by David Wood
Broken glass littered several of the risers, a blunt warning to trespassers. I continued to climb, listening for doors opening and closing. It was a bad place to be. I paused beside the sign for level 7 long enough to put my shoes on again. There was enough noise for me not to worry about drawing attention to myself and I had more things to think about than stealth.
Someone was talking in low tones a couple of levels above my head. The sound carrying down the stairs was too distorted to make out the words, but it was clear from the crisp rise and fall that the conversation was coming to a conclusion and they were heading in their own separate ways. Another door moaned petulantly, and the echo of footsteps parted, one set through the door, the other coming down the stairs.
There was nowhere to hide where I was. I backed off through the door to Level 7 and stepped back into the deeper cluster of shadows gathered around the nearest pillar. None of the death race voyeurs seemed interested or even aware of my presence. I offered a silent prayer that it would stay that way.
The Tin Man opened the door and walked confidently among the gathering, moving as if he had some divine right to be there. He hadn't changed in the slightest, wearing the same rags, the same black hair and those ugly facial scars that marked him forever in my worst memory. He walked up to a kid in a distressed leather jacket and slapped him on the back, seemed to be whispering something. His razor-embedded thumbs glinted in the dying light like hard-edged treasures. The kid nodded and pulled away from the crowd.
The Tin Man led him back towards the privacy of the stairwell, his arm around him in a manner that might have suggested they were long acquainted if it wasn't for the way the thumb razor seemed to creep towards the kid's bare neck.
Before they were halfway to the door the sound of the race detonated in a series of rapid-fire explosions and roars as the demons under the bodywork of the Cosworth and the Porsche came to life. Down below, the kids yelled. Up where I was, a reverent hush descended. The kids stopped breathing as they waited for the first car to come hurtling around the hairpin of the middle ramp.
I looked at the door as it closed on the Tin Man and his quarry, then at the ramp, around the level, looking for another way up to the next level, another set of stairs. There were plenty but the problem was getting to one of them without having to force a path through the hungry-eyed spectators. I moved back against the wall and sank down because all I could do was wait.
And then the Cosworth came careening around the ramp, the Porsche's bonnet up its boot. Wheels shrieked. The stench of burning rubber was incredible. The driver of the Cosworth was a compact blackness behind the tinted glass. How old was he? Ten? Twelve? He was barely in control of the demon, throwing it into a dangerously tight turn too early for the up-ramp. The Cosworth's wing clipped the side of the up-ramp's wall, its front wheel catching the concrete lane divider. I thought the kid had lost it for sure, but he mounted the concrete rise and accelerated even harder into the turn, driving as if he were prepared to kill himself if that was what it would take to win, his recklessness keeping him alive for this level at least.
The Porsche pushed the Cosworth hard, always up its backside but always in control, plenty in reserve, waiting for the mistake to capitalize on.
I chewed on my knuckle and tried not to imagine the wreckage.
The crowd howled its appreciation, and then the cars were gone, up and away. The tension lifted from them, the spectators started breathing again.
The Tin Man came back through the door. From his fixed smile I guessed he wasn't too upset at missing the high point of the meeting. He was looking around the crowd again. This time I moved first, slipping back out through the door to the stairwell. The kid with the leather jacket was half a flight below me rolling a five pound note into a straw to snort the small sachet of premature burial he had paid the Tin Man cash for.
I climbed quickly but the kid was wrapped up in the act of getting his fix. I heard the door open and close behind me, and voices again. The Tin Man pushing something harder on to some other sucker with cash to burn.
Not this time, I thought coldly, taking the cheesewire garrotte out of my pocket and wrapping it around my clenched fists. My heartbeat slowed to nothing in my chest as I waited for him to come.
He stopped a single flight from where I waited and sat on the stairs. His buyer stayed on his feet, shifting anxiously from one to the other, breathing impatiently. The Tin Man had reeled in a live on. The kid was speeding.
'Hurry up, man!' the speedfreak hissed.
'Time kid, time,' the Tin Man replied, pulling a piece of silvered mirror from his rags. He cut the powder using the razors in his thumbs, neat, precise movements. He cut something in with it but the speedfreak was too far gone to notice. 'Twenty quid,' he said, handing the mirror over. The speedfreak paid. He clutched it like it was the Holy Grail, not baking powder at all. 'Now fuck off, kid.'
The speedfreak didn't need telling twice. He clattered down the stairs, dragging his stiff fingers through the metal railings. I tested the garrotte. The Tin Man was eleven small steps away. I could smell the sodden whiskey and the reek of his cheap cigarettes hanging in the air with the more human cologne of urine. He was lighting up. A crinkle of paper then the twist of a cap. He raised the bottle to his lips, swallowed deeply and sighed.
Could I do it?
Yes, yes, I could. . .
Eleven small steps between man and monster.
Eleven.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight. . .
The Tin Man exhaled, his head tilting back to rest on the concrete step behind him. His eyes were closed, savouring his own brand of fix.
Seven.
Six.
Five. . .
The speedfreak's noise was fading. I could hear my own footsteps again. Not loud, but there. The Tin Man's eyelids fluttered, but didn't open.
