by Bill Hussey
Berwick Avenue was a street of terrace houses, each red brick, many bearing the hallmarks of student dwellings. Traffic cones and road signs, the spoils of many nights drunk, littered the pavement outside No 17. A desperate-looking potted plant baked in an upper window, and what appeared to be a piece of toast layered with jam was stuck to the outer side of a curtain. A sign done in gothic letters was attached to the post flap: Jehovah’s Witnesses selling weed and Avon ladies with big tits only please. All others are kindly asked to FUCK OFF.
It took a good five minutes of Dawn hammering on the door before it was opened.
‘Yep?’
‘Doug Winters?’
‘Upstairs … Hey, is Dougie okay?’ the mass of hair and towelling dressing gown called after them.
‘I don’t know,’ Jack said. ‘Maybe we could talk to you later?’
‘Sure … okay, sure.’
Nirvana’s money-grabbing aquatic baby poster was tacked on a door at the top of the stairs. Above it sat a salivating cartoon dog with Dougie does it Doggie printed beneath in neat copperplate. Jack knocked.
‘Who is it?’
‘Jack Trent. We spoke yesterday.’
They heard a soft clap of slippers. A bolt whined free of its fitting and the door slackened in the frame. Jack pushed it open.
Doug Winters sat cross-legged on a futon. The walls around him were papered with posters of rock and Britpop icons, each positioned as though a spirit level had been used when hanging them. A collection of musical instruments: acoustic and electro-acoustic guitars, a banjo, a violin, and what Dawn believed was a jew’s-harp had been mounted with care around the room. Books and colour-coded files were arranged on the shelves in order of size. The rest of the room was in total disarray. Crushed drink cans and furred pizza boxes lay strewn across the floor. A week’s worth of washing, consisting of knotted shirts and cardboard-rigid socks, sat heaped in a corner. It was the stereotype of a student living in toxic untidiness, but the squalor did not ring true.
Doug appeared flushed. The skylight above his head was open and the sweet, earthy scent of cannabis was still in the room.
‘Musician I see,’ Jack said. ‘Is that what you study?’
‘Yeah, my dad wanted me to read economics; something ‘useful’,’ Doug said, his voice uneven. ‘Dear old Dad, he’s like the contents of a whore’s pants: a pussy, but he pays the rent.’
The boy gave a hollow laugh and plucked at the breast of his T-shirt. Despite the drowsy warmth of the room, and the amount of cannabis he had toked, Dawn could tell that he had not slept in days.
‘Okay, Doug,’ she began, brushing away strands of rolling tobacco that littered the desk and resting her notebook in the cleared space. ‘What can you tell us about Simon Malahyde?’
‘Whoa. Wait a minute. You’re journalists, right? You said you were a journalist.’
‘We’re the police, Doug,’ Jack said. ‘On the phone I mentioned that you’d contacted the Gazette. You didn’t ask who I was. As you know, Simon has disappeared. We need you to tell us about him.’
‘I don’t know anything. Listen, I just thought you were …’
Doug lapsed into silence. The stench of the room thrummed at Dawn’s temples. Doug’s eyes fixed on the door.
‘Do you want me to lock it?’ Jack asked.
The boy nodded, pressing his back against the wall. Jack flipped the bolt.
‘Something bad happened.’ Jack turned to face the kid. ‘You couldn’t tell your friends about it; too many questions. You couldn’t tell the police; they’d want to follow it up. But you needed to make sense of it. You saw the notice in the Gazette. Thought you’d tell a journalist. Didn’t matter if they believed you or not, you had to tell someone. You’ve been sitting in this room since the night of the party, ordering takeaway, afraid to go out, even to the launderette. Such a neat young man, living in this pit. Something must have really frightened you.’
‘Can I smoke?’ the boy said, his voice dirt-dry. ‘A cigarette?’
‘Sure.’
Doug took a roll-up from the pocket of his dressing gown and lit up. He drew on it, picking fallen flecks of tobacco from his shirtfront with shaking fingers.
