Colony

by SpunSilk

PART ten: Cairns

This is the rock he lifted
to lay upon the cairn in a high place.
This rock, warmed by the near sun,
felt right, somehow, in his hand.

–Claudia Putnam

Weary as I was with my own health issues, this fellow was in worse shape. I got myself under one of his arms and supported him, mostly standing. His head threatened to loll to one side. "Hey!" I said, "Come on! Stay with me!" He did not respond. I swung my head around, looking for what I should do. I decided to move with him into the old church, and let him lay flat awhile.

He could support only part of his weight himself, we stumbled inside and I eased him down onto a hardwood pew at the back of the small sanctuary. "Come on, now!" I encouraged, patting his cheek with the palm of my hand to get his attention. "Wake up, friend."

His eyes had rolled back into his skull and his breathing was uneven. But with my encouragements and a few minutes horizontal, his pupils reappeared and he tried to focus them. His skin was paper-thin and he seemed incredibly breakable. He was like a walking skeleton wearing a thin, mis-fitting layer of skin – like some tailoring-job gone wrong. "Just hang on, I'll get you some water." I promised, but then my mind flailed around, to think just where I could do that. "I'll be right back. You hold on!" The cabinets at the back of the church held various books, cloth and such in various states of being chewed by vermin, but also communion chalices that had held no interest for the mice. With one of these in hand, and leaving Edward R. Murrow in charge, I hurried out to the well-pump I had seen behind the church building. It was all for nothing though – the handle was rusted in place and useless. I scanned the thorn-vine mounds on both sides of the graveyard.

I had another thought; I sprinted quickly up the street to the General Store, where –not finding water to be sold in bottles back in the day– I grabbed the bottle of brandy I had stashed away in the grain sack (with the plan of squirreling it away to my cabin). Although part of my brain twanged with disappointment, this stranger had more need of it that I did.

I sprinted back towards the old church, but skidded to a stop at the sudden memory of my contagion. That indecision lasted only a blink before I sprinted off again. My Colony infection was still inert until it bloomed. And it showed no signs of blooming this afternoon.

I offered the old man a mouthful of the golden liquid from the chalice, with a quick swig from the bottle myself on the side for good measure. (Ah! The years had been kind to the liquor.) My patient sputtered and swallowed, and his breathing became deeper and stronger. "That's right," I said. "talk to me..." But his head fell back again onto the unforgiving wood. My own heart was beating hard, as he moaned in semi-consciousness. This fellow needed help, and not a doctor in the house. It was all on me. He started to shiver, and I quickly made my decision.

Getting his arm up on my shoulder again, we stumbled together out of the church and toward the last house in town standing. The door still stood open from my last visit and we entered. I eased him down onto the soft couch in the front room. Upstairs I grabbed an ancient blanket from one of the un-shredded beds, and with a flurry of moths set aflutter, I spread it over him. "Listen, now. Come on!" I encouraged, offering him another mouthful of the smoothest brandy I had ever had the joy to have on my tongue. "Don't leave me now, I got questions!" He coughed. "What do you mean 'it's over'? What task are you talking about? Are there other people here? Talk to me, man!"

He coughed again, a weak wet cough. "I die, but the Task is secure."

"You are not dying!" I told him sternly, "Not before your answer some questions!"

"Ask what you will," he spoke in a weak voice.

"Are there more people out here?"

"No. No more people. I tend them myself, since the death of my father... " He took a difficult breath. "And he, since the death of his..." his eyes closed.

Well, that at least. I put one major concern off to the side; a human Colony out-break was not an imminent danger. My tone softened. "What is it you tend?"

"The cairns."

"What's a cairn?" I asked, but he had fallen silent. I shook him gently. "Come on, focus! What's a cairn?"

His eyes re-opened and he stared at me without comprehension for a few beats. He glanced at the room around us in surprise, and his thin lips pulled into a weak smile. "Papi's house! I've not been back here in years..."

"Why do you tend these cairn-things? Why are they important?"

"How they doted on me!" He reminisced, his eyes unfocused. "All of them. Their golden boy... " he slipped into a language I didn't recognize. In this he babbled for a few lines.

"Hey," I tried to get his focus. "What's a cairn?"

"Yes," he absent-mindedly answered a question I had not asked. "You must be always vigilant. Trust him not a single moment! He is... wily..."

"Fine. Wily – got it." I assured him. "Tell me something, now. Who is wily?"

"But he has forever, and I am so tired..." his scrawny chest convulsed in a few quick sobs under the heavy angular pewter medallion. "So tired." He started to shiver again.

I hastily folded the blanket in a double layer and tucked it in around him. "Come on, old timer." I said gently. "Have another sip." I raised his head and held the liquid to his lips and he drank deeply this time. "Good, good." I let him back down. Jeez, there was nothing to him, he was as frail as an autumn breeze.

His eyes seemed to focus on me again. "You aught not live here, Papi's house is too far removed. Use my cabin... much closer to the mine..."

"Mine?"

He nodded weakly and his eyes slid closed. "The Enemy."

He did not elaborate, and although his eyes remained closed, his breathing was sure and regular. I watched him in silence for a few moments, then decided to let him sleep. It seemed he had gotten a bigger shock, when we had come across each other in the church-yard, than I had. And old bodies recover slowly from shocks. I stood and surveyed the room for the second time that afternoon. He had recognized the house, had known it as a boy. How long had he lived out here by himself? His whole life? Who was this Enemy of his? What was a troglodyte?

I walked around the parlor, pressing down the questions that popped up one after the other, like some odd whack-a-mole. I distracted myself with snooping the room for clues. There were neither dates nor names on the backs of the stern black and white portraits on the walls. As I've mentioned before, the furniture had seen better days, some of it even toppled (by wildlife?) but then my eyes fell on the huge roll-top desk.

It was closed – it was intact.

I was there in two strides, and tried to opened the desk. As much as the old wood fought my efforts, I won in the end. The insides had been kept rodent-free and I felt I was looking at a time capsule newly opened. Fountain pens lay in a horizontal grove. A blotter was placed tidily on the left hand side. Wire-rimmed reading glasses lay folded carefully near the pens, and a thick layer of papers lay in the work-area. Lying on top of this pile was a large dusty green ledger book, the kind used to keep accounts back in the day. I opened it to the first fragile page. "Dowd's General Store, Accounts 1890— " scrolled across the top of the page in the elegant script of a fountain pen. Following that, the page was filled with tidy columns of numbers and entries that didn't interest me at all. I flipped through the book and was surprised to find that about two thirds of the way through, the columns stopped and the pages were suddenly filled with thick prose in the same elegant hand. After scanning the first few sentences, I groped blindly for the chair that lay on its side on the floor behind me to sit down on, unable to tear my eyes from the words that I found written there.

I read;

As I age and come to what will inevitably be the end of life, it occurs to me that the account should be recorded on paper, for you, dear Horace, or for whomever Providence will supply after you, for the Task at Hand. You, being tender of years now, would not understand my account were I to give it you today, and I fear if I do not set it down now, the account you receive later from your father, although truthful, I'll warrant, would be by rights less than a first-hand account. For aught I know, you yourself will someday carry this cross I now bear. The result of this account you will already know. Suffer me now then, I will try to tell how it happened...