by Ian Dyer
‘I bet you didn’t like that.’ Simon said to the club.
Halfway along the wall the photos became paintings. All except one, The Fighting Temeraire, Simon didn’t recognise and he glanced over them noting that most were of fighting ships, some sail, some steam and some more modern like HMS Hermes returning from the Falklands; all rusty and damaged. Scars of battle
On the opposite wall, in the centre, there hung a giant painting of the quarry that, Simon guessed, Mr Rowling worked in. It was a grand oil painting, mostly blues and greys though there were some specks of yellow and black that denoted machinery or the odd working man and Simon admired the detail and skill as he neared it. The frame was thick and simple and again oiled to a dark sheen. An image of the painting in his nightmare flashed before his eyes and Simon knew the two frames were the same. But what did that matter? Such fames can be found anywhere and he had no doubt seen a million of these in his travels. Much like the painting in his dream, this one also had a brass plate screwed into the bottom piece of wood:
Rottenhouse Quarry 1988
Sirrell Grove
Either side of the grand oil painting were two others. They weren’t as large but they were each individually lit by their own little lamp that hung on the wall above them. The lamps had little green glass lampshades which directed the light straight down highlighting the two paintings like two old masters hanging in the Louvre. The smaller painting depicted a cricket scene, the batsman raising his willow to the crowd whilst the bowlers and fellow batsman were clapping in awe. Not your average village pitch though; it was on a much bigger stage, perhaps Lords or Edgbaston. Leaning in he read aloud the brass plate,
‘Mighty Boycott at the Helm, 1980, Lords Cricket Ground, Versus Australia.’
The painting wasn’t great but it was effective and Simon could almost hear the idyllic sound of leather against willow. Sounds of the summer.
The other painting, to the right of the grand quarry depiction, was of a football ground. Again, not a village scene, this was a stadium. Players in white with blue collars celebrated a goal whilst the players in red and white strips were crest fallen. The picture wasn’t named but by the kits Simon believed one team, the team in white, to be Leeds United and the other, Sunderland.
Simon took a quick look at the clock that was on the bookshelf and saw that 10 minutes had passed already. He quickly scanned the books on the shelf to the right of the desk and saw nothing of merit though he noted many autobiographies; Boycott, Botham, Churchill, Peel, Parkinson and Truman to name but a few. There were a couple of smaller pictures along a couple of the shelves, friends and family Simon thought, but none were named so he hadn’t a clue who they were. One of the pictures, slightly bigger than all the others, was of Geoff Boycott and next to him someone that looked like Mr Rowling only considerably younger. There was something scrawled on the photo but Simon couldn’t make it out.
There were books on gardening, more on WW2 aircraft and tanks and one on American Civil War ships. Two books stood out from the crowd and were on a shelf all of their own next to some shiny trinkets. Simon pulled one of them out and looked at the cover, his eyebrow raised.
‘I knew you were a bit out there Mr Rowling, but Mein Kampf, really?’
He flicked through a couple of pages and was just about to close it and jam it back onto the shelf when what looked like a handwritten message caught his eye. He opened the book up on that page and to Simon it felt as if the page liked being opened there, as if it had been opened there a great many times:
Bob. We joked and here it is.
Your friend, Chairman.
‘Jesuskrist.’ And with that Simon closed the book with a dull thud and put it back into its place. He had a sudden urge to bleach his hands clean, but for the time being made do with his jeans. He turned his attention to the second book which now seemed absurdly comical to the one he had just seen. This one wouldn’t need a bleaching of the hands after handling it. The second book was thick and heavy and he had to hold it in both hands.
‘Stan Thrumpers Cookbook for Widowers.
‘Catchy title there, Stan.’
He flicked the book over to its back and was greeted with a black and white image of a man smiling from ear to ear like a lunatic before he tells you that he is the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ‘And quite the looker, too.’ Simon chuckled and continued to chuckle as he placed the book back in its place next to Mein Kampf.
