The Oeuvre

by Greg James

  “The masks are awake, Virginia. Can you hear them?” whispered Father.

  “Oh, how they scream,” said Mother, “Oh, how they scream.”

  Virginia wept, feeling the hard narrows of raw existence she had cut into her arms. Her blood-gloved hands raised themselves, palms out, supplicant to what lay behind those masks, to the Grey, to the blackness beyond.

  It all hurt so much.

  It all meant so little.

  She screamed and, from her lips came a menagerie of sounds, the cries of myriad dying things, the blind hopeless shrieking of the unborn.

  She threw her head back hard, her back went arching high, then splashing down, dead.

  She was gone.

  And the red waters ran out of the bath to lick at the bare feet of Arthur Spice.

  Too late again, old man.

  Every time, too late to save his wife from the horrors of the red room.

  Dr Spice wiped at his bleary eyes.

  He could see twilight settling through the heavy curtains. There was a bad oily taste in his mouth. More dreams of the red room, he thought. All that reading about the Vetala had had its effect on his subconscious over the past weeks.

  He got up and scratched at the back of his neck, feeling a sharp pain there that spread, becoming a stinging wave of cramps coursing down to his feet.

  What had awoken him?

  He heard the doorbell chime again.

  Spice dressed quickly, went downstairs and opened the door.

  “Hello, Dr Spice.”

  “Hello. What I can I do for you? It’s Liz, is it not? You came to me for a reading some time ago.”

  “Yes, doctor, that’s right. Look, we need to have one of them seances you do.”

  “Oh, what for?”

  “My friend here had an accident in France and he’s lost some of his memory and I think you can help him. Might be something spiritual you can fix.”

  “Oh, veteran are you? And something spiritual, how so?”

  Jerry nodded. “I’m not sure. But I saw things, ghosts in the trees, after my plane crashed and I’ve not been right since. I keep having nightmares. It’s been worse and worse over the last few weeks.”

  Dr Spice felt a shiver pass through his flesh as he met the younger man’s eyes.

  “Well, I can’t arrange a seance for free, I’m afraid, and if it were just for yourselves, the cost would be a considerable sum.”

  Liz showed him the money.

  Crisp notes she had stolen from Cargill’s wallet when he was snoring and drooling in her bed, tucked under the mattress for a rainy day. The cunt never missed them, or he just didn’t care. She had been hoping to save it all up so she could move away from Whitechapel but now, somehow, seemed to be the time to use it, the time she had really been saving it for. It felt right though she could not say why.

  Spice hesitated as she put the crumpled bundle of cash into his hand. There was something about the young man. That bad taste was in his mouth again; the bitter tang of copper, the taste of the red room, blood.

  A bad omen, surely.

  The memory of Hazel’s last performance played out behind Spice’s eyes.

  Dr Spice licked his lips, unsure of what to say, how to go on.

  Should he turn them away?

  “Doc, can I ask you a question?” he said.

  “Certainly, please do.”

  “Does the word Vetala mean anything to you?”

  I should herd them out now, he thought.

  “Vetala? I’m afraid, it does. Where did you come by it?”

  “A dream I had. One of the ones since my crash.”

  “Really? Interesting.”

  “Dr Spice?” Liz frowned.

  Spice’s hands were shaking. A note fell from his fumbling fingers to the plush carpet of his hallway.

  “I’m not sure if I can go through with your request. I think it would be a most dangerous ceremony to conduct.”

  “Dangerous, why?” asked Liz.

  “I cannot say in layman’s terms but I think your friend has brought something back with him from the Front. Something very nasty indeed.”

  Liz opened her purse once more and placed a further handful of purloined notes on top of those already in Spice’s trembling hands.

  “How about now, Dr Spice?”

  The money was a tidy sum, thought Spice, it would stand him in good stead for a while, pay for the upkeep of the house. He had the books and materials necessary for that which they asked. There was no good excuse he could come up with. Not for this much.

  He sighed heavily.

  “Oh, very well. Come back to this house at eight o’clock tonight and we will proceed.”

