The Bone Traders -- a FREE chapter

...this FREE chapter shows the link between Joe's abilities and stored time -- here he begins his journey to cross the line between the living and the dead. It is the beginning of an interesting battle for Joe -- when to cross the line and where is the point of no return.

Sky hurries toward the Church but just before he enters the building, he looks across the street to where an identical replica of the Ferguson house stands. The windows and the doors are bolted. Sky glances over the house with a sense of pride, almost gloating. He turns and enters the Church.  

There’s less daylight within the building, coldness even in the harsh sunlight.  Sky heads toward the covered altar, veers off and enters a narrow, bare hallway. He moves forward and enters a stark, semi-circular room. Its only furniture is a wooden desk and a chair. Leading off this room, is an archway -- behind the arch, a room of darkness. There is a doorway to the side.

Sky enters that doorway. He pauses there, tosses the soft toy toward the bed in the centre of the room.

“There’s a Digger in Erasmusville,” he tells the man resting on the bed. The man rolls over and looks at Sky. His name is Trader. He is a soul shrunk in a once tall frame. He is the dead alive. 

“I know. I heard. But it is yet to be proven.”

Sky lies down on the bed. He embraces Trader, like a child would his father.

“I was told...”

“...nothing. You were told nothing,” Trader interrupts. “Those three faeces eating, unwashed doggery couldn't tell left from right, right from wrong. Their breath alone will taint you, Sky. Let me smell.”

“You want to what?”

“Let me smell!”

Sky exhales into Trader’s face, their lips close. Trader sniffs.

“It is as tainted as the day’s dawn.  Deceit is contagious.”

Sky sits up on the bed. “But there is a chance? I mean -- that this man could be a Digger?”

Trader holds out a well manicured hand. “Rose Jarvis. She died?”

“Sorry, I forgot...”

Sky pulls out the ladies wrist-watch and hands it over. Trader caresses Sky’s hand before he takes the timepiece. He gets out of the bed and puts on a robe that hangs like an old curtain over a once proud window.

“She met with him,” Sky informs Trader.

“They copulated?”

“No. Of course they didn't!”

Sky follows Trader into the lounge. Trader walks toward the archway and enters the dark area.

“Then their meeting was of no consequence to me,” Trader says as he disappears into the black.

“You mean to us - it was of no consequence to us. Am I right?” Sky’s voice is suddenly shrill, like that of a spoilt child. He steps closer to the archway, but does not enter.”To your promise to me, remember?”

Trader’s voice is soft in the darkness. “Yes, my promise, my trade for pleasures past.” Then he raises his voice. “Yes, my promise to you.”

Sky calms as he watches a soft light invade the room. It is the light from a night’s sky pregnant with stars. As this light grows, Sky is able to see Trader operating the winch attached to the curved wall. Trader is mechanically opening the roof of the dome.

Trader pauses in his action to look at Sky. “But only when she is with child. Best you never forget that, my infertile friend,” he tells Sky.

“You have to do that, don’t you?  Just keep ramming it home like vomit in reverse. That’s what gets you off?”

Trader turns his back on Sky. “No my sweet boy,” he says. “You do.”

Joe moves through the canyon.  Neither torchlight nor lamp is required. Above him, the stars seem so close he could touch them. He squats, looks at the ground.

“If he is true to his gift,” Trader tells Sky, “then he will, at first, work at night.  He will have no need for light. After all, what he searches for is already buried in the dark.”

The damp light of the night’s sky fills the dome, ricocheting off the hundreds of timepieces that hang together like crystal drops on a chandelier. Wrist watches of all sizes, age and shape, their mechanisms still, hands dormant, stalled at different times.  Every time-piece hangs from a thin thread. They seem to be floating in the air, these souvenirs of the dead.

Trader begins to feed a thread into the strap socket of the watch Sky has just given him. “He won’t tempt to unearth anything,” Trader continues. “He’ll simply probe -- he’ll feel. Touch and sense. Let his presence be known -- that he’s a friend, a new light, a respectful visitor.”

Joe sweeps both his hands under the belly of a rock. The muscles across his hands are taut. He moves on like a water diviner, his stride loose, calm and sure footed on the terrain.

Trader randomly touches a free floating watch. “If a Digger has a response, he’ll settle and make camp. He’ll open the way for the dead to speak.  He’s as patient as a vulture. No difference between them really -- both eat off the dead...travel the same road.”

“He’s got a bird with him. An ugly bird,” Sky offers.

Trader sends the wristwatch aloft. It swings like a pendulum. “That’s interesting. I wasn’t aware.”Trader looks at Sky. “A Digger is patient and sensitive -- potent weaponry in the battle for love, Sky. Do you think you are capable?”

Sky stiffens in the doorway. “Screw you, Trader.  I shared your bed, now she will share mine.”

“And what of me, Sky? What of us?”

Sky turns his back. “A trade is a trade. That’s what you always tell me.”

Trader hears Sky leave. He smiles, the night sky reflecting in his oval glasses.

Joe lets his hands roam at the base of a boulder, where dirt meets rock.

Suddenly, a few slivers of loose stone and a few grains of sand float toward Joe’s hand, and cling onto his flesh. Like a magnet draws iron shavings.

He brushes off the slivers of stone and moves on.

A suspended watch begins to swing, to bob up and down. It touches another watch. That, too, begins to move.

Trader observes, doesn't move, and listens to the metallic rustle, like a breeze through a wind-chime.

Joe focused, shifts a hand to his left, to his right. He rotates on his heels, pirouetting almost, palms an inch or two off the ground. The occasional sliver of flint or dust rises and sticks to his hands. Concentrated, resolute energy as he rotates on his heels. His muscles are taut; a ballet in the moonlight.

Trader watches as a few timepieces shift now -- spin on their axis. Not all of them. A few -- like dancing puppets on invisible strings.  Above them the night sky through the open dome.

“Thank you father,” Trader tells the night sky.

Almost feline, Joe ceases his movement. He squats on the earth, his chest inflating, deflating as the slivers of stone and dust slip off his hands. 

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