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Art by wordsinhaled
Edwin heard it all when it started. The screaming.
An especially cold October night found Edwin being violently hauled from his bed in the dorms of St. Hilarion's boarding school for boys. The culprits, of course, were Simon and his merry gang. He had skipped dinner with the intention of avoiding them, but it seemed they were especially determined to harass him.
Vicious hands grabbed him from all directions, lifting and tossing his body around, jeering and laughing as they carried him up stairs he didn't recognize and down a long corridor. He was all but thrown into a dusty old attic, the door locking behind him before he had half a mind to start running.
He tried to force the door open, screaming and throwing his weight into it yet only succeeding at getting laughed at even more. From the other side of the door came a new wave of insults and a mocking promise to let him out tomorrow. Then, receding footsteps.
All things surmised, it could be worse. Edwin knew why they hated him, knew the kind of things that were done to boys who carried themselves the way he did. He was lucky to have gotten away with only a wounded ego and a few minor bruises from the boys’ gripping hands. And so Edwin, not stupid enough to try and find another way back into his bed and risk retaliation from Simon and his friends, resigned himself to his fate. After determining the only other door in the room had also been locked from the outside, he sat down on the cold wooden floor and decided to wait until morning came.
Then, the screaming started.
Gunshots and stomping feet shook the floor under him, melting into hundreds of terrified voices to form a symphony of terror. The cacophony overpowered the sound of Edwin’s heart hammering in his ears. He rushed to the window, stretched his body as far as he could to get a better view, but the night-tinted courtyard below was completely empty. No sign of what was happening.
Minutes passed. The chaos continued, and Edwin was still in the dark.
Then, the tell-tale creaking of wood announced someone ascending the stairs. Edwin cautiously approached the locked door and crouched low, cheek pressed to the rough floor, to look through the door gap. Uncoordinated legs, the only thing available to his field of vision, crept along the corridor in aimless fashion. Their owner sported dark trousers and an unmistakable pair of ridiculous snake-skin loafers.
“Mr Neely,” Edwin called out, “I’m in here!”
The legs grew faster, feet nearly tripping over themselves to get closer. Edwin’s teacher slammed into the thick door with full body strength.
Another hard slam. Edwin flinched away from the sound and scurried back to his feet, hands dragging on the unkept flooring and catching splinters along the way. A furious wail sounded from the other side, more beastly than human.
That thing was not his Latin teacher.
Edwin frantically looked around the attic for something to bar the door. He secured it with an old dining chair before putting all he had into pushing a heavy abandoned desk in front of it. The creature was now scratching at the door, relentless. Edwin found even more things for his barricade—a heavy pile of outdated encyclopaedias, a wooden chest, more chairs—and it persisted in its goal. Edwin did not want to know what would happen if it succeeded.
The sound of scratching gradually became… wetter, somehow. Edwin collapsed to the floor, back pressed against the wall opposite the room’s entrance and eyes glued to the barricade he’d made. What reached his ears was now wet and scraping, with dozens of little hard somethings colliding against wood. A dark, viscous liquid slowly seeped from under the door. The smell of pennies. The creature was—Oh God.
That was when Edwin covered his ears. He hasn’t let go since.
Edwin sits curled into himself, shaking. The room's insulation isn't enough to keep the autumn chill from seeping in, yet his sweat-soaked nightshirt clings to his back. From the building’s lower levels: gurgly growls. From this one: the nauseating sound of the creature scraping the flesh off its fingers on the attic door. Occasionally, Edwin hears an agonizing, human-sounding scream. He flinches and presses his palms harder into his ears, but it’s no use. There have been no more gunshots.
The knees of his sleep trousers are wet against his chin, soaked from his silent crying. He wishes this night were merely a terrible nightmare—that he would wake up in his too-hard mattress and get on with his routine of slinking from classroom to classroom and smuggling his meals into the library—but Edwin has never had such an active imagination. The hard wall digs into his spine. His throat aches from dehydration. He is awake.
One Sunday morning in his youth carousels in his head. The nutty smell of old varnish over wood, the hard pew beneath him as hymns rang in his ears. The Book Of Revelations, also dubbed The Book of the Apocalypse, heralded the end of the world as they all knew it, hail and fire descending from the heavens above as God reached his mighty hand in intervention. The devoted priest smiled, bowed his head as he crossed himself and Edwin… Edwin was terrified. Even then, at the ripe age of nine, there hadn’t been much he felt attached to—his mystery and fun animal facts books, the family dog who occasionally let him pet it—but to end it all?
