by A. J. Kirby
You got drunker and drunker. And more and more… maudlin. Yeah, that’s the word. Maudlin; like my old mum used to get when she got stuck into the gin. You were snivellin’ and cryin’ and everything. Just like you know who. Then you passed out for a bit. And that’s when Dick and me set fire to your bloody sleeping bag with you in it. You woke up like a man possessed. Wouldn’t see what we’d done as the joke it really was. But you stayed when we bribed you with more drink.
Anyway, after a while, we all had too much to drink and went to sleep – you in your half sleeping-bag, shivering away like a girl – everyone else wrapped up toasty warm. But after an hour or so, I got woke up. You, white as a sheet, like you’d seen a ghost, shaking and shaking at my shoulders. Claimed you’d seen the Black Panther. I mean really seen it. Not just as part of the story we were going to make up. Kept talking and talking about how it breathed. Even how it smelled. You said it smelled like fish. I’ll always remember that.
We all tried to calm you down. All of us. Lion sat on you for a bit, Dick tried telling dickish jokes. I just told you that we needed to stick to the plan. But then you said it: you said that you were going to go to the police. About you know who. Said you were going there straight-off. Gonna run all the way down to that piggy station like a good little pig. And you just scarpered, leaving us clutching on to your burned-out purple sleeping bag. Dick tried to run after you and you just increased the pace. But as you did so, you started slipping down the slope. Came a-tumbling all the way down, didn’t you? Bashed your arm up big-style. And your head.
Of course, we went knocking on the door of Maurice Dailly’s farmhouse like good little boys. And Maurice called your dad and the ambulance. You were in for two weeks. Your dad stayed the whole time. But when you came out, it was like you’d forgotten the whole thing. It was mad, like. But we thought it might interrupt your recovery or something, so we… get off… get off my throat…
I had my hands clasped around Twinnie’s neck. I could feel the grease and purple sliming its way off his skin and onto mine. I felt the old power in my hands and the righteousness of what I was about to do. Outside, the wind howled louder, like it was laughing away, ever so merrily about some fart joke in assembly.
I loosened my grip. Twinnie seized upon my moment of weakness and kicked out at my half-foot. Knocked me over. I crashed to the floor, still gripping him, but weaker now… weaker.
I ran my fingers across the ridges on the stone floor, tried to map my way back into a reality I could cope with. But suddenly, Twinnie’s story about what really happened at Grange Heights that night started to ring true. But it couldn’t be, surely?
‘You’re lying,’ I breathed.
Twinnie, who was still lying next to me, fingering his purple neck, started laughing.
‘I swear on Dick’s life that I’m not,’ he said, finally. ‘It was you that broke down up there… You that wanted to confess…’
‘But it was Dick’s sleeping bag,’ I pleaded.
‘It was your sleeping bag… Come on, you remember really, don’t you, soldier boy?’
I screwed up my eyes; tried not to remember.
Twinnie grabbed onto my shoulder and squeezed. I felt his fingernails slipping into those old scars left by Tommy Peaker back at the military hospital. Felt the searing pain of memory sting through me.
‘It was you that was in hospital. You that has that scar on your arm where the bone poked through…’
‘That scar on my arm is from when I fell off my bike… on the cobbles… on Hangman’s Row.’
‘Is that really what you think?’ demanded Twinnie, digging his fingers deeper into my flesh. Twisting them now too. Twisting so’s I’d finally understand what he was trying to tell me.
‘But why did Dick tell me all that stuff he did… back at the Choke? Why did Dick say it was him?’
Twinnie laughed.
‘He’ll say whatever he feels like depending on what the drugs tell him. Come on; you know that.’
I gasped, stared down at the familiar circular scar on my wrist, just down from the elbow. It glared purple.
‘Or he’ll say whatever I fucking well tell him to say,’ said Twinnie.
Chapter Fourteen
“It landed foul on the grass”
I must have passed out. When I came to, I had the strange feeling that a lot of time had passed, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly how much. Through the cracks in the farmhouse walls, I could see that it was still mostly dark, but it was the kind of dark in which there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Or at least I hoped there was.
