by Dan Cummings
Neil vowed to smooth this over with Sam — and Matt, if need be — later, but right now he was a moth to the bright glow of Lindsey’s optimistic smile. ‘Eight o’clock-ish.’
Lindsey turned to Deb, drilling her with some type of telepathic compliance. ‘We’ll need to decide on those costumes tomorrow.’
Deb showed a plastic smile which in itself would prove to be a pretty unsettling Halloween mask but her reluctant side-eye at Matt betrayed her true willingness. ‘Fine, whatever,’ she conceded.
A deafening thunderclap boomed out over the skate park, the moody grumble of the concrete sky obliterating the world for a split second with a flash of white, jolting most everybody in the park. The boom stole a fright from the five of them, stirring a bout of nervous giggles. The humour quickly died in Neil’s eyes, the atrophy gradually trickling down to his mouth. There was something on the warehouse rooftop, a cartoonish figure which seemed to have ridden in on the storm clouds, blown in from some strange foreign land. Something which he had left behind years ago. Frolicking about on the tar paper parapet was the squat and nimble Frogmore. The frog-man could have been a relative of a certain Kenneth Grahame character, even sharing a similar dress code to the wealthy Mr Toad. Bouncing about and cartwheeling, he danced along the knife edge of gravity all for Neil’s personal entertainment.
Please, leave me alone, Neil begged.
Removing his flat cap, Frogmore begun to toss it in the air and retrieve it with a lash of his tongue as the first fat drop of rain pelted Neil on the edge of his nose, breaking the trance. Neil had almost forgot to breathe until a physical touch, from a real flesh and blood friend, startled him back into his rightful place in space and time.
‘I like cloud gazing too but can we go? It’s raining cats and dogs.’ Neil looked at Lindsey dumbly, realising the warmth of her hand rested on his arm for a little longer than necessary. Her bomber jacket was standing up against the sudden artillery of raindrops.
Neil laughed lightly but something about his smile didn’t fit right, ‘Sorry, just thinking about something. Let’s go before we get washed away, eh?’
Everyone else was already bolting for the dryness of Sam’s van. They both hurried towards the vehicle, hearing the engine chug to life just as another crash of thunder strained to clear the park of the more adventurous aquaplaning skaters. Lightning fragmented the heavens into jigsaw pieces, leaving Frogmore to watch the small van spin around and sluice out of the park to a crescendo of booms. Dropping his hat back on his head, his big yellow eyes narrowed with an acceptance of challenge. It looked like the old friendship would require some reparations…from both sides.
*****
The van surfed to the curb before one of the many traditionally designed, colonial revival homes which populated the pleasant cul-de-sac. Sam remained subdued, keeping his eyes on the gentle rhythm of the windshield wipers. He now sat alone up front since Neil had joined Lindsey, Matt and Deb in the back. The van door rolled open to the torrential downpour. Deb and Matt had continued to circle around their blatant and unexpected attraction, opting to remain ambiguous.
‘Might see you at the party.’ Her voice was as drab as the weather.
Matt, leaning his back against the rear doors, held her tentative gaze until she dropped her eyes, but his impassive voice seemed to care a lot less than his countenance. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
Deb was out the van and shuffling quickly towards Lindsey’s porch. Lindsey seemed to hang undecidedly on the van’s threshold, her very proximity continuing to turn Neil into a mush-brained idiot. ‘So, this is me. Tomorrow, eight o’clock-ish?’
Neil didn’t even stop to check in with Matt or the eerily muted Sam. ‘Definitely.’
She flicked her soaked brown hair over her shoulder. ‘See you later, Sam, thanks for the ride. See ya, Matt.’
Neil watched her hurry through the curtain of rain to an impatient, foot-stamping Deb on the wooden porch. Before he even had a chance to close the door, Sam tyre-spun away from the house, the wheels kicking up a miniature tsunami from the dark puddle. Lindsey giggled watching Neil fight for balance, wide-legged and struggling to close the door in the van’s hasty retreat.
‘Shit, Sam. Maybe don’t drive like we just robbed a bank.’ Neil’s concern was undercut by his own blissful smile.