The priest later explained it was a metaphor: God prevailing above all, good defeating evil—whatever ‘good’ meant. Still, the idea of the apocalypse sharpened its nails on the back of his head, incessant.
He didn’t think he would be saved.
He stays still despite the sting of splinters in his palms and the static hum of his numb legs. Then, the creak of rusty hinges echoes.
Edwin shoots up, wobbly. His eyes follow the origin of the noise. The far corner of the attic is crowded with abandoned supplies—piles of broken school desks, dusty furniture, mould-stained mattresses leaning against one another—all coming together to form a massive wall that nearly severs the room in two. Tilting his head to the left, past the corner formed by an empty cupboard, he sees a maze of rubbish which winds into an open door. Something has just got in.
He curses himself for his stupidity, for being so paralyzed with fear that he did not think to block the other door. Slowly, quieter than a mouse, he seizes a bulky, outdated atlas, blinking away the cloud of dust that emerges. Footsteps echo. Edwin sneaks along the cupboard and places himself right before the corner, muscles taut with anticipation.
The intruder approaches with hesitant steps, dragging its feet along the wood, uneven and clumsy like Mr Neely was at first, getting closer and closer still until Edwin can no longer breathe, heart thudding in beat with every clock tick of footsteps. He raises the book over his head with shaky arms when—
“Charles Rowland?”
Art by wordsinhaled
The boy yelps, jumping backwards as soon as he comes into view.
“Edwin Payne? What are you doing here?” His eyes are wide and unblinking as they take Edwin in (and what a sight he must look, after the night he’s had).
“What are you doing here? I thought you were one of those… creatures.” Edwin takes in a long, shaky breath.
“Creatures? Mate, those are zombies. Proper ones. And I was just looking for a warm place to crash, yeah? I’m freezing.”
Now that he takes a good look, Edwin notices that Charles seems… damp. Limp, shiny curls and athletic trousers that seem to stick to his long legs. It is no wonder, then, that the boy appears to be trying to fuse with his overcoat—the only dry-looking thing about him besides his overfilled backpack.
“Excuse me. Zombies?”
“You know”—he extends one arm in front of him, hand limp at the wrist, while the other remains clutching the strap of his bag—“brains… give me brains…” His voice takes on a growly quality.
“Yes, I know what a zombie is. I was simply wondering how—” At his raised voice, the thing standing outside the room pounds at the door with renewed strength and Edwin jumps, hands clutching at his heart. He sighs. “I have had a very long night, and still not a clue of what is happening. Would you please enlighten me.”
His harsh tone does not seem to faze Charles.
“Right. Sorry.” He smiles, sheepish. “Uh, I guess it all started just a bit after lights out. I was on the cricket pitch with some of my teammates, you know, to practise. Then we heard screaming coming from the dorms. Two janitors came out of the locker rooms and—bloody hell. One of them had blood all over her uniform and part of her neck was just missing. I think she got bit, like in those zombie movies.” He has all but dropped the chipper facade, eyes far away, and Edwin doesn’t know what to say. “I knew her, that was Mrs Margaret, and now it’s just not her anymore. You should’ve seen her eyes. They were just empty, like she wasn’t there. It was—it was mental.”
“Mr Neely—” Edwin’s words catch on the walls of his parched throat. He tries again: “Mr Nelly is the one trying to get in. He was teaching verb tenses only a few hours ago, and now he is… this.” He extends a hand towards the door.
“Welcome to the apocalypse, mate.” Charles laughs, humourlessly. “I’m pretty chuffed you’re alive; I thought I was the only one left.”
Edwin has to agree. It is probably the first time he has ever felt relief at seeing another boy his age.
“When you say the word apocalypse, what exactly do you mean by it?”
“The end of the world? I mean, there’s evil walking corpses roaming around. It feels like the end of the world. But baby steps, yeah? We can worry about the world later.
Edwin scoffs, indignant. It is the end of the world—how does one not ‘worry about it?’
Charles riffles through his backpack, objects clattering against one another. Finally, his hand emerges grasping a plastic water bottle big enough to make Edwin wonder how it had fit inside the bag at all.
“Here, have some water. You look… rough.”
