Mallory's Last Photo

It had been ninety years since they had disappeared. 

Years of theories, of conjectures, of those who said that maybe they had, and those who said that maybe they hadn’t.

To commemorate their climb and to search for the final body, Jack was going to lead an expedition which would reach the top of Everest on June 8th. Perhaps this would be the final proof to show that the men had indeed been the first on the summit of the highest mountain in the world.

What happened on that June day in 1924? Had George Leigh-Mallory and Andrew Irvine died on the way up or had they perished on the way down from the summit?

When the news came in that they’d found Mallory’s body, a couple of thousand feet below the summit, Jack had been excited and disappointed at the same time. It had always been his dream, ever since he was a kid, to bring home the bodies of Mallory and Irvine and to prove once and for all that they had indeed been the first. He was excited that the truth would soon be known but disappointed it hadn’t been him.

“It wasn’t on him?” said Jack, who had to put a finger in one ear to try and hear the climber on the other end of the phone line.

“No sir. There was no camera on the body of Mallory.”

It was known that Mallory and Irvine had taken a Vestpock Kodak with them and if they had made it to the top then there would be photographs (assuming the film was still able to be developed) to show this fact.

The only other option was that Irvine, when they found the body would have the camera with him. There were a lot of bodies out there lost on Everest, at least 120 – a needle in a haystack came to Jack’s mind.

Jack’s expedition was got underway in May that year. It was on June 7^th that Jack directed the expedition to another area near the summit, one – and this is the weird bit – that was given to him by a crazy woman. She was a friend of the family and some of the things she’d said had rung true with Jack. Not that he would have told anyone that.

One night not long after his mother had died, Jack had been given a message by the strange woman. “Your mother says ‘Tickety Boo’,” she told him. Right there and then Jack felt as if he had been hit by an ice cold bolt; one that ran from the top of his head to the extremities of his toes. ’Tickety Boo’ had been the saying that only him and his mother had said to each other, no one else knew.

The woman even told him what results he was going to get in his university exams. He’d worked as hard as he could to disprove her prediction. But in the end she had been spot on.

So when she told him it was important to search on the north east quadrant of the mountain, he felt he should listen to her. Jack could see the doubt in the eyes of his team – why there, they were screaming but he insisted on it and they followed.

On June 8^th, the body of Andrew Irvine was found and yes, the camera was with him. Jack thanked whatever god had led him to that location. He was happy that he had accomplished what he’d dreamed of when he was only 10 years of age. He had brought the last body home. 

A few weeks later when he was back in New York, he got a call from the company that was developing the photos.

“It was like we feared, Jack some of the photos have been exposed by the cosmic rays. Some have decayed but we still managed to save three photos. I think you should get over here, as soon as you can.”

Jack didn’t need to be asked twice and within the hour he was driving north to Poughkeepsie to the film company. 

Dr Carter shook Jack’s hand and led him into the boardroom. 

“Can I get you some coffee?” asked Dr Carter. Jack said he was impatient to get on.

Carter made sure the door was closed and then displayed the photo on a big screen.

The first one was taken at the previous camp by one of the base team. The second photo was one of a smiling Mallory and the third, well the third was Mallory and Irvine standing smiling at the camera on the summit of Everest.

“They had made it. They had made it.” Jack started whooping and dancing around the room. “Wait until the world sees this.”

Then Jack looked at Dr Carter and wondered why he wasn’t as excited as him.

“You knew this and yet you don’t seem that moved about it all,” said Jack.

“Oh, I’m excited all right but not for the reason you think. Have you looked at the photo, I mean really looked at the photo?”

“I just see what you see,” said Jack “Mallory and Irvine smiling at the camera after they’ve made it to the top of Everest, and more importantly, thirty years before Hillary and Tenzing.”

“And what else do you see?”

“What else is there to see?” asked Jack.

“Who is taking the photo?”

“Perhaps they placed the camera on something, a piece of ice? or a small tripod?” said Jack.

“Look at the shadow at the bottom of the photo.”

