The Poison People

by Alex Makepeace

The springs yawned as I eased myself up from the bed, the plug-in air freshener failing to mask the stench of decay—the rot in the walls, the weight of skin, all the dried-out juices that had seeped into the mattress over the years. I could still hear the legion of shifting, feasting bugs, and couldn’t help scratching.

  “Hereyouare,” she continued in her sleep. Her cellulite-flecked flanks glimmered in the morning light. The sweat had dried on her now, but I could still smell its cheesy sourness as I pulled on first one sock, then another. I clenched my stomach as I put on my boxers, jeans, t-shirt.

  I was closing the door as she turned over, rubbed her eyes and peered blearily at me through the gloom.

  “You’re going,” she said huskily.

  I nodded.

  She closed her eyes and fell back to sleep. I heard her begin to snore as I made my way down the stairs.

  I caught a 29 bus at a stop just down from the hotel. The half-light was perfect for me—the driver still drowsy, the only people on the bus barely-legals. I sat in the cubbyhole downstairs where the camera couldn’t reach and made myself small, forgotten already.

  North London slipped by in shades of grey.

  The 29 lurched stop-start, slowly filling up, and with every new arrival, my senses came further undone. I was half up and half down, half-deafened by the cludder-shudder of the bus, half-high on the hydrogen, the carbon; the dried piss, fried food, grease, the mouse mummifying beneath my seat; the peaches, apricots, almonds, roses, musk that provided a slapdash mask to the fishy privates, sourness, gut fart, rot of the other passengers.

  The man opposite gave me a funny look and I forced myself to sit back down. I tucked my hands beneath my thighs, closed my eyes. Opened up again and he was looking elsewhere, looking at the young mother juggling the two kids. Like a cadaver, this man. His rubbery, jaundiced skin. His bloodless lips, eyes flat like buttons. Yet there was something in him still alive. I could feel it nestling there in his centre, radiating outwards. Christ, I could almost feel its oven heat.

  Cancer. It was cancer, I could feel it. Burning him up inside, its becoming that would be the end of them both. And I was horrified. And I was awed. And I was getting up and looking him in the eye and making the OH, forcing my mouth to make the warning OH but the words wouldn’t come, they caught in my throat. A rasp. A sandpaper rasp was all.

  And he must have been thinking I was crazy, a madman, a knife-wielding random act, and I was turning on the greasy pole and heading up the stairs, bounding to the front of the bus and flopping down, only now the slam-door of my lungs yawning back open. Never again, they said as they let the life back in. Never try that again, Vereesh—to draw attention to yourself, shout for help—or like your friend on the bottom deck we’ll go down together, a pair of parachutists tangled in a deadly, spiralling embrace.

  And I didn’t doubt it, not for a minute.

  The city began to shed its monochrome suit for the colours of the day.

  I could feel the bus filling up behind me with its wave upon wave of synthetic and secret odours. Among this cloud, this crowd, I could, at least feel some comfort in obscurity, but then, outside, a creeping familiarity: the laundrette, the dodgy pub, the bookie’s, all-night grocery – we were entering my neighbourhood.

  The traffic congealed, the bus inched forward as three lanes merged into one. I leant over to see what the problem was: a police car was parked at an angle across part of the road, blue and white tape stretched across the street behind it. An ambulance was sitting there, cops and other uniformed types chatting among themselves.

  Most of the talk behind me was Slav, save one coarse cockney that said: “Stabbing.”

  Then the bus lurched forward and we were through the bottleneck, heading on towards the centre of the city, the diversion guiding us away from the halls of residence we should by rights have passed. And I wanted to believe that—that it was a stabbing. He must have heard it on the radio that morning. A drunken spat, a hoodie rumble, a Turk feud. A stabbing, and if I was to get off the bus at the next stop and walk back, sleepy-eyed from my night on the tiles, the cop at the tape would wave me through, say just a gang thing, mind the bloodstains, mate, and I’d let myself into the still-slumbering halls, push open my unlocked door, pull the blinds. I’d drape my clothes over the chair and crawl beneath the duvet. Sleep, until afternoon.

