“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Tonto.”
Letting it out felt perversely satisfying, so much so she did it again.
Halfway down the Hallstile Bank the first few tentative splashes came down. She walked the rest of the way back to the Citroen in the rain, grinning. Most of the people she met returned her grin as they bustled and ducked into doorways for shelter.
The cobbles might just as well have been icy for all the purchase they offered.
The rain felt wonderfully cool on her face. Invigorating. Two school girls skipped by, hand in hand, their hair matted flat to their round heads by the sudden flurry of rain. They giggled when she smiled at them.
By the time Kristy started the car she'd seen the photos and was grinning because they were everything Jason had tentatively promised her they would be. She indicated left and eased out to join the traffic, sparse as it was.
She drove as far as the Railway Station before an impulse she couldn't pin down had her stopping to use the phone. Three public phone boxes and a portaloo were propping up a dry stone wall that seemed to be cultivating its own form of vegetation; crisp packets, sweet wrappers, gold and silver foils from cigarette packets, and the offending butt-ends of the coffin-nails themselves peeked out between the chinks. Instead of throwing a blanket of grey over everywhere the rain delighted in conjuring a rainbow that might very well have climbed high enough to reach all the way back to Newcastle city itself. The Lego rooftops slicked off their own rivulets of rainbow, spilling colour down the gutters. Some people had umbrellas up, but most appeared content to get wet. Wiping a wet curl of yellow out of her eyes, Kristy fed the payphone with a handful of silver, watching the total tot up on the digital L.C.D. screen, and then dialled directory enquiries for Richards' number at Havendene.
Listening to the cycle of the dialling tone, Kristy thumbed through the photographs until she found the two she was after, and propped them up against the back wall of the phone box and the top of the phone.
“Havendene, can I-”
“I want to speak with Richards. Now,” Kristy interrupted. She had that lightheaded feeling that comes hand in hand with digging a trench to bury yourself in by the time the flustered receptionist had started to ask who was calling. “Kristy French. Newcastle Evening Gazette. I am quite sure he will be expecting my call.”
“I'm sorry, but Dr Richards isn't-m”
“I'm sure he isn't. Just tell him who I am. He'll want to take the call, believe me.”
“I don't think you understand-”
“I understand perfectly,” Kristy snapped. “God was good like that, he gave me half a brain. Now, tell him from me if he isn't on the other end of this line in sixty seconds he'll be seeing his face and his precious fucking dogs all over the front page of the Gazette before today is out. The time starts now. One. . . Two. . . Three. . . Four. . .” A sea-shell hollowness smothered the line as the receptionist cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. “Five. . . Six. . . Seven. . . Eight. . . Nine. . . Ten. . . Eleve-”
”Ah, Mizz French,” Richards murmured smoothly, “you seem to have upset my receptionist somewhat. I trust you feel your cause suitably justifies your rather crude means.”
“Just shut up and listen, doc,” she cut across him. “Who knows, you might learn something.”
“In which case, my dear, I am delighted to say I am all ears.”
“Fine. Now let’s talk rats.”
She had time to watch the swollen rain splashes break and run down the glass doors while the silence, no longer muffled, stretched into the static hum of the cross-country connection. Then, finally:
“I am not at all sure I am the sort of doctor you need to be talking with, Mizz French. Rats are a trifle out of my field, if you will excuse the unintentional pun.”
“Don't put yourself down, doc. My guess is your field is plenty big enough for the kind of conversation I've got in mind.”
“Go on.”
“Let’s take a hypothetical line for a moment. Shaved scalps. Why?”
“I believe it is considered the fashion in some quarters,” Richards answered glibly.
“Rats don't follow fashion, doc. My guess is that their heads have been shaved for fitting electrodes.”
“That is conceivable, I suppose.”
“And wouldn't you say that was also a trifle out of your field, doc?” Kristy mimicked in a passable parody of Richards’ mincing tones.
A lorry thundered by, spraying water up in a wave that drenched the glass wall, a car advertising a local driving school tight on its tail.
