Sufferer's Song

by Savile, Steve

  “Sarah is having some dinner. Sure you aren't hungry?”

  “I'm sure.”

  Daniel cleared his throat, coughing awkwardly, and perched on the corner of his daughter's low bed, stroking her forehead with a soothing finger. Ellen was lying on her back, her hands supporting her head, fingers woven through strands of her rich cherry-blossom curls, staring at the tiny cracks in the ceiling's artex whorls. She felt the bedsprings shift under her dad's weight as he settled down next to her. The only noises were outside noises, birds, cars, the playing children. The evening air was heavy, thick with humidity, threatening rain.

  “That was Sergeant Doyle again,” he said. His voice sounded almost hoarse, strained. “He said to tell you he thought you were very brave, honey. And that he wants you to try not to worry. You've got to try your best to get a good night's sleep for him, and for me,” Daniel swallowed. “I'm so sorry you had to find him, baby.”

  Ellen flinched back just ever so slightly as he touched her cheek, concentrating on trying to find some smaller pattern within the plaster galaxy splashed across her ceiling.

  “Why daddy?” She asked at last. It was the kind of question he could not possibly answer. “Why did he do that?”

  “Because he's worried about you, honey. He's a nice man.”

  “Not the policeman,” Ellen said, as if she were talking to a three year old. “The man in the woods.”

  The man in the woods. . .

  Daniel sighed and shook his head wearily. He didn't have all the answers, no matter how much he wanted to. “I don't know, baby, but I think he must have been very sad.”

  “Didn't he have any friends?”

  “No, I guess he didn't.”

  “I'd have been his friend if he'd asked,” Ellen mumbled, fingering one of Comfortable Dog's stitched on button eyes.

  “I know you would have, honey. I know it's hard, but try not to think about it too much.”

  “Has he gone to heaven now?”

  “Yes, baby. He's gone to heaven to live with the angels,” Daniel did his best to explain.

  “That would be nice, living with the angels. . . Will they be his friends now?”

  “The best friends he could ask for.”

  “Emma Radcliffe says that God doesn't love people who kill themselves. She says it's a sin and sinners have to live with the Devil.”

  Daniel sighed. “Emma's a very silly girl, sweetheart. You don't want to believe everything she says.”

  “But what if God doesn't want him? Will he have to come back and be a ghost?”

  “There aren't any ghosts, baby,” he assured her, smoothing back an errant curl.

  “Where would he haunt?”

  “Nowhere, Ellen because Emma's wrong. God loves everyone, no matter what they've done. I don't think he'd send someone back because they killed themselves, do you?”

  “No,” she admitted, chewing nervously on her bottom lip as she listened to him.

  Like mother, like daughter, Daniel thought fondly.

  “But I still think God is horrible,” Ellen sniffed. 'Making that man so sad and lonely that he had to kill himself to get some friends.”

  “Don't say that, angel. I bet God is very sad about it. Now you get some sleep and I'll see you in the morning, bright and shiny, okay?”

  “Okay. Night night, daddy.”

  “Night night, sweetheart,” he smiled, touching his lips to her forehead, and went downstairs.

  Ellen lay awake, thinking for a long time. She must have dozed off for a while, because when she opened her eyes again her bedroom was doused with the grey of the failing light; the children's cries were gone too, replaced by grasshoppers and lonesome birds and other night sounds. The rain had come while she was asleep, like the gush of an open tap. God's tears. It sounded like fingers tapping on her window, slowly. . . Water gurgled through the gutters and down the pipes, rain pattered on the leaves and slapped off the tarmac driveway.

  The breeze filtering into her room seemed almost chilly now, causing Ellen to shiver just ever so slightly and draw the covers up to her shoulders as she imagined Brewer Street outside, wet and dark and full of night.

  She drew her feet in under the trailing edge of the blankets, curling into a tight, foetal ball, and closed her eyes, only to toss and turn uncomfortably for five minutes. She may have been awake or asleep, her mind roaming the dreamy grey landscape, but her ears didn't fail to pick out the noises slithering through from the dark side of her thoughts. Noises that were coming from the other side of her wardrobe door. . . Footsteps? Slow, dragging sounds. Bare feet. Coming her way.

  She imagined the blue skinned man with the noose around his neck, stumbling through her clothes. . .

  When she opened her eyes again, it was to see that the wardrobe door had opened a crack.

