For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

The morning chill had been biting but, somehow, the cold in this metal temple was all-consuming.

Their walk across the concrete plain felt like an eternity. Finally, they reached the far end of the hangar, where a vast projection screen sprawled across the metal wall like an impromptu cinema. Directly in front of the screen was a raised platform, upon which a large sheet of tarpaulin lay draped over something. Something big.

‘Quentin, what is this?’ she asked. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘You’ve worked hard on those scripts,’ he announced, a thespian to his audience. The words echoed through the chamber. ‘You really brought those love scenes to life, you know.’ He stopped by the platform and turned to face her, the knives of his eyes finally materialising behind their horn-rimmed frames. He tapped his foot maniacally. ‘But the romance is over, Renata.’

He held the wrapped up rag in one hand, a corner of the tarp in the other. Keeping his gaze fixed upon her, he yanked the tarp off in one grand sweep. Upon the raised platform, facing the projection screen, was a car – a dark blue Ford Cortina. Quentin pulled from his pocket a small remote control and pointed it behind and above her. She heard mechanical whirring as the screen awoke, streaks of shadow and broken image struggling to life. Then, in a blast of light, the movie started to roll.

It was a dark country road.

‘As you know,’ he declared, ‘in Horror Highway it was a woman in a green dress mowed down.’ He glanced proudly at the projection screen as a yellow shape appeared on the rolling road, then flicked his gaze back to the white-faced Renata. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve used a little poetic licence to make this a touch more…personal.’

She watched hypnotised from the tail end of the Cortina, which, from her position, gave the rough illusion of its speeding along the projected road. The shape became clearer.

He unravelled the rag.

The walls of the hangar melted away. She entered a trance, enslaved by the image before her, until all that remained was the speeding car, the road, and that shape in the distance, the ghost which forever loomed just out of reach. A bead of sweat traced down the length of her back. Her knuckles whitened around an invisible wheel.

‘Midnight, midnight…’ he called from the darkness, his words seeped in ecstasy. To Quentin C. Rye, a biblical event was unfolding, a cosmic cycle completing. His universe was this hangar, Renata his Eve. The shape took form on the screen. Sweat stung the scabs in her palms.

‘…it’s your turn…’

It was the shape of a child, yellow raincoat hanging off its puny frame. Quentin dropped the rag and revealed a small red spade. He crouched and smashed it off the ground, those mad eyes drinking in every nuance of her being.

One

Pain burst in her brain like never before.

Two

He cracked the spade off the concrete.

Three

She counted the blows as her brain swelled with a profound agony.

Four

‘Please, stop!’

Five

‘…clock strikes twelve…’

Six

His words were infused with orgasmic pleasure.

Seven

She lost balance and fell to her knees.

Eight

Her bladder let go.

Nine

‘…burn…’

Ten

‘…burn…’

Eleven

‘…burn.’

Twelve

The shape, an image of a figure superimposed upon the speeding road, finally took form.

Noah.

Thirteen

Blackness took her.

15

 

‘Look after your brother, Rennie.’ Her parents huddle around their son, patting down a spring of curls here, smoothing a crease in his jumper there. He is a prize trophy and, tonight, the girl is that trophy’s minder. ‘Get him to bed by eight o’clock and make sure he’s warm,’ her mother continues, smile wooden as ever, hair a sculpture of perfection. ‘You know where the extra blankets are if he needs them. And I want this place as clean and tidy as we left it when we come back.’

Her father crouches by the boy. His tremors are getting worse. ‘If you need anything, son, you tell her.’

‘Me and Lenata have fun!’ squeals the child. The woman’s eyes shine with adoration. The man’s lips curve in a rare smile.

The cool summer’s night is perfect for a stroll into town with Samson – a stroll which, seven years ago, before the boy’s arrival, the girl couldn’t have imagined occurring any more than her father’s acceptance of the new church. That’s what’s happening tonight, a meeting at the town hall for everyone to vent their rage at the modern facility due to replace the church across the fields. ‘It’s a tragedy,’ Mr Lawson, a physician from Millbury Peak Community Hospital, had declared after service two Sundays prior. To everyone’s amazement, even Mr Crawford’s wife, the mousy librarian (forever ‘Mr Crawford’s wife’, never ‘Mrs Crawford’) had, for the first time in history, spoken up, denouncing the decommissioning of the old church as sacrilege and – yes, indeed – ‘a tragedy’. The school’s head teacher had expressed his disapproval by way of a series of grunts, while Mrs Cunningham wept her agreement that the act could be called nothing less than – you guessed it – ‘a tragedy of the highest order’.

And so tonight was the night for strategizing the fighting of this gross injustice. Their efforts would fly in the face of a decision already made like a bluebottle in the face of a train. The old church would rot, cursed to serve only two purposes: its clock tower would continue to toll the noon and midnight hours, and its cemetery would continue to swallow the town’s dead. Nevertheless, tonight they would gather while the precious Wakefield boy would be left in the care of the not-so-precious Wakefield girl.

Tonight, true tragedy will reshape the Wakefield family.

The girl watches from the living room window as her parents set off, her father stopping to buff the navy paintwork of the Ford Cortina