She was looking past him at the canvas. “It’s good,” she announced, then looked up at him, still smiling. “Almost real,” she added.
His laugh was nervous, strained and he shot a quick glance at the painting. “Yeah, ‘almost’ ”
“The blood actually looks wet!”
“Probably because the paint actually is.” He commented with a slight smile.
She wrinkled her face in the way she did every time she got mad and moved her hand out towards the painting. “Wet enough to smear?”
“Yes, but don’t!” Not even a vague trace of humour.
She smiled and withdrew her hand. “Where the hell do you get the ideas from Josh? Does this just come from your mind?”
He looked at the picture and nodded, then turned back. “Yeah... it just...” The words drifted off and he stared at his painting almost willing it to do something.
“Weird mind!”
“I’m a weird person.” At that moment he believed that even more than usual.
She laughed. Josh loved that sound. The fact it was a rare sound made it even more sacred.
“Hey, how did you get in here anyway, didn’t Rufus lock the door?”
“No, I saw him outside, so he left the door open for me.”
Josh half heard the words. He was having difficulty focusing on the current situation. Had he really seen what he had?
“Anyway,” she continued. “Are you nearly finished? Because I’ve got some weed if you want to get a smoke before we go down?”
“Yeah?” He answered distantly. His eyes burned into the painting, daring it to do something. “Oh Christ,” he thought, “I really need a break from this.” Taking the chance to chill out seemed like a good idea.
He turned back to Sarah, again slightly mesmerised and smiled. “Yeah I could do with a little.”
“Good, oh but we’ve got to meet Rob at the Cathedral.”
“Rob?” He questioned suspiciously.
“Yeah, my boyfriend, Rob.”
“I thought his name was Alex?”
“No, Alex’s name was Alex, Rob’s name is Rob.” Her voice dripped sarcasm and she looked at him as if he didn’t have a clue. He hated the way she made him feel small, but at the same time...
“What? A new one? Jesus!”
“Christ it’s not that strange! Me and Alex are over now.”
“You sang his praises two days ago.”
“Yeah, well, everything can change in two days.”
Josh shook his head in disbelief. “Or two minutes in your case.”
Again the wrinkled face. “If you start that slut stuff...” She left the threat open.
“What’s that saying, more pricks than a pin...”
“Seriously!!” Her tone stopped him dead. With anyone else he would have risked getting the slap.
“Okay, okay.” He softened his voice. “So what’s this guy like?”
“Oh Rob’s great. Well you’ll see for yourself, won’t you?”
Can’t wait, he thought and resisted the urge to say it.
“So are you ready?”
He could feel a familiar blend of hunger and warmth in his chest. “Yeah, just lemme’ get my coat.”
He took his worn black denim coat off an easel.
“Okay. I’ve got to set the alarm and turn off the lights.”
Most of the them didn’t work anyway. No one could be bothered putting in money to buy new strip lights. Beer and paint were higher priorities.
A few minutes later he was clamping shut the three padlocks onto the large door and the damp ice chill of winter had wrapped itself around them both.
“It’s fucking freezing!” She said.
“It’s not that bad.”
“Bollocks! Right, we’ve got to get a move on ‘cause I said I’d meet him at seven thirty.”
Reluctantly and feeling somewhat crushed, he followed, secretly hoping that Rob would be a dick so that he could feel justified in wishing him dead. The painting was forcibly dismissed and pushed slightly further back into his mind.
As far as he could anyway.
HARPER
HARPER’S BREATH TURNED into little ghostly wisps as it met with the night. The air was slick with moisture and bit deep into his shivering flesh. “Fuck it’s freezin’!” He hissed as he tried to pull his puffy yellow jacket closer around himself. An ice chill shot up through his spine, caused, it seemed, by some kind of deeper cold. Harper glanced round nervously but there was nothing and no one in sight.
