He was standing on the other side of the gate.
‘You took your time.’
‘Where did you go?’
He shrugged. ‘I just gave them a lesson in how to really scare people. It’s the only fun I’ll get all evening.’
* * *
It’s 1982. He is standing by his grandfather’s bed, fighting back the tears that seem to begin in his throat and push upward in hot, stinging waves to his eyes. The grandfather will not live to see his great grandchildren.
‘Happy birthday,’ the old man says. ‘How does it feel to be fifteen?’
The teenager shrugs, choking on his misery. He is trying to grow a beard, but at this moment the soft down on his chin and cheeks strikes him as pathetic. The whole world is pathetic and cruel.
The old man nods. ‘Neither one thing nor the other, is it?’
* * *
And I could not distinguish my memories from his.
* * *
The sun cast long shadows on the few unpopulated patches of ground. The light was faltering, throwing the multicoloured fairground bulbs into sharper focus. The sky had deepened to a rich, dark blue. At length Death stopped me with his hand, indicating a ride we hadn’t yet encountered. I heard the whining of a generator, the groans of onlookers, the shrieks of victims. I saw light reflecting from spinning metal cages, I watched our client join the queue.
‘This is the machine that will kill him,’ he said.
It was a hideous, rattling cyborg. Its non-human components consisted of a dynamo, a strong metal web supporting a latticed steel tower, and a central revolving spar at the ends of which two cages spun freely. Its non-mechanical components comprised a live human being willingly restrained inside each cage, an operator, and two hired hands. The twin elements of metal and flesh were mutually responsible for the successful functioning of the apparatus. When the device moved, the caged people cursed, screamed, gesticulated and groaned, committed to their part in the performance. Once the ride was over they were free to leave, their roles readily filled by new players.
Death squinted at the signboard advertising the ride.
‘The Voyager,’ he read. ‘A one-hundred-and-eighty degree vomit comet. Tasteful. No wimps allowed.’
‘Are we going on?’
‘No.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘But he is.’
Only two people were permitted per ride, and the queue shuffled forwards slowly. Our client was third in line. He seemed apprehensive, surveying the surrounding crowd and seeking approval of his dare-devilry. As we watched the Voyager’s spin slowed to a stop. The cage doors were opened, two satisfied customers staggered free, and a new couple climbed inside. The hired hands bound them tightly with leather straps and closed the doors. Soon the squealing occupants were tumbling over like amateur acrobats.
In the distance a bingo caller announced random sequences of numbers. Near by, a white-faced clown was selling helium parrots and foam lizards on wire leashes. I watched the crowd, catching indiscriminate phrases from passers-by until the ride came to an end. The rotating arm decelerated, the cages spun to a stop, the metal base shuddered with decreasing violence. The assistants prepared to unlock the cages. Our client rocked on the balls of his feet and whistled.
‘Next.’
He handed over his money, passed through the gate and claimed the nearest carriage. The hired hands strapped him in, struggling to fasten the bonds around his chest, belly, thighs and ankles. Having mostly succeeded, they closed the door casually. The operator activated the revolving arm until the second carriage was level with the loading platform. The assistants secured the second customer as the bearded man swung idly in his suspended prison.
‘Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride,’ said the operator.
He switched on the machine. It began to rotate, slowly.
* * *
He is thirty-two years old. He looks through the café window and smiles as he notices his ex-wife sitting at their old table by the stairs. He enters, sits down, and places his hand on her shoulder.
‘You’re looking good.’
She turns and kisses him lightly on the cheek, and pulls a photograph from her bag. The photograph shows two children at a swimming pool. His eldest child, now dead, and her younger brother, who had just learned to walk. The boy visits him at weekends and during the holidays.
‘I thought you might like to see this. I found it at the bottom of the suitcase. Do you remember?’
