by Tom Fletcher
‘Well then,’ I say. ‘Get me another drink.’
Graham pours me another vodka. ‘Why have you got so much blood on you, anyway?’
‘I had a fight,’ I say. ‘With Aidan.’
‘Aidan?’ he says. ‘Ha. What a bastard. I’m sure he deserved it. I thought he’d wind a few people up. Here.’ He hands me the vodka. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘First off; we go outside.’
‘Who are all these people?’ I point at a group dressed as bikers. Beards and everything. We push through the hallway. ‘Did you invite them?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘But good parties always get gatecrashers and the gatecrashers are part of what makes a good party good.’
We push open the back door. The cold air sweeps in over us. The wind is fierce. The sky low with cloud. There is a muddy, rocky stretch of ground before us that disappears into the darkness beneath the scraggy excuse for an orchard.
‘Why did we have to come outside?’ I say.
‘To explore,’ he says.
‘Jack’s already shown us around.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what I mean. It’s weird, to be honest, Francis. I just felt like we should come outside.’
I hear the door slam shut behind us. The light vanishes. We move forward, slowly, towards the low trees.
‘I don’t like those trees,’ I say. ‘They’re a bit warped.’
‘No,’ Graham says. ‘Hey! Shit.’
‘What?’
‘I just tripped over something.’ He’s crouched down now. Feeling around on the ground. He moves on all fours. He crawls towards me. ‘Look at this.’ He stands back up.
‘What is it?’ I say. ‘I can’t see.’
‘I think it’s an axe,’ he says. ‘A big one too. Imagine Aidan’s face if we went back in swinging this around!’
The wind tears the clouds open for a moment. Beyond them the sky is thick with stars. The faint light illuminates Graham holding a huge woodcutting axe. He’s laughing. It’s like the axe was made for him, despite the suit he wears. If you didn’t know him, he’d be terrifying. Beyond him, the gnarled skin of the mountainside is momentarily visible. My stomach clenches as I see what looks like a person, tall and awkward, tottering across the bleak expanse towards us.
‘Graham,’ I say. The clouds close up again.
He stands the axe on the ground. He leans on it. ‘Are there any girls here tonight?’ he says. ‘I mean, any that might sleep with me? It’s been too long. I mean, three months.’
‘Graham.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I’ll be quick with them; I won’t let sex get in the way. I mean, I’ll fit it in around everything else. The game.’
‘There’s somebody out there,’ I say. ‘Past the orchard.’
‘What?’ He turns around. ‘Some wayward guest, probably. Hello? Hello, who’s there?’
They’re close enough for us to see despite the darkness, now. They stop walking about ten feet away from us.
‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Just here for the party, man. What are you? Like, bouncers?’
‘No,’ Graham says. ‘Just getting the air.’
‘Cool, man.’ She carries on past us. Her huge eyes flashing. She opens the back door. She disappears inside.
‘What was she doing out there?’ I ask. My heartbeat still racing.
‘Dunno,’ he says. ‘Maybe a local. Or maybe she’s been here all night, and she’s just been outside for whatever. A piss or something.’
‘I haven’t told anybody this,’ I say. ‘But there’s something about this place that I don’t like.”
But he’s not listening. He’s looking back at the house. ‘Maybe she’d sleep with me,’ he says.
JACK
I heard it before I saw it. I heard it from the kitchen and made my way through the rush and pushed towards the sound because I liked it, because it was lively and hopeful and brought to mind folk music from another time, a wilder happier time, maybe in another country where music and love were more important than money, where a night spent dancing and laughing was the pinnacle – the ultimate aim – of human endeavour.
