“Stop,” he said, ashamed at how weak he sounded. Ashamed, frightened he’d piss himself despite his hard cock, afraid at what would happen if he did.
“Please,” he said. “Please…stop it…let me go…”
“Not stopping your little soldier, is it?” said Sid, and Paul realized Sid was there, in the dark, listening to the wet sounds of his sister’s ministrations.
“What do you want? What? I’ll…” Paul didn’t know what he would do. All he knew was that’d he’d do anything and everything he could just to live.
Not going to happen, he thought through his terror and his arousal.
“How about I chop off your cock so you can skull-fuck yourself?” said Silvia.
Not going to…
Sudden, excruciating agony. Complete pain, beyond anything he’d ever imagined. Enough to forget everything else entirely. A single focal point of pain that blew away thought, all feeling, his sense of self, his words, his breath. The shock of it sent him reeling into some kind of other world where there was nothing but pure agony. For a second, maybe less, nothing but that pain.
A second, only a single second, some kind of singularity of pain, like a black hole, a vortex, sucking him dry and long and thin until he was nothing more than a strand of flesh and consciousness. A single lonely second in which he understood that one of his insane captors had just blinded him.
30
Mark Deacon, Paul’s father, was Paul’s hero when he was growing up. He was always proud of his father. Sure, they had their fights. Paul wasn’t much for listening as a child, wasn’t much for doing as he was told. Mark Deacon’d been brought up by his own father on the strap and knuckle, but he never raised a hand to Paul. He was stern, he shouted, he punished. But he’d never belted either of his sons.
If Mark Deacon, Paul’s father, was his hero, his little brother Joseph was his baby, his charge. He felt responsibility for his younger brother, because of love, and because of the lessons drummed into him, but also because Joseph was cool. He was funny and cute and polite, and a kind of effortless love flowed from Joseph to Paul and back the other way, too.
“Paul, watch your brother,” was the refrain at home from both his father and his mother.
Paul would have done it anyway, out of love, rather than duty.
But he took his job and his charge seriously. He looked after Joseph, watched him, helped him onto swings in the park and made sure he didn’t get hit by a car or a bike when they had to go across roads, held his little brother’s hand on the way to the corner shop, hugged him when he skinned his knees or elbows. Let him bleed into his own favorite T-shirt when Joseph fell from the Witch Tree in the Hangman’s Woods (the girls called it the Fairy Tree, but Paul knew it was a Witch Tree and girls were stupid anyway).
Joseph was even cuter when he spoke, because when he did, he mangled his words and sentences in a way that made Paul laugh. Joseph liked to make Paul happy, so he mangled his words on purpose. Paul liked to laugh, so he never did correct Joseph.
He was, Paul thought, just the cutest thing in the world.
So when Joseph went missing, the world swallowed Paul and his family right along with him.
31
They were playing in the woods. It was the height of the summer holidays, and playing in the woods was just an ordinary thing. Back then, the ‘70s, kids did all kinds of stuff that even older kids today can’t do, or aren’t allowed to do.
Back then, Paul was seven, his little brother three—old enough to play in the woods, old enough for Paul to be the responsible one.
Except he was seven, and when he climbed down from the Witch Tree, Joseph was gone. Just gone.
He ran home, his heart pounding and hurting, with hot tears pouring down his face. Mark and Mary Deacon weren’t working because it was a Saturday. They ran, too, into the woods, screaming, shouting, searching without success.
They didn’t find Joseph, not that day. The Deacons didn’t find him at all.
The police did.
It turned out Joseph had wandered and crawled his way through the fence around one of those deep holes called Dane holes—great pits in the earth, prehistoric mines. Fallen, silently, maybe while Paul and his friends had been shouting at each other high on the Witch Tree’s tempting fat branches.
A little kid falls down a big hole, it doesn’t turn out sweet. Joseph was dead.
A short, simple story. Until the following night, when Joseph sat on his brother’s bed again. At the foot of his bed.
