- BILLY'S FALL -
Again the dream woke him, and he lay in the dark while gusts bellowed at the windows. He had dreamed he was there to watch Pops cleanse a seven year old boy who had forgotten to feed his birds, and in that fragment of a memory was a truth that hurt far worse than his old man's belt.
He sat up, shivering against the goose-pimpled chill, and realised he had not been lying on his own mattress at all, but on the big old bed in Pops’ room. He stood up, his body cold and sticky with Night Terrors sweat, and walked to the high windows that overlooked his own little piece of Northumberland, down Moses Hill to the water. The wind was raging beyond the glass, rain striking the window and running through his face while he peered from one darkness into another.
Billy was scared.
He wanted to hide under the table, or in the wardrobe, anywhere that might mean that they wouldn't find him.
* * * * *
His bedroom was a treasure-trove of useless oddments. Everything that went missing around the farm ended up - eventually - in one of his junk boxes. Comic books; Batman, Captain Planet, Metamorpho and Lobo along with other D.C. Heroes on the slippery slope down from Superdom filled five cardboard boxes. A collection of marbles in a mason jar. Clothes scattered randomly. X-ray and 3D glasses. Plastic miniatures of Star Wars figures, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca and Princess Leia stood on shelves that stretched on for miles and miles.
Billy huddled up against the wall, the bed to one side, the corner of another wall to the other, waiting for either the light or the bad things to come, by no means sure which of the two would get to him first.
Pops wouldn't get out of his head with his strap and his feathers.
He knew he'd had that dream again, it had been so vivid. The memory of it was up there in the front of his mind, but receding at some speed, the way dreams do.
The feeling it left behind was the same, familiar fear.
Billy was scared.
He pulled his big Sloppy-Joe off the wicker chair and slipped it on over his head without ever actually covering his eyes.
The actual memory of it was blurred, and probably nothing at all like the nightmare, but it was frightening. He relived it in his sleep night after night - and then relieved it while he was awake every time Pops hit the bottle. He remembered forgetting to feed the pigeons and Pops going on, over and over, how much it hurt him to do it, but Billy had to be cleansed, else he would never get cured of his evil ways. The same old story. . .
He snapped his head up off his chest sometime later and realised he must have dozed off. It couldn't have been for long because there was still night in the window. An owl was hooting out there now, sounding more comfortable with the dark than Billy felt.
He shifted his position slightly and had to grit his teeth at the pins and needles that started jabbing as soon as he moved. He had been huddled there for so long he was still asleep from the waist down.
The rain at the window had eased off to a splatter.
Feeling the seconds crawl past, Billy's mind kept folding in on itself to the wings of the birdman and his leather strap. The aftershock of shivers he felt then set cramps tugging at his belly; he was starving. A reaction to coming down off six months of bad dreams. In another hour, the sun would be coming up. A clump of something yellow blew cold against the glass, bounced and tumbled away to skitter on its way to somewhere else. The night was old and rotten, but the prospect of facing down day one of the next six months was even worse. He tried to make it better by thinking of the sun and the water and the children in the park for Sunday play, but it was still dark and it would be dark again later, and dark was their time, not his. Pops kept on coming back with his belt.
A drainpipe, loosened by summers of sun and a winter's frost hard on its heels one time too many, banged against the wall by his window with a dull, repetitive dunk-dunk-dunk that could have been someone climbing up to get at his window.
He waited for the tap-tap-tap of the vampire's fingernails that didn't come, and then had to go and see why. The farm had that fresh-washed quality that left everywhere looking clean and alive and eager for everything to get underway one more time, but because everything was dark-on-dark, he couldn't make out any details.
He ran a hand through his fine, thinning hair. He felt like crawling back into the corner and just sitting it out until dawn, and then he remembered the birds. Suddenly he was very cold.
Forgot to feed the birds.
Pops would be madder than a fly on a shit heap if he found out, and he knew what that meant only too well.
* * * * *
He checked in on Pops again, but the old man's bed was still empty. The idea that he was punishing Billy for forgetting his chores wouldn't go away.
Downstairs, he could smell the rain dripping through the fresh cut grass outside without opening any of the doors. In the kitchen, he spelled out his name in the wet and steamed up glass, slowly and deliberately forming each letter. He smiled at his face: B.I.L.L.Y.
“That's me,” he agreed. “And I gotta go outside now. See you later.”
The rain had all but wrung itself out by the time Billy reached the old farmhouse-coop. His Sloppy-Joe kept out the worst of the cold, but some of the early morning chill still managed to find its way through.
Sunday morning was by no means glorious, but it was a long way from being a wash out. By the time most folks were up and out of their sacks it would probably be a lovely sunny afternoon.
He swiped at the drops falling from the guttering, splashing his hand one time in every three passes, but right then nothing he did had any of that special magic he needed to make him laugh.
At least the breeze had helped clear out the cobwebs. His head felt clearer than it had for days. He put it down to knowing Pops would be coming home pretty soon now, his drinking binges never lasted much more than forty-eight hours, and everything was going to work out just fine after all.
