Speak for the Dead: Streets of Crawfield, #1

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 24, 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 2014

First Published 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

Preview: Following Suit

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 tendrils out to other parts of the city and rotting them from the inside. You can’t cut out the poison, it hides and multiplies, you would 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, shop raids, beatings, the murder. The petty thefts, the graffiti, vandalism. It happens every day.

The rich, the powerful, make their 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 guess it is ‘under control’, their control. I stopped asking how they justify it to themselves, it’s hard enough to get to sleep.

At the bottom of the pile is Crawfield, as old as Haven Bay itself, the gutter to catch the run off of the more affluent suburbs. No one escapes, no one gets out. When you’re down and out, the streets and alleys are like open arms to welcome you. You tell yourself that it’s only for a while, that you can slum it until you get back on your feet. Things never work out that way.

Sometimes a strong arm, big enough, bull-headed enough, with a particular propensity for violence and mindlessly following orders, might get promoted. They’ll put him in an expensive 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, across town, across state, maybe even across the sea.

Maybe a young girl of exceptional beauty will be married away, the families and partnerships that run things on the docks and in the factories have a lot of clout across Haven Bay. She’ll have a good life, if she doesn’t want too much, if she doesn’t think too much. They’ll buy her nice clothes, take her to fancy parties, if she’s lucky she’ll never even know how cheaply she was sold into prostitution.

All my life 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. What if we could 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 bit my lip and frowned, holding back the feeling in the pit of my stomach that was going to make me cry, grownups didn’t cry. And I think you’re old enough to know some things now, he continued. I don’t think I was scared then, not yet.

I know you don’t really remember our dad, but he loved us and he knew right from wrong, and those are the most important things in the world, okay? I nodded my head, chewing my lip.

Dad worked hard to provide for us, but he didn’t know how to keep his head down. You know 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. I didn’t understand, I was too young to understand, but I loved John with every fibre of my being, so I kept quiet, John had always taught me to keep quiet. His voice was hard, my brother had always been serious, but never grim. He’d always been able to find a smile for me, for Jane, he liked to say that his sisters were the best thing in his life. I liked making him smile

Now I was frightened, what happened to dad?

The light from the hallway slanted away from his face, and the glow of my nightlight wasn’t enough to prevent the shadows that pooled around his eyes. "Dad worked in the grocery store. It wasn’t an important job, 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 wanted to 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 could say anything, they shot him. The second man got out of the car, he turned up his collar and just walked away. The car drove off. They left dad there, dying, in the street.

I was crying. Huge tears rolling down my cheeks, meeting under my chin and wetting my nightshirt. Do you understand? They didn’t know him, he never said a word to them, but they killed him all the same. In shadow, his dark eyes glittered, cold and black as obsidian. Those eyes frightened me. Tell me you understand, Jade. Keep your head down. I was nodding, breath catching in my throat, say it, Jade. Say you understand.

I do, I swallowed hard, my nose was running and I felt like I was going to suffocate on the mucus sticking in my throat, 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, like the lifting of a cloak, as if he hadn’t just told me some dark fairy tale, a true camp-fire ghost story. 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. The covers made me feel safe, soothing my confusion, my fear. I wiped my nose on my nightshirt and fell asleep.

-o-

Something woke me up. I lay in the incomplete dark and listened to the sounds of the night: the hum of air conditioners attached to windows, the rise and fall of tires on the road as cars passed by, a siren approached and quickly turned away, a dog barked, someone yelled at it.

Closer than that, I could hear two people talking. One was hissing discreetly, unintelligibly, but the other voice was rising. I slipped from the bed, the carpet was scratchy against my feet, there was no give in the pile. I padded to the nightlight on the balls of my feet, nightshirt protecting my knees as I dropped down, pulling the light out from the wall socket. Darkness swallowed the room like a tank filling with water. Dim light from the ajar door sliced across the room, narrow as a blade, weak and yellowish.

Creeping to the door, I peered through the crack, but all I could see was the wall opposite; a long-since repaired leak stained the wall, a fuzzy stalactite reaching downwards as if to meet with the rising damp that coloured the drywall along the skirting boards. The low-maintenance carpet extended into the hallway, a dirty beige colour, I couldn’t see anything. I turned and sat on the floor, leaning against the wall next to the door frame, face turned towards the light, looking into the dark, unfocused, listening.

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

For fuck’s sake, it was our mother, getting into another argument with John. They argued 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, screeching, my body tensed as I winced, screwing my eyes shut against the sound. It’s such a shame we can’t all be as responsible as little Saint John.

John didn’t answer, I could picture mother’s face contorting in anger. What do you care? she shrieked, you said you needed money for the girls. I give you money, don’t I? There was another silence, John was always so calm when he was angry, mouth set in a disappointed line, eyes cold as stone. I don’t need your approval, something shattered and I jumped, eyes popping open.

I dashed back to bed. With my back to the door, I pulled the blankets over my head, squeezing my eyes shut. My breath was hot and in moments the tiny space was stifling. I heard glass clinking as John cleaned up the mess, my mother slamming her bedroom door, the floorboards creaking as John checked on our sister, then came to check on me.

I jerked the covers off my face, bunching them in my small fists under my chin, eyes tightly closed, unable to relax until I heard him walking away. I’d forgotten to plug the nightlight back in, I never did use it after that night. If John knew I wasn’t asleep, he gave no sign, drawing the door almost closed and quietly moving away. I must have slept, the next thing I knew it was morning.

-o-

There was a goodwill store on Reynolds Street, you could buy three paperbacks for a dollar. They knew John, he visited every fortnight to pick out books for me, always donating back the ones he’d bought previously. He never made me read kids books, and I devoured his choices voraciously, disappearing into worlds of fantasy and science fiction for hours on end.

The owners were always nice to me, sometimes they let John take four books instead of three, sometimes the ladies would bake cookies and, if John had brought me along, let me take a handful home to share with Jane. All of our furniture was thrift shop, but our clothes were mostly new. None of the families around us had much money; if anything, we were pretty well off compared to our neighbours, we always ate well. I never felt like we went without.

The thrift shop got most of their stuff from outside of Crawfield. Close to the suburb’s borders, convenient for visitors who didn’t want to dirty their shoes in our gutters. People say that shit flows downhill, usually, by the time something landed in the store on Reynolds Street, it was in pretty bad shape. The store always smelt musty, except when it had been raining a lot, then it smelt mouldy, which was a lot like musty except damp. The books smelt the same way, so did the furniture, it made our house smell, but John knew some trick with vanilla and baking soda that helped.

I was small and lithe, but I wasn’t interested in anything but my books and the hand-me-down pocket radio I listened to all day. Sometimes I joined the girls when they played jump rope, my sense of rhythm had always been excellent, but I didn’t really care for the company of others my own age. I didn’t care about the company of anyone who wasn’t my own brother, I wasn’t even as close to our sister as I was to John. He always made me feel like I mattered.

Jane was the opposite to me in every way, she was beautiful and gregarious, she made friends easily and could talk to anyone. Left to her own devices in a grocery store for more than a few moments and we