‘Red beacon from the postosuchus,’ said Security Beth, and then softly against his ear, ‘if we get a J. P. Scenario on a Sunday, you’re going headfirst in the lake.’ She sniffed and walked away madly along the side of the great room, through a shaft of light from the tall oriel window, as Jack fought to continue his nervous spiel. He was only in probation, he was too young and handsome to be eaten. A ‘Jurassic Park’ Scenario is every dinosaur park employee’s worst nightmare.
            ‘Let me sum up,’ said Jack, ‘in the continent of Pangaea, this land was racked with monsters and monst – monsoons. Jesus was born in a barn, and later in England the Black Canons pulled this Abbey together, which survived the whims of Henry VIII, and a crypt-splitting earthquake…’

Late afternoon sun fell onto the Great Hall’s diverse pictures; here was Pierus with his nine daughters, next to a green etching of a plateosaurus bearing its gums – and more paintings, more dinosaurs, and on it went.
           ‘Time stops for nobody, man or beast…’

Jack stopped, as the immersive video had frozen behind him. It was stuck on a five foot portrait of Lord Fairmile, whose projection was bent slightly by the antlers mounted on the back wall. Jack rubbed the trackpad on the laptop to no avail. All part of the Triassic Abbey Experience, thought Jack to himself, and then began to gesture more widely with his arms to compensate, like a pterosaur caught in a crosswind.

           ‘Yet this place has survived it all, and an endless succession of Lords and poets, too – this fine man behind me included.’

‘But the dinosaurs don’t come in yet,’ said the woman – one of his two audience members – as if they really ought to. The other was an old man, barely more than bones, who was sitting in a wheelchair with his hands together, taking in the ceiling through dark cataract glasses.

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘that’s how we’ll wrap up – Lord Fairmile’s ballad, about the girl who found the first fossil. Let’s see…’

As Jack studied his laptop, the old man in the wheelchair touched his carer on the arm. She bent down towards him and pressed an ear to his slowly moving lips, then repeated:
            ‘It begins with “the constellations closed”’, and she stood back up. She wiped her hands on a bright pink pinafore on which the name ‘Angie’ was sewn.

‘That’s it,’ said Jack, ‘and it continues…’
             The young Head of Audience Engagement summoned himself. He had been off work with stress for three weeks, and he’d only been there a year in total. This was his great renewal. He looked up at the portrait of George III for a second, then at the chandelier made entirely from polyester tusks, and prepared to channel the spirit of Lord Fairmile himself.
             ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the carer, ‘but Duncan needs to be back at the care home before seven.’

‘We’ll have the poem at the end, if there’s time,’ said Jack. And he was relieved to stop talking.

***

There was little chatter on the way to the Rhynchosaurs Rectory, only the peep of the wheelchair as it rolled down the lumpen-carpeted corridors. The old man Duncan paused them to look at a scale model of a Lystrosaurus, which was positioned in front of the manuscript of a Fairmile villanelle. Jack stood at the doorway, thumbs in his pockets, as Angie the carer pushed Duncan towards the daylight. Then they all came out into the quad, under a streaking, brick-red sky.
          ‘You’re Angie, of course,’ said Jack, ‘good to put a face to an email’.

          ‘I’m her,’ said the carer, ‘where are we heading?’
          ‘All will become clear,’ said Jack, who was desperate not to lose their interest, ‘the mysteries of the past are mere footsteps away’. Then Angie pursed her lips, and they walked with discomfort around the Pleasure Gardens.
           In short order they came to a grey outbuilding, fumblingly built. Jack had told his mother this was the Raptor Roadhouse; but the sign above the door read ‘Rhyncosaurus Rectory’. Across a gravel path from the residence were the taut grey wires of an electrified paddock. Jack, Angie and the old man Duncan stood in a line on the path and stared into the field of prehistory.

There were three creatures inside upon the grass, of distended and colossal dimensions, each completely still. The two at the far side of the paddock were on top of one another, in a slow and forlorn part of the mating process, a position which had been long condemned to another geological era. The other rhynco was a few feet away by the fence, regarding them with all the joie de vivre of a parked car.

The Oxford Institute of Revivification had shaken up their petri dish, and the Fairmile Trust had purchased the results – three of which were lying prostrate before them, on a wet field in Nottinghamshire. Here on the lawn where Lord Fairmile’s set had composed the most indulgent poetry in the English language, you could feel the scorch of Prometheus’ torch, as you looked at the three rhyncosauri; but at the same time it was also as though you had yanked any lizard from between the rocks of a wall in southern Italy, made it twenty times larger, and swapped its head for a slowly bubbling potato.