I saw people grouped in the living-room, crowded round the musician. I pushed through and there he was, standing on one leg, with the other resting on a chair. He was wearing tight black trousers and a loose white shirt and a tatty old black waistcoat. He was playing so fast his arm was a blur, and his eyes were closed, his face a mask of concentration, and many of the hairs of the bow had snapped, and whipped through the air around him. There was something about him that resonated deep inside me and I didn’t know what it was, but it was hypnotic. It was like he had entered me, penetrated me, in some non-sexual way, but just as intimately, and I felt like I shouldn’t have wanted to feel it, but I did want to, and we all seemed to – we were all standing and watching him as if we’d been waiting a long time for the opportunity, as if he was important to us all. He was a bit intimidating, because of his obvious talent and his somewhat forbidding demeanour – he was tall and strong-looking and his eyes were rolling – but that added to the excitement. Maybe he was some sort of celebrity, because there was something unnervingly familiar about him – but no. It wasn’t that kind of familiarity, it was something altogether deeper, like the recognition that I imagine you’d feel if you met the ghost of your great-grandfather without ever having seen a photograph. We all felt it. And, all that aside, the music had this transcendental quality that took you out of your world momentarily, cutting through everything you chose, and opened up the part of you that was really you, the part of you that you never shaped or manipulated or dressed up for public consumption. I often thought that was what the soul might be. The part of you that was completely you. Whatever was left when you took away all of the CDs, books, films, friends.
Whatever that part of you was, his music revealed it, laid it open, as if he was peeling open our skins and looking inside.
A girl in a red skirt and a white shirt danced and danced and danced, whirled and stamped and shouted. I recognised her as one of the girls that I’d seen on their bikes the day before, and with her was a tall boy with long hair smashing a tambourine against his thigh. They must have been from the gathering at the end of Wastwater. I was glad they’d come actually, I liked their music and their dancing. But there was a story from Norfolk about two girls who danced to the music of a strange fiddler until they died. It was a variant on one of the explanations for stone circles – the stories in which girls dance and dance and dance to the fiddle music until they break the Sabbath and so get turned to stone.
I backed away.
I was looking for Jennifer but I couldn’t find her, so I sat on the bottom step whilst all around me people span and drank, kissed and argued. A boy called Paul, who I knew from university, tumbled down the stairs and hit his head on the floor in front of me and lay there motionless. I half thought about calling an ambulance, but then he got to his feet, dizzily, and grinned at me before walking unsteadily away down the corridor.
The party raged like a caged animal on heat. I was still looking for Jennifer. I went up to the room that she was sharing with Erin and stood outside. I’d already tried it, but I supposed that it was entirely possible that she had wound up in there since I’d last looked.
I opened the door and quickly glanced around the edge. There she was, naked, with Francis, on the bed, and she was on top of him, rocking back and forth, his head hanging over the edge of the bed. Neither of them noticed my intrusion so I closed the door quietly and nodded to myself. So that was that, then.
There weren’t any empty rooms for me to be alone in so I made my way outside. It was bitterly cold and there were still a few stars visible towards the horizon, although most of the sky was obscured by cloud.
FRANCIS
Graham and I stand before the barn. A tall, stooped figure lopes quietly across the yard to join us. Taylor. Three mice before a sleeping cat.
‘Is the barn a part of our
journey?’ I ask.
‘Part of your journey maybe,’ Graham says, ‘but I’m not going inside that fucking thing.’
I can almost feel the alcohol running through their veins.
‘I will,’ Taylor says. ‘I’ve been thinking about Erin. I love her, I realize. I fucking love that girl. She’s perfect.’
‘Congratulations,’ I say. ‘So that means you’re going into the barn?’
He turns and looks at me, smiling. ‘I’m not sure the two things are related. Is Jack OK?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I thought he was OK. Why?’
‘He seems quiet,’ he says. ‘He should be out here, with us.’
‘You know Jack,’ I say. ‘He’s always been quiet.’
He just looks at me. Then strides off towards the barn door. It is unlocked. He pulls it open and the sound is horrific. Metal on stone. A train grinding along the rails. An injured dragon. To say that it is dark inside the barn would be an understatement. Taylor disappears inside. Graham holds the axe in both hands, rotating it. Maybe Jennifer told Erin about us. Maybe Erin told Taylor.
‘What do you think?’ he says. ‘What’s he hoping to find?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘This is your stupid game.’
