The Fire That Raged Beneath

Chapter 1: Christopher Anderson

His eyes were blue. Burning blue. A layer of ice shielding the world from the fire that raged below. Those eyes... They were the stuff of nightmares. Nightmares that continued haunting me long after the night Harry was killed. Those eyes...

***

1987. That was the year Harry was killed. It was summertime and the night was warm, and Mama was in the laundry, folding yet another crumpled bundle of clothes. I was with her, and Harry was playing with the wooden train track in his room. "Toot toot!" His imitations of his beloved trains echoed down the hallway, and throughout the house. Suddenly, I could hear his voice no more. It had been replaced with a strangled cry that I recognised as Harry's. I ran to his room, and stretched onto my tiptoes to turn the wooden knob. It took my eyes a second to adjust to the dimly-lit room. I saw a burly man slitting Harry's throat, not that, at the time, I realised what he was doing. Then Harry slumped to the floor, a toy train lay resting in his unmoving hand, his brown eyes gazing blankly and lifelessly at the baby blue ceiling. The man who had killed him moved to stand near the window, holding a sharp kitchen knife. He was attempting to lift the window with his gloved, thick, stubby fingers. He glanced back into the room, and for a moment I saw a hint of surprise in his eyes. His blue, entrancing, beautiful yet deadly eyes. With the fluency of an experienced killer, he silently lifted himself onto the window frame, and jumped the metre-and-a-half to the wilting lawn.

I sat beside Harry for a few minutes after the killer had fled, trying to wake him. The murder was clean and well-executed; it wasn't like one you see in the movies – there was no cackle as the murderer ran from the scene, no blood stained on the walls. Only a single line was cut along his neck. One single cut had ended a life as innocent and young as Harry's. A few minutes later, Mama came into Harry's room to see what we were doing. Seeing him lying lifelessly with me shaking him to hopefully wake him, she dropped the pile of socks she was holding and the blood drained from her face. She fell to the floor, leant a hand against the wall and cried until the tears would not come. I stood up and sat beside her, overcome with bewilderment about what had made her so very upset. I guess I thought that death was reversible, that it was something temporary. After all, I was only four.

His funeral was five days later. The service was basic, the most Mama could afford, being a single mother with one source of income and all. I don't remember much of it – just that one day Harry was a happy little seven-year old and the next people were talking to me about how he was "with God now, in heaven."