Jack went up to the screen and looked closer. His blood ran cold. He saw what 

Dr Carter was getting at, but he let himself take a few seconds before he reacted.

“It looks like there is someone else there. The shadow looks like someone else is taking the photo other than Mallory and Irvine.”

“Now you see my concern,” said Dr Carter.

“Perhaps it is one of the team who went up with them,” said Jack grasping at straws.

“That was my first thought but all the rest of the team were accounted for,” said Carter. “There is something else, something in the second photo that I think you should see.”

Jack couldn’t see what he was supposed to.

“Look at the reflection in Mallory’s glasses.”

Dr Carter magnified the image and it was then Jack saw it. The person who took the photograph of Mallory standing on his own wasn’t Irvine.

“Who is it?” asked Jack.

“What is it, is probably more accurate,” said Carter.

“It’s a man...I think...and it looks like he’s got........but that’s impossible," said Jack.

Dr Carter stood up, “It looks like he has a pair of wings.... like an angel...is that what you were going to say?”



bobby stevenson 2014

The Miner

Some came to wonder at it all,

Imagining that some of the glowing embers from

The dying bonfires, drifted high

Above the tallest trees and  

Became stars themselves.

And there were those who came to dance to rhythms that were laid out

Long before the time of the Big Bang,

Long before the worlds came into being.

And some came to love and in doing so, be loved,

While a few came to hate what life had buried in

Their hearts and in seeing this, hated others

For the same weaknesses.

Some came to heal or be healed,to hold another lost soul

And tell them that everyone mattered.

And some were born to sing a song that had hung around

In Space from the beginning of Time just

Waiting on their hearts to hear the tune.

And me?

I came to dig for slivers of the Universe,

And in the mining,

Turn those slivers into hopes

And into words.

bobby stevenson 2014

The Rain Country & Eastman

1. The Rain Country

 "You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass" . The Power-House ,John Buchan , 1913

He dreamt of letting his hand dance under the cool water which flowed freely from a tap and then watch as the unwanted liquid disappeared into the hole. 

He awoke with a start and yet there were not the usual battle noises that kept him awake at night. This was a darkness that brought with it nostalgia, an aching for the past that was guaranteed to suffocate any of his happiness that clung for survival.

He walked the top officers’ corridor, the one which was plastered with the war propaganda:

“Remember our enemy – they squander”

This was supported by photos of water being abused at the hands of the barbarians to the north.

Placed at the far end of the corridor was the most famous poster of all:

“Remember why we fight” the photo of a tap and a drip of water. 

Every home had one on the wall – put there by order. 

He had been a night-walker ever since he was a child, long before the Drought, long before the War, long before the dreams of the past.

The drought and the war were things he could fight against but the nostalgia was the worst, it lured him into a warm land. In his dreams he was bathing in hot water while his family prepared the evening meal in the rooms below. 

Those days had gone and most of his family were dead or taken as slaves and shipped to the north. 

Once people crossed the rebuilt Hadrian’s Wall they were very rarely seen again. Satellite photos showed camps for re-education on the outskirts of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. For re-education read extermination camps. 

Those unfortunate enough to be captured were usually worked to death building underground storage areas for the water or the new gold as it was better known. 

His own parents had gone ‘over the wall’ ten years ago. They had moved for safety to the hills in the Lake District but had been captured on a raid by The Reivers. Those to the north had the water but not the manpower - so that need had brought them raiding as far south as Old Manchester.   

If the war continued it would be thirty years old next February. The war was older than most of the people left in the United English States, he guessed that was why they had made him a General - he was forty three years of age and one of the few people that old. One could still make out ‘General Robert Star: UES Army’ on his fading breast badge.

He had sent his wife and child to a holding camp near Liverpool as it still had some water and was considered safe, at least for now.

It was estimated that the population of the United English States was just under a million, many had perished in the first drought but disease had been the main cause for most. 

The Barbarians on the dark side of the wall had an estimated 200,000 and probably another 100,000 made up of those captured or those who had defected. 

The defectors were known as ‘Thirst Runners’ and if they were re-captured by their own people, they were normally flayed alive and laid out on the grass as a warning to others. 