‘What a whimsical collection you have here, Mr Rowling.’
He perused the papers on the desk, ‘Watch some cricket, play a little footie, then over lunch have yourself some deluded ranting’s from the world’s greatest looney, and then, for treats, enjoy a well cooked meal by your old pal Stan the Man Thrumper. Oh, and if you’ve got time, hack apart some guy and dump his remains outside of his mums house just for good measure.’
There was nothing of note on the desk, though some of the letters he didn’t touch or turn over for fear of leaving a trace of his being in this room.
‘Can see why you keep this place locked up, Mr Rowling. An Aladdin’s cave if I’ve ever seen one. He turned around and faced the back wall.
There was another grand painting on the wall. There was also an ornament.
5
Simon leant back on the desk almost pulling a bunch of papers onto the floor. The chair squeaked as its wheels turned whilst Simon steadied himself.
‘The dream.’ Simon whispered. And he was right. The painting matched the one he had seen in his dream. It was set in a forest; the sky blue, washed white in some places. The tress were full of lush green leaves, the grass a seeming endless expanse of carpet where here and there daisies and buttercups sprouted as to mock the painter’s hand. In the far left hand corner of the painting there was a stream, much like the one not a 100 meters from where he stood and it flowed diagonally across the painting disappearing off of the edge. There wasn’t a body in this stream, though a quick set of brush strokes could change that.
Simon moved in a little closer. He knew what was there, in the centre of the painting being engulfed in flickering Halloween orange flames; he had seen it all before.
Two men were being set a flame, their bodies strung up on crucifixes made of dark wood and their hands and feet lashed together with rope.
‘Fuck me. It’s the same. IT’S THE FUCKING SAME!’
The two men, upon their crosses of death, shared the same dead, black eyes as Billie had in his unconscious blackness, though there was no gore coming from between their legs. Their mouths were wide; deep circles of blackness. Simon was sure he could hear their screams through some weird Voodoo power direct into his skull.
There were two men stood next to the crosses. Both men wore long black shawls that covered them from head to foot. The material flowed over the grass beneath their feet like a black tide of filth. In their hands they each held an axe and a truncheon.
‘Weapons of choice for any killer,’ Simon mused, but he wasn’t laughing. To Simon his voice sounded like it was the musings of a man on the edge of running. Now close to the painting Simon could read the brass plate, again he knew what would be written on it before getting there, but still, the shock of it was no different:
Chairman’s Justice
They Leak. They Bleed. They Don’t Stop Once They Started.
‘I’ve got to get out of here. This aint right. Nothing is right here. I don’t care what he says or what Lucy says. I aint gonna fit in here.’
Simon heard the sound of a car coming down the main road. Turning quickly and looking to the window the world outside was faintly lit by a car’s headlight. But that faint light was getting brighter with each second.
‘Shit.’
The ornament, Simon. The ornament.
Before leaving the room and closing the door to the freak show that was Mr Rowling’s study, Simon made himself take one quick look at the black ornament that was on a shelf below the painting.
‘Well there’s
something you don’t see every day.’ Simon said whilst he was halfway to the door. And he stopped for a couple of seconds until he heard the car drive past and the familiar squeal of brakes.
He wanted to touch the ornament. Wanted to touch it, maybe weigh it as to prove to himself that it existed and wasn’t a figment of his imagination. He licked his lips and rubbed his hands thinking he probably looked a bit like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Arc, probably not as cool though (he didn’t have a whip or a fedora and this was no golden idol like it had been in the film). The car pulled into the driveway, its lights lit up the kitchen and hallway overpowering the household bulbs. Simon placed one hand onto the black marble bust and rubbed his fingers across its cold features. It was real. Flicking off the light in the study, the last thing Simon saw as he closed the door, locked it and ran into the kitchen placing the key back into the drawer as the front door opened, was the bust. And though he could scarcely believe who it was of and why such a thing should exist he couldn’t deny the fact that not only did Mr Rowling have a copy Mein Kampf taking pride of place in his book collection he also had in his possession a bust of the man that wrote it: Adolf Hitler.
