The Book of Air by Joe Treasure

Author:Joe Treasure [Joe Treasure]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911525103
Publisher: Clink Street Publishing
Published: 2016-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

Jason

There’s a noise of knocking and creaking and I think I’m listening to the rocking chair. But the rocking chair is down in the TV room – the snug, you called it, a better name for it now the TV is dead. It’s the bedroom door I can hear. The draught from the window has set it off. It would be an easy job to fix the catch, but it’s low on my list.

I think I was dreaming of the rocking chair – because of the door creaking, probably, and maybe because of what happened with Simon earlier this evening.

I was in the kitchen and heard a racket from the snug. When I went in, the monkey was clinging to the side of the rocking chair, throwing himself one way and then the other and making those high humming notes that sound like laughter. Simon was sitting on the floor in front of the chair, watching the TV screen solemnly, absorbed by its blankness.

‘All right, Si?’ I said.

He didn’t look at me. He just said, ‘My head hurts.’

‘Too much telly.’

When he raised his eyes to meet mine, I thought at first he was annoyed at my stupid joke. Then I saw his puzzlement.

‘Uncle Jason.’

‘Yes, Si.’

‘Where are all the…’ He sniffed and hummed and his neck tightened, so I squatted to his level and waited for the word to pop out. ‘… people?’

‘They died, Simon, remember. They caught the virus and died.’

‘No they didn’t.’

‘It’s sad, I know.’ I put a hand on his arm. ‘I’d bring them back if I could.’

‘No, I mean on TV. Where are they all?’

‘Oh. They were just people too.’

Aleksy came into the room. ‘Come, Rasputin. I’ve a treat for you.’

The monkey clambered from the rocking chair to his shoulder.

‘Not the cartoons,’ Simon said. ‘They weren’t people. Sponge Bob, Dora the Ex… plorer.’

‘No they weren’t people. But people had to draw them and do their voices. People had to send them whizzing through space to our TV and make the electricity so you could switch it on.’

He thought about that for a bit. Then he said, ‘My head hurts a lot.’

Aleksy stopped in the doorway. ‘You have headache? I get you aspirin. How about that?’

Simon looked up at him with a blank expression.

‘Didn’t no one ever give you aspirin?’

Simon shrugged.

‘A pill to make your headache better?’

Simon thought about this, and said, ‘Baby cetamol.’

‘Baby seat moll?’

‘Zackly.’

‘I get you this, then. Baby seat moll. I mix it in water.’

‘And Urs’la…’ He paused. It wasn’t the sound he was struggling with but the memory. ‘Urs’la gave me rescue remedy.’

‘How many drops?’

Simon held up three fingers.

‘So one baby seat moll mixed up in water with three drops Urs’la’s special remedy.’

I followed Aleksy into the passage. ‘Aleksy, what are doing? We haven’t got any of that stuff.’

‘You know, Jason,’ he said, ‘you are not always so clever.’

Simon was saying my name, so I went back into the den and sat in the rocking chair.

‘When someone died, Urs’la mmm-planted a tree.’

‘That was nice of her.

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