“If you will excuse me, I believe we are just about through here.”
“Tell me one more thing, doc,” Kristy pressed. “Why do you need to break their backs? That bit I don't understand.”
“I am sorry, but you are sadly mistaken, Mizz French. I do not take kindly to allegations of any sort, especially ones with no foundation in reality. Now, if you will excuse me, this conversation is going nowhere and I am a very busy man. Goodbye, Mizz French.”
Then the dead-end click as he slammed the receiver into place.
Kristy was left holding open a dead line.
So much for the subtle approach.
She slammed her own handset home, too hard.
Hit the wall with the side of her fist.
Kicked it.
Hit the plastic covered poster of area codes.
She didn't see her one man audience until she was coming out of the phone box.
“Problems?” The ticket collector wanted to know.
To which Kristy replied:
“Bloody machine stole my pound.”
- 36 -
Pops had gone, of course; long ago.
Billy wandered aimlessly through the old farmhouse, searching amongst the bric-a-brac cluttered store rooms, lounge and pantry, hoping he'd left some sort of message behind. He hadn't. The minutes ticked by. He sat in the back room watching the bright images on the television parade by, trying hard to rein in his rambling thoughts.
The house was quiet, which was worrying.
His first coherent thought had been that Pops was mad at him because he'd forgotten to come home like he promised. That must be it, he told himself. Billy called out his father's name, half expecting to hear the old man roar: “Billy, you fuckin' ree-tard! Where in Hell's name have you been?”
There was no response.
One of the bare hardwood floorboards in the kitchen was up, propped up against the whitewashed wall, and Pops' money box was open and empty on the long table beside it.
He waited several seconds, listening closely, before he repeated the call: “POPS?”
He went through to the hallway, calling again, and then went upstairs.
His father's bedroom door was closed.
“Pops?” he said, knocking lightly on the door and getting no response. “Are you in there?” he asked, barely whispering.
But, of course, he wasn't.
Billy pushed the door open.
The air in the room was so leaden it made drawing each breath a real chore. He had the vague sensation, like a spider crawling across the nape of his neck, of something moving on the landing behind him. He turned, imagining sets of scurrying rats lining up to play judge and jury on the floor. There was no one there. In the room itself, a matching chest of drawers and Victoriana wardrobe with brass lion-headed handles, several chairs and a large bed covered by a knitted patchwork quilt (made up from every colour available from the local wool shop) gathered dust. The windows were grimy, and the stained lace curtains did little other than clog the light. A vague puddle of honey coloured light pooled on the room's threadbare carpet, looking very much like a damp patch of cat's piss. Clothes were piled up on the old rocking chair in the corner, waiting for washday, and several odd shoes littered nooks and crannies. Tarnished silver-framed photographs of his mother lined up on the mantle, these too dusted with their share of everyday grime. The mirror over the dresser glinted with a
pearl-grey glimmer. Everything about the room was wrapped in the same musty smell of disuse.
Of the old man there was no sign.
Billy walked over to the window, lifting aside the decaying curtain, braced his thick hands against the wood panelling, and started to explore, his fingernails feeling out the crevices and creases in the wainscoting, stroking through the runnels in the wood's rough grain, picking at the flakes of rot. The honey textured light reflected in his eyes as if they were marbles shaped from oily glass.
The rain clouds and the sea-sick sky went to work on the window while the world slipped away down Moses Hill, towards his Happy Place and the stippled lake. Through the rain, he could just make out the twin steam belching chimneys that made the paper mill look as if it were permanently on fire. Closer to home, the old farmhouse and the caravan. It looked as if Mike Shelton was home. A light was on, at least.
“Got to feed the birds,” he muttered without much enthusiasm for the game right then.
Letting the lace slip through his fingers, he sat back on the bed, thinking just to close his eyes for a few moments. Exhausted by the long, cold night and the day before, and all they had brought with them, Billy slept the day through in the front bedroom, catching up on bad dreams, while outside, the wind got up, gusting through the old farmhouse complex, rattling at the panes of glass in the window frames.