Edwin does not have it in him to be offended—it is true. He pounces on the bottle and drains a good half of it in greedy gulps. A tad embarrassed when he's done, he gingerly wipes away the trail of water down his chin with the pads of his fingers.
Meanwhile, Charles sets to protect the entrance he came through.
“This one leads to the courtyard and the whole sports area. There’s probably not as many zombies as in the dorms, but still.” He drags a chair over with a grimace. “Better safe than sorry.”
Edwin examines his hunched posture, the slow movements and the way he patently refuses to use his right arm. Charles is in pain.
“Do you need any help?”
“Nah, I’m fine. Just not as good at barricading as you are. Did a nice job with that one, didn’t you?” He throws a charming smile over his shoulder, but doesn’t manage to fully smooth the furrow in his brow.
“Are you hurt?”
Now fully facing Edwin, Charles falters. “Not too badly, it’s just, my mates threw me into the lake. I hit my arm pretty badly on a rock on the way down.”
Edwin would not say he is perfectly acquainted with the student body of St. Hilarion’s. The only people he has made sure to memorise could be sorted into two neat categories: staff members or bullies. Yet, he remembers seeing Charles. One year ago, a new student joined the grade below Edwin’s. He walked around the school with a spring in his step and a gaggle of friends—smiley and carefree—as though he should always be seen framed by warm rays of sunlight. Edwin never talked to him, but somehow knew his name. It seemed wrong, in an instinctual way, that this boy was now roaming this nightmare, all alone and shivering cold.
“Why would they do that? Weren't they your friends?” Edwin has never had any, but he knows that is not something friends do.
“Yeah, um, when they called me for practice, it wasn’t true. They wanted to rough me up because I stopped them from beating up the new exchange program kid. You know, the Pakistani one? They always made fun of his accent. I told them to stop, but then earlier today I saw they were getting violent.” Charles takes in a deep breath, looking to the floor. “I knew they wouldn’t treat some white, English bloke the same way. And I thought—well, my mum’s Indian. What makes me so different from him?”
“I see.” Edwin is unaccustomed to speaking gently, but he still attempts to. “Why did you meet them, though? When you knew they were mad at you.”
“I thought they must have been trying to win me back, what with the big match coming up. Didn’t really want them as friends but someone’s gotta keep an eye on them, you know? None of them would stop the others from pulling that type of shit and I bloody well know the school doesn’t care.”
Edwin is all too aware of it. He has spent a considerable part of his ongoing youth attempting to mould himself in the shape of something unnoticeable, and it has not worked. Too intelligent, too harsh, too effeminate—it is an old stain, now melded into the material of him, and his peers could smell it from a distance. The choice stood between isolation or harassment, and he landed upon both. Maddeningly unfair, he knows, but there was nothing to be done. Charles tried to enact change by himself and all he got in return was a bruised arm—his former friends would have probably continued to pick on that boy if it all had continued as it was.
“There is a reason I was locked in this attic, and I assure you it was not personal choice,” he offers. “I have attended this school for almost three years and I know what it does to people like them. Namely, nothing at all.”
Understanding dawns on Charles’s face and he seems to relax at once, shoulders dropping the smallest fraction.
“I’m sorry,” Charles says, and he sounds far more genuine than any of Edwin’s teachers had ever been when they said the same. “They shouldn’t have done that to you.”
“I have gotten used to it. One tends to. My protocol for dealing with bullies is much different than yours, though.” Edwin looks at his own hands where they rest, gently intertwined fingers at abdomen height. “Mostly running and hiding, if I am to be honest.”
“Running and hiding? You?” Charle’s eyes shine with humour—despite the subject, despite the night they have had. “Mate, you were going to hit me with a book just now.”
It’s enough to make them crack. Edwin, at the absurdity of him hitting someone, and Charles seemingly because he was made for laughter. Edwin hangs his head low while Charles leans his skywards, both helpless against the mirth that overtakes them. Edwin can't remember the last time he laughed with one of his peers.
At once, Charles sobers up.
“Do you have anything to defend yourself?”
Edwin levels him a look.
“Right. Trapped in an attic.” Charles works his jaw. “I had my cricket bat with me but I lost it in the lake. And it wasn’t that good a weapon, really.”
“How so?”
“I just—don't think it would be. Made for whacking balls and all that, can’t be very good against bloodthirsty zombies now, can it? And anyway, that’s gone now. We need to find something to fend off those monsters, yeah?”
