Saracen (Saturn's Child Series Book 1) Read online

  Saracen

  Book One in the Saturn’s Child Series

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  R.L. Holmes

  To my friends and family

  April 1998: Stranger

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  I thought I would never come back to this dreary, little town. As to be expected, little has changed. The dairy is still there on the main road, the pretty white cottage behind is looking tired and worn. I guess the small co-op supermarket built down the road has ruined their business.

  Like most rural towns - the pub is full, even at 2’oclock in the afternoon, and the church empty. I see they both have had facelifts, like many of the square houses on the main road. There is now a post office - wow Fenton, you’re moving up in the world - and four small shops attached to the co-op; a fast food takeaway store, a spice shop how odd, a second-hand collectors’ store - containing old books and ornaments, and a pharmacy, the dispensing of drugs more common than the dispensing of alcohol.

  It still has its narrow-minded gossips and sturdy farm wives and foul smelling utility trucks covered in mud and cow dung, the drivers younger and fresher faced. I notice a chicken feed factory has been built a mile out, sending out a most vile smell when the wind changes direction. I suppose they consider this filthy monstrosity as progress, supplying locals with jobs, when in fact it puts a tarnish on a town that already needs a lot of help to attract outsiders to make their homes here.

  I have been gone a long time. That is true. I put this place behind me, the memories tucked into the back of my mind. But only recently as I age, my past longer than my future, do I become reminded of unfinished business, of things needed to be put to rest. I left the last place quickly, as I have many times. The rapid flames swallowed it whole, leaving nothing but charred wood and splintered hearts. I outsmarted everyone, they suspect nothing. But now a gentle prodding within me, directs me back to Fenton. Back to find the ghosts of the future I could have had, if she had not gotten in my way.

  It was Pope who lured me back. He appears now and again. I can feel him hovering behind me. I can smell the sweet perfume of roses - sometimes it’s the soft scent of the dog rose, sometimes an overpowering scent of something more modern and glamorous. He’s not happy with the way I have handled myself, those people left maimed and killed. But this fire burns within me, urging me forward and smothering those who dare who walk across my path.

  I see her, crossing the main road near the dairy. She has not aged much. She still has that style, that freshness, that likeability. And what’s this? A child? Is she her child?

  I watch the girl as she glances over at me. Her eyes are old, an old soul perhaps. She looks like her, but bestowed with a heaviness, as if the burden of life is too much for her. Why would a child wear this? She must be about 11 or 12. She looks at me again. She suddenly feels self-conscious. She can feel the weight of my stare. There is something about this child. As their silhouettes fade out in the distance, a gentle autumn breeze sails past carrying whispers of direction and guidance. This is it. For now, I shall wait and watch.

  A figure appears, walking towards me. I recognise her. She has aged somewhat, I guess that’s what farming does to you. I smile. She nods. I don’t think she recognises me, I have changed. I’ve had to. This is my third identity in twenty years. She turns back round and frowns. ‘Elaine Richardson?’

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  Early September, 1998: Saracen

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  It was my gran who gave me my name. Well, it’s her who raised me. I was born in September, a spring baby, at 3.40am on a full moon. The year was 1986. Cyndi Lauper’s, True Colours, played on the radio and according to my gran, my astrological make-up foretells a life filled with disappointments, hardship, and sickness and I would compensate for this by living in my head.

  Well, I think it’s true to say that I do have plenty of disappointments because I expect so much and I am sick a lot due to my sensitive stomach, and I do live in my head and in books and in my imagination - but that’s because kids my age don’t like me or find me a bit odd.

  I often feel odd. I don’t read the latest books and I’m rarely interested in what the teacher is harping on about. I would rather make up stories in my head and watch them unfold on the playground like a wonderful, mystical theatre.

  But my life isn’t too bad though, not compared to Daniel Parker who was found burnt to a crisp on the Richardson’s farm, last week. He was lying in the back of the canopy of his orange utility truck next to a body; they believe was a female, when his car caught alight by some strange means. Apparently he suffocated in the fire; his body engulfed in flames, like drowning in the sun. When I overheard adults talking about this I felt awful for him. I felt awful for his girlfriend too, Rachel.

  Of course in a small town like Fenton whispers are aplenty especially when we discovered that the female body was not chubby Rachel at all, and due to the fact that no one around here was actually announced missing, the body still remains a mystery.

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  I really liked Daniel Parker as he used to visit my gran every Wednesday and Friday evening to pick up some dried herbs that came in a small brown paper bag. He was always friendly to me, and sometimes he’d stop off at the dairy to pick up a Jellytip ice block in summer or some liquorice logs in the colder seasons, always managing to buy the logs that were soft and easy to bite.

  I guess that’s because his chubby girlfriend Rachel works and lives there, so he can fondle the packets before he buys them. Whenever I’d go down there to buy lollies and supplies, Rachel just scowls and watches my every move as if I am going to rob the place.

  Rachel the black-eyed Scowler: who paints thick black lines around her eyes to make them stand out from her chubby round face and double chin, but instead they only sink deeper into her flesh, becoming narrow little slits. Rachel the Screecher: who bellows at the top of her lungs when she doesn’t get her own way, and cries out as if serious injustices have been committed. I wonder how she’s feeling now.

