THE WINDMILL: TOM'S STORY

Thos's eyes were glassy and behind them his life was paused.

"Tom Bones. I call you forward from the darkness".

Throaty words came. Barely audible. Crackly, weak, like a badly tuned radio. She couldn't make them out. Only their gutteral growl...choking.

Thos' head lifted unnaturally. As if it was being pulled up by an invisible cord. His hand moved forward across the table towards her, but then the fingers shriveled into a claw, curled, dragged back across the surface. His fingernails dug into the wood, and Idima's teeth set on edge at the sound of the skin pulling, cuticles tearing.

"Stop it!" She covered her ears.

A heartbeat. And then the voice again. Choked with phlegm, it rasped. "This is your fault".

"Are you Tom Bones?"

"Tom....yes. That name."

"Where are you?"

"Here."

She shivered.

"Why have you come? What do you want from me?"

"I don't want you."

"Then..."

"The children".

Another choking cough. She wasn't sure if this was Tom or Thos.

The voice came again. "I want my children."

"I don't have your children."

"These". He looked through Thos' eyes at Gilda and raised Thos cut finger up to his mouth. Touched it to his cold, cracking lips. The face was more palid...as if life were draining from its skin. "Are my children".

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I can."

Idima looked at him. Trying to see her son. Just then he swayed and she thought he would fall. But the body stopped and a sickening smile seeped across his face as his head hovered above Gilda's mouth.

"You can really smell the bones through her skin."

She jumped up, trying to force him away from her daughter but he grabbed her wrist with a supernatural strength and she had to fight back from screaming as he dug Thos's fingers into her flesh. She fell back into her chair. Even without nails the vice-like grip of his fingers broke her skin.

"Sit down. Slut Teef." He spat the words at her.

He released his grip. She rubbed her arm trying to get the marks out of her skin.

"Who are you?"

"You know who I am."

Idima shivered. "Why won't you leave us alone?"

"I want what is mine. What they stole from me."

"Who?"

He studied her face for a moment before answering.

"The people here".

She waited for him to continue.

"A tooth....for a tooth." The pause was sickening.

He seemed to be rambling now. There was something pitiful in his voice - but a vengeful grief too...if there was grief it was turned in on itself, and any pity was only self-pity.

"You want to know about Tom Bones? Tom Van Moost I was then. Before....."

His voice trailed off momentarily. Then he took up with a new fire.

"To hear how a war took a 14 year old boy and turned him into this?"

Idima continued "Yes. Tell me."

Tom's voice was clearer now, though the accent was strange.

"A war about money. As are all wars. 40 souls were lost when my ship went down. She was my beautiful destroying angel. A wave, a single cruel blow from a God who doesn't care and she was gone. The English could have saved more. But they watched them drown. Fifteen hours I languished in the sea. Until they returned...to save me from dignity. So that they could chain me in hell."

He laughed. "Death is the only certain, true hope."

He seemed to fade. Idima looked at her son. He looked so small.

And then Tom was here again. Ice cold. Tom's voice, hot breath marked out in the cold air with condensation. And though Thos' lips were not moving, still the voice came forth.

"For three nights and days I was raped by their crew. And God? He watched them. No devil could have been so cruel."

The words turned, winding about her as Idima was transported to that small, disgusting hold in the ship, 200 years before. She smelled rotten gangrinous flesh, the stench of piss, death, hopelessness.



And then in the darkess, she saw...herself. So young. Barely older than Thos. A girl with what little strength remained, lunging for the wooden door. It was locked. Tight.

She was weak, but still had a quickness to the eye and the hand, and with that still, clever eye she watched, and with that quick, deft hand she darted, and caught hold of a rat. It's neck broke with a single snap. She was hypnotised for a moment by how the head lolled and swung. It was almost comic. But this was just delirium. She tore at the rat's throat, knowing where a fat juicy vein would still be rich with blood. A blood that might just sustain her for a few more hours.

She slipped into unconsciousness. She had no idea how long she had remained in that hold. Suddenly, she was thrown against the wall. The ship had pitched against rocks. Above, she could hear the crew. Cries, men fighting, abandoning their ship as she began to break up. She begged for death to come at last, but death would not come.

A tearing. Wood shattering and suddenly she could feel salt water on her face, and the rushing of the sea. And then she was under the water. Fighting to breathe. Drowning. Slipping once more into darkness.

When she stirred, she could feel pain throughout her body. She coughed. Trying to clear the water from her lungs. Thos was looking at her. Expressionless. Not even hate.

Thos' mouth opened but this was Tom's voice once more.

"I washed ashore in this hell. Albion. Devil's Island. I held my tongue, so they assumed that my injuries had silenced me. Stupid fools. They took me into their homes. And for a year, they cared for me. And i listened. Learned to understand their horrid way of speaking. Their mongrel language. I stayed in the town. Ran errands for the farm. The slaughterhouse. The mill."

As he spoke the last words a firm expression returned. Triumph.

"And I found my home. The miller taught me well. He died in the wheels of his trade. I think he enjoyed that."

Idima's heart grew cold.

"I took the first one without them knowing. A child passing through town. Lost. I took her in. She didn't take long to die, and she was small. I cooked her and fed her to the dogs. Simple and clean. But there were bones of course. I couldn't risk them being found. But the mill wheels were strong, and grain being scarce that harvest it seemed a waste not to add a little extra to the flour, so I ground up her bones. And then I only needed 38 more."

Idima fought back the urge to be sick as Tom went on to tell her how he took more and more children and how he began to sell the flour to the baker. There was glee, pride even, as he described grieving parents eating bread containing the ground up bones of their own children. And any fleeting pity she had felt turned to disgust as 9 more souls were avenged.

But Tom fell short of his hideous quest. The town grew suspicious of Tom Bones and one night men lay in wait outside the mill. As Tom Bones rode out, they found the hair on the millstones. Hair of children who had struggled and cried out as they were crushed between the grinding wheels.

Tom Bones described without emotion how the local magistrate had ordered him crucified upon the sails of the mill; how fathers, sons, grandmothers, sisters and multitudes from all around the neighbouring parishes could come. The good and the stoic, the meek and the curious - all come to see the vengeance of a town who reaped what their brothers in the English navy had sown. Or so it was in the eyes of the man who hung dying upon the sails of the mill he had won from his first victim.

Tom Bones it was who died on those sails. Thomas Van Moost, the boy, died much earlier...Eventually, the Van Moost name dwindled until only a few remained with that scattered descent, to carry on the line.

T O M B O N E S --- did she need it spelled out --- B E N M O O S T. Thos and Gilda's father. Why hadn't she seen it? Idima's heart curled and withered within her: a small bird dying in it's cage. Tiny stains scudded across the window: trees weeping their leaves. All was lost. All despair. Tom Bones lived now in the two children she had born. And as long as they lived, none were safe.

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