All

Of
Which
Remains

C.M. Reay
 All of Which Remains

The boy had been dying for weeks now, and when it finally came to
pass, his family dug the grave.

Father decided on a spot between two apple trees a few hundred

yards from the main hut. There were dozens of them about, and
Mother had wanted to keep him close, flourishing the beauty of his
soul. So for the life and of the spirit.
The boy was their first to die.
Father had waited on digging the hole until after he had passed, and
yet, he thought of the hole all the time as he waited. When he spoke to
the boy, lying there on linings of straw, red eyes, he spoke of how
beautiful the grave would be for him. The wisdoms of ancient times.
That he would live on and watch over.

When he died, Father was out with his eldest son, his only son, now.
Hunting rabbits in the woods. Crop ruining at harvest’s end.
Burrowed deep.
There were storm clouds brewing.
Names for them that Father had heard and had passed down from
blood to blood. When they returned home, Mother was on the floor,
weeping quietly. Still gripping the boy’s cold, stiff hand. It was Father
that unbound them. He said:
The boy is dead now. I must bury him.
And as he spoke the sky clapped thunder and the clouds released
their fury and the world was made damp and of mud. Four days it
rained, the volume leaving the sky in a permanent night storm, unable
to cut through. Under no circumstances could they leave they hut,
which itself was beginning to moisten and leak. The body of the boy
lay there in his bed. Pale skin and a blank, watching stare. The onset of

2
 All of Which Remains

rot.

At the request of their girl, Father turned his dead son’s head to face
the wall. The smell of his decay exacerbated by the humidity of the
storm. Soon, his corpse began attracting beasts.

On the third night of rains, the night air was besieged by the howling
of dogs. Distant at first, but growing closer, louder, into the long night.
Father sat by the door with his axe. His eldest boy knelt with him, a
sharp file tucked beneath his elbow. By the far wall, Mother was
crying again.
She prayed to the Lord and she pleaded for forgiveness. She asked
what they were being punished for.
Father said:
Meat. They want our boys meat.
And Mother cried at that too, for how could he say such a thing? But,
the hounds had drawn close now. Howling just outside the door. The
world small, lit only by the single candle that Father held.
SLAM!
A force rattled against the wooden frame. Mother covered her mouth
to suppress a cry, reaching out for their daughter. Father held up the
axe, the candle. He said:
Go now, foul vultures! My son is not for you!
And the beasts cried. Thunder spliced the sky in a tremendous roar
and, when it subsided, they could hear nothing from beyond the
walls.

It dried up two days afterwards. By then, the last of the rabbit meat
had been skinned and boiled and hunger was setting in. His dead son
was still decaying. His skin bleaching alabaster. Flies roaming in
sockets.
When it stopped raining, Father stood by the door and looked out
over their small arable settlement. The rain clogged the Earth so
gluttonously that it sat atop the mud as far as he could see.
Mother stood behind him. She said:

3
 All of Which Remains

This land is cursing us. It wants our boy in the dirt.

And Father nodded grimly, knotting his fingers against a loose strand
in his garments. He said:
It is still too wet to bury him. The Earth is too soft. I will keep him in
the store. There, the dogs will not reach him. There, he can rest in
peace, for now.
Mother shook her head. She glanced at her son, lying there in the bed,
the withering of his essence. She said:
We have stayed too long here.
And he looked at her, shaking his head. He said:
But, this is home.
So it was.

It took the strength of Father and Eldest Boy to lift the body out and
down the steps of the main hut. Wading the waterlogged dirt, so thick
and deep that the brown kissed their ankles and threatened to dye
them. The store was empty from the harvest. What had been stored
had been eaten and they laid him down in the straw.
Inside, the light was dim. Wood panels on the door, cut to size, had
warped over their four summer so that thin strips of light poked
through. The Eldest Boy watching as Father positioned his brothers
arms and legs just so. It was how he had seen his own siblings rested.

