A bloom of orange, smudged into the lowest band of mist, drew my eye away from their movement. The area around the colour shivered and pulled back, creating a pocket of light. Directly above, the mist churned, turning dirty as smoke from the fire mingled and drew its mischief into the sky. Maybe it was that plain promise of warmth, that remarkable smear of colour, couched in such a derelict setting that decided me, pulled me on as though appealing to the primal root in me, the part that recognised the bleak glimpses of other worlds that seemed to be breaking into my everyday regimes.
Nearing the arch-our arch-I could smell a mix of wood and damp paper, of reeds and polythene bags. We'd once thrown the carcass of a large rat on one of our arch fires, found squashed on the road outside the hospital, and we'd marvelled at the speed at which it cooked and the smoke as it funnelled out of its eyes.
The couple seemed to come apart in the mist within the arch, shredding as though their inner bodies had caught some of the fun which the mist was having with its corporeal surroundings. It was only as I stepped beneath the curve of sandstone, scattering echoes as easily as a careless foot scatters the ashes of a dead fire, that I realised I'd been wrong all along. It wasn't Shay and Helen. And it wasn't the mist that was making this figure seem less than whole. I watched, my breathing becoming increasingly ragged, as the figure struggled with its inner desire to disintegrate. Slowly, it solidified, drawing some of the substance from the brickwork behind it so that at one point it seemed to be wearing a slice of yellow graffiti across its piecemeal face. It was wearing little more than a pair of ripped Y-fronts and a school tie strung loosely at the throat, knotted ridiculously large-the way we'd worn them at school, as a tiny act of rebellion. I backed away, as if in a dream, drugged into soporific calm. I didn't feel threatened, although I could sense it was smelling the air and tensing, a red tear appearing in the pink, wet cloud of its head. There seemed to be teeth there, broken and misshapen, like chunks of opaque glass set into the coping stones of a wall for security.
It reached for me and I stepped back, watching the eddies in the mist its too-sharp fingernails had created. I heard a clotted murmur-it could have been its voice slurring my name-and then it reared and attacked, or at least lunged towards me, perhaps more from unsteadiness than design. In the instance I ducked and lurched back, I saw one eye swim out of the confusion of liquefied flesh: bruised and niggardly, shining with the glutinous lustre of a raisin. I ran backwards, stumbling through the rubble, until I'd put some distance, and some smoke, between myself and its directionless thrashing. I was torn between wanting to help and wanting to run away, to shake the visions from my head and blame it on the excesses of Morecambe. I took a step towards it, holding out my hand as if I might calm it with gestures alone. It sensed my movement and loosed a stream of bilious abuse my way. Some of the sputum touched my skin and burned there. It smelled thinly of petrol. A milky image spanked me hard behind the eyes. There was the detail of action and nothing else; his features were lost to the shock of recall. I was holding a cricket ball to a boy's mouth, forcing it between his lips while the torpid sound of Sunday afternoon clapping from the pavilion filled the air like the cry of strange insects. His eyes rolling up, red-rimmed, his skin drenched in sweat, muscles in spasm as he breathed in nothing but scorching vapours. The corky finally breached the portcullis of his teeth as the hinges of his jaw sheared apart.
It was still dark when I came to some time later. My hands were balled into fists, each gripping a divot of grass, my chin flooded with pain where it had carved a rut in the ground. The mist had receded somewhat and I could no longer hear the violence of the creature I'd stumbled upon. I remained still for a while, until I was sure it wouldn't be there when I turned my head to look.
***
I think Mum was a bit peeved that I was choosing to go out on my first night back but I was in no mood for conversation, especially when I knew in which direction it was likely to travel. Mid-week in the town centre: not a lot going on-which was fine by me. I bumped into Kim just as she was leaving the Barley Mow. She performed a monster double-take and squealed before wrapping me in her arms. We've always got on. I smiled at her colleagues as she steered me towards a flashier pub on the corner of the main road. Linking my arm, she told me how dissatisfied she was, how frustrating her search for a house had been. We had a drink and she left soon after-a table at the restaurant had been booked-but not before I'd spotted Daniel Hoth leaning against the wall, talking to one of the bouncers.
