by Anna Burns
They all swore they didn’t do it. Sure, why bury your own screwdriver? Sure, why bury somebody else’s? It got to the point where no workman would go into that house and the journalist made jokes about the work never getting done. But the Doe team was wiser. ‘What does he know!’ they cried. ‘Girly lemon-shirt, little pink-tie fruity bastard!’ They had nervously watched this light-hearted tail news item, which had followed a ‘Body Found! Another Body Found!’ murder item, but that tail item – it wasn’t light-hearted to them. They knew that particular house, see. It was the Demon House and it wasn’t that far away from the Doe Garden Community Centre either. That Demon House – it looked normal but it wasn’t normal and it was just up the road.
So the Does would terrify themselves with these tales of the supranormal, or else they’d borrow a stack of horror videos free from that new video-contraption shop and throw up a screen and watch them in the shack one after the other until the cock in the garden up the road told them all was safe at dawn. They’d only venture out then, for the ghost energy would have dissipated. Because of this, they’d be able to joke and bluster and make fun at this point.
‘Yeah,’ they’d say. ‘Yeah, sure. Yeah, right. I’ll let you think you scared me. You go ahead. I’ll carry on letting you think that.’ Then they’d remember.
‘Oh flip,’ they’d say, and look over to the corner. ‘We forgot about him. He’s still alive there dying.’ ‘Check if he’s really alive,’ said John Doe. ‘He’s dead,’ said Johnjoe. ‘Well, throw him away then’ – but at least one good thing to say about this is that they didn’t believe in vampires. Could you imagine? Grown men believing in the undead who went around taking bites out of people? Then those preyed-upon pursuing the undead back to their coffins in some underground cellar to put stakes through their hearts? Honestly. I mean, honestly. I’m not being flippant but if that were the case, you could understand why that journalist – the girly one the team wouldn’t mind killing if only they knew where he lived and could get their hands on him – well, you could understand why such as he might laugh.
But I’m not saying there aren’t ghosts either – so don’t be putting that about. All I’m saying is that don’t you think these people – I mean, really, these people! – are off the scale in the number of ghosts they think there are? They weren’t all grown up either. Even before they got arrested and it got to the police station and it got to the courthouse and it got to the jail, it turned out the youngest member was thirteen years only. That was the leader’s son. That would be John Doe’s son – the quiet boy, the disappointing boy, the boy who hadn’t found the knack yet. He was the youngest but the rest, bar the second and third youngest, were all in their twenties at least. The third youngest was JerryJudges – he of the Ouija, of the ‘Uncle Joe, which of them was it?’ question. The second youngest wasn’t Julie Doe but, like Julie, she was only fifteen.
So what was going on? Do we have a psychoanalyst or a psychoanalytic psychologist or a psychophysiological profiler or even an unaccredited enthusiast with Jungian leanings in the building who could perhaps do a bit of maturity work for us here? Is this about a state of stuckness? A state of sickness? Did these men perhaps leave school before they’d learnt enough and should have? Or is it that they couldn’t get themselves individuated and thus had intermingling mythic mirages, not only in their dreams but in their waking lives as well? I wouldn’t know about interpretations, for my expertise lies in being a bystander. But come on – werewolves? Monkey’s paw? Murdered youths coming back to get you? And that woman who turns you to stone just because you have a peek at her, and has – if you could credit it – snakes standing in for the auld hair?
Now I know you’re wanting, you’re busting for me to tell about God or maybe second best, about whether those ghost noises at the shack later when the group was being arrested were real or if they were imaginary, but I’m not at liberty, so please give up asking and accompany me back to the shop. Tom’s nose was still bleeding but now that was because he’d got punched on it. There were also new bruises in the making, given to both Toms by the Doe man.