They left the store in darkness, bound shut by rope. Mother stood on
the front step, her arms around their girl. She said:
It is not right to keep him like this.
And Father, watching the movement of the creatures at his feet in the
newfound swamp outside his home, said:
We have no choice. I will bury him when the Earth dries. What else
would you have me do?
And he carried on inside the hut, and a fire was started with the last of
the good wood. Father suppressing the burgeoning hunger in him, in
all of them, by tending the flames. Watching its orange flicker.
Thinking on the condition of the boy. His dead boy, and of his resting
place under the apple trees.

4
 All of Which Remains

II

It rained intermittently over the week that followed and so the ground
never settled.
Thrice Father had left for the forests, taking Eldest Boy with him.
Miles scoured, burrow to burrow, unclipping the meat from their
traps. Six rabbits in all.
His daughter had developed a cough and the roof was leaking.
Mother spent the days nursing her, but the girl’s health was only
getting worse.
No one went near the store room.

It was a terrible burden upon Father, the death of his son. The boy had
been strong before the fever, stronger even than Eldest. And then the
illness took his strength, his breath, his life, in that order. Father had

5
 All of Which Remains

seen in him the future of the stead. Now, he could not even be buried
in it.

Of the six rabbits they discarded two for they had been found already
by other creatures of the woods, the meat ruined. The woodlands
sloped on a hill rolling for miles. Its depths they gauged only by the
gradations of species growing amongst its muddy flooring. They
found mushrooms also, and Father inspects them, highlighting the
different parts of the stem for his son so that he would know which
were poisonous.
His only son, he thought.
They carried handfuls back to the settlement before the evening glow,
laying them out on the kitchen table along with the four rabbits.
Mother was still tending to their daughter, who was sleeping now, a
gentle sway in her motions. Father saw her and said:
Stop that! You will scare us all.
And Mother turned to face him. Flush with fresh tears. Praying
silently through wordless lips. He saw beyond her to his daughter in
the bed. Her red eyes. The pale stillness of her.

Later, he would sit by the door, a thin moonlight his sole company.
She had taken to wheezing, a redness on her neck and legs.
It was all the same, he thought. All the same again.
He kept his axe between his legs and looked out at the slim partings
of the door. At the shadows of the night. It was all black out there. So
quiet. So peaceful.
And yet, there was death. Death in his house. Deaths he was helpless
to prevent, as if a plague had beset him, falling foul of malevolent
will. And yet, Father could think not what for. His mind still into a
loop as he sat there. A cycle of pain and suffering. Always us, he
thought. Always us.
He had never lost a child, and now he feared for his second in a
fortnight.

6
 All of Which Remains

On the floor beside him sat a bucket of apples from the nearby trees.
He took one up and bit hard into the flesh. Sweet juice running down
his lips and chin.
He thought of the apple tree where the boy was to be buried. Of the
fruits his body would bring.
Father had no visited the boy in days now. The smell of his decay
lingering further and further across the settlement in passing days so
that he grew afraid of what he would find. Ten days now since the
boy had died. On nights such as this one, the Witching hours, he
closed his eyes and pictures what his soon looked like in there.
Maggot white. A blank, disintegrating figure. Swarming with life in
his death.
It was those images that stayed with Father. Soon he would forget his
son, the boy he knew, the boy that had lived and worked with him.
The young man moulded in his image.

Father?, the voice said.

It was soft. Barely a whisper. Eldest Boy crouched behind him, Father
turning on his pail to look at him.
Let me., he said, pointing to the seat.
Father grumbled, the images of his son dispelling as quickly as they
had come, now only a familiar darkness again. He rose slowly, and
rubbed his eyes.
Everything in the hut was shadows and further shades of blackness
and he crept slowly, each step imprinting a creak into the old wood.
Before he retired, Father said:
Wake me if anything happens.
And the voice of his son called back from the darkness. It said:
I will.

That night, Father struggled to dream. Fidgeting from side to side,

never settling. The girl coughed from her raised bed and Father lay

7
 All of Which Remains

and listened to her breathe for a long time. At some point, he slipped
away.

