Why I Went Back

by James Clammer

  I’d hidden the bike at the roundabout end of the industrial estate. Now I waited and watched, hidden too, in the overgrown alley where I’d eavesdropped on Christy and his pals the night before. The place was dead, no cars, no voices, nothing. Even the ghosts weren’t bothering with it this morning.

  Easy not to believe in ghosts once the sun’s up.

  This time I had my torch, and something else too – something I’d taken from the shed at home. How I hated that shed, hated what was in there and what it was making me do. But there were other things inside it as well, regular shed-type things, old hammers and chisels and trowels on dirty shelves, cobwebby tools left behind by the people who’d lived in the house before us, or even from the people before them. I looked at one of them now, the hacksaw I’d snatched from a hook, checked the blade with my thumb. Quite a lot of rust came away. I ignored that though. It felt good having something solid, something metal, in my hands.

  Up the ladder, into the sky. Not blue any more but grey on grey. Pushing aside the hanging door on the little rooftop hut. Down the stairs, avoiding the broken glass and the mountains of pigeon droppings. I didn’t want to turn the torch on but pretty soon I had to because the gloom was deeper than before. I cupped it in my hands, making a pink fleshy flower.

  Every other step stopping and listening and hearing only my heart, the invincible muscle-bag, and the breath locked deep in my lungs.

  Was this really such a great idea? I thought of Christy, of how he must have planned this, picking the location, getting the locks and chains, organising Haxforth’s imprisonment. All that made me surer than ever that he was somebody I never wanted to meet.

  Ground floor. The dead acre of moon once more.

  99.9% sure the place was unguarded.

  Haxforth. Who was he? What was he? The truth was, I was starting to think he hadn’t been real at all. An old man locked inside a filthy storeroom, frozen and starved, with bleached-out eyes that looked as if his skull was showing through? It was all too difficult to believe. And really that’s why I went back. Because maybe what Mum had I had too and finally it was starting to show itself. See, I’d once heard a doctor say on the radio how schizophrenia was often inherited, and how it often presented first in teenage years (that was how he said it, ‘presented’, like it was some TV show), and I’d been worrying myself stupid about it ever since.

  Mild hallucinations to begin with, this doctor had said. Auditory and visual.

  And I was fourteen going on fifteen, which was about as teenagery as it was possible to be.

  Past the weird-looking machinery, the dangling control box with its three white buttons and one red.

  All I could think of was getting into that room again. And that then I’d see a man with a chain around his ankle and he’d be able to give me some explanation, however shaky, for why he was there. Because if I didn’t see him – if the room was empty of everything except beer cans and fag butts – then I reckoned my chances of landing in a mental institution sometime in the near future were pretty high. Maybe they’d put me in a ward next to Mum, and that would be my Glorious Future. The hacksaw I’d brought more as a lucky charm if I’m honest. Proof, almost – cold, hard proof in my hands – that what I’d seen before was real, and so would be real again.

  Up the corridor. Still no noise. But a problem. The loose piece of plaster was gone and so was the key.

  I searched up and down the corridor. Jesus Christ it felt risky hanging around like that. But like I said, I had to find out one way or the other.

  Stupid. Didn’t the door have a frame? First place you should always look. I tapped my hand along the top and sure enough, there in the dust, was the key. Not too bright after all, Christy.

  I took it down and fitted it to the big steel padlock.

  Click.

  Chapter 12

  He was asleep, one hand nestled against his face and the blanket pulled up to his chin. The chain was coiled below his ankle like a watching viper. For a moment I thought about going away and letting him sleep, he looked so peaceful, but then I thought No.

  ‘Haxforth,’ I whispered. ‘Haxforth.’

  I reached out and touched his shoulder.

  ‘Haxforth.’