5
Simon had made his way into the kitchen and started to pour himself a drink of water by the time the front door opened. He was stood by the sink, his back to the window. He knew his face must look flushed, it felt as red as a radish, so he quickly gathered his thoughts in an attempt to calm himself. Though the image of Hitler wouldn’t quite shift, a part of Simon wanted to laugh, laugh until his head exploded.
There was silence between Lucy and her father as they put their thin jackets on the hooks in the hallway.
‘You in the kitchen, Si?’
‘Yeah. Just having a drink. Just got back myself.’
‘Really?’ Lucy said walking into the kitchen. Her eyes were wide with concern. ‘What took you so long, you left hours ago?’
She took a seat at the small table. Mr Rowling walked in and joined her, paying no attention to Simon. A whiff of stale beer and cigarettes filled the air.
‘The storm got me. I managed to find some shelter. But it got me pretty good. Once I got back here I realised that I didn’t have a key. I stood outside for a bit then thought I’d look for a spare, found one, too…’
Lucy finished the sentence, ‘Under the rocks. Dad, I told you, imagine if that were a burglar or something.’
Mr Rowling didn’t answer, just smiled at the table. He was listening though. Simon could see that he was listening very well. That was his finest trait, a man of few words but with ears that seemed to pick up on anything and everything.
Lucy shook her head, ‘Where abouts did you hide? Must have been somewhere in the square I bet, that storm hit just as you left.’
‘Weirdly, it was in that fire damaged house. Not ideal, but there was nowhere else to go.’
‘You went into the Johnson place?’ Mr Rowling said. His cheeks were a little red, but Simon couldn’t be sure if it were the beer or what he had said that had caused them to redden.
‘Yeah, like I said, there was nowhere else to go.’
‘What did yasee?’
‘…Nothing.’
‘Really, Simon, nothing? You sure, son? You sure you saw nothing? From the looks ofyer it looks like yaseen a ghost.’
‘What are you talking about, Dad?’
‘Simon knows. Don’t yaSimon.’
Simon was all of a sudden very much aware of the sweat that was boiling on his forehead and that he was holding the glass so tight in his hand that it was apt to smash into a million pieces. His teeth ground together and he blinked more times than necessary. Trying desperately, but failing miserably, Simon tried to lessen the shake by holding the glass with two hands. Like a school boy caught kicking a smelly kid in the toilets Simon said, ‘I didn’t see anything.’
‘Come take a seat son, looks like you need to take a weight off.’ Mr Rowling pulled out the chair next to him and offered it to Simon.
‘You okay, Si, you’ve gone grey.’
This is it, Simon thought, it’s over. I’m either going to make it over to that table or I’m going to have a stroke right here and end up a dribbling wreck being fed liquid food and shitting in a tube for the rest of my life.
6
Simon sat down. Two sets of eyes were upon him, watching him. His own were fixed upon the pale bleached wood following the shapes the knots made, each one looking like a tiny Worm Hole to another dimensions.
‘Si, what’s wrong. Tell me.’
With a deep sigh Simon began.
7
‘I’m not sure how much of this will make sense but I have to get it out. Tonight was the straw that broke the camel’s back I suppose. You know me, Luce, I’m not the sort of bloke who gets like this, I’m like go with the flow and all that, but these last two days have been… well, they’ve been shite. Mr Rowling I know you don’t care for such language but I was brought up without such graces I’m afraid, so I shall apologise now before I go on.