Harper again found himself wondering if this was really worth it. So far there hadn’t been much interest. Well, interest yes but commitment, no. No one would touch it. It looked great but that wasn’t enough! What the hell did they expect of him? How could he sell something when he didn’t even know what it was and the only line he could feed buyers was, “it’s new!”?
The only reason he was carrying on was because he wasn’t losing anything either and he could still smell the faint smell of money about the whole venture. Also he was intrigued. It was definitely a very unique product!
He heard the crunch of a foot on gravel and span ’round slightly panicked.
He saw who it was and relaxed. “You’re fuckin’ late!”
The other calmly walked towards him, then stood over him, silently, unusually tall and darkened by shadow. Behind him the sky was midnight blue and in the distance the lamps above the highway burned warm amber.
Harper looked around nervously. Above his head was the massive block of concrete that made up the flyover. They stood in a rectangle of gravel, partially closed off with battered and torn up chain-link fences. Around them were a few damp-eaten crates, oil drums and pieces of rusted machinery that had once served a function that he couldn’t even begin to guess at. To his right was a fenced off and desolate looking area of buildings, all boarded-up windows and hole-filled corrugated iron roofs. They looked abandoned to him. There were certainly no lights.
The only real chance of being seen was if someone walked down from the highway above along the pavement to his left. He admitted to himself it was a good secluded area but he didn’t really see the point.
“It’s fuckin’ freezing out here mate. Look, why don’t we just meet in a pub or a club or something from now on?”
“No one will see us here.”
“Fucking right, because no one else is stupid enough to be down here!”
The other nodded and in their calm voice. “Exactly.”
“What I mean is, no one cares, no one’s watching? In a club no one’s going to notice shit either!”
“Well, we prefer not to be noticed here.”
“Listen, I’ve...”
“No,” the other said. Unmovable.
The wind hissed through the fence and there was a brief halt in the traffic above.
“Results?” The other asked bluntly.
“Fuck all!” came Harper’s equally blunt reply.
“You said...”
“Fuck you!” Harper blurted out; he was getting tired of these fucking freaks. “Listen, no one will touch it, cause no one knows what the fuck it is! yeah it looks good, but fuck that because they all say ‘So what’s it do?,’ and I’m like, ‘fucked if I know, but give me some green and find out.’ Fuck that! Look, I need to know what it does?”
“How can I tell you? Actually I can. Think of the colour red.”
“What!?”
“Red! visualise it!”
“Why?” Harper mouthed, his gold tooth catching the light.
“Do it!” The other said sharply.
He shook his head. “Yeah okay, wooo’ look at all the fucking red! So fucking what?”
“Now visualise a new colour.”
“What? I can’t, can I! What...”
The other held out their hand to stop him. “Okay, now this is new. I can’t describe it because it’s not like any colour you’ve experienced before. The only way to know it is to see it.”
Harper smiled. �
��What?”
“When you first asked us what it was, we told you to try it.”
“Yeah, and I said not until I know what it is. Still do!”
“You’ll never know till you try it. It’s not like anything else.”
“Okay, I’ll try it, but only if you cut me in for extra.”
“No. There’s more money here than you can believe. you’ll get what you deserve!”
Harper gritted his teeth and shrugged. Suddenly he found he didn’t care that much any more, a barrier had just collapsed. He was angry, but most of all just tired of arguing. “Fine then. It’s not on me though.”
The other was looking over to the right, at the complex, intently. He didn’t seem to hear Harper’s words.
“I said...”
“I heard you. I have some here.” His hand disappeared into the long-coat’s pocket.
Harper took a final look at what he now held in his hand. “This shit isn’t radioactive, is it?” One of the students he’d tried to push it to had asked this and it had got him thinking.
The other laughed coldly. “No.”
“Then why does it...”
“Look, it’s not in our interests to kill off our dealer. Just try it!”
Harper shrugged and raised his hand to his mouth, the other quickly caught it.
