by Glen Johnson
No sick covered the alarm clock that was sat where it always sat. The time now 8:13 P.M. Over four hours had gone! Gone where?
I fell forwards, my mind blanking out from what it was trying to figure out.
But the last thing I remember before blanking out was, I am going mad? He’s making me go mad. Was being in the presences of such evil causing me ill effects? Was he sucking the very life from my body?
A loud banging awoke me from my fainting fit. The sound originating from my front door. I had never fainted in my whole life. I though only women fainted? Typical male perspective.
I pulled my robe around me one more time, before heading down to the door. Already having made up my mind to give him a good shouting at, and demand to know what he was doing to me.
He obviously already knew what I was about to do. That’s probably why he picked whom he did, to throw me of balance.
10
A Gift
I stood in front of the banging door while trying to put my thoughts into some sort of order. Reaching down I pulled hard, swinging the door open to its limit. It hit hard against a tall table that stood beside it, where my trucks keys rested in a small Bamyam bowl. The colourful bowl upturned smashing on the wooden floor, the keys skidding along hitting the back of the couch.
“That’s some temper you have there mate,” came the voice of a teenager who stood leaning against the door post. A cigarette already hanging from the corner of his mouth, smoke trailing out his nostrils. He was dressed in faded jeans with rips at the knees. A zip-up cream coloured sweat top with the hood sprawled down the back, zip open at the front displaying a khaki T-shirt with the cartoon character Speedy Gonzalez on it, who was smoking a joint, with the words, slow down and relax a little. His hair was light brown and tied in a tight ponytail at the back. And acne that a warthog would be jealous of.
I stumbled five or six steps backwards, missing the back of the couch with my out stretched hand and fell to my knees, landing hard, knocking the wind from my lungs. My eyes were watering, tears running down my cheeks blurring my vision. I grabbed at my head, trying to stop the pounding noise that was echoing loudly around inside my throbbing skull.
Standing in front of me was my oldest nephew, the son of my dead brother. Now his son had gone and joined him.
He walked past after gently shutting the door. He gave me a sideways glance on the way towards the chair.
“You wanna put more water with it, mate,” came his familiar voice and the laugh I was all too familiar with, but now it seemed dark and vile – tainted.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my hand hard over my face, smearing tears and runny snot into my hair.
My own nephew, all I had left from my bother, was now dead. All my hatred for this being had drained away. I sat grieving. But then all the anger came rushing back like adrenalin. My own fucking nephew! I stood in one liquid motion and made my way towards the two high back chairs that faced each other. One already occupied.
Then I saw him sat there, sat the way he always did, one leg crossed over the other while leaning back in the seat. When I saw his image again all my anger melted away, my eyes filled with tears once more. I covered them, slumping into the seat opposite, like a puppet that had just had its strings cut.
“I thought you would be happy to see this body again.” He motioned with the thin white hands, before pushing them into the large baggy pockets on his sweat-top. A top I had brought him many years ago, which for some reason had CUBA, written across the front – two letters on either side of the zip – even though I had bought in from a shop in Exeter, a city just down the road.
“Happy!” I blurted. “How could I be fucking happy?” I stood up again. Anger rising up in me because of his words, because of his pompousness.
His hand rose stopping me mid-stride. I didn’t know what I was going to do, or even if I could do anything to him. But I was about to try. Anger was filling me with strength, turning me half crazy.
But I was held in his invisible grasp.
He relaxed his hand, putting it back to his face and removing the cigarette so he could talk. “Do you know what the date is?”
I was confused. What’s the fucking date got to do with anything?
“It’s the twenty-third of January.” He let those words sink in.
“Twenty-third?” I muttered. No way, it couldn’t be. Realization dawned on me. The fourth anniversary of my brother’s death.
I always spent that day with my nephew because of the way he had taken the news all those years ago. The look on his face. I knew from that date on, each year I would have to spend it with him, so he wouldn’t do something stupid. And now he obviously had. The corpse sat in front of me was testimony to that horrid fact.
He released whatever was holding me. I fell into the chair like a sack of potatoes. My hands came up to my face, but this time they were fists pressing hard against my forehead.
After everything that had happened to me over the last five days, I had completely forgotten all about the twenty-third.
“W-w-what happened?” I stuttered.
The grin returned, twisting the sides of his mouth way beyond there humanly normal limit, giving him the resemblance of Lewis Carroll’s depiction of the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Or maybe Tim Burton’s creation did it more justice – darker, more menacing.
“Tablets and beer,” he said matter-of-fact. “You’d be surprised at how little it takes to overdose,” he said tipping the cigarette backwards, pretending it was a bottle of pills. “Like I said, I thought you would be happy to see him one more time.