With that comforting thought lodged firmly in mind, Billy pushed open the door to the coop. He didn't know what he expected to see, but he certainly didn't expect to be ducking back from the first flush of a feather-guided cyclone. Birds winged past his head in a bluster of furious activity, arrowing for the sky in a riotous flock.
Before he had the presence of mind enough to close the door, the last of the stragglers was out and away, flying for the twin peaked chimneys in the valley below, and by then it was a bit like closing the gate after the horse has bolted. His birds were up with the gulls from the muddy banks of the Tyne and the black and white magpies, sparrows and starlings of the city, his belief in Pops’ sudden return up there with them.
Billy felt sick and frightened and a hundred and one other things he couldn't pin down to any names.
A sackful of mix had been tipped out onto the floor, though there was precious little of the feed left to say so. The restraining bolts holding back the cage gates had been pulled to let the pigeons get at the feed, so at least they hadn't gone hungry for too long.
He thought of Pops, but the old man would never have pulled the bolts. He hated the birds enough to let them sit and rot indefinitely, as he had done once before when Billy was just turning seven. So if not Pops, then who?
No one came up to the farm to visit anymore. Not since Ma had gone her way in '97. People didn't enjoy being friends with Pops after then, and those that did he scared off soon enough. Everyone kept themselves pretty much to themselves where he was concerned these days, even the Doctor and those folks he worked for at the health farm.
Billy didn't go so far as to worry about who had stopped by to do the neighbourly thing as far as his pigeons went. With his whole world of friends disappearing over the false horizon of the woods he had more pressing worries. But, by the time he had gathered himself together enough to set out in pursuit, the pigeons were literally specks on the horizon.
An old sheet of yellowed newspaper wrapped itself around his legs until he kicked it off. It wheeled away along t
he weed choked flowerbed on a collision course with the wall.
Looking at the freedom of the freewheeling pigeons something came over Billy and he found himself suddenly thinking it would be good to chase about barefoot. Without stopping to think about what he was doing, he threw his boots and balled up socks through the open doorway of the empty coop and began to run, feeling whole and free and relaxed. All at once he was bubbling with the sheer exuberance of the chase.
Halfway across the grass he started to call out their names and wave his arms in a windmill above his head without ever realising that his capering was more likely to scare the pigeons off than it was to lure them back.
Billy didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He wasn't used to the peculiar mix of emotions fermenting inside him. Soon, he was doing both.
It was a weird combination of circumstance and coincidence that brought him up short, no more than ten yards from the trees and almost directly in line with the open porch door. Nuke, Nosey and Felix stood there in a line, halfway in, half out of the woods, watching him with runny grey eyes made black as winter by the shadow. Billy's head came up just as his barefoot came down on a splinter of broken glass that sliced through the soft tissue between his big and next toes. He cried out, jerked and pulled up, holding his leg and hopping. Fighting the sudden flare of pain, he hobbled on an awkward pace. His face crumbled a step behind his legs, a flicker of surprise giving way to agony as he lurched and collapsed to his knees.
The splinter had broken into three shards, none of them very big on their own, but they had sunk into the flesh and their saw-teeth edges were holding on like the barbs on a fishing hook. He took a hold of the piece that had broken off in the ball of his left foot and pulled, wriggling it back and forth until the splinter worked itself loose. Blood flowed in a slow, neat trickle down his grass-stained foot.
The dogs paced, alert, waiting.
Next came the piece that had buried itself in his big toe. Billy's fingers were shaking from fear as much as from pain as he tugged on the glass spelk. Bits of fatty flesh clung to its jagged edge.
The final piece, the one that had sliced between his toes, was by far and away the largest of the three at nearly half an inch. It had pierced the deepest, too. Billy teased it for nearly a full minute, teeth clamped, eyes watering, before he worked it free. He threw the piece across the field, feeling sick.
He could hardly bear to stand again, impossible as it was to put any weight on his left leg with the burning needles chiselling away at his raw nerves.
Nuke padded up beside him, seemingly impatient with waiting. The others circled slowly, almost as if they were hurrying Billy into coming along with them. He limped along two steps before giving in to the heat slicing up to his brain. It was like walking barefoot on a carpet of razorblades. Just about everything down there screamed. Billy flopped down gracelessly and started massaging the pad of his bloody-green foot with both thumbs, but the small contingent of Alfie's posse weren't about to have any more waiting than they had to.
Nosey and Felix started bumping Billy, the first couple of times only nudging at him, then when that didn't work virtually walking head down into his back. Nuke loped off into the russeting shades of the trees, only to re-emerge a moment later with one of Billy's precious birds clamped between his jaws. He dumped the dead pigeon at Billy's feet, as if making an offering to Billy the grinning Buddha of Garrett's Farm.
Seeing the bird, which, in spite of its injuries, he recognised as Tempest, one of his prize racers, Billy's thoughts folded in again to become a house without any doors or windows. Bricked up within the origami prison inside his head he chased down, trapped and isolated the root cause of just about every nightmare he could remember ever having. The solitary terror from which every nightmare, every fear, stemmed.
And it all came back to Pops.
The notion itself was almost a revelation, and certainly as unexpected.
He sat there, looking around as if he didn't know where he was or what month of what year he had woken up in. Blank and bewildered, eyes wide and bemused.