  We finally reached the city centre. And it was as if I were in a film in rewind, retracing the steps I had taken before: now I was boarding the coach, now it was reversing out of its berth at Victoria Station, hissing forward, but me, I was still passing backwards through the city streets with their grand white mansions, their embassies, their monuments, stores, tourists, suits, students, chaos, colour. Cover, I thought. Cover enough, and, honestly, I was torn between the staying and the going but I’d chosen to go, so go I would. Go, Vereesh, and do the only thing you can think of.

  Run back to Ma.

  Which makes a change. Running to you, I mean, running solo.

  “Little toad, my little toad.” You’d stroke my hair but what good did that do? Another sooty carriage, another soot-black night. Nudged awake, lifted up and wrapped in an itchy blanket. No, I’d insist, shrugging it off, I was big enough to stand. Irritably, sleepy, dreamy, as you zipped my parker to the top and the world was enveloped by a fluffy snorkel. It began to dawn on me as we ran for the last train—that I was leaving Daz, Chaz, Davey, Jules behind. The dread prospect of a new school, a new gang. My shrill squeal, beetroot-faced tantrum. Those tender but determined hands hoisting me on board. Whispered apologies, heartfelt thanks, the heavy clunk of the door, the screech of the ageing rolling stock. The turning away, the digging my face into the scratchy seat. I’m sorry, little toad, my little toad.

  You finally found a hole for us to hide in though, didn’t you, Ma. Hebdon-Le-Hole, ha ha. Fuck knows where the Le came from, but the hole was plain enough—there were two of them in fact, set at opposite ends of the toon, as the locals would have it, their mounds of slag and low-slung buildings the tip of an industrial iceberg.

  The whole area was riddled with mines. I sometimes imagined the pavement giving way as I walked home from school. One minute I’d be strolling along, the next I’d feel just air beneath my feet and this whumping noise as I fell through the caved-in ground, passing tunnel after tunnel as if through the collapsing storeys of a high rise. It’d stop with the sky miles above me, and as the dust would clear I’d find myself face-to-face with a leering skeleton in a miner’s helmet or a Celtic treasure trove which would transport me and Ma away to the beaches of . . .

  “Oy! Hippy prick.”

  Fucking Hebdon. For sure, the only miners down the holes were dead ones by the time me and Ma showed up, but there was no shortage of their angry offspring.

  “You’ll love it,” she said as we pulled into Sunderland railway station. “It’s by the sea. It’s been a long time since you’ve been by the sea, hasn’t it.” I just scowled through my fringe. By now I’d grown out of tantrums and into sulks, but they were no less heartfelt. It’s hard to describe the burning sense of injustice I felt, the betrayal, shame even. Ashamed of myself, mainly, for believing that we’d settled at Elizabeth Road, Birmingham, the ramshackle three-storey terrace we’d shared with a couple of other families. Ashamed for drawing on every positive word Ma had uttered about the house, the place, the people as inferring that this time maybe, surely we’d be staying put. Ashamed about Victoria From Upstairs, with whom I’d spent countless hours camping in the front room, watching kids’ shows, playing Harry Potter, and who’d come with us all the way to the station and presented me with a crayoned goodbye card with a wizard (me) and witch (her) and all I could do was snatch it without saying thank you and run up the platform where she couldn’t catch me.

  “Look, there’s Samat!” Ma ran towards him and they hugged.

  “Matthew!” He strode towards me, arms outstretched. Ignoring my warning look, he hugged me every bit as enthusiastically as he had M
a. He let go and stood back, chuckling. “I’m not going to say it . . . okay, why not? You’ve grown, man. Soon gonna be chasing the pussy, eh?”

  “Samat.”

  “It’s back to Clive now, Ren. This ain’t sannyas, just a bunch of New Agers doing it for themselves. Though to be honest I’m feeling more like an old ager these days. Got to hand over to the new generation, eh, Matthew?”

  “It’s . . . Vereesh,” I said. He looked at me, then Ma. Grinned, his teeth ivory white against his leathery tan.

  “Vereesh it is then.” He picked up Ma’s luggage and led us through the station. “It’s perfect, Ren,” he was saying. “Dirt cheap and massive. Enough space for everyone. It’ll be just like the old days.”

  “Not just like, I hope,” said Ma.