My fingers ached. They remembered what I’d tried to do to Twinnie. I must have had the heavy weight of memory, of truth and of righteousness behind me in that moment. I rolled over on the stone floor and saw Twinnie. He was sitting, back propped up against the camp-bed, just staring at me. There wasn’t malice, or love, or compassion, or regret or anything in those beady eyes of his. Just blankness. Just inhumanity.
‘It’s you know who that’s driving us crazy like this,’ I whispered, trying to make some kind of connection with my childhood friend. ‘His poison is infecting this whole farmhouse.’
Twinnie snarled. His upper lip quivered and his jaw clenched.
‘You tell yourself that, soldier boy. You tell yourself that,’ he said.
‘You looked in on Dick?’ I asked, trying to be as normal as possible.
Twinnie simply resumed his staring match. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck starting to stand on end.
I tried to climb to my feet, using a broken old workbench to help me up.
‘Watch out for those old animal traps,’ said Twinnie, not making any effort to come and help. But I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want his cold fingers touching me again. I could still feel their impact on my shoulders; digging into my very soul just as Tommy Peaker had.
It was only when I’d finally got to my feet that Twinnie lit the cigarette. I heard him click open the lighter and light the cigarette in one move; something that could only be achieved with a Zippo. With my Zippo. I turned to look at him, extravagantly puffing away on that extra-long Dorchester and Grey – the cigarette brand he’d always taken the piss out of me for smoking because, apparently, old ladies did – and stroking his beard like he was performing some kind of meditation. Again, his eyes were fixed right on me.
‘Where’d you get that cigarette from?’ I asked.
Twinnie blew a smoke ring – not as impressive as the one Burt had blown a day or so ago – and picked up my Zippo from the floor in front of him. Started spinning it around with his fingers, occasionally snapping it open and sparking the flame.
‘Where’d you get that lighter from?’
‘In your pack, man,’ he said. ‘Chill. I went looking for some… uh… medicine I could bring you round with. I only helped myself to a couple of your ciggies… honest.’
I picked up the pack from the floor. Checked the small front pocket. Saw that the last two packs were missing.
‘Where’s the rest of them, then?’
‘In safe keeping,’ smiled Twinnie. ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’ll keep ‘em safe from this bogeyman that you’re so scared shitless of.’
I felt my fingers twitching for his neck again. I felt the cold burn in the marks on my shoulders.
‘Toss me one over. Now,’ I ordered.
‘Now wait a minute, soldier boy. I ain’t just one of your cadets or something that you can just boss around whenever you’ve had a bad day. Now be a good little soldier and fuck off out of here, or else you can go find somewhere else to hide away until your bogeyman comes after you.’
‘He’s your bogeyman too,’ I breathed as I unbolted the farmhouse door and stepped into the freezing mist which had descended on the courtyard.
Fucking hell it was cold. And eerie too. Like the mist was trying to tell me something. I felt it brushing up thick against my face. Felt it creeping under my t-shirt and caressing the nail-marks on my shoulder.
Felt it buffeting against me, trying to make me lose my footing. I reached for the now familiar uneven stonework of the farmhouse wall. Traced my way along that same path I’d already walked a dozen times since I’d been here. Followed it like it was a thread and the courtyard was a labyrinth.
It was only when I heard my grunts and pants echoing back to me that I realised that I’d entered the barn. It took a while for my eyes to get accustomed to the dark, but soon I managed to pick out a row of pitchforks lined up against the wall; I picked out old bails of hay which were rammed into the corner; I picked out the now dilapidated woodpile. And finally, I picked out Dick’s cocoon; he’d evidently kicked off the yellow tarpaulin in the night and it now lay sad and battered and useless half out the back door.
I crouched down over the pile of blankets. Felt the dampness of them; dew perhaps. Ran my hands along the once-soft material, trying to feel Dick’s body underneath. Started to panic when I couldn’t feel anything. Crawled to the other end of the cocoon. Thought I saw Dick’s face, shining white despite the gloom, but slowly realised that it was my eyes playing tricks with me.
