Featherbones Read online

  Featherbones

  Thomas Brown

  The right of Thomas Brown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved

  © Thomas Brown 2016

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or places is entirely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted by any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this publication may not be hired out, whether for a fee or otherwise, in any cover or binding other than as supplied by the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  2.1

  BIC code: FA

  ISBN: 978-1-907230-52-3

  Print ISBN: 978-1-907230-51-6

  @SparklingBooks

  Thomas Brown is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Southampton, where he is investigating the relationship between horror and the sublime in literature. He has been Co-Editor of Dark River Press, and has written for a number of magazines, websites and independent publishers.

  In 2010 he won the University of Southampton's Flash Fiction Competition. In 2014 he won the annual Almond Press Short Story Competition. His first book, LYNNWOOD, was a finalist in the 2014 People's Book Prize. He is also a proud member of the dark fiction writing group: Pen of the Damned.

  When not writing, he can usually be found waiting on his cats, or enjoying a bottle (or two) of red with friends.

  By the same author

  Lynnwood

  Reviews

  “Featherbones is an ethereal love song to a city by the sea. Thomas Brown's beautiful novel depicts a liminal world of statues, drownings and winged creatures. It's also a real page turner. I love this book.”

  Rebecca Smith, author of The Bluebird Café

  “This is an exquisitely written novel; deft, poised, and with a writer's ear for the rhythms of the world around us. Featherbones does the always-difficult job of making the strange familiar, while asking us to attend again to the things we think we know.”

  William May, author and lecturer

  “I loved the use of language, I loved the story and above all I loved the constant sensation that I was walking on the top of the dividing wall between reality and dream and imagination and past and present and future. I want to live on that wall for the rest of my life.”

  The Bookrazy Blog

  “What to call this experience? Magical realism doesn't quite fit right. Magical-psychological-philosophical-realism. Maybe. This is a book that will be unlike any other that you have read.

  “There are some very well crafted passages in this book, and some amazing uses of language. It is really the beautiful language, in my opinion, that makes this a book worth the time to read and share with others. I liked the characters ... the way the story developed and the way the reader is never quite sure if what is happening is actual reality or just the imaginings of a confused mind.

  “If you enjoy reading books that make you think, and make you wonder at the author’s ability to turn every day ordinary into something else, something a bit more extraordinary, then I recommend this book to you.

  Ionia Martin, Readful things blog

  “Featherbones is the second of Thomas Brown’s novels that I have read and I think that I enjoyed this more than Lynnwood, which I loved. Having made this statement, however, the book is going to be hard to review without telling readers too much about the plot.

  “Felix, the main character, is a young graduate, living his rather mundane life in Southampton. The highlight of his week is his Friday night drinking binge with his workmate and long-time friend, Michael. All seems fairly commonplace, until an event acts as a trigger for Felix to fall, swoop, descend into unreality.

  “The novel looks back to Felix’s traumatic childhood - so many events that could lead to an uncertain future for Felix's mental health. Looking into the past, we meet Felix's father, his teacher, his very best friend, Harriet and a man who was supposed to be helping Felix overcome his disturbed childhood.

  “What I love about this novel is that it works on several levels and is open to different interpretations. For me, it is about guilt, repression, sexuality and the need for each of us to know ourselves. It is about acceptance, love and trust.

  “Thomas Brown writes such beautiful prose; Featherbones is worth reading for this alone. However there is much more to appreciate - a fine, thought-provoking novel.”

  Angela Thomas

  Dedication

  For Lucian and Andrew, still missing.

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to Aamer Hussein and Rebecca Smith, for incubating this story throughout its various drafts and for helping it to hatch.

  Thanks also to Poppy Z. Brite, for saving me from the dark, and to Patty, for the introductions – and so much more. Wormwood forever has a place beneath my pillow.

  Inspirations: Brite’s ‘Missing’ and Lost Souls. Philip Hoare’s Leviathan, and his many moving talks on Southampton. The city itself, my home away from home. Kate MccGwire and her haunting sculptures. Aronof-sky’s ‘Black Swan’. Thomas Ligotti, Angela Carter and Clive Barker, whom I admire so much.

  Thanks to Anna and the Sparkling Books team for continuing to make my writing dreams a reality.

  Finally, thank you to Gill and Brian for always being there.

  All my love.

  Thomas Brown

  June 2015

  Oxfordshire, UK

  @TJBrown89

  “Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or moun-tainous; that ocean is not silent.”

  H.P. Lovecraft, ‘The White Ship’

  Chapter One

  The deep mewing of a gull draws Felix from his dreams. This close to the sea, there are many gulls. It is their city, as much as anyone else’s. Pinching the sleep from the corners of his eyes, he gazes across to the window sill. The bird stands with its back to him, wings tucked to its chest, as though surveying the streets spread out nine floors beneath it. In the morning light, its feathers appear grey, and quite dirty. He makes to move from under the covers and it turns sharply, studying him with one beady eye.

