Thin Men, Paper Suits

by Tin Larrick

  Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to look.

  Charlotte…

  “They’ll never find them out there. They’ll never find anyone out there. You know why the forest scares you so much, Charlotte? Because it sees.”

  He took a step forward.

  “Don’t come any closer!” Charlotte shrieked.

  “The house is mine, Charlotte. It’s the inheritance that was kept from me. It’s mine. And I intend to stay.”

  His hand went to his pocket. Her eyes, transfixed, followed its movement.

  It’s a gun. He’s got a gun. He’s got a loaded gun and…

  It was a pack of cards.

  He shuffled them expertly from hand to hand.

  I should scream, she thought. I should scream and run and…

  But her throat was as dry as bone.

  Who are you, little girl?

  Jamie took another step forward.

  Charlotte brandished the axe.

  “You can’t scream, Charlotte,” Jamie said. “You can’t run, either.”

  He was right. Her feet wouldn’t move. The axe suddenly felt heavier than the world, but when she dropped it, nothing happened.

  “You can’t die, either. Want to know why?” Jamie grinned.

  She couldn’t speak.

  “Because you’re already dead, Charlotte. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Who are you, little girl?” Charlotte croaked.

  He frowned, like a teacher exasperated by a gifted but recalcitrant student.

  “I think you already know the answer to that,” he said.

  He took another step forwards, his eyes black, the cards flicking against each other like moths’ wings in his hands.

  *

  Charlotte stared up at the darkening sky, the edges of her vision framed by shards of black that, she realised, were the edges of the fractured patio. The earth was warm and damp on her back.

  She tried to move, but she couldn’t feel anything at all. Even her head was immobile, forcing her to stare straight up at the top of the sky and beyond.

  She couldn’t feel her body, but she could see, and she could hear. Her brain crackled with electricity as it tried to kick-start her unresponsive body, piece together the sequence of events leading up to this point and fathom a way out of this shallow grave, all at the same time.

  Charlotte…

  She couldn’t turn her head, but she knew she was wearing a yellow dress. She couldn’t move, but she could feel the hair that tumbled around her shoulders. She couldn’t get up, but she knew that the forest awaited her at the foot of the garden.

  Jamie Brazill appeared at the edge of the patio, the shovel resting under one hand like a cane. He looked down at her. His face looked peaceful, and she knew that her over-revving brain had tried to knit shadows together.

  She had never been away from this house. Her brain had left her clues in the fading embers of its chemical activity, played out in a narrative of moving houses and meeting strangers. She felt the tears well up and spill over the edges of her eyes – tears of frustration. She hadn’t been quick or smart enough to work out a way to avoid her inevitable future.

  Jamie smiled.

  “Sleep tight, princess.”

  He tossed the cards, and they fluttered over her; fifty-two fleurs-de-lis covering her body like petals.

  Her sight and vision began to fade as her brain followed her body and finally began to shut down.

  The last thing she was aware of was the sound of sirens; a chorus of them in the distance. They would be too late to save her, but they might be quick enough to catch Jamie Brazill and seek some kind of rough-edged justice for her and the parents she had barely known.

  She died before realising that they were not sirens at all, but the rising and falling wail of a flock of seagulls, their shrieks swallowed up by the forest as they flew overhead.

  ****

  Dead Slow by Tin Larrick

  To Craig’s surprise, being suicidal was not an entirely unpleasant feeling. Amidst the sensations of despair, misery and abject hopelessness, Craig found other emotions – exhilaration; a curious sense of liberation.

  This may have been because Craig was not entirely suicidal, not in the true sense of the word. Sure, he had packed a length of hosepipe and an industrial clamp in the boot of the Nissan, but he had also packed a large suitcase and withdrawn nearly three thousand pounds cash, which was bunched up in a wad in the breast pocket of his shirt.