They talk about old times for an hour or so. They are still friends, and the fact that she holds his hand as they leave is, for him, a sign of hope. As he opens the door, he glances to his right and sees three people at the window table. Two of them – a pale, thin giant and a sickly individual covered in rashes – are engaged in an animated discussion.
The other man, who looks like a corpse, is staring at him sadly.
* * *
The revolving arm lifted its passengers high into the darkening sky and pulled them back down to earth, the cages describing circles in space. Our client groaned as he approached us and groaned as he left, his prison spinning like a propeller. His fellow convict screamed with pleasure and fear as the orbit accelerated. The metal base shuddered ominously, its rhythmic vibrations threatening to shake the apparatus apart.
The hired hands looked on coolly. The operator increased the speed.
The vibrations intensified, the shaking support hammering furiously against its foundations. The cages turned over and over like rolling stones. The revolving arm whirled like the sails of a windmill.
She handed him the photograph of their two children. Do you remember?
‘The Chief took the liberty of removing a couple of important bolts this afternoon,’ Death explained. ‘It shouldn’t be long now.’
‘I’m not sure I can look,’ I told him.
‘Then turn away.’
But I watched.
A door flew open on one of the cages. It banged against the arm, clattered back against the lock, swung open again. The crowd gasped collectively; the bearded man, our client, screamed. The assistant nearest to the ride waved his arms wildly and shouted at the operator; but the operator reacted too slowly, his brain shocked by the failure of the machine under his control. His dysfunctional reflexes eventually moved his hands to the drive lever, pulled it into neutral, and switched off the power.
The rotating arm droned as it decelerated, but the broken cage continued to spin crazily, its rhythm broken. On the first revolution the open door crashed against the base, ripping against its hinges as the compartment reeled. It tore free from its housing and shot, rattling, clattering, beneath the webbed metal support. On the second rotation, the cage roll slowed, revealing our client with his head bowed, his body held in the compartment only by the loosening straps around his waist and ankles. He clutched feebly at the grip bars as the cage rolled forwards and backwards, out of control. On the third, the waist strap snapped and he fell out of the compartment, swinging freely from the opening, held only by the feet. As the rotating arm slowed to a halt, it dragged him through the web of metal and tore him apart.
The dance of Death
‘We should hurry,’ said Death. ‘We need to take him back to the Agency. The Chief has something big planned for him on Sunday.’ He opened his black medical bag and removed two green plastic refuse sacks, handing one to me. ‘Reinforced. Triple strength.’
Time had congealed. In the dead, still air the sound of a thousand voices droned. Mannequin people gazed passively, trapped in mid-conversation, mid-laugh, mid-stare.
‘What do I do with it?’
‘Pick up the pieces. As many as you can find.’
Death pushed his way through the queue and slipped around the barrier, repeating the phrase: Let me through. Medic. Let me through. No-one challenged him, or the zombie in his shadow, and we reached the ride’s revolving arm in seconds. The bearded man’s battered cage swung idly at the base; the other was trapped at the apogee, its door perpendi
cular to the earth, its occupant staring emptily at the grisly scene beneath him and screaming. One of the assistants had turned away from the accident, his hands covering his face in disgust; the other crouched, staring, at the dismembered body. The operator’s fingers still rested on the controls.
‘Over there. Quickly.’
On the far side of the metal web, the bearded man’s severed head lay face down on the pavement. I picked it up, turned it around: one dull eye, a crushed jaw, missing ears, smashed skull, skin and beard red and wet with blood. The face that had watched the men on the moon. I lowered it into the bag, then knelt down for a moment, feeling numb and weak, watching the dumb expressions of the crowd. Death moved in front of them like a giant praying mantis, stooping to pick up a finger, or an ear, or a clump of hair.
I returned to work. By the operating platform, pointing towards the assistant who was unable to watch, I found the hand that had stroked a pregnant belly. In the webbed metal base I saw his heart, broken for the last time. On the tarmac I discovered the remaining eye, now blind to his surviving child. I gathered all the fleshy, bony, bloody bits and pieces I could find and placed them carefully in the sack.
