The Killing Jar

by Nicola Monaghan

  The weather was all dash and bluster that day, total English crap. There were dead umbrellas everywhere. They were all over the pavements like a plague of daddy long legs hatched too early. They poked, all spiky, up from bins. It were quite hot but the air felt foreign, full of water like it gets inside a greenhouse. The rain sobbed down on the glass front of the hairdresser’s the whole time I was there. This shampooist gell talked crap to me about going out and holidays and stuff. She asked me what I did and I lied, said I was a student. I would of liked to tell her the truth, see the look on her face. I’m a drug dealer, one of them evil rats what prey on your kids, and the other week I killed someone. Would she back off and run out the room? Or would she do what she did when I said I was a student, pick my hair up and drop it again in the water, and say ‘lovely’ and ask me if the water was okay? The rain sobbed and sobbed on the window, mirroring my mood. I could imagine putting my fist straight through the perfect membrane what separated us from the street, cracking wide open the stupor of the day. I didn’t do this but, instead, thought about the pills Jon’d promised to get for that night.

  On the bus home I studied the collection of mardy-looking people who got on. The woman in her thirties with wet hair stuck to her face like it were melted there. The mam with two rowdy kids, shaking her umbrella and trying to fold up a pushchair, holding a baby at the same time as making sure the other kid didn’t end up under the wheels of the bus. She was about my age, eighteen or nineteen at the most. It were no kind of life.

  The bus stopped and I got off. It’d stopped raining. I walked up Coleby Road towards the Six Ways Centre. I used to go there, hit a plastic ball across a table, talk to the good-looking youth worker, before Uncle Frank came along and I was too busy helping him out. But someone’d mashed up one leg of the tennis table, bent the other at a mad angle, and the youth worker’d married a gell with a cut glass accent he’d met at university. Me and the middle-class nobs I was attracted to. Maybes that youth worker was where it all started. I noticed as I came by that the windows of the youth centre were covered in that metal boarding the council used. A gang of lads stood round the fence, dressed like gangsta rappers. One of them spat on the grass. I turned the corner into my street and didn’t look back. I was wary since that kid’d laid into Mark with the knife. They might of been school kids, dressed that way so’s no one bothered them. And they might not.

  I walked in the house and could smell Jon’s spliff. He smoked them like cigarettes them days, and I’d given up trying to stop him. He’d decided his dad was a Rasta but, let’s face it, no one could be sure of that. My slag of a mam wasn’t round to ask, of course, but I wonder if she would of had a clue to tell him one way or the other if she had of been.

  ‘Did yer gerr-em then?’ I asked him, as I walked into the kitchen. My hair felt nice, and I felt okay. Not good, but okay for a change, and I fancied getting on one and having a laugh.

  ‘Course,’ he said, showing me some pills in the palm of his hand. I took one and had a good look at it.

  ‘How much they cost?’ I asked.

  ‘Tenner. But the bloke says it’s a double dose. Look how thick they are,’ he said.

  ‘Double stacked more like,’ I said, taking one look at the tab and clocking it as PMA, the stuff we’d used to get Phil back. I’d read the other nicknames for this after Phil’d died. ‘Killer’ was one of them, and let’s face it we’d proved that to be true. ‘Jon, you can’t drop that shit,’ I told him.

  We still had some mushrooms what Mark hadn’t bothered taking. Jon hunted them out and I put some pans on to boil. I threw the shrooms into the pots. The potion bubbled on the hob and filled the room with a wet metal smell. As the water boiled we broke the law, turning the contents of our pot from toadstools into class-A drugs. Magic. As I filled a mug and passed it to Jon, in the eyes of the law I was dealing. Good job the eyes of the law weren’t there then. If I’d got caught giving my brother this particular cup of tea, in theory I could of gone down for life. That made me laugh. All the other stuff I’d done, and someone in an office somewhere thought this was just as bad.

  We sat at the table chatting, waiting for the effects of the tea to kick in. I wished my bro hadn’t been such a tosser and’d got us some decent pills. But I still loved the nob.

