1.
The coffee table was made with the skills his grandfather had taught him. Using the tools from the workshop that the man had built over the fifty years he had been a carpenter. The legs had already been made, turned by his grandfather in the year or so before his death. This was back when he was still desperately trying to ignore the cancer eating away at him. They were for a project that never found completion, so when Victor found them all he had to do was ask and they were his.
They needed finishing, adapting to fit with the stout table he had planned, and the old man had done this himself to Victor’s specifications. He had worked the wood with his own meticulous diligence despite the pain that so obviously afflicted him, and the coffee table ended up being his grandfather’s last completed project before the pain became too great for him to continue working.
Or so Vic had assumed.
Vic had spent a lot of time looking at the low table since he heard the news. He had studied the round curves of the legs and the sweep of the tables long edge with admiration. Not admiration of his own work, but admiration of the skills he had been taught.
It took his mind off things.
The worst part of it was not being able to go to the funeral. The crematorium told them no more than six were allowed, and so it was his grandmother, their three children and his two closest friends.
There had been no room for any of the grandchildren.
Vic thought that it was for the best.
The Bakers were not a huge family, but they were big enough that trouble always broke out when enough of them got together, and trouble at his grandfather’s funeral would have been unforgivable.
It was only a few weeks after the event that the restrictions were relaxed. Vic didn’t know by how much, it didn’t seem important anymore, but the change did fill him with a resigned sadness that was lifted by the package he received in the post.
He had expected it, his mother had told him it was going to arrive, and he knew what was going to be in it, or at least so he had assumed.
The box was an eighteen inch a side cube securely taped with masses of mahogany brown packing tape. He could clearly visualise his mother working on it in what must have been an empty family home. He strongly suspected that the worst part of it all for her – apart, of course, of the certain knowledge of her fathers’ death – was that her own mother was being forced out of the family home to pay for the funeral.
Death was an expensive business these days.
Vic knew that his job was an easy one. His Grandfather’s death was not real to him yet – it never really would be now – and he had been spared the raw loss of the man, and the loss of the family home.
He had not been there since before the outbreak; the better part of a year had passed since he last saw the house in which his mother had been born. That had been that day he had manhandled the table into the back of his van to get it home.
His Grandfather had patted him on the back weakly, the memory of the feather-light touch still made Vic wince, and had said in a small voice, “We did a fine job there, it’ll last you a long time I think.”
Vic’s eyes moved from the table itself, and he stared at the parcel which lay on it. He was sat on the couch with his elbow placed on his knee and his chin rested on the palm of his hand. He was in no rush, there was no reason to rush; no one was going anywhere.
He let those words roll around in his head: No one was going anywhere.
Beside the box he had placed a small craft knife, he picked it up and carefully cut around the tape holding the box closed. The smell that drifted from it, a faint smell of motor oil and burning electronics, pulled at the edges of his memory and for a moment he was tempted to allow himself to think of those many times in the workshop watching his grandfather work – but he didn’t. Instead, he unfolded the top of the box and peered inside.
He reached in and slid out the package, discarding the box, and then carefully unwrapped it, removing layer upon layer of paper as thin as tissue, each layer revealing something inside that was a hard rectangle.
A wooden box.
Vic bushed the paper from the coffee table and placed the box on the varnished wood.
The table and box looked like a matching set. They had the same relative dimensions and the same sweep on their long edges. Even the joints had been made to match and this marvelled Vic. The old man had remembered a piece he had worked on for less than a day, even though all the pain and fear to create something that so perfectly complimented it.
Vic cried a little then, the workmanship saying so much for his grandfather’s love of him. He had known the way to his Grandsons heart in that no-nonsense practical way that was often confused for unfeeling stoicism to those without the eyes to see it. His Grandfather had been an old-fashioned man who never wore his heart on his sleeve, but to those who knew him he was a storm of emotions.
He had only ever seen his grandfather cry once, and he had been the only person there to witness it. There had been an argument between Vic’s Grandparents and his grandmother had stormed out, threatening to stay with her sister. After a few moments of silence Vic had heard soft sniffs from the corner of the room where his grandfather’s chair had been. He turned to see the man silently weeping.
He had walked over and put his hand on the old man’s shoulder, and they had stayed that way until the tears had passed, neither of them spoke, they just shared an unspoken mutual support that transcended words.
Vic’s Grandmother had returned by suppertime, wandering in as if she were just returning from a casual visit to her sister, and life continued.
She never mentioned it, and his grandfather never mentioned it, but after that Vic began to spend more time in the workshop.
In a way Vic knew that this moment of conflict had been one of the best things that had ever happened to him, and his memory of it was altered by this knowledge.