A gentle rain started to come down upon them. Duncan’s long nose pointed towards the lead rhynco, but Jack could read no emotion. He unlocked the rectory door, picked up the bucket and threw a handful of beetroot paddockwards. The lead rhynchosaur took off a chunk of leaf with glacial nonchalance. The rhyncosauri were 200 million years behind in the race towards wheelchairs, eTickets and electrified fences, all the sundry apparatus of civilisation, but they were in no obvious hurry to catch up.
          ‘I hope he’s enjoying it,’ said Jack finally to Angie, who had her hand above her eyes to block out the raindrops. They had pushed Duncan’s wheelchair right up to the fence.

‘It’s all he asks for,’ she said, ‘we take turns with the Golden Resident Experiences. Duncan’s always said, let me see the Triassic Abbey, by myself.’

A crackle came through Jack’s walkie-talkie, and he heard a snatch of Security Beth’s voice, high-pitched and alarmed.

‘Beth,’ he said quietly, ‘what’s wrong? How’s Postie?’

Then there was a rippling spark of blue electricity across the nearest stretch of fence, it seemed to leap between the raindrops in the air. Angie yelled, ran across to Duncan and pulled him back.

‘Goodness me,’ said Jack, his finger twitching, ‘it’s alright, they’re rain-resistant cables.’

Yet as he approached the fence, he saw that the safety gate to his right had unbolted itself. It swung inwards lightly and he pulled it back shut. Walking away to be sure he was unheard, he buzzed Security Beth again.

           “How’s Postie doing? Are you OK?” said Jack again.

To his relief she replied quickly.

“She’s in a mean temper, but I’ve got this. Remember not to panic. You set the tone, Jack.”

‘I’m on top of it,’ said Jack, his heart flipping, ‘if you have time, Beth, could you please see to the gate around RhyncRec? I’m sure it’s fine, but I’d love to leave best impressions…’

‘Jack, when I say ‘Jurassic Park Scenario’, I’m only messing about, right, lad. It’s all tested to within an inch of its life. I’d lose my job if I didn’t do a PAT test on the fridge in the staff room. Concentrate on your own job.’

‘If it’s no bother Beth,’ he said, knowing that it would be, ‘if you want to come and have a look at the gate before we move on, just so they know we’re very serious…’

‘Fine. On my way.’

That was it. He had seen her once in the Coelophysis Catacombs, stroking the dinosaurs’ necks, saying. ‘Where is he now?’ With no affection. Was this how people were supposed to speak, grab each other by the scruff of the neck? Maybe it was just straight talk. He looked the nearest rhynchosaur directly in the eye.

‘Don’t push against that gate’.
The rhyncosaur looked back at him, its thoughts lost in amber. A bead of sick, beetroot-coloured, rolled down its cheek.

***

Jack had set his eyes on this place as a teenager, and yes, he was still a teenager, but working here was making him a man. He had been the kind of boy for whom social interaction felt like a knife through a warm Victoria Sponge. He lay awake at night thinking about the Ozone Layer. He had never wet the bed but it had always been a real possibility. His mum used to settle his nerves with the Blu-Ray of Walking with Dinosaurs. And then the Fairmile Trust had made it all real for him.

The ammonites that swirled across the lake, the pair of hyperodapedon who nested in the cavewalls of the crypt…he loved them in their feeble anachronism. It had been a glorious six months in which his neuroses were forgotten. Then, on the Christmas tours he had seen the children’s eyes start to unfocus. It had been coming for him the whole time, that feeling he used to get in school assemblies. The passion of it, of molten prehistory beating round his blood, was so real and eternal for him, but when the panic came, the passion choked in his throat. To stir up this old man and his carer – it was never too late.
            ‘It’s 6 o’clock, my sweet,’ said Angie, producing from her bag a tupperware medicine kit. She took a white paper cup the size of a thimble, filled it with pills, filled another with water, and gave them to Duncan. Her voice lowered, although Jack still heard her say: ‘and something for the pain?’
             Duncan bowed his head, a slow nod in the affirmative. Jack looked away and watched Security Beth arrive in her golf cart, park it, step off it, stride towards the group with her heavy-footed gait.  Angie bent down and unclicked the brakes on Duncan’s wheelchair. The four of them now walked down a slope to the dark body of water, beyond which lay the chapel and the Postosuchus Presbytery within it. This was the trump card, the Postie never failed.

‘Here of course is the lake,’ said Jack, ‘where Lord Fairmile would row his punt out to look at the stars, where, in 1817, he met his cold demise.’

