Taking off his sneaker and rolling down his sock, he heard Alex grunt something and start shuffling about the cave. He kept the torch fixed on his stack of goodies, ignoring Alex's bleating and attempts to kick up non-existent dust. Even this slight disturbance rankled him so badly he wanted to scream with rage at
Alex's lack of consideration.
“Fuck off out of here,” he spat, and then regretted it immediately as the barbs raked at the back of his raw throat. Johnny leaned back and closed his eyes, swallowing down the phlegm that scored his throat.
Mixing a small portion of lemon juice and heroin in the spoon, he started to warm it through gently with the softest flame his lighter would allow. His hand was shaking badly, but desperation prevented him from spilling any of the precious liquid concoction.
Satisfied, he dipped the cigarette filter into the reservoir, and then pierced the gummy filter with the minute needle and started drawing the hit up into the body of the two-mil syringe.
He knew he was grinning all over his face, but what the fuck, he deserved it, right?
Deftly, he swabbed down the patch of skin above the bluish vein in his ankle, and steadied his hand to deliver the injection. The needle point was hovering less than an inch above the criss-cross network of old puncture wounds, when an itch at the back of his nose became a loud sneeze. His arm jerked, scratching the needle along the skin just deeply enough to draw a bead of blood where it rested.
All of a sudden he felt sure that the hundreds of tons of rock balanced above his head were going to come raining down on top of him if he moved so much as a muscle. He desperately wanted to draw the syringe back the inch and a half it had slipped, but fear prevented him. Another cramp twisted his stomach. He knew he was crying, but his sudden fear of falling rock was winning its battle against desperation. Inside he was writhing and squirming. Relief was less than two inches away, but two inches was too far because if he so much as moved. . .
Finally desperation won out. Cold sweat peppering his brow and matting his lank hair, Johnny edged his hand back, oh so very slowly, until the needle once again hovered over the criss-cross of puncture wounds. He flexed his fingers. The fingers of his right hand. His right hand that had swollen to the size of a balloon when his 'scoring vein' caved in on itself. The fingers that he had all but lost to gangrene because of the rings he had habitually worn like a jagged line of knuckle dusters. And, pushing fear out of his mind, clipped the needle into his ankle and eased the plunger down, squeezing the heroin out into his blood stream.
His body was a different matter almost instantly. His hands ceased their spastic jerking, and everywhere the aches simply drifted away to nothing. He rolled up his sock and slipped his sneaker back on.
Where was Alex? Dumb jerk must have gone wandering off again Johnny thought wryly, and then noticed the small orange shell of the transistor radio on his sleeping bag. Grinning, he turned it on in time to catch the tail end of Always the Sun by The Stranglers as it faded into Grimly Fiendish.
Munching on a digestive, Johnny decided to go and look for Alex before he got himself into any more trouble.
A well-like opening in the cave's uneven floor served as a door. It opened onto a slender, dark funnel that twisted downwards steeply towards a glimmer of light some twenty feet below. Johnny sat on the ledge, dangling his feet over the lip, and lowered himself into the shaft. He used his feet to brace his back against the wall, and in that manner all but walked his way down to the light. The climb down was difficult but not as impossible as it might have looked from below. The wall was smooth enough to allow him to ease his way down gingerly, without scratching like claws against his back.
Slowly, he pushed and stepped and braced, time after muscle clenching time until his feet stepped into the gap of yellow light that painted a bright swathe on the fissure's floor. As Johnny dropped the final few feet to the floor, he felt the razor-blade sharpness of the building daylight scour at his eyes. He screwed up his face, shielding his light-sensitive eyes with a hand until they adjusted to the glare, and stepped out of the waist-high fissure in the face of the stone.
He saw Alex immediately, hunkered down over a hillside rivulet, mopping at his face with his red and white bandanna. His runic earring was a twinkling pinpoint of brightness in the rising morning light.
The sun felt good on his skin, warming, soothing.
His place before the entrance to the camp provided a wonderful vantage point for surveying the surrounding countryside. He looked out across rain-damp unkempt grass and purplish heathers that rushed away down the declivity separating him from the lesser heights of Moses Hill and Dipton Wood. Gorse bushes and clusters of boulders rolled away down the slope. To the left and right glowered the last slopes of the mountain range which surrounded the valley. The village itself was hidden beneath and behind the tree-line.
Johnny sauntered across to the bubbling river and sank down beside his friend. He felt really good about life for the first time in ages, the strength and freshness of the hit beating down the insistent voices that had plagued his night, providing him now with buckets full of energy. From the way he could see his cheeks out of the bottom of his eyes, he knew he was grinning broadly.
Alex turned, and for a moment looked uncertainly at him, then he too was touched by Johnny's infectious mood, and his own face broke behind an enigmatic smile.
“What the fuck are we going to do now?”
“Uncle Johnny's on the case, no need to worry,” he said soothingly, dipping his cupped hands into the miniature white caps as they splashed on down the hill. “We had some good times up here didn't we?”
“The best,” Alex agreed.
“Christ but I love this place. We ought to call it something you know, like the Bat Cave.”