“Unlike most nights you would be surprised at the amount of bodies I could have picked from.” He started ticking off his fingers one at a time. “A thirteen year old boy, who though grinding down a rail on a steep set of steps was a good idea. Snap! A man who thought using a couple of logs, instead of a car jack, would be sufficient. Squish! An eight-six year old woman who just wanted one more cigarette before bed, and fell asleep with it between her fingers. You gotta love polyester sheets. Whoosh! A twenty-three year old driver who nodded off and hit a truck head on. Splat!” He motioned both hands at himself. “I chose this one for you. A gift, because of all the things you have been doing for me… Your welcome.”
I sat open-mouthed, tears flowing freely, not caring how I looked. I stared at my nephew. Only a teenager. Eighteen. Eight-fucking-teen.
A whole world and life had been waiting for him. I had let him down and now he sat in front of me, his life already long gone, drained away by paracetamol and Budweiser and most probably accompanied by the loud droning music he so loved. I hated that sort of music, but I respected his choices. I had even brought him some CD’s. Had one of the ones I had brought him been the last thing he had ever heard? Probably not, most of his music came from illegal downloads.
I stood, not being able to look at him anymore. I walked over to the drinks cabinet. Vodka straight from the bottle, one long gulping swig. I slammed it down hard on to the Mexican silver tray – which I had brought from Coyoacán market in Mexico City – up turning several other bottles in the process. I ignored them as they rolled to the sideboards edge and fell to the floor, shattering in a sticky display that was now slowly being soaked up by one of my numerous rugs.
I looked down at the silver tray I had just hit. I looked up and around at my collection of artefacts from every continent – from many ancient civilizations. All the money I had spent. All the time and energy I had used collecting it all, and not one piece could help me now. Not one piece would bring my nephew back – bring me solace. It was all just material things. And when my time came, I wouldn’t be able to take any of it with me. Papa Roach hit the nail on the head with their song title: Born With Nothing, Die With Everything.
I was going to return to my seat, but first I snatched the vodka bottle up in my hand, taking it with me, clutching it close to my heaving chest.
“Was it painful?” I asked keepi
ng my eyes cast down so I wouldn’t have to look at his face.
“Well… let’s see. First the body goes into shock, hard jolting spasms rocking the whole body, and then comes the gut rendering pain, blanking the person out. While he’s unconscious his organs go into shock, the heart starts missing beats, the kidneys having already packed up from all the drugs. Then comes the–”
”SHUT UP!” I screamed, kicking a footstall in the process. “I get your point,” I said more subdued this time. I gave him a long hard stare before finally saying, “Couldn’t you have just lied?”
“Ah yes, the father of the First Lie. That’s me.” He coughed, waving the cigarette in an elaborate pattern. “Didn’t feel a thing. Like falling into a deep peaceful sleep, while listening to Pendulums album – Immersion. He finally slipped away during track nine, the Island, pt. 2 – Dusk.” He gave me a look. “Better? Oh, and on a personal note, it’s also my favourite track on the album. A sound which The Prodigy have been lacking for a while now.”
I didn’t bother to answer. I stood up, having to rock a few times to get back out of the chair.
“Where are you going?” he asked, realizing he might have gone a little too far. “So you liked pt. 1 best?” he asked with a smirk on his face.
“I’m going to bed,” I tossed over my shoulder.
“What? What about the story? It’s going to be good tonight, all about Nimrod, and–”
“Let yourself out,” I said almost whispering, but I knew he could hear me, even if I just said it in my head he would have heard.
“I don’t care where you go, but I don’t want the body of my nephew anywhere near my house. Understand? If he’s slumped in that seat in the morning, then don’t bother coming back here again.” With that I took my leave, not caring what he done to me.
I had an after thought; I turned while making my way up the stairs, one hand clutching the bottle the other grasping the banister rail, not trusting my unsteady shaking body.
“Take him back to his house. Make it look like he died in his sleep. I want to find out he died at home. I know you have it in your power to be able to do that. That can be my gift. UNDERSTAND?” I shouted the last bit, spittle flecking from my mouth.
I climbed the stairs on my shaking legs and crawled under the thick sheets of my bed, curling up into the fetal position, my knees tight against my chest, after I had emptied the bottle of vodka down my throat in one long – painful burning – swig.
I didn’t hear him leave.
*
I can’t remember anything about the next few days. I slept mostly.
Several times I had to get up, to either empty my bladder or return downstairs to retrieve a new bottle of alcohol, not caring what it was so long as it done its job of making me forget.
Two days passed like this, with me in a drunken stupor. Unwashed and uncaring, laid out in my own filth.
I think I heard the door banging on a few occasions, but I ignored it; too drunk and sad to care.
Everything blurred into one long painful event. Days and night all merged. I continually saw images of my nephew, which sent me into a harder drinking binge. I lay among my own waste, vomit and empty bottles.
