by Unknown
We had a couple of silent days after that. I watched a lot of TV. The owner of the bungalow came over and I negotiated two more weeks' rental. After ten days the paralysis and swelling had gone and I let Lexie take me to the hospital for X-rays, making up a load of old toss about a biking accident. Turns out Lex was a good nurse. All that time she spent at the clinic, I guess. The fracture was healing fine: I didn't need treatment or stitches. So, I ruffled my hair over the scar and began making plans to get back to Cuagach. I went to Lochgilphead and bought a pair of insulated heavy-duty bolt-cutters. Course, could I find one fisherman or boat-owner prepared to drop me on the south of the island and wait? Could I fuck. Eventually, after four days of searching, I found someone in Ardfern who was prepared to rent me a small outboard for a massive deposit. But just as I was all set to go the weather turned. Autumn had already descended on Scotland – the day I was carried off the island it seemed to pounce in an hour: one moment there was balmy Indian summer, the very next the temperatures dropped and there was even snowfall in the Highlands. Now it got worse. The winds picked up and howled round the coast; the sea threw itself at the beaches day after day. If I didn't want a battering on the rocks off Luing, I'd have to sit it out.
And what a wait it turned out to be. It was a week before I woke up to see chilly sunrays sparkling off the waves of the firth.
It's weird, but the clearest memory I have of Lexie during the whole sorry episode isn't what you'd think: it isn't any of the nightmare stuff, it's actually something kind of benign in comparison. It's from the morning she came down to the jetty to see me off. Even now it's as clear as anything. She was furious I was going back to Pig Island; she almost couldn't speak she was so angry, and I've got a perfect mental snapshot of her standing with one hand on her hip, pushing her sunglasses up her nose and staring out at the island because she couldn't bring herself to look at me. She'd had her hair cut in London before we left – and still a bit of suntan across her nose from the summer – and all in all she didn't look exactly like my wife that day, I thought, glancing at her sideways.
'Why don't you go back to London?' I said. 'Get a taxi and take the train.' She didn't answer. She shrugged and crossed her arms, keeping her attention on the island. I watched her for a moment, then got into the boat and started up the engine. 'There's cash in my computer case if you need it,' I called, as I slipped the bow line and the boat began to edge away. 'In the front pocket.'
She didn't bother waiting. When I got the boat out of the moorings and looked back at her, wondering briefly whether to make a romantic-guy display – take the boat back, leap ashore and kiss her without a word – she'd already turned away and was heading up the sea steps, and the moment was gone. C'est la vie, folks. I tapped out an irritated rhythm on the tiller arm as I watched her go. It goes to show you never can tell.
The tide was with me. I was washed straight out of Craignish loch into the firth, where whirlpools bounced tennis-ball-sized knots of foam on the surface and goats watched me from deserted islands. Spanish Armada goats: they'd been stranded on these islands for centuries, poor fuckers – and Sovereign thought she had it bad. It was rough for a while, and I had images of being sucked into the mighty Corryvreckan whirlpool, chewed up and spat out. But then I caught a drift of something and before I knew it the water was calm and the sea almost rolled me, like the gentle hands on a prayer book, around to the deserted side of Pig Island.
As I drew close to the shore I could see a small, derelict jetty, a white, salt-dried fishing-net tangled round it and pebble beaches stretching out as far as the eye could see. About a foot outside the tree-line stood a wire fence that must have been a continuation of the one in the gorge. Maybe it was there to stop the PHM landing by boat. Or maybe it was a cage to stop something getting out.
I tied the boat to the jetty, hefted the bolt-cutters on to my shoulder and stood for a moment, staring inland, past the fence, half expecting Dove to materialize out of the trees. There was silence, just the creak and yaw of the boat moving against the sun-bleached timbers of the jetty. After a while I picked up my kit and set off along the beach, trying to find somewhere secluded to make the break. A breeze had picked up: a cold, unnatural breeze with a fishy scent to it, which made the trees come alive, a lazy flex and sigh travelling the length of the fence. By the time I'd reached the rocks at the end of the beach it had turned into a strong wind that flattened my hair sideways and made my head ache in a way it would never have done before I got that tap on the head from Dove's axe. In the daylight it was nothing like the gloom of the last time I'd been up here, but it felt like the twigs and scraps of heather pirouetting in the wind were just the outriders of something more powerful coming out of the enclosure. I was glad of the weight of the bolt-cutters on my shoulder.