  Certainly Craig was a man who liked keeping his options open. This was why right now he was parked on the beach at Normans Bay. The tide was miles out, the Nissan sitting on the mud flats; Craig having carefully negotiated his way down the steep shingle. To the west lay his town, his job, and the life he had known. To the east lay the road to London – two minutes and he could be gone for good, with enough cash to cover his tracks for several weeks.

  And to the south lay the Channel, and the certainty of oblivion – if he chose it.

  He didn’t want to do it yet. He felt that he should at least ruminate for a bit – on his failings, on his misery, on the reasons he was sitting here in the first place. Moreover, he had yet to decide on the method. He wasn’t keen on pain, which was why he had the hosepipe and two hundred paracetamols. He certainly had no intention of drowning – the sea was purely for the view, to add a bit of romance while he reflected on his life.

  It was nothing really, just the sum of several negative ingredients adding up to less than zero. His job might have had something to do with it. A mortuary attendant was a bit of a conversation killer at parties – not that he went to many. He actually enjoyed his job – perhaps a little too much. Certainly he found the dead infinitely more tolerable company than the living. And dead bodies did not bother him. He arranged, moved and sorted them in the same way an office manager might organise his stationery. The dead were his paper clips.

  Yes, the job might have been part of it. The on-off casual relationship – seven years with Celandine – might have been another. Soft porn, the odd recreational drug, pointless gadgets and trinkets for the flat he had never invited her to move into – were little morsels of excitement, and the satisfaction they induced evaporated almost immediately. The steadily mounting debt generated as a result of these little wraps of indulgence did nothing to help, especially when he started falling behind with his payments.

  Over to the west he watched the winking lights of two alternating buoys – one red, one green, demarcating the entrance to Sovereign Harbour. A dredger sailed past in the distance, with DEAD SLOW painted in huge white letters on its black hull – or at least, that’s what it looked like from the beach. It might have said FEAR SOON or maybe even DEEP SHIT for all Craig knew.

  There was nothing in particular that made him feel excessively depressed, or desperate, or any of the negative connotations he associated with the mottled clammy suicides that turned up in his mortuary; rather, it was the sheer bland nothingness of his life. He felt crippled by the rut of his own monotony, and utterly powerless to do anything about it.

  He got out of the car and leaned against the bonnet, and even as he watched the daylight start to melt into the horizon, turning the ceiling of cloud pink, he knew he wouldn’t do it. He just wasn’t there yet.

  Or maybe he was just gutless. The road to London seemed a better option. He was fairly sure he could find romance in his escape, in the perils of roadside hotels and 24-hour garage snacks. Shut the door on this life, start afresh with money in the bank.

  He moved back towards the driver’s door, and looked down when he heard splashing around his feet. He frowned and checked his watch. Surely the tide couldn’t be coming in yet?

  He fished in his pocket for the tidetable he had bought from the tackle shop, and scrutinised it, drawing his finger down the tiny columns.

  There. Damn. Got the wrong day. High tide was two hours earlier than he had expected.

  He pursed his lips and sighed. Suicide was a bit like yo
ga, he decided. Without the right setting, the absence of distractions, it was pointless. Practical details like tide times did not lend themselves well to self-contemplation.

  He moved to the driver’s door, and got in. With a final look at the horizon, he started the engine. He looked back over his shoulder, gripping the passenger seat with his arm while he prepared to reverse.

  He applied some throttle while engaging the gearbox, but instead of the low rumble and slow movement he was expecting, he heard a tinny shriek. He frowned, and tried again. The same shriek, and a grinding, whirring noise that suggested the rear tyres were spinning hopelessly in the mud.

  Shit, he thought, still only mildly perturbed. He got out of the car and examined the rear wheels. The water was lapping around the bottom few inches. Still plenty of traction to get out. He started the engine and tried again. Nothing. Just the same hideous shriek.

  He got out again and stared at the car with a serious look on his face, hands on hips, like a builder assessing a particularly tricky job. With some embarrassment, he pulled his mobile phone from his pocket, and then put it back again. No way was he about to tell anyone about this. That really would be suicide.