“You said this door”—Edwin walks over to Charle’s barricade—“leads to the courtyard at the sports building, correct?
“Yeah.”
It comes to Edwin in a lightning bolt of clarity.
“The fencing studio!”
“Wait, we have a fencing—”
“Yes, do keep up. There is a fencing studio, and I was a member of the fencing team. The storage room is full of swords, and not just rapiers. Our instructor had a real sabre stored there for exhibition. He sharpened it every week; most likely it is in perfect condition.”
Feeling the blueprint of a plan taking shape in his mind quietens his fretting nerves. Things are always much simpler when one knows what they should do next.
Charles seems to be on board, and so they set out to execute their plan. Removing a blockade is easy when done in two and they are soon out of the stuffy, blood-smelling attic, with Charles sparing one last look back and Edwin pointedly staring ahead. It is enough, he thinks, to have the image of that door, of the invading blood, burned into his eyelids. He does not need to look.
They descend round upon round of spiralling stairs until Edwin is dizzy. Charles places himself in front of him and doesn’t budge, not even once. At the end of it, opening a heavy door with glass-stain panels leads them to the courtyard. A rush of wind cuts through Edwin’s clothes, chills him to the bone, and he breathes in—fast and full, wanting to drown in fresh air.
Free at last.
The sky has begun its change from deep blue to a light periwinkle. Brown leaves, dying in the face of the approaching winter, flutter in the air and spread out across the courtyard. One hits Charles square in the face. Mildew-wet grass gently pricks Edwin’s bare soles as they keep rushing into the sports building standing tall in front of them, just behind a couple of red-orange-brown trees.
When they enter, a blanket of quiet settles over them. To their left, bloody shoeprints— smudged and brown with oxidation—paint the linoleum floors, following the straight course of the corridor until it curves right.
“Tell me we’re not headed that way,” Charles whispers.
“I’m afraid we are.”
“Bollocks.” Charles extends an arm in front of Edwin and follows along the path.
Slowly, in light steps, they make their way. Dim light enters through the opaque windows to stretch across the floor in evenly spaced bands, catching stray shoeprints to paint them a glossy maroon. Passing each one feels like a countdown.
They turn the corner. A zombie stands, only an odd ten steps from them.
Edwin doesn’t recognise her. Merciful Christ, he doesn’t recognise her. It still pulls the breath from his lungs.
She has her back to them. Long hair that was probably once blond is now painted dark in blood. She sports the full girls’ uniform but her sleeves are in tatters, with deep scratches running up her arms, and when she takes a stumbling step forward the open wound in her leg expels more blood, syrupy and maroon, as though it is beginning to dry inside of her veins.
In front of him, Charles makes a low, distraught noise. Edwin clamps his hand over his mouth, but it seems too little, too late. The girl's head turns to them.
Edwin freezes, hands clutching Charles even tighter—one covering his mouth, the other on the back of his head. The zombie now looks at them—through them—unblinking eyes and a dark substance dripping down her face like tears. An open mouth reveals sharp, cookie-cutter shark teeth, with unrecognisable detritus stuck in them.
He can’t see its irises. They are obscured by a muddy, greenish film, and he can’t identify what exactly it is made of from this distance. The zombie groans. It jerks its head to the left, then to the right, and the boys stay where they are. The corridor they must reach is just to their right, but Edwin doesn't dare move. He hopes his death grip will be enough to keep Charles still.
Another clunky movement from the zombie. Yet more blood slugging out. Abruptly, the creature turns and trudges away from them. Just like that.
Edwin waits until it is out of sight to remove his trembling hands from Charles.
“Be very quiet,” Edwin whispers, and gets a shaky nod in return. “I believe they navigate by sound.”
When he steps around Charles to lead the way, the boy clutches at Edwin's sleeve. He looks sickly; paler, even, than in that moonwashed attic. With the same arm currently in Charles's hold, he twists his wrist and pinches Charles's jacket back. A reassurance.
They manage to get to the fencing studio, and from then on it is remarkably easy to get into the storage room (Edwin knows where his coach kept the keys: up on the trophy wall, hidden under a framed certificate) and block its entrance with a surprisingly heavy pile of plastic chairs.
