Then came the madness: the explosion, the smell of burning flesh, the warm wetness that rained sticky blood and flesh onto his face, his hands, and into his eyes and mouth. There was the siren sound of perforated eardrums and the faint shouts of men hauling him up.
There wasn’t much left of Max, blown in half, and another of their team lay on his back with smoke rising from charred and ripped flesh. They were being overrun, and he was dragged away, but not before he thought he saw the dead man’s fingers twitch. He tried to pull away, tried to scream that the man needed help, but his mouth wouldn’t work.
He was later told the man, Henderson, was dead. His head told him that was the truth, but his subconscious whispered that he had left a man behind and those bloody fingers twitching, beckoning to him, still haunted his dreams even today.
The shrapnel had opened his face, but he knew he was one of the lucky ones; he served, and survived, with everything intact. Many others didn’t, or they came home missing pieces.
Ben let his eyes drift again to Emma and didn’t realize his hand had reached up to touch the scar; his mother said it made him look handsome in a brutal sort of way. Others said it just made him look meaner, and that was fine by him.
Ben continued to stare with dark brown eyes that had a hawk’s intensity. Years ago, he and Emma had dated. She was a cute girl then, but now had grown into a beautiful woman, and he wondered whether she had kept in contact with his family, or she was here just to catch a glimpse of him. You conceited ass, he thought, but then, I hope so.
Afterwards, there was a wake planned at the family home, which was agonizing to endure, and then his mother asked could he stay for a few more days to help tidy things up, and to just be there.
He knew what she had meant — tidy things up, meant to pack away objects she couldn’t bear to look at anymore. Of course he would. Besides, Ben was diplomatically termed between engagements right now.
After the grenade, and then the two hundred and fifty plus internal micro-stitches to his face, he had left his Special Forces unit and the Army for good. He had felt like he was running away, and the guilt still hung over him like a shadow. But he knew then that he had seen enough, endured enough, and delivered enough violence to last a dozen lifetimes.
Now, he just wanted peace and quiet, and may even resume his studies to become a vet — animals he loved; it was human beings that were capable of atrocities and that he had walked away from. He was like his dad, and his grandfather, and he guessed all the other Cartwrights who yearned to live life simply and in the sunshine. Even his namesake, Benjamin Cartwright, who died somewhere down in Venezuela in 1908 after trekking into the jungle, was just a dreamer with an adventurous soul.
His mother came back into the living room and picked up an old photograph, stared for a moment, and then sobbed again.
Ben sighed; yep, should be raining.
CHAPTER 02
Ben woke with a start. The house was quiet, and he turned his head slowly, wondering what woke him.
He read somewhere once that if a person dies suddenly it could take days for their spirit to actually realize it. They’d carry on like nothing had happened, wandering along hallways, opening and shutting doors, and even trying to speak to their loved ones.
“Goodbye, Dad. I love you,” he whispered to the still air.
Ben sighed and sat there for a few more minutes; it was late, or rather way too early, and he silently got to his feet. He stepped carefully, trying to avoid squeaking floorboards that might wake his mother who had finally got off to sleep.
He decided to continue with his tidying up and carried a box of his dad’s clothing under one arm and a beer in the other as he made his way up to the attic.
His grandfather, Errol, had made his fortune in mining and left his father a sizeable inheritance and home on a gentle hilltop with 20 acres of surrounding land. The family home itself was impressive with plenty of sandstone and wood, filled with antiques, memories, and things the family had picked up over several generations.
The third floor was all attic space and was filled with boxes, chests, and dustsheet-covered excess furniture. He flicked on the lights, placed his beer on a covered table, and hiked the box of clothing over to the existing pile of chronologically layered personal items.
He still had much to bring up, but the man’s pictures would remain downstairs. He noticed his mother had turned them face down, as if even looking at him would cause her to crumble all over again. Ben figured his dad’s ghost would be in the house for a long time to come.
He pulled a sheet off an armchair and sat down, breathing in the smell of dust, old wood, and aging papers. He put his feet up on a chest and just let his eyes move along the piled towers of their family history — like geological layers, Barry would now have his things added to the piles, joining those that belonged to grandfather Errol, great grandfather Julius, and his namesake, his great, great grandfather Benjamin.
In a moment of feeling his mortality, he wondered whether one day someone would be sitting right here with their feet on his lifetime’s collection of papers, pictures, and old track and field trophies.
Ben shifted his feet on the chest. When he was a kid, his dad had told him that they were all full of treasure. But upon opening a few of them, he had been disappointed to find that there was nothing but papers, old letters, antiquities, and faded photographs. Nothing a kid valued at all.
His dad had just smiled at the downcast look on his face and told him that knowledge and information was the greatest treasure that a person could ever be given. Back then, he wasn’t impressed; but time has a way of changing perceptions.
He lifted his feet from the ornate box and unlatched it so he could lift the lid. The hinges squealed in protest like tortured banshees, and he shushed them.
He clasped large hands together and ran his eyes over the contents. This one belonged to his grandfather Errol and contained thick folders of papers and old books on geology and mining. He dug down; there were even sealed packages in a waxed paper and bound with string. He lifted several free and read the notes scribbled on the front in pencil. Some were addressed to Errol’s father, Benjamin, some to Errol, and some just to the Cartwright Estate, with a few dated as far back as 1912, well before Errol was even born. Another was inscribed 1930 and both felt like books, and both seemed to be from a similar source.
He ran a hand up through his thick, dark hair and left the fingers there, massaging his scalp as he read the notations — they were from the Estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Being an avid adventure fiction reader, he recognized the name and his interest was immediately piqued. He unwrapped the first package dated 1912.
“Whoa.” As he suspected, it was a book — but what a book — an immaculate first edition of The Lost World. The gilt and blue cloth-bound book was heavy in his hands.
Ben didn’t even know Doyle had written the book. He always thought he was well known for his Sherlock Holmes adventures, but thought The Lost World was actually a Steven Spielberg movie.
He lifted it to his nose and sniffed; he detected a slight mustiness, but overall, the dry attic coupled with the book’s wax paper covering had preserved it over the entire century.
But why wouldn’t Errol have opened it? he wondered. Maybe because it came before he was born and wasn’t addressed to him? Or perhaps it had been put away and he hadn’t even known it existed?