by A. J. Kirby
Where the hell was it? Had I left it back at the Choke? Had Burt propped it up somewhere else? Or had he hidden it? Was he a part of this grand revenge plan? Was that why he’d lured me back here in my drunken state? Was that why he’d kept me here with promises that he’d something to pass on to me? Was Burt undead too? He certainly looked it. But then half of the people in Newton Mills did. Dick included. Me included…
And then I heard a voice on the stairs again.
‘Bully!’ it called. ‘Bully! Come out, come out wherever you are!’
It was pitched higher than the booming voice that Tommy had used on me previously, but still seemed terrifying. The voice was so… inhuman. So unreal; so taunting.
‘Bully!’ it called. ‘Bully! Are you up there? What the hell you doing to that poor old fucker up there?’
I’d heard the voice before. Recently. Very recently. But before I could properly put two and two together, Dick Featherstone ambled into Burt’s front room. He was wearing the same tracksuit that he’d had on when I’d seen him last – looking even more dishevelled, if anything – but he also had on a massive, goonish grin and a kind of sheen of something. Like he was floating almost.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I demanded.
Dick flopped down onto the sofa next to me, barely even bothering to move my half-leg out of the way before he sank into the sofa’s welcoming folds and ruffles.
‘I asked: what the fuck are you doing?’
Dick spun his head around to face me. It took him about twenty seconds to achieve this feat, but once I saw the lolling tongue, the rolling eyeballs and the trickles of sweat which were rolling down his forehead, I knew exactly what was wrong with him.
‘I asked at the Choke where you been, man,’ said Dick, slowly. ‘They told me old Burt looked after you… They told me you came here. So I found where ‘here’ was and then I came round here. Mate. Mate? Are you not pleased… ?’
‘You smashed the old boy’s window,’ I snapped, trying to keep my voice down.
‘Never did that,’ said Dick. ‘No, never smashed no windows or nothing. It was like that when I got here. And I thought you’d done it.’
Dick seemed to find the confusion over the smashed window fairly amusing. But not as amusing as the picture of the horse in the field which was stationed above the fireplace.
‘Nice horse,’ he said. ‘I used to like horses.’
‘Shut up, Dick,’ I snapped. Louder this time. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t you that smashed the window?’
‘I told you… Look I’m sorry about what I said in there. In the Choke. I was in a bad way mate. Strung out. I didn’t know what I was saying. Or who I was saying it to. Lion going like that has fucked me up. I just needed a little taster again tonight, just to set my mind at ease again. I’m okay now. We can talk all you want. I’m glad you’re back.’
Dick beamed over at me. I had the overwhelming urge to punch him in his stupid gurning mouth. But at least he wasn’t Tommy Peaker…
‘I’m sorry, man,’ he repeated. Kinda wailing now.
And that must have been what finally roused Burt from his slumber. Not the thudding of the undead at his door; not the smashing of his front window as they slipped inside; not their tap, tap, tapping on the stairs; but a stupid junkie talking nonsense in his front room. He must have had a sixth sense for that kind of thing.
‘Sorry Burt,’ I said, meeting his fiery, yet confused eyes.
‘What’s this one doing here?’ he growled. ‘This one’s no good. No good at all. Look at him…’
Then Burt launched into another machine-gun quick rapid-fire burst of coughing and spluttering. His round face turned blood red. To someone in Dick’s condition, it must have looked as though his whole head was going to explode.
‘Go on over to Burt’s chair and light up a cigarette for him,’ I whispered to Dick, gesturing to the packet of Dorchester and Grey which Burt had finally dropped on the floor.
Amazingly, Dick did as he was told; popped up from the sofa again, skirted the coffee table and reached down for the cigs. Still coughing, Burt tried to lash out, fearing that his prize was being stolen from him. His weak arm-swings only met thin air, but still Dick shuffled away a little before extricating a lone soldier from the pack and lighting it up. He took a long drag before passing it on to Burt’s grateful fingers. Burt finally understood it for the act of kindness it was and calmed down. Or maybe it was only the nicotine that stopped him from being a raging bull.