Aside from its name, the storage room had other functions. Namely, being the coach's office and safeguarding the lost and found box. An elegant mahogany desk, pilled with folders, sits somewhat gingerly amidst lockers of cleaning supplies and bins overflowing with fencing whites. An old tapestry depicting a jousting tournament hangs on the wall, exactly beside the reason they are here in the first place: a lustrous steel sabre, perfectly polished and sharpened, lying primly in its wooden hanger.
Charles lifts his good arm to tap his pointer finger against the blade's edge and whistles.
“Could cut through that desk if you felt like it. Brills.”
Something tugs at the corner of Edwin’s mouth. “It is rather brills.”
Despite his ogling, Charles does not take the blade. He instead drags his feet all the way to lean against the desk—painstakingly, might Edwin add—and lets his bag fall to the floor. He must be exhausted, as well as possibly hypothermic in those wet clothes.
Edwin opens one locker and pulls out a plastic lost and found bin packed with long-abandoned uniforms. They smell vaguely of old sweat and mould, but neither boy is in a position to be picky.
“What are you doing?” Charles asks.
Edwin holds a school-issued sweater, soft from wear, up to his chest. It looks like the right fit.
“Finding a change of clothes.” He folds a pair of black trousers over his arm.
“Oh, right. It’s gotta be real uncomfortable, running around the apocalypse in your jammies.”
A rush of warmth surges up Edwin’s neck. He cannot wait to be in proper clothing.
“What is your size? Quite a few of these still have their tags on,” he says.
“Nah, don’t worry about me. I’ll change later.”
“Are you sure? You ought to be freezing in these clothes.”
“I'm aces. Promise. You can change.”
“Fine,” Edwin concedes, though he doubts Charles is ‘aces’ .
Now cradling a complete outfit in his arms, Edwin looks expectantly at Charles. A beat passes. “Do you mind?”
“Oh, right!” Charles covers his eyes with one hand and turns around.
The room is silent for a second as Edwin’s pyjamas fall to the floor with a soft sound and sickly-warm embarrassment immediately pokes at his viscera. He gingerly steps into the pair of trousers, does the buttons of his shirt as he watches Charles's back. His shoulders shake with barely contained shivers.
“Hey, Edwin? You know how to use a sword, yeah?”
“I fence. There is an extensive set of rules, most of which I don’t think translate well to actual fighting.” He pulls on the sweater and combs his fingers through his hair. Garment by garment, Edwin has restored his dignity. “I thought you were the one who wanted the sabre, what with your cricket bat being gone. You’re the one who is used to… whacking things.”
He could not hold his own against his bullies—never mind real monsters. Lord above, he was not even among the best in his team.
Charles huffs. “You’ve gotta learn to defend yourself, though. It’s important. None of those fancy moves with the wobbly sword are gonna save you from a zombie.”
“Firstly, it is a foil. And secondly, what is the matter with you? You’re not making any sense.”
Charles slides down the wall, strength fizzling out like a water droplet in a hot pan.
“Just—don’t be mad, yeah?” He looks up at Edwin, eyes pleading.
With some difficulty, Charles removes his jacket. Edwin gasps.
His arms, as well as the black polo underneath, are marred with scratches, some deep enough they still look vibrant red. A bloodstained white singlet wraps tightly around his right arm.
“There was a zombie in the lake. I might've been bitten.”
Absolutely not.
“What do you mean you might have?” Edwin’s voice rises an octave.
“I don't know. There was so much water and it just wouldn't stop—” He interrupts himself and inhales, deep and shuddering. “You've gotta listen to me, yeah? If it was a bite… we've both seen what happens. You have to take that sword and—Where are you going?”
Edwin marches away from Charles and proceeds to open the door to every locker and cabinet in the room. At last, he finds the cleaning supplies and takes a bottle of rubbing alcohol and two of the cleanest-looking rags available.
“Your arm.” Edwin kneels diagonally to Charles and extends a hand.
Charles frowns but does as he's told, and Edwin tries to gently remove the makeshift bandage. It sticks to Charles's skin where the blood has already dried, on the outskirts of the wound, and he has to use an alcohol-damp rag to unstick it.
Once revealed, Edwin notices the presumed bite does not look the way he thought it would. This comes as a clinical, detached realisation—as though he has just arrived at his doorstep to find the postman swapped his mail for his neighbour’s. A piece of Charles's arm is simply missing. The hole is about the size of a tennis ball, (if not slightly smaller), deep enough in some spots that Edwin can see the yellowish fatty tissue, and with no discernible pattern to it. Wet specks of dirt pepper the wound’s surface and the unbroken skin around it is a worrying shade of red.