  Her parents own the dairy. It was handed down to them by Rachel’s mother’s mother, her Nana. They live in a pretty white cottage attached to the shop with a jasmine growing up over the balcony.

  Every day when it’s hot, that jasmine smell floats all along the street and gets up my nostrils, making me feel a little sick. Sometimes I sneeze and get headaches from it. Because of my sensitivity to it, Gran doesn’t have one growing back home. We have loads of other plants instead that aren’t so sweetly vile and are more useful, like herbs and fruit plants.

  Three days after Daniel was found dead, Rachel’s mother sent her off to boarding school so she could focus on her studies. It was around about this time when I overheard Moley from the post office in Fenton, tell a customer that the utility truck Daniel Parker was found in was deliberately lit, and it’s now become a murder enquiry.

  I felt sick to my stomach imagining someone setting the truck alight and watching Daniel and the mystery female banging on the windows screaming as the flames burned their skin and cooked their organs.

  I think that would be the worst way to die. I would rather die drowning in a lake somewhere, at least you would be found whole. Unless of course you live in Australia where the crocodiles rip you to shreds, or in South America where the piranhas savage you in large numbers taking small sharp bites leaving nothing but bones; bones that sink to the bottom of the lake to live with the mudfish.

  Being burnt alive would be the worst way to die by far. It would be similar to when Gran buys livers, to get her iron levels up, and fries them with onion. That smell, that horrible smell. But it would be ten times worse than that.

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  Early September 1998: Stranger


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  Fire enthrals me. I love to watch the way it licks and engulfs everything in its path like a hungry lion devouring an antelope - sinking its fangs into her neck, only stopping when it’s full and content and had its fix. Oh how I love to feel the intense, scolding heat, smell the suffocating smoke, and hear the excitable crackles, eating into the house or the workshop or the car, collapsing its foundations and killing those within. Oh how my heart races, my brow sweats.

  I hid in the bush on the other side of the river. It was easy really. A good combination of alcohol, dope and much frolicking and they were out like a light - exhausted from their ridiculous flirtations and silly games. This was not the best fire I’ve seen, actually it was pretty disappointing. I waited patiently for it to spread to the engine, the petrol tank. I waited patiently for the loud riveting bang, the smell of petrol and burning flesh. But it did not come. The flames pitted out before it got there. Damn.

  What did I do wrong? I covered the vehicle with plenty of fuel, and used an ethanol smothered cloth to light the flames. It should have worked. The vehicle should’ve been left unrecognisable. Oh well, at least it did the job. The purpose complete, the task achieved.

  Now I wait. The clock ticks. Let’s see how long it takes for them to realise that it was me.

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  Early September 1998: Saracen

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  If you’re wondering where my parents are, well I can tell you that they are alive and well and million miles away from me. Of course there is no bitterness when I say this as I am having the best childhood I could ever have with my wonderful gran. A childhood filled with an array of dancing colours, extraordinarily good cooking and a warm nourishing heart. So I feel that I am missing nothing, except that I do not know them well, not really. But they are worth a mention, I guess their blood still travels through my veins and I have a funny feeling, and I have funny feelings often, that they will resurface again soon.

  My parents are strugglers of the defeatist kind. They seem to have come together under a rein of social awkwardness and shyness, but convinced themselves that they were just misunderstood and different to everyone else.

  This seems to be the theme of their entire lives. When things didn’t go their way they would blame it on some authority somewhere trying to corrupt them from having a decent life, just because they chose to walk a path that was unique.

  They were always suspicious of the government and its departments, large corporations and people who are popular and wealthy. They categorised them as being dishonest and cruel, and you should never trust anyone who is especially rich as they are likely to screw you over and take your money, because that’s how they got rich in the first place.

  According to my gran, there was really nothing special about my parents at all, which is a little confusing to me. As when dad comes to town he rants and raves about rebelling against some political institution that people like him, who don’t fit into the social norm, will suffer the consequences of.

  “‘People like me’” he says “‘don’t want to be sheep that follow everyone else. They want us to be all the same so they can control us, they just want to dumb us down so that they can fit us all in a neat and tidy box.’”

  Of course in my mind ‘they’ are faceless fat men wearing million dollar suits, with pockets filled with gold coins, tricking the innocent into handing over their savings for some dream that never comes true. And going by dad’s verbal tangents on the subject he is terrified of them, which explains why he cannot stay in one place for long.

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  My parents met at the local meat works which has now closed down. Mum was a desk worker and dad did the slaughtering and gutting of animals. It took my dad a year and a half to find the courage to ask my mother out, and luckily she said yes. Not because she fancied him or visualised a future with him, but because he just asked. And that was it. Nobody else asked her out over the two years she was working there so she was wise to take whatever was offered.

  Gran says, Mum wasn’t much to look at back then. She looks much better now; a late bloomer, she says. She was pretty skinny with lacklustre mousey hair and spotty skin. Her two front teeth were yellow from smoking and she had to wear special shoes with different height heels due to an accident she had when she was twelve.