Robert, or Bobby as he liked to be called by his men, had been a soldier for most of his adult life. As the drought moved up what was once known as Britain, so Robert’s garrison followed. He had spent thirteen years in Old Manchester before moving to this new camp called New Manchester built on what had been once a town called Preston. 

Preston had been razed to the ground at around the same time as his parents had disappeared. 

He was issued with a small bottle of water each Sunday and this was to do him for the week. There was still some water reaching them from Wales but most of what was left of those supplies had been stolen, the pipes  having blown apart. Those who lived in the border areas of Wales were systematically erased, it was considered better to rid the area of Drinkers (that was how the UES referred to non-combatants) than wait for them to become potential terrorists. Except the extermination gave birth to more terrorism than if the place had been left alone. 

The scorch and burn policy was now dropped in favour of bribery. Give the Drinkers water and they had no need to hit back at the troops.

Everyone knew on both sides of the wall what was coming next - it was inevitable. It had been discussed, planned and resourced from the Garrison in Old Manchester. In two days time the entire UES Army was going to attack the wall from both the Carlisle side and also using those battalions based at the River Tyne; there had been a proud city there once.

Robert always finished his nocturnal walk as the dawn was breaking through - this shortened the dream-time.

The next few days would change the war one way or another for everyone.

What they couldn’t do was stay where they were.

2. Eastman

It’s one of those games we still played even after all this time; where did we think Eastman was born?

There was a day when every city west of Berlin claimed him as their own but in the end it was probably London or across the water in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

You wouldn’t have picked him out at the start as being the type of creature he became. The story is often told of him being referred to as The Quiet Man, the gentle man.

He wasn’t a devout anything, never really went to church and rarely spoke of religion. To be honest, he wasn’t extreme about anything. Not at first.

He was born with that indefinable gift of people liking him. He magnetized them, flattered them, became their friend and then used them.

He spoke on television, on the web, wrote best selling E-books and even composed several successful music downloads. He was the champion; he was the peoples’ champion, he was their champion.

His ‘Deacons’, as he called his close followers, financed his rise. He was astute and he waited until the time was right. After the crash of the Eurozone and the 60% unemployment, he offered cheap food in Eastman Stores, all making a loss and all promoting his ideals. Cheap camps were set up in Spain and England and these were known as 'Eastman Vacs', where families could vacation for almost next to nothing.

This was when he was loved and this was when he made his move.

It was as quick as it was well thought out.

He didn’t attack the churches at first, not at first. On his daily web broadcast he maybe hinted at his objection to the church, its power and its money. Only later did he talk of the actual buildings being insane asylums – only later did he suggest that holding a faith was a mental illness.

Then the first one went, a Baptist Church in South London was razed to the ground. The Eastmen (as the disciples now insisted that you call them) blamed it on a race issue – wasn’t the church full of outsiders? But it didn’t stop there. Within two years, any form of worship in England was outlawed. This didn’t apply to the former UK countries of Ireland North and Scotland, they had gone their own way.

When Eastman finally claimed power, it was amongst the poor that lived in tented cities in the parks of England. They ate Eastman Food, watched Eastman Broadcasts, Eastman Movies and drank Eastman Gin (Orwell would have smirked at that last one).

Every July the 2nd was Eastman Day and the Eastmen would hold parades in every corner of the country. It wasn’t an option to attend.

But what you might ask, became of the opposition? Or the devout Catholics/Muslims/Protestants/Jews and others? Those that insisted on worshipping were slung into the other type of Eastman camp and worked to death.

Those who spread any form of socialism or brotherly love were beheaded in the Eastman Squares at the centre of every city.

Eastman Money was offered to anyone who snitched on their friends and family who worshipped in secret. Normally their homes were set on fire with the occupants inside.

Somewhere in all the cynicism of the 21^st century we stopped caring and as we stopped caring we fed the beast.

As I sit here, I think back to the greed that started all of this; the bankers, the debt, the crash of the Eurozone, the unemployment, the riots and the rise and rise of Eastman.