He awoke to harsh light. To a firm grip on his shoulders. When Father

opened his eyes he seized the figure in fury. And then he remembered
himself, and the boy above him recoiled in dear. He said:
I’m sorry, Father. I fell asleep.
And it was then that Father knew.
He rose instantly, pushing his son out of the way. Mother was already
wailing on the front step by the time he saw it. A parting of bloody
mud in a long trail out into the trees, into the hills. A mixture of flesh
and pawprints. The storeroom door lamely ajar.
Father just stood there as Mother screamed. He thought: Any minute
now I’ll wake up. The day will shake me and the nightmare will end.
This is a dream. A terrible, terrible dream.

III

Within the hour he was deep amongst the hills. The trail of mud
drying on the slopes. Alone on the hunt.
He had ordered Eldest Boy to stay at the settlement. There was danger
he hadn’t expected. The hounds for one. Over their four summers
they had seldom been so bold as to have wandered near the
settlement, let alone break into the store room.
It was the land, he could hear her saying. Whispering in his ear for
months now:
The harvest is failing. The land is rejecting us.
And yet they had stayed. Stayed by his will.

Father found the first of his son randomly amongst a cluster of fallen
leaves. It was his arm. Skinless, gnawed like a chicken leg. Loose

8
 All of Which Remains

tendons like piano wire, reaching out to a disconnected part of

himself. Father took his time picking it up, handling the limb with
cloth.
A pale thing, like a splintered club now that he held it in his grip. That
it once had been his son’s, that he had kissed that hand and watched it
toil dirt and land and flesh, was impossible to him.
He felt a welling in his chest. A deep, bubbling tremor in the base of
his stomach that he swallowed hard to simmer.
By the layout of the palm, the way the fingers worked in from right to
left, Father knew it was his boy’s right hand. With his own, he held
the dismembered limb aloft and kneaded his fingers until he held his
son’s hand for the last time. Rubbing his thumb slowly along the hard
leather of his dead skin.

There were loose marking of prints upon the leaves and mud. Bits of
the land pulled and curved like the banks of a dried up river. Father
followed them vaguely for miles, tucking the bound limb into the
hamper on his back and proceeding deeper and deeper into the forest
until all trails ceased and the trees around him were ones he no longer
recognised. Overhead, the sun had moved across his neck and crown
before settling on his eyeline, causing him to squint as he walked.
He realised then that he had travelled too far to return home before
nightfall. A part of him had known this, yet, Father had carried on
regardless. He knew that they would be waiting for him anxiously.
Watching the sun fade behind the valleys ever changing face. His
daughter, lying there, dying.

In the night he heard hounds abroad, cursing out one after the other.
Father took rest by a stream, feeling his weight sink slowly into the
mud, a rupture in the otherwise silence of the constant stream. Safe if
he was quiet enough.
Father closed his eyes and listened to the water, laying his back out on
the risen grass. Damp weeds and straw knots a makeshift bedding.
The sky concealed by thick cloaks of cloud.

9
 All of Which Remains

The morning brought with it a confused daze. Father stood, then

groggily bent over the stream. It was shallow, clear water running
over stones – and he kneeled down again and drank heartily.
He retreated for hours along the hills and found nothing of his son.
Only the arm, which was a sickly blue. Tucked away inside the cloth
of his hamper. 88

When he reached the settlement, the sun was beyond the trees once
more. Still light in the valley, though the shadows enhancing,
growing. No sound bar the churn of metal and dirt. Father gazed at
Eldest Boy, by the apple tree, knee deep into the Earth. Beating the dirt
with his shovel, venting a pain and a fury which seemed to consumed
him, so that the dirt flew and scattered in the wind, and more than a
little coated his skin. He hadn’t noticed Father watching him, and
Father did not wish to call.
The front door of their hut lay open as if it was abandoned, and he
made his way towards it.
Inside, it was dark. On the table lay the body of his daughter. He
approached it slowly, taking no notice of the room or its contents, or
lack of it. His hands reaching for the strands of her ginger hair,
running the locks between his fingers until it gave way at the end,
stopping forever.
Her hands were cupped neatly on her chest. An innocent to her
unblemished skin.

IV

10
 All of Which Remains

His Eldest son was still digging in the moonlight when Father came to
him holding a candle. The boy looked up at him, clothes
indistinguishable from skin for all had merged with dirt. He said:
Mother has left us. She cursed the land and never stayed to pray. She
has deserted us.
And Father looked at him, and he lay the candle down on one of the
mounds of dirt, and he knelt to offer him his hand.

