It was in the middle of the night when he realised that waiting for the end was pathetic and cowardly. He should kill himself swiftly, mete out the justice due to him and have done with it.
He slipped from the filthy second skin his sheets had become and stood naked in front of the full length mirror in his bedroom. Moonlight filled the room with luminous silver light.
He was thin now. His ribs showed - he could count them all. What little fat he’d carried had gone from around his waist. His abdominal muscles were a ridge along the centre of his stomach. Inside, all his organs would have shrunk to fit this smaller cavity. His pelvis protruded like a small shelf. Everywhere the guy-wires of his body, the sinews, showed tight and proud beneath his thinning skin.
A razor would do it.
A blade across his skinny neck and his blood would pool blackly in that silver light.
There was no razor in the house.
He went to the kitchen. There he took out a tiny paring knife and his whetstone. The sound of grinding, slippery steel was loud in all that quiet. For five minutes he stood, his right hand sliding up and down, up and down; a sandy, gritty movement vibrating in his bones, raising the hair on his forearms and neck.
He tested the blade against his thumb. Sharp as a razor. Sturdier. Surer.
He moved in the direction of the stairs but sensed something outside the back door. He stopped and turned. Was there movement out there among the quicksilver shadows? He stood for a long time, watching. Stood until his vision greyed out and he had to blink it clear. It was so long since he’d looked outside that the shapes out there, the rotted-down stalks and stems and vines, made no sense to him. He recognised none of it in the insufficient moonlight.
The knife became a weapon of self-defence and he clutched it, blade upward, in his weak fist. The sense of a presence outside the back door grew and spread. A dark tide had flowed all the way to his back step, covering everything, a living black ocean.
But that could not be.
He stepped closer to the glass in the back door until he could see his own breath on it. The ground seemed to be rippling in the moonlight as though his whole house were at sea. His grip on the knife loosened because his palms were sweating.
He listened, turned an ear towards the glass.
Whispers across the lake of his garden in a language he did not understand.
He told himself he did not understand it but in truth he knew every word. The calling had returned.
Something scraped against the bottom of the door and he stood back.
The waves in the garden were rising, a squall getting up out there. Crests began to obscure the only shape he did recognise - his shed. The level outside was rising.
He backed away still further.
What could his knife do against all this?
And could he really kill himself now when tomorrow would no doubt bring the strangest dawn the Earth had ever seen?
He waited there for a long time, trying to discern some shape, anything recognisable in the flood of movement beyond the glass. He could not.
He waited for it - for them - to come and take him as he so deserved to be taken. He waited for them to separate him into vein, muscle and bone, lymph and blood, to dissociate his various organs and reuse them in accordance with their new way. They came no further than the threshold.
An hour must have passed wherein he entered some staring trance, as though contemplating a mandala. Then, finally, he was tired. Tired enough to sleep. He turned from the black ocean in his garden, disconnected and trudged upstairs to his bed. He placed the knife in the drawer of his bedside table next to his grandmother’s Bible, a book he never read.
Before he died there was something he needed to do.
***
Aggie stood naked in the tiny bedroom of her shared flat in Wandsworth.
The landlord had made a poor job of turning two bedrooms into four - there was barely enough space for her to walk around her bed and the walls were like cardboard. Somewhere in the house there was damp rot and every room smelled of mould and sweaty decay. She hated it and barely spoke to her flatmates. Maybe it was because she believed she was worth so much more than the existence she’d found. Maybe it was because she was becoming exactly the person she swore she’d never be.
The mirror showed her who that person was.
She had lost weight trying to stay as skinny as the other girls. After finding the job in East Putney and quitting the money-grabbing modelling agency, she’d found it impossible to put the weight back on. She remembered how she’d looked when she studied herself in the mirror of the bedroom in her parents’ house. She hadn’t been fat then, but she’d had curves and a fuller bust. Now her ribs showed just a little too much. The gentle, attractive mound of her belly had become a definite concavity - still desirable in the world of modelling but a difference she didn’t welcome. And yet, there seemed nothing she could do about it. She tried to eat but the hunger wasn’t there. Her skin had taken the grey out of the city air. Her sweat smelled stronger, sourer than when she’d lived at home.
These things were a source of constant anxiety but her skin told other stories. Tales not necessarily about the lonely single girl trying to make it in the world of fashion. The bruises on her wrists and ankles never quite had the time to fade now and so she wore clothes with sleeves that draped to her hands or fingers. The whippings were more for show than for pain but occasionally the leather did leave weals. Sometimes the marks took several days to disappear.
She no longer had any pubic hair and the hair on her head had been shorn to a crew cut allowing her to wear a variety of wigs. Before she’d left home she’d always worn clip-on earrings, not having any desire for the real thing. Now she had piercings in places she would never even have considered. The one consolation was the balance of her bank account. All of a sudden she had savings. Soon she would move to better accommodation - she promised herself a nice place on her own nearer the centre of the city. She’d clean herself up. Get pretty again. And then she’d get back into the kind of work she’d always dreamed of doing. She had enough experience now to shop around for the right kind of jobs.
