'You gotta stop this,' I said, later, to the Stranger.
'I wish I could, but if we're going to live in some sort of ordered society, we have to obey the rules.'
So that was it. My first clash with the authority of the settlement, and for the first time in my life, I hated Harrington.
The next day, Emily hated him, too. The next day she was locked in a room and a while later, HE went in. And it was done.
Afterwards I sat by the pond with Emily and she cried on my shoulder. They were tears of despair, but also, I later realised, the shedding of the last of her childhood innocence.
Over the following years, she was to have many children in this way, as were all the women of the settlement. And they loved their children dearly. But perhaps the most memorable event of that day was later, when Emily had cried herself to sleep, and I snuck into the Central Hall and found Harrington crying, too.
THE RIFLE
When the Stranger first arrived with his rifle, we were in awe. No rifle - no gun of any sort - had been owned by any of us in our settlement since the end of civilisation. So to see it in action, to sense its power, was magnificent.
Harrington, our leader, understood the danger of this. As an ex-soldier, and now a man of peace whose wisdom was at the root of our way of life, he wanted nothing to do with the weapon; and wanted none of us to revere it either.
That's why he was horrified one day when he saw me and a couple of other teenagers playing with pretend rifles made out of sticks. Grabbing me and another boy by the ear, he pulled us to the front of the Central Hall and summoned everyone around him.
'This is the danger we face,' he said, 'when we think violence is the way to do things. That's how our old world ended, and it was enforced by stupid children playing at war and thinking it was glorious.'
Dad was deeply embarrassed that I had been harangued in such a way and I was punished by a long period of not being spoken to. And I suppose it was an important lesson and I lost any idea of playing such bloody games again.
Well. If only it could have continued that way. But a few weeks later an event was to occur that was to rock our settlement to its foundations. For one morning we all woke up to discover that the brook which supplied much of our water had dried up.
'That's all we need,' said Harrington as he looked at the dry ditch before us.
Of course, he wanted to know what had happened, so he sent a team to follow the brook and see where the water had ceased to flow.
They set off early morning and returned late afternoon, a deep worry on their faces. The head of the team said to Harrington: 'There's some new people - about a dozen - and they've set up a homestead. They've dammed the brook to allow proper irrigation for planting.'
Harrington was deeply concerned about this, and the next morning he led his own team to the new people - a diplomatic mission to try and get the dam taken away; even offer a new home for them in the settlement.
He came back angry. 'They'll have none of it,' he said to the senior members of our settlement. 'They couldn't give a damn about us. They're only interested in themselves.'
Over the next few days we managed with less water. Harrington thought about the situation a great deal, and sent several more missions to plead with the newcomers. This episode ended when one of our people came back with a broken nose and bruised face. They had beaten him up.
'So what will happen now?' I asked Dad that night as we ate in our shack.
Dad shook his head slowly, deep worry engulfing him. 'I don't know, son. But I fear it will not be good.'
'But we must have water,' I said.
'Yes, we must,' Dad replied. 'But in getting it back, I worry we'll be laying the same seeds which turned into the harvest of our previous destruction.'
They were prophetic words. For a couple of days later Harrington called a meeting and it was decided the dam had to be destroyed by force.
Over a dozen of our fitter males formed the attack force, leaving early in the morning armed with clubs. They never appeared at all that day; and it wasn't until the next day that they struggled back to the settlement. They had been severely beaten and one of them had been killed.
Harrington's response was to again go to them to plead - there was enough water for all. But they were intransigent and would not remove the dam.
We try as much as we can to be good; to be wise; to be peaceful. We have knowledge of the 'happening', when civilisation came to an end. And though we never really remembered everything that happened, we nevertheless remembered how to steer clear from it happening again. But those wishes are based on ourselves, and cannot take into account the actions of others - actions that require action or suicide.
It was two days before we saw Harrington again. He had gone off alone and it was clear he had taken the rifle with him. His return was heralded by the flowing brook, bringing back life to our settlement, the dam obviously destroyed. But in Harrington's face there was no life. And as the myths grew, and as he watched us once more playing pretend battles, I think he realised that man is man, and we will never remember the mistakes.
THE WITCH
Is there something in man that compels him to make all the old mistakes? Growing up in a small settlement following the end of civilisation, I never really had time to ponder such questions. The main object of life was survival, and for most of my life everything I did had been geared to this. But by the time I was fifteen I suppose we'd got the survival game about right, leaving us with time on our hands to think. And when we do that, we get bored and begin thinking in abstract; asking questions such as what if?
