Knocking - Part II

A dead father, a stubborn horse, and the knocking crescendo

I found four more candles in a wooden chest I located in the far back of the basement. The light was gone so I resorted to feeling my way along the walls of the basement until I stumbled over the chest. It wasn’t locked. I felt around the interior after I swung the heavy lid open, not caring that it made a loud creaking noise. Those things undoubtedly heard it over their insistence that I let them in, and anyway, they already knew where I was. The flame from the matchstick I fished out of my front nightgown pocket fizzled and died down after proliferating to the candlewick.

I can only assume this chest was Father’s, as it held his belongings from during the war. There was a blanket there, a dingy grey old thing, British Army issue by the look of it, along with a dinged-up and grimy silver medal that lay on top. Underneath was a folded muddy green uniform with a yellow page tucked under the flap of the right breast pocket. I took it out and in the faint candle light read, “10th Division, 29th Brigade, 5th Battalion, Connaught Rangers, Gallipoli, 1915.” A dark green rectangle with a smaller lighter green rectangle inside of it was drawn next to that. Mother must have buried it down here among the cobwebs and dust, not wanting us to find it until she deemed us old enough.

Curiously, though, there were two more items beneath the uniform: a pistol with a seven-round cartridge lying on top of it, and a telephone, the cord attached to the body having been cut. The pistol, I imagine, was Father’s standard issue firearm. I picked it out of the chest and initially took in its heft, like an ingot of cold iron. As I write this, I know this pistol, if it even still works, and given that I can even load it, will be of no use to me against the Knockers. There are far too many a score more than seven above me.

The telephone was a tad more confusing, though. I only vaguely remember Mother ever using it. The last time she had, however, was a bad night. It was the night after a long winter storm. Four feet of hard-packed snow had built up along the narrow dirt road leading up from the village, cutting us off from anyone on foot or by horse. Our only means of outside communication was a lone telephone wire. I was only eight at the time, so I didn’t understand too well what had happened or what was wrong with Mother when she got the call. I was in the kitchen when the telephone rang, finishing my cabbage and potatoes. It was only a few seconds after she lifted the receiver that she dropped it and crumpled to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Brother was outside, tending to Olly, but he could hear Mother’s bawling from out there. He rushed in and must have known right away what happened. I was corralled to my bedroom for an early night and later was told that Father had been killed on the front lines. Brother was the one to tell me. Mother was bedridden for a whole week — Brother said of a broken heart — and that it was up to us to keep her strong and make her well again. I couldn’t see how to, and I didn’t, so that burden fell on Brother to make both of us better. He made the weekly trip into town with Olly by himself that time, after some of the snow had melted, and cooked every meal for us, and even sang what songs he knew to help us sleep, and hummed the tunes of the ones he didn’t. But at night, I could hear his muffled crying through the chasm of the hallway between our rooms.

He seemed so brave back then. I am not quite sure what changed in him. Maybe nothing truly changed. Maybe that was the only reserve of courage he had, and he spent it all on our wellbeing, with nothing more to spare. Or maybe he was born with such a thin and tenuous line to courage itself that Father’s death bore too much weight upon it, and the tether snapped, forever leaving Brother a coward. That seems too harsh a word to use for someone as compassionate and empathetic as him. No, he wasn’t a coward. We were all scared. I don’t know what to call him then. Human, I suppose.

You may be wondering by now, or have already questioned why I am taking so much care in writing this account of my final days with Mother and Brother, and now here, alone. How can I be so calm and write so much, knowing what stands above my head? Part of that calm comes from the weight of Father’s pistol resting on my lap, although it is still not loaded. But the true reason is because I know exactly how they will come for me. It is within my power, so long as I remain sane enough to keep them out. Writing this is helping that sanity keep them in check.

We moved as a body to my bedroom, across from Brother’s. Mother checked the window, which overlooked the field in the back, and reported there were fifteen Knockers coming up from a long way away. She said the others she saw coming up from before must already be at the windows downstairs. I wish we could have jumped a window and ran, but we could not have known how fast they would be. Like ghosts or wraiths, they would disappear and reappear within less than a second once they found their kin. We were trapped before we could find our bearings. We slipped from room to room, at first only upstairs, and then downstairs, looking for any window or door they weren’t at yet. We were wasting our time. Knocking could be heard from every window, every door, and even on all of the walls.

The knocking was growing louder, from all sides, to the point where we had to almost yell to one another to be heard. Inconspicuousness was no longer on our minds. The windows weren’t covered, nor were the glass panes on the back and side doors leading outside. We were in full view for the Knockers to see, and them us. If they had faces, we couldn’t see them behind the matted mess of black, wet hair masking them. We did not want to get close to any of the windows for a better look, either. We had no way of knowing how strong these things were, or how long our windows could keep from spider-webbing and shattering. But they never did. Never had since we first bought Olly.

Father had just walked Olly home from the village. He was riding atop our first horse, Gabriel. It was a family tradition dating back to Great-Grandfather,who named his first horse after God’s Divine messenger, and every horse since has carried that name. Up until Olly, of course. She was far too ornery for her name to be changed.My family has always preferred to breed our own horses, and Olly was only the second horse the family was forced to buy.. Both grandfather’s Gabriel, his second horse, and later our Gabriel, Father’s Gabriel, were found to be sterile. So without any avenue to breed out from Gabriel, Father was forced to go to market and see if there was a foal there for sale, and if not, then wait for the next horse auction. He ended up doing the latter.

Gabriel had been known for years at that point to be unable to breed; that was found out before I was born, so Mother and Father had opted to wait to buy a horse until Gabriel was nearing an age where he was too old to carry out his chores. That age ended up being twenty-three. I was six years old then. On his last ride to the village, Father told Mother, Brother and me when he got back that Gabriel seemed to know exactly what this last chore was, and bore it well. Father also said it must have been Gabriel’s toughest job too, for Olly was exceptionally obtuse for a cob, and for much of the trip back she swung between moods of obstinate malaise and jerky excitement, which in either case forced Gabriel to literally drag her back to heel.

At dinner that night, after corralling Olly, who vehemently objected to being called Gabriel, into the two-horse stable, Father told Mother that Gabriel wasn’t faring well. He said they had to rest three times on the way to the village, and five times on the way back. Gabriel no longer trotted, but only trudged along, stepping lightly with each hoof. Father said his joints were bad, and his breathing was cold and shallow. He said tonight was probably “the best time for it,” but Mother demurred. I didn’t know what he meant by “the best time for it” until a week later. And I did not know why Mother had disagreed until a few months later. Father understood right away, however, and waited the week at Mother’s behest. For that week, neither Gabriel nor Olly would do any work. Olly was too young to be a work horse yet, and Gabriel was too old. Father had planned for this. The field had already been sown the previous month and so we also had no crop to send to market.

Instead of work, Brother would take Olly out to the fence by the stable at the side of the house and, under the guidance of Father, try to break her. I never liked that term, as it implies breaking the animal’s spirit, killing the wild in her, which is essentially what they did. To her credit, though, Olly never answered to the name Gabriel, and even shattered the kitchen window upon escaping from Brother’s grasp on her first training session. During that short time, Gabriel mainly stayed in his stable, Brother tending to his needs which, aside from feeding, were few.