  Ellen felt safe in bed, but the problem lingered. Cocooned in the warmth of her blankets she couldn't reach the door, but she couldn't sleep and leave it open. . .She knew there was only one way out of this problem, so, sucking in a deep unsteady breath, she pushed herself out of the roll of bedclothes and rushed over to the wardrobe door. She pushed it closed, listening for the tell-tale click that said the lock had snicked into place, only as she pushed it felt as if something on the inside was pushing to get out. . .

  Ellen threw all of her weight against the bulging door, struggling to stop its slow opening. A five inch crack showed through to darkness. The door edged open another inch as her bare feet slid on the carpet.

  “DADDY!” she shrieked, forcing the door back a couple of inches. She could hear breathing on the other side of the door. He was coming to get her. She was puffing and gasping with the exertion, her little fingers scrabbling for purchase on the smooth wood.

  The door opened another two inches, letting a chilled breeze whisper into the room, bringing with it the cloying reek of the meat locker.

  “DADDY!” she screamed again, “HELP! DADDY! DAAADDDYYYY!”

  She couldn't hold the door, she knew, so looking frantically about the room; her eyes sought some small haven... and stopped on the looming shadows of her bed.

  Letting go of the door seemed to take forever, her movements all slow and jerky; dreamlike. She leapt for the small island of safety. The wardrobe door crashed open, slamming into the corner of her dresser, toppling her My Little Pony nightlight. The bulb shattered as it hit the floor, showering slithers of glass across the carpet. An icy blast of air whipped out through the gulf of blackness the hanging door exposed, lashing at her bare legs as they pedalled furiously against the air.

  Ellen hit the mattress with a whump!

  She heard something coming out of the wardrobe.

  “DADDY!” she screamed, scrabbling at the mound of rucked up blankets, not daring to look back over her shoulder for fear of what she might see.

  She was struggling for breath, tears biting at her eyes.

  “Ellen?” she heard her father's voice, but continued clawing at the heavy layer of blankets. “Ellen, it's all right. . . It's all right. . . I'm here now. It was just a dream baby, just a bad dream,” he soothed, lifting her into his arms and holding her close. She knew if she opened her mouth she would just end up gabbling, so she nuzzled into the warmth and safety of his neck, drawing comfort from his closeness. Barely holding back more tears, she looked about the darkened room. She could barely make out the lines of the wardrobe, but knew it was closed. The light was in its place, but the room was still dreadfully cold against her bare legs.

  “Are you okay now, sweetheart?” Daniel soothed, lowering her back down to the bed. The mattress felt clammy against her back where her nightie clung to her skin.

  “He. . . was. . . in the wardrobe. . .” she managed to squeeze the words between sucking breaths.

  Daniel went over to the wardrobe and opened it wide. “Nothing in here, see? Just clothes. You want to sleep in with me and mummy tonight?”

  Ellen nodded.

  'I think we can manage that. Now com
e here and give me a big cuddle.” Ellen bounced across the bed and into his arms like a trampolining acrobat, tugging heavily on his neck. There was little or no strength left in her arms. He sighed deeply. “You'll be all right, honey. I promise.”

  Even after what the girls had witnessed in the woods that morning, and the nightmares of a moment ago, Daniel felt safe in his promise. Ellen clung to him, her breathing steady with the rhythms of sleep.

  It'll all be like a bad dream in a couple of days, he thought.

  Ellen felt comfortable in her father's embrace, close to sleep. She was weak and tired. With one last, weary, lingering look back at the closed wardrobe door she allowed herself to be carried through to her parents’ room.

  “Love you, daddy,” she whispered sleepily.

  “Love you too, petal,” he answered, laying her down.

  - 31 -

  A very frightened Billy Rogan huddled under the weather-beaten timbers of the Devil's Jetty, hugging his knees and staring down blankly at the lapping white-tipped curls of the water as they broke on the rough shore. The short slope down to the water’s edge was littered with crumpled beer cans, fast food cartons, water-logged crisp packets and cigarette packets, but it was dry, sheltered against the wind and safe from the bad dreams, like good Happy Places should be.

  The lights of the village backed up behind him without actually sneaking into his hideout. The stone arch of the support was cold against his back. Billy yawned and looked up from the brackish waters. The air seemed to be almost smudged with soot, so thick was the black clinging to it. Across the lake he could see the framework of shadows, chairs and tables, cluttering the patio of Evie Doyle's Watersedge Restaurant.