And then I kinda threw myself into the cold blankets, hoping to touch any part of him. Just wanting to feel body-warmth. Wanting to make him say something like; ‘Get off me Bully. What are you; a puff?’ But there was nothing alive inside the blankets.
Oh God, what has he done? Oh God what has been done to him?
My mind raced through the possibilities; first, and least terrifying of them was the chance that Dick had simply wanted the drugs so much that he’d managed to extricate himself from the cocoon and tried to crawl back into town to the welcoming numbness of the main street flats and their naked bulbs. Second, and only marginally worse, was the possibility that Twinnie was fucking about with me. That he’d used the time when I was passed out to do more than just steal my cigarettes; perhaps he’d simply moved Dick. Perhaps he was in the outhouse or something. And then there was the option that I wanted to think about less than any of them; the fact that Tommy Peaker might well have come for him in the night, while Twinnie and I lay in the relative comfort of the farmhouse.
Hell, we’d offered Dick up like some goddamn sacrifice or something, hadn’t we? Although I’d tried to convince myself otherwise, through years of trying to make myself a better person, there was still a hidden part of me that only cared about number one. And now Dick was number two. He’d have that number carved into his chest, above the heart, just like Lion had the number one carved into him.
I let out this massive bellow of torment and pain and I don’t know what, gripping the blankets to me, trying to inhale the scent of Dick. But all I could smell were the horses that the blankets used to cover. All I could smell was the past, coming back to haunt me. Cantering back to haunt me, with a fucking lunatic highwayman in the saddle wielding a bloody spear that was destined straight for my cold, cold heart.
Somehow, I managed to wrench myself upright and using the crutch, I staggered back out and into the courtyard. Despite the fact I knew it was hopeless, I tried the door for the outhouse. But there was no Dick in there; no stupid, childish junkie shouting ‘surprise’ as soon as my worried face poked through the gap.
I staggered on. Past the farmhouse and round to the front, to the lawn where I’d picked out the ornamental wheelbarrow. Where was the famed view of Newton Mills now? Where was the belching factory and the school? Where were the garish council houses and the decrepit old mills? They’d all turned their eyes away, hadn’t they, and pretended that they didn’t see. They pretended that it was too misty, or that their minds had been too clogged up with drink. Or that they had better things to do than look in on other people’s business.
Oh, but they’d be whispering about it, wouldn’t they? They’d be creaking into each other; nudge nudge, wink wink; did you hear the one about the soldier boy up at Summit Farm? The one that fell asleep on his watch and allowed his injured comrade to just be carried off into the night. And he didn’t even stir. Just lay there feeling sorry for himself. That’s what happens when you take the boy out of Newton Mills; Newton Mills is taken out of the boy.
I picked a careful path through the middle of the garden and back to the fields. This, surely, if Dick had effected his own escape, would have been the way he had crawled. But the mist was still too thick to check whether there were any tell-tale crawl-marks on the grass. The mist was still too thick to see more than a few yards in front of me.
My throat burned for a cigarette, and for the comfort of my pack on my back. I tried to play ‘mission’ again, but all I could think of was the time we were up at Grange Heights yesterday, Dick and me. How he’d appealed to me to look after him. How my story about being on a beach in Spain was like an unwritten contract between us which said that I’d never let reality encroach upon his sheen of fantasy. Well: I’d broken my promise. But then, I couldn’t remember a single promise that I’d actually kept in all my life. And even if I did - if I could remember - would I even be able to trust my own memory any more? After what Twinnie had said? The memory of falling off my bike on the Hangman’s Row cobbles: a fiction. Setting fire to Dick’s or Lion’s sleeping bag? Made-up. And what about all those things I remembered about my brother and about Jane? The things that made me who I was? Were they fabrications too? I supposed that the only thing I could really trust now was the fact that the four of us had done what we’d done to Tommy. That was who I was.