  His eyebrows flew upwards, uncreasing his frown, as an idea came to him. His body galvanised by inspiration, he reached into the car and retrieved the rubber floor mats. He placed them underneath the rear wheels, hoping that they would provide sufficient traction to get him moving.

  He tried the engine again. The car moved backwards a fraction, and relief and hope simultaneously surged in his throat. Then, the awful tinny shriek returned. Craig got out again in time to see his floor mats floating away on four inches of water – four inches that were now covering the wheels.

  He sighed, in an exaggerated attempt to convince himself that the panic rising in his stomach was not really there. He went to the boot and, retrieving his suitcase, trudged the two hundred yards across the mud flats, back up the shingle towards the road. He squinted left and right down Herbrand Walk, the deserted, narrow beach road linking Normans Bay and Cooden. No headlights, and no distant rumble of engines. It was just him and the chain-link fence separating the road from the thick brush and silent railway line on the other side of it. He would just have to wait.

  He looked down at his suitcase, and another idea came to him. He decided he would replace the case in the boot. Maybe, just maybe, the tide would take his car, and his unexplained disappearance might just be written off as a suicide, or at least a dreadful accident. Faking his own death seemed like a happy medium, and he would get the narcissistic bonus of being able to read his own obituary. He might even go to the funeral – in disguise, of course. Besides, the Nissan was a crapheap anyway.

  He was jolted from his fantasy by a thud-thud-thud in the distance. A pair of headlights appeared to the east, and the pounding bass was soon accompanied by the swish of forward motion.

  Craig launched himself into the road, only dimly aware that his actions did not exactly correspond with his earlier casual musings about suicide, fake or otherwise.

  “Hey!” he yelled, waving his arms frantically. “Help me! Please help me!”

  The car was rocketing along at a fair old split, and Craig had forgotten he was in dark clothing. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom, but evidently the driver’s hadn’t.

  Craig leaped back onto the verge as the car – a Fiesta – swerved round him, and skidded to a halt fifty yards down the road.

  A baseball-capped head appeared at the passenger window.

  “Fuck’s your problem?”

  “Oh, I’m really sorry,” Craig said, advancing towards the car. “My car is stuck on the beach. I wondered if you could help…”

  He slowed a little when two more heads appeared out of the sunroof. “Whatcha say, mate?”

  “I said, I got my car stuck on the beach.” Craig pointed down towards the mud flats where the silhouette of the Nissan was just about visible in the fading light.

  “What the fuck you doin’ down there? You doggin’ or something?”

  Cackles of laughter.

  “Not exactly,” Craig smiled, trying not to roll his eyes. “I wondered if you had a tow rope, or something.”

  “Hang on,” one of them said, and disappeared back through the sunroof.

  He appeared a moment later.

  “This’ll help ya, mate,” he said, and lobbed an empty beer bottle at Craig.

  It struck him on the chest. It didn’t break. Craig looked down, wondering why he hadn’t felt anything, and realised that the bottle had struck the thick wad of cash in his breast pocket.

  “I have money…” he began, in a rather pathetic attempt to placate his assailant.

  The next bottle didn’t break either, but because Craig was looking down it caught him a treat on the top of the head. He stumbled and fell backwards over the suitcase, cracking the back of his head on the road.

  White spots exploded around his eyes, as the cackles of laughter faded off into the distance and Craig sank into unconsciousness.

  In the dream Craig waits outside the gates of his old secondary school. His former English teacher, a fierce-looking lady with a marcel wave and a penchant for animal-rights activism on the weekend – approaches him and demands that he accompany her. Unable to refuse, through fear or some other threat of discipline, Craig obliges. As they walk he passes someone – Celandine? – and mouths help me to her.

  Craig gets in her car. She drives him to a nearby hospital and escorts him to one of the wards. They sit down at a nurses’ station, where she demands to know what Craig has done with his life.