I approached the fence, stopping only inches away and holding up my hand, waiting for the crawling sensation of the electric field lifting the hairs in their beds. But this time they remained flat, not responding, only moved by the occasional blast of wind. There was none of the faint buzzing I remembered from last month and now it occurred to me that although I couldn't have broken the circuit I could have caused Dove to close down the supply so he could repair the damage.
I positioned my hands carefully on the insulated handles of the cutters, checking the way my thumbs lay along them. There was a chance the fence was dead, but that didn't stop my heart thudding like a pile-driver. I lowered the bolts, bringing them closer and closer and closer to the wire. I let them touch, ready to have them jolted out of my hands. But they didn't. They lay inertly, occasionally moving sideways in the wind, the sun winking white off the jaws. I shook my head and gave an ironic smile, half laughing at the sinking feeling in my chest. No excuse now, old mate ... I ran the cutters down the fence in one movement to check for a rogue current, and when they landed with a bang on the floor, no sparks or jolts, I crouched and began to sever the wire.
Compared to Blake's snippers, the cutters went through the fence like a hot knife through butter. In less than three minutes I'd made a hole from top to bottom. If someone was watching me from in there, hiding in the trees, they weren't going to have any doubt about my intentions. I picked up the kit and stepped through, resting the cutters on my shoulder so I could either carry them comfortably or circle them down in one move, crack them out of the air like lightning.
The first thing that struck me about the forest was the pig dung. The pellets were everywhere, piles of them, some trampled, some perfectly oval and crusted like manufactured dog biscuits. I kept passing shallow grooves in the earth, wind-battered snarls of hog-hair caught on twigs and stones where the pigs had come to scratch themselves. Every time the wind changed direction I got a blast of a smell too – not the rotting pigs' heads, but digested grass and leaves.
Deeper in the forest the wind couldn't reach and for a while everything got weirdly still, the trees motionless, loaded with silence. I paused to get my bearings, ears roaring in the quiet. Ahead, between the trunks, I could see patches of sunlight, like there was a large clearing out there. I could make out shapes – a rusting old hopper, a blondin rope suspended high in the air with an old pulley dangling from it. The slate mine.
I poked my head out of the trees and checked the clearing for signs of life. Deserted. The pulley creaked back and forward in the breeze – the same eerie squeaking I'd heard from outside the fence. I picked my way across the mine, peering into shafts, giving the hopper a shove, making rust flake into the air. In the side of a rock face a shaft entrance was half concealed by a rusting water tank. It gave off a stink of decay, like a sewer – when I shone my torch into it I came face to face with a dead pig. I stared into its flat eyes for some time, thinking that it was a weird place for it to have crawled. It must have been pushed in. And it wasn't as decomposed as it smelt – it looked kind of fresh. Maybe this was one of Malachi's disposal places. I remembered what the Garricks had said, that he had access to hell through these shafts: I was thinki
ng of crawling inside to dislodge it when something made me stop.
Someone was laughing.
I backed silently from the shaft, clicked off the torch and sat back on my haunches, looking around at the trees. It was a heinous laugh – like a cartoon witch's – echoing around the deserted rocky hollow. My skin tightened. The laughter stopped and another noise joined it – of someone speaking in a long, low, uninterrupted monologue. There was something about the quality – something so familiar that—
I stood slowly, a smile on my face. Television. I was sure of it. Somewhere up ahead, among the deserted rocks, a television was playing.