  Hand in hand, then arm in arm, Jerry and Liz made their way back through the crumbling terraces. She thought of Harry and how long it had been since she last walked like this with a man. He thought of how good it felt not be alone. The afternoon air was pungent with the gassy rot of vegetables from the alleys and dung in the drains. The streets were quiet too though there had been no siren.

  Jerry stopped, making Liz stumble on the cobbles. Before she spoke, he nodded towards her home, where the door stood open. A black slit showing around the wood and a splintered cavity where the handle once was.

  “Bloody bastards.” she said, taking a step forwards.

  Jerry held her shoulder, drawing her to him.

  He knew who was in there, who was looking for him.

  “I’ll bloody well kill ‘em.” Liz spat.

  “Oh, you will, will you?”

  Jerry and Liz turned, they faced Cutter and Russell.

  Cutter was slapping a billy club against the palm of hand. His face was still a mess but he wore a smile, a butcher’s smile. He’d watched them come back from Spice’s place, in a world of their own, forgetting their surroundings, to beware, and now he was going to make them pay.

  First, he’d rough them up a bit then it would be time to cut them up.

  “Wait here, Russ. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

  Jerry watched Cutter come to him, taking his time, but already he could see how unsteady the man’s feet were. He had been drinking. Cutter was in no fit state to fight. The first swing of the billy club swished through the air, hitting nothing. Cutter yelped as Jerry’s fingers grasped his arm, twisting, grinding flesh and muscle against bone. Making his fingers spasm and lose the billy club, it thumped onto the cobbles. Another good, hard twist and Cutter cried out, crumpling to his knees.

  The second swing of the billy club caught Russell in the gut as he ran to Cutter’s aid, Liz having retrieved it from where it fell. The third swing brought the Private down as Liz cracked it hard into his balls.

  “Cunt,” Cutter groaned, “I’m going to cut you up into fuckin’ rags!”

  Liz kicked Cutter where it hurt most, making him cry out once more as his testicles stung from the blow, soon to be thoroughly bruised.

  “Fuckin’ try it, mate.”

  Blinking his eyes, Cutter saw the Mother standing there, over him, the Scratchman crone, tall, dark and terrible, splitting the air open with the wicked ridges of her cane, making everything scream and bleed. He trembled and shook on his knees, a tear in his eye, a trail of piss colouring the crotch of his fatigues.

  Jerry and Liz were gone when the two Redcaps recovered.

  Staggering to their feet, they saw how the windows of the street were open and how people were peering out from doors and alleys. They had watched the beating as it was dealt out. Cutter’s face burned.

  He stormed away with Russell in his wake.

  *

  Russell sat opposite Cutter in the Ten Bells. The fuggy bustle of the pub pressing in close, crushing them into an alcove made up of hot bodies and high voices. A cold sparkle came into Cutter’s eyes. “Cunt like that sees a lot of men. We all look the same to her.”

  Russ laughed, trying to lighten the mood.

  Cutter frowned. “What you laughing at?”

  R
uss stopped laughing.

  Cutter ran a finger over the bruising on one side of his face, “Bitch. Carried herself like a bloke, didn’t she? Like she was going to stick one on me. Little slut! I’ll stick something in her, next time I see her.”

  Russ didn’t want to hear what was coming next, he had heard it too many times before.

  “I bet you it’ll be like a train tunnel down there. After all the men she must’ve had in her. How much you want to bet?”

  Russ said nothing.

  “I said, how much d’you want to bet?”

  “Pound,” said Russ, wishing Cutter would shut it. The red they wore was shielding them from bloody consequences being whispered about behind their backs. For now, he thought, one day, it won’t matter.

  The only red then will be his blood and mine.

  Cutter went on, not caring about the ears listening, eyes watching and tongues wagging.

  “A pound. You think she’s worth a pound? You in love, Russ? Nah, I think I’m due a pound from her. For what that cunt did to me, to my face. A pound of her flesh, cut right out from her fuckin’ cunny.”

  Heavy hands fell on Cutter’s shoulders.

  A hardened voice spoke from out of the smoke.

  “Time, gentlemen, please.”