Jack, Beth and the two visitors looked out upon the face of the water. The brachopods were shy under the surface. The board wanted a plesiosaur, but that wasn’t Triassic. Some board members felt that their only USP was that they were Triassic. There was a curious quality of rust in the sky, a blood-richness. There was a tautness in Jack’s forehead. Lord Fairmile had written of these sunsets. The poet had loved the lake, but he had been deathly afraid of the water. He had commissioned a ‘Flotsam Collar’, a ring of cork which sat under his neck. When the boat capsized, it was the collar that held the poet’s mouth just under the water and drowned him.
             Jack began to recite again:

‘As the constellations closed

Astraeus was a stalling dancer-’

‘Got to keep moving, Jack,’ growled Security Beth in his ear, ‘I’m going to have to tranquilise Postie after teatime. Keep it to one stanza.’
             Before they started to walk again, Duncan gestured two fingers towards him, touched Jack’s elbow, and he bent down. This was progress.

‘Where did Fairmile’s boat go down?’ said the old man.

‘We’re not sure yet,’ said Jack.

‘Not sure yet?’ asked Angie. ‘Wasn’t it like a thousand years ago?’

‘Oh,’ said Jack, ‘no, I mean I’ve only been here for a year. We mainly get questions about Triassic Creatures’.

‘We’re not allowed to call them dinosaurs,’ said Security Beth.
            ‘I liked Steven Spielberg’s take on it,’ said Angie.

***

The red sunfall flowed immensely through the great arch of the East Front, and they filtered into the stonework chapel. Where the High Altar had been, there was now a large pen, covered with metre-thick plexiglass. A statue of Mary the mother stood as the centrepiece, cradling the babe, surrounded by soiled triassic foliage.
          ‘Welcome…to the Postosuchus Presbytery,’ said Jack, his syllables echoing between the walls.

‘Wow,’ said Angie, wowed only by the ornamentation. The Postosuchus was nowhere in sight.

The old man Duncan touched his cold fingers to Jack’s arm again. He bent down to listen to the weak breath.

‘What sort of dinosaur will this be?’

‘The most deadly animal ever to live,’ said Jack, nodding again, regaining his embellishment, ‘one of the pseudosuchia’.

‘Pseudosuchia,’ said Duncan haltingly, ‘fake crocodile.’

‘That’s right – they would terrorise-’

Jack was determined to stoke this rapport.

‘Is this the chapel,’ asked Duncan, ‘where Lord Fairmile coupled with the horse thief, Anne Mint?’

‘That’s right too,’ said Jack.

Security Beth bent down next to Jack and whispered in his own ear.
            ‘I’m going to fetch the Postie.’
            Angie had lost concentration, her phone was out. But she put it away when she saw that Beth had her electric prod tucked under one arm, a bucket of raw horse meat in the other. Beth walked into the pen, threw four marble slabs under the statue of Mary and child.

In a matter of seconds the Postosuchus reared itself from its sleep. It stood back on its hind legs and turned its dreadful head to them. It was winey-black, rooked with ancient pockmarks and bumps, ten feet from tail to nostril. Jack felt the sense of reinforcement arriving, you could not fail to fall under the spell of the Postosuchus. It dropped down to its four legs, walked with mythical grace through the Marian legs to the bloody steaks that had fallen among the bracken. Angie was using two fingers to zoom in on her phone-screen. The flash went off.
            Then the change came. The postosuchus took in a patch of air and a cloud of distraction came upon its dark eyes. Its crocodilian pupils fell upon them again and it took purposeful steps towards the glass. Yes, it thought to itself, why not now? In no space of time it was back on its hind legs. The moment was too perfect, it was worthy of Spielberg. So Angie took another photo, the killer shot, and again the flash was on.

There was an instant of noise, both human and pseudosuchic, shouts of animal terror and the hunger of two ages separated only by a cheap transparent pane. The feet of the Postosuchus came down upon the glass, and a chink appeared in it, a dark line which thundered across their only layer of protection. And it did so again and once more.
              Jack came to his senses and found that they were all scattered – Security Beth had leapt to the fore, and had her electric prod raised towards the Postie – whose cries of pain were like cracking thunder. Angie the carer was behind Jack, had tucked her head inwards and stepped back into the shadow of the chapel wall. Jack had his palms outraised towards the ancient beast, saying, please, not today. Duncan was the closest, gripping the arms of his chair tightly, looking up into the eyes of the Postosuchus. But the glass withheld the bygone crocodile. The Postie fell back onto its four legs and ate its meat.