The house was like a large Victorian cottage – bizarre out here on its own in the woods. Maybe it was built for someone senior in the mine. It stood on a weed-cracked hard-standing; the paint had been allowed to peel and drop and the windows were mossed and dirty. But there were signs of life: lace curtains tacked up, oil drums stacked against the generator at the side and a television – an old black-and-white movie, from the Celia Johnson accents – playing beyond an opened downstairs window.
I stared at that window. Something about the lace curtains lifting on the cool breeze, something about the darkness inside – the way it seemed almost designed to suck in the attention – made every nerve ending sing out 'Trap'. Slowly I raised the bolt-cutters above my head. You're not the fucking Special Squad, old mate. Don't get your head stove in for nothing.
I approached, cautious step by cautious step, coming from a wide angle, meeting the house at the far end of the wall and sliding along with my back to it, conscious of the warmth of the bricks on the back of my neck. Hardly breathing now, cutters still raised, I bent slowly, slowly, to peer into the room. It was in disarray – filthy, crisps packets, dirty cups and empty yoghurt pots scattered around – the sunlight falling on sedimentary layers of dust. The back of the TV was to the window, and beyond it, facing me, was a sofa, worn shiny in the place opposite the screen. Beyond that another window, closed, its matching lace curtains hanging silent in the autumn sun, embroidered with dead-fly carcasses.
Using the tip of a finger I gently touched the door. It swung open to reveal the length of the tiled hallway. I took a step inside, my sandals sinking into the filth. In the room ahead the Neighbours theme tune started up, making me think incongruously of my soup-and-bread-roll lunches in Kilburn, when Lexie was out at the clinic and I was home working. I stood still and listened. Beyond the noise of the television, nothing stirred, only the occasional click of the net curtains moving in the breeze.
I stepped into the living room. It was small and clogged with furniture and rubbish. A reproduction of Blake's Christ hung above the fireplace, thick with dust, and in an alcove stood an almost life-size plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, the sort of thing I'd seen for sale in the Tijuana immigration lines, every inch of her painted a different colour, her cowl blue, her lips and cheeks red, her eyes a brilliant cornflower. She'd been draped with things – flower stems and tinsel trailed from her on to the floor. The house of a religious maniac, I thought. Just the sort of thing I'd—
Behind me something whirred to life.
The word trap trap trap went through me with a crack. I turned, bringing the cutters up ready to strike, expecting Dove or worse. But the living room was empty. In a plant pot on the windowsill a child's seaside windmill, lolling at an angle, had caught the breeze and was zipping round and round and round. I stared at it, blinking, as it speeded, slowed, speeded and slowed again, winding down with a lazy clickety-clickety-click, until I could see the individual colours, red and yellow, and at last came to a rather uncertain halt.
I didn't move. I stared at the windmill and let my heart thump out the remainder of the adrenaline. After a while I lowered the cutters. The house was still again, only the television still churning out its drama behind me. Clenching my teeth, I glanced at the pile of clothing in the hallway, then back at the windmill. Some of those clothes belonged to a child – there were a little girl's clothes in that pile. I entertained a brief, electrifying thought: that a child, or children, was here – maybe imprisoned. I raised my eyes to the ceiling, let the thought stay, and then, knowing that if I was going to keep sane I couldn't go forward in my imagination, I went into the front hall and started to search the cottage.
It turned out to be empty. Not a soul in the place. All I was getting from the cottage was that Malachi was as looped as they come. He had no regard for hygiene or civilization. And that maybe women, or a woman, or even children had been in the house at some time. One of the rooms was weirdly clean compared to the rest, a single bed made up neatly, curtains secured back, books lined up on the shelves. Where the occupants were now I didn't want to think. The second I was off this island I was calling the bizzies and getting them to check their missing-persons records.
You're a smart one, Oakesy. A smart one.
I stood at the edge of the clearing, my back to the cottage, breathing hard and wishing to Christ I hadn't let Lexie come to the marina. I hadn't had a chance to pick up any tobacco and, right now, I'd have given my kidneys for a tug on a rollie. I was staring at a trampled path that led away from my feet into the woods in the direction of the gorge, and I knew it had been walked along recently. The bad thing was that I was going to have to follow. On the heels of Dove's crooked beast. His biforme.