  “No,” said Clive, loading up the van. “Not just like.” I was already inside but the doors were still open when I heard her say, “You’re sure it’s safe?”

  “I’m sure, babe,” I heard him say.

  I watched them embrace in the wing mirror.

  At first I thought Sunderland was just like Birmingham, except with fewer black people, but as the town began to give way to countryside, I grew uneasy.

  “Where is it we’re going?” I asked.

  “It speaks!” said Clive.

  “A place called Hebron . . . ” said Ma.

  “Hebdon,” said Clive. “Hebdon-le-Hole.”

  “Funny name,” said Ma.

  “Funny name, funny place,” said Clive. “Old mining town, except the mines have gone. Well, not gone exactly—they’re still there, sort of—but it’s all closed down now. That’s why it was so cheap!”

  “It’s a big house,” said Ma. “Like Birmingham but bigger.”

  “Much bigger,” said Clive.

  “We’ll be sharing with lots of others. It’ll be a big community. Just like the old days.”

  “Except not just,” said Clive.

  Ma laughed. “No,” she said.

  “Will I have my own room?”

  “Will he have his own room, Clive?”

  “The kids have got their own barn. How about that? When you’re grown up and your girlfriend asks,” he adopted a shrill voice, “where did you grow up? In a barn? You can say, as a matter of fact . . . ”

  We passed through a cluster of houses, by some shuttered-up shops, an abandoned church, a concrete bus stop sheltering a gang of older kids. As I looked back, one of them gave me the finger.

  Soon after, we turned off the road and down an overgrown lane, foliage brushing against the sides of the van. And then, there it was: the house. An overblown gothic pile jam-packed with turrets, crevices, hidden passageways and gargoyles. Home to a bunch of hippies dreaming of a new age, a haven for Ma and me.

  The Swami didn’t like Fate, did he, Ma? Said it makes you slaves, makes you Indian. But what were we doing except running from it? Not the Fate you envisaged sure enough, but you’ve got to admit there’s a certain sweet irony here, one even the Swami would appreciate. Did you think we’d finally got away with it? Is that it, why you thought it was safe to stop?

  Oh, Ma.

  14

  As the coach pulled in, Sunderland seemed pretty much the same as ever, only kind of shrunken by my London horizons. But there was none of the frustration, the resentment I used to feel as the coach swept into the station, none of the self-pity about being stuck out on a limb like this, not even in Newcastle for fuck’s sake. Instead I felt a kind of cool-eyed comfort. I knew this geography, knew what was around every corner, and even though I could sense the danger, at least here I could face it on my terms.

  But I didn’t want to be recognised and I pulled my hood up as I crossed the station for the connection to Hebdon.

  Through the diesel fumes I could taste the salt in the sea air. The sea was never far from you in these parts. I remembered the toxic beach near the house, with its sulphurous sand and moon rock, a far cry from the seaside image the region liked to promote. If the fine Seaham beach was the city’s beautiful, if chilly, face then our poisoned beach was its hairy arse, so of course that was where we kids used to hang out, clambering over the abandoned cars, burning stuff. Maybe it was a kind of subconscious rebuke to the organic health kick the grown-ups forced upon us, and for a moment I wondered if that was it—that maybe I’d absorbed some kind of chemical shit from back then, become a sort of Toxic Avenger like in some Eighties schlock horror, and as I boarded the bus, turning this over in my mind, I could almost hear myself laughing, fuck it, I was laughing, and the driver was giving me this crazy kids look. Then I stopped laughing, wondered: was that it?

  Was that really what was happening to me?

  Was I losing my mind?

  Rewind . . . the tape kept playing backwards . . . to the leaving home, the arriving in London. The halls, the drinking, the lessons, the fucking. Daniel, Jane, Cal. Ahmed. Then what happened. All that happened—the blackouts, the panic . . .

  This thing. This thing I could feel even now inside of me, coiled in some dark recess, it felt like; quiet, resting for the moment, but ready to take me over again if I stepped out of line.

  Was it not nearly so mysterious as I would have it? Not nearly so special, so terrible.

  Was it maybe just . . . madness?

