Dead And Buried

But his mind was filled with hazy memories — images of himself flickering and shimmering, dancing and shuddering, fading in and out as if he’d become just one more shadow in the smoke.

And then there was another image. A figure in front of him, outlined against the flames. The smoke between them black and thick and choking. Boards over the windows were burning. He heard glass shattering, a blast of air exploding the flames into a great roaring blaze, a wild beast devouring the furniture, ripping up the floor, stripping paper from the walls. A sheet of fire rolled across the ceiling, and engulfed the room.

And then the figure was gone. In Ben’s memory, he could see nothing but the smoke, feel nothing but the crash of falling stone. He could hear only the screaming.

Then, incredibly, a deafening absence of sound. And that silence was the most frightening thing of all.

‘Liz?’ he said, his voice croaking with fear.

But there was no answer in the room now. Matt was utterly quiet. Ben listened to that hush, recognising what it meant, remembering all the times that he and his brother had used such silences to share the most difficult things, a thought or emotion impossible to put into words.

It was strange the way a silence could say so much. It could tell the truth far more effectively than any platitude or cliché, or the most eloquent of speeches. This was a silence that came straight from the heart, and Ben understood it perfectly.

‘Liz,’ he said. ‘Is she … gone?’

Finally Matt spoke.

‘I’m sorry, Ben,’ he said. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’

Among sharp antiseptic smells, in a brightly lit room with a white ceiling, that was the moment. The exact moment when Ben Cooper’s world came to an end.