Like now, even though deep within the pain Paul understood he wasn’t in the past, wasn’t a heart-cut-out grieving kid of seven years old. He wasn’t dead and Joseph was. He wasn’t in his childhood home, under the covers, in the dark.
But there he was, just the same. Little dead kids don’t care if their older brother’s hurting, or in the future, or way down in the deep kind of darkness you get at the bottom of a big hole, like a Dane hole.
Joseph was right there, real as anything Paul had ever seen or felt or known, sitting, at the foot of Paul’s bed.
“You’re dead, Joseph. You’re dead,” said Paul. Joseph had wavered in Paul’s vision as he cried that night. He cried a long time, even longer than when his hero Mark Deacon took his own life.
All Paul’s fault. All his fault.
“You’re dead,” said Paul. “Quit bouncing…”
32
Joseph bounced up and down like a demented rabbit at the foot of Paul’s bed.
“Joseph, quit it. Dad’ll go mad!’
Bounce, bounce.
“Joseph,” said Paul, laughing, though. “Stop it! Dad and Mum’ll hear you.”
“No they won’t,” said Joseph, his voice full of that craft he had, that streak of cunning even though he was only a baby, really. “I’m only little. Don’t make much noise.”
“You’re only little like a fart,” said Paul, but he wasn’t being mean, he was just trying to make Joseph laugh. He didn’t really care if Dad and Mum told them off. He liked it when Joseph played up. He’d get told off, not Joseph, but he didn’t mind.
Joseph did laugh. But too loud. His jumping didn’t bring Dad up the stairs and away from his evening television, but his laughter did. They both heard the footsteps on the stairs. Thick footsteps like a heavy-built man would make on old creaky wooden steps.
“Shh,” said Paul. “Get into bed!’
But he was still laughing. Joseph jumped off the bed into a crouch, and as he crouched he really did fart. A big fat squelching fart. That was all she wrote.
Both of them rolled around. Paul in bed, Joseph on the floor, laughing and crying. The door opened and their dad was in the doorway. He wasn’t angry. He couldn’t be, because the two boys laughed so hard it was like a kind of plague, something infectious that leapt victims through the air, through sound waves.
Dad was laughing now. Laughing and laughing so hard his clothes actually fell off.
“His…dad’s…his…” Paul couldn’t even get the words out, he was laughing so hard it hurt and he couldn’t see. His bed was still shaking, rocking, his whole body shaking and rocking. Only, it wasn’t his dad and his brother really was light as a fart. Joseph leapt onto his own bed, rocking it. Paul’s dad, his hero, Mark Deacon, didn’t look like his dad any longer, but some skinny old man with not a shred of clothing to cover him.
The old man smiled, sat at the foot of Paul’s bed. It didn’t feel weird. It should have—a naked man sitting at the foot of his shaking bed, his (dead) brother laughing and rocking across the room.
“Going to give you a gift, Paul. Give you a little heads-up,” said the old naked guy at the foot of Paul’s bed.
Joseph laughed and laughed but it didn’t sound like he was enjoying himself anymore, like when real, God’s honest laughter becomes a little too much and flips over into painful, the kind that makes your guts and head hurt.
“Going to give you a gift, Paul. Going to give you a gift…”
“Joseph
’s in trouble…”
“Joseph’s fine, Paul. He’s dead. He’s fine.”
“He’s not dead! Don’t say he’s dead! He’s not! He’s not!”
The old man shook his head, sadly. “You’re not dead, are you, Paul? Are you?”
“What are you saying? Why are you talking like that?”
“Are you dead, Paul?”
“I’m not dead! Stop talking!”
“Good,” said the old man, shaking away at the foot of the bed, just like Paul. “Ever smoked?”
“What?”
“Ever smoke a cigarette?”
“I’m seven.”
“No? Well, first time for everything.” The old man drew a packet of cigarettes out, and shook one free. Everything shook. The lighter, the cigarette, the bed, the room. Joseph’s rocking wasn’t causing it.
