by David Wood
It was a half-second that lasted an eternity. I couldn't move. I was fifteen feet away from a man who had bitten his own tongue out.I wanted to run for my sanity.
He had an audience now but no one was trying to help him. In fact one of the tramps was clapping; the sound of his hands sending a shiver tracing down my spine. I could hear breathing behind me, or a parody of breathing that was so near to perfect it was indistinguishable from the real thing. The other tramps joined in with the applause.
He strode past me, pushed his way through the throng. My tramp. The crowd seemed to shrink away from him as he carved a path through them. He was ignorant of their revulsion. His eyes fixed on some point invisible in the middle distance. His fingers were wrapped in scraps of cloth now, his hands bandaged, the only superficial changes since I had last seen him hovering over my bed. The pigeons and starlings were flocking to be near him. More tramps were pushing through the crowd in time to see the first one land on his outstretched arms.
The way his look singled me out, I got the distinct impression this whole hellish act was for my benefit and mine alone.
I balked, grabbed the nearest person to me, a teenage boy with an unruly shock of yellow-corn hair. 'Him, him.' I said urgently, pointing. 'Do you see him?'
The boy cringed back; had he seen what had happened to the last two people who tried to talk to me? I had no way of knowing.
'Do you see him?' I insisted, shaking him.
There must have been forty deadbeats ringing the Monument. The noise started with one of them stamping his feet. Another joined in. Then another. One took to chanting; an eerie, ululating howl. Another growled low in his throat as the stamping intensified.
The boy was transfixed; but not by me. My tramp was commanding an army of feathers. Birds of all descriptions were coming to roost on his body. Feathers, beaks and eyes. He started to spin. At first I thought it was a stagger, the weight of the birds too much for him, but the gradual increasing of his momentum convinced me otherwise. One foot to the next, from a shuffle to a wild spiral, as the tramps' peculiar whooping chant goaded him into faster and faster spins. The birds clung to him as long as they could before his tribal dance forced them into flight, then they broke and banked higher, their circling fanning out into looser arcs.
The sky was full of wheeling birds. A vortex of wings centred on the spire of the Monument.
The noise of the gathering was insane. The sounds of the birds disseminated unintelligibly into the tumult.
The boy saw him. I didn't need his nervously whispered: 'Yes. . .' to know that. The boy saw him. I was so frightened, I didn't know whether to laugh or weep. If I knew how to pray, I think I would have said a prayer for myself then, but I didn't have the knowledge nor the time.
The boy went stiff in my arms, as if someone had rammed a blade into the base of his spine. The muscles in his arms tensed, tiny tremors furrowing beneath the skin. The shocks ran into my hands through his shoulders. The tension in his body thrilled through my restraining hands. I looked at him then, for the first time paying attention to the fight going on under my nose. The boy's face seemed incapable of holding one expression for more than an eye-blink. Rage warred with fear in his plain features. Cheek muscles contorted, the strength draining from the gaunt hollows. Lips peeled back in a feral snarl to bare nicotine-yellowed teeth. But his eyes, oh, his eyes. . .
The fear was in those washed out orbs, stark and unremitting. But it wasn't the fear that sent me screaming and reeling backwards. The crowd and the buildings around me lost all of their colour and most of their depth and clarity as my brain recoiled against what it was interpreting. The street scene was suddenly one of few hues, turbid umber and ochre. My hearing lost its clarity, too, and volume, as if the air had somehow transmuted to water and we were all drowning. Feeling the trembling of his body against mine it was too easy to share the boy's trauma.
Before the reality of light and sound flickered away altogether, I had a moment to feel dizzy and glad of the support of my crutches. Despite the fear in the boy's eyes they had dulled to become remarkably placid, but even that new calm couldn't rob them entirely of what I had seen. He was suddenly an empty glove, a discarded thing that had lost its sense of place, his eyes dead. I had seen those eyes before. He tried to speak normally, but there wasn't enough breath left in his lungs. It came out no louder than a whisper, but this voice I wasn't going to be able to lose amid the eerie chanting of the deadbeat crowd.
'I know you,' he said, but he said it in that voice, the one my tramp had used when he asked if I was afraid. 'I know who you are.' His face went as blank as his eyes for a heartbeat, but then he smiled that rictus smile.The smile of someone who believed himself ultimately untouchable. He had a different face, but it was him. His eyes rolled upwards, going over on themselves. The tension fled his muscles and one second later he was gone, and I was left holding the boy's limp body in my arms. I wept as I tried to shake life into his body, lowering him to the flagstones, breathing into his mouth, once, twice, three times. Pumping on his chest. A cycle. Three times. Three times.
'You can't die on me,' I howled, punishing myself because I couldn't convince his body of that fact. The boy shuddered and I thought I had won his life back, one for the two I had lost, but even that brief glimpse of victory was yanked out of my grasp. I felt the life seep out of him in a series of weakening shudders.
He died in my embrace.
I screamed into the sky, and for just a moment my guilt and grief drowned out the vagrants’ chorus. I threw my gaze toward the Monument, the fallen cross and my tramp.