Finally, Sam broke his tense silence. ‘So this big party half the school is going to tomorrow, you don’t suppose Noakes or Shit Storm or any of those guys will be there?’ Neil dropped to his knees on the mattress and glumly reached for another beer in the bag. ‘I mean, hey, don’t let me get in the way of you two wetting your dicks. But if you’re going to risk getting the fucking shit kicked out of you to do it, then I’ll see you guys in hospital. I’ll be the one who isn’t having a colonoscopy to get my teeth back.’
Matt looked up from the ancient parchment of a dog-eared rock magazine which he must have perused a hundred times or more, and caught Neil’s look. Sam was right. Neil nodded to himself but didn’t want to pass up an opportunity with Lindsey. He held his hand out to Matt who passed him his lighter, which he used to pop the cap off the beer. ‘We don’t know they’ll be there,’ Neil countered lamely.
‘Of course not.’ Sam seemed to be enjoying this little diatribe. ‘It’s not like Lloyd is one of the most popular guys in school or anything. Or anybody will have any interest in getting fucked up on weed or coke or anything else Noakes can supply. Probably just going to be cake and ice cream.’
‘Okay, I get it.’ Neil was abundantly aware of how shoddy his argument was.
‘Maybe there’ll be a clown and a petting zoo.’
‘I said I get it.’
Sam continued to keep his eyes on the road, ensuring that Neil was having a conversation with his right shoulder.
Matt could probably swing either way on attending the party. Sure, it was obvious that Little Miss holier-than-thou Deb was attracted to his roguish charm, but for Matt, he wasn’t acting. Despite his reputation as one of the school’s illustrious burnout losers, he was too cool to chase after girls.
Neil took a sullen gulp of beer. ‘Then don’t go, it’s cool. But I don’t want to look like a flake in front of Lindsey.’
‘Stupid,’ Sam reproved, ‘it’s stupid and you know it.’
Matt discarded the magazine. ‘Did you get her number?’
‘It didn’t seem like I had to.’
‘You could see if she’s on Facebook. Ask her if she wants to do something else?’
Neil shrugged. ‘Looks a bit desperate. Look, don’t worry about it. I’ll go myself, and if I get my ass kicked then it’s on me.’
Matt rustled another bottle from the bag and popped the cap. ‘I definitely have a shot with Deb. She’s trying far too hard to dislike me.’
They clinked bottles but the pang of guilt furthered its roots inside Neil. He looked at the silent form of Sam who slowly turned the volume up, the heavy metal offering the peace he was sorely lacking in life. Even if Sam did go the party, he would most likely end up feeling like a fifth wheel.
Neil nursed the horrible betrayal in his mind with a brow rub. ‘Look, Sam, we’ll meet Lindsey and Deb, and maybe Connor and some of the other guys will be there, and we’ll go to the drive-in instead, check out what horror movies they’re showing.’
Sam gave a mild head twitch, and it took a full pumping chorus before he morosely came around. ‘Okay…whatever.’
Neil and Matt’s mouths cut open into wide cheery smiles and they once again clinked bottle bases. ‘There we go. Everyone’s happy. Now Sam, for shit’s sake get this van back to yours so we can start some real drinking,’ Matt commanded. ‘T.G.I.F.’
Chapter 10
Tattooed knuckles rapped on the black-painted steel door. With great vitality the rain pounded on the porch roof of the rundown yet vast two-storey mess of a house on the edge of town, its only neighbours an old street lamp and the looming woods. Red spray paint covered the building from the ground to the large ang
ular loft conversion, and long nonsensical contours like deep cuts had been made in the wooden flesh. The door looked to be the only thing standing tall with any real conviction within the crooked building which seemed to be a simulacrum of a cartoonish haunted house brought to life where it continued to cling on to the edge of death. An assortment of cars were parked in the yard, a desert of dirt, broken glass and patchy rugged weeds, including a police cruiser whose uniformed occupants were busy doing bumps of coke.
Despite looking fit for nothing but rats, roaches and parasites, the metal security slit in the door slid open. A pair of flint-hard eyes inspected the dripping wet forms of Noakes and Staubach for a second then the metal panel screeched back into place, the sound of deadbolts being wrenched aside. The door opened slowly to a bass-throbbing gloom. Tully, the doorman, popped out at Noakes from behind the door in some worm-faced ghoul mask, two slits for a nose and a circular funnel of teeth for a mouth.