Vic moved through the memory and back to the box in front of him, for a moment surprised that he had not moved and that only seconds had passed. The smell of the workshop still lingered in the air from the wooden box that had no doubt been built there, so the memory of it lingered in the room with the scent.
There were some people who we just expected to always be there.
Reality was a little broken.
The box was about eight inches by four now all the packaging had been discarded, the lid fit snugly and the whole thing stood on four stout little legs that looked like perfect miniatures to the table it sat on.
He reached over and tried to lift the lid, but it was securely closed.
Perplexed Vic sat back.
The large living room window allowed a wide view of the front garden, the tree that hung into view wept autumn leaves onto the grass. Vic let his eyes wander over them, the wind swept a few of them up and they danced briefly before being drawn from his view.
He moved his eyes back to the box.
There was no keyhole and no obvious catch to release the lid.
Vic shifted closer and examined the box more closely.
The lid was etched in shallow relief, curves sweeping around onto themselves in complex designs that must have taken careful preparation and execution. Vic imagined his grandfather’s liver spotted hands, shaking as they cut and shaped the wood. The markings may have been cut by machine, but Vic suspected that they were made by hand. There was something organic about them, something he knew from experience a machine had difficulty emulating.
Here and there he saw a variation in the depths of the curves and a slight irregularity of the border that cut straight from edge to edge, they were unmistakable signs that his assumption was correct.
He brushed his fingers over the lid gently, as if feeling braille.
He couldn’t place it, but something felt odd about the design.
Vic picked the box up and shook it gently, no sound came from inside, then he turned it over and looked at the bottom.
On its underside was a similar design to its top, the curves and sweeps appeared to be the same, but where the lid they were cut as grooves, here they were formed into peaks.
He ran his fingertips over them and felt his lips pull into a smile.
It was like running your fingertips over a miniature mountain range, the peaks varying so slightly and gently he could feel the…
He snatched his hand away as sudden pain tore into his fingertip.
A dot of blood sat on the underside of the box, a single droplet. He looked at his fingertip and saw a tiny matching ball of crimson that grew than dribbled down his finger in a tiny stream.
He popped the tip of his finger into his mouth and looked more closely at the underside of the box. Carefully examining what had caused the wound. He pulled a tissue from his pocket and cleared away the blood.
It was a tiny pin, so small he could barely see it.
He scanned the peaks.
It took twenty minutes, but he found six spikes, no bigger than the tip of a pin, no more than a millimetre tall.
He wrapped the tissue around his fingertip and turned the box back over and carefully examined the same six spots on the design on its top; and there they were, six tiny indentations, six holes that were almost invisible to the naked eye.
Vic sat back in amazement.
For a moment he couldn’t move.
His Grandfather had been a genius – no, an artisan – if what Vic suspected was true.
Vic stood and left for the kitchen, returning with the small transparent plastic box where he kept a selection of needles, threads and – of course – pins, and popped it open selecting six of the thinnest he could find, then carefully inserted the first into one of the holes.
There was a click as something shifted and for a moment Vic couldn’t move. It was as if the memory of his grandfather had been a false one and he had suddenly realised that he had really been a man of great renown, and not just a retired carpenter who still made the odd bespoke item when asked.
His Grandfather had really been a Mozart, or a Michelangelo; even a De Vinci, and Vic had never realised it.
The sorrow Vic felt then was immeasurable.
The loss crushing.
How much had he never known about the man?
How much was lost?
What secret had he held that he would have shared if only he had been asked?
Vic had started to cry again, but he didn’t notice it, instead of wiping away the tears he took up another pin and found another of the holes, then another, and then another, until the tips of six pins had been inserted into what he now knew were six tiny keyholes.
The final click was followed by a louder one and Vic thought he saw a shift in the boxes lid, as if it had been released.
Again, Vic didn’t move, but this time he didn’t think he could if he tried. All he had to do was reach out and lift the lid, that’s all, then he could see what his grandfather had deemed so worthy of this kind of protection.
Vic knew that this had been a puzzle just for him, he knew that it relied on someone lovingly running their fingers over the carvings in the same way he had. Then who ever had found the tiny protrusions would have to understand that they were not just shards of unfinished wood. This person would have to understand Vic’s Grandfather, but they would have to understand the artisan rather than just the man.
And Vic now understood that he might be the only one that truly did.
Vic shifted on the couch as if preparing for an important interview then took a deep breath and opened the lid.
It was an anti-climax, but then it had to be.
Inside was lined with something that looked like red velvet and on the velvet was an envelope.
Written on the envelope in his grandfather’s slightly shaky but otherwise neat hand was a single word.
Vic.
He took the envelope, slipped out the thin sheaf of papers that it held – again written in his grandfather’s small handwriting – and then begun to read the dog-eared pages.
