I'm coming back

I’m coming back. You never thought I would, did you? I never thought I would. I was determined that I would never set foot in that place ever again. But something has changed and here I am. I’m coming back, and you’re never going to forget about me ever again. You can be certain of that.

I’m sure you all thought that once I’d gone, that would be the end of it, once I’d left the old town and the stinking old bodies that existed there. Those lingering bodies that shuffled and meandered the worn old streets. Holding the same conversations, hello, goodbye, oh you must, I do believe… no, don’t believe, don’t ever do that, not ever. You all know how it was and no doubt still is. You just don’t want to admit it. That your existence is a charade, an excuse, a way of placating yourselves. Convincing yourselves that everything is acceptable. That it’s so much better than it might be. I accepted it for too long. Accepted you for too long. But I did leave, and now I’m returning, for one last time.

The day I turned my back on your decaying old town, I turned my head towards the north wind, put a voice back in my larynx and laced up my boots good and tight so that no one could take them off me. That was the day that I untied the cords from my wrists, ripped the tape from my mouth, shook the dust from my hat and left the traces on the hall table for someone else to clean away. I had learned that giving a damn would be the undoing of me and was prepared to be undone no more.

It’s dusk as I reach the outskirts of the old town, worn and grey, fraying at its pitiful edges. The clouds across the distant horizon, scud towards me, a dark greeting from the earth as the wind whips up all its demons and begins to howl. ‘The banshee has returned,’ it wails across the moors, shouting to the hares that flee and the wild horses that turn on their hooves and head for the shelter of the trees. I’m here again. I am back amongst you all. The earth trembles. The heather, wild in this wind, deep and springing like coils. I remember its earthy scent as I shook at the harsh firmness of your hands, the heat as the sun blazed against my face. The insects that scuttled about my hair as you took what was not yours to take. The clouds are darker now and I have been gone for so very long. Longer than you know.

The dusty trail into town is little changed. The edges fall away as they battle with the untamed, coarse moorland grass, extending its reach further, cutting off this desolate place, choking, clawing against any hope of more. The road turns, revealing a picture that’s been held frozen in time. The damp narrow street of terraced houses looming tall on each side, their hollow eyes staring blankly at their own reflections.

I tilt my head skywards and look towards the window of my childhood room. There’s a light behind faded brown curtains. Perhaps another child plays there on the cold bare floor with a single teddy-bear and a tray of building-blocks, of which half are missing. Perhaps there’s a different child. A child caressed in the arms of a doting parent, warm and snuggled in love. The curtains twitch and I look quickly away. Any sense of what was or what is now, dissipating into the heavily falling dusk and beyond.

Along the street, the smell of boiling cabbage is seeping through a barely open window. A mackerel tabby turns and looks at me, its gaze holding mine for a fleeting moment before its tail rises tall, bristled and pointed. Then with a hiss it is gone, down the narrow alleyway that runs between numbers five and seven. The sense of desertion, like a thorn, a cat’s claw. Why does the creature leave me with this feeling? I know you aren’t here anymore. I know that, but still I came back. Even though there is nothing here for me now.

At the bottom of the street and around the dog-legged corner, bordered by a row of diseased elm, the foreboding visage of the building where I learned to read and write comes into view. From the colourful posters and signs at its gate, I discern that this is still a place of learning. A place for young minds to flourish, grow…

But no, those minds were curated and shaped, carved and fashioned into what you wished them to be. Like birds tasting their first freedom from a cage, you netted them as they flew towards the trees, capturing any sign of independent, free thought.

To challenge your deemed knowledge was folly, and the crack of the birch brought us back from the sky to our knees. There to be made a spectacle of in front of the class who cowered behind wooden desks. Your alcohol tinged breath in my ear, flakes of skin on the shoulders of your tweed jacket, the wetness of my pants as every part of mortal fear you instilled in me. For my one solitary question. For a child’s curiosity and free thought to be torn into pieces.

I know you are now long gone from this place, time and the laws of its calendar dictate so. I know not where you lie. I care not. I look at the colourful posters by the gates, drawn by childish hands of many decades later. They tell me that you are no longer here and a grim smile pulls across my teeth.

The old town is still framed at its centre by its dark civic buildings, each competing with one another, depending on each's own benefactor, to be grander or taller. Not that this mattered. What did you all care for those Georgians and Victorians who built this place? What would they care for you who have stayed and decayed along with all that they built?

The old Baptist church, now an empty shell, the board in its overgrown garden, announcing its auction is now many years old and still no nearer. No auctioneer and no bidders. Whatever you said they didn’t come. Not for God or Jesus. Not even for profit.

Next to it stands the dark granite Sunday school, long since a private house but its stone steps and heavy door still stand solid and grim, inviting in the young of the old town. When you beat me in the name of the father, son and holy ghost, for my childish utterings, God never came to save me. You know that. You thought it wouldn’t matter.

But now you are dead in the earth of the overgrown churchyard. Not a soul can reach you for the rampant brambles and thorns that twist and strangle there. Your own crown of thorns, but with no one to weep or pray for your resurrection. I came back. You lie there still. I would spit on your grave if only I could reach it.