  Dad wasn’t much better. He was quite overweight then, due to heavy indulgence of Lion Brown beer, and wore a beetroot red face. He drove an old beige Vauxhall that had a tendency to break down and fire out gun shots that frightened the locals.

  His workmates tagged him Porky Pig which suited him, but his top lip quivered and curled every time that name was mentioned, so he probably silently resented it.

  Mum is a lot like me, she loves to read and be carried away by a fantasy of others’ lives. Dad though, isn’t good at reading or writing, in fact he isn’t particularly good at anything. There’s something in my father that makes him restless and uneasy. He has great difficulty staying in the same job or in the same town for long and hits the road running when things become unbearable.

  He of course, blames his failures and inability to commit on several things such as; being underpaid due to the corrupt government, or the City has too many ‘money grabbers’ or it’s always raining, or his workmates are lazy and he’s the only one that does a decent day’s work.

  Even though he makes friends easily and is fairly likeable, he always has an air of intense loneliness that no person or no place can ever fulfil - not even my mother.

  She like any good wife, packs up the car after spending six months in a City that was filled with people who were ‘slippery or pedestrian,’ and goes with her husband on an adventure to find new work in a new town, and start a new life. Of course after this new life becomes stale, they’d be off again, searching for something outside of themselves that can never fulfil them.

  They were on their third shift when my mother found herself pregnant. My father wasn’t overly pleased with this, but saw it as a sign that they should settle down somewhere nice and set up a home. He found a great work opportunity in the mines down south where the workers are paid better than the average. So off they went.

  The work was really hard but the pay was really good. Mum had my brother Austin in a damp little town, and my sister Lucy came shortly after. They stayed for 3 years then my father decided he had enough of ‘raping the land’ and saw another opportunity to work on a fishing trawler.

  When my mother questioned his motives as wanting to get away from the noisy children-filled household to rape the sea instead, my father made excuses saying that the sea is unlimited and that seamen are all ‘good blokes’. This was when my mother realised she was pregnant for the third time.

  This pregnancy was different to the first two. She was terribly sick all the way through and had awful lower back spasms. Her skin, a sensitive subject, broke out in infectious boils and she suffered with much anxiety and depression. She at this point, had enough of this life.

  After a difficult labour with my gran by her side and my father out at sea, on a Saturday in September, under a full moon at 3.40am, I was born. Then at that moment, my mother announced in a hysterical state, that she didn’t want to take me home. She pleaded to Gran to take me to her home in Fenton, for a little while or at least until her depression had lifted.

  So that’s what my gran, her name Mary, did reluctantly. And here I am several years later still living in Fenton, only seeing my parents now and again, when they happen to be passing through.

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  This living arrangement seems to suit us all. My parents say that they can only afford to have two kids and the boy eats a lot. Plus as I grew, it was clear that I have a sensitive stomach, and would suffer terribly with motion sickness. That seemed to justify their guilt, the fact that I am meant to be with Gran and not with my travelling, free spirited parents.

  But I really don’t know any difference anyway, as my life here with Mary is so nourishing and colourful,
even without seeing the sea, or lakes or snow-covered mountains. I can just close my eyes and imagine anything I wanted, without having to go through the experience of squeezing into a small car with rowdy kids and feeling queasy.

  Gran decided to name me Saracen after a woundwort in Culpeper’s herbal. She said it suited me as going by my unfortunate astrological make-up I will need a lot of healing and a strong vulnerary is ideal.

  So Saracen it is. I have never seen this herb, not even a picture of it, and Gran said that she is not sure that you can even get it in New Zealand. So I am a little confused about her choice of name for me. I think she just really likes the name Saracen and felt she needed to add a meaning behind it.

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  This September so far has been unusually warm and windy as

  Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls is being thrashed on the radio and I discovered that it was Max Richardson who found the burnt orange truck parked up next to the river, last week.

  Daniel used to go the river in the weekends to fish for trout. He was a pretty good fisherman, and fairly good at gutting and cooking the thing afterwards. I overheard him once boasting to a mate of his, Geoff, about the huge Rainbow he caught on Richardson’s farm. He said the river was teaming with Browns, but he managed to outwit them and get a beauty Rainbow.

  Geoff is a strange looking man. He’s not good looking and charming like Daniel. I think they are the same age but Geoff looks so much older, and his body parts are all out of proportion. There never seems to be much conversation between the two of them, it’s mostly Daniel chatting enthusiastically, grinning warmly as his brown curls bob in the breeze, while Geoff grunts and answers, “Ahyeah,” in a sleepy, barely listening sort of way.

  I think, and Gran agrees with me that Geoff was and probably still is, envious of our Daniel. Anyone would be. Daniel can have the pick of the females, why he chose chubby Rachel I don’t know. He got jobs easily, and was promoted over other farm hands that had been there for much longer. The older ladies of Fenton loved him like he was their son. All he had to do was smile that charming, dimply smile and every female would race after him with plates piled up with peanut brownies, or bags filled with Russian fudge.