“Listen and understand. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll understand what we mean and that might make you re-evaluate how much money you think you are going to make. Don’t get foolish and don’t you dare fuck with us!”
WEED, CATHEDRAL, FACTORY
‘DON’T YOU DARE FUCK WITH US.’
“You hear that?”
“Hear what?” Sarah said without interest.
“It was only faint.”
“What was?”
Josh was about to speak, sensed the complete lack of interest, realised he’d barely even heard the voice and instead shrugged. “Nothing. Just a voice.”
“In a city? Surely not!”
Again he felt like he was about six years old. He wished he could hate her.
He shivered internally and glanced behind, like he’d done subconsciously ever since he’d got stabbed those four or so years back. There was someone casually walking out from the patch of gravel beneath the flyover. They ducked through a hole and got onto the path a good distance behind them, striding along the wet, light-streaked pavement. They were too far back for him to really make out without his glasses—which for vanity’s sake and in vague hope—he never wore in front of Sarah. To his blurred eyes they looked like Rufus, only too tall. Either way, they were clearly making no effort to catch up.
Still there was a familiar fear. He hated the location of the modified art studio. A converted garage, that eight students and four tutors had come together to rent. It had been long abandoned, had a lot of unused space, and had come extremely cheap. No one else wanted it! The City Council had never found a use or any other buyer for it. The complex, of about five buildings in the shadow of a flyover, was too small for most purposes. Previously it had only been partly rented out as storage space. The Council had agreed to rent the rest of the space quite happily to his lot. Still the fact remained that it was in the shadow of the flyover, largely unlit, very close to a Council estate of high-rise flats and surrounded mainly by shabby old industrial units and the highway.
Josh hated winter, but especially hated leaving the place when alone, along the series of graffiti sprayed alleys and tunnels that ran under the over-linking roads like some kind of man-made warren. Most of the wall-mounted lights were smashed and the security mirrors at the corners of tunnels had been spray-painted over. He’d lost count of the many times he’d been convinced he was going to die, when he’d imagined hearing footsteps or had seen a shadow shift. It depressed him how often he had actually found in those circumstances that he didn’t care.
Right now though he felt alright, and he was relieved that he and Sarah were heading closer into the city centre and the street lamp numbers were increasing. Soon they’d be moving along the road that passed the theatre and the obscenely crap abstract art fountain that was supposed to resemble whales. Then the risk of being attacked would be reduced due to the wide spaces and regular lighting.
Mildly curious he looked behind and saw the vague blur of the figure still behind.
TWENTY OR SO MINUTES LATER, the spotlight-scorched side of the Cathedral was looming over them. The roof was gone and the walls were weathered and blasted from when the living hell had been bombed out of it during the war. The cobbled street beneath their boots was slick with water which reflected back the chalk glow of the surrounding black-painted, mock victorian streetlights. He’d always liked this area of town that was just up from his University. Old-style buildings with great beams in their damp-stained walls and lead-diamond-lined glass. Half of them were reconstructed just to add an air of authenticity to the fucked up Cathedral for the sake of the tourists, but they still looked good.
“So what’s he like?” Josh suddenly thought to ask.
“He’s really cool.”
He nodded silently in reply and kicked an empty beer bottle into the gutter. His long brown hair hung wetly down the back of his neck.
“Where are we going to smoke this shit anyway?”
“You know that little sort of alcove next to the stairs into the front of the Cathedral?”
“Yeah.” He winced against a sharp blast of wind and sank back into his thoughts. For a second the writhing picture streamed back into his mind and he struggled to force it out again as he had been for sometime. He had dismissed it now as a trick of his mind, he didn’t want to consider the more realistic alternative.
‘Jesus, I can see for miles.’ A faint whisper drifted through the rain and a violent shiver ran up Josh’s spine like ice fingers along a piano. He squinted into the dark trying to see where it had come from. A bunch of under-aged girls, faces plastered in rain smeared make-up and with their older sister’s party dresses drenched and plastered to their bodies, ran past in a fury of clicking heels.