But Pops?
Shaking his head, Billy eased himself into a crouch and then to his feet, gingerly testing his left side for any sudden flares of pain. To his surprise, he found that walking on his heel didn’t hurt nearly half as bad as walking properly did. So, he half stumped, half walked behind the posse as they loped between the trees and away. The whupp whupp of wings filtered down through the canopy of leaves. The slowly warming air felt wonderfully cool to the point of purging his lungs. The loosely packed mulch of damp soil and wet grasses solid under his feet.
Everything seemed somehow sharper and clearer against his enlightened face as he emptied his head of all but the birds by standing himself on the other side of the paper wall and Pops. Clearing the fence at the meadow's skirt took some doing with just the one good foot to stand on, but he made it over by almost folding double and swinging his good leg over first. Tiny specks of colour proved the posse were still insight, though well ahead and nearly disappearing into the dense foliage.
Not wanting to lose them, Billy pushed himself on, deeper into the woods. Dizzy-headed adrenaline swam through his system, spurring him on into putting a gradually thickening wall of tree-trunks between his back and the shadows of the farm.
Billy stumped on, disorientated by the occasional silver scrawls and charcoal lines put down by the dwindling moon. More than once the uneven ground threatened to bring him down as twigs and branches and stones snapped and cracked and dug into his bare feet.
Ten yards ahead, Nuke barked raucously, the sound grating out of his throat like a fistful of chalk being powdered between the big dog's canines. His huge head bathed in the splendour of the leaf filtered moon. Nosey and Felix continued to steer Billy's path, nudging him on to their find. The sounds of the forest round about came across as muzzy, Billy's ears – concentrated on the hectic trampling of the dogs as they were – missed all but the loudest. A breeze washed over his face as a pigeon swooped by closely enough for his nose to smell over the forest full of other aromas.
The clearing they stopped at might have been a sacred grove to Mother Nature. The altar dominating its heart stood tall in the body of a vast and ancient oak, the virtual twin of the old Hangman's tree on the farm back home. Silvered light, the texture and thickness of mercury suffused it, picking out the intricacies time had taken to carve into the oak's thick-skinned bark. Seen like that, the tree looked closer to being a watching angel than it did a screaming man.
In places, Billy saw, the oak's roots had forced their way up through the churned soil.
He sucked in a deep breath.
Felt suddenly cold bone deep inside.
It took him that long to recognise what it was he saw clawing out between the bare roots at his feet.
A hand.
A blue-grey hand reaching up, fingers broken and twisted, scraps of bone peeking through. A bracelet of ragged polythene cupped it around the wrist in a ruffle, and disappeared under the dirt.
A bloated worm slithered out from a fold in the sinew.
Silver glinted on gold, and Billy recognised Pops' wedding ring on its third finger.
- PART THREE -
- WALKING UNEASY STREETS -
- 40 -
“. . . Miss?” Someone was saying. Kristy didn't feel all that much like opening her eyes to find out who. Keeping them closed was by far and away preferable; not seeing the bloodlines on the wall, not seeing the mummified rat decorations and the shit on the sofa; especially not that. She sighed heavily, wanted to curl up behind the bag of laundry at the back of the wardrobe and wait for them to finish violating her. Stretched to ease cramping muscles. Shook her head sharply, trying to come back to herself.
“What? Sorry?”
She felt very much as if, in some fundamental way, she had been raped. Chewed up and spat out by some zitty, nihilistic bastard out looking for kicks.
A thick raven's crop of fly away hair tu
mbled across the gaze of the clear, blue eyes looking down at her.
“I said, do you have any idea who might want to do such a thing, miss?” The officer repeated, slowly, his voice husky enough to call gravelly. Added to that, the words came over with a measured deliberation that might just as easily have been confused for some difficulty phrasing the thoughts behind them. As out of things as she was, Kristy could see the lie in those eyes.
Todd Devlin had dangerous eyes. Eyes that only hinted at the immensity and intensity of rage bottled up within the wiry Detective Superintendent.
“No. . . Yes. . .” Kristy mumbled, knuckling her eyes, trying to knead alertness back into herself. Something had gone, but she couldn't think what.
“Which is it?”
She sighed again, shaking her head loosely, as much to clear the soupy, slept-in feeling that had thrown its blanket over her head, as if to back up the negative. 'No.' Kristy felt strange, curiously dislocated from the present, as if she were only now coming around from a long, deep slumber.
“You don't sound convinced,” Devlin pressed.
No flies on you, she felt like saying, but somehow reined her mouth in and came out with an excuse about being tired and confused. Chewed up and spat out.
Devlin seemed prepared to let it go at that, for the moment.
No one had thought to clean the brown smears off the sofa.
Another officer, out of uniform, came over to talk to Devlin.
Kristy couldn't hear any of what was said, but saw enough suspicion in the way Devlin's beguiling smile dropped down a few notches, to carry all the weight the words did not. Around them, Scene of Crime officers were running off pictures of the mess from just about every angle conceivable.
“Been upsetting the Animal Rights lobby?” She couldn't read the implication in the way Devlin said it, but was sure it was there.
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