I looked again at the lifeless bodies...oh, my God...one of them looked really small...a child? I began to shake uncontrollably as the realisation of what I’d done finally hit me like a blunt axe through my skull. Tears began to stream down my face and my bottom lip began to wobble.
“Oh, my God,” I said, my legs buckling in the middle. Before I’d dropped to my knees, my father gripped me by the arm, dragging me like a drunk towards the dead in the street.
“Look! Look! Look what you’ve done!” he roared in my ear. “Take a look! You’ve killed people here! You’ve killed an entire fucking family!”
“I’m sorry...please...stop...I’m so...” I begged him, clinging to his arm.
“Look!” he hissed, shoving me again towards the wreckage, the blood – the horror of what I had done. With tears streaming down my face and snot swinging from my nose, I stood, shaking and sobbing.
The wooden cart was tipped onto its side. Half of it was smashed and splintered like matchwood. There had been seats, but they had partially come free and stuck upwards into the bleak afternoon sky, like broken limbs. There was a body of a young woman, perhaps no older than me, trapped beneath one of the uprooted seats. One of her arms was wrapped at an unnatural angle about her own throat as if she had somehow strangled herself to death. Her face stared upwards like a pale moon, eyes wide and blank, mouth open showing her teeth. I looked away, but only into the face of another. This was a man, it was impossible to tell his age, his face was smeared black with blood. The centre of his body was trapped beneath one of the giant iron wheels. Part of the wheel was imbedded in his chest, like a length of cheese wire brought to a halt halfway through a thick lump of cheddar. There was another man, older, his face wrinkled with lines of age, each one like a deep valley, crisscrossing around his dead eyes and thin lips. A flap of skin had come away on his forehead and it hung down the length of his right cheek like a bloody bandage. I looked away and wished I hadn’t. What confronted me was far worse than anything I’d yet seen. There was a child – a little boy. He had flame-red hair, and was wearing a smart black coat, shorts, and socks and shoes. One of them had come off and lay beside him. It looked like something one of those expensive porcelain dolls would wear. It wasn’t the only thing about the boy which reminded me of a doll; it was his face. Soft, pure white looking in contrast to his bright hair. He couldn’t have been any older than six. Slowly, I edged my way towards him. I wanted to pick the little boy up, cradle him in my arms and tell him I was sorry for what I had done. It was then that I noticed his hair wasn’t auburn – it was only reddish-brown in colour because of the blood which flowed from the giant opening in the side of his head.
I lurched away and threw up into a nearby ditch. Vomit swung from my chin like a pendulum, and my stomach knotted. I leant forward, holding my sides, as I vomited again. It was hot and smelt of whiskey. I felt an arm slide around my shoulders. My father straightened me up, and held me in his arms. I felt the stiffness, the anger leave his body.
“This can be sorted,” he whispered in my ear. “We can work this whole thing out.”
“What do you mean?” I murmured into his chest.
“No one needs to know what really happened out here,” he hushed, holding me tight. “Just do as I tell you and I can put this right.”
“But the people...the dead people...” I cried. “I’ve been drinking...”
Then, holding me at arm’s length, my father stared straight into my eyes and said, “Listen to me, Sydney. This was an accident caused by these people – not you!”
“But I killed...” I sobbed.
He shook me by the shoulders and said, “You’re not listening to me. These people are nothing – they are nobodies. Drifters who come into town once a year for the summer then move on again. No one gives a shit about them. No one knows their names or anything about them. If we deal with this right, the story will make a few local headlines at the most. I can make this all go away if you just do and say as I tell you.”
“But how?” I said, looking over his shoulder at the wreckage.
“What were you doing out here?” he suddenly asked, then said, “On second thought, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. The less I know, the better for everyone. But you heard the control room calling you, right?”
“Yes,” I nodded, looking back at him, wiping the tears from my face.
“Okay,” he said thoughtfully. “So you heard the message and thought a colleague was asking for urgent assistance. So you switched on your sirens and lights and started to head back towards town. These people would have heard you coming, but did nothing to move out of your way. You rounded the bend back there, and instead of moving out of the way, or pull in, they kept coming towards you. The horse got scared by the flashing lights and the sirens, and the old guy lost control of the creature. It pulled the cart and it’s passengers across the road and you collided with them. That’s what happened, wasn’t it?”