- 37 -
Johnny Lisker was seriously fucked up, all right.
No doubts on that score.
The kid was off his box.
And dangerous as Hell backed into a corner like some chump-challenger on the ropes. Alex didn't want to even begin thinking about what was going to happen when his small stash of “happy thoughts” ran dry. Johnny's moods were already taking enough ups and downs to make him look like an emotional Yo-Yo. What would happen when there was no heroin lifeline to pull him out of the next trough?
What then?
The smell of spaghetti hoops being warmed came to him with the listless indoor breeze. Alex tried to remember whether he had eaten that day, or not. His stomach twisted with shadow-pangs of hunger, so he guessed not. The gas-blue flames of the Primus cast silly-putty rectangles on the cave floor and set shadow dancers across Johnny's engrossed face. The rest was black.
The scrape of the spoon on the bottom of the pan continued to echo in the lightless cavern. It sounded as if an army of ten thousand maniacs were out sharpening their knives.
Alex was cold, again. His burgundy shirt, last years’ birthday present from Beth, was all but useless against the obsessive chill, but he pulled it closer nevertheless. A habitual and ineffectual reaction to the cold. His sensory deprivation was such that the whisper-thin silk might have been the very stuff of the darkness itself, or the fabric of his imagination, for all the warmth it offered the line was impossible to draw.
It's a long way from hanging yourself up by the feet because you're fed up of being five-foot-six. Still afraid of the dark? Now that wasn't the sort of question he wanted to think about. Things were black enough as it was. Johnny's first needle-point yesterday morning he'd been somehow swept along with the adventure. But then there was the big-bang and a whole new universe of problems (fears) sprung to life, intent to orbit Johnny's slumped shoulders.
Johnny divided his time in almost equal measure; whistling in place of the dead transistor radio; cooking on the camping stove; and fighting the shivers and cramps of withdrawal. The upswings in his moods were becoming noticeably fewer, and increasingly further between. He was whistling now. Distracted. Hollow. Without light it might have meant anything. Alex chose to hear it as Johnny whistling a happy tune as best he could.
He had three cancer-sticks left in his golden cardboard packet. Benchmarks for his systems' need and the passage of hours in this limbo.
What now?
He didn't know, so he lit up one of the three, and sucked back the smoke. Two days ago his biggest worry had been laying his hands on a packet of safes so he could lay his hands on Beth come lights out in the Tanner household. The smoke tasted lousy in his lungs. He couldn't understand how a nice, comfortable world like his own could fall apart so completely, so fucking quickly. The last two days beggared belief. Here he was, a prospective father with a lover who didn't want to so much as know him, holed up in a cave with a fucking junkie-schizo playing out the last few scenes of Butch & Sundance.
Somehow (he didn't want to think about the how's and why's of it) things had gotten way, way out of hand.
Johnny used his knife to saw off a hunk of stale bread – the same knife he used on the Slave – for each of them. Alex took his. He chewed slowly and without enthusiasm, tasting phantom traces of something almost metallic in the dough. Like iron, he thought picturing the biker's blood on his friend's hands. Johnny, on the other hand, had no such qualms about feeding his face. He ate like an animal snatching a last meal while eyes without pity looked on, shovelling the hoops of pasta into his mouth faster than he could swallow them. Thin tomato sauce drooled from between his lips only to be licked back by his tongue.
Alex felt sick.
Confusion and an element of dislocation wiped out anything approaching rational, constructive thought. The eating itself was a mechanical reflex. He only ate because the ache in his stomach made him. He was completely sure of just one thing, and that was that he was way out of his depth and drowning. Right now, he was being swept up Shit Creek without so much as a log to hang onto, let alone the proverbial paddle. The inexorable pull of the currents would drag him under, sooner or later.
It was only a matter of time before people started looking for them, if they hadn't already. And when they found them, then what?