And then I threw up.
* * *
My throat and stomach burned with the violence of retching. My mouth and nose filled with the acid taste and pungent smell of vomit, spilling out of me like a pump. I had forgotten the colour and texture, and how uncontrollable the process was, how debilitating and humiliating. When it was over, I felt as if I had been scooped out. I had no desire to live.
I was still crouched in that position when Death knelt down, rested his hand on my arm and announced that we were leaving. I looked up. His bag was filled with broken and battered limbs, but he carried it over his shoulder as if it were a balloon.
‘There are a couple of things missing,’ he said, ‘but it’s all we can manage. The Chief will just have to put up with it.’
I nodded, wiped my mouth, and lifted my sack slowly. ‘Where are we going?’
He pointed towards the helter skelter.
* * *
I focused on Death’s bent back smeared with red stains and followed him through the crowd: past the ghost train, the row of prize booths, the wind organ and snack bars, the Waltzer, the big wheel, the Rotor Disco. At the helter skelter he turned right, negotiated the war memorial and advanced through the double iron gates into St Giles cemetery. He didn’t pause until he was halfway towards the church, then he veered left through a clump of trees into a small clearing.
He dropped the sack, opened his black medical bag and removed the contents, nodding to himself. ‘Parcel tape. Staple gun. String. Very good.’
I swung my sack onto the ground next to his, relieved to be free of the burden.
‘What do we need those for?’ I asked.
‘Reassembly,’ he said.
* * *
I watched as he emptied the sacks onto the grass, arranged the body parts in vague anatomical order, and proceeded to cut lengths of parcel tape with his pen-knife. ‘You don’t have to do anything,’ he said at last, ‘but helping me might help you.’
And, as it turned out, he was right.
We stapled the single ear to the head. We taped the head to the torso, the torso to the arms, the arms to the hands, the hands to the fingers. We stuffed his chest and belly with the organs we’d found, connected them crudely with string and staples, and sealed him up. We stapled his penis to his groin. We taped his torso to his thighs, his thighs to his knees, his knees to his calves and shins, these to his ankles, those to his feet. By the time we reached his toes our achievements were recognizably more accomplished. The head wobbled and grinned unnaturally, but the legs were perfect.
The reassembly was almost complete. We stapled his wounds, wrapped and knotted string tightly around each limb to aid stability, and stood back to admire our handiwork.
I found only one slight mistake.
‘I think the right arm is out of line,’ I said.
Death twisted it back into place.
‘Lovely job,’ he said, kneeling by the patchwork corpse. ‘Now for the final touches.’
He pulled the last surprise from his bag: a pair of turquoise surfer’s shorts in a Hawaiian design, a pair of red deck shoes with white laces, and a black T-shirt which boasted QUALITY COFFINS AT DISCOUNT PRICES, with a telephone number on the reverse. I helped him dress the corpse then sat down wearily. Putting the body back together had eased the sickness in me, at least.
But he hadn’t finished: he pressed his lips against the cadaver’s broken mouth, and breathed. The chest inflated like a balloon, stretching the string and tape bonds to the limit. Death breathed again, and the bearded man breathed with him. When he took his lips away the chest rose and fell naturally.
‘Stand up.’
The corpse ignored his command.
‘Come on. Get up.’
This time he obeyed, sitting up awkwardly, then rising to his feet groggily like a drunkard. Death pressed his fingers against the dead man’s face and rolled open the eyelids. The corpse gazed passively at us both, but showed no interest in his surroundings. He did not ask about the noise from the fairground. He did not wonder why he was standing in a graveyard. He did not recognize his broken body. His death had been cold and unfeeling, as if the machine had studied him, analysed what he was, and then rejected him totally. I felt sorry for him, and patted him on the arm reassuringly.
‘How are we going to get him back?’ I asked. ‘He’s in no state to walk.’
