The Execution by Hugo Wilcken

Author:Hugo Wilcken
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-02-13T05:00:00+00:00

†

In memory of

JOHN FRIEDMAN

1961–1970

Much loved and missed by

his mother, father and sister

Christian had got the wire mesh off. We pushed the curled-up body to the hole. For a moment it was balanced there, teetering on the edge like a giant golf ball, stiff with rigor mortis. Then the body keeled over into the darkness below. I heard it roll down, bump on a ridge or something, then silence for a good second until a dull thump and maybe a distant splash. It must have been a good long way down. I stared into the hole but I couldn’t see anything, just the blackness. I felt a stale coolness on my face and I shivered and stood back, then I went out of the cave.

Outside the sun’s rays strained through the trees and the air smelt warm and alive. I sat down on the ground by the camp bed waiting for Christian to come out but he was quite a while. I could hear hammering noises from inside. There was a huge rock leaning by the side of the cave, it looked like a flattened sphere. It looked as though it would have fitted snugly over the entrance and I wondered if that was where it had been originally. Perhaps it had broken off and rolled away thousands of years ago in an earthquake.

Eventually Christian came back out. His jeans were dirty at the knees and he looked blank and exhausted as he closed the gate and put the broken padlock back on: ‘Finished. Let’s go.’ His voice sounded mechanical. I was standing now by one end of the camp bed and Christian walked over to the other end: ‘I don’t want this thing any more. I don’t want to see it again. Let’s dump it over there.’ Then he changed his mind: ‘No, we’d better take it back after all.’

We walked the bed back to the car. It seemed to take much less time to get back out of the forest than to get in. There was the darkness then suddenly we came to the edge of the forest and the gate, the sun overpowering my eyes. I sat down by the edge of the path, overcome with fatigue. I looked at my watch and it said three. That didn’t seem unlikely but then I noticed that the second hand wasn’t moving. I shook it but that didn’t make any difference, the watch had stopped. I’d only recently put a new battery in.

Christian was folding up the camp bed and then I could hear the sound of a car coming from up the road. It was the man in the tweed cap, coming back from the other direction – I almost knew it was him before I looked up. This time he slowed right down and stared at us carefully, first me then Christian, as if he were trying to commit our faces to memory for future reference. For a moment I thought he was going to stop but he didn’t.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.