Just a little more money and she’d move on. She’d move up.
The mirror was straight with her. More honest than she was being with herself about where her life was headed. It was one thing she couldn’t ignore. There was no disguising the changes. She was a different kind of girl now. She was a different kind of animal.
Her phone rang and she flinched at the sound. It could only mean one thing: more work. She grabbed it out of her handbag and pressed accept. No one spoke.
‘Yeah?’ she said.
‘Agatha?’ It had been a familiar voice once but now, like her own body, she barely recognised it.
‘Mum.’ She had no idea what to say. ‘How did you get this number?’
There was something wrong with her mother’s voice.
‘You’ve got to come home, poppet.’
‘Don’t start this. I’m never coming back.’ Her mother was trying not to cry.
‘You’ve got to. You’ve got to come back.’
‘Listen, I’m nev -’
‘Yes, you are, Agatha. You’re coming home right now. Donald’s . . .’ The tears Pamela Smithfield had been holding on to escaped. Her next words came out as a kind of howl. ‘. . . gone missing.’
***
Delilah held Ray’s head against her breasts as they lay beneath the oak tree.
She liked him unshaven, his stubble scratchy and prickling to her skin. She liked the smell of sebum that came from his unwashed hair and the sourness of his underarms. From all of him came a musky fuck-odour. She’d smelled it the first time they’d come to the secret clearing. Since then, the more sex they’d had, the stronger the smell became. It was as thoug
h his hormonal system had responded to her at a chemical level. The more they touched each other, entered each other, the more of this smell he produced and the more magnetic he became to her. Even when they weren’t together she could smell a trace of him. She never wanted to lose it.
Ray had changed in other ways. He was more of a man. Still a feckless dreamer. Still a person who found it hard to live in what other people called the real world. Inside him, though, something had hardened, locking another thing deeper inside. She sensed a fear in him and she knew not to ask him about it. Not yet.
Spent, he dozed beside her. They’d brought sleeping bags to the clearing so that they could spend the night outdoors. Now the weather had turned a little cooler, the bags were ideal for day-time trysts too.
Ray twitched, making her jump.
He sat up and she saw in his eyes the hidden thing that had returned from sleep with him. It faded quickly.
‘Shit.’ He said.
She touched his arm.
‘What is it?’
‘A dream, thank God.’
‘What happened?’
Ray looked around at the oak trees as if gauging their strength.
‘Do you think we’re safe here?’ he asked.
‘Completely. No one knows about this place. No one else has ever found it.’
He wiped his face with both hands.
‘That’s not really what I mean, D. I thought it was coming here. Coming for us.’
‘What was?’
Ray rubbed his forehead hard and shook his head to clear it.
‘Sorry. I’m still half asleep. Or stoned or whatever. You know that feeling when you think you’ve woken up but you’re still dreaming? That’s how I feel.’
‘Are you scared?’
‘I’m fine. Just need to arrive properly. Is there any water left?’
She passed him the canteen and he took several small sips. Then he lay back against the tree and put his arm around her.
‘I love this place, D. Being here with you, it’s like being on a better planet. A place that only you and I understand.’
‘I feel the same way.’
‘Did you bring other blokes here before me?’
She held her breath for a moment. They’d known each other long enough for this.
‘My first boyfriend brought me here when I was fourteen. He was three years older than me and that seemed like a lot back then. I didn’t tell my parents about him. At school, the other girls were jealous. Boys my age wouldn’t come near me when they realised who I was seeing. His name was Simon Pike. Everyone called him Spike. He’d already left school and had a job in what used to be Manny’s Spares and Repairs. I had a thing for all that grease and grime.’
‘Dirty girl to the bone, aren’t you?’
‘To the marrow, Ray. Anyway, he brought me in here a few times. It was Spike who put the ammo box here but there were other things in it back then. The first few times he was nice with me, took it slow. I lost my virginity right here under this tree. It wasn’t bad, really.’ She paused, remembering. Not smiling. ‘Pass me the water, would you?’
Ray handed her the canteen. She could tell he knew there was more to the story and she was glad.
‘We came here one Friday evening after he finished work. He didn’t even go home to change. Just took off his overalls, washed his hands and brought me here. It was like he was in a hurry. We made love and then he stood up. I heard some laughter in the bushes and I realised straight away what he’d done. Either he’d bet his mates he’d do it while they watched or they’d paid him. I never found out. They’d all been drinking hard when they walked out into the clearing. Spike was angry, so I suppose they must have promised to stay quiet so I wouldn’t know. The funny thing is, I wasn’t that angry. I knew they’d watched us and, from the looks on their faces, they’d enjoyed it. That made me feel good. I must have been born kinky, I suppose.’
