Just thought I’d see what all the fuss was about, he said.
Shanks was like, How’d you get in here? He was trying to be tough, and if you’ve never seen someone try to act the hard man on pills, you should.
Vincent swigged from a can of lager. He said, This music sounds like a tumble dryer what needs its bearings changed.
I’m getting security, Shanks said.
I wouldn’t do that if I were you. What I said would happen, happened. I had hundreds of shitheads pouring down my street.
We’re just having fun, Shanks said. Why can’t you people understand?
What I understand, Vincent said, is that my wife has barely slept in three days, but tonight, miracle of miracles, she manages to drift off, only to be woken up by these mongs blowing fucking whistles outside her window.
Sorry, Shanks said.
Vincent was like, So I’m here to give you one last chance, only now the rates have gone up. Give me half the door or – and here he pointed out into the knotweed, all around the clock face – or my boys come in and we have an altercation.
I’m getting security, Shanks slurred. He fumbled around his belt for the walkie talkie, but it had gone. That’s another thing – when you’re on pills, stuff just vanishes.
Vincent put his can down on the pipe, went over to Shanks and gripped his shoulders. He stared into Shanks’ twitching face. You’re a fucking mess, son, he said. What would mama and papa say if they could see you now? Cut your inheritance, I’d bet. And this shite – he nods over at the rave – people will be laughing at this shite in five years’ time. Mark me, I’ve seen it happen. Teddy Boys, Mods, Rockers, Skinheads, Punks…you think you’re all onto something, but you wait. Now, do we have a deal?
Shanks squirmed free. You get nothing, he said. Nada. Zip.
Vincent went back to the pipe and picked up his beer. Have it your way, he said, and disappeared into the dark.
I just spiked that cunt’s can, JJ said.
Shanks scanned the night. Nobody’s out there, he said. He thinks he can scare me.
We went back in and put it out of our minds, pretty easy to do considering the contents of our bloodstreams. But then I started feeling wrong – I was coming up again, only this time it was different. Too hard and fast. I retched, but nowt came up. I staggered to the wall, but it kept coming. Waves of it. Then my head filled with blue-grey. I can’t explain it better than that, just blue-grey, like this mist we’re standing in now, and I looked up at this lass and she started melting, her face running off her skull, lard globbing off her jawbone. A bloke’s ear slid off in a dollop. I’d forgotten about that second pill, hadn’t I? I started freaking out and the music got louder, got crushing. I pressed my face against the wall, wet with breath and sweat, and closed my eyes, and that’s when the screaming started. I tried looking, but if I focused on any one spot for more than a few seconds, it melted, so I used the wall for support and kind of groped my way towards the entrance.
A man with a shaved head was beating the shite out of some poor fucker in dungarees, the impacts making lumps of his face fly. Another guy swung a length of pipe at some terrified kids who, in my eyes, collapsed like waxworks in the sun. Someone pulled the plug on the music and the crowd stampeded – people coming at me with eyes, noses, mouths splattering. Gristle and bone beneath. These blokes lashing out at anyone trying to escape, three of them around a security guard, kicking the shite out of him. I grabbed hold of someone’s leg and begged him for help, but his face came apart. I got slammed into the floor and the lights went out, so I crawled. Somehow I made it outside and the coach the security guards had come in on was burning. The flames threw crazy shapes over everything, greasy smoke pumping into the night. People fighting everywhere, people senseless, people screaming, people running. I stumbled away from the fire, into the darkness, and I was still coming up – monstrous waves of it, like it was never going to end.
Adam and JJ were huddled not far from the concrete pipe where JJ had spiked Vincent’s can. Shadows swooped, hiding them one second, exposing them the next. I forced myself to watch as they melted together, their faces and bodies liquefying into one, and I hated them. Hated the oozing thing that had once been my friends. It turned what was left of its head in my direction, staring with its one remaining eye. A dripping stump that might’ve once been part of JJ reached out to me, and I think I heard it say my name, but I was already running for the knotweed…
Peg, don’t worry. That’s not going to happen to us. Our pills are from Alive. You can trust him.
How long was I out there? Like I said, time bends on you. There’s holes in my memory, and that knotweed was no joke, man. It was taller than I was, and thick like in a Vietnam film. Proper slashed my hands pushing through it. I’d lost my jacket and I was freezing. I started coming down, and sometimes the weeds parted just enough so I could see there was no moon or stars. Threads of smoke and sounds drifted over my head – sirens, chaos – but I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from, or why.
I came out into the clearing. I’d only been there once or twice, when I was growing up. Being from the blocks meant you couldn’t just go and hang around there without some kind of comeback from the more local estate kids. In the centre of the clearing, sticking a few feet out of the ground, was the well. I didn’t want to get closer, but I did anyway. It was like I wasn’t in control, like it wasn’t me stepping up onto the edge and leaning over. There was a sound from the bottom, this watery breathing. I still had the glow sticks Shanks had given me, so I cracked one and dropped it. It fell so far I didn’t even hear it land.