Alex was contemplating his distorted reflection in the glassy surface of running water.
“Alex? Alex?” Johnny called softly, tapping his knuckles on the top of his friend's head. “Are you in there?”
“Fuck off,” Alex snapped, throwing his saturated bandanna up into Johnny's grinning face.
Johnny rocked back, too late to avoid the wet cloth, his feet slipping out from under him, and sat back on his arse, laughing as if he found the whole thing outrageously funny. “What's the matter?” He managed between splutters.
“You might have killed that guy.”
“Nah, it was just a scratch. Something for him to tell his girlfriend about,” he seemed to think about something for a moment before going on. “Anyway, so what if I had, arsehole deserved it, right?”
“You're fucking off it, pal, you know that?”
“Yeah. So you keep telling me,” Johnny agreed, still smirking as he pushed himself back to his feet. “A place like this still needs a name though.”
Alex pondered this for a moment. “Okay, how about the Judas Hole?” He suggested finally, but the irony was lost on Johnny.
“Fuckin' sound, mate. The Judas Hole it is,” Johnny proclaimed grandly.
- 33 -
There was a coldness about Billy's Happy Place that had only a small part to do with the early hour. There was a dampness to the air. A chill. It surfaced as he blinked his rheumy eyes open, a singing shock of memory that snapped him bolt upright and away from the cold stone, shaking and all fizzy inside before he was even half awake.
His grubby work shirt clung clammily to his broad back. The soreness had eased enough for it not to hurt when he leaned against the wall. The air seemed close and sharp, clawing down the back of his throat like a hand, and laced with an odoriferous reek Billy thought of as fear. His hands were sticky. He stared down at them in horror, but of course it was sweat, not blood, that glistened slickly on the palms.
Another bad dream. . . awful figures stalking through his sleep, leering faces stooping down over him, whispering voices, horrible. . . had haunted him, this one slipping into the safety of his Happy Place, leaving only shapeless shadows of fear behind.
The forecourt o
f the Watersedge Restaurant was empty, though showing some faint signs of stirring, early morning life. For some time Billy sat among the driftwood and water-logged crisp packets, scanning the lake's other banks. The park trees were laced with teary dew drops like pearls and diamonds peppering their verdant boughs. The grass and tall weeds beneath them rustling in the wind. Airborne fairies spiralled and swirled like pale spirits that had fled a haunt with the coming of daybreak.
An unpleasantly cold chill was seeping through his skin and numbing his bones, but he ignored it as best he could.
He might have been the very last man alive. . .
The sun was low in the sky, a red orb, its’ rays scintillating over the stippled water, touching the horizon and melting into it. The vibrant light lifted swiftly from bloody red to a soothing, sunburst orange. From the east a wall of light was toppling the frail grip of darkness. Everywhere was quiet, except for the occasional lap of water against the shoreline, and the silky rush of wings flitting from branch to branch.
He yawned and stretched, still desperately tired despite his few hours rest.
He checked right and left.
Satisfied that nothing had slipped through from his nightmare, he moved down the shale and slipped out from under the jetty, placing his feet carefully on slick, treacherous pebbles that scrunched and scraped under his boots.
Billy heard the sound of out of tune whistling even before he reached the street, and immediately his mouth went dry. No, no, no. . . leave me alone. . . He thought desperately, and peered up over the edge of the jetty.
Ben Shelton, the younger of the two brothers, the one with the nice big old dog, was out for a morning stroll. His dog was padding along at his side, stubby tail wagging flamboyantly, eyes roving across the thousand sights around him.
He relaxed, and hauled himself up to the street.
“Mornin' Mr Shelton,” he called, ever-so slightly breathlessly as he scrambled to his feet.
“Morning Billy. Up nice and early,” Ben said pleasantly.
Billy looked at his dog and smiled broadly, hunkering down and taking his sloppy head in both his hands. “There's a smashin' fella,” he laughed, blowing a wet raspberry on Scooby's moist nose. “Got to scoot,” he said to Ben, adding, “Feed the birds,” by way of explanation.
Across the narrow street, Mr Barney the policeman shouted hello. He was talking to Daniel Tanner and his little girl. Now she was nice. A really cute little button.
Where had everyone come from?
Shaking his head, Billy waved to Barney, said goodbye to Ben, and shuffled off in the direction of Garrets Lane. Despite the sun, the air had grown down-right cold.
* * * * *
The low mood gathered strength as he walked, hitting him hardest as he cut over the gravel and grit track that wound around to Cotters Ledge.
Billy's list of friends was short enough to have Pops up at the top and Alfie Meecham at the bottom with no one in between.
Having someone to talk to would help, but Pops would want to cleanse him with the strap more than he would want to listen, so Billy took the cut and went looking for Alfie.