‘No problem,’ Death replied. ‘I’ll just have to indulge one of my two weaknesses.’ He smoothed his blood-soaked clothes, turned to the cadaver and took him by the hand. ‘Shall we dance?’
‘What’s dance?’ said the corpse, stupidly.
The Dance of Death: theory
RULE 1.
The Dance is for couples only. One half of the couple should ideally be Death, but any Agent of the Apocalypse will suffice. The other half should consist of a corpse, preferably recently deceased.
RULE 2.
Recommended dances include the galliard, the minuet, the waltz and the quickstep. The cha-cha-cha, lambada and foxtrot are forbidden.
RULE 3.
Within the limits prescribed in Rule 2, above, the couple shall engage in a random sequence of popular dance steps according to the prevailing mood.
RULE 4.
Music is permitted, but not mandatory.
RULE 5.
The Dance will be assumed to have ended when the destination is reached, when one of the couple is exhausted, or when an accident intervenes.
As he took our client in his arms, Death began to hum a tune which I recognized instantly: Billie Holiday’s version of ‘Cheek to Cheek’. He even sang a few of the words as he pirouetted out of the clearing, and kept to the rhythm as he swung onto the gravel path and glided away through the graveyard gates. He moved with a grace previously unwitnessed, skipping by every bystander on feet of air, touching no-one. The corpse fared badly in comparison, often stumbling and standing on his partner’s toes, raising his taped arms at the wrong moments, or simply failing to catch the beat. But his motion required no effort. Death took the lead and the strain.
They squeezed together through the narrowest gaps, floating between people and traffic as if they didn’t exist. They turned and whirled and twisted and leapt along the roads back to the Agency, the cadaver unsmiling, his partner’s jaws fixed in a competition grin. It was all I could do to follow them, and when they finally stopped at the top of the slope a hundred yards short of home, I took a couple of minutes to catch up.
‘He’s falling apart,’ Death explained. He tugged at the bearded man’s wrists and thighs where the tape had come unstuck. The limbs were barely holding together.
‘What’s dance?’ asked the corpse again, dimly.
Death ignored him. ‘I think he’s had enough anyway. Help me carry him.’
I supported our clie
nt’s left shoulder, Death took the right. The corpse squirmed and wriggled, gibbered and cried out, but together we managed to bear him down the road and to the front entrance. We sat him on the pavement, then Death skipped down the steps, unlocked the cellar door and leapt back up. He wasn’t even sweating.
‘I’ll take over from here.’
I sat on the wall, watching as he eased the load onto his shoulders and carried it down into the dark basement. The corpse complained a little, but fell silent again in the comfort of darkness. When Death returned, I asked him where he had deposited the body.
‘Storage,’ he said.
A lone candle burning
In the three years of my love affair with Amy, I felt more alive than I ever had before, or have done since. And when I told her I loved her, I meant it.
I meant:
I care if you live or die. I am interested in what you do. I trust you not to destroy me. I am attracted to you physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. I am proud when you meet the people I love. I will comfort you and care for you if you are sick. I will argue with you because you matter. I will value you above objects, plants, animals and other human beings. I will make no demands of you and set no conditions (within reason). I will sacrifice myself for you, if necessary, and whether you like it or not.
And I do not expect you to reciprocate my love.
At first.
* * *
The first time I told her was in the month before we decided to live together. It was spring, and we were standing together beneath an elder tree, by the river, sheltering from the rain. I couldn’t stop myself. The drops splashing on the water, the sweep of rain on the trees – it was too romantic. I looked at her and thought:
She is a dark room in which a lone candle burns for ever. Her light shines like starlight, constant and miraculous and beautiful, but cold and distant. She is a hurricane blowing inside my head, a still centre waiting for me to find her. She is a deep, dark sea, and I will never dive to the deep sea-bed. But she will sing herself to me like a bird sings, and I will listen.
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