Then a voice said, Careful. And I was this close to falling in.
There was a shape at the edge of the clearing, almost invisible. I tried focusing on it, but my vision was all pixelly. I cracked the other glow stick and chucked it over. Vincent’s face lit up in deep skull-socket shadow.
Haway over here, he said. He was sitting with his legs out in front of him.
Again, I knew I shouldn’t, but I went.
It’s you, he said, when I got close. How the fuck are you? His eyes took up half his gently melting face. He was trying to light a little cigar, but he couldn’t figure out which way round it went. Finally, he got it going and inhaled. He was like, I’ve just been sitting here thinking about how fucking amazing everything is. Don’t you think? All these people having fun…it should be like that, shouldn’t it? People having fun. There isn’t enough fun round here sometimes.
But you killed it, I said.
It took him a minute to process that. Under his beard, his jaw was going hard. He was like, Aye, but I had to do that. Business is business. Was that what all that noise was before? I wasn’t there. I’d started feeling a bit queer, so I came out here for a breather.
Exhaustion hit me. Sometimes the fatigue clouts you all at once. I sat down on the other side of the glow stick.
Vincent looked over to the well. He said, My boy nearly died down that. Some local lads did it. Left him to die.
I’d heard about that. When Vincent stories came to us, we savoured them because we weren’t involved. His kid was called Evan, or Alan, or something. A couple of years above us in school, this weird lad. Nowt like his dad.
Vincent’s eyes rolled in his head. I feel really fucking good. How do you feel?
Cabbaged, I said.
He kept talking about his kid. He was like, I’m hard on him, I know I am, but he needs it because it’s a hard world. That’s how my dad raised me, that’s how I’m raising him. Only he’s…different. I don’t understand him.
My dad doesn’t understand me either, I said.
We both wrestled with our sinking heads for a bit. Then Vincent said, But whose fault is that? If he doesn’t understand you? Kids change too quickly these days.
You closed the hatch on us, I said. What did you expect?
I d
on’t know if he understood that. I think he just wanted to talk. He said, Jean treats him like he’s made of glass, and it only got worse after what them bastards done to him. It makes me look like the bad guy…and maybe I am…but it’s because I love him. He’s my only kid. We tried to have another one, you know, but it just didn’t happen.
His cigar had gone out, so he flicked it.
He said, I should tell him that, shouldn’t I? That I love him? And tell Jean too. She’s the light of my life. I should tell her, shouldn’t I?
Uh, I said.
You know, he said, I’ve done things. Bad, bad fucking things she’s none the wiser about. But when I’m with her, it’s like I’ve still got a chance. We’ll have been married twenty-two year next year.
S’nice, I said.
Then, in the slushy voice of someone rushing on pills, he said, She’s got ovarian cancer. Doctors say she might have another year or two if she’s lucky. Cunts actually used that word. Lucky.
His face was dripping, but nowhere near as badly, and if I looked away for a moment, his features reset. He lay flat on his back. I even tried praying, he said. Got down on my knees and offered myself up to God, but there was nobody there. Nobody anywhere. Just emptiness.
I couldn’t think of owt to say.
Then he was like, I used to think me and her were part of each other. She’s a part of me, at least. But I catch her looking through me sometimes, like I’m not even there, and it makes me feel like maybe I’ve been alone all along.
He lay for a while in silence. Then he said, I can’t see the moon.
Me either, I said.
He got up. You know, you’re alright. Come on, givuz a hug. And he scooped me into his arms like I weighed nowt, and I was this close to his face, looking right into his eyes, and I don’t know why, but I kissed him. Proper smooched him – Vincent Barr! – right on the lips. He didn’t kiss me back, but he didn’t pull away neither. Then he put me down, walked into knotweed, and left me alone.
That’s when you spoke, Peg. At first, I was like, chill out Jim, it’s just the drugs, but then you said, Down. Here. And I realised it was coming from the well.
So I stepped onto the edge and leaned over. The glow stick at the bottom was less than a speck, and the last thing I remember thinking was maybe I had imagined it, maybe Vincent was right – when it came down to it, we were all alone – and then something moved in the weeds behind me and I turned and fell. There was wind, darkness, then nowt. How long was I unconscious? All I know is that I woke up twisted in a puddle of water. I didn’t feel any pain yet. Over to one side there was a kind of, I don’t know what, a kind of shrine made of beer cans and cider bottles. Some of the cans had been beaten flat and bent into weird patterns. Cigarette ends were arranged in neat rows around it, like years scratched into a prison wall. And in the middle, the weirdest thing of all – a trainer with a feather sticking out of it. I was trying to work out what it all meant when I glimpsed you, crouched and swaying, just beyond the glow stick’s light. I tried to speak but my jaw was smashed. You came closer and you were naked, like you are now – skin and bones, hair over your face. You weren’t a hallucination, I knew that much. You were real. Real and beautiful. What did you think of me? There was no time to find out because then you were gone, and I woke up in the hospital two weeks later.