2.
There are no sights more beautiful than the highlands of Scotland in the winter. The landscape is desolate and alien to someone who grew up in the cities of the south. The white mountains roll on forever and if you are silent and still long enough sometimes a deer will come close enough for you to almost touch them.
There is magic there, real magic, and its undeniable when city-folk like us feel it.
It was considered a strange place to have a honeymoon my many of the couple’s friends and family. Why not pick some sunlit spot in the Caribbean? They would ask, but the couple had their heart set on it and so that’s where they went.
The cabin they had found was something out of a fairy-tale, it reminded the new husband of the western novels he so loved and to the new wife thought of the remote hotel in the movie White Christmas.
Both were happy with their arrangement and when they let themselves inside, they noted that the large window of the living room. It opened out to a view of a nearby lake, and they held each other close to take in the view.
He cooked; he was not a good cook, but the rustic nature of their accommodation drew him to the kitchen. He thought of the western novels he often read and wished he had a Stetson perched on the back of his head as he cooked the simplest meal he could conceive. Meat, vegetables, gravy. The meat as overdone as the vegetables were raw. His new wife ate them anyway and declared them wonderful.
They both smiled at the lie, then her smile became suggestive, and he asked for desert.
On the second day the new husband woke to a deer looking in through the window. It’s face friendly, curious, and instantly disarming. The new husband waited patiently for his wife to rise while watching the deer as it watched them, careful not to move and alarm it.
It stood there for the longest time. Its eyes were surprisingly expressive, with iris’ so deep brown they were almost black, and a long sweep of muzzle that ended in a moist heart shaped nose.
The fur ranged from a soft-tan to a rusty-red, and short enough that he imagined it would feel like velvet to touch.
If the window weren’t there, he could have touched it, it was so close, and if he dared to move.
The deer’s mouth seemed surprisingly small, and he noticed little flecks of black fur at the corners that made it appear as though the creature was smiling slightly, as if enjoying a private joke at their expense.
He wondered why the deer did not have antlers – he didn’t know that deer shed them over winter – and he wondered if it were young, or whether females didn’t have any.
The new husband realised how little he knew.
About everything.
He did not know how long he watched the animal as it shifted around outside of the window, never moving too far away. Perhaps it was curious, or perhaps it was drawn to the heat of the cabin. Perhaps it was merely visiting, paying its new neighbours its respects, and drawing more than a little in return.
The husbands’ eyes drank in every detail. When it finally did move it was languid and showed no concern for these two human interlopers.
When his wife awoke, he meant to tell her, but he didn’t.
He did not know whether it was a selfish act, or an act of mercy. Was he trying to shield her from missing an experience that held such magic, or did he mean to keep that moment for himself?
He didn’t know – he really didn’t – and if he had understood how such an event could haunt him, he would have wished the moment away in a heartbeat. He would have wished he had just slept a few more minutes and missed the moment himself rather than have it fester in him.
Because that’s what happened.
The honeymoon was an eventful one, the highlight was a trip to Loch Ness and a boat ride across it black water. The waves were choppy, and the husband felt his stomach roll and feared he would be ill, but it was the black water that clenched his stomach closed from such an incident.
He had always scoffed at the idea of something living in that loch but seeing the water and looking at the ridge of high hills around it he felt he was in as remote a place as any on the planet.
Again, he was struck by his own ignorance. So many times he had scoffed at such fancies without knowing even the simplest things about the world.
As they climbed from the boat and his feet hit the land, he knew how Armstrong felt when he finally got back to earth. He had tried to quell the growing terror of the black water, but it grew steadily inside him.
In the gift-shop they purchased some keepsakes, she a small Nessie plush toy and he a book on the mystery, and then they left.
The husband read a lot less westerns after the honeymoon and read a lot more on nature. The book he bought on the shores of Loch Ness was placed unread on a bookshelf and for a very long time it was not moved, as if he were trying to disassociate himself from those dark waters. The water haunted him, invading his dreams and sometimes his waking hours. The waking hours were worse, because there he did not have the presence of the deer standing between it and the dread.
There were children, then grandchildren, and still the husband said nothing about the deer and his fears of black waters. These things he kept to himself and as each year passed, and as those years became decades, he realised he could not share these thoughts with anyone.
Too much time had passed.
Though it did not feel as though it had.
He retired and built a small workshop where he could continue his work, now transforming it into a hobby. Working with the wood kept him close to nature and this brought with it a joy he could not quite understand, though he did know that it kept the darkness at bay.
Time became the enemy; it became greedy and ate up his remaining life like a starving man at a banquet. At first it was satisfied with days, but then this became weeks gone in a gulp, then months until it felt as though there were mere days between birthdays.
