Speak for the Dead

By A. M. Harding

Who speaks for those with no voice of their own?

The suburb of Crawfield is a mire of neglect, crime, and petty vandalism. Still, all is not lost, not yet. There are those who bring justice to the streets. In a place without courts or trials, the vigilantes exact swift punishments on those the law has forgotten.

The past had been hard enough on Jade already. She had never wanted any trouble and, as long as she kept her head down, her life remained quiet and safe. After interrupting an assault on a woman she didn't even know, Jade has been changed forever. With nothing more than a hooded sweatshirt and a knife in her hand, she has joined the ranks of those taking moral right into their own hands.

In the dark labyrinth of Crawfield's alleys and abandoned buildings, it can be hard to see where right ends and wrong begins. When you break the law to uphold it, who gets to decide how far is too far?

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. M. Harding
• Release date: Jan 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301967681

A. M. Harding

Angell M. Harding is a caffeine addict from Brisbane, Australia. Her natural habitat is perched over her tablet in the nearest coffee shop or tea house, gazing into space in between furious bursts of typing. A voracious devourer of stories, Angell enjoys books, movies, and television series of all types except romance. When she's not writing, she pours her creative energies into drawing, painting, and sculpting.

Book preview

Speakfor theDead

Speak

for the

Dead

A. M. Harding

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © A.M. Harding 2013

A. M. Harding has asserted all moral rights in relation to this work.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

Table of contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For Mama

Prologue

This place is like a cancer. Black tumours growing the darkest back rooms and dirtiest alleyways. It spreads, sending its poison out to other parts of the city and rotting them from the inside. You could try and cut the tumour out but it wouldn’t do any good, you’ll never get it all. What’s left just grows back, faster and more noxious than ever before.

The middle class in their pretty suburban homes cluck their tongues about crime rates, but they have no idea what really goes on. The drug deals, beatings, shop raids, the murder. The petty thefts, the graffiti, vandalism. It happens every day. Statistically, they say, someone is murdered in Haven Bay every single day.

The rich, the powerful, make these speeches about punishment and rehabilitation, they talk about recidivism and incarceration, they try to pretend that everything is under control. It’s just noise. All the while they’re saying one thing, but when it comes to action they’re just passing money around to make sure their interests are the ones getting protected. I stopped asking how they justify it to themselves. They have it easy. I’m the one who has to sleep at night.

No one escapes Crawfield, no one gets out. Not until they’re dead, anyway. There are no lucky ones. We’re the Hotel California. When you’re down and out Crawfield will welcome you with open arms but more than a few people found out the hard way: you can never leave. Things have to be pretty dire to find yourself on this side of South Haven. There’s no getting back on your feet. No slumming it for a while. In Crawfield, you’ve sunk too low for slumming.

Sometimes a thug with a particular propensity for violence and the ability to follow orders might get promoted. They’ll put him in a suit and give his job a respectable name, but a thug for hire is still a thug for hire. He’ll carry this place with him, everywhere he goes is Crawfield.

Maybe a young girl of exceptional beauty will be married away to someone in business with one of the families or partnerships that run things on the docks and in the factories. They buy her nice clothes and take her to fancy parties and, if she’s lucky, she’ll never even know that she was sold cheaply into prostitution.

Too long I’ve lived with the wailing of sirens splitting the night. The casual violence and the bruised faces, the broken glass on the streets and pavements. We can fight back. Little by little. Reclaim the streets and push the corruption further into the darkness. We won’t win, but winning isn’t the point. It’s about the fight. Maybe we’re not any better than they are, maybe we do it for the thrill as much as they do. Still, when our time is done, we are the ones who will say:

We spoke for the dead.

Blood SplatterChapter 1

I don’t remember my father, I wasn’t even five years old when he died. My big brother took care of us after that. The day I turned ten he came into my room, sitting on the edge of the bed and saying to me you’re ten years old now, too old to be tucked in anymore. I tried to keep a brave face, after all I was almost grown up and grownups didn’t get tucked into bed like a baby. And I think you’re old enough to know some things now, he continued. I wasn’t scared then, not yet.

I’m not going to tell you that dad was a good man. I don’t want you thinking he was some kind of hero. But dad was okay. He knew right from wrong and he loved us, and those are the most important things in the world, okay? I didn’t really understand, but John had taught me to know what’s right and I loved him with every fiber of my being. I nodded my head and kept quiet, John had always taught me to keep quiet.

Dad worked hard to provide for us, but he didn’t know how to keep his head down. I love you, little sister, and I will do anything to protect you, so I need you to understand this. Keep your head down. Don’t see anything, don’t hear anything. Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. His tone was so grim, my brother had always been serious, but never grim. He’d always had a smile for me, he liked to say that his sisters were the best thing in his life. I liked making him smile.

I was scared now, what happened to dad?

"I think you’re old enough to know now. Dad worked in the grocery store. It wasn’t an important job, and he wasn’t an important person. He stocked shelves and ran a cash register and it paid the bills. One night when he finished work he walked out into the parking lot, he was going to give one of his coworkers a lift home. On his way to his car he saw someone parked on the street with the cabin light on. He thought they might have been lost. He thought he would go over and offer help.