‘Thank you, lad,’ he breathed, through a thick mouthful of smoke. ‘But what was that you were saying about a smashed window? I heard you talking just as I was waking up… Smackheads are always round this way breaking windows. Is that what you’ve done, lad?’
Dick shook his head and again strenuously denied the accusation: ‘Smackheads go on the rob when they don’t have gear. Not when they do.’
I had to admit, Dick actually had a pretty good point. So did Burt, nodding away to himself and examining the perfect smoke ring that he’d just blown from his mouth. Thing was: neither of us believed him. Smackheads are great storytellers, or so I’m told. It had to have been him that smashed the window. Probably he just couldn’t remember it, that was all.
‘Well, what are we going to do now that you’re here?’ asked Burt, after a moment’s silence.
Dick and I looked at each other, a little mystified.
‘How’s about I get us all a nice taster of whisky and we have a good old, honest-to-goodness chat about old times?’ continued the suddenly back-to-normal Burt.
‘That sounds nice,’ I said, like a polite young Kingsman doing his duty in the community. Not like some fucked-up child killer that was being haunted by the very boy that he killed.
‘That’s a nice horse, Mr. Burt,’ said Dick, by way of thanks. He was pointing at the picture above the electric fire again. Burt raised his eyes to the ceiling as he stumbled past on his way to the kitchenette to grab some glasses. As he rummaged through the cupboards, we heard him cursing and panting, but neither of us made a move to help him. This was his place, his refuge, and we knew better than to demean him like that.
He returned with three tumblers, two which looked as though they’d seen better days. There was a large crack running down the side of one of them, and another looked as though it hadn’t been washed or dusted for about a hundred years. The other – his glass – looked pristine clean however. Burt was clearly not used to company of any kind. My heart, such as it was, went out to the old battler.
The whisky, it turned out, was stuffed down the side of Burt’s chair, and was already half drunk. I wondered if he’d been drinking after he carried me home. I wondered how he’d carried me home in the state he’d been.
‘Glenmorangie,’ he said. ‘The best.’
‘You’re spoiling us,’ said Dick.
Burt poured lovingly. Even twisting the bottle at the end of his free pour as though he were a barman in some swanky airport lounge and we were travelling businessmen, ready with cash-dollar tips. He handed one over to me first, then placed one on the table in front of Dick. His own, he drained in one fluid gulp, before pouring another, larger measure. Then he took his seat.
‘Well; what is it you lads want to know?’ asked Burt.
‘I…I don’t know what you mean,’ I stuttered.
‘What brought you here, to my door? What questions do you need me to answer?’
‘You brought me here,’ I tried.
Burt waved away my comment: ‘You were brought here by the wings of destiny. You were brought here because you need answers. Now fire away. We don’t have much time…’
Dick nudged me in the ribs and made a rather too obvious gesture with his hand, indicating the fact that he clearly believed Burt to be drunk, or insane. I tried to ignore my smacked-up friend.
‘I need to know where my crutch is,’ I chanced. ‘I can’t see it anywhere.’
Burt smiled.
‘Such an obvious ques
tion, young man,’ he said. ‘It’s in the kitchenette. I couldn’t have you running out on me before I had chance to tell you what I needed to tell you… or remember what it was that I was supposed to give you…’
‘Why do you say that about us not having much time,’ interrupted Dick, sounding remarkably compos mentis for about the first time since he’d arrived.
Burt smiled again. This time it was a cruel, knowing smile. Not a shopkeeper’s smile at all, but the smile of a man who’s seen it all and who knows what’s coming.
‘If it wasn’t you that broke the window, lad, someone did,’ he said.
‘Who?’ shouted Dick.
‘You know very well…’
‘We need to get out of here,’ I said. ‘Get me the crutch, Dick.’