He was kicking his feet along the railway embankment soon enough, and tutting at himself for having let the grass grow long enough to cover his boots. He could see pretty well every which way he chose to look. Trees, like a big green blanket that had been dropped on the hill, made it most of the way up to the farm and the brown hills above, likewise back aways to Swallowship Hill and the cemetery. Best of all though, he could see the white walls and two chimneys of the paper mill close up. Lorries and high-backed trailers waited in the yard, canvas sides pulled back on flatbeds and boxes. Some of the most amazing toilet rolls, five times his height and three times as wide, sheltered under the canopy, waiting to be broken down and recycled for pulp.
Billy walked and watched and scuffed his heels, but there was little to see. He soon got bored with trading glances with the lorry drivers and their mates.
He was thinking about the beating Pops was bound to give him for forgetting his chores, when he first caught the smell of smoke, faint but definitely wood smoke. The aroma drifted around him, sometimes tinged with the flavour of cooking meat.
His stomach grumbled.
He was on top of the ledge, with only the slide down between him and the Bus Graveyard below. The Watersedge Restaurant was little more than a long smudge on the horizon. The smoke was coming from a patch between two overturned single-decker buses. Billy skidded and scrambled down the thirty foot slope, whooping and hollering and waving his arms in the air like a madman possessed. Puffballs of dust scudded up around his feet. Twice he ended up on his backside, laughing.
The Bus Graveyard was actually a disused blast quarry that had, over the years, seen a local bus company dump its handful of castoffs. Sandstone walls cosseted the six rusting vehicles, and several smaller burnt out husks and black sacks. The dogs were mooching about through the detritus, sniffing and nosing at the morning's windfalls.
“Alfie?” Billy called out. He dusted himself off and stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. “ALLLLFEEE?”
One of the dogs started barking. Hopper, Billy recognised him by his limp.
“Shush, and what's your noise 'bout then, Hopper?” Billy heard Alfie mutter, but still couldn't see him.
He kicked an open can back at a spilled sack. Nosey and Nipper were playing an aggressive game of tag between the standing double-deckers.
“Alfie, it's me,” he called again.
“Don't want none of it, we don't,” the old man called back without making himself known. “Jus' gan on yer way an' leave us be affore we set the mutts on yer. Hear?”
Drawing a deep breath, Billy started toward the source of the smoke. Peering through the line of grubby windows shielding the fire from the wind, a lean, sun-browned man had one of the dogs by the scruff of the neck and was watching his cautious approach.
Alfie was the strangest fellow Billy had ever seen. For one thing, his clothes looked like they could stand up and walk around without him in them for much of the time, and even his boots had big enough holes in them for his grubby toes to peek through some of the way. His coat was back over by the fire, drying out.
Gathered at the back of his neck with a bitten-off bootlace, his greying brown hair hung down his back to his waist. A thick beard sprouted and fuzzed across half his face and a good part of his chest. A long knife, with a hand-carved handle of wood, was slipped between loops in his rope belt.
Billy waved at him through the glass.
The old tramp seemed to peer forward, squinting for a better look. Knitted brows furrowed to give him the wild-eyed look of a rusted fret-saw. He had pulled a couple of doors up to make a barricade between his home and the rest of the quarry.
“Billy? That you lad?”
“Yep,” Billy called back, climbing over the doors.
“Thought you was one of them buggers come t'burn summink. Like as not one o'me dogs.”
A skinned rabbit was cooking on a fire of six sticks and a skewer. It was roasted brown from the bottom and dripping a fair amount of juice that hissed in the flames. A pot of stew broiled on a second cook fire. The smell of it, so close, made his mouth water.
“You hungry, lad?”
Billy nodded.
“Maybe I fix yer summink t'munch then, eh?”
Billy nodded again.
“Speak up, lad, or's the cat got yer tongue?”
“No cat's got my tongue,” Billy smiled. “Look, see,” he said sticking it out for proof.
“Good. Good. Don't do no good 'aving a cat get yer tongue, it don't. Jus' makes it a bugger t'talk's all.”
Billy looked around for a crate to pull up. He spied an orange milk crate and went over to fetch it, but the thing wriggled something rotten under his backside when he sat himself down.
Nipper and Nosey had given up chasing each other and had slunk up to lie near his feet. Alfie was stripping the rabbit on to a sauce
pan lid.
“Done starin', Billy? Wanna call the posse in for grub?”
“Sure,” he stood himself on his crate and started to whistle like he'd heard Alfie do, and sure enough Hopper started limping his way towards the fire.
Rosie and Felix were the next to appear, bounding effortlessly through the rubbish heaps with Nuke coming on their tails. Nuke was a big white shaggy thing that dwarfed the other mongrels.
Alfie always called them Heinzers, and laughed whenever Billy asked why?
“Where's Sasha?”
“Got 'erself killed by them bloody kids. Planned on fixin' 'em good. Stick 'em wi'me knife an' see how's they like that. Near as et 'er they did.”
“Stop saying it Alfie, that's horrible. Where is she really?”
“I tol' you, she's gone. Dead gone. Et by them kids that burn t'cars.”
Billy felt kind of sick inside as he said: “Really?”
“Yep so. Now are yer gonna come 'ere an' tuck in while t'grub's hot, or are yer gonna stand up thur like a tree?”
“Did you bury her then, Alfie?”
Sufferer's Song Page 14