Our Sunset Wall of Remembrance
Published by Red Crow 2016
Copyright Kelvin James Roper 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Cover image and illustrations by Kelvin James Roper
Our Sunset Wall of Remembrance
i
Come the rise of the sun I expire, yet every evening there it is before me; The Wall.
It seems impossibly high, so intimidating; as though artificial structures reach a certain height before they cease to be man-made and become something sentient.
Even though I should have nothing to fear now, I fear The Wall. It was something to dread in life and I suppose that energy has followed me into death. I expect it will dissipate soon, the same as my form with the dawning of each new day, though until that day arrives I watch that colossal shaft of black snaking towards the horizon with a caution verging on suspicion.
The daylight has all but gone now, though I still have the vision to see a sky washed a beautiful shade of pink. Behind me the blanket of night encroaches, hauling with it a spattering of stars that will be my fellows for the evening, and a brilliant white moon that will be my sun.
All around me the landscape falls into shadow. It looks so wonderful, a wilderness of tangled trees and unkempt foliage. It's late summer, and the bindweed is in full flower; buddleia forests are in bloom amidst the ancient oaks. It is The Wilderness beyond The Wall, where we Wraith's jostle and howl in our violent torment, supposedly. In death, however, I am alone, as are the rest of the dead. It's curious to me how the living can see us all, and yet we can see none but ourselves.
For this I am thankful, for I remember the Wraith's and was terrified by them. Now, however, I know we are not all troubled, and not all violent, and wish I had the company of those such as I.
In my solitude I watched The Wall for a long time. I cannot say how long exactly, for time is a strange thing in this state. It is like the tide, seemingly at the will of the moon. It peaks and troughs, and is a most disorienting thing.
I watched The Wall, and always The Ferryman on it's last journey from Addenbade's Hospice to the end of the mile-long pier, dropping it's cargo of corpses into The Wilderness. They fell like scattered sticks, bouncing on the brickwork into the vast pits far below. It's a sad thing to see, all those bodies tumbling and disappearing into the earth, though it is satisfying to know that it is not the end for them; that their souls will soon be wandering in the wild, in the Eden on the far side of the city.
I knew when I woke on that first sunset what had happened. I knew where I was and how I had come here. But, even though I knew, it didn't make the sensation any less bewildering. As the sun faded I opened my ethereal eyes for the first time and found myself in The Ferryman's pit. I lay in a sea of corpses, each in varying states of decay, and I cried in shock for what I saw. Entwined forms, barbarous indignity and grinning skulls were my furniture, and I scrambled from it as fast as my will would let me.
To the east is the road I would enter the city when I was a man of handsome repute. A twenty-foot high viaduct of two tiers, the lower and main thoroughfare. I always used the higher, entering through the high eastern gate, away from the common traders who used the road beneath. From Grantaburgh it leads across The Wilderness for hundreds of miles, some say to the very fringes of the west, though I never travelled any further than Haversburgh, some ten miles from my village burgh of Abingtowne.
From the eastern gate of Grantaburgh, Abingtowne is three miles journey as the crow flies, and it was in that small but prosperous burgh that my family lived and where I ultimately met my mortal end.
I look back on my death as a young man would look back on a misspent youth. There is a certain amount of sadness entwined with anger, though my time alone has allowed me to accept my fate as we must accept the inevitability of changing seasons.
My spirit surges when I think of the circumstances, how it could have all been avoided, how silly words and simple minds can create such storms. An act of pride cost me my life, one which was brimming with potential and happiness, and for the sake of my stubbornness I lost all that I held dear.
It was mid autumn of 1789, though without that knowledge one would have been forgiven for thinking it was the dead of winter. The days were filled with perpetual mists that hung like a cream veil in the watery sun. The trees had shed their leaves early, and the bony fingered trees dripped incessantly with dew. All was damp, and the maidservant complained under her breath that I had too many clothes to dry.
Abingtowne is a drowsy village at the best of times, home to only three hundred citizens, though in the autumn of my death it felt as though the mist were a plague, and our household the only survivors.
The small burgh was prosperous for it's cotton mill, employing most all the residents of the village to maintain the steady flow of cotton that poured out of the mill as continuously as the smoke that billowed from its tower. The other residents were either farm hands and labourers, or gentry living on one of the many country retreats overlooking the village's modest wall.
I lived alone with only the staff for company. It mattered not to me for I was mostly away on business. I was a cloth merchant, with a devil-may-care reputation and more swagger as any young entrepreneur in the city. I spent most of my days in the factories on the Catchpenny, where the mighty galleys unloaded their cargo. I was everywhere and nowhere, with my fingers in every pie available. Buying from one merchant and pretending to barter with another to confuse all in question, I had everyone running around in circles and I always won the advantage.
It was a prosperous time, in an age when captains were pushing back the frontiers of the world and returning with priceless wonders. Much to the delight of the other cloth merchants, I even managed to secure a position on The Temerarious, and sailed for eighteen months to the land of Japan, where the Emperor cautiously granted us trading rights. These rights turned to dust almost immediately, for the Dutch intervened and cast dark aspersions of my countrymen to the Emperor, who banished us from his land. Although fraught with disease and the most vile situations, I befriended the first mate of the ship; a young, barrel chested man by the name of Robert ‘Hamfist’ MacCourighn. His presence was boisterous and he practiced sin with an expertise to shame the Devil, though we left the voyage the dearest of friends. He was my greatest ally, as well as my most lucrative asset; returning with shipments for me and my company alone. He thought I didn't know he was swindling me, though I took it in good heart and even gave him extra for his absurd loyalty.
The years rolled by happily for me. My wealth grew in pace with the respect I enjoyed. My midriff grew ampler and my side-whiskers showed signs of grey, and before I knew it I was peering in the looking-glass to see a middle aged man staring back. I had blossomed into the kind of man my family had never bred before. I wore the long black coat and tall hat like my mother's master had worn, and I carried a cane with a silver pommel. I was a gentleman in the eyes of all I encountered. I had money, I had a country retreat, I owned a factory and I was involved with the borough council, which held me in high regard.
And then the meticulous instrumentation of fate revolved, and set in motion a new series of events for me to take my part in.
I had been to my banking company and requested a loan. Several ships from the East Indies were arriving in dock during the same week, and I wished to secure payment with all of them. My bank manager, Thomas Lacey, insisted that The Royal Financial Banking Co. would be happy to extend the loan on account of my being a reputable customer of worthy esteem. I was grateful and shook Mr. Lacey's hand, though found it curious that his colleague, Oscar Sobel, stood and watch
ed without offering his.
Although I had never met the gentleman before in so social an occasion as to speak with him personally, he is a resident of Abingtowne as well as I, and It was well known to me that he was a hot-tempered man who's past had been spent as a Lieutenant in the army. It was no secret amongst the villagers that he had an open grief for a low-born such as I to be living in the same village as he, regardless of the position I had secured for myself, and I assumed that his long military career and simple dislike for my existence to be the cause of his reserve. Unpeterbed, I nodded in farewell and he offered me a twitch of a smile.
I left the The Royal and continued my morning as usual, not paying the matter a second thought. It was a blissful day in the city, the bustle of the dockyards filling the air alongside the cry of the sweeping gulls. The mists of Abingtowne didn't reach Grantaburgh, and