“Did you not clean this at all? You'll get an infection.”
“That's what you're worried about? I could be turning into one of those monsters right now.” Charle’s nostrils flare and he looks to the ceiling with wet eyes. “I could kill you.”
Edwin sighs. Once, on a hunting trip with his father, he saw their family's thick-set Great Dane catch a lithe rabbit by its rear. He remembers clutching his crossbow with white knuckles as his father showed the damage their good boy Rover had done to the poor thing: the red-spotted fur, the oval teeth marks; how little was needed to take a life. Those marks didn't look like this vile absence of flesh in Charle’s arm. He knows it is a ridiculous comparison, but doesn’t allow himself to think this boy was bitten.
If not hopeful, Edwin has always been damned stubborn.
It has to be something else.
“We shall circle back to it later. I promise. Let me take care of this, first.” Edwin uncaps the rubbing alcohol. “Please.”
Charles searches his face and seems to realise he has no chance of winning any sort of argument. He nods, to Edwin's relief.
“This will hurt. Try to stay as quiet as you can.”
Charles sets his jaw. “Go ahead.”
Edwin covers Charles’s mouth with a clean rag. Looks into his eyes and waits for a confirmation nod. Then, he pours alcohol into the wound.
Charles screams, pained and guttural yet thankfully muffled by the cloth. Tears stream down his face.
“I'm sorry,” Edwin whispers. “I know it stings. I'm sorry.”
When it's over, Charles's tense muscles give out in perfect synchrony and he slumps, eyes closed as his body shakes. Edwin douses a cleaning rag in yet more rubbing alcohol and wraps it around Charles's arm to contain the bleeding. Once he has secured the new bandage, he looks first to Charles's purpling lips and shivering frame, then to the tapestry adorning the wall.
Art by wordsinhaled
Edwin removes the sabre from its hanger. A tad too heavy for him, but it shall do for the moment. He swings it at the thick nylon wire that holds the tapestry—one, two, three times—until it snaps, then repeats the process for the other side. Dust flies up as the wide rectangle of cloth falls to the floor.
With a tenderness he didn’t know he was capable of, Edwin bundles Charles in the tapestry, tucks it snugly around his neck and shoulders. He collapses beside Charles and presses his fists together to stop their shaking.
A tiny half-moon window, too high up to pose a threat, allows warm-toned sun rays to enter the room. They bounce off each suspended dust particle so as to make them glimmer.
The end has come, Edwin thinks, and I have spent my entire life merely surviving.
It seems all the more real, suddenly, that his life is now akin to a questionable piece of pulp literature. Something has caused people to become flesh-eating monsters, unlike anything he has ever thought possible. It could be a fungus, he thinks, similar to the one which took control over dead ants. He learnt about it in his biology class, which he will most likely never have again. Good Lord. And now he is responsible for the life of a boy he has never exchanged a word with prior to today.
If he knew the world would end before his eighteenth birthday he would have done more. Been meaner to those who deserved his vitriol, perhaps, and kinder to those who didn’t. Stopped guarding every facet of himself behind lock and key.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Charles says, startling Edwin, who thought he was asleep. “About the bite, I mean. I just wanted to set you up with something to defend yourself. ‘Cause if I don’t make it, then at least I helped a friend on the way out, yeah?”
Something prickles behind Edwin’s eyes. A friend.
“I forgive you.”
“Good. That's good.”
They sit in silence. Edwin would not say it’s a comfortable one, but something close to it. He thinks it could be, someday, if they both survive long enough to become real friends. Bound by something other than a shared terrible circumstance.
“If I make it,” Charles says, “I think I’ll go see my parents. Check in on them. ‘Course, we’ll look for your family too. If you want that.”
Edwin thinks of his parents, tucked away in their estate. Would the tall wrought iron gates, the sharp-toothed security dogs, be enough to keep them safe? Selfishly, he hopes they are thinking of him. Worrying.
Charles’s covered shoulder rests against his own, and Edwin notices they have been slowly inching towards each other, seeking some sort of comfort.
“My dad's one of those preppers, you know? Has a whole shelf of canned food he wouldn’t let us touch.” Charles laughs, and Edwin does not know for whose sake it is. “I hope my mum’s okay, that he’s taking care of her for once. He’s always been pretty rubbish at it.”