Now we can’t blame Johnjoe for blaming the two Toms for his own psychological constructs. Sure, isn’t it natural for everybody to lash out at others when they get into the fear state? Johnjoe became convinced that Spaders’s face was starting to turn into an old woman’s and not only that – that it was turning into the face of Johnjoe’s maternal grandmamma. So he punched it. As he was doing so he had the perspicacity – which you can only get in situations when you start meeting your dead relatives – to turn quickly and check out the person behind. Guess what – Customer Tom’s face had turned into dead grandmother on Papa’s side. Naturally, Johnjoe had a go at her as well. Then he repunched the maternal for she was back on her feet, adjusting her headscarf and her gingham housecoat, then he took out his gun and jabbed it into Auld Ma Harrison’s side. The old lady squeaked, which had Johnjoe squeaking himself and jumping away, for it was too real, that squeak. It really did sound like his old granny, whereas he had been hoping that if he only half-believed it, she wouldn’t have taken on the three dimensions that she had. He kept re-hearing too, that slitty sound, that slit-slit-slitty sound of the split lip, of the skin ripping, of something tearing, that had been done by invisible forces upon Tom Spaders. It kept repeating itself, over and over, in Johnjoe’s by now fraught mind.
‘Get away from me! I mean it!’ he screeched, swinging his gun, his body drenched in sweat, fear and revulsion. ‘Get away from me!’ and then he took a shot at the paternal, but she ended up unshot for, in panic, he fired very wide. ‘Okay, dear, all right, dear!’ it seemed the wee granny was cooing, even though in reality, this woman never had cooed. She had smacked heads and jabbed people and snarled, ‘Stupid boy! Get out of the way. I said out of the way, stupid boy!’ – crack! That had been more Granny Harrison’s style. She was worse in her prime and her prime lasted all the eighty-five years of her life and appeared still to be lasting, and it didn’t matter that Customer Tom Cusack, in reality, was yelling, ‘Johnjoe! What did I do? I didn’t do anything!’ as he jumped behind the counter to be beside the other Tom. Both Toms were now standing with their hands up. Keeping his gun on them – for, between us, this was not the first time his grannies had appeared and disappeared and reappeared out of nowhere – Johnjoe backed into a glass cabinet, which some idjit had pulled over to block his exit from the shop. He was calming down, however, for he knew from experience that putting even a few feet between himself and his old caregivers would bring about their reduction, eventually their dissolution. Indeed, already they appeared to be turning back into the men they once were. Wait till he told the others, though. Two emanations appearing simultaneously – and walking, and talking – not silently hovering, as in ‘Stage One Phenomena’. As long as he didn’t reveal it was the grannies, he’d be quids up with the others on the ghost front.
Now it was the Tomboys’ turn to stare as the big man yanked, shoved and in the end pushed the tall cabinet away from the exit. He did it with such ferocity that it carried on moving and he emptied his gun into it as it started to fall. It fell, toppled, its glass doors smashing on to the glass countercase in front of it, but neither Tom retaliated, except in so far as to get out of the way.
Johnjoe was out the door – or almost. First he experienced some doorframe moments. He banged his body against one side, stubbed his toe against the other, paused, thinking, there is the door, there is the opening, just go through it, why can’t I go through it?, but he couldn’t, not until he’d knocked his head and torso about four times. Eventually he was through, after successfully ducking out of the way of four flashes of flappy people, then he managed to get over the threshold, screaming, ‘Can’t stand hysterical women!’ as he ran away.
Chapter Three
The meaning of ‘lull’ is to soothe, to compose, to quiet, an interval of calm, a calming influence. But that didn’t happen when Johnjoe left the gunshop. Neither of thes
e Tomses was going to feel lulled and even the one with the wife wouldn’t have a good sleep that night.