Noakes’s expression didn’t change, he didn’t even blink. ‘Where is he?’
Tully was taller than the two youths, blond with a granite chin and hooded, humourless eyes. He fist-bumped Staubach and dropped the mask onto his stool. ‘Kitchen.’
Noakes kept walking.
‘Shit, kid. Anyone ever tell you that you need to lighten up?’ He shouldered the iron fort closed and re-bolted the door.
With most of the windows boarded up, Noakes strolled through the murky, black-lit corridor, past creeps, users and his uncle Grainger’s doped-up muscle. Walking past the rickety, graffiti-coated staircase to their left, the next generation of pushers stopped within the large kitchen, the cleanest part of the house which wasn’t saying much. Standing there like a stern employer doling out directives to his workforce was a man of average build and height, black goatee, receding hairline and one damn ugly paisley shirt. Uncle Ralph Grainger. Several bigger guys hung on his every word.
Grainger nodded a curt greeting to the boys and continued, ‘The next lot will be ready by tomorrow. Hurst says this new batch might be a little stronger than the last. Same old drill, only deal within Hard Luck Haven. Test it on the dirtbags and no-hopers first. If there’s no significant episodes, you can sell the following product to your customers at your own discretion. Just remember what happens if you have shit judgement. If this new recipe is as scattershot as the last, then just stick with the tried and tested au naturel product for your loyal customers.’ His voice was measured, engaging and laced with a subtlety of peril. He flitted through a few stacks of bills besides the weighing scales on the kitchen breakfast bar and tossed them out to the heavies. ‘Go buy yourself something nice.’
A black man with a modest-sized afro in a red hoodie turned to the rain-plastered Noakes, ‘’Sup, kid,’ and caught his stack, shaking his head in amusement. ‘I still don’t get what the fuck’s up with some people,’ he said as his thumb skimmed through the dollar stack with great pleasure. ‘Why they smoke that nasty synthetic shit? It’s like a slap in the face to Mother Nature, y’know.’ A few murmurs of agreement followed from the shark-grinning posse.
Grainger shrugged. ‘If some degenerate folks want to throw the dice on losing their mind it’s on them. So long as they’re paying for it, it’s a market to tap. I’ll let you all know when Crankenstein has finished cookin’.’
Red Hood nodded in amusement and kick-started the departure of the distributors, cutting a respectable path through Noakes and Staubach and leaving the three of them alone, or at least, relatively alone. The kitchen’s back wall had been knocked through long ago, connecting to the large extension at the back of the house, separated by a curtain of thick plastic strips. At one time it might have been a garage or a workshop, now it had been appropriated as a drug lab. On the other side, several ghostly apparitions of guys in white protective suits and masks were busy spraying down shredded plant material with an unknown substance.
Grainger picked up a fresh cigar and the cutter from the counter and started to boil the kettle. ‘You boys walk here or something?’
Noakes watched him grab a mug from one of the cupboards and didn’t see any point in stalling the inevitable. ‘The windshield is fucked. It just broke, right in front of us. I’m sorry.’
Grainger spooned some coffee into the mug and gave them an unsettling smirk over his shoulder. ‘Just broke, huh?’ Staubach felt those little insect bites of electricity beginning to spark up inside him, almost shuddering with delight at the animosity crackling the air like the lightning outside.
‘Even Garth doesn’t know what caused it, but he found some slimy shit around the hole.’
Grainger turned around, leaning back into the counter. ‘Well it’s Halloween weekend. Maybe it was Claude Rains.’
Noakes was utterly lost for ideas. ‘Who?’
Grainger smirked again, opened the fridge for the milk. ‘He played the Invisible Man. Long time ago. Where did this happen?’
Noakes shoved his hands into his jeans, repentant. ‘School parking lot.’
‘So it wasn’t heat from any other upstarts trying to make a statement?’
Noakes shook his head. ‘Nah, no one with the balls to do that. After what me and Staubach did to Linc, his crew won’t do shit. And after what you did with Sticky, I think most others are smart enough to stay low.’