  Billy couldn't tell the time, but it had to be pretty late because there were only three cars in the car park, and one was Evie's Fiat.

  It wasn't as late as midnight, because that was when Evie put out the lights and went home, and the lights were still on.

  Billy had come to the jetty right after leaving Swallowship Hill, hoping some of the local school kids would trip-trap along it. . . Playing 'Trip Trap Troll' was one of his favourite games, and the kids seemed to think it was pretty funny, too. No one seemed to mind, he'd heard some of the parents call him “Harmless Old Billy,” and liked the way the words sounded.

  “Harmless Old Billy. . .” he whispered aloud.

  Only thing was, now he was here, going home meant walking through some dark streets and then up through the woods. And that was almost as frightening as not going home at all. Apart from the old farmhouse, his Happy Place was the only safe place he knew.

  “There's trout in there, Pops,” he whispered to himself, looking back down at the ripples of black water as another eddy of silver slithered by beneath the surface. “Lots of 'em. We'll go fishin' when all these shenanigans blown over, hey Pops?”

  A finger of chilly wind squirmed down the length of his back.

  Something bad was happening. He didn't know what it was, and all he could think to do was hide and hope it passed him by.

  * * * * *

  The last sliver of grey light starkly outlined the sleeping hills, casting a feverish glow over the town, trees and rooftops slick with marching rain-soldiers. The dark pool spreading out before his feet gaped like a hungry giant's yawning mouth. Overhead, the whipping winds cut down through the circle of peaks and scree slopes to the north shredding the paper mill's vapour clouds to rags, revealing the black night sky and a smattering of shiny silver stars. The lights from the Watersedge Restaurant were out.

  Billy shook his head, trying not to think about the panic that was twisting coils around and about inside his belly like horrible worms. He rubbed one large, dirt-smeared hand through his thinning hair.

  The water reflected the sky back like a ghost's shimmer. The wind whipped, whistled and howled as it licked at the frothy white-caps surging up and breaking around his feet.

  Billy shivered beneath his thick shirt.

  He'd been unable to sink back into the arms of sleep since waking nearly an hour ago. Each time he closed his eyes feral, nightmarish images were there, waiting to pounce. Even now, he couldn't recall what was so very frightening about the dream, only that he couldn't leave his Happy Place - or they would get him.

  His hands clamped tightly about his knees, drawing his legs in.

  He rocked slowly between the breakers. He shuddered. Pops had been in the dream. . .

  The thought came to him out of the air. . . Pops had been in the dream, talking to him like a ventriloquist's dummy. . . Only he couldn't hear any of his words and Pops' hair was on fire. . . Like the little girl's. . .

  Billy looked instinctively towards the restaurant's low white walls again, but of course, he could see nothing. He felt himself trembling, and hunched up against the stone wall of the jetty's supporting arch to better duck out of the wind and the rain.

  “Best not go back home now,” Billy shivered involuntarily as a finger and thumb of ice squirmed through the buttons of his thick plaid lumberjack shirt, sketching a line down his chest. Raindrops ran like tears down his cheek. He sniffed. Vapid light from the distant street lights fused drearily with the shadows beneath the jetty so there was an oddness to the culvert, a lack of depth to its darkened contours. He looked out at the unwelcoming night.

  “We'll just stay here, nice and cosy. See Pops in the mornin' we will. Yeah, see Pops in the mornin'.”

  - 32 -

  The stale smoke of cigarettes poisoned the slowly circulating air, a waspish tip flaring amber as Johnny Lisker inhaled. He stubbed out the last half-inch of the cigarette on the rough stone floor, and peeled the nicotine-yellow stained filter free from the charred paper. Putting it beside his half-eaten can of cold baked beans and a packet of digestives, he reached for the vodka bottle with the stunted fingers of his right hand. The level of the colourless liquor was well below the halfway mark. He pulled at the red cotton of his t-shirt, peeling the clinging fabric away from his clammy skin. Despite the coldness of the previous rainy night, the air trapped within the stone walls was still warm enough to be pleasantly cool. Inside, it was all but impossible to guess what the time was in the real world. He had extinguished the Primus stove sometime earlier and since then darkness, and her handmaiden shadow, filled every nook and cranny.

