The Heart-Shaped Locket

After

He’d been walking as long as the ash had been falling, and the ash had been falling for over a hundred days. Sometimes rain fell, but always, ash. All around him, a plain of nothing. An abandoned Buick was pointlessly parked at the side of the road, as if the driver were hopeful that they might one day return to it. To the east, a ridge reached its peak, stretching as far as he could see, which given the consistent fall of ash, was not very far.

He put his hand in his pocket, and took out a small, sharpened stick. He crouched and ran the tip through the ash. Putting a hand in his other pocket, he removed a scrap of paper, and made a mark. By his reckoning it was nearly June, but he realised this ritual was useless. He couldn’t even tell when twenty-four hours had passed. The weather didn’t change. He went to sleep in an ashy grey, and woke to the same. It had been rumoured that the ash covered the country like a blanket, and that when one went far enough, they’d step out in to the light, but the source of the rumours were unknown. When someone had left, they had not returned.

A white flake fell in front of his face. He reached out and held it in his palm before it suddenly disappeared. Something he hadn’t seen since Before. Snow.

Before

Snow. A single flake dropped out of the sky. He had not heard of Chionophobia before meeting her, and this was the first time he had experienced it. He hoped it wouldn’t turn in to a storm, nor that she wouldn’t notice it. He glanced over, a glean of sweat gathering on her brow. He reached out to touch her hand, stunned to find that it had no effect, and this annoyed him for reasons he couldn’t place. After a few seconds, she snatched it back.

It began to fall in a regular pattern, like archipelagos in the sea of the night sky.

She tried to get off the hood, but in doing so, slipped backwards, hitting her head against the windscreen with a dismal thud, her upper body collapsing on the hood. He scooped her up in his arms, and began to carry her to the house. He thought he heard a metallic clink as lifted her up, but looking back, saw nothing.

After

Nothing. As far as the eye could see. He had made three more marks on the scrap of paper since he had come across the Buick. The trunk had been left open, the rats reducing this prized asset to the prestige of a sewer.

On he walked. Three days since the Buick. What was time? In the nothing, time was precisely that. He reckoned a few more hours had passed when he saw a dark shape in the distance. He judged he was still a couple of hours away, and if he had got his timings correct, then he hopeful. If he was wrong, then he wondered if he would survive the disappointment. At the very thought, his stomach rumbled. He was tempted to dip in to his supplies, and yet if he was wrong, it could prove fatal. He would know in a couple of hours.

He tried to remember why he had left. It had been easier in the days shortly after, but as the weeks passed, he was more and more certain that he was on a fools errand. Could he have remained in that community, hoping it would all pass? He had made the decision to leave, and now he had to live with it. He had made the decision to leave behind a home, which whilst empty of life, was not empty of supplies. He pictured even now his neighbours stripping the house bare in the search for supplies. He scolded himself for his stupidity. They’d have done that a long time ago.

Awake, he dreamt. She was next to him, walking by his side. She knew where it was, and she would lead him to it. He turned to smile at her, but she had disappeared. When he left, there was conviction in his thoughts. Now he wasn’t so sure. Had he simply wanted to believe anything, just to leave? The community had remained strong, even after it had happened, but it had been at breaking point when he left, and would have been beyond salvation now.

No, he decided. He had left because her words contained magic, and he believed her. Not for the first time, he surrounded himself with her words. It kept him from feeling lost.

Before

‘Lost?’

He didn’t know what to say. She had woken up, and her hand went instinctively to her neck. Finding nothing there, she had sat up straight, her eyes adjusting to the light, and the stranger peering at her. He had been sat in the corner of the room, watching the doctor attend to her. He had searched the car from top to bottom, but it had gone. It must have fallen out somewhere else, he had told her. When she argued back, he had made the mistake of suggesting she had lost it.

‘Lost?’

Her anger had been fierce. Who had he been trying to convince, other than himself? She knew she hadn’t lost it, even though he had heard the doctor tell her she may suffer from short term memory loss. The day of the argument, they had flown to her parents several hundred miles away.

‘Lost?’

The shame burnt within. He stood in her parents spare room and swore that he would find it when they got back home, if it was the last thing he did. Something caught his eye. He only had a second to take it in before the overwhelming silence.