There is an edge of something blue and brittle to his voice, an old wound left to fester. Edwin hates it. Surprising himself, he wraps his arms around Charle’s bundled-up frame, and it feels as precious and fragile as the oldest of antiques. Charles sucks in a startled breath.
“Don’t be getting too close to me. Bit dangerous, don’t you think?”
Edwin makes a gentle shushing sound, like he would to an anxious horse.
“You can’t shush me! I'm being serious.”
“It seems I just did. Now hush.”
A half delirious giggle tickles Edwin’s ear. Charles finally lets his head fall, chin digging into Edwin’s shoulder. The frayed edges of the old tapestry prickle his neck, but he doesn’t mind.
Charles sniffs. Suddenly, he is sombre again.
“I don’t wanna turn into one of them. Promise you won’t let me.”
“Charles, I—”
“Promise.”
Edwin can’t. He doesn’t have the courage to kill this boy, not even to save his own life, and he suspects Charles knows. He says nothing.
They stay in their embrace, Edwin soothing erupting chills with his palm. Human warmth is good for hypothermia—he read it once in a first-aid textbook.
When Charles asks if he knows a story, a real good one, he tells him of the first book to capture his heart: A Study In Scarlet. A great detective (the best in the world in fact), his trusted friend, and their journey to solve a murder case riddled with injustice. He would read it every night, holding a lantern under the covers, and scramble to hide the fact every time he heard footsteps approaching his door. He suspects his parents knew what he was doing, found it funny even. Looking back, he was not discreet at all.
“Best in the world?” Charles slurs. “I thought that was Batman.”
“According to whom?” Silence. “Charles?”
And he is out. Gone to the land of dreams—good ones, hopefully. His breathing is thankfully stable, warming up Edwin’s neck where his head is tucked. He feels deceptively small like this. Edwin looks to the window, to the stained glass fire of the autumn leaves swaying outside, and mutters every prayer he knows, calls to every saint he remembers from Sunday school, pleading for his new friend to survive. He thinks he sings a hymn at one point, cracked and low. It echoes in the otherwise silent room as loud as if he had shouted it.
He knows hours have gone by the moving of the sun, but it feels like no time at all spent in this stasis. At one point, he props Charles against the wall while he builds a nest on the floor out of fencing breeches and scours Charles’s discarded bag. There is still water left in that bottle he had handed to Edwin. He tries to make Charles drink, succeeding only in part.
Guiding Charles to the nest is harder. An unconscious boy is far too heavy for someone with Edwin’s lack of upper body strength to drag about. He thinks he pulls something in his back doing so, like the old man his parents always joked he was, but it pans out to be a successful endeavour. Before afternoon comes, Charles is still rolled up in a tapestry, but now also comfortably (or so Edwin hopes) settled atop a pile of white trousers and bracketed by even more fencing attire.
Edwin sits facing Charles. He can’t help but think of the attic door, the impotence of only being able to watch as a stronger force decided on your fate. He keeps track of the slow rise and fall of Charles’s chest when he reaches deep slumber, his winces when he moves and brushes his wound against something, the pallor of his face slowly receding.
And when he eventually stirs.
“Charles?” Deep brown eyes sluggishly opening to meet his. “Charles.”
“Edwin?” He takes notice of his current, somewhat ridiculous, situation. “What happened?”
“Nothing at all.” Edwin smiles, wide and toothy. “You fell asleep a few hours ago. No monstrous transformation.”
Charles rasps an incredulous laugh. “Bloody hell. I’m alright then?”
Edwin nods, still grinning. “So it seems.”
“And you made a bed for me?” Edwin nods. “It’s aces. I’ll need a hand though.” Charles wriggles inside his cocoon, failing to free himself.
Edwin rushes to loosen the tapestry trapping Charles and helps him rise into a sitting position. Charles looks at him with a teasing grin. He truly does smile a lot.
“You know,” he drawls, “now that you saved my life—”
“I did no such thing.”
“—now that you saved my life you’re not gonna get rid of me so easy.”
“Lord help me.” Edwin suspects he looks damningly fond.
“I’m being serious, yeah? I think we should stick together.” Charles extends his hand to Edwin and wiggles his fingers. “What do you say?”
Edwin pretends to ponder the offer.
“Agreed,” he says.
A shared look, warm and eager.
They shake on it.