In the night they heard terrible screams. The bodies of his daughter
and what was left of his son were laid out on the table the two of them
sat around. Boy and Man. Man and Man. Each consumed by thoughts
of their own destiny, listening to the wails of the night.
It was a familiar voice. The barking of vicious beasts and the quiet.
That terrible quiet.
Eldest Boy looked at his Father, whose eyes had fallen to the planks
lining the floor of the hut. His hand involuntarily clenching and
releasing. And then he looked at the bodies. And then it was day, and
his only son shook him awake and pointed to the sky above the hills
where the birds were circling.

The slopes had dried. As they ascended, they watched out through
the trees for any sign of the birds. Veering East, or North to match
them so that they were always underneath. Always approaching.

It was a horrific site.

Eldest Boy notices the leaves first. Stained red. Parts of him
everywhere. Loose bits of limb. A devoured bone. The maggots had
found him before the birds did. His sockets white and wriggling, as
was his mouth, so young his brother, stretched open in a pose of abject
terror. Skinless and clean in portions where they had picked him dry.
The boy couldn’t help but vomit. The stench along was enough to
overwhelm them, Father grasping a tree for strength, half-expecting to
find his wife and cruelly relieved at the site before him. His son

11
 All of Which Remains

defaced and torn by nature.

When they could stand the sight of him, Father said:
This is not how we leave our own. You must help me lift him back to
be buried.
And Eldest Boy, his only son, his only child, now, looked again at his
brother. A deep trembling in him that made his eyes shake. He
nodded, turning to face him, his voice light. He said:
I will. I will help you.

They started by bagging those parts of him which had been severed.
Loose scraps of bones and chunks of meat. The air around them was
still thick with wisps of morning fog, making it hard to see. Once they
collected what they could, they carried the main carcass holding an
end each. Eldest Boy ahead, taking the slopes with his back to the
drop.
At first, it went fine, and then he lost his footing. Slipping under a
plant, his balance giving way under the weight of the body of his
dead brother. He fell, and in an instant the three of them were rolling
down the hill, tumbling their frames against sharp rocks, frass, mud,
the deep padding of leaves. The Eldest Boy came to a halt at the
bottom of the hill and his Father rolled into him. Both lay still for a
moment, moving only to gauged injury. Father said:
Are you alright?
And the boy groaned. He said:
Yes.

They rose slowly and looked back up the hill. Their bodies had
erupted a concealed mud slide which made climbing back up
impossible. The boy’s corpse lodged some thirty feet up, half-buried
in the dirt, face down. Father and son gazing up at him. His
composure missing, Father thought, the way he was bent forward. He
was missing something, something large.
Father scanned the slopes again wide-eyed. The Eldest Boy looked to
his feet and screamed.

12
 All of Which Remains

Maggot white. It had come off in the fall.

Father bit his lip before taking his sons skull into his hands. Wrapping
it tightly to the knot. His son was looking up at his brother’s torso,
still caught up on the slope. He said:
What are we going to do?
Squirming and moving. Alive in his son’s death. Thriving as the birds
and the dogs.
What are we going to do, Father?
The boy was looking at him. Father gazed up at the remains of his
son. So close, so out of reach. The bag in his hands. He said:
Leave it.

Mother was waiting for them in the hut when they returned. A fire
blossomed in the corner wall beside the table where her daughter lay.
Ointments and creams and flowers. There was the hand, too.

Neither of them acknowledged her as they entered, though, it was

hard to ignore the bandages. Stained red cloth wrapped around her
shoulders and stomach and legs and hand. She wobbled as she
moved, only now, Father knew, it was a source of genuine pain.
For a brief moment, the two of them looked at one another. Both of
their eyes drawn to the bags he carried about his shoulders. The faint
sound of gentle movement. He said:
It is time to bury our children.

She followed behind them as they carried her out to the grave. The
son they lay in his bags on top. Outside it was dry, the wind light, but
cold, brisk. The three of them standing beside the hole. The bodies of
their youth so delicately placed. Not needing more than to bear
witness. Father cleared his throat, he said:

13
 All of Which Remains

We have lost our future. And it is either God, or our land who is to
blame. One and the same.
By the afternoon bleeding of the red sun they were buried.