The people I’d heard behind me in the weeds had been police, rounding people up. Apparently, they’d bumped into Vincent after he’d left me, and in his agreeable state, he’d told them I was in the clearing. When they got there, one of them thought to shine a torch down the well and that’s how I was found. I’d caved the left side of my ribcage, collapsed my left lung, shattered my left hip and left side of my jaw. Left hand smashed to smithereens. The police wanted to pin it on Vincent and wouldn’t believe it was just an accident. They were like, When it comes to him, there are no accidents. Cor went mental when I told her I wasn’t pressing charges. She actually went round and called him out in his own house. The fucking balls on her.
I was in hospital for a month. Mam and Cor visited a lot. Even Auntie Bea flew back from Spain. The only person who didn’t come was Dad. Adam and JJ came, too. They said Shanks was due up in court and was looking at a heavy fine, maybe even jail. Adam had dyed his hair Dracula-black. He was like, Shanks swears he’s never crossing the Watford Gap for the rest of his life.
Long pause.
We’re moving down there, JJ said.
Adam almost put his hand on my good hand, but chickened out. Come down when you’re better, he said.
Sure, JJ echoed.
And I said, Try and stop me. I blamed my tears on needing more morphine.
So long story short, I moved back to Asquith. My old room with the Middlesbrough FC and Pixies posters. Mam haunted me morning, noon, and night with bowls of soup and rice pudding. Waiting outside the bog while I had a shit, in case I couldn’t pull my keks back up. And Dad…well, if he despised me before, it was nowt compared to his revulsion once I was back. I wasn’t just a freak on the inside anymore. Now it was there for all to see.
The tension in the flat all got too much for Cor. She put her name down for a place on the estate, and who can blame her? Getting a house was still pretty easy back then, as it wasn’t exactly a desirable area. I started physiotherapy, and when I was well enough she invited me to live with her. I’ll never be able to repay her for that. We lived together for a while and…well, maybe I could have coped with things better than how I did before we fell out…but I don’t want to get into that now.
Time passed. I healed bent. My scars turned pink, then white. My hair dropped out and I stopped going out in daylight. People avoided me in the street. Bairns cried at the sight of me. Teenagers chucked stones. And then it hit me, what I was…
…what I…
…Man…I feel…Hey, hey – it’s OK, this is normal. Just let it come. I’m right here with you…Hey, did you know…
…did you know…
…I started dreaming of you? We’re down the well again.
You come out of the darkness.
Rest your cold fingers on
my broken face and
I trace your bones through your skin as the glow
stick dies. Then I wake up alone, my lips
brackish…
…and…
…For a while I thought
that we – me, Adam, JJ, everyone – I thought
we were sinking down to the place where we wouldn’t need each other,
anymore
because we were each other…But look at me now.
Here I am,
talking to you,
and I haven’t seen those people in half a lifetime…
…
…But for years I thought Adam was right. Like Thatcher said…
…There is no such thing as society…
…and that I was alone…
…but…
…do you know what she
said after that?
Thatcher…?
…I didn’t, until recently…I found it on the…
…Internet…
…She said…
…I memorised it, she said…
…There is no such thing as society…
…There is a living tapestry
of men and women and people…and the…
…beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our
lives…
…will depend…
…will depend on how much each of us is prepared
to take responsibility for ourselves
and each of us prepared
to turn around and help…
…by our own efforts those who
are…
…unfortunate…
…Which is why I’m here,
…
Like I said…we’ll start small, just the two of us…
…
…take it from there…
…I haven’t felt like this in years…look at my
hand! I can move it!
Look…
…!…
…Hey…
…It’s OK…we’ve got all th
e
t
i
m
e
i
n
t
h
e…
.
..
.…c’mere…
.…oh…
…givuz a…
…givu
z…
…a…
…hug
)
III
Moorside: apricot-coloured residences with Georgian-barred windows, double garages, drapes. Children’s bicycles lie unswiped from front lawns as uniform and verdant as butcher’s grass. And now, reeling through it like a bronchial Nosferatu, comes Jim. Up ahead, a late-night dog walker pre-emptively crosses the road.
Best as he can figure, the well itself once stood where he stands now, at the junction of Chestnut Close and Pine Street, two streets so hushed it’s as if their audio tracks have been muted. He imagines the drop directly below his feet, though knows it isn’t. In 1993, while Rowan-Tree were razing the waterworks in preparation for the final phase of Moorside’s construction, an uncovered World War Two bomb exploded and collapsed the shaft forever. The well exists now only in Jim’s mind, something any victim of that void knows is still more than enough.
He shines his torch on the map, checks his compass. From here, the pipe heads north east, so that’s the way he goes, pushing through snarls of knotweed that only he can see.
His shoes are too old for these woods and the black treacle of autumn soaks his soles. Occasionally, his torch illuminates shreds of police tape still tied around the trunks of trees, the low-hanging fretwork of branches reminiscent of stripped nervous systems. He uses his crutch like an insectoid feeler, sweeping and tapping. The pain in his hip and back harmonise and there is no moon that he can see. Things vanish. No explanation.
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