  They kicked him and beat him, breaking his nose into a red stump and blackening one eye for the things he’d said. They never spoke. They did their duty, and then they threw him out on the street. He wove and stumbled about, drunk on the sourness in his soul as much as the alcohol in his guts. “Fuck you! Fuck you, all of you fuckin’ cunts!”

  I’ll do ‘em all one day. Get them, each and every one.

  “Can’t do this, not to me, fuckin’ Redcap, aren’t I? Where are yer, Russ? Where, you brown-hat cunt? Bloody run off and left me, di’n’t’cha? Cuuuuuunt!”

  Some fucking friend. Staggering on, Cutter saw something, a scrap, a tatter torn from midnight. He widened his eyes, wiped his hand down his face then back up over it, feeling the bristles and striated stress-lines in his skin. He saw a face, the eyes opaque and the lips elliptical. Familiar though, known and hated. There it was, then gone, fleeing from him.

  “That you, Reinhart? You, you cunt, come back here!” he slurred, following the rustling of cloth on skin, the sound of feet on cobblestone, those lamplight eyes, into the darkness, into the gloom.

  Into a dead grey space he did not know, a wet zone of crawling things that crumbled damply underfoot. The stench of the place hit him. Ordure, blood and offal. A miasma of dung and flies hung over a mass before him. Approaching, blinking the stinging ether from his watering eyes, Cutter soon saw what the construction was; mound upon mound of heads, swinish and bloated, all rotting away. Each skull thickly crusted over with scabby mould. A plague of maggots squirming in mottled tides from the empty eyeholes and gnawed nostrils, a tumescent sea of inchoate grey.

  The first grunt made Cutter jump. Another head writhed, squealing, sticky trails of gore running from its half-eaten mouth. Cutter shook his head, trying to clear the fug of death from his brain. The heads ground their cancerous lips together, filling his head with a cacophony of cries, grunts and bellows. Squelches of blood spattered from their working jaws, sending the maggots into a carnivorous frenzy. Cutter licked his lips, backing away, turning to flee from this place, from the sight before him. Then, there was a crack of taut rope from above, stopping the descent of a thin and fragile falling weight with a sickening lurch. It hung there, pale and wan, twisting to the right then to the left, describing a hypnotic figure-eight through the soiled air over the mound of living dead heads. Cutter dropped to his knees, transfixed by it, his mouth open. It swung back and forth, forth and back.

  After some time passed, Cutter found his voice.

  “Barry?”

  His brother hung himself in the privy, aged nine.

  “Wake up.”

  His eyes, blood-red balls. His neck bulging with bruises.

  “Stop pissin’ about up there.”

  Pockets of livor mortis, patches of receding colour, turning to white.

  “Stop sleeping. Please.”

  Barry was dead, his baby brother.

  “Not asleep, Billy.”

  Dead, not coming back.

  “Never was.”

  Cutter – Billy – stood there, watching the lifeless little body swinging in awful orbit. Watching and waiting.

  “You stayed too long then, Billy, looking at me.”

  Waiting for Barry to wake up.

  “You should have looked away.”

  They came out of the shadows, the stern and merciless dead.

  They showed Cutter their teeth, their mouthless teeth.

  He ran for his life.

  “You should have looked away ... ”

  *

  Cutter ran into the heart of the burning. Those fleeing the zeppelins saw him go, bewildered. Must have a death-wish, they thought. Seconds later, they saw his pursuers; their hopeless, haunted eyes like hangman’s holes.

  Those teeth.

  People moved along quickly to the shelters, not looking back, trying not to think of the running man, the look on his face, the fate that awaited him.

  Some things were best left to burn.

  Cutter tried to control his breathing. It was difficult in this heat, he was inhaling nothing but ash and smoke. The dead were close, coming for him, through the maze of broken buildings, pursuing him as he had pursued many men before. Hounding them through backstreets, alleys and sewer-streets until they dropped from exhaustion.

  Now, it was his turn to be hunted.

  Cutter turned down a street on his right. It was blocked by a blazing barricade of wood and bricks. He tried to approach it, to climb it, to keep going, but the heat beat him back, defeating him.