‘Jesus. Somebody’s suddenly turned into a miserable twat. What’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing.’ Jack, I think. Poor Jack. You invite us into your house. And I sleep with your girlfriend.
‘Cheer up,’ Graham says. ‘Or I’m going to chop you into pieces. You’re so covered in blood nobody would notice. Ha! What do you reckon – shall we hide while Taylor’s in there?’
‘Ha ha, yes!’ I nod manically.
‘Come on!’ Graham is giggling. We start running towards the corner of the barn so that we can hide round the side.
‘He’s going to be terrified!’ Graham says.
‘Hey!’ Taylor shouts. He emerges from the mouth of the barn. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Oh,’ I say. I look and see that we’re only half-way to being out of sight. ‘Nowhere. We were going to come in with you.’
‘Oh well,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t bother. It’s just empty. Nothing there.’
As we re-enter the house it starts to snow. I register it dimly. Like when you hear somebody talking in another room as you wake up.
I’m sitting on a beanbag in the living-room. Slowly zoning out. Graham is next to me. Gazing meditatively at the joint in his hand. Simon dances slowly to an Avril Lavigne video that’s playing on the TV. A girl called Lucy is lying along the sofa. I know her from before. Before what? Before we lost touch. Before work. I don’t know. Some other people are here too. People I don’t know. A boy with the clearest blue eyes. A man dressed up as a Hell’s Angel. Sunglasses and all.
‘Our journey of self-discovery didn’t come to much,’ I say eventually.
‘Nothing ever does,’ Graham says. He looks up at Avril Lavigne on the TV. ‘I would give my right arm to sleep with her.’
‘She looks like a little girl,’ Lucy says. ‘She looks like a kid.’
There is a silence.
‘Don’t say that,’ Graham says. He watches the video for a moment longer. ‘It’s not true, anyway.’
‘It is,’ Lucy says. ‘Look at her.’
‘It’s not!’ Graham says. ‘She wouldn’t be so fit if she looked like a kid.’
‘Unless you’re a paedo,’ I say. Graham elbows me in the ribs. I topple slowly to the floor.
The door bursts open. I wake up suddenly and sprawl across the floorboards in a panic. I am hot and have the impression that somebody is running away from me. But it fades quickly. ‘Jack?’ I say. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know where Jack is,’ Erin says, leaning over me. ‘But we have to find him. It’s snowing! We’re going to build a snowman. Who’s coming?’
‘Me!’ I stumble to my feet. ‘I want to build a snowman!’
‘Yes!’ Graham says, standing up. Lucy and Simon are entwined on the floor. They don’t say anything. Neither do the blue-eyed boy or the biker.
We follow Erin out of the room and are joined in the hallway by Jack, Jennifer and Taylor. Jack looks absent-minded, as usual. Jennifer smiles at me, flushed. Erin and Taylor grin at each other. I reach out to grab hold of the wall. ‘Coats!’ I say. ‘It’s going to be cold. Very cold. We should probably all get our coats on.’
‘I’ll get them,’ Jack says. He slopes off upstairs. Frowning.
‘Good thinking, Francis,’ Taylor says. ‘Good man. Good thinking.’ He nods sagely.
Jack returns after a moment. His arms are laden with jackets and coats. He distributes them without speaking.
An unopened can of lager is lying on the floor by the wall. I pick it up on the way out.
There is a light on the other side of the clouds. I am not sure what it means. It is confusing. It just makes the clouds look thicker and stronger and blacker. They move slowly past like they will never stop. Either that, or the light is floating gently through a static sky. And all around the snow comes down. Heavy and fast. It all starts to make my head spin. The cold air keeps me from feeling sick. The yard and the mountainside and the house and the barn are blanketed with deep fresh snow.
‘What time is it?’ I say.
‘What day is it?’ Erin asks.
‘Ha ha,’ Graham says. ‘I don’t know. It’s like before I ever started school and keeping track of that kind of thing.’
I can’t help but notice Jack’s silence.