‘You won’t believe me. I don’t care if you don’t. I couldn’t tell Kate; I couldn’t tell any of them …’ he swallowed hard. ‘The party hadn’t really got going. By around one, people were either comatose or leaving. Joll – the cross between Marilyn Manson and Chewbacca who let you in – had just won the last drinking game. You threw food at the window, if it stuck, you had to drink. Toast on the curtain. That was mine. I was knackered, so I decided to crash …
‘I found him here. Waiting for me.’
Doug flicked ash into the Diana memorial mug between his legs.
‘He knew. Said he knew. Said he’d known from the first time he saw me. Said Kate was just a front. I told him he was talking bullshit, but I couldn’t look at him. He has these eyes … He said we should take a walk …’
‘What time was this?’ Dawn asked.
‘Like I said, ’bout one a.m.’
‘Where did he take you?’
‘The graveyard behind the cathedral. The Karlarney crypt. You know the place?’
Yes, she knew it. She and Jack had passed it often on their walks. The granite mausoleum, erected in the seventeenth century by the Karlarney family, rose up in her mind. The monument, faced with colonnades, was not just a tribute to the dead, but a testament in stone to the huge wealth generated by the slave trade. Its grand archway entrance, now curtained with creeping plants, had been financially shouldered into place by those torn from their homeland and shipped to the New World by Tobias Karlarney. It was now a ruin, well known as a place of assignation for ‘cottaging’ homosexuals.
‘It was dark,’ the boy continued, his voice more even now, ‘but the crypt has no roof and the moon was bright. I could see him plainly, you see? It’s important you realise that. He was stepping over broken rock, broken gravestones. Stepping over the past. His voice was warm … cold … I don’t know. “Survival is an urge,” he said. “It has no time for niceties. It’s the only instinct we have left that doesn’t kowtow to conventions of polite behaviour. Our other drives have been stripped of their power. But the urge to survive is still merciless. It teaches us this: if we want something, we should take it”. He came closer. “If you want something take it”. His breath was hot against my eyes. “If you want something take it”.”
Doug pressed his fingers to his lips.
‘He has these eyes. The darkest eyes … But I couldn’t … He.’ Doug’s voice died. It took him a moment to begin again. ‘He took a wooden box from his coat. There was a blade inside, like a dissecting knife. I tried to push through the vines, but they were stronger now. Thicker, somehow. I had to stay and watch.’
The boy stared past Jack to the door. He held out his wrists and made slashing motions with his cigarette.
‘He cut … right along. Right along his arms, elbow to wrist. The blood was thin. Like dyed water. Nothing living could have so little blood in it … “This is the power of unfettered urge”, he said. “I wanted to show you, before I die, things you won’t believe” …’
After a lengthy pause, Jack asked: ‘Doug? Can you tell us what he …?’
‘He did things to me. Made me do things to him. Things I wanted. Things I didn’t. Things that no-one would ever … He was dry. Hollow inside. His veins, withered grey. He showed me things. They came from the walls, from their graves. They told me I was dirty; told me I was damned. I still see them,’ the boy cupped his forehead with his hand. ‘In here. When I sleep … The moon was still bright when he left, and I was alone in the crypt. Alone with the dead. I waited ’til the sun came …’
‘Doug, can you tell us what Simon was like?’ Jack asked.
‘No. No, I can’t. I didn’t know him. No-one did. The party was the first time any of us had seen him outside class. But I know one thing: he … he liked hurting people.’
‘Did he physically hurt people?’
‘No. It was emotional. Mind games. He’s Janus-faced, you know what I mean?’
Doug shook his head, as if he disagreed with what he was saying.
‘I think we’ll wrap up there,’ Dawn said. ‘Listen, Doug, we need a photo of Simon. Do you have one?’
‘I don’t think so …’ Doug reached into the drawer by his bed, his eyes still far away. ‘Here. That’s a video of a guest lecture I taped for my … for Kate. Some theology crap. He was there, asked some nuts question and made a bit of a scene.’
‘We’re going,’ Jack said, taking the video. ‘I’ll send someone to talk to you, okay?’
‘He had the darkest eyes,’ the boy mumbled, ‘the oldest eyes.’
‘What did you think of that?’ Jack asked.