No answers came.
The wind gusted up the funnel-mouthed chute that kept the real world outside. If the wind could find them so easily what was to stop others from sniffing them out?
What now? He asked again. Any interior voices he might have imagined leaping to his aid decided to keep schtum. The image that sprung to mind was like some weird mental eclipse. Johnny was doing his familiar better-to-burn-out-than-fade-away routine, Alex on his knees feeding the flames.
He knew perfectly well what he was doing was clutching at yellow straws. He was becoming very familiar with that particular feeling. But Johnny was the sun. He had to think about him that way for now. And putting the sun out offered at least a temporary reprieve from his fears.
That in itself was a way out of the Losers Club.
* * * * *
“Fuck it, I've had enough. I'm getting out of here before I flip,” he told Johnny later. And that was exactly how he felt. Johnny seemed content to just sit tight for however long it took, but he was going stir-crazy. Two days (not even two whole days at that) had him climbing the walls. What would two weeks do to him? Or three? Four?
Alex knuckled the stiffness in the nape of his neck, rolling his shoulders. He sensed it was the onset of claustrophobia that brought on the dizziness, but the impending sense of terror (it was terror, he decided). . . the sure knowledge that the only way out led straight to Hell's front door, that he had to put out the sun, was calling for his undivided attention. From the moment he framed the first conscious thought that housed the words “Kill” and “Johnny” together the terror found its footing. Irrationally, he found himself thinking Johnny somehow knew his secret, knew what he was intending, probably better than he himself did, but Johnny wasn't psychic or telepathic or any other extra-sensitive. He was just Johnny Lisker. Mad, bad and fucking dangerous, yes, but just Johnny Lisker all the same.
In what might have been as little as an hour, Alex found himself on the threshold of cracking up. His thoughts were a babble of nonsense. That was when he decided he had to get out of the cave before his head exploded. He lied to himself by pretending revulsion at having to watch Johnny shoot-up again, and took his opportunity to grab some air to think with.
Outside was dark, but against the unrelieved gloom of the Judas Hole (an irony Ale
x no longer appreciated) appeared as light as morning. He limbered up for a few minutes, stretching to loosen angst-taut tendons. He didn't care that it was raining, nor that his ponytail had matted into nine straggly rats tails.
The moon on the river claimed his attention between stiff-muscled stretches. Its reflection, fragmented into thirty pieces of silver, seemed to blaze with an intensity that could have only been a sign of God's, or the Devil's affirmation.
One way or another, the sun (Johnny Lisker) had to be doused.
Alex pushed out three sharp punches, breathing deep and expelling it with a hiss; one, two, three. . . The combination flashed by in a tenth of a second, but in that one-tenth Alex Slater's disconnected musing took a backseat to his anger and frustration. He was angry enough to kill, but not desperate, or stupid enough to. Not yet.
He worked his anger out in a series of gruelling kata's, pushing all thoughts of anything other than the burn out of his head. After twenty minutes sweeping, punching and kicking out at shadow opponents, feinting and dodging imaginary attacks, Alex took to foraging.
He came back with two shanks of deadfall, both just over five feet long and thick enough to grip easily. He hefted them together and swung, testing the weight and balance of his practice weapons.
Neither was particularly well balanced, but they would do just fine for the few routines he had in mind.
He circled, feigned an attack with the left only to lunge at the dark shadow of a cloud with the right. Suddenly the wind dropped to almost nothing, a sussurant whisper, and the sounds of the rain seemed very loud. The cloud died to the sounds of Johnny's applause.
“Toss us one,” Johnny hollered, pushing himself off his rocky perch. Alex had been too busy with his workout to see him slip out of the cave mouth, but he wasn't surprised that he had. Johnny caught the cudgel easily and dropped into a relaxed crouch, passing the weapon from hand to hand. “I'll be Skywalker,” he declared, whipping the stick out for Alex to parry. Wood thunked dully. Alex launched a lazy riposte that had Johnny back-peddling.
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