  The bus took its usual wretched route, lurching through the town then into the estates, but I was blind, engulfed by this double-dread, the one for what I was, the other for what it meant. In short—was this all in the mind? Was that all there was to it—young Vereesh lost it down in London, ended up on Ma’s doorstep gibbering of infections, sights, smells, possessions . . . was taken away, poor lad, shuffling around the mental ward even as we speak. Always was a bit of a weirdo, that one.

  Oh Lord, if this was madness then I had it. Because I could look at what happened, look at what I was, and know it was real. Whatever I was, it was, there in the darkness, every bit as tangible as the tongue between my teeth, the nails pressed into my palms. The springs in the seat, the cool of the window against my temple as we passed the sign that read Hebdon-le-Hole.

  Oh Lord. Whatever it was, I was.

  There was no one at the bus stop. The common, with its tangled swings and bashed-up slide, was likewise empty. The bus moved off and I began to make my way along the high street, as barren as ever but somehow still comfortingly familiar.

  I glanced into the corner store where Mr Sykes was still behind the counter, ready to sell you king-sized cigarettes for 50p a pop as long as “you don’t tell your betters”. A taciturn man, he’d never been that friendly as such, but this time he caught my eye, raised his hand, mouthed, “Lad,” and beckoned me.

  I looked away, quickened my pace. Don’t lower your guard now, Vereesh. Not when you’re this close to home.

  I put my head down, concentrated on what was ahead.

  Ma. You’d likely be in the kitchen or the workroom. There’d be others, there always were: from the house or further afield. Better strangers, cos then there wouldn’t be too many questions. Either way I’d need to be casual, upbeat, even, so they didn’t take too much account, then slip them in, the words, our code.

  “You’ll remember our code, won’t you?”

  Crow Town. It’s Crow Town, Ma. Come back from Crow Town. Been to Crow Town. Gone to Crow Town. You would remember, wouldn’t you? After all your insisting?

  Of course you would.

  I was almost through the town now. Around the bend was the turning towards the house, but something made me stand a while, lean into the silence, and although I couldn’t hear anything, I was beginning to pick up a scent, a smell, of something chemical. And I could feel that thing, that madness, whatever it was, stir inside of me, spread its icy tentacles. And I was off the road and I was ducking into the woods.

  I picked my way through the trees, avoiding the well-trodden path direct to the house. Instead I ducked and scrambled through the overgrown tangle of brambles, weeds and branches in the direction of the beach. I
kept out of sight of the house because if I could see them, then they could see me, which was not so much my thoughts as those of my thing, keeping me safe and doing what was necessary.

  The beach was still baked yellow and burned brown, the sea dark as lead. The same old carcasses of machines and sea creatures; even the sky seemed sick here, bleached by our bad living.

  I skirted along the sand, kept close to the tree line. Finally found what I was looking for.

  This path took me back through the woods and I was soft and I was swift, dodging the coal-black trees, my feet falling on quiet ground untouched by autumn leaves. Inside my head there was a map of this place, a memory of the big tree with its tyre swing that stretched over the dip and, above it, the rickety platform nailed into the high branches, which looked out over the sea and, more importantly, down onto the house.

  There it was, the tyre suspended over a carpet of undisturbed leaves. I began to head towards it when there was that smell again, that chemical sharpness that set my senses screaming, and I ducked down, behind a too-thin tree. Too late to move: the sharpness was close now and I would have started running for it, making a mad dash like any other forest creature, but I sensed it was too dangerous even for that now. So, as much as my stillness would allow, I shrunk into myself in an effort to become small as could be, as skinny as I could behind this skinny tree. And I waited.

  I waited.

  There.

  Yes, and there. A glimmer; a slither growing bigger, bigger still, moving through the woods, it’s fluorescent orange skin as raw as fire. A blazing sloth, a bloated biped.

  It must have been quite a labour to carry that amount of bulk and I could hear its shallow breath through its long black snout.

  Hollowly, heavily, steadily it picked its way towards me.

  I could have backed off, made a break for it. I could have maybe outrun this one but knew I’d be done for. Where there was one there would be others. Hundreds, thousands. In cars, ’copters, on the ground. The air waves would be buzzing, the internet instantaneous. I wouldn’t see out the hour.