You may mention Hitler in the same breath and you’d be right.

And all of this?

Well these are my final thoughts as I know they’ll be coming for me soon.

You may ask what my crime was?

I was a writer.

I’ll be taken to the re-education showers shortly.

No one ever returns.

bobby stevenson 2014

The Cloud Climber

Stan had a brilliant job, one that many people would have given their back teeth to have. People were always telling him – “that’s the kind of job I’d like to have Stan.” Stan would just smile and move on. 

Ever since he was a kid, Stan had always wanted to be a cloud-climber. “That’s pie in the sky,” folks would say. “Your head's in the clouds,” and Stan would just keep quiet and move on.

Stan would get up at 2am every night, when the house was sleeping and by candlelight he would take out his books on cloud-climbing and study until the morning light broke through the window.

Then the day came when Stan told his family and friends that he was leaving his job to become a cloud-climber. His family thought he must be ill because no one in the family had ever been a cloud climber. “I’m sorry,“ he said “that you feel that way but it is what I was born to do.”

“Nonsense,” said his friends. “How stupid,” said his aunts and uncles. “The boy must be mad,” said his old teacher.

Then came the day when Stan got to climb his first cloud.

After a hard day’s work he arrived at the top of the cloud where he breathed in the sweetest of all the airs, and where the sun warmed his contented face.

Up here he knew he was at home and that no one could tell him that he wasn’t born to climb clouds.

Stan, the cloud climber, just smiled because right there and then he knew he was special.

He finally understood what it felt like to do what you had been born to do - and not everyone knew how that felt.

thoughtcontrol ltd 2014    bobby stevenson

I Will Remember You

I will remember you when the best of you has gone

I will remember you when the song you loved is sung

I will remember you when I stand on hills where we once walked
I will remember you and your laughter as we talked
I will remember you and all the kindness that was shown
I will remember you when your tired soul has flown
I will remember you when each new day has a dawn
I will remember you when the last of you has gone




bobby stevenson 2014

Two Things To Think About And Written From The Heart

Point One:

This year some people will leave your life

And new ones will enter

This year some dreams will vanish

And others, not thought of, will come out of the sun

This year you’ll make mistakes

And you’ll survive them all
This year you’ll win some things and you'll lose some things
This year some friends will fail to understand

And some will grow to love you

This year you’ll learn a little more about yourself

Some of it you’ll like and some of it you won’t

This year perhaps you'll cry alone
But you'll also laugh at things you won't explain to  others
This year some of your actions will be misunderstood 
But you'll discover that others understand in amazing ways
This year you'll misjudge hearts and situations
And yet find more caring than you ever thought possible

This year you’ll learn to love yourself just that little bit better

And that will be all you’ll need.


Point Two:

Be who you are,

Be magnificent,

Be strong,

And except to those who cared too much,

The one who never quite belonged.

Be who you are,

Stand tall, unique

Be grand

The one who smiled at little jokes,

That no one else could understand.

Be who you are,

Let laughter roll the same as tears

Take pleasure in the here and now,

Not in the days or months or years.

Be who you are,

Be loved

And loving everything,

Don’t back away from chance nor dare,

You too will have your song to sing.

Be who you are,

Let happiness and joy

Break through,

The universe was wise enough

To only make the one of you.

Bobby Stevenson 2014 

Thing And The Wise Man (again)

There were two occasions when Thing could recall being really unhappy. The first time was when his mother left to go to hospital and didn’t return (although he still knew she would one day) and the second was when the Wise Man came to town.

Thing still spent most of his days standing on the ledge above his cave and watching the Horizon for his mother. Some days he thought he could see her but it would only be a shadow caused by the sun.

Sometimes he would treat these shadows as being just part of life but on other days, and he wasn’t sure why, he would take himself to the back of the cave and cry his heart away. None of it ever made any sense to him.  She had gone to hospital and had promised to return.