Every night he dreamt of the dark waters. Beneath them something lurked. It was not the friendly shape of Nessie we had all grown to know so well, it was something undulating and insistent, as if it wanted to reach for him but did not dare.
The deer visited him less now, and – perhaps to mitigate its loss – the husband began carving figures of it. He remembered it, it had never left him, and sometimes their accuracy surprised even him. There was never a second opinions as he never showed another living soul. If he showed someone, he would have to explain their importance, and this was something he could not do.
It was three days before his birthday – which felt only a few days after his last – that someone mentioned his odd colouring and he looked in the mirror. He thought he could see a slight yellowing of his skin and a discolouring of the whites of his eyes. His wife suggested the doctors but – as so many men do – he elected to wait and see whether it would pass.
It didn’t.
His skin seemed to thicken, as if he had grown callouses in unusual places. He had one just under his arm, and another close to it under his shoulder blade.
It was then that he relented.
He didn’t think that anyone thought the tests were necessary, but they did them anyway and confirmed what everyone already knew.
He had lost, and he realised that the dreams had been prophetic, if only he had listened. He now realised that how he had always dealt with his health had been nothing more-or-less than him gambling with his life. Within days – or was it weeks? It was so hard to tell – he felt increasingly worse.
This is when he made another discovery, one that shook him.
He understood now why old people sometimes said they were ready to die. He was becoming ready, he wasn’t there yet, but he was close. There was a point when he didn’t know anyone on TV anymore. ‘Celebrities’ were just people with good skin and broad smiles that happened to be invited on talk-shows. Music seemed discordant, art baffling, and the westerns he loved so dearly were few-and-far between.
The world had moved on, and at some point, he had lost the thread.
He was closer to the end than the beginning now, the finish line was in sight and a part of him was so glad to see it that the feeling frightened him.
There were still joys to be taken, moments he tried not to let the pain eclipse. Not just the pain of his body but the almost overwhelming pain of nostalgia that visited him daily.
He carved and created, feeling the contentment it brought with it. When he was gone a little of him would remain through his work. People would look at them and remember, use things he had created with his own hands and in a way, he might still feel their touch.
Then there were his children and grandchildren, with all the joys and pains that they brought with them. There was two of the one and six of the other, and there was a chance he might see a great-grandchild before…
Well, before…
He had no favourites; they were all the same in his eyes. That was of course a lie, another thing he buried deep down and never spoke of. It was put alongside the deer, and the black water, and bothered nothing but his dreams.
Of course, that was a lie as well.
The black water remained on his mind and the deer had never returned to the woods. Old minds accumulate, like a dusty second-hand store that may contain treasures but more likely contain someone else’s junk.
He had no favourites, but one of his grandchildren spent more time in his workshop than all the others combined. With alarming speed, the child became a teen and the teen a man.
He had no favourites, but one of his grandchildren asked him about the tools of the trade and the skill he had developed.
He had no favourites.
But, of course, he did.
The husband knew the final days when they arrived. He saw that the world was a little brighter and he once again dreamt of the deer.
He wanted to tell his wife, but he no longer knew how to. He could not express what the black waters were, or why the deer was so strong in his mind. They were small scars that had never truly healed, and he did not understand them enough to explain them.
He should have read more Freud.
He smiled at the thought of it and was glad he didn’t.
We all dwell enough on things that are best left unspoken.
He changed for bed and slid a box from beneath it that contained the item he had worked on in secrecy over the last week. He wrote for half an hour, surprising himself with what he managed to produce, and arranged everything as he would want to leave it.
The husband climbed into bed and then held his wife. She was plumper around the middle than she had been on that first night so long ago. Her hair was greying, and he thought how wonderful it was that she never hid the loss of her natural brunette locks.
He buried his face in the hollow of her neck and listened to her breath as she slept. He wondered if he would wake in the morning.
He believed he wouldn’t.
3.
Victor Baker turned to the beginning and read it again. At some point halfway through he stopped, wiped his eyes, and continued.
When he finished, he carefully folded the sheets of paper and slid them back into the envelope, intending to return them to the box, but there was something he had missed.
Under where the envelope had been placed was a small hollow in the red velvet, and something was inside.
Vic reached in and slid it out.
The tiny carving could easily sit in the palm of his hand. Its tiny ears appeared as soft as the velvet in which it had been placed and he could almost see the fur move with the currents of the air.
The deer smiled up at him, and Victor smiled back.
The material surprised him, he had never known his grandfather to work in anything other than wood. He recognised the material; he knew that it was volcanic and more brittle than average glass. Victor would not know where to start working such a material, how something could be produced without shattering it to splinters.
Even though he knew little about such things the material was obvious.
There was nothing quite like the fine dark lustre of Black Obsidian.