Conrad Williams
Head Injuries
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David has been summoned to Morecambe, a place he hoped he'd never see again.
It's winter and the English seaside town is dead. David knows exactly how it feels. Empty for as long as he can remember, he depends too much on a past filled with the excitements of drink, drugs and cold sex. The friends that sustained him then-Helen and Seamus-are here now and together they aim to pinpoint the source of the violence that has suddenly exploded into their lives.
The friends drive each other further into a territory of fear, suspicion and threat as old bitternesses are rekindled, ancient haunts are revisited.
The phantoms of the past are coalescing and something is coming home to roost…
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From Kirkus Reviews
A debut novel that progresses like crisscross dreams in a damaged head, by a young Englishman whose work has appeared largely in horror and fantasy anthologies. Narrator David Munro, a second-rate painter, has not seen his college roomie Seamus 'Shay' Cope since he threw a teacup at him three years ago. But now their shared companion, Helen Soper, has called David to the English seaside town of Morecambe to help revive the unlovable Seamus, who's now suffering some mystery malaise that affects Helen as wellsomething shapeless and ugly that is unfolding and that David has begun to feel as well. It's winter and something cryptic is exploding within them. Odd figures spur childhood memories; as in a dream, a strange woman in a car slowly parts the skin of David's cheek with her fingernail. Memories filter back: Had Seamus and their schoolmate Dando tried to drown a dog, then tie up David, nearly drown him in mud, and start to bugger him? Seamus tells David about a caving tragedy in New Mexico when his fellow caver got stuck and died of cold which reminds David of Seamus nearly drowning him in mud. Bad karma comes twisting around David in the form of a murdered girl. Did MacCreadle, a horrible figure from their childhood, do it? Helen explains to David that they're being stalked. But by whom? The three friends slowly form their own vocabulary to describe the events befalling them. And so they stumble vaguely on, David and Seamus with dreams of suffocation. It's as if, Seamus says, we've opened up our heads and nailed them together so that we're all sharing the same Widescreen movie. By novel's end, their worst secrets have fountained upward in a collective dawning and bloodletting. The spine of this waking nightmare is a sad, gasping loneliness, into which any bad thought can fall and spear you. The family love that at last fills this vacancy is quite moving.
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'I loved it. His portraits of everyday loneliness are brilliant. Altogether I thought it one of the finest and most haunting modern spectral novels I've read.'
-Ramsey Campbell
'Conrad Williams is a demon-Spirit, weaving beautiful nests of tight prose, hatching spectacular nightmares out of love, guilt, remorse and unreliable memory. The flights of his fiction are dazzling and dangerous.'
-Graham Joyce
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P. (heroic scan-finding & OCR) & P. (formatting & proofing) edition.
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This novel is for my parents, Leonora and Grenville, with much love.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to the following for their friendship, encouragement and support: Richard Coady, Mark Morris, Nicholas Royle and Michael Marshall Smith.
Thanks also to: Frank Baguley of the National Caving Association, Suzanne and Richard Barbieri, Michael Blackburn, the British Fantasy Society, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Crowther, Ellen Datlow, Francesca Day, Jim Driver, Les and Val Edwards, Adele Fielding, Jo Fletcher, Neil Gaiman, Paula Grainger, Annette Green, Mike Harrison, David Hosier, Simon Ings, Liz Jensen, Steve Jones, Graham Joyce, Chris Kenworthy, Robert Kirby, Joel Lane, Paul McAuley, Robin Newby, Kim Newman, John Oakey, Caroline Oakley, David Peak, Amanda Reynolds, Kate Ryan, Seamus Ryan, Anna Scott, Dave Sutton, Karl Edward Wagner, Nel Whatmore, Terri Windling, my sister Nicola and Keri Green.
Death is its own best friend, and our dreams know it.
