expected to have the rope swing completely to themselves.’

‘Pretty neat, huh!’ Beaton didn’t reply, he didn’t recognise the boy or his dog. He was not from the same school. The boy came to the edge and peered over to inspect the drop.

‘You’d die if you fell.’ continued the boy, looking down.

‘It’s not so far.’ Said Beaton, he didn’t want to look afraid in front of the boy.

‘Go on then, I dare you, I dare you, go on bet you wouldn’t.’

‘You wouldn’t do it?’ The boy Gave Beaton a shove forward whilst at the same time grabbing his jacket and pulling him back immediately.

‘Saved your life!’ The boy cried, Beaton felt the hot wet against his leg in an instant. He had pissed himself. He had wet his pants in front of this boy, he felt like he could just drop off the edge and die. The young boy was in fits of laughter. He fell back pointing at Beaton’s crotch, sitting on the ground thumping the dirt with his fists. Tears of laughter rolling down his flushed red cheeks.

‘Haha, pissed your pants, you should have seen your face Oh my God, you pissed your pants.’ Kaiser was yapping and jumping around as if he were involved in some fun game. Beaton didn’t even think twice about what he was doing he was so incensed. He shoved the boy onto the floor and grabbed the puppy by its leash dragging it up into his arms.

‘Hey, what are you doing, don’t be stupid put him down your scaring him.’

‘I’ll drop him, I swear. I’ll fucking drop him.’ It was the look in Beaton’s eye, the boy could tell that he was not joking.

‘Grab the rope.’ Beaton shook the dog, waving it in the air above the drop.

‘What? No, wait, please stop a minute.’

The boy was almost crying now. Pleading on his knees in the dirt.

‘Let him go, let him go. Please, he’s just a puppy.’

‘I’ll let him go, I’ll let him go if you grab the rope.’

‘OK, OK, I’ll grab it, I’ll grab it.’ The boy leaned out and took hold of the rope that was hanging a mere foot from the edge and stepped backwards with it. There was a loop knotted in the end that was be used as a footing to stand in when swinging. Beaton lowered the dog down over the precipice so that Kaiser was out of sight.

‘Don’t, don’t.’ Beaton was smiling, he was enjoying himself now that he had the upper hand.

‘Put it over your head.’ he brought Kaiser up onto his lap.

‘What?’

‘Put the rope over your head. Do it!’

‘No, I wont. I won’t do it.’

Beaton shook the dog and squeezed it hard.

‘Do it and I’ll give you him back.’ Jonathan lifted the foot hold over his head, it was a tight fit. He struggled to pull it past his ears. He was sobbing hard, his whole body shaking violently. A string of spittle hung from his chin.

‘Who’s the scared one now.’

‘It was a joke, I was joking, please, let him go.’

‘Say your sorry.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

‘Here’ Beaton held the puppy out, the boy took it in his arms. He hated the boy, the sight of him standing with his puppy in his arms. His victory had left him even more bitter. Beaton, standing there in his own cold piss whilst the boy and his dog were happily reunited.

It was the hand of the ugly spirit, the worm that turned inside his brain. One shove, one small shove was all it took to send the boy and his dog spilling over the edge of the cliff.

 

Beaton knotted a length of the waxed rope between both his fists. It was about as long as a skipping rope. He dragged Mrs Gream away from the wall, she was screaming now, choking on the wadded mass of fabric in her mouth. A high pitched stifled scream rising in intensity. Pushing her forward he swung the rope over her her, quickly wrapping it in a double loop around her neck. He shortened the slack by winding his fists into the cable so that each hand held six inches of cord either side her throat. He pulled his arms apart, crushing the windpipe with all his strength. He thought about the young boys legs kicking out over the edge of the drop. The way his hands had struggled at the rope around his throat and the eyes swollen in their sockets like hard boiled eggs. The little puppy yapping. Yapping, yapping, yapping, yapping, yapping, yapping, yapping. Beaton looked down at the limp body, his hands were bleeding.

 

It had been a struggle to fit the body of the old lady into the sports bag. It wasn’t the size that was the problem it was the shape. With one end of the rope he bound her legs together, winding it around several times before knotting it. He threaded the loose end underneath her armpits around her back, beneath her already trussed arms, and out the other side. He wrapped the rope around her legs again and then several times around the back of her neck. As he pulled the rope tighter her body doubled over. He heard a crack of the vertebrae as Mrs Gream’s head was pulled up to and between her knees. With the body now roped fast tightly he was able to roll it into the bag. He zipped her inside. She was heavy to pull but he found that if he leant into the wind with all his bodyweight it wasn’t to much of a struggle. It was difficult to plough through the deeper snow, the wheels weren’t up to it, so he tried to keep to the salted roads and pavements. It took him more than an hour to climb the incline from the canal through the woods to the brow of the valley. The bowed black silhouette of a ragged man on the ridge line, dragging a burden through the snow. Putting his shoulder to the wheel. In the distance a dog barked.

 

Michael could hear Kaiser, he was barking somewhere up ahead. It was hard to see the path in the dying light of the quarry floor but he had some idea of where the animal was going. It was a part of the quarry he knew all to well, a place to avoid. He whistled and called but the dog wouldn’t come.

‘Kaiser stop fucking about.’ The ground became rockier, the snow had blanketed the deep pot holes between the boulders. He clambered between the stones, the snow up to his waist. Kaiser stood facing him from the mouth of the cave, his ears were pulled back, his tail up leaning down onto his paws. Each time he let loose a sharp bark he jumped backwards slightly. The dog let loose a few more cries before disappearing into the mine. He struggled after the dog, sliding down