We didn’t know much about life before the 'happening'. We only knew what the old ones and Harrington, our leader, told us. Yet since the Stranger came among us, bringing with him religion, Harrington had been ever aware that the old mistakes may be happening again.
A clear indication of this began one day when Susan broke down and cried. Susan was a friend about my age who I often played with. I knew she was a bit strange, a bit quiet, at times a little hysterical, but Dad said it was down to her being a depressive.
I didn't know what this meant, but he told me that before the 'happening' depressed people found it hard to cope with life, and doctors gave them pills to keep them calm.
We had no pills, not that I knew what they were anyway. But what Harrington did was to teach her meditation, allowing her to settle herself. But when she burst into tears that day, it was obvious meditation was no longer working.
She was put to bed, but the following day she awoke with a new mania in her eyes.
'I went to places last night,' she told a group of us, 'and I met gods and spirits and they told me I was special and had special powers.'
'What powers are they?' I asked, and she said she had the power to invoke demons.
I asked Dad about what she said later that day, and he said she was just being hysterical. She must have had a bad dream and thought it was real.
That seemed fair enough to me, but the following morning another of my friends came up to me and said: 'I saw Susan's demons last night. They came into my room and frightened me. Hell, I'm gonna do as she says in future.'
That's how it began. And soon several of my friends began seeing demons and even I thought I saw one out the corner of my eye. Dad said it was just a hallucination and it had been suggested to me that I'd see them, so I did.
When Harrington found out what was going on, he decided to have a word with us and told us there was nothing to it. Susan was just ill, and we were to ignore her. As for him, he was going to intensify her meditation. And I suppose it would have ended there if the Stranger hadn't got involved.
'She is possessed by the Devil,' he began to tell us all as he wandered through the settlement, blazing eyes burning from above his bushy, black beard, his black coat trailing behind him as he went about us. 'The Devil is among us and we must root him out.'
Harrington was incensed by what the Stranger said and went to see
him; told him to stop this stupidity. Which only made the Stranger worse. And within hours a small, but angry group of survivors were convinced the Stranger was right and evil was among us.
Harrington came to see my Dad that night. Said we had to help look after Susan. Guard her. For he was sure the Stranger was going to do something to her. When I turned up for my shift with Susan, however, he had already struck. Her guard was unconscious and she was nowhere to be seen.
I immediately went looking for her, and at the perimeter of the settlement I heard a commotion. Susan, the Stranger and six other highly excitable survivors were in a huddle. As I looked, the Stranger was twisting Susan's arm and causing her great pain. 'Cast out the Devil,' he was saying, 'and repent your sins, or you will die.'
I suppose I should have raised the alarm, but like a fool I decided I was going to rescue her myself.
I guess I looked like the demon as I charged into them. With surprise on my side, they nearly all fell and I grabbed Susan and pulled her away, running as fast as I could towards the hill a couple of hundred yards away.
They were soon giving chase and ten minutes later we found ourselves trapped at the other side of the hill by the cliff. I would have fought it out, I'm sure, but luckily I wasn't the only one to notice Susan had been taken. Or at least, lucky for me.
'What the hell is going on,' snapped Harrington as he and several other men appeared, out of breath.
'We must cast out the Devil,' said the Stranger as he ran to the edge and stood there with Susan. And then ...
Did she fall or was she pushed? We'll never know, and it was clear, as we buried her, that Susan would never be able to tell us.
Harrington and the Stranger argued for hours after that, and eventually the Stranger was convinced to calm down the religious fervour that had broken out amongst some of the survivors.
Harrington said we weren't to blame them; it was all to do with belief, not badness. But I couldn't help thinking that if we didn't learn how to calm such urges in future, the 'happening' could well come again.
THE SAVIOUR
Maybe we never learn. Maybe the human race is engineered to destroy itself. Maybe that is what it is all about - for us, anyway.
Harrington, our leader, had tried to warn us; let us know what we were capable of. How we had already ended it all during the 'happening'. But I suppose the past is a forbidden country, psychologically. If we don't experience it ourselves, then it is to be distrusted. After all, they were inferior to us, in the past. We know better. We can go forward, in ignorance, maybe, but better prepared than they were.
Yea. Sure.
I suppose that's why Harrington was always so hostile to the Stranger, and the religion he brought with him. Harrington told a select few of us: 'Religion,' he said, 'is of the emotion. We are born from reason; the exact opposite. Emotion is all very well when benevolent, but when it flares to negativity, it destroys - whereas reason is stable; always the same; always to be trusted.'