-Derek Raymond, 'How the Dead Live'
PROLOGUE
Sometimes, during his morning walks across the field to school, he would see the cat. It was coffee-coloured, with blue eyes and a kink at the tip of its tail, as if it had been snapped like a green stick. Often, it would approach him and allow its tummy to be stroked while it purred and creased its eyes at him in pleasure. On these occasions, he felt that his day at school would be all right; that the teachers might notice him and praise his work. That the boys would leave him alone.
The cat was there, but it was dead. They had painted its face green and gouged its eyes out, leaving them on a paper plate next to the body. The words YOR BREKFAST, CUNTIE had been scrawled upon it. The smell of piss rose from the bundle that had stretched and vibrated beneath his fingers, like a promise made by the future. He hoped it was the cat's piss. He hoped that it had died quickly.
He felt for the package in his pocket. Still there, as it had been since he left the house that morning. His mother's kiss felt like a scar, cold against his cheek. She didn't understand. She thought that it was every boy's right to get roughed up in the playground. If it's good for the gorilla, it's good for you, she'd said. It's natural, she'd said, it's the male genes fighting for dominance. Should be like your dad. He had a spine of iron when he was young.
He still does, he'd wanted to say, bolted and screwed into his back to halt the progress of multiple sclerosis. His father never said anything. Just stared and sneered at him like a scrunched-up piece of paper wadded into his wheelchair, a spinning thread of silver connecting his lip with his shoulder.
'All right there, Dad,' he whispered, continuing his journey towards the playground. 'No, don't get up.' He barked laughter and had to swallow hard against a stream of bile. Don't bother getting up.
They were waiting for him, as they always did, on the fringe of the teachers' car park. The school behind them was like a theatrical backdrop. Four boys. Blazers framing off-white shirts, collars undone, unfeasibly wide Windsor knots in their ties.
'Has anybody seen my pussy?' called one and a laugh got juggled about between them. It wasn't pleasant laughter. There was a nervousness in it. This one here, with the ginger hair and the invisible eyelashes, he usually started it and he stepped forward now, spitting into the ground in front of his feet to stop the boy going any further.
'Hey, he's got toothpaste round his gob, the scruffy twat!' someone called. Always someone called but he couldn't focus on them any more, he didn't care. He wasn't here. He was somewhere else, in a soft field filled with poppies, chasing a cat to a shaded place where they could sit and curl against each other and be free from anyone.
'Nah, it's not toothpaste. It's spunk. You been sucking your dad off again, you dirty bastard? And him, with his iffy back an' all.'
A place to which the cat would take him, through the trees where the sun always shone and there was food and other cats and the sky filled with purring. Every eye that turned on him would blink with acceptance and love. Every paw that landed on his face would be soft and entreating, claws sheathed. Come and play. Come and look at this tree with me. Let's sleep in the shade. Come and play.
'I had a fuck awful morning,' Ginger spat. 'Bus late. Spilled me Coke all over me fucking lap. Cap it all, I did the wrong cocking homework. I decide to be a good boy, do the exercises, keep Lovesey off my dicking back and what happens? I shitting well do the quadratics instead of the simultaneouses. Not that it really matters, cos I couldn't fucking do them anyway. But the effort, see? All that bastard effort down the shitter. And I want you to know how bad I feel. Which is pretty fucking evil, actually.'
The fur. So deep, so impossibly soft. The heat of an uncomplicated body beneath it. Simple, uncondition
al love.
He took the canister from his pocket and drenched his head under the spray. His eyes were blinded with the pain and he almost stopped, but somehow it was better now because he couldn't see them. They were making noises; uncertain noises. He imagined them backing off; they knew how desperate he'd become. Surely that time by the gym had warned them. But it was over now.
He struck the wheel of the lighter and his head took off.
Who was screaming? Them or him? He really didn't give a shit.
ONE
GRAVITATING
We stopped at the wishing well opposite Woolworth's but even though she saw me feed it a coin, Helen didn't kiss me. The tide was rushing in. Across Morecambe Bay the hills of the Lake District were pale and blue; I could just make out villages speckled white in the hollows of land. At night, lights pooled there like scattered new pennies.