After Kim had gone, I took my glass over. Having talked to my sister, I was hungry for more company; the episode earlier had rattled me and I didn't want to be alone in case I was targeted again.
It was nice to be recognised after such a long time.
'Dave,' he said.
'Dando,' I said.
My earlier memories of him still fresh in my mind, I bought him a drink and we stood at the window, watching couples as they ducked into pubs or argued in the street. Our friendship at school had taken a while to develop. We'd turned out for the football trials but for some reason, maybe because we realised deep down how similar we might be, we maintained a distance before any exchanges were made. We'd been pretty thick after that. Fridays we'd walk into town and have a few Cokes at the pool hall, stick Prince's 'Girls and Boys' on the juke box, talk absolute bollocks. And then, like in all my friendships, there evolved a disaffection. At every point of change for me, I have left corpses on the wayside. It pains me, the degree of civility erstwhile companions show each other. So it was with us. We traded poor, stale gossip. The drinks helped strip away the years. Our talk grew laddish and immature, cheering me more than it deserved to. When he asked me if I wanted to go on to a club I nodded and told him to lead the way.
***
Maybe it was because I knew the town and felt newly comfortable with Dando that the nightclub appeared unthreatening though I'm not a nightclub kind of chap. I felt good about the way the evening was going: our conversation was suitably mindless, consisting of references to Liverpool Football Club's steady recovery of form, girls mutually fancied at school and films we wanted to see. It was good to talk without the feeling I was being monitored all the time. When I laughed, my cheeks ached-it had been that long. We drank lager, but switched to doubles when we realised-if we were going to get smashed, we might as well do it properly. Sometimes, when a song came on that made me feel good, something driven by a thick backbeat and leavened by melodious voices, such as Curve or Lush or Garbage, I felt myself swell and my trips to the bar would fall in with the rhythm of the song. Absurd, but it improved my confidence to the point where I smiled at the barmaid and began chatting to her whenever I bought a drink. Bodies on the dancefloor either slumped to the music under syrupy-red light or appeared to jerk about once the strobes were activated. Everything white: tee-shirts, socks, bras beneath thin tops-even teeth-glowed in an ultra-violet wash from tubes in the ceiling. Men cruised the dancefloors, immaculately pressed or strategically crumpled. The air was drenched with sweat and Obsession.
Morecambe was like a scene from a film so old it was deteriorating before my eyes. Even the events of only a few hours ago took on the opulent sham of cinema. The thought that I would have to restore those scenes was thankfully numbed by vodkas and orange that were rapidly losing their potency-this was dangerous; too much like drinking something soft. I told Dando and he laughed and called me a fanny. I laughed too, agreed, and sank another double to celebrate my newfound fannydom.
And then things started to go odd.
I knew my light-headedness was due to all this alcohol, but there was a deeper imbalance; the kind of thick, inflated sensation you might feel when you've spent all morning in a closed room painting walls. Dando was watching me intently and I was horrified to see his hair start to churn about like anemones in a strong current. His eyes seemed too vivid: his green irises slipping into purple realms for a moment before fluxing yellow and blue then green once more. His pupils dilated and shra
nk separately like the cartoon eyes of some character clouted by a frying pan.
It was like a dream I'd suffered when I was six or seven. Mum told me I'd almost died from pneumonia, and one particular night I'd been lying in bed listening out for the music from the TV that I liked to hear (I only found out about three years later-when I was allowed to stay up until after nine o'clock-that it was the theme tune from M*A*S*H*). I felt a diabolical heat swoon upon me, pressing me into my mattress and wringing sweat from my body so that I was drenched within seconds. I couldn't lift my arm for the water at my bedside; my lungs were suddenly frothy, unable to suck in enough air for the single syllable I wanted to call out. I'd drifted into exhausted sleep and it seemed all my discomfort had gathered and funnelled itself into that part of my brain that made dreams. It was like being trapped beneath an airless canopy of purple/black canvas that was slowly being drawn closer to the ground with each breath. And something hungry clattered around its heights, flashing its teeth and claws, waiting for the moment we'd be forced together by the collapse around us.