In the gable of the old building, the great clock of years, of ticking time, is stopped still, not moved since I was last here, its fingers still pointing meaninglessly to a time that is now gone. The walls are cold and hard under my touch. Nothing remains. There is no mark of my being here, only the etchings, engraved in my mind, and yours too I am sure, haunting your fitful, final sleep. I pray for the child that I once was. That golden slumbers will find their way to them, kiss their closed eyes and wipe away such memories.

As I move through the broken heart of the old town, I reach the ancient stone bridge which straddles the clattering river beneath. It shouts and bellows, spits and hurls its froth and spume into the darkening air.

As I stand looking over its side I recall those drunken nights, when we fell out of the doors of the old town inn, stinking of ale and tobacco. Your laughter harsh in the night air, masquerading the words that you really wanted to say. But oh, you found them, an orchestra of venom, the river competing with your accusations, your insecurities hurled at me through the blackness of the night. The street light catching on the words, throwing them up towards the stars where they could haunt me forever.

That was here, the river our only witness on many of those battered nights. Yet here I am, returned. And you are gone. Gone far away on a hand-cart of whiskey and beer and rotten insides. Flesh to the soil and no words, no fists, just decay. The stench of you is gone. Just me and the river as it washes any lingering sense of you away. I had to come back to know you were gone, that it was safe to return.

The flickering street light casts a faint glow over the doorway to what once was the bakery, warm and comforting, coated in sugar and flour. The door is boarded, the window blocked with newspapers, years old. Many years have passed since we tasted the sweet delights on Saturday mornings, sticky pennies in our pockets as we took our treasured morsels to the memorial garden bench, where we would savour our treats and swap stories and trinkets.

I gave you a stone that I’d painted a flower on, and you with your kindness gave me your pretty pink doll. An exchange in my favour. You knew there was nothing better that I could give, than a stone from the ground. But my friend, you had more love to give than any other in this town.

When the forces of nature took you, ate you away with their cruel disease when we were just twelve, the earth took its own sweet morsel and carried you far away into the ground. I dreamed of you there in the earth, with flowers and ponies and pink cake. I know that is how it was because that was how it had to be for you my dearest and only friend.

The bench is still there, green with age, and I sit for a moment, in the darkness, the stiff breeze against my face, the dampness in the air. I close my eyes and let it cleanse me, let it blow the cobwebs and mildew from me. For now I have come back to the old town that spited me so. This is my new beginning and I will lay to rest those demons that followed me when I left this place all those years ago.

All around is darkness. Eyes closed, it is darker still. As I shift my body on the bench, a murmur at my ear. I open my eyes. A dash of light at my side. I turn. You hold out a sticky cake, dripping with sugar, your eyes bright, your skin glowing as it did before you were stricken. You hold out your hand, small and fragile. It is many years since I have seen you, dear friend. I know you cannot truly be here but I take your cold hand and follow where you lead, through the dark and dampness of the narrow streets, your pink dress bouncing at your ankles, it’s hem a little dirtied, your shoes tainted with earth.

As I follow, my heart aches with memories of what had been, the single moments of joy as we played, two sparks of light amongst the grim decay of the old town. We wind back to the churchyard, through the twisted iron gate, I see the gnarled ancient trees bowing a macabre greeting as we enter the yard. The breeze has settled and the old town is quiet, no birds, no voices, not even the whisper of the trees. Just the hush of heavy, dark air.

Your hand leaves mine and for a moment I stand alone, confronted by the voices from the past. Voices from all the places that should have been a sanctuary, that should have held me and cared for me. I recall the day that I fled, my case banging at my leg as I hastened, breathless, along the road towards the moors, eyes full of tears, jaw set in determination, my back to the place that I swore I would never return to.

And yet, so many years have passed, and here I am again. No one believed I would come back. Least of all me. But the path behind me has gone, and now briars and thorns grasp at my ankles. I shout your name but my month is empty and nothing comes out. I can see your dress, pink in the moonlight at the far side of the churchyard. I make my way through the disarray of broken and fallen stones, names faded, forgotten, worn by the rain.

And there, at the far end of the yard, where the mist gathers in dense, shifting banks, there you stand, small, still, and solitary amidst the dankness of this place. My steps feel heavy as I approach, the ground soft and easing. I try to call to you again, but when I open my mouth, only the darkness fills it, stifling me, leaving me without a voice.

You hold up a hand, beckoning me towards you. Your smile punctures the dark blanket that cloaks this place and I feel strangely at peace. Whether it was you who drew me back to the old town I do not know. But knowing that you are here and near is solace in itself.

My tired eyes focus through the gloom to the place where you stand. A freshly filled grave, new dirt facing towards the sky, a single pink rose laid across it. The clouds shift and the moonlight casts its soft glow across the headstone, fresh with dust from the mason’s hand. It pulses as you brush against it, the love in your face as you welcome me back.

And then I see it. The name carved deep into the granite.

A name that is mine.