  The room, if room it could be called, was a hollow chamber less than twice Johnny's height, though maybe as many as fifteen times as wide as he was tall. The two sleeping bags were laid out side by side, the rucksack between them, while the stove squatted in a corner, ten feet away, cupped in a natural basin of stone.

  He could hear Alex Slater shuffling about blindly, and in a second or two heard the rough rasp of his lighter and saw a flare of blue-tinged flame as the light caught the tip of the cigarette dangling from his mouth. The phosphorescent firefly illuminated the soft angles of his boyish face, a thin veil of smoke rafting up and across his pin-prick pupils.

  Johnny sighed, and fumbled for the rubber-handled flashlight he had had enough sense to grab before they left the house. The wash of light was dazzling with its intensity. Black cords (like snake skin) of darkness flaked away from its roving eye. The light darted effortlessly around the dark chamber, resting finally on a line of wall-paintings behind Alex's head. They seemed almost pre-historic in their stark simplicity, lending the cave the feel of some Neanderthal grotto. The light seemed to give the basic daubs of colour a thousand diverse hues, where in fact they had a sparse spectrum of reds, browns and blacks.

  One of the paintings showed two disproportionate swordsmen squaring up to each other. The image brought back another; of lying back on damp grass during a seemingly endless, lazy, hazy summer afternoon, wooden sword in hand, Alex (the years stripped from his grinning face) straddling him, commanding his surrender.

  “Good days,” he said reverently, the torch beam lingering on the two swordsmen. They had found the cave, in the peaks beyond Moses Hill, during the heady days of the summer of '03, when t
hey divided their time between listening to classic punk like Sham 69 and the Ramones, reading Stephen King and Lord of The Rings, and playing Devil May Cry on Alex's PS2. “The best.”

  “What are we going to do, Johnny?” he heard Alex ask again, and wanted to snap, to lash out, but didn't. He leaned back against the rough wall, enjoying the momentary chill of the stone through his shirt. His headache was getting gradually worse. He had awoken with a faint, nagging thrum behind his eyes. Now it felt as if someone, hidden by the darkness, had slipped two burning pokers through the base of his spine, and was busy dragging them, slowly, up and down both sides, grinding against the jagged vertebrae. The 'cramps' would be coming soon. Cramps? He wanted to laugh; they were more like fucking seizures. Things were beginning to ache already. His gums felt as if their teeth were working free, slipping the roots to grind on his nerves. Even his hair ached for Christ’s sake!

  Johnny bit on his anger. Alex was really beginning to irritate him, and right now, with his stomach churning like a tumble-dryer; emotions, anger, frustration, hurt and hatred churning around on themselves, winding him up to the point of snapping; he could do without all of his fucking whinging!

  Music! He thought, that's what I need, and laughed out loud at the sheer wonder of the idea. His voice bounced around the close walls, conveying his glee to a bewildered Alex.

  Shining the torch's beam into the mouth of the sack, Johnny hunkered down and started rooting through its contents until he found the small orange transistor radio. A brief flare of joy sparked somewhere deep inside as his trembling hand closed around the cheap plastic casing: Music! Then the scalding needles began jabbing at his jelly-like limbs, stabbing at his eyes, ears, fingers, tongue, bladder. . . He groaned aloud, swore and snarled with frustration, and started rooting deeper inside the rucksack, fumbling for the emergency stash he knew was hidden in the secret flap-compartment.

  He lifted the radio out, and then pushed it away, feeling sick. He wanted to cry at the sheer pain as the first 'cramp' seized at his stomach fiercely enough to double him up. His mouth felt and tasted like the sand at the bottom of a cat's litter tray, after the cat had pissed in it, raw and scratchy and full of phlegm; his nose like the chimneys of a foundry furnace. There wasn't a single inch of skin around his body that didn't scream its discomfort; even his eye sockets seemed to be giving out under the weight of his eyeballs. He sneezed, the braying echoed back to him by the wailing walls. Johnny groaned. He felt truly fucking awful, no mistake. He grimaced at the ribbon of snot that was trailing down over his upper lip. Wiping the mucus with the back of one hand, he finally touched on the cellophane shrink wrap of a fresh syringe. He pulled it out, putting it down beside the cigarette filter, and then resumed the hunt afresh. In a minute or so he had built a small pile of essentials by his feet: Syringe, needle, filter, swab, spoon, lighter, Jiff lemon juice squeezer and the foil sweet wrapper containing his hit.