‘This place isn’t what I expected. Its chaos. I’ve seen more shit here than I have ever seen. Movies and TV shows haven’t got crap on stuff that goes on here. Take that poor guy in the stream today. I watched him take a beating for doing something so meaningless it beggars belief and then this morning we find him floating face up, a knife jutting from his head. Now, I know you don’t want me to do this, Mr Rowling, I don’t mean no disrespect cos I know that is big around here, but Lucy has the right to know. She has the right to know what happened after.’
‘What happened, Si?’ Lucy said.
Simon looked to the old man and saw that he was not going to stop him. If Simon didn’t know better it looked as though the old feller had given up listening all together, but Simon knew that was not case.
‘That Lewis guy, you know Luce, the one they dragged through the club tonight like a dog, he had an axe. A big shiny axe. He and Pickering… well they…they.’
‘SpititoutSimon, for heaven’s sake.’ Mr Rowling said.
‘They hacked him up, Luce. Arms, legs…head. Chopped up like a chicken on a Sunday afternoon.’
Lucy put her hands over her reddening eyes. There were little sobs coming from behind her hands.
‘Barbara, you know why they did it, don’t ya. Those rules have been about since your days and well before that. The only shameful thing here is that Simon had to see it. That’s all.’ Mr Rowling said putting a very awkward hand upon her shoulder. It was an act that looked clumsy.
She didn’t reply. Lucy shook her head and wiped a bit of snot from her nose. Simon had hoped for a little support but was left wanting much like had been back at the club.
‘So that’s all, Luce. I tell you that a bloke you used to play with was hacked to bits like a piece of cheap meat and all you can do is twist a finger and wipe away an errant tear?’
‘What else do you want from me, Simon? Really, tell me. It’s sad, yes. But like dad says, it’s happened before and it will happen again. Just a shame you had to see it.’
‘A shame! Jesus Luce, what the hell has gotten into you? Two days ago you would have freaked out at that. Now it’s as though it’s all just part and parcel of everyday life like you see it every day. Or saw it.’ Simon saw a glimmer in Lucy’s eyes then, like a thousand memories came flooding back all at once reminding what had gone on here, reminding her of all the cruel and twisted stuff she had seen and accepted. Simon was afraid that he was losing her. Not in the literal sense, she was his and he was hers, but she wasn’t Lucy anymore. She was two people now, the girl she had fled and hidden from, the one called Barbara had found her shell, the one called Lucy had stolen it, and now Barbara wants it back. And she wants it all to herself.
‘You’re changing.’ Simon said unable to hold it in.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She snapped back. Lucy never snapped back.
‘Since we got here. The girl I once knew; seems like I lost her along the way
.’
‘Seems a bit farfetched that, Simon. Bit like High-Brid cars and drink driving laws and men that make a living from photos, if yaknow what I mean.’
‘Mr Rowling, please, come on, give me a break will ya. I’ve tried to be nice, Christ, I’m a nice guy, but all this, all this death and beatings and axe’s and hanging men and rats and fat guys in girls clothes and the nightmares, it’s driving me insane. Really, how thick can someone be? How thick can an entire village be? He called you Bob. Not a cunt or a fucktard or a prick. No, just your name. Bob. Bob. Bob. It’s insane. I can’t take it anymore. We came here to mend things, to try and rebuild, the last thing I expected was to be a part of two murders. The last thing I needed right now is for you screwing with me.’
‘SIMON!’ Lucy yelled looking as if she were about to wrench the hair from her head. But it was too late. The freight train had left.
‘No, actually, the last thing I need is what is happening right now, with Lucy. She isn’t the girl I came up here with. She isn’t the girl I want to marry any more. As insane as that sounds, it’s the truth.’
Out of breath Simon slid the chair away from the table and walked over to the sink with the gasps of shock and surprise from Lucy floating with him like unwanted rain clouds. He had done it, finally lost the plot, and was, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, regretting it. He didn’t need to turn to see the look of dismay upon old man Rowling’s face; it was reflected in the windows like a painting dipped in water and left to run.
‘Shit it.’ Simon whispered, and he hung his head in shame.