  I felt for the hallucinogen in my system. You have to work with them, drugs, believe in them, like ghosts or telepathy, or they don’t work proper. If you fight them, especially stuff like shrooms and acid, that’s when it all goes tits up. I leant back in my chair and waited to be took over, like I was a medium in a spiritualist church. And it were the same cause I knew I’d soon be speaking in tongues and seeing visions.

  ‘Some monks tek MDMA,’ I told Jon. ‘I read about it somewhere. They reckon it brings-em closer to God.’

  ‘You read too much, Kez. It freaks me out,’ he said.

  ‘D’yer think Moses was on acid?’ I say. ‘All them burning bushes what spoke to him and tablets handed down on mountains. Pills more like,’ I said.

  Jon laughed and I joined in. Our giggles bounced round the kitchen and rebounded off the walls.

  I liked the way I felt. All silly and funny, like the world was a great big joke. It wasn’t as good as ecstasy, not nearly. MDMA. I used to believe it opened up bits of the brain you couldn’t usually use. I still think that, even if it leaves you damaged for good after. At least it’s not like alcohol, a general anaesthetic, folding you inwards, making you numb so it doesn’t hurt when you hit things, when you get hit, turning you into Superman with two left feet and two left hands, a superhero with the powers of judgement of a two-year-old. That’s the most dangerous drug, which is why I don’t bother drinking.

  We sat round giggling for a while, till the shrooms took us further. I could see this huge moth on the wall, like summat out of Mrs Ivanovich’s jars.

  ‘Look at that moth,’ I said to Jon.

  ‘It in’t a moth,’ he said. ‘It’s a hole in the wall.’

  I looked again. ‘It’s a hole in the wall,’ I said. We both laughed.

  We were sat opposite each other on our kitchen table, a cheap bench designed to go in a garden really, made of wood what’d been padded out with paper and other crap, covered in formica. It were cut and stained all over. We played slapsies and I won, slapping Jon softly round the face to celebrate my victory and making him laugh. I got up to fetch more tea, poured us another cup each. We sipped it.

  Jon decided it’d be a laugh to tape us while we were tripping. He fetched the security camera and got it rolling. He was interviewing me.

  ‘Miss Hill, you’re a famous actress now,’ he said, putting on this posh accent. He sounded like Robert. He sounded like Phil. I answered his silly questions with silly answers, but my voice echoed round the room. I could see the moth again. No matter how hard I looked at it then, it were a moth, not a hole in the wall. It took off from the wall, flew towards me. I stood up and waved my hand at it, tried to grab the thing.

  ‘Vhatt can you see now, Mees Hill?’ Jon said, putting on a German accent. He had a gift for talking in voices, did Jon. I kept grabbing at the moth. Then it flew at my face. I tried to push it away. It kept flying at my face. I was pushing at it and pushing at it and it kept flying at my eyes, trying to get into my mouth and nose. And I was screaming and waving my arms all over trying to get rid of this moth.

  Jon put the camera down and grabbed hold of me. He pulled me tight to him, told me nowt was there. ‘Close yer eyes, Kez. It in’t there,’ he said. I did what he told me, but I could still see the bastard thing, flying at me inside my head. Jon held me and kept saying, ‘There’s nowt there, Kez, nowt at all.’ It took ages for it to fade and he squeezed me and told me it were going to be all right the whole time. It were a good job too. If he hadn’t of been there I might of jumped out the window or summat, with this moth thing throwing its-sen at me the way it were.

  I was calming down and Jon was still stroking my hair and I loved him so much for
being like this with me. He walked me up the stairs, taking the video camera with us, making me laugh as he filmed our crappy house, and said stuff about the history of the stairs and the door, things he made up. He put me in bed and tucked me in. Stroked my head. Then he backed out the room, camera still running. He was saying stuff as he left the room, a running commentary on what was going off, but I couldn’t make out the words. I shut my eyes.

  I could see a line of silver like a mercury thread. It wrapped its-sen in a spiral, spinning out further and further. Then a new thread made a square shape what shot round and round till it filled up my whole head. There were a triangle then and it splintered, sending smaller triangles off in all directions, like glass breaking. Then I was asleep and dreaming, counter clerks from the dole office turning into moulded plastic aliens. In my dream I had a fit, shaking and dribbling all over. I had to fight through layers of consciousness to make it to the surface awake. I was awake but couldn’t move, then I woke up and found worms on the end of my bed. Sitting up in my room, I waved my hands at the worms and screamed for Jon, then I woke up. Sitting up in my room, I had another fit, and then I woke up. I wondered if I’d died and gone to déjà-vu hell.