I went to the bar and waited until the girl I liked was free to serve me. As she poured vodka, I saw my vampiric face in the mirror, which began to warp and melt. Close eyes. Breathe. She asked me if I was all right. I nodded, said 'pissed', and watched her hands ripple: the veins so clearly embossed against the skin she might be inside out. I watched the journey of her blood for a while, frightened to look at her face, then paid and hacked my way back through the jungle of limbs which blocked my path. Dando was kissing some woman so deeply it looked like he was trying to suck the lower part of her face into his mouth. The colours beyond them had grown more vivid and I seemed able to track each ray as it splashed against the nightclub's limits-as if the speed of light was suddenly no more than ten miles an hour. I ducked when it seemed the errant droplets of light must hit me-an act which drew stares from the people nearby. I was now sure that everybody was clued up about my stupidity: at any moment the DJ would stop spinning discs to call out: 'And that was the latest by Dubstar. No more fly sounds for now I'm afraid, till everyone of you calls David Munro-that's him in the spotlight-a dizzy sad fuck.'
My heart had cultivated a heavily knuckled fist which it rapped against my ribcage. Its irregular rhythm horrified me. I placed my drink on a narrow ledge and stumbled for the toilet, noticing that the thin bones beneath the skin of my hand looked more and more like the faces of babies trapped there, screaming soundlessly. The people dancing were losing their basic human form. Traces of their movements hung in the air, commas and curlicues of flesh, like ghosts trapped in a double exposure.
Beneath the brittle light in a Gents thankfully unoccupied, I shuffled into a cubicle and considered making myself sick. My stomach still ached from the last bout of vomiting; I oscillated between feelings of shame and self-despisal. Dando had spiked my drink with something, the bastard. I tried to get a grip, to not let whatever was freaking me out gain deeper access. I closed my eyes and the colours there grew sullen and fractured, peeling away from the veins like layers of paint from wire: new colours, it seemed, alongside a sickly combination of peppermint green and strawberry milk. When I opened them again, and focused on the window above the urinals, I saw a creature made of mist clinging to its lattice pattern, mouth open in pain or rage, its eyes ovine and black.
Gradually, I came down. I was shivering and my back was filmed with sweat. I must have been sitting on the toilet lid for a full two hours, trying to tether the beast, wondering when my eyes were going to burst and spill my head across the pissy tiles. I rose and turned around. I lifted the toilet seat, in need of relief. I unzipped. The boltless door swung open on its hinges, creaking massively. I looked round, waiting for my bladder to relax. Nobody had entered the toilets. The music from the club throbbed through my feet. I watched the tip of my penis and the horseshoe curve of plastic below me. Urine arced in a sudden steaming jet. I thought of Mum and Dad tucked up in bed, utterly numb to what was going on. It was almost funny.
A coldness swept through my midriff, as though I'd just been injected with ice-water. In the next breath it had become unbearable heat, wrapping itself around my innards like sauna towels. My piss turned red.
Turning hurt so much I was close to blacking out. Blood was gushing from a rent above my waistband, creeping through the cloth of my shirt. Pointlessly I went down, because all the stab victims I'd seen in films did just that. Trying to staunch the wound with my hand, I screamed but still the thump of music vibrated in my lungs. Whatever was tripping through my body made the spreading pool of blood look deep and beautiful, like liquid marble.
I wondered how and I wondered who as flashes of white light sparked across the spaces in my head-like shorts in a circuit that has begun to blacken and die.