After

Silence. He waited patiently for the sounds of life within. He might have sat there thirty minutes, or might have sat there for hour, but there was no one there to keep time.

He hadn’t seen a living soul since he left, but he had heard the stories before that day. He had heard that when a man stepped out into the nothing, they changed, and became living wraiths. He didn’t believe it, and nothing he had experienced on his walk had changed that.

Yet why did he wait if he didn’t believe?

The nothing changed a man’s mind, although there was always the possibility that he had always been this way and it had taken a world-changing turn of events to bring it out in him.

He crossed the threshold of the abandoned store. Many people had passed through, but with nothing to transport the goods, plenty remained. He considered that this would change in the coming months, and soon, the store would be a future museum exhibition. He laughed to himself, the first sound he had heard in days. How optimistic, he considered.

He filled his rucksack, and sat down at the end of an aisle, picking off the unappealing scraps, before filling is belly. How far he still had to go, he couldn’t tell. He hoped there would be another store along the way. If not, this might be his final stop.

A thought crossed his mind. He got to his feet, and approached the till, unsurprised to find it empty, but surprised that someone had still thought money worth anything. An old till receipt was trapped underneath, and he pulled it out, wondering if he would recognise the location.

His heart skipped a beat as he realised that he did know the location. Then he heard the footsteps.

Just After Before

Footsteps crept closer. He heard her call out his name. He almost broke in to tears on the spot. Then, somewhere outside, someone shouted. He grabbed her hand, went downstairs in to the street, and began to run.

After

Run as fast as you can, he told himself. Three miles. Three miles, and it’s over. He didn’t believe in a higher power, but said a few words just to be safe. He choked on the ash as it continued to fall, his mouth sucking in specks like a hoover as he gasped for air. He did not dare to look behind him. He wasn’t sure, should he know he was being pursued, whether the knowledge would spur him on, or break his spirit.

Three miles. Three miles. Three miles.

And then what? He already knew where to look. He hadn’t looked closely enough at the time. He knew that now.

Three miles.

Just After Before

Three miles he ran before realising that somewhere along the way he had lost something. He had lost her. At what point he could not tell. His hand was still closed around the ghost of hers. He already knew instinctively that his parents hadn’t made it, and yet he was certain she was okay. He turned around as the ash began to fall.

After

Fall. Rise. Keep going. Stumble. Jump. Keep going.

Before

‘…going, and going, and at the very end, that’s where you’ll realise that it was there all along. I will never show you what’s inside, because if I do, then you won’t have had to work for the answers, will you, and isn’t that the point of life? To discover for yourself? Besides, I think you’d be disappointed with these answers.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’re not the answers to the questions you need answering. Don’t you see? It’s nothing to do with a single answer, because each of us has a different question.’

‘I don’t know where my answer is hidden.’

‘It could be anywhere.’

‘Anywhere?’

‘Anywhere. In your desk drawer, your parent’s house, hell, it could even be under the hood, in the engine of this Mustang.’

‘I wish our answers were in the same place. It would make it a hell of a lot easier to find.’

‘One day, perhaps they will be.’

Just After Before

‘Bea?’

He called her name for hours, but there was no reply.

‘Bea?’

Movement. He stood still, as he saw someone pull themselves up on a monument now speckled with grey ash. His heart burst with joy. It was her. She smiled, just before falling back down to the floor. His joy is short-lived. As the final breaths leave her body, she manages to get out a single word.

‘Home.’

After

Home. Home. Home. He realises how close he is. Three blocks away. He keeps to the pavement before realising that no one will care any longer. This suburb was always full of life, and now its void of any meaning to the word.

He cuts through a neighbours garden, half expecting to hear them sending him on his way with a dose of colourful language, but instead he is met with silence.

There it is. The sight of it freezes him in his tracks.

He hears the footsteps behind him, thundering in his wake.

He reaches the Mustang and in a swift movement, reaches in through the smashed window, and unlatches the hood.

He dare not look up. They are getting closer.

He lifts the hood, and using his last remaining strength, rips apart the engine. There it is. The key to the universe. They are only a few feet away when he opens the locket.