He vacated his perch on the raised dais of the Monument's steps, leaving me with a look of mocking triumph. Around the Monument, the street people dispersed into the fractured shadows, taking their own segments of the chant with them.
There was a chill in the air.
The night smelled sharply of smoking hickory wood and something else, something rotten compared with that sweetness.
I huddled up against the new chill, rocking the dead boy in my arms.
The Dark Glass Hour
One
I left the boy propped up against the bulk of a streetlight, his chin on his chest, eyes closed.
It was over for him.
My head was a mess inside. At first I just hunkered down beside him dazedly, shielding his empty corpse from prying eyes. I didn't abandon him to the carrion eaters. Part of me was hoping I would be able to get through this on some sort of mechanical level where I didn't need to believe in the phantasms my eyes offered. I waited patiently for the boy's eyes to open, expecting my tramp to take repossession of his puppet the moment I bared my undefended back. I was walking on the edge of a very dark precipice, the cliff beneath my feet eroded by the recognition of madness, my balance not my own and therefore unreliable at best. The howling wind wanted me to fall. Wanted to pluck me off the cliff edge and hurl me out over the abyss and the dark glass sea. Wanted to dash my body against the stones so when I landed in its country I would be utterly broken. All I had was the word of a boy my proximity had destroyed. His whispered 'Yes. . .'
Against the violence of the long fall summoning me so very eagerly, it was precious little. A sweet song that illuminated the pitfalls of the dark landscape ahead, as steadfast as a candle in the howling wind. Who would believe me if I risked pouring my heart out? Not the police. The official quarter would offer disbelief and contempt. I could well imagine the conversation:
'You see, Officer, I killed a tramp and now he's haunting me, making women who see me claw out their own eyes and men who try to talk to me bite out their tongues.'
'Yes sir, now you just sit there and we'll get you a cup of coffee.'
Only in this instance the coffee was a euphemism for a straight-jacket and a padded cell, both mine, at the local asylum's leisure.
Equally, though, I couldn't allow the madness to fester inside me unchecked. But who could believe me when something as real to me as my home had beco
me a warren of traps and illusions and all I had to offer was the truth as I saw it?
Aimee, champion of hopeless causes?
She would listen to my words without prejudice, no matter how much reason insisted on her dismissing them as the ravings of a lunatic, but listening wasn't believing.
I rummaged through my pockets, making sure I had the change, then I crutched across the square looking for a phonebox.
Two
Aimee came to rescue me from Newcastle.
I promised myself I wouldn't look back at the boy's streetlight. I broke that promise as well as every other one I had made since three a.m. last Saturday morning.
'Why the hell didn't you wait for me to come and meet you at the hospital?' Her anxiety made her sound harsher than she had intended. I sank back into the passenger seat, robbed of the strength to argue. I shrugged and shook my head. She knew better than to press the point. I looked at her, driving with all the concentration I had neglected the last time I sat behind the wheel of a car. 'Ciaran's been asking after you. He would have come to visit but he couldn't face the hospital.' I nodded without answering.
Ciaran, was my only brother, older by two years and everything my parents could have asked for right until he turned seventeen. Their Golden Boy, they couldn't stand to think of him as different, and for that he's making them pay the ultimate price. He won't let them near him now he knows he is dying. He's lashing out blindly at everyone who wants to be close to him, making them hurt for hurting him. Sometimes he's a complete wanker, but he's my brother. I love him dearly. He can't tell me this self-imposed exile of his isn't hurting him as much as it's hurting mum and dad.
The minutes ticked by. I wanted to talk to her. I ticked over a variety of explanations, but couldn't settle on one that would suffice. The effects of the day were beginning to catch up with me. I wanted to sleep but I wasn't sure I would be capable of sleeping ever again. The Tyne was high tonight, its waters a dank filthy grey.
In the end, I couldn't stand the silence. I tuned the radio to 1215 on the medium wave in time to catch the tail end of Chumbawamba's Give The Anarchist A Cigarette. The disc-jockey slipped silently into another album track. I hummed along as if it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be doing.
We were heading back through Gateshead, Aimee taking an alternative route to mine, probably thinking she was doing me a favour by avoiding the stretch of road outside the Springfield Hotel.
'Can we drive past the hotel? I want to have a look for something.'
To her credit, Aimee didn't question my desire to return to the scene of the accident. If she had, I don't think I would have been able to pinpoint why I wanted to go back there. I wasn't hoping to find anything in particular. I didn't think there was anything there to find. I was looking for an angle. A way in.
With an uncertain, formless apprehension, I watched the streets change until we reached the lights, the hotel no more than a couple of hundred yards ahead.
'Stop the car, please.'
The street was lighter than the last time I had seen it. Aimee turned into a side street to park, wheels crimped against the curb.
We walked slowly. 'It's no use wanting to wrap me up in cottonwool. I don't want to pretend it never happened. I want to talk about it. I'm hoping this is the right place to talk – and if it isn't…' I shrugged. The streetlights had come on in the time it had taken us to park and walk back around. A balmy night, just right for a walk. 'I'll tell you the truth because I need you to believe me.'