On the days when Thing went to school, he would slide down the mountain side, cross the road and walk as silently as possible. Keeping to the sides so as not to attract too much attention to himself. And for most parts the plan worked. If he was unlucky enough to attract the attention of a larger boy, he would keep his head down and walk fast. Sometimes they caught up with him and called him names. He was called names that came - not from the children’s lips  - but from the parents who had taught their children well in the art of intolerance. Thing had realised that people weren’t born bullies, they were made in homes.

But Thing still had inner strength, all he had to do was remember that he was loved by his mother and he found something deep inside which gave him courage.

Then one bright Friday, a man who walked from town to town and told stories, came to where Thing called home. He was staying at the house of one of the teachers and, as such, had been invited to talk to the whole school, the parents and Thing (who was still waiting on his mother).

The Wise Man talked of love and of tolerance and of consideration and everyone smiled and nodded their heads. But then he said that he had bad news and that it came from the Book Of Records. You didn’t need to take his word for it, for it was written by the Wise Ones before time and therefore it was the solid truth.

“Those who do not look like us are an abomination. For this is an outward sign that they do not think like us,” said the Wise Man while holding both his arms aloft. “And if they do not think like us then they are an evil, and if they are evil then they must be destroyed.” 

Thing wasn’t sure what the Wise Man meant but as he looked around he saw some of the bullies looking in his direction. Thing wondered why anyone would write such things, or more importantly repeat them.

The first rock hit Thing’s head as he was crossing the road to go back up the mountain. It caused a little bleeding but he knew if got home quickly he could wash it off. How he wished his mother was here. The second rock hit him on the back of the head. He was about to turn and see where it came from when he heard chanting of ‘evil…evil…evil..’ and somehow he knew they were talking about him.

He didn’t go to school after the weekend instead he decided it was safer to stay in his cave. Except that the Wise Man came up the mountainside on the Wednesday evening followed by a crowd of people, adults as well as children. They had torches and signs that said ‘Destroy those who do not look like us for they are evil’.  

“We must rid the town of this pestilence,’ said the Wise Man and everyone agreed. Thing moved to the back of the cave and waited on the rocks.

“Help me, mother,” he whispered under his breath. 

Maybe she heard from where ever she was or maybe she didn’t, but a group of people from the town, who Thing had never seen before, came up and blocked the mouth of the cave telling the Wise Man to go home as they were not leaving.

The Wise Man said they would burn as well – it was then that one of the those guarding the cave mentioned that Wise Man was wanted in the next State for causing destruction and that he had deserted his own family. 

People looked at the Wise Man in a new light and wondered if they had been wrong about him.

“What about the Book Of Records?” Shouted the Wise Man.  

But by the then the townsfolk had started to walk down the hill and go home.

Thing learned two things that night. Unhappy people spread unhappiness and there are still good people in the world.

KILLER

She liked to call him ‘Joseph’, that way he seemed a bit more human.

It was her turn tonight to wash and bathe him. Poor soul. Some of the other nurses would run a mile rather than get anywhere near him. But she felt she was different. She was used to the wild ones.

Sometimes people would come in and poke him, just to hear him squeal but she would give them all short change and hurry them out of the room. She didn’t want any of that hanky-panky, not when she was on the ward.

And as she washed his beaten body down she saw the mellowness in his eyes, somewhere behind that grotesque face was a heart beating. One that was kinder and more honest than the rest of the folks who walked this sick Earth. She felt like he was almost a baby at times and wanted to lift the huge head and cuddle it. Tell it she was sorry for what God and man had done to him.

She knew people were easily fooled. An ugly face, meant an ugly heart and a pretty one, meant intelligence and love. Yet nothing could be further from the truth – the one - the one she loved, that is, was the prettiest man she had every set eyes on. He had told her he loved her and when she looked into his eyes, she believed him.

Some pretty packages hide dark and dangerous souls.

When she had finished washing and drying him or it - she wasn’t quite sure – it had looked at her with the softest eyes she had ever seen. It made her feel almost human, too.

She knew she was pretty, the way the patients and the doctors stared at her – the way the navvies shouted after her in the street. But most of all, she had to have been pretty to have landed the most beautiful man in Whitechapel. Yet, as she’d come to find out, that behind those beautiful blue eyes of his was a heart as twisted and dark as the lanes leading to the hospital.