  I woke up again, with a proper dry throat. I grabbed for the bottle of water I kept by the bed. But my hand found summat warm in its path. I sat up. I thought I was still asleep then, and would wake up again. I was waiting for that to happen when Mark woke up.

  ‘You alright baby?’ he said. And summat about how it sounded made me know I was awake. Mark was back. I’m not sure why that was such a surprise to me. But as I got used to being awake again, summat felt wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on what. I sat up and Mark tried to pull me back down again, held me close and cuddled me. But he was holding me too hard. I felt trapped and didn’t like it. I pushed him off. He resisted for a bit, then he let me get out of bed.

  I got up and went downstairs, put the kettle on. The place seemed quiet. I couldn’t explain. As the kettle boiled and I scalded my teabag, I realised what was missing. Jon was a nightmare snorer, so loud he often made downstairs vibrate with it. You could hear him loud through the thin wall what divided our room from his. It kept me awake sometimes but mostly I liked it, it told me he was there, and all right. But I hadn’t heard him snoring, not at all that morning.

  I slammed down the kettle and rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I pushed Jon’s door open. His quilt was shoved down the bottom of his bed. There was no snoring. No sign of him at all.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  It were like Jon’d disappeared into the air, abracadabra. And I knew straight away he wasn’t coming back. It were like it wasn’t just his physical body’d gone, but summat more fundamental. Like he’d never existed. It didn’t stop me looking for him though. First in the house, checking the corners of every room in case he’d curled up in a ball and fell asleep like a cat, the way he used to when he was little. But he wasn’t small enough for nooks and crannies no more, he was as big as a full grown man.

  I searched the estate then, round the close to start with, and spoke to all his mates. None of them had a clue where he was, and I know they would of told me, out of being scared if nowt else. I went out into the rest of the estate, following the roads round and round in circles the way they was built. It were like when you’re looking for summat you’ve lost, a watch or a ring. You know it’s there, right in front of you, and you keep looking straight at it, but you pass it by without seeing owt. You’re too busy searching to see what’s right in your face.

  When I was convinced he wasn’t on the estate, I stole a car. An old thing, this battered up Escort, cause it were easy to get into. You could of done it with a hairclip – they built them old cars so vulnerable to it. I spose they didn’t have to worry about them getting nicked so much back then. I drove round and round Nottingham in the thing, street after street, looking up and down the pavements. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly. To see Jon walking along, happy as Larry, waving at me as I pulled the car over and saying, ‘Ey-up mate, I’ve just been out fer a walk.’ It were all wrong cause I knew Jon wouldn’t of done summat like this to me. He was a good lad that way, never stayed out overnight without telling me he was going to, or ringing to let me know. And he wouldn’t of run off. He knew what I was planning in that regard so there were no way he’d be mucking round.

  Days turned into a week and still there wasn’t sight nor sound of him. I felt sick to the stomach at the thought of what might of happened. That kid came to mind, the one what’d got stabbed and was found in the bin. His killer’d tried to chop him up, dispose of the body, but hadn’t got the stomach for it. If he’d managed, would the kid of disappeared into the air, like Jon? Had Jon met the same man, but the bloke’d got used to the gore of it? Had he come across someone who’d ‘learned to deal with that side of the business’? It crossed my mind it were a hell of a coincidence that Jon’d disappeared the same night Mark came back from his ‘lickle holiday’. It made me cold to think of it, what Mark was capable of doing, even to someone like Jon he’d known forever. I didn’t want to believe it were possible, but I couldn’t stop torturing me-sen about it all the same.