  Cutter’s retreat was blocked by his pursuers. Their faces lit by the burning barricade, making their hollowed heads strobe and echo with a black lantern light. They advanced on him. He could not tell how many there were.

  One of the pursuers stepped out, ahead of the rest. Its eyes flashed, hard points of light igniting where there should be pupils. Its skin glistened, not sweating but clammy, cold under the shadows cast by fire. It drew a knife and Cutter knew who stood before him. It spoke in a crackling voice, the strangled sound of extinct vocal cords grating over one another.

  “I’m Jack, son, and I need a home. Your skin and bones’ll do nicely.”

  Shouting, Cutter threw himself at Jack, hands out.

  Kill the bastard, choke him dead.

  But Jack was nimble and his knife was quick.

  Cutter was on his knees, blood soaking him, darkening his abdomen and thighs. He swore at Jack, cursed him until his throat was hurt and dry. A ruddy line of drool ran over Cutter’s lips. A vicious kick bit into him, felling him. Cutter, now a whimpering heap, felt ice-cold points puncture him, withdraw then puncture him again. Many of them, all on him. Their coldness pushed itself deep inside, wet and writhing, driving itself into his heart. Then, there was laughter, old and empty. Then, there was only the fire, slowly burning itself out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cutter’s face wore a labyrinth of cuts, grazes and gouges. The natural colour of his skin would take days to come back, he would walk with difficulty, everything would hurt. His body would get better, but his eyes would still be gone.

  “Who did this to you, Cutter?”

  Cutter said nothing.

  He was in the London Hospital. Pads of gauze covering what was left of his eyes. He was not moving, not responding to Captain Thwaite’s demands. Thwaite didn’t understand it. This was not like Cutter at all, to keep silent like this, to protect a felon. Better yet, a felon who mutilated him and left him for dead.

  From speaking to Private Russell, Thwaite deduced the attack had been partially Cutter’s own fault. His own carelessness, acting like a drunken idiot. What an embarrassment to the barracks he was. Jeopardising the whole operation, their relationship with th
e Metropolitan Police and shaming the red cap he wore.

  “Come on, man. Tell me. Why keep silent? Why protect someone who could do something like this to you? Was it Reinhart who did this? We can put this on the list of charges, you know? Just say the word, name him.”

  The body in the bed might as well have been dead.

  Thwaite huffed and flicked his cap back onto his head. “You try and get some sense out of him, Private. I have to attend to matters at the barracks, see if we can find someone else willing, and able, to go after Reinhart.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Russell.

  Thwaite left with a final huff.

  “C’mon, mate, what ‘appened? You can tell me. Old Thwaite’s gone now.”

  Cutter said nothing; he did not move, he did not speak, he did not react. The Private stayed for an hour, sitting by the bed, holding his friend’s hand for some of the time, pleading with him to speak the rest. He left when a Sister asked him to do so, wondering what he was going to do, what was going to become of his mate.

  *

  Cutter listened to the whispers, the whispers that took his eyes away. He worked fingers underneath the gauze patches taped across his eyes, worrying the damaged orbs beneath, touching the torn jelly, squeezing out a silvery flux of fluid. He withdrew his fingers. The voice he had heard, it was him, that was the one, after all these years. That doctor was the man he’d wanted to kill for so long. The one who hurt Barry, raped him, made his brother die.

  There was no mistaking it.

  Cutter had listened to that voice countless times in nightmares down through the years. It was not something you forgot easily, the death of your kin and the one who made it happen.

  Oh yes, it was the same voice, that cunt, it was him.

  Cargill.

  His hatred had a name and it would come to an end tonight, the whispers said. It would all be over. Cutter peeled the linen gauze away. He saw the world as it was, as it had always been. It was bleeding, slowly dying, becoming emptier, becoming Grey. The whispers went away, leaving him to do what must be done.

  *

  Cargill was finishing his notes on the day’s rounds. Sighing, he rubbed a thumb and forefinger into his eyes, working them in deep. He would retire early tonight. He prayed that there would not be a raid, he was not in the mood for spending a sleepless night below ground. He also prayed he would not see or hear from his guest tonight. The thought tailed off as he realised it was in vain.