This dream was getting wrong, thought the seven-year-old/grown-up Paul. It’s wrong and I don’t like it, he thought. Cunt blinded me, thought the grown man.
“Try a little. Only a little. Special magic, young man,” said the old man, holding out a lit cigarette to Paul. “Special magic, Master Deacon. Take a little puff. Go on.”
“I’m not allowed to smoke. I’m only seven. And it stinks.”
“What, are you chicken?”
“I’m not scared. I just don’t want to smoke.”
“What, even if I dare you?” The old man grinned, to show he was kidding, because you never could tell which way a kid would leap sometimes.
“Joseph…”
“Don’t worry about Joseph,” said the man, a little sharply, but not rudely or horribly. “He’s fine where he is. Look, he’s laughing.”
“But it’s not happy laughing.”
“Smoke a bit, then. He’ll be better. Trust me.”
Naked man at the end of the bed. Something jarring, not quite right, but an adult saying “trust me.” Paul was a child of a different era. A child from back when children were children and adults were right. Always right.
“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to finish it, okay? How’s that? Just like trying a little cabbage with Christmas dinner, eh?”
Paul was still suspicious, but the old man was kind, and Joseph wasn’t laughing anymore. Joseph was just sitting, watching. Paul looked at Joseph. Joseph nodded.
Paul took the lit cigarette and held it like a pencil. Cabbage isn’t that bad, he thought, and took a little smoke into his lungs. Inexpertly, so that it made him cough and his face turn pale and his gall rise, but he took a little of that magic smoke and coughed and the room shook and his lungs hurt and he was crying tears that hurt to cry because Joseph was about as real as a fart and the old man wasn’t there anymore and he was crying blood not tears. The earth shook beneath him.
An earthquake.
He was a copper in the middle of city being pulled apart, in agony. He was blind in the dark that didn’t matter in the middle of some kind of massive tremor and a howling, screaming storm above. He was in the subway and he was blind. He was blind and someone had taken his eyes from him and an old man had given him his first taste of a cigarette in his dreams. His brother was dead and the little fart was bouncing somewhere. Paul hoped he was bouncing happy, living in that night (that night that never happened?) and bouncing and laughing and farting.
His father was dead and he’d laughed so hard his clothes had fallen off. Paul didn’t remember that ever happening, because it never had. But if that wasn’t true, then Joseph didn’t bounce.
Little kids fall down big holes, they don’t bounce.
But right there, right then, down in the dark with the taste of that cigarette in his mouth, still, Paul chose what to believe, what not to believe.
Joseph could bounce, all right.
But…
But?
But the old man had been naked and in his dreams and he’d been real, too.
And with that, like the old naked man was some kind of talisman, a reality check in the middle of a bad trip, Paul came back.
And he was still blind in the dark. He was still in the middle of an earthquake in London. Blind in the dark with two psychopaths who might still be alive.
Blind in the dark…
33
The maelstrom roared above ground and tormented, screaming wind broke through the cracks in the earth and rubble to scour Paul’s skin raw with swirling debris. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. Tentatively, he raised his hand toward his eyes, but stopped short, terrified of what he might find. What kind of mutilation had been done to his face?
He was too afraid to find out. Paul Deacon lay blind, trying to sense his surroundings…threats…with nothing but his hearing. He had no way of knowing if it was still dark, or if Sid and Silvia watched, silently laughing.
He remembered being bound, now he was free. They must have freed him…how else would he get free?
Why?
Did it mean they’d lived through the quake?
Not a quake. An aftershock.
Was he even underground still? Had he been found, taken to a hospital?
Of course I haven’t, he thought. It’s the feel of the place, the sound of the howling wind, the cadence of my tears and my breathing, panting…I’m panting…got to try to calm down…
He was still underground. And…were they there? His captors…his mutilators? Should he speak? Ask? Was he that desperately afraid that he’d beg again? Beg the fucks that took his eyes?
No.