Josh grinned to himself. “Idiots,” he thought and then questioned what the hell they’d meant.
The rain was bouncing off the steps that ran under a huge gothic archway and into the Cathedral, with incredible intensity. The wind hissed and spat knives into their bodies, making Josh’s coat flap like a furious sail around him.
“FUCK!!!” he half growled, half screamed; and even then his voice was barely audible.
“SARAH!!!” came the muffled yell through the storm.
They both looked up, the full force of the elements pelted at their faces. There was a figure with long dreads hunched up and waving from the top of the stairs beneath the glow of a wall-mounted lamp.
A brilliant smile illuminated Sarah’s face, she waved back and began to run. Josh watched her black-clad form disappear up the stairs with acid swimming over his mind.
The guy was huge, sort-of rugby player huge, his rounded face curtained with bead-speckled black dreads and wearing an old Slipknot top, a worn-out army jacket and urban combat trousers. This, it seemed, was Rob.
Josh sprinted to catch up to where Sarah was being swung ’round in the giant’s arms. He was mildly surprised to find that he was actually slightly taller than Rob.
“Hello.” He ventured to a clearly suspicious Rob.
He nodded. “Yeah, hello,” he replied and gave Josh the once-over.
“This,” said Sarah, eyes all love and sparkly for Rob, “is Josh Holt.”
A huge smile appeared. “Josh? Josh like...” Rob threw out his arms and began shouting. “JOSH!! JOSH?! JOOOSH!!!!”
He finished looking maniacally around back to a largely unimpressed Josh.
“You know, ‘Blair Witch??’ ” the guy said indignantly.
Sarah was pissing herself laughing.
“You know what? It doesn’t matter how often that happens, it’s still funny,” Josh said dryly and thought Yeah, about as funny as breast cancer.
Rob shrugged. “Not the first, huh? Soz boz’”
A voice suddenly came out of nowhere, “What the fuck is this? What the...?” Josh span round,to find a drunk in a yellow jacket shambling along the pavement below them; he didn’t seem to be talking to them. In fact he didn’t even seem to be talking. There was something slightly odd about it. Josh shrugged.
“Weirdo,” he commented.
“Josh!” Sarah was scowling.
“No, that git behind us, not er... Rob. You are Rob right?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah well, that guy anyway,” he said and pointed behind.
Rob looked slightly confused “Er... yeah alright.”
“Don’t mind Josh, he is always weird.” Sarah said patronisingly. Jesus, she sounded like his sister.
“Yes, I truly am.” Josh said with a purposely fake and overtly cheerful face. “Now let’s smoke this joint, get the fuck out of here and get to the Factory. It’s fucking freezing.”
“Yeah, damn straight, man.” Rob murmured and started heading to the darkened alcove.
Rob didn’t seem like the complete wanker Josh had first thought. Still, he was aware he’d been toking a copious amount of skunk so maybe that didn’t mean much. Further evidence was that he had suddenly realised when he looked over at the wall-mounted statue of an Angel defeating the Devil, that the Devil’s limp dick was the funniest thing ever. So maybe he wasn’t in the right mind to judge. Still the guy had heard of Godflesh, said he had some Skinny Puppy and Ministry on tape, so as far as Josh was concerned, he couldn’t be all bad. Just mostly.
They moved through the old building, went out the other side, passed by the Medieval pubs and out onto the Clubber-drenched main street. Rob and Sarah were giggling about stupid shit like dustbins and Josh walked calmly behind smiling mildly to himself, allowing the complete calm to take him over.
They moved into the old arcade, a wide open arena of wet paving slabs, and headed towards the thumping bass of the Factory. The flickering red neon sign had lost another letter, and as usual the written sign, all gold and gothic script, was speckled with pigeon shit. The huge owner, who Josh had always considered to be an escaped character from Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was grinning up at them.
Dark Side Darker Page 3