  His eyes flicked open. There was no tiredness in them, they were big and round and coloured like ivory and they seemed to dance out of sleep instantly like mine never did. ‘I was dreaming,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Kings. Monsters. A face I saw once.’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  He threw the blanket aside and sat up and then stood. Huddled in the thin dawn light wearing that sports gear he looked like the lonely victim of an earthquake, like something you’d see on the TV news.

  Things change fast, these things that decide your Long Term Future. I’d gone through the door desperate to see him and for a moment or two, standing there in that tumbledown place with its high smashed windows and its squashed beer cans and the Pacific Blue still neglected in the shadows, I’d been ecstatic seeing that he – it – was all real. I wouldn’t have to go calling for the loony wagon any time soon. It was like a mountainside of black grinding pressure had slipped off my back.

  All I had to do was walk away and get on with my life.

  Only here’s the thing. Now I was getting pulled into his situation. A prisoner with a chain around his ankle, dressed in rags practically. A reason why he had to be there. And even if he didn’t seem too bothered himself, unless someone did something soon it was possible – probable – he’d end up dead. His body might stay hidden forever in that old wreck of a building. Who would ever know?

  Food. Why hadn’t I brought any? Haxforth was malnourished, anyone could see that. Probably it was affecting his thinking and that was why he didn’t seem to care too much about himself.

  ‘I should have brought you something to eat,’ I said stupidly. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘Pity. I’ve been through leaner times, but not many.’

  ‘I’ve got this though.’

  I showed him the hacksaw and he reached out an old white hand, felt the blade with his thumb like I’d done outside.

  He shrugged. Try if you want to, he seemed to be saying.

  Silence – only a bird flittering in a far corner of the storeroom. Sheltering against the winter, most likely. At least it could come and go whenever it wanted, through those broken windows.

  ‘Don’t you ever leave this room?’

  ‘Sometimes. They’ve taken me out to the countryside once or twice.’

  ‘The countryside? Look, just tell me what it is they’re after.’ Knowing it was true, everything I’d seen the time before, made me want to know why. Something weird was going on in that place, something under the surface, more than gangs or money or whatever. But Haxforth didn’t answer, only hunched against the cold and stared at me with those eyes that seemed to say everything and nothing, all at the same time.

  I looked around, not knowing what to do next. Then I heard myself say, ‘My mum, she thinks about monsters and stuff like that a lot. Only she doesn’t dream about them, they talk to her when she’s awake. Lots of things talk to her. They make her act crazy.’

  I don’t know why I did it, really. I’d never spoken about Mum like that to anybody. Maybe it was all those early-morning mail runs. Important stuff spills out easier when you’re tired and worn right down. Or maybe it was the isolation of that place. It felt like you could tell a secret there and it’d stay vacuum-sealed forever, never leak into the wider world.

  ‘Does she?’ said Haxforth. ‘Does she?’

  ‘When it gets bad we have to hide all the knives.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said slowly, ‘people hear messages from other places. Voices. They might not want anything to do with them, but that doesn’t stop the messages coming. I have some experience with things of this—’

  ‘It scares me,’ I said, feeling my throat tighten suddenly. ‘I want it to stop, I want to find
a way of making it stop …’

  I pressed the palm of my hand hard against the hacksaw blade. Toughen up, stop snivelling. One of Dad’s sayings. I hadn’t come back here to be a bleeding heart, to show this stranger everything that was hurting me.

  ‘Come on,’ I said roughly. ‘I’m getting you out of here.’

  We stretched the chain out, winding it round one of the pallets. My idea was to keep it tight, pinned to the splintery wood, to cut between the slats. Haxforth pointed at a link in the chain close to his ankle, the one he thought was the weakest, then he yanked the chain taut and stood on it with his feet apart.

  ‘If you hear anything, anyone coming or anything, tap me on the shoulder straightaway.’

  He nodded. I put the hacksaw to the chain and drew back the blade. My ears were ringing with the silence, ringing with trying to hear danger as far away as possible.