  For several seconds man and bird stare each other out. Then he staggers from bed and it screams at him through the glass before plummeting from the windowsill. When he realises it is Monday, he considers doing the same.

  Every morning Felix walks the same way down the high street to the offices on London Road, and every evening he walks the same way home again. The sounds of the city wash over him; the murmur of car engines, gull cries, laughter as students trail past him on their way to Halls of Residence, and beneath it all the maritime roar of the sea.

  His flat overlooks the docks and it takes him thirty minutes, at most, to get from one end of the city to the other. The walk is generally uneventful. He barely notices the streets any more, the pavements, the faces of passers-by. When Michael and he first took the vacancies with the recruitment agency it was a temporary set-up. He had just finished his History degree and needed money to support himself. He has worked at the agency for over five years now; five years of his life lost to the city by the sea.

  The office stirs with morning activity. Years ago, the team numbered eight. Now they are four, including Mr. Coleson. He cannot see Mr. Coleson in his offi
ce but he can hear him and his deep-bellied laughter through the door, propped open enough to remind everyone that he is there and they are here to work another week. The rest of the office is a small, communal space. The stationery drawer sits empty, functioning biros as rare as new job prospects. A cleaning rota stares back at them from the cork noticeboard on the wall, detailing precisely whose turn it is to vacuum the carpet, dust the windows, mop the lavatories, and when. No one was especially enthused when this rota was drawn up, but none less so than Maggie, who, on her thirtieth birthday, took Mr. Coleson aside and threatened to leave in a voice not unlike those belonging to the gulls outside, unless he removed her from the rota immediately. It is difficult to call what occurred that morning a conversation, as this implies there was rapport of some kind and at least two speakers. When negotiations concluded, Maggie was relegated to light dusting on Tuesdays and Fridays. She seemed satisfied by this, and Felix remembers suspecting that, for all her protesting, she was in no more of a position to leave than he.

  In an ideal world, Maggie begins each day by patiently sorting through her emails, red-lacquer claws wrapped around a vast mug of tea. At her desk a strong work ethic grips her, setting her face into a mask of concentration. Blue eyes narrow. Thin lips seal tight. Loose strands of light blonde hair are dealt with swiftly where they stray across her face.

  When Michael is late, however, she is forced to begin the day with his photocopying. Long talons tap the cheap plastic cover of the machine while it makes its own Monday protests beside her. Sometimes, if the photocopier is taking particularly long, she touches up her make-up in a hand mirror while she waits. Tiredness vanishes from her pale face beneath a mixture of concealer and rouge; a clown, all set for another day at the circus. He smiles to himself at the comparison, before wondering what that might make him.

  Staring around him at what could be any morning of any week in the last five years of Mondays, he wonders what Maggie would do if they ran out of teabags, or if the photocopier began working properly, or what would happen if Michael was actually on time for work one day.

  His friend cuts a dark silhouette as he hurries past the office window. The cold air chases after him, his black pea coat fluttering in the wind. Inside the office, he strides to Felix’s desk, shrugging the coat from around his slight shoulders. Its absence reveals his white slim-fit shirt, navy blue tie, and a pair of grey trousers that Felix has long considered a touch too tight for the office. The coat flaps like a great pair of wings from around him.

  “Morning,” says Felix tentatively.

  “My head feels like a Greek Tragedy.”

  Aside from the fact that he is dressed for work, the casual observer might be forgiven for thinking Michael has come straight from a bar. By the unforgiving brightness of the office lights his features seem pale, made sharp by his dark hair, scraped into a tight bun behind his head. His eyes are thin, cheeks slender, narrow nostrils quivering as they filter the scents of printer ink, carpet cleaner and stale dust that make up their surroundings.

  “Have you slept yet?”

  “Yes.” Michael seems to reconsider. “Briefly.”

  “You’re hopeless.”

  “There’s always hope.”

  “Three years of studying philosophy and you sound like a fortune cookie.”

  Friday night swims behind Felix’s eyes; shining spirit bottles, the shadows in the bar’s rafters and the rush of the sea filling his head. He struggles to recall the face of the woman with whom Michael spent the best part of the evening, and most probably the rest of the weekend. For a moment he thinks he places her; sitting at the bar, legs crossed, a small, black dress hugging her hips, before the lights, and perhaps drink, distort her face into obscurity.

  Then Mr. Coleson is standing in the doorway of his office, except instead of booming laughter the Ringmaster is tapping his watch. The gesture is empty, grown meaningless from years of repetition, but it prompts apologies from Michael and an immediate start to his working day.