  After a fortnight I decided I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t sleep no more. Every night I lay there looking at the ceiling, or staring at the hammer Mark wore round his neck. Thinking what damage it could do to someone’s skull. My eyes were rimmed red from lack of sleep, and from crying, in secret of course. I couldn’t of cried in front of Mark, the way he looked at me if I did made me feel small as owt. So, when I felt the tears come on, I ran off. To the bathroom, or to Bek and Duggy’s room, left like a shrine full of all of the things they’d both kept there before it all went fucked up. I’d lie on the mattress and smother my face with the quilt, and scream and cry, without no noise coming out the room. I fell asleep like that this one time. Mark came and found me, picked me up and carried me through to our room, kissing my tear-scorched face. He kissed my eyelids, which were all swollen and tender. It felt dead nice and woke me up.

  ‘Yer bin crying?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah yer have. Yer was doing all them breathy sighy things what you always do when you’ve had a sob,’ he said. I heard me-sen making the exact noise he was talking about and he smiled at me. ‘S’alright, yer allowed to cry for yer brother running off. I wan’t ever the same after me dad took off wi-Jason,’ he said. Uncharacteristic, I thought, a long word what came into my head from nowhere, cause Mark almost never mentioned what’d happened with his brother. Jon would of said I read too much if I’d used that word in front of him, and I smiled at that thought, and did another one of them sighs come sobs. I thought about telling Mark I didn’t think Jon’d run off, ask him to help me find out what’d happened. But I was thinking more and more it might of been Mark who was responsible. If I was right, and Mark thought I might of cottoned that, I doubted he’d hesitate before doing summat to me an-all. So I kept my mouth shut.

  I went to Broxtowe police station to report Jon missing. It went against the grain going to the pigs, it really did, but it were Jon and I was sure summat bad’d happened to him. This woman was at the desk. She looked up at me as I stood at the front of the queue. I could tell the way she eyeballed me she thought I was a junkie.

  ‘Yeah?’ she said, looking bored.

  ‘Me brother’s gone missing,’ I said.

  ‘Right.’ She picked up this pen, looking even more fed up of the whole thing. ‘How old?’ she said.

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘You thought he might of just run off?’ she asked.

  ‘Course. I’ve looked fer him but they’re in’t no sign.’

  She raised her eyebrows at me, which I noticed were badly plucked, making these strange half circles of an even thickness above her eyelids, like summat a clown might paint on deliberate. ‘Where’s yer mam?’ she said.

  ‘Gone away.’

  ‘Dad?’

 
‘Mine or me brother’s?’ She didn’t looked shocked at this. ‘It dun’t matter anyways. Never met neither on-em,’ I told her. The eyebrows danced a bit again then.

  ‘You next-a kin?’ she said. I nodded. ‘Name?’ she asked me.

  She went through this list of questions then. When I’d last seen him, had I checked the hospitals, what about the ones in Derby and Leicester, was he into joyriding, drugs, gells? This came out as one long question. I told the cow that Jon was a normal teenager, for round here. She raised her eyebrows again and I thought to me-sen how she ought to have them done proper if she was going to draw attention to them all the time.

  She took me into this room and asked me to wait. This older copper came in, he was about in his forties. He sat down and offered me a cup of tea. I said no. I didn’t want to spend no more time there than what was necessary.

  ‘Right, Miss Hill,’ he said. ‘We’ve got all the information about yer brother, and we’ll do as much as we can about it.’

  ‘Summat’s happened to him,’ I said.

  ‘Wi-all due respect, that in’t very likely. More probably he’s just run off, or found some gell and shacked up there for a bit,’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘He wun’t do that, not wi-out ringing or summat. I know he’s been hurt. Or worse.’

  ‘Miss Hill, nine times out-a ten, when teenagers go missing they turn up a month or so later right as rain,’ he told me. But I kept shaking my head at him, and had to pull in the muscles hard round my mouth so’s not to cry. He must of clocked this. ‘Is there summat yer not telling me?’

  ‘I’m telling you everything you need to know. Me brother’s gone missing and summat bad’s happened to him,’ I said.

  The police bloke sat there without saying owt for a few moments. Then he leaned forward on his chair. ‘We’ll do our best,’ he said, tapping at my hand. But I didn’t believe him. He thought I was a sad smackhead, and my brother too problies. People like him made assumptions about everyone off my estate. I got up and walked over to the door. I turned and gave him a right dirty look as I left, and he rolled his eyes.