He tapped on the glass and they rolled the window down. There were two men inside, they sounded like they were arguing. One of them had a gun. Dad leaned down but, before he said anything, the man with the gun fired. The second man got out of the car, he turned up his collar and walked away, calm as you please. The car drove off. They left dad there, dying, in the street.

I was crying. Silent tears rolling down my cheeks, meeting under my chin and wetting my nightshirt. Do you understand? his eyes were dark in the glow of my nightlight, glittering and cold as obsidian. Those eyes frightened me. Tell me you understand, Jadie. Keep your head down. I was nodding, breath catching in my throat, say it, Jadie. Say you understand.

I do, I swallowed hard, my nose was running and my throat felt like it was full of sticky mucus, I could barely choke out the words. I understand.

Good, he leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. The hardness in his eyes was gone, the room seemed more brightly lit than it had a moment ago. Get to sleep now, school in the morning. He walked out into the hall, leaving my door open just a crack, I heard his footsteps, the floorboards in the hallway creaking, he went into our younger sister’s room. I lay down and pulled the blankets up to my chin. I felt safe under the covers, like nothing could touch me, the monsters in the dark couldn’t reach me. I wiped my nose on my nightshirt and fell asleep.

-o-

I don’t know what it was that woke me up. I lay in the half-dark and listened to the sounds of the night: the hum of the air conditioner next door, the rise and fall of tires on the road as cars passed by, a siren approached and quickly turned away.

Underneath it all I could hear two people talking. One was hissing their words in an undertone, unintelligible, but the other’s voice was rising. I slipped from the bed and crept over to the nightlight. Worried that someone would hear the click of the switch, I pulled it out of the wall and darkness swallowed the room like a tank filling with water. Dim light leaked in through the ajar door.

I crept to the door, tried to peer into the hall, I couldn’t see anything. I sat on the floor with my back to the wall next to the door frame, where I wouldn’t obstruct the door if someone opened it. Where I hoped a little girl might not be noticed by someone who wasn’t really paying attention.

And do you want to keep that job? the hissing voice spat, angry as a snake.

For fuck’s sake, it was my mother, getting into another argument with John. They did this most days. I’m an adult, John, I don’t need to answer to you.

No, mum, I’m an adult. I’m the one who feeds the girls and bathes them and puts them to bed. I’m the one who cleans, and pays the bills, and sends the girls to school.

Well aren’t you just a perfect little saint, mother broke in. It’s such a shame we can’t all be as responsible as little Saint John.

John didn’t say anything to that, I could picture mum’s face contorting in anger. What do you care? she screeched, you said you needed money for the girls. I give you money, don’t I? There was another pause, John was always calm when he was angry, mouth set in a disappointed line. I think the guilt of failing him, that disappointed look, kept me out of trouble more than all the threats in the world. I don’t need your approval, something shattered and I jumped.

Frightened, I dashed back to my bed. With my back to the door, I pulled the blankets all the way up to my nose, squeezing my eyes shut. I heard glass clinking as John cleaned up the mess. I heard mother slam the door to her bedroom. I heard the floorboards creak as John checked on our sister, then came to check on me. I held still, eyes tightly closed, I didn’t relax until I heard him walking away. I’d forgotten to plug the nightlight back in, if John noticed, he said nothing. I never used it again after that. I must have slept, the next thing I knew it was morning.

-o-

I liked school well enough, the stuff that I understood anyway. I wasn’t so good with numbers. I liked science and computer studies, and I did well without really needing to apply myself. I behaved, quiet, I didn’t want attention. I didn’t really have any friends, I didn’t mind. I mostly kept to myself because it never really occurred to me that talking to the others was something I could do. I liked to join the girls in their jump rope games, I was small and lithe, I had an excellent sense of rhythm. I knew all the rhymes by heart, I could even keep up with the two-rope games, at least until I lost my balance, sooner or later I always did.

John bought me paperbacks from the charity store on Reynolds Street where they were three for a dollar. He always picked them out himself, he didn’t make me read kid’s books. I would read each book twice, unless any of them were really terrible or really long. Once a fortnight John would take them back to the charity shop and get me three more.

They knew my brother down there, sometimes they gave him half price, sometimes they let him have four books instead of three. They were always nice to me the times John was able to take me with him. They got most of their stuff from outside of Crawfield. People say that shit flows downhill, by the time something landed in the charity store on Reynolds Street it was in pretty bad shape. The store smelt musty, except when it had been raining a lot, then it smelt mouldy, which was a lot like musty except damp.

I only owned one book of my own. John hadn’t wanted to let me keep it. We rely on the charity of others, he had told me, and others rely on our charity too, but I had begged. I’d get the book out every now and then, the thin pages were darkly yellowed, the corners badly dog-eared, the edges of the cover felt furry. The spine was creased in so many places it was completely illegible.

It was the most adult book I’d been allowed to read, a thick horror novel of supernatural and vampires, dark and violent. The novel was unflinching, there was blood and pain, but it revealled a mystical