She watched Ray’s face. He could have laughed or commented but he didn’t. Again she was pleased. She continued.
‘They raped me. Spike tried to stop them but not very hard. In the end he just joined in. By the time they’d all had a go, the first one was hard again. It took hours before they were finished. You know what the worst of it was?’
Ray shook his head, watching her carefully.
‘If they’d suggested it to me, if they’d let me have a drink and if they’d just asked me, I probably would have said yes. But for them, the pleasure was not in the asking, it was in the taking, the forcing. It was after dark when they left me. I heard Spike being sick a little way off. Back then, I really believed it was me he was disgusted with. He’d fucked me and he’d hated it so much it made him ill. That was what made me so introverted for so long, thinking I was the kind of girl that made men puke.’
She checked Ray’s expression again. It was his opportunity to tell her that she didn’t have that effect on him. He didn’t take it. She already knew how she made him feel and he knew it. Nothing needed to be said. They were good together. She was falling in love with him.
‘I squatted under this tree and their sperm poured out of me onto the dirt. It just kept coming and coming and I remember thinking “I’m going to be pregnant and I won’t have any idea who the father is”. But I didn’t get pregnant and all those billions of sperms died here on the ground. It was that that brought me back here in a way. This was the place where I’d faced men and survived. This was the place where their power had fallen into the ground, impotent and wasted. This was my place, not theirs. I used the dirt where
I’d squatted to perform cleansing rituals on myself. And then I fell in love with the outdoors. I’d rather be outside than in the most beautiful palace in the world.’
‘What about the Goth image? It doesn’t really fit, does it?’
‘No. But it keeps people from getting too close.’
‘Hasn’t worked with me, has it?’
‘It’s worked perfectly. You saw through my disguise. You’re worthy of me.’
‘I’m not so sure about that.’
She seized his face between her palms and looked into his eyes.
‘Ray. No matter what you may think of yourself, I can see who you really are and who you can become. I wouldn’t have told you any of this if I didn’t have the greatest trust in you and the greatest belief.’
‘D, I’ve dropped out of college. I don’t have a job. I spend every day stoned and I waste most of the hours of daylight playing video games. I’m not worthy of anything.’
‘I could slap you for saying that. I believe in you, Ray. You’re only like this because you’re afraid. When you conquer your fear, you’ll be capable of anything.’
‘What fear?’
She put a finger on his heart.
‘The one you have locked away right here.’
His tears came from nowhere. It was as though her finger had pressed some kind of release mechanism. He knew she was a real witch then, a powerful white witch with the keys to open him up. He turned his face into her breasts again and wept there until his tears rolled onto her belly.
When the tears finally stopped he told her everything. He told her about the garbage man.
Part III
‘Respect your mother and father above all things . . .’
Statement taken from Mason Brand’s journal, dated September 21st, 2001
17
Together, Ray and Delilah watched for the garbage man and his followers.
They looked for signs of him in the back alleys of Shreve and along the winding pathways of the Country Park. Sometimes Ray drove them to the local tip and recycling centre where they threw small bags of rubbish they’d brought from their homes - merely as a reason to be there. All the while, they watched the skips and bays for signs of movement.
Telling Delilah about what he’d seen felt like a confession. He’d been surprised by her reaction. She’d listened closely and nodded from time to time as though she understood something he did not. She seemed to draw meaning from what he said as though interpreting a dream for him. She was silent for a long time after he finished. When she finally responded he was terrified she was going to tell him he was a psycho and she never wanted to see him again. He compared this fear to the feelings he’d had for Jenny. Not even the jealousy he’d felt at The Barge had been as strong as the fear that Delilah might no longer want him. Before she said a word he realised he loved her.
It had started out as fun, a kind of accident.
And now, well, here they were: pleasantly, nakedly tangled in her bed. She was explaining Gaia theory to him and almost welcoming the rise of a new supernatural force. He wasn’t fully concentrating; he wondered if he had the guts to ask her to marry him. He didn’t, it appeared. Not right at that moment. But the idea was now never far from his mind, the unspoken words lingering around his lips.
‘It’s such a privilege to be alive now,’ she said, stroking his shoulder.
‘What do you mean?’
‘In times like these. When elemental forces are manifesting on our plane.’
‘Huh, I thought that was the cabin crew handing out the headsets.’
She cuffed him over the head.
‘It’s a new era, Ray. The long-awaited age of Aquarius.’ He reached to the bedside table to retrieve a Marlboro and her matches. He lit the cigarette, took a pull and passed it to her.
‘Isn’t the age of Aquarius meant to be a time of peace, love and harmony?’ He asked.
‘Sure. But these things never come without a struggle. This is the dawning. The garbage man and his kind are some kind of message to us. A catalyst perhaps.’
‘But they . . . you know . . . they’re hungry.’
‘I’m not saying it’s going to be pleasant. Change never comes without pain. Things are not born without the agony of labour. But afterwards . . .’
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