I stood on the dead grass of the cemetery, watching my mother's coffin being lifted by Men I never even knew. The sombre procession, black cloaked, some distance from me, shuffled forward, heads bowed in melochany. Cynically, I doubted any one of them actually knew my mother personally, as my mother, from what I, as her firstborn son knew her, was a loner. She always refused outside company and never sought companionship.
Yet here they stood, their facade in place. I guessed they were co-workers, but really I had little Idea. I never saw my mother that much.
The fact I stand here thinking of these things really tells you how much I loved my mother, and how much respect I had for her. My mother was always cold towards me and sometime before my latest 15th birthday, I gave up trying to talk to her.
And, 28 days later, I stand watching her coffin being lowered into the ground while a cleric utters prayer to his absent god. I detested the fact that the burial was to be a christian one; that my mother would rot and be consumed by mindless vermin, worms that would bring decay and rot into her deathly repose. Like the streets of Altdorf, where I lived, the stain of corruption would spread and darken, till the old school house fell down, and the farmers celebrated their 12th annual crop failure; till the police would give up on the law and descend, like everyone else, into despair and cruelty.
I respected the cleric for staying in this blighted town, despite the townsfolk calling their home godforsaken and the cruel populance. Perhaps he believed he could reverse the change, send back the strangers and restore the hope, to fight the dark and blast the light back into our lives. And as he uttered the final lines of his prayer, the coffin was, like everything, smothered into final darkness.
Truly, If that was his intent, he was naive. No miracle could undo what has taken hold.
Perhaps some explanation of my life is due. I was born here, in Altdorf, and unlike most tragic stories my mother did not die in childbirth. My mother was never married. The man left her after realising she was pregnant, leaving a single, pregnant woman alone in the harsh conditions of a town descending into darkness. I had never forgiven the man for that; If I met him I would kill him wherever he stood.
The next day, I wake alone in the house in which I had endured for 15 years. I crossed the ancient floorboards that have already been smothered with thick dust. Their creaking, once a perk to me, echoes across the now empty rooms. Down to the kitchen, I took in the scene that remained from that fateful day 3 days before. The kitchen was in disarray. Evidence of a struggle was clear: the wooden tabletop on which the cold meals had been handed to me by the deathly cold face of my parent was smashed apart from a mighty riposte. Several smashed windows had sent their deadly shards to pierce the wooden floor, their razor edges jutting like a field of bones.
I had woken up here on the day, curled up in a defensive ball in the ruins of the kitchen sink, the tap running on full blast. If the police had bothered, I would probably be a suspect. Yet this was Altdorf. No police had the will to do this. Personally, I woke with no memory of the past week.
Later in the day, one of the men who attended the funeral met me at the door, introducing himself as Doctor Gordon, a Child Psychologist. I mildly resented being regarded as a "Child" and that the man regarded himself as a "Doctor", hereby implying he was to fix something wrong with me.
The doctor sat me down at the scene, taking in the destruction and chaos of the ruined kitchen. He looked shocked.
"So..." He began, trailing off.
"How do you feel?..." he said, rather lamely in my opinion. He looked at me with brown, tired eyes.
Over the next hour, Doctor Gordon talked to me about my broken relationship with my mother. I thought he seemed dismayed at the lack of companionship of our family, and was depressed by my emotional detachment from it all. I realized afterwards that my tone was flat, like a servitor as it recounts ten thousand misdeeds recorded in the vault of sins. I delivered my words with a hollow point, with damp gunpowder, with the fire and charisma of a defeated general, freezing to his death while he watches the events of his life play out in his dying hours.
About an hour later, Doctor Gordon left the house, promising return late afternoon the next day, with me feeling empty as if he had taken the last breath of my life with him. Tiredness would overwhelm me, yet I felt no fatigue, only a energy that built as the night reached its zenith. I paced the room, thinking over what to do, feeling neither pain, nor hunger, not fatigue or grief most deep. And as the early morning sun rose with brightened crimson, accompanied by the calls of not morning birds waking but cruel night birds resting, Doctor Gordon knocked once again on the ancient door that denied the house to outsider.
I answered the door with tired resignation, without cause or reason why. It was as I opened the door I realized logically there was no way I could have identified the outsider as the Doctor, and as specific as Gordon was to be to far for mere mortal to guess. Covering my shock I glanced at the people that stood beyond, behind the Doctor. The group was composed of two adults, obviously a couple, young and bright. The third was a female, in the same youthful vigour of the adults, comparably my age.
The man wore a short robe and business atire. The woman wore a white dress that showed her shoulders, and the most exotic hat. A slight black adornment obsucred a section of her face, and she wore clean white gloves. The girl, on the other hand, dressed in jeans and a thin blouse. She had a pouch on her hip secured to her belt.
Doctor Gordon introduced us all, with much of an experienced air of one who has introduced orphans to their new caregivers. That much was obvious to me, and as I learnt the identity of the others, I grew both apprehensive and resigned to the fact my life was to changed at the procedures implemented by administrative officials who had neither studied orphan development nor investigated the personal success of his policies.
The adult female was introduced as Beatrice Lismore, wife to Christopher Lismore. Both were of Russian origin, I was informed by the Doctor. The girl, extremely charming in an influential way that pestered my thoughts, I was surprised to find that her name was Jenifer Lismore, and she was part of the family.
My assumptions proved correct, and Doctor Gordon related how the arrangements were complete and I was indeed to join the Lismore's as a member of their family.
"He looks just like you, Chris." Beatrice said. Chris looked me in the eye and narrowed his eyes. It was then I noticed that Chris was extremely handsome in a classic way, with a highly angular pale face... Similar, as Beatrice, or Mother as I should call her, had said. Like all of the Lismore family. I met his gaze, and something in Chris' eyes softened and he looked to Doctor Gordon.
"You will be moving to Drakenhof, a village in the north of the land. " Gordon said. "I'm sure Mr and Mrs Lismore will inform you about Drakenhof on the way there. "
I noticed he hadn't said a word about Jenifer. "Drakenhof..." I said. " An interesting name. "
Beatrice, sorry, Mother, smiled and said: "Yes; It will be just like home for you."
And with that hanging in the air like the stench of blighted corpses - sorry, with Beatrice saying it, it was more like the cloying scent of wildflowers that burst into bloom in the far dark of a corrupted grove. And with that we entered the car, Jenifer and I in the back seats, of course as was right and proper.
And as the car left the lost village of Altdorf, the forbidden spires of the fallen town gave way to barren countryside, we all sat in silence as I thought this over. I knew one thing already: This was another chance, and I wasn't going to let it go away.