If they hurt him again? Hurt him worse? What could be worse?
No.
He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t beg.
But still he couldn’t stop himself sobbing. Still his hand hovered above his face. Wetness on his temples. Blood? Some kind of fluid from his eyes? Simple tears?
The only way to tell now was to put his hand on his eyes and feel. But he couldn’t. He was too afraid. Afraid to find out if there were nothing but bloody holes remaining in his skull. He had no idea at all. And he didn’t want to find out.
Maybe I’m dead? he wondered, hopefully.
Maybe this is what death is like? Confusing, painful, black. No sight, just the scouring winds of heaven flensing your flesh until you are nothing but bones, frightened to reach out for…what? Frightened of what?
What are you afraid of, Paul? What are you afraid of? What?
It took most of his breath and will to do it, but he forced himself to quit his sobbing. What was the point of crying? He was blinded. It was the end of the world, or close enough that it didn’t matter. The little rock had hit and he’d felt the earth shake and the wind score his skin. He’d been burned and heard the screams of death and the laughter and cheers of the animal insane as they rioted and cavorted on the carcass of a once-great city.
This was the end. If it wasn’t, then he wished it were. What kind of world was it that laughed at people burning to death? Was there anything left worth saving?
Maybe.
The memory of his little brother bouncing, bouncing on his bed, surfaced. An old guy, naked. A cigarette.
Nothing but a dream.
Really? Nothing but a dream? Or was it a memory long forgotten?
Could he have forgotten such a thing? A visit from his dead brother and some weird old naked guy?
“Maybe” was the best he could manage. It’d been a hard time. The hardest. His brother, then his father. He thought he’d known pain then…
“This is nothing,” he whispered, then jumped because the sound of his own voice surprised him. He hadn’t expected to speak, but he had. And it felt good. Like something anchoring him in the storm. He tried his voice out again.
“Don’t be a pussy,” he said. His voice stronger this time. More…him.
He touched his eyes and found them whole. Blind, but whole.
Would they heal?
“Don’t fool yourself,” he said again, and smiled. Actually smiled. He had no idea why, but it felt solid on his face. Something on his face cracked, lik
e a small cut from the debris swirling around on the air. He felt fresh blood trickle down his face.
If I can bleed, I’m not dead.
“I’m not dead.”
He waited a beat, half expecting Sid or Silvia to interject, maybe say, “not yet.”
But, nothing. Nothing but his breathing and the pain and the wind.
The earth beneath his back was still. The wind was dying, its strength lessening with each breath he took, until, finally, he could breath.
“I’m not dead,” he said again, just for the comfort of a voice, even if it was only his own.
So, you want to live?
He did. He really did.
You want to get out?
“Yes.”
Then you’ve got to get up. Get moving. Keep moving so you remember that you’re not dead.
“I’m not dead,” he said, a final time. Everything else; his blindness, the rock, the animals loose in the city… all that was secondary.
Primary for him was to get the fuck out of the subway. Find out what was going on above. Find help, or help others, if there was anyone left. But then, of course there would be. There would still be life. Life wouldn’t just stop. People would survive. Maybe only for months, or years, maybe decades, but the world wouldn’t end in one stroke.
Be pretty damn close, but not the end.
Just…
Different?
Paul laughed at himself.
“Blind optimism?”
He laughed again, then did the only thing he could. Got to moving.
34
With no vision, Paul had no way to tell the time. Maybe, before the rock hit, he’d have been able to tell just from the sounds and smells of his city.
But this city wasn’t his anymore.
Gauging the minutes or hours he spent climbing was impossible. To him, each clawed meter felt like an hour, as he climbed rubble and ruin slowly and carefully toward the feel of the air. Dirty, burnished air full of the stench of fires and dust and death was his only way of sensing direction. Even his own body could not always tell which way was up, which down. Like being in an avalanche of stone. But if he could feel the air, smell the stink of a city in its deaththroes, then he was headed in the right direction.
Left to Darkness Page 9