Eyes stinging from the mist, I pressed on; stared into the middle distance and into nothingness. I could have been walking on the moon or in the desert or across a beach in Spain for all I knew. But all I knew was that I had to walk.
And so, I can’t actually pinpoint the moment that the mist began to clear; that Newton Mill’s self-imposed blindfold was lifted. All I remember is that suddenly, I could make out the bumpy, grassy terrain of the fields. Amazed that I’d not fallen over, I looked back at the house and saw that I’d not actually walked that far. When I looked back, I could see about half of Newton Mills town, as though it was emerging from the deep like some long forgotten sea monster.
‘Blind bastards!’ I yelled at the town. ‘Your heads are up your arses!’
I staggered on, still yelling.
More and more of the town became clear. I could see the toffeeworks now; for some reason it was not spouting candy-coated smog into the air this morning. I could see the half-basketball dome of the library at school. It was winking at me in the early morning sun.
‘You should all be punished!’ I yelled again. But knew now I was clutching at straws. Blaming society for the way I’d turned out in a way that I hated psychiatrists doing.
And then I saw him. A figure in the distance, stealing over the low part of the dry stone wall just as Dick and I had done yesterday. I crouched low to the ground and watched. The figure had a loping gait, but walked with a purpose which belied his stooping frame. Perhaps he was the first of the Newton Mills mob, come to descend on Summit Farm; come to burn Twinnie like the mad witch that he was. But I could see no pitchfork. In fact the figure carried no weapon of any description. Not so far as I could see. Or else it was Tommy Peaker, and decomposition was already increasing at a breakneck pace, half-crippling him; giving him a kinda hunchback.
Either way, he was rapidly gaining on my hidey-hole amongst the long grass. That limpy-gimpy stride swallowing up great swathes of turf and molehills and dead rabbits.
I decided there was only one thing for it. I lifted myself on my crutch, bit back the pain and ran towards the man on my one and a half feet; the crutch held high above my head like some primitive weapon.
‘Gary!’ shouted a voice. ‘Stop!’
But I couldn’t stop myself from barrelling into, through, over the figure. Couldn’t stop my half-foot trampling down onto something soft and unprotected. I fell headlong into a gigantic molehill, and face full of dirt, tried to catch my breath for whatever would come next.
But when I felt the figure’s hand on my
shoulder, I did not feel the ice-cold certainty that death was just around the corner, tap, tap, tapping with impatience. I felt warmth flowing through his fingers. I felt peace. I craned my neck around to see my old dad. He had a big smear of blood coming out of his ear-hole, but was standing strong and proud, holding out a thick hand to me, offering to help me to my feet.
‘Dad?’ I gasped. And then I could say nothing more. The tears just wouldn’t stop coming. The single tear I’d shed for old Burt had now become a torrent and threatened to overwhelm me. Dad simply held me up and pressed my face into his once great chest.
‘It’s all over son; all over,’ he whispered, over and over again.
And I so wanted to believe him. I wanted to be able to let him carry me down off that fucking hill, back to the house where I’d get washed up and then get started on building a bloody pigeon coop or pretty much whatever he fancied turning his hand at.
‘All over,’ he whispered. ‘I came up here as soon as I knew. I’m sorry son.’
‘About Burt? Have they found Burt?’ I sobbed into his chest.
Dad took my face between his two meaty hands like he used to when I was a child. He lifted my head off his chest and looked into my red raw eyes.
‘Not Burt, Gary. What are you talking about Burt for? Which Burt?’
‘Burt from the shop. On Dye Lane,’ I blubbered. ‘He helped me out the other day. That’s where I slept the night I came back. But he had some kind of heart attack and… I’m sorry dad… We left him there…’
‘Son?’ said dad in a strong voice, like he was talking to someone stuck down the bottom of a well. ‘Son? You know that old Burt from that shop in Dye Lane… Well, he died years ago. Right at the counter of his shop, just like everyone said he would. He just loved the place so much that he…’