  I started to saw. And oh god oh Jesus it was loud. I mean really loud. The silence of the morning and the silence of the abandoned factory and then that rasping and ripping tearing it all apart. Anyone out on the road would hear it. Anyone on the other side of town probably.

  I sawed like mad for two minutes thinking, Get through it fast, get through it fast, then I stopped and got my breath back and looked up at Haxforth and looked down at the chain.

  There was the tiniest silver groove in the link I’d been working on.

  ‘Move it across,’ I panted. ‘It’s wobbling too much between the slats. Get it on the wood.’

  Haxforth made the adjustment but in the new position I couldn’t get the angle I needed. The blade was coming in too low, brushing the metal instead of cutting it. A splinter from the pallet jabbed sharp against my knuckles.

  ‘Move it back,’ I said. ‘Stand on it there. I’m going to cut right on the edge.’

  That was better. I went at it again, this time for longer, five minutes, six minutes, shredding the morning silence. My arm was going to drop off, I saw blood on the knuckles – but on I went, sawing, sawing, till my muscles screamed and I was drowning in a sea of gnashing sweating metal.

  I pulled away, breathing hard.

  I was maybe a tenth of the way through one side of the link.

  Haxforth sat down and examined the chain. He picked up the hacksaw and felt the blade again and then laid it on the floor.

  ‘You’re acting like a peasant,’ he said, in a resigned sort of way. ‘A peasant is stupid. He does the same bad job with the same bad tools year after year and he wonders why life never gets any better.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you could sit there all day with that thing and not get through. We need a better tool. A sharper saw.’

  ‘There’s no time for that! What about—’

  ‘Christy and his friends? Boys who think they’re men. No imaginations. Not really so dangerous.’

  ‘But your ankle! The blood supply’s practically cut off!’ My head was hot and spinny and I suppose I felt a bit desperate then, trying and failing like that.

  ‘It looks worse than it is,’ Haxforth said. ‘And if you got through the chain – did you have a plan after that? Or were you going to release me like a caged bird?’

  I didn’t answer. I hadn’t thought that far ahead – didn’t think I’d need to.

  ‘If you’d used your head you wouldn’t even be here,’ he said quietly. ‘You’d have taken one look at me and left me to rot.’

  ‘I needed my bike. And then I sort of … decided to come back …’ I knew that was the moment to snatch at the question still hanging there in the air. ‘That thing you said just now, about hearing voices, you talked about it like you’d seen it before …’

  ‘I have. I’ve a brother, he heard things like that once, a long time ago.’

  That got me super-interested, if I wasn’t already.

  ‘Heard them? You mean he doesn’t any more?’

  Haxforth shook his head. ‘It has been a very long time, however.’

  ‘I keep asking,’ I said, ‘but nobody’ll tell me anything about it. What does it mean? What does it mean when somebody hears voices inside their head?’

  ‘It means trouble.’ Haxforth picked up the blanket, draped it over his shoulders. ‘Homelessness – think of it like that. The mind is a palace and the person you know is the king who lives there, controlling everything. Well, something’s come along and kicked out the king. That person you know and love – all of a sudden they’ve nowhere to go. They’re outside time. And the servants, the thieves and creeps who’ve been at the bottom, the ones filled with rage and jealousy, they’ve taken over and they’re shouting louder than anyone else, and they won’t stop shouting and they can’t agree on anything except that they don’t want to give back the palace. That’s what it means.’

  I didn’t say anything. I picked up the saw and looked at the blade. It wasn’t sharp, never had been. I’d just been kidding myself, pumped up with stupid courage.

  ‘Can you do anything to get rid of them?’ It sounded pathetic and pleading, I realised that, but I needed to know. ‘Can anyone? The voices, I mean?’

  ‘What a question.’ His two bleached-out eyes stared at me. ‘I did something once, to help. Before I became one of the thieves.’

  ‘Where exactly have you come from, Haxforth?’

  ‘The houses of the rich. Mostly.’