We start piling the snow on the bare patch between the back door and what used to be the orchard. We gather it from the ground. From the tops of cars parked near the house. And the drifts piled up against the walls. And the windowsills. And everywhere. It continues to fall from the sky and fill the holes we have made with our hands and feet.
‘I haven’t made a snowman in years,’ Erin says. ‘And I just looked out of the window and saw all this snow and knew that we should. It’s perfect. Jack. Thank you so much for inviting us up here. This is amazing. You’re lucky, you know.’
‘Yes, I am,’ Jack says. He flashes a lifeless smile at me. I smile back. Maybe he knows.
Soon we have a column of snow nearly six feet tall. It is still snowing. Taylor throws a snowball at me. It hits me in the eye, hard. It hurts. I laugh because it reminds me of being a kid. I roll some snow up in my hands. My fingers are mottling white and red. I hurl the snowball at Taylor. But he ducks and it whizzes off into the trees. I am so cold. I don’t have any gloves. My hands are numb. I laugh to myself. The column thrusts out of the ground proudly. It’s a growth. A phallic tumour.
Graham has leant the axe against the wall of the house, just next to the back door. He makes his way back and forth between the snow pile and the wall. Shovelling armfuls of snow up out of the drifts and striding back through the driving snow. He dumps it next to the snowman-to-be. His beard is full of snowflakes.
Erin starts work on the detail. She starts at the bottom, shoving snow into two foot-like mounds. She carves long, dextrous toes, slowly and carefully. She keeps on touching her earrings. They must be cold.
Taylor is building a snow-dog.
I am starting on the head. I roll a ball around and around, marvelling at the way it grows. I imagine a bunch of cells tumbling around inside my body, growing in the same way.
Jennifer takes the snow that Graham deposits. She smoothes it on to the body of the thing. She keeps looking at me and smiling. I smile back, but I’m nervous. I don’t want anybody to see it.
And Jack just drifts around. Sometimes he helps one of us. Sometimes he just looks out over the mountainside. Almost as if there’s something out there.
When we have finished, the snowman is over six feet tall. He has legs, arms, a scarf, a mohawk, a penis, a pipe, a dog, eyes, nose, mouth and a 28 Days Later badge, courtesy of Erin. The badge reads ‘THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH’ and is pinned to the scarf.
‘What are we going t
o call him?’ Taylor asks.
‘Tim Burton,’ Erin says.
‘I don’t think we should name him after anybody,’ I say. ‘It should just be a good name.’
‘Oak Man,’ Jack says. His sudden excitement is surprising. But pleasant. And confusing. Everybody just looks at him. ‘You know,’ he says. ‘Faery folks live in old oaks.’
There is a silence.
‘Gandhi,’ Erin says.
‘Frankenstein,’ Graham says. ‘Santa Claus.’
‘Oppenheimer,’ Taylor says.
‘Lucifer.’
‘Jumanji.’
‘Kilroy.’
‘Homer.’
‘Troy.’
‘Brad.’
‘Spacey.’
‘Stipe.’
‘Johnny 5.’
‘Bush.’
‘Spongebob.’
‘Hitler.’
‘What?’ I say.
Taylor shrugs.
‘I was only joking,’ he says.
‘I’m very cold,’ I say.
‘Balthazar,’ Erin says. ‘Out of Romeo and Juliet.’
‘He was out of the Bible first,’ Jack says.
‘I like Balthazar,’ I say.
‘So do I,’ Taylor says.
‘And me,’ Jack says.
‘Does he have to have that badge?’ I say.
‘Well,’ Erin says. ‘I don’t want it.’
His face looks like the face of a long-dead body. Uncovered at Pompeii, or somewhere equally tragic. We tried to make him smile, with stones for teeth. But his mouth just looks like a big rotten mess. I’m touched. He’s kind of sad.
‘He can be our guardian,’ Taylor says, ‘against those gatecrashers.’
‘What about a name for his dog?’ Jennifer asks. ‘What’s his dog called?’
‘Withnail,’ Taylor says.
‘Do you just say the first thing that comes into your head?’ I ask him.
He shrugs. ‘Does the trick.’