After pouring in the milk, Ralph placed the cap on the bottle and returned it to the fridge. ‘Well,’ he sighed lightly, ‘Garth will get a new window fitted, but you’re going to have to shift some extra weight to cover the damages. What did your old man teach you, rest his soul?’
Noakes nodded firmly. ‘Pull my own weight.’
There was a distant twinkle in Ralph’s eye. ‘One of the most important lessons a man can teach his son. Then, I suppose Carol taught you that just as much as Donny. My sister had balls almost as big as me.’ His mouth curled softly in fond remembrance.
Noakes tried to share the bittersweet reflection of life but found that his eyes were too rigid and guarded. Staubach seemed to have fizzled out, sensing that Grainger wasn’t in a tough love kind of mood. ‘There’s a high school party tomorrow at Powell’s farm. We can offload more there, easy.’ Noakes pulled out some thick green bundles from his wet jeans and passed the earnings to his uncle. Grainger didn’t count; despite the windshield hiccup his nephew and his borderline sociopathic friend had earned his implicit trust.
Grainger deducted their wages from the takings into two separate wads and passed one back to Staubach, then took ten Jacksons from the second pile before handing it to Noakes. ‘That’ll cover the windshield.’
‘How’s Crankenstein’s science experiment? We could help Miles and the others move some of it,’ Staubach suggested, wiping a bead of water from the tip of his nose.
The red light on the kettle clicked off. Grainger jabbed his unlit cigar at the small kitchen table. ‘Have a seat.’ They did. He poured the boiling water into the mug, stirred the black contents and joined them at the table. ‘This party tomorrow, I’ll sort you more of the Purple Haze. A nice sativa, uplifting, energetic. That stuff back there—’ he inclined his head to the plastic partition, ‘—it’s still too experimental at the minute for reputable consumption. It’s for die-hard fuck-ups only.’
Noakes leaned forward on his elbows. ‘What is it?’
Grainger blew steam away from his coffee. ‘It’s called Fable. Hurst’s latest generation head fuck. He and his lab coats knocked together some artificial cannabinoid laced with LSD. You think Spice, K2, Joker, all that other synthetic shit on the market was rough—’ his eyes went comically wide, ‘—that stuff will kick your mind into fucking outer space…but you won’t be coming back. He’s still working out the kinks. Since there’s no natural substances in that stuff, the brain trust are trying to enhance the chill-factor and hallucinogens of the compound without any of the unwelcome side effects.’
Staubach’s mouth stretched into a mean, morbid little smile, his bloodshot eyes distant. ‘Sticky?’
Gr
ainger took a tentative sip, his top lip conditioned against the molten java. ‘Sticky is on a one-way trip throughout the fucking cosmos.’
‘He still here?’ Noakes enquired, not sharing Staubach’s vicious glee but rather uncomfortable with the arrangement.
Grainger seemed to focus on the ceiling for a moment, maybe tracking a meddlesome housefly. ‘Still locked in the attic. At this point I’m starting to think it would be a mercy killing. That’s why I never fucked with acid, kiddies.’
Staubach remained impassive. ‘He was stepping on local business, fuck him.’
Grainger chuckled a series of frigid wet clicks. ‘I knew there was a reason I liked you two shitheads. Nasty little animals are good for enterprise. Still, he’s a fuckin’ state. Once Hurst has finished with his little observations I’ll have to give him the Old Yeller treatment. And that’s why that stuff—’ he gestured towards the partition, ‘—isn’t for the little boys and girls at this party. It’ll bring the wrong kind of heat should some parents’ little promising senior experience a reality break and all fingers will point to me.’ He seemed to remember the unloved cigar waiting on the table before him and picked it up, placing the tip in the metal cutter. ‘I don’t like it when people point fingers at me—’ he lopped off the end of the cigar like a fat brown accusatory digit, ‘—it tends to cost money.’
‘Can I see him?’ Staubach asked.
Grainger held the youngster’s curious but pressing stare. ‘Not now. I got shit to attend to.’ He lit his cigar, puffing on it and instantly reeking the kitchen with thick tobacco. Appraising their soaked clothing and the rain which was still slapping against the windows above the sink, he rested the cigar on the glass ashtray. ‘Once the rain lets up I’ll grab you the herb and I’ll throw in some MDMA too.’