‘You’ve not asked what you need to ask yet,’ said Burt, slowly, calmly lighting up another cigarette from the butt of his last one. The ashtray was overflowing now. Surely a fire risk.
‘What is he on about?’ asked Dick, not making any move to get the crutch.
‘I’m on about guilt, boys. Guilt,’ said Burt. And suddenly we saw the light in his eyes once again. ‘I’m on about what you need to know about guilt and what it does to people in this town. We’re killing ourselves, aren’t we? Be it the smack or the booze or the fags or the jumping off bridges.’
‘He didn’t jump,’ muttered Dick.
‘That may well be,’ continued Burt, ‘but have you ever considered why so many people seem to be on a one-way ticket to hellsville in this town?’
‘Do you mean all the graveyards?’ I asked, remembering what my father had said in school that day. ‘The processing of the people…’
‘In the old days, it was the mills. Now it’s the drug dependency,’ said Burt. ‘But what drives people into this mess in the first place? Tell me, have you heard of a thing called the purpling?’
I felt my face blanch. I had heard of the purpling. Why, in this flat, I’d heard of the purpling… But I couldn’t answer Burt’s question.
‘It used to be that the purpling only came to certain people. A madness, it was. A death-wish so to speak. Where good folk feel that they have no other choice than to persecute themselves into living the lives that they don’t want to live.’
I nodded my head, tried not to look at Dick, whose mouth was wide-open, catching flies. We were under his spell, and despite the fact that we should have just run away, got as far away as we possibly could, we just kept listening.
‘But the more people came into Newton Mills – the more people that were poisoned by the town – the more it became like an epidemic. First at the mills, then in the schools where they taught you lack of ambition, and then when they let you drink and take drugs. Without ever caring what it did to you… I was younger than most when I began my purpling… At first I felt it as a… I don’t know… a desire to inflict pain on others. And then I started to turn that hatred in on myself. The purpling is a desire to bruise and cripple what is innermost about yourself until there is nothing left.’
‘How did you get away?’ I breathed. My good leg was drumming up and down, wanting away from the place, but somehow, I stayed rooted to the spot. And helpless.
‘I didn’t get away, son,’ said Burt, slowly. ‘I just left for a bit and came back. And the purpling had already taken Sheila – that’s my wife – in my place. I tried to take it back from her, but it took us both in the end.’
‘But you’re still alive,’ I said.
‘Am I?’ asked Burt, looking me straight in the heart. ‘Am I really?’
‘You sold us bastard cigarettes when we were twelve,’ said Dick, holding one finger up as though he were a case lawyer proving an incontrovertible point.
‘Lads,’ he said calmly. ‘Do you not realise? You were already taken! I could see it in you that you were gone. Lost. The purpling had started in you boys even earlier than it had with me… And the purpling had a very specific job that it needed you to do, didn’t it?’
We both drained our whiskies at the same time, Dick and I, unsure of the exact nature of the information that was being imparted to us, but both recognising, in our own fucked-up little ways that it was bad. Oh it was bad, and there was no escaping it.
‘You’ve had a shock, lads,’ said Burt. ‘I’d better get us another bottle of the good stuff so we can talk some more about this. There’s other things you need to know before you face what it is you need to face.’
He wrenched himself up from his armchair. I wanted to call him back; the whisky bottle on the table still had enough in it for at least three more shots. But the old man was determined, and we had to let him have his time. I turned round to speak to Dick, and all I saw written on his face was raw fear.
‘It’ll be okay,’ I lied. ‘It’ll all get sorted.’
Dick wouldn’t reply. Couldn’t reply.
We sat in silence and listened to Burt rummaging around in the cupboards again. Heard him cursing and panting and moaning. Suddenly, the old man called through to us. ‘I remember what it was I was supposed to give you now,’ he shouted.
And then he gave this little half-laugh, half whoop of joy, as though he’d discovered buried treasure. And in a way, he had; his own memories. We listened some more as he rattled around behind the fridge, this time with far more speed and purpose. And then we heard a terrible, massive thud. And then we heard nothing.