They were standing by his car. Dawn scanned her notes and made little eye contact.
‘At uni a whole group of us got stoned and convinced ourselves Bono was stripping on my bed,’ she said.
‘So why’s he still scared out of his wits? Don’t tell me he’s still not come down.’
‘Well, I’m not about to believe Simon Malahyde took him to a crypt just to do some sick magic trick. The kid’s obviously going through some big life crisis. The only thing we can take from all this is that the big fur ball housemate confirmed Simon was here ’til one a.m. Monday night. And he said Simon left alone. That fits in with Father Garret’s sighting of him at about two.’
‘Okay. I’m gonna get the duty doctor to call on the kid,’ Jack said. ‘Shall we take tomorrow off? Come back to it fresh Monday morning.’
Dawn nodded and snapped her notebook shut. She was about to get into her car when he laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘Dawn? I really am sorry about yesterday. The photos, honestly, I didn’t …’
She shrugged off his hand.
‘How’s Jamie?’
She got into her car and slammed the door.
Ten
Jack completed the latest draft of the pi number series. It was becoming beautifully familiar. No matter how reassuring it was, however, it could not stop Doug Winters’ words worrying his thoughts:
He had the darkest eyes … the oldest eyes.
The same eyes, perhaps, that had stared at Jack from the dreaming? Or could he put it down to coincidence again, just as he had with the familiar feel of the trees in Redgrave Forest? Maybe Dawn was right, maybe Doug’s story was just a drug-addled delusion. The report from the doctor that Jack had sent round this afternoon suggested the kid was suffering from a mild persecution disorder, no doubt enhanced by his cannabis consumption. The doctor had asked Doug to spend a night in hospital, but the boy had refused and there were no grounds to section him. Diagnosis: any testimony from Mr Winters should be treated with a good deal of caution. And yet, to Jack something in that bizarre story rang true.
He went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of milk. Clearing a space between the piles of boxes heaped on the kitchen table, he sat down and surveyed the chaos. Two weeks and he still hadn’t got round to unpacking. His striving for a tidy mind certainly didn’t extend beyond the confines of his head. He pulled a box toward him and stared at the sterile contents.
When normal people move house, they have lorry-loads of memories, he thought. Whole attics full of trinkets and keepsakes from friends, family, relationships. Stuff they can’t bear to throw away. Stuff that makes them laugh and cry. Even things that remind them to be angry or to grieve. Attics must be the soul of any house, but his attic had always been light on that kind of personal memory.
I have things, he reflected, just things. Nothing with any depth. Someone will sort through it all when I die. Maybe they’ll laugh. Or maybe they’ll be sad, to find such emptiness.
He had only one box of items that gave any context to his life. Inside were souvenirs from four special people. The first keepsake was a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles wrapped in tissue paper. The frames were heavy, the glass as thick as Coke bottle bottoms. As a boy, he would grab them off his father’s nose, run to the bathroom and stare at his weirdly enlarged eyes in the mirror. He could still feel his father on the glasses. Two months ago, after the old man’s funeral, Jack had given everything his father had owned to Oxfam. The smell of his clothes, the annotations in the books he read, even the funny cartoons he used to draw, had been too painful to keep around the house. His father had lived with Jack for six years and had never understood his son, but he had been the last person to love him unconditionally. Jack pulled his hair over his eyes, the way he used to when he’d been a kid, and remembered his dad’s last words: Live for me, son. Please try. Be happy, for me.
The second item was a brooch. It was still necessary to put on gloves to handle it. The pain of his mother’s death could still be tasted there, undiluted by the passing years. She had always worn the little cameo with the French lady’s silhouette. It had been pinned to her nightdress when they … Jesus, he did not want to remember, but images snapped open in his mind: the black pool at his feet; the shrieks of vicious mouths; morphing limbs dragging across the floor. And the cameo. The last part of her still visible through the swarm.