  A shadow flitted at the high smashed windows – the winter-sheltering bird heading out to greet the morning. Outside, the sky was turning from dark to light grey. Low cloud, day beginning, cars on the road.

  Cars on the road.

  All at once the questions and ideas whirling round my head were sinking faster than torpedoed ships. One vehicle in particular had separated itself off from the general hum. Closer it came, closer and closer.

  The engine paused a moment, then whined as it backed up right outside.

  Chapter 13

  Immobilised. That’s how I felt, like the pictures you see on TV of the police shooting someone with a taser where the victim can’t move or even hardly breathe. I’d only seen Christy in person for a few minutes but somehow the idea of him had grown inside – the idea of what he was capable of. And I was afraid, physically afraid, which wasn’t a feeling I experienced too often and took a moment or two to process.

  ‘Wait. Take this.’ Still wrapped in the blanket, Haxforth went to the limit of the chain and reached his little finger into a crack in the concrete floor. ‘Something I’ve managed to keep hidden from them.’

  He thrust something into my hand but there was no time to see what, it was a small slender thing and already it was in my pocket.

  ‘I find gold usually makes people come back.’

  ‘I’m coming back anyway.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know you are.’

  Outside, the engine switched off.

  ‘Don’t forget the hacksaw,’ he hissed. ‘And the padlock.’

  ‘What? Oh no!’ I’d dropped the key to the padlock, the padlock that secured the door to his room, into another of my pockets and now it was buried deep where I couldn’t find it.

  Car doors slammed.

  ‘Quickly,’ said Haxforth. I felt him pushing me away and as he did so the blocked-up sludge in my veins whooshed back once more into real flowing blood and I ran, fumbling, searching for the key. There it was, hiding in the seam under my torch. I yanked it out hot already in my hand and raced into the corridor, closing the door, fiddling with the padlock, hands shaking and the thing not closing, not going in properly. I tipped up on my toes and put the key back on the dusty top of the door frame then tried the lock again. Still no go. I heard a clunking noise, a heavy external door being opened somewhere. They were inside already. Voices approaching, getting nearer. Christy’s voice – the salt and scabs in the throat, no mistaking it. One last go at the lock to Haxforth’s room and I’d have to run, whatever happened.

  Click. The lock closed and I was out of there.

  But where? Not up to
the roof – that was the direction they were coming from, past the stairs, cutting me off. Nowhere else to go but the next door along. The old works canteen, the lines of ancient orange furniture. And then as I darted into the darkest corner of that room I saw and remembered the random angry dents in the wall that someone had sledgehammered months or years before. Dim ragged lights showed where a couple had broken right through the breeze block to next door. They were no bigger than cricket balls but I reckoned if I got into the right position I might be able to see Haxforth sitting on his bed of pallets.

  Down on all fours, stretching and angling my neck. Face well away from the hole.

  Here they come.

  ‘This time we’ll nail the bastard, you see if we don’t.’

  ‘Take it easy, Christy. He’s simple, don’t you get it? We don’t want a body on our hands. The cops’ll be all over this place with their little forensics teams and their DNA, then they’ll be round yours for a swab. They’ve got mine already. That what you want, is it?’

  ‘Stay focused, Deano. You want to be nicking silly little stuff the rest of your life?’

  ‘No, no, but go easy, that’s all I’m saying.’

  They were at Haxforth’s door, opening the padlock. They were inside the storeroom with all the stolen stuff, with Haxforth and his chain and the primitive bed. The jailors surrounding the jailed.

  For a moment nobody spoke. Then, ‘I’m sick of you, you bloody retard,’ Christy said, all loud and aggressive. ‘I don’t know why we’re bothering. You’re a ghost.’

  Haxforth didn’t answer. He was huddled down on the pallets, the blanket pulled up over his head and close round his throat like sometimes you see little kids do.

  ‘I get the feeling that if one day you disappeared, no-one would care. No-one would even notice.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Haxforth agreed.