SIX
CHERRY-COLOURED FUNK
When I realised I could, I wondered why. Did there have to be a reason? I knew what the club was like; its licence had been in jeopardy due to violence before-pages were devoted each week in the local press to new incidents. One smart reporter had totted up the number of sutures the victims of the Club of Chaos had accreted: it had beaten the thousand barrier.
Bleary-eyed, I regarded the ward. People lying in beds, so motionless it seemed they were all dead, gazed up at a grey ceiling (I hadn't tried to move for fear of waking up my sleeping back and must have looked the same). I was at such an ebb. My back must have been a real sight: sliced and stitched and scabbed over, though it seemed I'd not been as badly wounded as I'd first believed. I must have hallucinated the blood in my water; the spray from my back.
This starchy hospital bed trapped my legs and made me hot. I was suffering from a hangover that nailed me to the sheets. My mum and dad were probably settling down to a jolly breakfast now, Mum deciding to let me sleep on for a while before taking up a cup of tea.
A nurse walked into my line of vision; I lifted a hand. That's the thing about nurses-unlike, say, some people who wait on you at restaurants-they won't try to ignore your pleas, they want to help you, even though a tip isn't expected for their service. This nurse, all smiles and a faint whiff of Imperial Leather and peppermint, brushed a lock of hair from my eye before reading my mind.
'Water, hmm? I'm not surprised. Whatever you were on last night stripped you dry as a bone.' She checked my drip, told me her name was Olwen and said I couldn't have anything to drink for a while. 'I could let you have an icecube to suck on for the time being.'
I nodded. 'And my parents. They should be called.'
They have already. They're in the waiting room. We told them it would be best if you came round before they saw you.'
The thought that I'd left them worrying for any length of time disgusted me. One day home and I'd disrupted their lives. I was helped to sit up and then she left me. It was important to try to look nonchalant about the whole affair, as if this type of thing happened to me all the time. Ridiculous, I know, but it occurred to me that I must not look as though I had lost control and needed their emotional support. I was an adult who had stumbled across something bad. Right person, wrong place, wrong time, that was all. Once it had been all right to seek comfort in my mother's cardigan; all right to rejoice in the sanctuary she and my father provided. And though I wanted dearly to reach for that now, to create that triangle of comfort, I knew I should not, for their sakes more than anything else. Smiles and confidence would reassure them.
When Mum walked into the ward I burst into tears.
I felt their arms around me, and the heat of the eyes of those who were able to lever themselves up in bed enough to ensure a good view. All of the times I'd broken down under the weight of their devotion-at the resolution of some petty crime or minor injury-came back to me now. I'd never been able to keep my eyes dry when my dad told me he loved me; perhaps because he didn't say it that often. I just let it go, and after a while it was obvious to me that I was shedding more than tears. I felt lighter, as though I'd sloughed off the burden of days spent in
Morecambe. I felt I could return there now and be completely guileless and fresh.
Mum asked me if she could bring me anything; Dad was more interested in statements to the police. He kept asking me who had stabbed me. 'I don't know,' I said. 'It was too dark. I was drunk. I didn't see anybody.'
A look in his eye said he thought I was holding something back, that I was protecting the offender. Then it passed and he sighed.
'Doctor says the cut wasn't that deep. Twelve stitches. Said it was difficult to sew you up because of the mess your back was in already. Bloody hell, David, why can't you be careful?'
I apologised around the knot in my throat. I felt ten years old. 'When can I leave?'
'Day or two, love,' said Mum, smoothing the same lock of hair touched by the nurse. I could see she was fighting against the wobble in her voice which only made me feel worse.
I was managing to regain some control. Wiping my eyes, I coughed and brought some spine back to my voice. 'It would be best if you go. Don't worry about me. I don't feel as bad as I should.' I squeezed Mum's hand. 'I'll make a statement soon as possible. They'll probably visit me soon, the police. I'll tell them what I remember.'
Although this didn't exactly assuage my father, I could see him soften a little. I could tell he wanted to say something else but I suppose it was like locking the gate after the horse has bolted. Nothing he could impart now would be of any use.
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