  The clouds break just before lunchtime. It is April, the month of showers, and Southampton’s are as cold and wet as anywhere Felix knows. He spends his morning scanning profiles for suitable job applicants. It is a thankless task. The hours stretch on, during which time he wonders where he went wrong. For three glorious years he had lived the dream at university. It had given him purpose, direction, an aim. The first week he spent drunk. The second he spent recovering, from both the drink and his leg, which he injured slipping down a flight of stairs in a club. He remembers little of the first week, or the ensuing three years, all lost in a sea of liquor. He does remember feeling hopeful and happier than he has ever been, at a time when the rest of the country was struggling to make ends meet. He had even managed a degree at the end, although it hadn’t been easy getting there. He owes that much to the city, at least.

  And there it is. ‘At the end’. There had been no afterwards, no fourth year. University had come to its champagne-popping, Graduation Ball finish and abandoned him, with nothing but a piece of paper and a false sense of hope to show for it.

  After work, Felix retraces his steps through the city. The pavement is long and narrow, a pier leading first to the city centre and then the docks beyond. If he walks south through the city, or south-east, or south-west, he will come to water. There is no escaping the sea, which laps its salty tongue against the city and the people who live there.

  A low wall follows one side of the pavement, barely more than knee-height, separating the street from the park grounds beyond. The stone feels cool and gravelly against the backs of his legs when he veers from the pavement to perch on it. Overhead, heavy clouds fill the bright sky, spears of sunlight struggling to pierce the swollen grey, reminding him of the hymns he used to sing when he was a boy at St. Barnaby’s. Divine chariots could roll through those clouds, steeds snorting, thunder spilling from the spokes of the wheels.

  “Thank God for Fridays, and men like Michael.”

  Opposite him there is a bus stop, behind him the green expanse of East Park. On his left a man sits cross-legged on the ground. The man’s face is long, his eyes half-closed. Hands twist arthritically into the hollows of his overcoat, which is wrapped loosely around him like a second skin, ready to be sloughed. It seems impossible to accurately guess his age. From the look of his face, he might be in his forties. Felix has never seen fit to ask.

  “Hello, Sam.”

  The man stirs slowly, seeming to come back to himself. He glances down, to a handful of change littering the pavement, then right, then up, to where Felix is sitting on the wall. His lidded eyes narrow, then flicker wide.

  “Felix!”

  He is not sure what first drove him to strike up conversation with Sam, when they spoke one evening last Christmas. He supposes he felt sorry for him. It was two below freezing outside and Sam made an abject sight, huddled beside the wall in the same tired coat he’s wrapped in now. He offered to buy the man a hot drink, and they found a café, not far from the park, down an alley at the bottom of East Street. Sam does not like crowds, and Felix does not like what Christmas does to people. So the café became their haunt, their private place where for a short while each week they could escape the eyes and ears of the city. They have been going for coffees there together ever since.

  “You’ll catch your death, sitting out here. Aren’t you wet?”

  “I’m waiting,” says Sam.

  “Waiting for what?”

  “The angels.” Sam stares behind Felix as he speaks. “The angels are coming.”

  Felix follows his gaze to a statue, standing at his shoulder. In each hand she clutches a wreath. His eyes travel from her outstretched arms, past her proud face, down the flowing contours of her robes to the base on which she stands. More flowers have been placed in bouquets around her feet and he realises with a twinge of guilt that she is a memorial. Though the flowers partly obscure it, he sees a plaque, and written on it some words, partially hidden by red rose petals.


  He reads the words ‘Officers,’ ‘Duty’ and ‘Titanic’ before a young man trips, or is pushed, and falls into the flowers. Mad laughter fills Felix’s ears as the man staggers to his feet and flees the broken bouquets with his friends.

  Clouds slide before the sun, turning the statue ebony, where a moment before she seemed quite green. Verdigris-copper; the colour he imagined the sea here to be, before he first saw Southampton’s waters. Her austere face reflects his; flesh mirrored in forged metal.

  “The rain,” says Sam, smiling brightly. Black stubs glisten in his gums. “They love the rain. The water. They sing of it. I’m waiting. Beautiful voices. I’m waiting.”

  “Do you need to wait here? I thought we could go for a drink. My treat.”

  “It has been a slow day at the office…” Pinching the scattering of coins one by one from the pavement, Sam places them in his coat pocket, before turning back to the memorial. With his face upturned he could be a small boy, wide-eyed, swamped by his father’s coat. “Yes, then, let’s.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, yes.” He breaks into a smile. “She’ll wait. I could use a cup of something hot.”

  Felix looks up one last time at the winged silhouette, thin against the budding backdrop of East Park. A shaft of light illuminates the grey-green hollows of her face, with its tight lips, small nose and empty eyes. Then he hops from the wall, his white shirt blossoming grey with rain, and if it seems to him that the statue turns to face him as he leaves, he knows he is mistaken; a shaft of light, making movement where there can surely be none.