‘All part of the Triassic Abbey experience,’ said Jack.

***

‘Would you like to continue the tour?’ he asked, when they had gathered themselves outside in the shadow of the East Front. Nobody could think that this was his fault, but he was so easy to blame.

‘There’s still the Liliensternus,’ Jack said, ‘and the gift shop.’
            ‘We’ll need to go soon, anyhow,’ said Angie. Any invigoration from mortal danger had dissipated quickly. Part of her, thought Jack, had longed for a Jurassic Park Scenario.

So Beth stayed to tranquilise the Postie, and the other three went back along the path beside the lake, Jack now pushing Duncan’s wheelchair up the hill and Angie watching him critically as they went. This was the making of a long Incident Report. If they weren’t impressed by that, then I can’t do it, thought Jack.

The rented Accessibility Van in which the two visitors had arrived from the care home was parked at the brow of a hill, from which one could see the larger part of the lake, and the whole breadth of the Abbey itself. They stopped here. Angie opened the back doors of the van and began to lower the wheelchair platform. These Sunday Community Giving sessions were essential for the Abbey’s museum status, without which the grant money would plummet.

Jack looked across at the Rectory field where the rhyncosauri were now beginning their slow monthly escape. In all likelihood the park would start to expand here – and buy Jurassic animals, if they were going to compete. The rhyncosauri, once recaptured, were soon to be sold to a private collector in China who believed that their tails could cure sexual lethargy when grated into a soup. The market had spoken; and it was not in Triassic Abbey’s favour. Revenues were falling. The board had begun to sell portraits of Fairmile from the collection.

But it was his first day back, and he had made it. The year was just a succession of single days. So what if they hadn’t enjoyed themselves. Neither had he. But it could be throttled, this job. The old man Duncan touched Jack on the arm once more.

‘May we go to see the grave?’

Jack blinked quickly, and then remembered.
            ‘Of course.’

Lord Fairmile’s short gravestone stood flanked by a pair of trees, right above the steep incline which fell down towards the lake. It wasn’t part of the official Triassic Abbey Experience, because the poet’s resting place was still under debate, and it had been defaced a couple of years ago by a faction of rogue historians. But Jack led them to the stone which read ‘Lord Fairmile’, stepped beside it, felt the evening breeze swell behind him.

‘As the constellations closed,’ Jack started for a third and final time, ‘Astraeus stood, a stalling dancer-’

‘What’s that?’ said Angie.

Jack stopped and turned slowly towards the lake. A red flare hung in the sky there. someone had fired it from the forest and was in trouble. That was what he first thought, but he could not unravel the image. The flare grew larger, there was a dark coin within it, licked around with fire. He frowned, he could not make sense of it. Soon it seemed as large as the setting sun, he could see the burning margins through the wide windows of the East Front where the Postosuchus lay. There was noise now too, a superannuated crack in the air, a sound that sunk quickly through the bowels of the earth. The sky was on fire. It dawned on them.

             Angie took out her phone.
             ‘What are you doing?’ said Jack.

‘Calling 999,’ she said.
            ‘Why?’ he asked.
            ‘I don’t know.’
            And she screamed, and ran to the driver’s seat of the van, as the meteor continued to fall towards humanity in general, and towards Fairmile Abbey in particular.

Angie was gone, the van was gone. Jack sat down on the grass by Lord Fairmile’s grave and felt a childish smile sink into his cheeks. There were tight bonds around his ribs, they had always been there, at least for years now. They were loosening. He had got through it, all of it. Let this be the fossil of me, he thought.
            In review there had been a dignity to it, his short fretful life. There had been…not quite appreciation, but it was broadly acknowledged that he had existed. He must have smiled at Duncan, whose dark glasses had fallen onto the ground, because the old man’s face began to shake with a laughter which had been subdued since Harold MacMillan.
            ‘Part of the Triassic Abbey Experience,’ said Duncan.

Jack laughed, and then the laugh died. He was sorry for this place, and all the animals of creation under the shadow of the meteor. He stood up and bent down to Duncan’s ear.

            ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jack, ‘you didn’t need to pretend to like dinosaurs.’

‘I did,’ said Duncan, ‘they wouldn’t have brought me otherwise.’
            ‘I’m sorry.’
The flaying sound of the meteor’s flame walled them together, and Jack fell towards the old man. Duncan began a soft recitation into his ear:

‘As the constellations closed

Astraeus stood, a stalling dancer

      And while he froze, the heavens posed

            A question and a cosmic answer’

By A.T. Leavis

online fiction short fiction