Read Online The Glister by John Burnside - Free Book Online
Authors: John Burnside
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Suspense, Fiction - General, Psychological, Suspense fiction, Missing Children
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own standards, he'd been determined to make a fresh start. When he wasn't working, he would do stuff in the garden, making things grow, taking a childish pleasure that he didn't even try to disguise in bringing in fresh vegetables and setting them out on the kitchen table, firm orange carrots with dark crumbs of soil still clinging to them and those bright curly leaves, radishes, turnips, lettuce, all of it a minor celebration, the man happy with his work, the produce looking good and clean and tasting fine, in spite of where it had been grown. In those days, Morrison had been an optimist, and she had wanted to love him for that. She had, in fact, wanted to love him for a long time, but she hadn't succeeded. Even before he grew distant, and fell in with Smith's people, she hadn't been able to love him. He was too meager, too commonplace. There simply hadn't been enough of him to love.
Now, she wants to go out into the world and walk away. Or not walk away so much as just walk, without even that much of a sense of direction. One of these days, she will take too many pills, or her body will just give out, and she will die while Morrison is out somewhere doing Brian Smith's bidding. She will die alone in her claustrophobic little police house, with nobody there to tell her goodbye; though if you took Morrison's word for it, everybody died alone because, no matter who was there when they were going, the actual departure had to be a solitary one, and the destination— whatever it might be—was one that you alone could reach. But then again, supposing it was different. What about all those stories of people who entered a brilliant circle of light and saw other bodies, other faces around them, welcoming, sweet faces, bringing them home? What if, when you died, you didn't move away into the ultimate loneliness, the ultimate separation, but instead, you returned to some other state, a state you had known before? What if death wasn't a solitary thing, after all, but a point where everyone who had ever been separated out, everyone who had wandered a lifetime, separate, but trying to connect in some way with someone or something else, returned to the shining, communal oneness from which they had all originated, tiny fragments of light and consciousness merging into the whole? She had read about such things; there were people—millions of people in Asia or some such place—who believed this. They thought there was one single mind that we were all a part of, and that we returned to it in death, to be separate no more, but to share in the one single, eternal thought that all of us had, and were. That thought was the universe, or being, or something like that. It was Buddhists, she seemed to remember, who believed this idea—Buddhists, or maybe Hindus—and they believed it as a matter of fact, the same way other people believed in gravity, or medicine. At times, the sheer mass of this belief, so many millions, almost persuaded her that it was true, and for giddy minutes she would sit wondering if any of those millions ever saw what a terrifying idea it really was.
ET IN ARCADIA
E GO.
Still there and gone away at the same time. Here and there, lost and found, in the everlasting present.
I can't help thinking that, if you want to stay alive, you have to love something. I used to have a friend, a boy called Liam Nugent, and I think I loved him, but now he's gone, and I don't know if I love anybody. Not Dad, that's for sure. Once upon a time, yes, but not now, because he's not really here now. He's lying in bed, silent, far away, and it's like he's dead already. Maybe I could love Elspeth, but I can't really see it. Sometimes I don't even think I like her, but then she does something funny, or she just says something outrageous, and I think I could almost be in love with her, like some character in a book. Though everybody says there's a big difference between being in love and actual love. It gets difficult around about there and I
Now, she wants to go out into the world and walk away. Or not walk away so much as just walk, without even that much of a sense of direction. One of these days, she will take too many pills, or her body will just give out, and she will die while Morrison is out somewhere doing Brian Smith's bidding. She will die alone in her claustrophobic little police house, with nobody there to tell her goodbye; though if you took Morrison's word for it, everybody died alone because, no matter who was there when they were going, the actual departure had to be a solitary one, and the destination— whatever it might be—was one that you alone could reach. But then again, supposing it was different. What about all those stories of people who entered a brilliant circle of light and saw other bodies, other faces around them, welcoming, sweet faces, bringing them home? What if, when you died, you didn't move away into the ultimate loneliness, the ultimate separation, but instead, you returned to some other state, a state you had known before? What if death wasn't a solitary thing, after all, but a point where everyone who had ever been separated out, everyone who had wandered a lifetime, separate, but trying to connect in some way with someone or something else, returned to the shining, communal oneness from which they had all originated, tiny fragments of light and consciousness merging into the whole? She had read about such things; there were people—millions of people in Asia or some such place—who believed this. They thought there was one single mind that we were all a part of, and that we returned to it in death, to be separate no more, but to share in the one single, eternal thought that all of us had, and were. That thought was the universe, or being, or something like that. It was Buddhists, she seemed to remember, who believed this idea—Buddhists, or maybe Hindus—and they believed it as a matter of fact, the same way other people believed in gravity, or medicine. At times, the sheer mass of this belief, so many millions, almost persuaded her that it was true, and for giddy minutes she would sit wondering if any of those millions ever saw what a terrifying idea it really was.
ET IN ARCADIA
E GO.
Still there and gone away at the same time. Here and there, lost and found, in the everlasting present.
I can't help thinking that, if you want to stay alive, you have to love something. I used to have a friend, a boy called Liam Nugent, and I think I loved him, but now he's gone, and I don't know if I love anybody. Not Dad, that's for sure. Once upon a time, yes, but not now, because he's not really here now. He's lying in bed, silent, far away, and it's like he's dead already. Maybe I could love Elspeth, but I can't really see it. Sometimes I don't even think I like her, but then she does something funny, or she just says something outrageous, and I think I could almost be in love with her, like some character in a book. Though everybody says there's a big difference between being in love and actual love. It gets difficult around about there and I
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