I asked Helen if she fancied some tea. She nodded but I couldn't see her eyes to gauge whether she really wanted to shelter from the cold: her hair was wrapped in thin bands across her face. The scar was a white arrow flying from her mouth.
We crossed the road, the wind swiftly dying as we stalked beneath the awnings of shops and guest houses until we found a cafe; I remembered it from my college days-they even had the same naff plastic tablecloths and paper napkins, chalked menus and a No Smoking section that comprised a single table and one stool under an extractor fan. Inside I nodded towards a table by the window and dithered uncertainly in the aisle where a cross-eyed dog was licking its undercarriage.
'There'll be a waitress along,' said Helen. I sat opposite her, again unsure as to the wisdom of my choice. Maybe she wanted me to sit alongside. It was tiring me out.
When the waitress came over I asked for a piece of toast and two teas.
'Coffee for me, please,' said Helen, after our order had been pencilled. The waitress withdrew, giving me a sour look. The cafe was empty but for us. It was mid-October and the promenade was host only to a few spent wheelchairs and prams. It felt as though we were the only real people left in the world. I was already starting to get the coastal town blues I'd felt from last time. Home, my family, the few friends that still lived back in Warrington, bloated in my thoughts like something out of a gravy advert-all warmth, sustenance and love. I yearned for it though I'd only been away a couple of days. I was giving it the gold leaf treatment anyway; five minutes at home and I'd be bored rigid, or arguing with everyone, or trying to get the cat down off the hessian wallpaper in the back room. I fantasised for a while, thinking about some colourful clothes to replace my current drab wardrobe-this town needed all the anti-pathos treatment I could feed it.
The cafe proprietor, a stunted man with a crumpled face, like a used tissue, interrupted our burgeoning misery.
'Getcha?' he gummed, around a bolus of phlegm.
'We've ordered, thanks,' I said, hoping he didn't recognise me. When previously I used to breakfast here, we struck up quite a rapport, if you could call his gritted, nicotian greetings and my non-committal returns anything so grand. He smelled faintly of beef paste and tripe. His name, if memory served, was Ernest. Now, he gave the table a swift once over with his listeria rag before eyeballing Helen's chest.
'Getcha?'
The button on his shirt just above the waistband of his voluminous slacks was missing, inviting a view of a navel well-packed with assorted oddments. I suddenly wanted nothing more substantial than a glass of liver salts.
'We've ordered,' monotoned Helen, in her best Dalek. He caught the dormant violence in her look and retreated sharpish, pointing at me and smiling.
'Know you! Cunt stay way from me kippers, eh? Eh? Ya miss me kippers?'
Once the plastic rainbow streamers which separated his kitchen from the main body of the cafe had consumed him, I turned my attention back to Helen. I couldn't blame Ernest, she was rather marvellously packaged. I'd forgotten.
I could tell she was looking at me; there'd be no affection there. Only hate, or pity. Or despair. Five years ago, I often wondered if she was my girlfriend because she was too lazy to find someone else: she'd hinted at as much early on when we talked about relationships during freezing evenings at Seven Arches, how starting out was exciting but somehow false too, as if you needed to tiptoe around and be nice so that in the long run you could find out how much of a bastard you'd ended up with. Wooing was twee and trite she'd said and if it hadn't been for her scowl at the time I might have laughed. Such odd words, almost quaint-doubly so coming from Helen's lips.
Maybe she realised how brusque she was sounding. She rubbed the heel of my hand with a finger. Its tip was purple and ragged from chewing. She dipped it into the torn packet of sugar and I watched its journey back to her mouth. She sucked long after the sugar had dissolved on her tongue.
Through the soapy window (soup, pies, chips, balms) I watched a couple bent into the wind trying to light cigarettes. Like a vampire the woman lifted up a flap of her trench coat while her partner ducked into its shade. An eddy of smoke. She walked on and he fell into a crippled gait behind her, his twisted limbs moving in grotesque yet oddly delicate parabolas. I watched them until they disappeared behind the clock tower. I had seen them before. Morecambe was like the dim, sunken corridors behind a theatre where character actors mope from week to week waiting for two or three lines in a play that has been running for years.