Four.
Three. . .
His eyes were open, staring at me, but it didn't matter, he was mine and this way he knew it. Knew what death had come for him. He tried to rise but the drink had taken the edge off his movements. The whiskey bottle smashed on the stairs, puddling yellow and glass. Put his hand down in the broken glass.
He was mine. I moved fast but there was no real need. My arms looping over his head and pulling back hard, lifting him up another step by the throat. I wanted him dead. He kicked out, jerked, horrible gargling sounds coming out of his throat. I pulled harder, crossing my hands and using the points of my elbows on his spine as a brace. The cheesewire garrotte bit deep, sheering through the soft flesh of his neck, into the cartilage of his Adam's Apple and opening a window-slit into his trachea. His fingers clawed at his throat, at my fingers, dug into the bloody flesh, his razors doing more damage, more cutting, but there was no clawing his way back from this brink for the Tin Man. There was the fresh braying of engines somewhere below, goaded by the wet wind. His legs spasmed. He made the one sickly gargling noise, blood filling up in his airways. I wanted to believe that he was begging me for his life, that he even knew who I was.
But he didn't have a clue. I could have been another speedfreak or a biker on a downer, a boy racer on an upper, a smackhead on a trip. I could have been anyone. He didn't have a clue.
I yanked my hands back, my elbows forcing him to look at me.
His eyes were wide, wild, scared, the pupils dilated.
He didn't have a clue who I was and that was the truth.
My grip slackened.
I didn't think I was going to be able to follow through; finish him off. But then Aimee's face slipped into my mind's eye; Aimee's pale and beautiful face, and as I reached for it the skin slipped away and there he was beneath. I screamed and pulled so hard, so desperately hard, that the cheesewire cut a bloody slash into my fingers and I kept pulling until I felt the solid barrier of his spinal column.
The Tin Man was dead only his body didn't know it.
It was a quick learner, though.
He
jerked, once, twice, his feet banging off the bottom step, then his fingers lost their strength and it was over.
I felt empty. There was no satisfaction. And a man lay dead at my feet. Whatever his crimes, a man lay dead at my feet, and his blood was on my hands. But there was Aimee.
I pulled the cheesewire garrotte out of his neck and unwrapped it from my hands. It was impossible to tell where his blood ended and mine began. And I could smell every hormone in that blood we shared. I put the cheesewire in my pocket and stepped past him. Someone would find him and the message would get back to Crohak; The Devil's Right Hand was coming for him.
Four
I walked out into the rain, letting it engulf me.
Letting it flatten my hair.
Letting it slick down my back.
Living the sensations, the night in pieces behind me. Even though it wasn't fully dark yet, not even half-dark, streetlights puddled amber where they hadn't been put out. I could feel my hands twitching at my side, craving my attention. The rain had thinned the Tin Man's blood without purging it. That was the first time I noticed how much like angels wings my hands were, and how, if I creased it into a fist just so, I could see the shadows coalesce into the face of the Tin Man. I clenched my fist then opened it, making him scream as I pulled his face apart.
My heart came alive and started beating again then.
Five
I found the Scarecrow in the heart of Funland.
An amusement park built in the bowels of a shopping centre, too cramped, too hot and too loud.
He had been waiting for me as if he knew all along I would come for him. As if I were his hope and redemption and not his damnation at all.
I found him on a cheap plastic seat surrounded by children, counting off the seconds until he came face to face with the Angel of Death. None of them were with him. They wore cheap plastic bracelets on their wrists which they flashed when they wanted to go on a ride. The Scarecrow didn't appear to see them as they ran across the miniature golf course on their way to the roller-coaster and King Whiz's castle. The Viking long boat sailed back and forth across the same patch of sky to screams and whoops from its sailors. Garish costumes waddled by in oversized boots. Dodgem cars piled up in a series of multiple collisions that sent sparks flying across the overhead grid. Toddlers trampolined on the inflatable castle mimicking the collisions of the dodgems. Older kids congregated around the banks of arcade machines, challenging each other to the death over high scores and combinations of special moves.
And noise. Noise. Noise. Music. Shouts. Screams. Laughter. Tears. Folded in on each other until they unified in bedlam.
The Scarecrow was the only stationary body amid the ever changing sea of little bodies chasing down pleasure. The game.
And he was waiting for me.
He was painfully easy to find after the Tin Man. I could smell his blood as easily as I could smell gasoline, because it was tainted in the same way that the Tin Man's blood had been tainted. It had that same tang. It smelled of killing. That was a smell I would never mistake again. Killing. And his rags were soaked in it. All I had to do was walk among the folk out on the fringe and hunt out that smell. It was never very far away.
I walked between the bodies as they played, my hand closing around the handle of the breadknife I had taken from home. I must have looked like death because he recognised me as I came at him out of the crowd. And I felt some small sense of satisfaction then. My reflection in the bright steel cages of the roller-coaster cars was gaunt, my paint and lacquer coloured skin sallow, and yes, I imagined death could look like me. This death. The Scarecrow's.