She was to have been buried with it. The coffin had been kept in the parlour. He had listened through the wall until his father’s muffled sobs segued into gentle snoring, and then crept downstairs. His eyes, round with fear, had been reflected in the shiny veneer of the elm casket. Careful not to smear the wood with his fingers, he opened the lid. His gaze inched up her body. Veins stood out in livid ridges along her neck. Her skin shone with horrible pallor against the black frock. He’d overheard his father saying that Mr Flannery, the undertaker, had not been able to get that expression off her face. Before he could look at her fully, he grabbed the brooch and covered it with the strip of sheet in which it now rested. His father never mentioned the disappearance.
The third and fourth items are new. A sketch of Reed Richards, aka Mr Fantastic, with ‘Wuss Man by JH’ printed beneath. And a photograph, somewhat out of focus. In it, she is smiling and motion trails lace out from her hair. He kept the snapshot in a plastic evidence sleeve.
They are my reminders, Jack thought, of what I can never have.
His skin tingled as he remembered those few exquisite moments when he had touched her. Felt her warmth, her hardness, her softness, the rough skin on her soles, the supple skin of her stomach. The coarse, damp hair of her vagina. The beauty of being joined with her.
He threw his glass against the wall. Milk splattered the fresh paintwork. Kicking the shards aside, he went to the window and opened it wide.
It was growing dark. Gusts of rain buffeted into the kitchen and cooled his skin. He had moved to the house a few weeks ago and the other properties on the new development had not yet been bought up. There were no garden fences erected and, whichever way he looked, he saw the black, empty windows of neighbouring houses.
There’s something unnerving about an uncurtained window at night, he thought. It draws the eye.
A piece of tarpaulin, pinned beneath rubble, fluttered in the wind. Scaffolding groaned and settled. Jack saw himself reflected in the patio doors of the house opposite. The walls of his kitchen framed him in a yellow rectangle. His face was roughly defined: a pale oval with black dashes for eyes and a simple line for his mouth.
The reflection shifted, but he had not moved.
His body froze. His arms and legs locked. He tried to fight it, tried to move, but it was too late. He was out of his body, catapulted into his mirror-self. Huge black shapes grew up around him: the sentinel oaks of the clearing.
The dreaming had begun.
Jack was back in the glade. His torch smashed and … Yes, he could still hear it: something crawling towards him. The wind picked up, crackled through the trees and knifed across his face. Stumbling back, he met the forest edge. He felt along the web of bracken, but there was no breach in the barrier of branch and vine. No good running.
No good screaming. The dreaming would not release him yet. Not until he had seen the face of whatever crawled from the darkness to meet him.
Everything was still. The dragging sounds had stopped. Perhaps the thing had vanished, like a will-o’-the-wisp, into the forest. Perhaps …
Hands dug into the earth a few inches from his feet. Nails were missing from some of the fingers, and the skin of a thumb was torn and peeled back over the bone. The hands ploughed deep. A head and torso emerged into the light. Lice, crawling through matted hair, bathed in patches of dark blood. Jack looked from the fingers that pawed at his legs to the turning face. It was ballooned and tinged throughout with streaks of yellow. Flaps of skin hung from it, mouldering like the pages of books kept in damp cellars. The whole body slithered into view.
A child. A dead child.
The boy pulled himself to his knees. Then he reached for Jack’s shoulder and tugged himself upright. From stomach to sternum, the child’s torso had been torn open and hollowed out. Rib-bones arched through the cavity and Jack felt them graze, like long hard fingers, against him. With every jerk upwards, blood and bile sloshed out of the child and splashed Jack’s feet. The sound of each spill made him heave, but Jack managed to keep the vomit down. Through his shirt, he felt the stretch and flex of striated muscle, the heat of dripping flesh. At last, the child reached Jack’s ear. His mouth lolled open.
‘Jack, save me …’ the voice gargled. ‘Save me, Jack. Please … He’s coming. He’s so close.’
Jack knew the voice. He looked into a pair of striking jade irises and screamed. The only sounds he heard were the spongy movements of the dead kid’s body and a faint ringing coming from far away.
‘Don’t let him take me. Jack, don’t leave me here alone.’
The scene began to recede into the night. Before it vanished, Jack saw the child through the patio doors, as if he were standing in the empty house opposite. His face … rotting, dead, and so familiar …
Jack drew his fingers across his mouth. He staggered to the hall and picked up the phone.