He was speaking to a select few because, now, that was all he could influence; and even amongst those, some were only there through family loyalty, such as me. And we were few because the Stranger had been gaining influence. With his speeches, the prayers, even his healings, people were going to him, following him, revering him.
Including me.
Why did I believe him? I was sixteen by now - a man in this new world. So why was I taken in?
Oh, I know, really. Because I loved that man. We all did.
Except Harrington's boring, reasoned few.
I suppose the thing that clinched it was when Emily's baby was born. In Harrington's reasoned world, her child - my nephew - was to be communal property; the only way a new society can truly rise. Emily hated the thought, and protected her child jealously. But the Stranger offered a different approach. Emily and the other mothers were important, and the bond they had with child, the foundation of the society he wanted to create - a society of love under the benevolent guidance of a God.
It was so difficult watching father and Emily go to different poles in our society, father being so close to Harrington. And I, too, was becoming distant from father. Perhaps fatherhood isn't as biological as motherhood. Maybe anyone can be a father. And I was certainly seeing the Stranger as more of a father during this period. He guided me, nurtured me, saw potential in me other than working the land.
He gave me meaning, purpose, importance. And being with the Stranger, I was also as one with Emily.
Of course, eventually things had to come to a head. A society as small as ours could have only one direction. Yet here we were being pulled in two. Something just had to give. And as Harrington saw everything he had built being pulled apart, it was going to be him.
'We've got to get rid of the Stranger,' I heard him say one day to my father. 'Soon he'll be too strong, and everything will be destroyed again. We've got to make a move.'
I never even thought in terms of treachery. In my mind it was them who were the treacherous ones, plotting against the Stranger. Hence, it was so easy to go to him. Tell him what was being planned.
'Keep an eye on them for me,' he said. 'Knowledge is power. If we know what they are planning, we can stop them.'
So I became a spy, against my own father; against Harrington, who had done so much for me.
Eventually, the time came for Harrington to make his move.
He only had a couple of dozen people left to rely on. The settlement was nearly four hundred strong now, but he was down to a couple of dozen. But he had surprise. Move at night, take out his closest lieutenants and remove the Stranger from his very bed. Imprison him and reason with the people from a position of strength.
It was a good plan.
Except for me.
I told the Stranger. The coup failed. How could it not fail when I had betrayed them? And they were herded together in the centre of the settlement, and everyone was woken up. And then the Stranger spoke of evil in the world, and the power of the Devil, and how he had infected their minds. And then he spoke of his benevolence. He took a spear and thrust it into one of them, killing him outright. And then he spoke of his benevolence.
'I give you all this offering as a symbol of our change. And the others I will set free.'
Oh yes. He set them free. He stripped them of all they had, and they were banished. All of them, including Harrington and my father. Banished from the society they had nurtured. Banished. Thrown out to the wilderness, where they would surely die.
I understood benevolence then. I understood what the Stranger was really about. He was about ultimate power for himself. And I felt dirty.
It was three days after they were banished that I, too, left the settlement. I found Harrington and his group a day later. They welcomed me with open arms.
'But I betrayed you,' I said.
'Indeed, you did,' said Harrington, 'but will you betray us again?'
I said I would not. And I joined them. And for many months we wandered through this wilderness mankind had created. For many months we existed. But in every mind there was one thought. One day, we knew, we would return.
About the Author
1955 (Yorkshire, England) – I am born (Damn! Already been done). ‘Twas the best of times … (Oh well).
I was actually born to a family of newsagents. At 18 I did a Dick Whittington and went off to London, only to return to pretend to be Charlie and work in a chocolate factory.
When I was ten I was asked what I wanted to be. I said soldier, writer and Dad. I never thought of it for years – having too much fun, such as a time as lead guitarist in a local rock band – but I served nine years in the RAF, got married and had seven kids. I realized my words had been precognitive when, at age 27, I came down with M.E. – a condition I’ve suffered ever since – and turned my attention to writing.
My essays are based on Patternology, or P-ology, a thought process I devised to work as a bedfellow to specialisation. Holistic, it seeks out patterns the specialis
t may have missed. The subject is not about truth, but ideas, and covers everything from politics to the paranormal.
I also specialise in Flash Fiction in all genres, most under 600 words, but also Mini Novels - 1500 word tales so full they think they're bigger.
Connect with Anthony
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Anthony's Blog (inc current affairs): https://anthonynorth.com/blog/blog
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