Afterwards, the family returned to their hovel and the night cast itself
upon the settlement, upon the whole world. The dogs howled on the
slopes and birds sang cries of terror and of love. For the first time in a
long time, Father slept long and fully, his rest untamed and deep, lost
in the distant realms of fantasy, abstractions of old memories and lost
loved ones. There were his children. His wonderful children! Rotting
now under the apple tree.

It took him a while to rouse in the morning. By then, the Eldest Boy
was six hours gone with what little he could carry. Father’s axe,
always resting beside his bed, was nowhere to be found. Nor were the
knives, half of the apples, or the boy’s blanket.
Mother was sitting on the front step of the hut, door open, looking out
into frosted tips of the morning.
Father stood, but he was unsteady. Taking to his feet and settling
down awkwardly, defeatedly, beside her. She looked over at him,
reading his expression plainly. Father said:
The boy is gone.
Mother nodded. She held a cup in her hand, lifting it up as she gazed
out towards the apple tree. Rising to drink but Father’s hand came
firm upon her wrist and sent its contents flying across the muddy,
abandoned lot that was their home. His face red with fury. He said:
You knew?
There was a shimmer in her eyes. A fear that suddenly hardened into
something stronger. Her flat expression returning. She said:
He was afraid of getting sick.
They looked at each other. Then, after a time, Father rose and set to his
day on the settlement as it had never been for him. Alone. The first
thing he did was walk the fields, assessing the damage the water had
caused his stillborn crop, and the bare soil yet to be used. Stones had

14
 All of Which Remains

risen, churning to the surface in the great mix of the storm, and the
Father grumbled that he would be picking it on his own. If only for
his sons he thought. The lost heir and the fearful deserter.
So he took to the soil by hand, fine picking the stones and leveraging
them into piles with which he soon enough devised to build a stone
wall. Certainly, of pebbles anyway, there was enough of them. And
the day passed without incident. It was short and arduous, as Winter
days are. Ever colder, the sun crystallised behind a shade of ice. His
breath standing out in front of him. In the afternoon he checked the
traps but they were empty. One after the other after the other. Father
wondered if his son, his only son, had been to see them before him. A
part of his midnight scheme prior to running away. That evening, in
the hut, he more than expected his return. Mother had come back
around the same time. Sat by the table, watching the door. A single
candle burning thin. Mother eating her apples in silence, departing to
bed without notice, where she prayed the souls of her children, in this
world and others. For Father, who had grown bitter in his soul. Worn
haggard. Staring emptily out into the darkness.

He was awake long after Mother finally gave in watching him. He

conserved energy by keeping completely still, his watching measured
between slow blinks. It was a state he was accustomed to. That the
world had put on him and that he had accepted, as a man.
He could hear the dogs approaching in the night again. The
settlement. The world was black and blood orange in the moon’s thin
arch. Peering out through thin cracks in the doorway. Shadows
slinking in the night with heavy breaths. The distant rain of dirt on
dry leaves.
Rotting under the apple tree.
He took up a spade. In the darkness, barefoot, too immediate in his
panic, his urgency, to worry about such things, he became a phantom
of the dark. Calling out angrily towards the growing wail of mutts. He
said:
Leave my children alone!
Banging the spade so that it rang a harsh, copper note and shouting so

15
 All of Which Remains

that the dog’s barked back and made themselves known to him. He
mimicked their snarls, louder, more viciously, always banging the
spade, stepping forwards towards their group, towards the grave, the
hole ever clearer as he approached. Freshly dug. The depth of it. Until
they skulked into the night, their snarls circling and petering out.
Until he was alone again.

A Father and his dead children.

He laid the dirt right with the spade, feeling for the inconsistencies
with his toes. The hardness of his skin against the dirt, pressing soles
down to pat it firm.
When it was settled, he lay down beside the apple tree. It was darker
in its shade. Hidden from the moonlight so that he dissolved entirely
into the night. Unable to see the hand he held not an inch from his
face. So white and so pale, and yet, nothing at all.

16