Time heals all things I’m told.
Time heals all wounds. Wounds all time, more like it.
And one morning, when the sun woke me through the drawn curtains, I realized this was doing no one any good. It wouldn’t bring Paul, my young nephew, back. And he would hate to have seen me like this. So on the third day after he had brought my nephew to me, I got up, with a monumental hangover, to get back on with my life, and the story. Also a lot of digging.
11
Splintered Trail
My head ached like nothing I had ever experienced before. Yes, I had been drunk on numerous occasions (more than my fare share to be honest) but never for a couple of days straight. My body was now protesting loudly against the way I had been treating it. My liver was probably shrivelling up.
I stumbled into the shower, letting the water play over my head and shoulders and down my aching body. It took a lot of effort to wash myself all over; my body was tender when I tried to overstretch. My stomach also grumbled from being so empty, twisting and turning, acid bubbling up into my throat, alcohol being its only content for the last few days.
Twenty minutes later I was sat on my bed, with my head banging like a bass drum. I reached into my bedside draw and pulled out a bottle of aspirin. I had reached for it subconsciously. I looked at the small white bottle held in my shaking grasp, then in one movement I tossed them against the far wall. The plastic bottle was unaffected; it simply fell to the carpeted floor and rolled back towards me, disappearing under the bed.
I noticed the half empty bottle of whatever I had been drinking resting on the bedside dresser. I snatched it up and was about to dash that against the wall as well. But in hindsight I walked to the toilet and poured it down, and then I dropped the bottle loudly into the bin. There’s no point taking my anger out on something so pointless, and besides, if I had thrown it against the wall I would only have to clean it up after.
After continually trying to focus on my bedside clock and eventually succeeding, I noticed in now read 11:26 A.M. It was the earliest I had been up in over a week. But hadn’t my body had enough rest over the last few days? Not that I would know because my mind was a complete blank.
I stood in one of my small bedrooms, which had been converted into a kind of walk-in wardrobe, and pulled on some clothes, not caring what they were. Jumper, jeans, socks and some old Adidas trainers. Then I slowly made my way downstairs, one hand rubbing my eyes the other creeping down the banister rail, guiding the way.
The first thing I noticed was the fire still burning steadily in the hearth. I blanked the sight of it out of my mind, simply not caring.
The sun was also streaming through all the windows, dust motes filling all the rooms. Standing beside the main bay front room window, I noticed the snow had almost completely gone there was just a weak gleam resting on the ground, with a few small piles up against the hedge. The sky was clear and crisp. All cleared up while I lay drunk in bed.
That’s when I had got my first shock of the day.
I needed to go around the back and do something about the bodies there. I couldn’t get out my back door because during the winter months the door swelled up, making it impossible to open without a crowbar. I could have planed the door down, but as I had already found out a few years ago, it shrunk back to its normal size, leaving large gaps around the sides and bottom. Best to leave it as it is and simply use the front door instead.
I put a thick coat on and changed my trainers for a pair of green Wellington boots. Also removing the key for the old dilapidated shed, where my spade lived most of the year. I would need it today, if it hadn’t rusted away.
As I opened the front door to make my way around the back, and I almost tripped over the bodies piled up there. I knew he had come during my alcoholic binge, and he had obviously left the corpses here as a payment for me ignoring him.
I went light-headed, imagining what would have happened if someone had come to my house, now the snow had dispersed. Not that I was expecting anyone. But that’s how so many serial killers and murders were caught – by freak accidents. A guy pulled over for having a failed tail light, and the police discovering he has a hacked up body in the boot. A neighbour complaining about a smell and the landlord discovers a body wedged in a freezer, which had switched off due to a blown fuse.
I was taken back when I realised I had likened myself to a serial killer! “It wasn’t me!” didn’t seem like it would hold up to much in a court of law.
But in some sick way I was glad after I looked down at the twisted bodies, because my nephew wasn’t among them. At least he had done what I had asked in that respect.
The smell was gut-wrenching, having been left out in the sun for a few days, with scavenging animals taking their share. Foxes most probably. With all the snow
they were probably hungry and welcomed the change. Did foxes hibernate? I had no idea.
The first body was that of a middle aged woman. She was wearing only a see-through nightgown that was all ripped, and only covering so much of her greyish-green body. Either it had been ripped during whatever had killed her, or the foxes had torn it while trying to get at the meat beneath. She lay sprayed out upon another person, left in a grotesque display, her head lying on the crotch of the other. One of his sick jokes no doubt.
I pulled on a pair of thick rubber gardening gloves, and then proceeded to pull her along by her ankles. I dragged her around the back; her body riding over concrete slabs and the paved stepping-stones that ran around the house. But she didn’t care, her unseeing empty eyes sockets staring up towards the cloudless sky, the birds having already picked them out.