Dick and I both lurched into the kitchenette as quickly as we could. But our uncoordinated three-leg race had only one winner, and it wasn’t us. When we finally reached the sad little ante-room, we found Burt’s body twisted on the floor. A look of complete and utter terror was burned into his face. His eyes were bulging out of their sockets and there was a strong smell of shit. Worse; worse than any of this was the sight of his right hand which was battered and bruised, but still clutching the spear that had been sticking out of my chest in the C. U. M building. The spear that Tommy Peaker had pulled out.
So that was what Burt was going to give me; the spear. The warning.
‘Oh my God,’ breathed Dick. ‘He’s dead.’
‘We need to call the police,’ I whispered, trying to bend down, frantically trying to find a pulse. Guilt was already quickening on me.
‘We need to get out of here,’ said Dick, coldly. ‘Don’t you see what this will look like? The two of us – me one of Burt’s renowned smackheads – in his front room; him dead in the kitchen and a smashed window out front. Who are the filth going to believe? What are the filth going to believe?’
I crouched over the broken body of Burt. The man whose surname we’d never bothered to ask. The man who’d been trying to reach out to us. The man whose coffin nails helped the rot to set in. And I shed a single tear for him. I heard Dick moving away from me, back to the cupboards, where he started fumbling around, just as Burt had, only minutes before. I shot him a murderous look.
‘What?’ he pleaded. ‘We’re going to need money, aren’t we? Where we’re going?’
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
Dick ignored me. Continued pulling out rusted tin cans and moth-eaten cereal packets. Finally closed his hands around the prize; an old money jar which contained a few old pound coins. He smashed the jar on the kitchen surface with a practiced ease and deposited the coins into the pocket of his tracksuit. And I swear in that one moment, Dick positively glowed purple. Like an aura or a fucked-up halo all around him.
Once a junkie, always a junkie, was all I could think.
We stepped along Dye Lane, keeping away from the glare of the streetlights. It seemed a pointless thing to do; Tommy could find us whenever he wanted, light or no light. But somehow it gave us comfort. Somehow, being on the move gave us comfort too. And we found a companiable stride in the half moon’s light; me struggling along on crutches and Dick staggering through drink and drugs.
We passed the old graveyard where we’d go to smoke the single cigarettes from Burt’s and I gave the place a two-fingered salute, just fo
r good measure. In the moonlight, my fingers seemed to glow purple, just as Dick was back in the kitchenette. Quickly I pulled them down.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Dick.
‘I thought you had a plan… You said we’d need money where we were going?’
‘We’ll always need money,’ said Dick.
‘We should find Twinnie’ I said. ‘Tell him what we know. Find out what he knows…’
‘Twinnie’s gone bad… And anyway, how’d you reckon we find him? He’s off the radar…
‘Do you not have a mobile number for him or anything?’ I asked.
Dick started frantically tapping the side of his head. ‘Don’t have no mobile for anyone, mate. They’re just tracking devices so they know what we’re doing all the time. No. I don’t have no numbers for anyone. I just use my instincts.’
I tried not to sigh with impatience. Stepping back into Newton Mills really was like stepping back in time. The town boundary sign should have read:
Welcome to Newton Mills, twinned with Level Six, Hell. Please leave all accoutrements from the twentieth century in the basket provided. You will find no need – or reception – for mobile phones, satellite navigation systems, Channel Five on the TV and anything else you might pull out of your candy ass. You are welcome to hang on to your weapons, however.
‘Well what are your instincts telling you now?’ I asked.
‘That we’re in deep, deep shit,’ said Dick, stopping abruptly on the pavement. ‘I saw shadows in there, moving. Before we found him. Didn’t want to say anything ‘cos I thought you’d think I was mad… and I never smashed that window… Bully? What if it really is Tommy Peaker, like you said? Out to kill us all…’
‘Then we make ourselves ready for him,’ I said, pulling Dick along with me, despite the searing pain from my leg.