Aimee tried to smile.
I offered her the truth, but kept my silence which Aimee allowed to stretch without trying to hurry me until we reached the first landmark. The streetlight was crippled, the bulb broken, the post reduced to a listing thirty-degree angle that had it hanging precariously out over the road. 'I killed him, Aimee. I know you said no one else was hurt.' Aimee went to interrupt, but I raised my hand to stay her objections. 'I know. . . I know. Please don't say anything. I want to take you through this in some sort of logical progression. If I start thinking about your questions I'll forget something. I need you to hear everything and then tell me I am not going mad.'
I hadn't realised how fiercely I was clutching at the hand grips of my crutches. I loosened my grip, waiting for Aimee's cue to go on. She had tears on her cheeks but she was trying to smile. I knew she was finding it hard, but there was a selfish part of me that wanted to lay my troubles at someone else's door. I gestured away down the road.
'I was back by the lights when I saw him. He was an old man. A tramp. He was standing on the pavement, other there. Hovering, as if he wanted me to accelerate. We were playing a grotesque game of chicken.
'I lost control of the Midget, hit him and ended up here. I called the accident in to the police on the cellular phone. I reported hitting an old man. They can verify that.'
Aimee took a step towards me. My mind was scrambling around for adjectives to describe the rest of my story, but it kept coming up empty handed and subsequent trawls became rapidly more difficult. I wanted her to believe so desperately, but if she couldn't accept the presence of the old man here, at the beginning, how could I hope to convince her of his reappearances down the line?
The answer was I couldn't.
'I don't know why I'm bothering. You don't believe me. Take me home.'
'No.' Her refusal surprised me, but I had to admit that her presence was comforting. Being there with her was comforting. 'I want you to tell me. I want to understand.'
She didn't say that she wanted to believe. I had to bite my tongue because that selfish part of me wanted to throw her choice of words back in her face. She was making an effort, tentatively holding an olive branch. I counted to five mentally, for each one naming twice as many reasons why I loved her, like the old game: How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways.
I loved her for her smile.
I loved her for her humour.
I loved her for her eyes; the way they sparkled when she thought she was getting one over on me.
I loved her for her voice and the words it had to say.
I loved her for her lousy cooking.
I loved her for her big feet.
I loved her for the way she made me think.
I loved her for her nose and its love of natural odours.
I loved her for her unshakeable faith in all of things bright and beautiful.
I loved her for her rotten musical taste.
I loved her for loving me and saying so.
The list came easily. With so many ways, how could I do anything but open up to her?
Three
And she tried to believe me, God love her, she really tried.
I hadn't even begun thinking how far I could push Aimee into believing. That selfish part of me just kept on insisting that best was best, and in this case making Aimee believe me was the best for both of us. I never dreamed of questioning whatever it was that directed my logic. After all, why would I lie to myself?
I stripped my retelling of the accident and the days after down to the bare essentials. Listening to myself rehashing the intricate mesh of craziness that seemed to be weaving itself around me ever tighter was somewhere akin to listening to a straight-jacketed man suddenly dragged out into the daylight after a lifetime confined in the dank, clammy chambers of a dark asylum.
What I said pushed believability to its very outer limits, and several steps beyond at times. Aimee digested it all, her weak smile dying altogether before I finished talking. She stopped me to ask questions and probe where she thought she saw tears in the mesh of craziness. Where she questioned and where she erected taboos and cordoned off no-go areas betrayed a fundamental inability to believe that stung me. The stinging wasn't acute. I was disappointed by the way she looked at me, but my faith wasn't irreparably shattered.
We must have made some kind of spectacle; a succession of drivers kept slowing, their expressions announcing that they could make little sense of my erratic semaphore a
s I re-enacted my stagger from the Midget to where my tramp had fallen, and then back again.
'I believe you,' Aimee lied, sounding even less sincere than I do every time a Jehovah's Witless threatens to take root on the doorstep. But maybe she wasn't so far from starting to believe; maybe it was just me being scared, needing her belief to be committed, whole-hearted and without question.
I took her hand in mine, lifted it to my cheek and held it there. I couldn't begin to tell you if I was trying to leech away some of her body's heat or force her into feeling the bone-deep chill that had replaced mine. I couldn't let go of her hand for a very long time. Aimee didn't try to draw it away, either. She simply allowed me to keep it there, pressed against my cheek, understanding somehow that I needed the contact.
How was she to know that I was literally willing some kind of mental telepathy to bloom suddenly between us?
I forced my mind's eye into replaying the worst of what my real eyes had seen, tried to pump the visions out of my head and down through Aimee's fingers until she could see exactly what I had and she had no choice but to believe.
When I pulled away, severing the contact, it was my choice. Her eyes hadn't changed. That they hadn't changed said I had failed.
Aimee reached out for me. Held me close.
We were no further forward, not really. We had constructed a few shaky foundations that a sneeze could have brought down, and that was the top and bottom of it. I thought of the Abyss Line and the kind of monster I had dogging my shadow. I kissed Aimee's palms and as I did I realised love could only be stretched so far before something had to give.