The Game of Shepherd and Dawse (23 page)

Spirit had never let Joe down on the occasions he had asked for help, which is probably why he had spent so many years looking over the children making their way home from school and also being there for Angela and Charlie and doing all of the other good deeds that Joe so liked to do.

As Joe sat there he concentrated all the energy he had left inside him and asked for one final favour from Spirit. He didn’t say it in words. He said it with pure emotion. It would be his final request in this lifetime and it would be the one that got answered the quickest. Just as quickly as he had finished asking, he started to feel the pain in his hip drain away. He also started to feel a cold descend upon him, as though Spirit was blowing directly on him. But as cold as this was, Joe wasn’t shivering and he wasn’t in pain. He could feel his soul detaching from his body already and in the distance he could hear a tune being played. It was a very simple tune he had never heard before yet one he recognised instantly. It was the glorious and soothing tune of Passover.

As the cold bit deeply into his bare chest, Joe felt a glow growing inside. By taking his own actions, he would now avoid the indignity of wasting away in a care home and being spoken to like a child for the rest of his days. Even more importantly, the council wouldn’t be able to take his house from him to pay for his care.

Joe died that night with a smile on his face and as he went, he caught a glimpse of himself in a previous life. That previous life had taken place on a rather nice plain called Shepherd Wood, and where he went by the name of Soladus – which when you rearrange the letters, becomes Sadsoul.

On the Sunday evening after the Friday afternoon that little Nettie had been buried, Mrs Dot was in her house, sitting on the settee snuggled up with her cat, Humphrey, and with a glass of sherry in her hand. She didn’t like sherry as a rule but it was the only alcohol that she had in the house and seeing that all of the shops were shut and she really fancied a drink, the sherry would have to do.

After a few forced gulps, the warmness of the sherry kicked in and the taste didn’t taste so bad. With everything that had gone on during the past week, Mrs Dot had forgot about all of the books that she still had to mark from the previous Thursday. Marking books was never a job she relished, but after looking at the big pile she decided to mark Nettie’s last little bit of work first. It would give her some closure on the whole ghastly incident that had just taken place.

It didn’t take her long to find Nettie’s book. It was the one with the scruffy cover and three matchstick people on the front. There were two large matchstick figures with big smiles on their faces and they were both holding the hand of a smaller matchstick figure, who also had a smile on her face. There was a house in the background and a smiling sun in the sky.

Mrs Dot looked at the picture and could see what Nettie had really yearned for all of her life, and that was just to be in a happy family. As Mrs Dot slowly made her way through every page of Nettie’s work, she could see something that she had never seen before. It was like there were lots of little messages to Mrs Dot hidden in her work, the kind of messages that we miss when we don't take time to smell the roses. Nettie didn’t have the neatest of hand writings, so whenever Mrs Dot marked her work she would just skim over it briefly and just write some encouraging comments.

What she had never noticed were the little comments that Nettie herself had left for Mrs Dot. There were comments like, “I love my teacher.” “She is the best teacher in the whole wide world”. “Mrs Dot is the prettiest teacher ever”. And, “My best friend is Mrs Dot”.

As Mrs Dot read each and every lovely little comment, the tears that needed to go just fell down her face. It was as though Nettie somehow wanted Mrs Dot to let go of any negativity she was holding on to. As Mrs Dot turned the final page, a folded piece of paper fell out. On it was one last gift that Nettie wanted Mrs Dot to have - a poem that Nettie had written. Mrs Dot read the poem, but instead of crying more tears she found herself with a very warm glow inside.

“What an amazing little child,” Mrs Dot thought to herself.

It was a short but very beautiful poem and Mrs Dot decided that she would read it to the whole class the next day.

The next day at school would be the very last day that each child would spend with their current teacher, as it was the end of term. Mrs Dot's class would be moving up to the nearby comprehensive.

The last day at school was always an enjoyable one. No one did any work as there was no need. Coming in off the playground, Mrs Dot came into the classroom with a line of children in tow. There was a buzz of excitement at it being the last day. Mrs Dot put down the two large boxes she was carrying which made the children even more excited as to what was in the boxes.

Mrs Dot started off the day with telling all of the children how much she had enjoyed teaching them and shared a little memory with each and every child from the year they had spent together. She also had each child share a memory with her that stuck out in their mind as an enjoyable moment. Some children had the same memories and some children remembered something that no one else had. After the last person had shared their treasured memory, Mrs Dot announced that she wanted one last person to share something too. Mrs Dot proceeded in a very soft and gentle voice.

“Ok then, class. As we all know, because of the events of the last week, very sadly and unfortunately we have one member of our class who can no longer be with us”. She paused and then continued. “But there is something I would like to share with everyone, as I’m sure the author would have liked to have shared it with you. This is a short poem Nettie wrote and it goes like this”.

Why I Love Hate

I don’t hate anyone, but I love Hate.

Hate is not my mate and I don’t have many mates

Hate is not my mate but I still love Hate.

Hate is hurtful and unkind. Hate hurts the body and Hate hurts the mind.