The confidence was gone and so was his grace. The Scarecrow was frightened. He pushed himself to his feet, back-peddling. Tripped over a rubbish bin and fell sideways in a sprawl of coats and rags and that mop of straggly blonde hair. No one moved to help him. All they saw was an old drunk. A dosser who had no one to blame but himself, and what was he doing here anyway? I walked slowly forward, letting the bodies part to allow me through while the Scarecrow scrambled on the terracotta-tiled floor. He had no bike chain to defend himself now, and no friends to take me down.
He was mine, all mine.
It looked as if I was helping him to his feet. I reached down and caught a hold of his cuff, used it to haul him to his feet, and as he came level with my face I plunged the breadknife into his stomach and forced it upwards, lifting him and opening a door this time, no little window, for him to bleed his life out through.
'For Aimee,' I hissed into his ear, making him hear above the din. Ramming the blade home again to reinforce the message. 'For Aimee.'
He screamed but it was impossible to decipher one scream from another in this kid's Funland. No one looked or moved. No security came.
I pushed the knife again. For anyone looking I wrapped my free arm around his back as if he needed my support in standing. Beneath the cover of the coats I pulled the knife out and dropped it on the floor. Then I plunged my hand into the rent, feeling for his heart, feeling its rapidly weakening beat in my hand, and for a second I had the power of life and death in my grasp, before I clenched my fist and stilled it with a sharp tug.
It was done.
Turning, I eased the Scarecrow back down onto the cheap plastic seat again and pulled the layers of his rags over the open door into his body. Blood was streaming from the wound, clotting and darkening the filthy rags. I picked up the knife and patted the Scarecrow on the cheek before I walked away as if it was the most natural thing in the world for me to do, my good deed done, the harmless old soak back on his perch.
I felt like Moses walking away through the tide of thrill seekers, the way they seemed to shrink away from me as if they knew, but that part of me, the core, was just as empty as it had been when I found Aimee all those days ago.
But my hands weren't empty, now there were two faces grained into the skin, one on each hand, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow bleeding in the shadows of my palm, my dead locked there to whisper words of cold, cold comfort in my ears as I prowled the streets chasing that scent, the pheromone that belonged so uniquely to killing.
Six
I had been living on the streets three weeks when I found Chaz's body hanging by the neck beneath the girders of the TyneBridge.
His mouth had been stuffed with pigeon feathers. His hands bound. He had been cut. Bled. His eyes taken.
The wall behind his body had been sprayed with the wings of a huge black bird.
Crohak knew I was coming, that was the message. He knew I was coming, but I had one last parasite to snare.
I touched the dead boy's cheek with my fingers, let them linger there on the cold flesh while I said my good-bye to another victim.
Seven
When his turn came, the Cowardly Lion ran for his life.
But there was nowhere for him to run to.
The sides of the alley reared up bleakly in the darkness like the claws of predatory bird. A snare. Although the rain had stopped, the cobbles were slick beneath his madly running feet, making it doubly treacherous.
The Cowardly Lion's coats flapped behind him like the broken wings of his master's bird, dragged down into the alley to face The Devil's Right Hand.
The few windows that weren't smashed looked blank and blind on the chase, no lights burning behind the sheets of glass.
And I was behind him, chasing him for his life.
He clutched a bottle in his hand, but I was too far behind when he threw it. It shattered harmlessly on the cobbles. His face, picked out by the silver moon, was masked by a patch of slowly spreading darkness that was his birthmark. The Cowardly Lion bolted again, his footsteps clattering over the cobbled ground. There was thirty yards between us when I skipped over the fragments of broken glass.
He ran, but I was faster. Where all I could think of was Chaz's body swinging under the bridge and Aimee's body in the bathtub, her head against the black tiles, the tiles running with black tears all I had lost he had so mu
ch more to think about as he ran. He had all he could lose to weigh him down, and heavy frightened people move slower in the darkness where there are too many things to trip them and claw them back.
It was three in the morning. That time when people die quietest. The last day of my third week on the streets. He was to be my third face. The third Oz Parasite. His death would be quiet but bloody where I took the cut-throat to his face. I would need three cuts.
The Cowardly Lion looked back every few seconds to see me closing the gap between us. He raised his butcher's hook but it didn't look like a threat – it looked like he was desperately trying to ward off the inevitable. I laughed and my laughter sounded mad even in my own ears.
In the end he ran into a dead-end. Surrounded by high-sided wheelie bins and the rubbish of other people's lives, the Cowardly Lion roared his last, a pitiful whimper as he pleaded for his life.
I held on to the image of Aimee's face cut away and lying on my pillow when I took the cut-throat to his cheek and drew the blade across his scratchy beard, shaving him beneath the skin. His screams ripped at the heart of the night but we were in the kind of area where curiosity killed more than the odd cat. We were left alone, me to cut, him to bleed.
He didn't die cleanly. He rammed the curve of that butcher's hook at my stomach and tried to draw my intestines out, but he was so dreadfully slow; moving as if he were dead already. I caught his wrist and held it. I wasn't letting go. Not now. Not ever. I stared into his eyes, looking for some kind of recognition that I was more than just death come down on him.
But there was nothing.