Time to drop this dread in my heart. I made a fist and knocked myself on the head with my knuckles. Get going, you fucking arse. I hiked up my kit, chucked the bolt-cutters on to my shoulder and set out.
The path wound and detoured, but I knew it was taking me in the direction of the gorge. The trees cloaked the air, warming it and deadening sound, making even my footsteps sound muffled. After half an hour I saw, glinting through the trees ahead, the fence. I picked up speed, sensing the gorge in the way the air had started to move. The wind would blow down the clefts in those rocks like through a tunnel. I could feel my sweatshirt and shorts starting to press against me, then flap and billow away, snapping and whipping around like sails. About twenty feet from the fence the trees cleared and I found I was standing on a stretch of grassland, the blades pressed down into random shapes with each gust. A dead pig lay next to the fence in a flat, deflated way, the shrunken skin lying tight and leathery against its ribs, the grass hugging it one moment, the next rolling back to reveal its mummified jaw and teeth. Something about its position made me think it had been thrown on to the ground, and then I noticed the black smudge on its snout – the stain of electrocution. I raised my eyes grimly to the fence, to where it glinted and creaked in the wind, and saw that a path had been trampled through the grass to a gate which stood open. My heart picked up speed.
I pulled up my kit, stepped over the pig's corpse and approached, looking out over the gorge. Someone or something had come through here recently.
The wind was blowing the dead trees, making them bow and scrape; the sun glinted off the old chemical drums. Almost a quarter of a mile away, above the PHM's scrawled message – Get thee behind me, Satan – the trees billowed and heaved, and for an odd moment that side of the island was almost as alien as this enclosure had once seemed. I looked behind me at the wind going through the trees, dipping in and blowing open holes in the leaf cover, revealing patches of different colours beyond, flashes of more trees and sky. There was no one on this side of the island and suddenly I was more sure of that than I had been of anything. I turned back to the gorge, gazing at the far escarpment, at the gate standing wide, and a weird feeling crawled across my skin, the words coming to me like a whisper: Dove's gone to the village. And he's taken his devil with him.
12
It took me three hours to cross the gorge. By the time I got to the edge of the community I had finished all my water and my tongue was a piece of raw meat in my mouth. There were blisters on my feet and an ache in my shoulder from carrying the cutters. I'd been on the island for four hours and the sun had dropped low in the sky. The wind, which in the gorge had twice s
et me off balance, had fallen quiet on this side of the island, almost like a memory, leaving my ears ringing and my face burning.
I came down the wooded path that led into the community and paused. The gate stood wide open. The shadows were getting long, evening wasn't far away, and there was an odd silence. An unearthly stillness. I rested for a bit, then headed through the gate, trying not to think about what it all meant. As I came down the wooded path, the rooftops appearing from out of the leaves, I knew something was wrong. Usually at this time of day there would be a prayer meeting, or someone busying across the green with a bowl of vegetables to be peeled, but now all I could see were empty windows and, beyond the cottages, the deserted green.
About a hundred yards to my right something moved. I became very still, concentrating. It was down near the ground, in a small, V-shaped depression, which continued in a straight line like a dried-up river, then disappeared between two cottages. It was something a bit paler than the surrounding grass. I took a few steps forward. It was a pig, snouting in the ground, its excited tail curling and uncurling like fishing bait. I approached silently, not wanting to disturb it. It was eating – its snout fixed in one spot while its hindquarters circled and shuffled and circled, trying to get a purchase on the food. I took a few more steps forward and—
'Shit.'
I shrank into the trees and sat down on the ground, staring blankly at it. The animal looked up in mild interest – not fear. It wasn't going to be scared away from this meal. Its snout was smeared with something that looked like vomit, but must be, I thought, my heart falling, the stomach contents of the human being it was eating. Fuck fuck fuck. I stared at the thin white foot in the pink plastic sandal. Sovereign?