My mommy hates but she doesn’t love Hate.

She hates me sometimes and she hates my dad

But I don’t hate my Mommy

Even when she is being bad.

My class mates hate me sometimes

But that is only because Hate is their mate

But I don’t care because my heart is full of Love and Love loves Hate.

As soon as Mrs Dot finished reading the last word this time, she would cry. But instead of hiding her face in her hands like most people do, she held her head high and proud so all of the class could see, which naturally allowed some of the more sensitive children to start crying too. Mrs Dot went around to every child and gently touched them in a motherly way on the top of their heads. Those who were not yet crying, started to after Mrs Dot had given them her farewell kiss. It was as though she gave each child a permission slip to let go of any hate and anger they were holding onto. Some children sobbed into their arms and some held their heads high just as Mrs Dot did. But they all cried. Every single one of them.

Something very magical happened that day which none of the children would ever forget - how very powerful and empowering it felt when they allowed themselves to really feel their emotions and cry. Because everyone was crying, no one felt the usual awkwardness in letting the emotions go that didn’t serve them. Once everyone had finished their little release, a lighter, brighter more happy energy filled the classroom and each child was ready to put the tragic events of the last week behind them.

The rest of the day was spent drinking tea and eating the fancy cakes Mrs Dot had brought with her in the two boxes and also making a memorial to their absent classmate, Nettie. Each child took a few words of the poem and drew the letters how they wanted to draw them on a big poster. When completed, the poster would hang in Mrs Dot’s class room until the day she retired and would be the topic of many a conversation over the years. Some people would get what the poem was saying instantly and some people would understand it later on in life, but the poem seemed to have an effect on all who read it.

Little did anyone know at the time, but the events taking place that fateful day would start a ball rolling that would to prove unstoppable. One of the Dawse’s strongest weapons in spreading their Dark energy throughout the world had finally started to come to an end. When this special little child was taken, not even King Dawse himself could have imagined the awakening effect it would have - first on the community, then the rest of the country and then the rest of the world. Paedophiles who were hiding in every corner of society began being unmasked for the monsters they truly were. There was no hiding place left for these Dark beings.

It started on a very local level - children’s clubs, schools, religious organisations, children’s homes and basically anywhere that children had once been and been abused. As more brave people came forward and told what had happened to them, sometimes many years prior, then others too would feel brave enough to name their abusers and start the healing. It didn’t just stop at a local level. As momentum grew, celebrities would be ousted, television corporations and even members of parliament. Oh yes, this disease went right up to big house itself. It seemed there was no institution or organisation that hadn’t been corrupted in some way or protected by those in power.

Tracey Furnella never did fully recover from the tragedy of what happened to her only child. Wracked with guilt and in a state of constant mourning, she would end up in and out psychiatric institutions for the rest of her life. The dark forces hadn’t managed to destroy Tracey directly so it had gone via the ‘back door’ by getting at her family which eventually got to her. It was two points in one for team Dawse. The only comfort that Tracey would get would be the occasional apparition of Nettie standing at the end of her bed saying the words, “Please don’t worry mummy, everything is ok”.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SALLY SOUR RIDES AGAIN

“
When a loved one dies, we can either choose to mourn them or celebrate their life. One of those is a wasted opportunity”. ~ Mrs Bottal

“Cooee! Home Help”! Sally Sour called through Joe’s letter box. Sally had missed the dramas that had occurred in the area since she had been away, so she made a start on her new plan of coaxing people to become financial donors to her ramshackle little church.

Frustrated by getting no answer at the door, she decided to try the back. Sally deduced that Joe had been arrested and charged, and that people now hated him. He would have no option but to move into an old people’s home away from the area to a place where no one knew him and he would have to hand all of his assets over to Sally to look after…or at least that’s what Sally hoped was going to happen.

She managed to undo the latch on Joe’s gate and made her way into the garden. Sally was too busy looking out for neighbours to notice Joe sitting there, tucked behind the coal bunker, until she almost tripped over him. It gave her quite a fright to find him but not as much as the fright it gave her to see his pale, lifeless face smiling up at her.

“Aaaah”! She screamed, with papers from her clipboard flying everywhere while she screamed and shouted. “Oh, my God! Oh my God! Oh my God”! She had never seen a dead person before and especially not one with such a bright smile on his face.

Sally left as quickly as her shaking legs could carry her, while urinating herself a little at the shock of it all. Walking down the road holding one hand over her wailing gob and the other over the freshly made damp patch, she scurried her way over to Mrs Bottal’s house.

The way Sally Sour knocked on the door, you would have thought the whole street was about to burn down. Betty had already heard the commotion and when she saw out the window what looked like Joe’s legs poking out from the wall, she quickly put two and two together.

Joe had often talked to Betty about his intent of not going into a home as his life neared its end and had often said how he would like Mother Nature to be the one who took his final breath. Now everything fitted together.

“Goodbye, my dear friend”, Mrs B whispered, as she silently blew a kiss in Joe’s direction.