  Craig says – I’ve been with Celandine for ten years. We’re having a baby – our first – that’s why I am at the hospital.

  His teacher becomes angry. Craig is telling her lies. He is not ‘with’ Celandine, and even if he were, he would not deserve the child that awaits him.

  Craig’s fear increases. His teacher means to hurt him and then kidnap the baby he has not earned. He jumps up and runs out of the ward. He gets to the end of the corridor, which arrives at a T-junction. He turns right, and runs to the end of that corridor.

  Another T-junction. Craig is lost. He doesn’t know which way to go. The corridors are brightly lit with yellow strip lights. Patient trolleys and wheelchairs are dotted around the place – but there are no people. He daren’t look back to see if he is being pursued.

  The corridors are endless. He reaches the end of one only to find himself in another.

  Eventually he reaches the stairwell, but for some reason he thinks the lift would be safer, intending to go up a floor and then down again in order to throw her off the scent.

  The lift doors open on the hospital’s top floor. A woman – Craig doesn’t know her – makes to enter the lift. She is carrying an empty car seat for a baby. Craig doesn’t know how but knows she is working with the teacher and plans to kidnap his baby.

  Craig pushes past her, but the doors are closing. He has to shove her to get out and she falls on her back. A passing nurse grabs hold of Craig’s wrist, but he wrenches it free.

  Then he is running, pursued by hospital staff. The pursuers grow in number as people get wind of the fact that Craig has assaulted one of their colleagues.

  Another corridor, another T-junction.

  Craig turns left, and sees nothing.

  He turns right, and sees the thunderous, murderous approach of an oncoming train.

  Craig wasn’t sure how long he lay on the road, but consciousness and oblivion overlapped as he became aware of the rhythmic rumble and stuttering klaxon of a train as it rocketed by, sending spirals of grit and warm air over Craig from the tracks.

  This undignified awakening brought Craig back to full consciousness, and he managed to haul himself up as the world spun. It was now almost completely dark, but he wasn’t sure if that was just his eyes.

  Fortunately, the cash was still in his pocket, and the suitcase still under his hand. He grabbed the handle to stea
dy himself, and the spinning gradually slowed. Craig touched the bump on his head, and a shard of pain sliced through him. He shuddered, then his throat constricted and he vomited onto the verge.

  His mind was still thick with the remnants of the dream and the blow to the head, and he stumbled back down the shingle towards the car without a clear sense of what to do next. He was almost there when he remembered he’d left the case on the roadside. He cursed as tried to recall his earlier plan.

  He pulled the mobile phone from his pocket again, pride and embarrassment no longer a concern. Light danced around his brain as he waited for the phone to connect with the world. A little handshake logo appeared, the light from the screen providing some small comfort in the dark. And then nothing.

  No signal.

  Not one bar. The phone was useless. Craig wandered around the car, holding the phone in various strange poses in an attempt to gain some kind of recognition from the useless phone.

  Far above him, a seagull shrieked with laughter.

  He tried a suitably casual text message to Celandine, hoping it would go through at some point. Past that his only other option was 999. He punched in the three numbers, then his thumb hovered over the ‘call’ button. Was he there yet?

  He slumped heavily in the driver’s seat, and leaned his head back. He didn’t feel well at all. He could have a serious brain injury, and he was worried about people laughing at him?

  He pressed the ‘call’ button, and sat back, his head throbbing.

  Again, nothing. Craig was like many who believed that, if you were prepared to throw in the towel, the world would come to your rescue. A bit like God, he presumed, only a bit more reliable. If you paid your council tax, you were pretty much guaranteed the service. The same couldn’t be said for prayer.

  But, without a signal, the world wasn’t coming to him, 999 or otherwise.

  He realised that there was no one else he could call. He began to cry, and the disoriented babble of panic began to emerge from his mouth. The crying gave way to freefall sobbing, the only other sound that of the waves lapping at the car.