She had heard whispers in the hospital that the police thought the Ripper might be from there. There were suspicions and one of them was a name she didn’t really want to repeat: his name.

She had found out late in their relationship that those pretty blue eyes had taken other women to bed - but she couldn’t see him as being the Ripper. He had cheated on her sure. He had hit her more than once, but that didn’t make you a murderer.

She knew what did make you commit murder, but she wasn’t telling. Just like the way she had worked out how someone could kill Joseph. It was as simple as taking the pillow away while it was sleeping. She would do it one day – kill, Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man just because she could, just because she wanted to.

But until then, she would satisfy her thirst by killing off those trollops who had dared go to bed with her man. She devoured the ways and means. She loved making them suffer.

Jack the Ripper? Don’t make me laugh. For she knew she saw the face of the Ripper every time she looked in a mirror. 

bobby stevenson

thoughtcontrol ltd 2014

The Walk

There wasn’t much he could see ahead of himself. It was cold and it was unclear and that was his future; he had never been more certain of anything in his life.

Before he’d set off, things had been good, probably better than good. They’d spent time, all of them, together on the west coast. A small Scottish town called Greenock.

They’d got drunk, had punch ups with the locals, but most of all they had bonded. Perhaps that was why he was doing what he was doing, perhaps only God knew the answer to that question.

The beautiful River Clyde, had been spectacular on that last day. The sun had been setting behind Helensburgh and he could see the Arrochar Alps as the ship turned to head towards the Irish Sea.

What a life it had been; a life of laughter and a few tears but always full of adventure. Always on the edge, always completely alive. He felt the toes on his left leg grow cold.

It was hard to breathe but then nothing that was worthwhile was ever won easy. Life was hard but friends, companionship, and family took that particular sting away. That made it all worthwhile; love and adventure was everything.

I suppose, he thought, that he could have done things differently and not ended up here, not ended up in this predicament - but then, the ending should never over shadow the living of a life.

He’d never settled for what had been given to him. He could have lived comfortably and gone to his grave, relatively unmarked and unremarkable. 

Yet, that was not what his heart was satisfied with. He’d had to climb the highest, run the fastest, jump the longest. That was the way he had been set to live in this universe and there had been no going back.

There was a price for everything - if his life had taught him anything, it had taught him that. He’d paid for his life of movement and achievement by never finding a place to belong. It did bother him, everyone should belong somewhere.

He looked up at the little number of the stars he could see and wondered if one day a man would stand on the moon and look back at Earth and feel homesick. That was the best he could do – say that this planet was his home.

He was dying from the inside out and yet he felt more peaceful than he had ever done before. There would be something, he was sure of it, on the other side.

He started to smile, he had no idea why, but suddenly his life seemed simpler than it had ever been. What he was doing seemed natural, the right thing, perhaps it had all been leading up to this point.

He thought of the lies he had told all of them as he left. He hadn’t believed it and neither should they. But there were things that were better left unsaid, unspoken. Those things were shouted the loudest in the silence.

He loved them all, that was the only reason he was walking in this direction.

He had written letters to those who mattered and one day they would find them. He wondered if he’d ever be found, ever be seen again, ever be held by a warm hand.

The coughing made him lose his breath and he bent down. Soon the pain would all go. Soon it would only be sleep. Soon it would all be over.

The wind was picking up and he pulled the woolen hat down over his ears. There was a whistling in the wind and he was sure he could hear choirs. Maybe there were angels after all, or maybe it was the cold and hunger.

Not long now, he could feel his time coming. He had to do this. There was no room in the tent for all of them to survive.

So he’d crawled out, turned to the rest and said:

“I’m going outside and I may be some time.”

And this is where he was going to rest, and at least he’d got to stand on the South Pole.

He thought of his sister and he whispered, ‘goodbye’ and of his time in Putney.

He said ‘thank you’ on his frost bitten lips and then his heart stopped.

 

bobby stevenson 2014