I don’t remember what Customer Tom said first. I was taken up with him, wedged in between the top of the fallen gun cabinet, which had been thrust up against the side of another gun cabinet, and with him lowering his hands – which were still up in surrender – to shift one of them out of the way. Glass crashed and a thick shard fell from the counter on to the top of the left boot of Tom Spaders. Spaders didn’t notice or else he didn’t care. I think Customer Tom Cusack was annoyed and said, ‘Were you messin’ about there, Tommy? Were you actin’ the goat, pretending all them cuts and bruises were from God or the Devil or something? ’Cos if you were, and yer man goes away and decides you were making fun of him, he’ll be back, and guess who’ll be included in his revenge as a grudge of association? Seems you didn’t give any thought to my well-being there.’ But maybe that’s not what happened for, you know, things can get muddled during the happening and during the after-happening – even for us bystanders – so, upon reflection, I’m now thinking Cusack might have said something that sounded less annoyed, and more that he thought it was funny, that he should escape with only a bit of a punch, and only a bit of a kick, and a gun shoved into only a bit of his abdomen. So maybe it was Gunshop Tom who got annoyed and upset instead.
‘Just like you, Cusie,’ he said, coming back into his body from wherever he had disappeared to out of it. His nose felt cracked, his teeth numb, his head jerked back as if someone were hauling on it, and he had the momentary sensation that Cusack was covered in black and white fur. Bits of loaves covered in pigeon feathers, cigarette packets, cigarette butts, auld chewing gum wrappers, auld chewing gum too, all seemed to be stuck on the floor and on the counter and on top of Cusack also, when really, after Spaders squeezed his eyes, those things were guns, bullets, cartridges and sugar – none of them on Cusack – and not bread, litter, hair or any type of fur at all. He felt sick and opened his mouth to breathe better.
‘You never want to face anything,’ he said. ‘It’s not funny, Cusie. Maybe the only way you’ll stop finding awful things funny is if you go out and get mugged and stabbed by a mob of teenagers yourself.’
It slipped out, the way those things do slip out during periods of associated damage. One thing’s smashed? Hell, why not dive in and smash everything else up as well?
During Spaders’s mini-breakdown in his twenties – I did mention he had a breakdown fifteen years earlier, didn’t I? Apparently every normal person’s supposed to have one every seven years. The sums don’t compute, though. It’s supposed to take ten years to get over the average breakdown, so that means you’d be in arrears with no respite in between. I don’t know who you could write to about that. Anyway, during the time Spaders had his mini, he kept experiencing funny things around his friendships. By funny I mean dreadful. He started falling out with all of his friends. Except Cusack. Cusack wouldn’t let himself be fallen out with. He’d turn up, hang around and initially Spaders would feel annoyed because he was continuing to show himself and asking if he, Spaders, wanted to go to the bar or something. So Spaders would resolve, next time Cusack showed his face he’d pick a big fight and get rid of him as well. Whenever Cusack did show, though, and asked Tom if he wanted to go to the bar or something, Spaders’s paranoia would melt and he’d feel nothing but unspeakable gratitude towards his old friend. This time, however, in Spaders’s latest breakdown – and aren’t breakdowns amazing in their versatility? – the thing about the friendships was the other way around.
This time Spaders kept wanting the contact with his mates to stay the way it used to be before the mugging and stabbing, so he’d long for Tom and the others to call and keep everything on the light and breezy front. But whenever they did, and were sitting around, having tea, playing with guns, chatting away, looking at postage stamps with gun pictures on them, Tom would get annoyed, for it seemed their lively cheer equalled a huge discounting of himself. How could they act as if nothing had happened, he’d think, sitting there, joking and patronising? So he’d feel as if it were those bastards, rather than the teenagers, who had ganged up on him themselves. Of course, at the same time, he knew what rubbish this was, that these were his mates. Still, though, the continual spurt of grudges – murderous grudges – kept coming on. ‘Kill them!’ something would whisper. It would prompt him, almost physically push him, nudge him in the shoulder. ‘Why don’t you just point that gun you’re holding and shoot them all now?’ But the moment would pass and thank goodness he hadn’t done what this persistent insane part was urging him on to. ‘Ach! You could have killed them,’ it said. It was disgusted. ‘If only you’d shot them when I told you. Make sure you shoot them next time they come around.’