Ernest reappeared with a tray. He had done up the offending button and smoothed his CrispNDry head into something more befitting the Conservative front bench. He still smelled but it had been tamed by the recent application of Hai Karate. The tea was greasy but strong and I disguised its taste with sugar.
'No kipper for you today, uh?'
'No thanks,' I replied, willing him, with every shred of my body to bugger away off.
With another glance at Helen's breasts, he left us, bowing slightly and offering Helen anything she wanted. 'Do you kipper,' he said, hopefully. 'A little bit of sausage? Hot.'
'Oh for Christ's sake, David. Why did we come here?'
'I used to come here when I was at college.' It wasn't a reason but I shrugged when I said it.
I've loved cafe toast for ever: even Mum was unable to equal it. It always comes hot and crunchy and golden, the butter already melted. It's one of those things, like freshly cut grass or milky drinks or Match of the Day, that you find yourself using as a metaphor for life. For good things. I explained all this to Helen once. She said: 'How very Hovis. You stupid twat.' I tend not to wax lyrical in front of her any more.
'Have some,' I said. She just stared at it. 'People who don't eat die, you know. I read that in the newspaper.' It was a weak attempt but it worked. She broke off a corner of toast and chewed, a comma of grease at her lip. My throat grew painful then and I found it hard to swallow my food. Why couldn't it be like it was at college? She looked so vulnerable sitting there with butter on her mouth that I wanted to hug her and nuzzle her hair.
The waitress took my plate away before I'd swallowed the last bite. I wanted to ask if her haste was due to an imminent coachload of tourists, flocking to this gastronomic heaven, but it would have only alienated me further from Helen. She wasn't one for faffing about. I left a small hill of coppers on the table.
A bitter wind, reeking of dead fish, mugged us as we stepped outside.
'We could go back to mine,' I said feebly, knowing she'd refuse. She turned away but not before I saw a look of disgust crease her face. I wish I could let my anger out now and again but I always feel foolish when I shout and I can't keep it up. Helen was wonderfully eloquent when in a rage. It would appear to be part of her natural constitution. She always seems sickly and pathetic when pleasant.
'I haven't walked enough yet,' she said. 'And I need to be at the pub in time for Shay. He'll be here soon.'
My attempts at feigning nonchalance were pitiful; I could feel my features sloping. Shay-Seamus Cope-had been a friend of mine back in our Warrington childhood; the kind you can't wait to leave behind
and never get in touch with again. The three of us would tool about the town centre or throw stones at birds by the railway line behind our school. He wormed his way into my life because a teacher had asked me to look out for him. Said he was shy. Like most people one feels a hostility towards, I couldn't pinpoint exact reasons; rather, it was a steady disaffection like the build-up of plaque upon teeth.
'Why?'
'He called me over the summer. He was in a real mess-he is in a real mess. I think that whatever I'm suffering… he is too.'
'Look, Helen. What is going on? Have you two got some kind of disease? And why call me about it? Ever since I got here I've felt like someone for you to piss on, someone to make you feel better. Well, it's just-' and here my anger expired. I could feel my mouth stiffening. I felt sad; I wanted to bury my face in a cardigan.
She was smiling, but in a kind of resigned way. It was the most compassionate she'd appeared yet. 'Believe me. You're involved. Do you think I'd have contacted you if you weren't?' She was talking softly but I still felt the blow of that last sentence, deep in my belly. It's an ache we know well.
'David. Shay needs to be here. He needs friends around him.'
I balked. She held up her hand. 'I know he drives you mad but he was fond of you. And he always had time for me. He's nobody else to turn to.'
I wanted her to tell me that the reason she called me was that she wanted us to get closer; she really wanted us to work.
The longer she talked without such an allusion only served to thicken the doubt surrounding my being in Morecambe.
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