So them coming, and them leaving, and what would happen inside Tom about shooting or not shooting became a routine – twenty or thirty times they all had to go through it, until the friends, even the thickest-skinned, felt something was wrong. They couldn’t put their finger on it, but after each short time of visiting, they themselves were becoming nervous – something to do with Tom not playing with his guns in the normal way he used to play with them before. Eventually, they stopped calling. No harm to Tom, they said, but it was gentler on themselves to go for tea and buns and guns in one of the other gunshops. So they did, urging Cusack to come as well. He wouldn’t. He continued to stick around and Spaders, in his trusting phase, in his grateful phase, would notice this loyalty and, in a softer mood, would rehearse trying to tell Cusack a few things he hadn’t quite told the truth about on the subject of that mugging, but in case he messes up, I’ll tell you it myself.
Three things important. First, how many teenagers were there really? Second, what age were these teenagers? Third and most important, when something awful happens to you, how long are you allowed before you’re supposed to be over it, and what happens if you’re not over it and take longer than the officially allotted time?
Big questions, except to people with disintegrated personalities. But we’re not them so let’s take the first one first.
How many attackers? Well, Spaders managed to tell the ambulance people when they were taking him to the hospital that there were ‘about ten teenagers who attacked me’. At the hospital he told the doctors before falling unconscious that ‘there were fifteen, Doctor, fifteen, maybe more’. To the police when they showed eventually – for, you know, those boys are understaffed and overstretched even if they do get the best pensions – he said there were twenty young adults. And every so often afterwards, whilst doing an involuntary splurge on the subject, an extra two or three seemed always to get added on. So, what’s the crack? I’ll tell you. The teenagers numbered three. One, two and three. That’s all.
This is not to say three teenagers can’t do a lot of damage.
They did do a lot of damage. Next question, what were their ages specifically once and for all?
This is shocking so prepare yourselves.
Those teenagers, the ones who stabbed and mugged Spaders and whom Spaders maintains were variations on vast groups of people? Over the course of splurging he said they looked to be crowds of about eighteen-, nineteen- and perhaps twenty-year-olds. Well, no. They were a batch of children – an eleven-, a ten- and a tag-along eight-year-old.
And lastly, how long ago did the mugging happen, or how long are you allowed to suffer and be in struggle before all around you get angry, shun you, or moan?
Oh dear.
Feel sad here, but I can’t protect him forever. Four years, that’s how long ago it was.
People here have their own version of time and it’s called the Jumbled Time Syndrome and it is contagious and everybody who suffers from Jumbled Time can’t help but suffer from Imprecision and Indiscretion too. Simply put: if you can’t countenance the concept of someone not being able to let go of something after four years and counting, you have to condense that figure to a number that would represent your personal version of the
time spent on it as having been enough. That’s what everybody did in Tiptoe Floorboard. Tiptoe Floorboard, by the way, was the nickname for the town. Its real name was Tiptoe Under Greystone Cliff. People who could take the town or leave the town called it ‘that auld shitehole’ and those who really adored the place, and who liked their diminutives also, strung out their intimacy with ‘Tippy-Toe-Under-Tippy-Toe-Ette’. They’re deranged those last people, though. I wouldn’t recommend hanging about with any of them.
Customer Tom decided the mugging had taken place as long as a year ago and initially that’s what I heard, which is why, innocently, I passed that on to you. Jennifer Doe decided it happened as far away as days ago, so what was wrong with yer man, she said, that he was still so dozy yet? Johnjoe decided it was yesterday, so why wasn’t Spaders out and about, spinning deals and getting on with things? And Spaders? Well, if reality were down to Spaders, he’d tell you right now that it happened to him a second ago. If you asked tomorrow he’d say, ‘It’s taking place simultaneously as we speak.’ It was so huge and terrible a thing to him, you see, that he needed to narrow the gap continuously in order for it to be remembered – the way people who go to the doctor’s always multiply up their ailments because they know the first thing the doctor’s going to do is to divide them back down. But it was four years ago, and it involved three children with one sharp knife between them. Tom decided this was shameful and, shame being terrible, how terribly shameful was that?