Flesh Wounds

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Calypso’ Bill was considered a bit of a ne’er-do-well and lived up to his reputation by promptly selling off the old lady’s furniture. He couldn’t get anything for the urn and still had it under his arm wrapped in newspaper when he accidentally incurred the wrath of an obeah man in a local pub called the Albatross.

  The furious obeah man accused Calypso Bill of trying to steal his woman, which may have been true, and with a mystic pass of the hand ‘turned his eyes’. Bill, who believed in the witchcraft of the old country, was instantly blinded, his eyes turning over in their sockets, and stumbled out into the street to be knocked down by a truck delivering skimmed yoghurt from Northern France. On the dashboard of the truck was a copy of Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal.

  In the confusion following the accident, the urn was knocked from the bar and burst open, its contents clouding out onto the folded jacket of a young man named Simon Turner. Turner was a frustrated insurance clerk who had long considered leaving his job to live a life unfettered by convention. He wanted to be an artist but lacked the necessary bravery to break free. That afternoon, though, he dusted off his jacket and returned to the insurance office with a determined look in his eye.

  He demanded an interview with his superior, resigned on the spot, received a cheque for his back pay and walked from the building a liberated man.

  Within a month the change in Simon’s appearance and personality was remarkable. He rented a tiny studio apartment in Shepherd’s Bush, filled it with art equipment, dyed his hair into a red and yellow striped mohawk, put a silver pin through his nostril and strolled through the market in purple tartan bondage trousers. He was not a very talented artist, but at least he felt like one.

  Simon’s former colleagues would never have recognised him – and in fact, they didn’t when they staggered out of a local wine bar called Vive La France late one night and saw him standing on Shepherd’s Bush Green studying the configurations of the stars. Irrationally annoyed by someone who clearly dismissed notions of conformity by refusing to wear a regulation grey suit and black nylon socks, they drunkenly kicked him to death.

  Simon’s jacket, still heavily impregnated with the urn’s contents despite a visit to the dry-cleaners, was given to Oxfam and bought by a girl called Amanda, who worked for a Bloomsbury publishing house. She embroidered an ornate collar around the jacket, tutting at the greasy grey dust that emerged from the unpicked material, and wore it to a smart French restaurant that was hosting the launch of the publishing house’s most successful author.

  Being a lowly assistant, Amanda’s job was to stack the author’s new book – a poetic romance set in nineteenth-century Paris – in attractive piles that would draw the attention of reviewers and photographers. The room was filled with literary celebrities, magazine writers, minor television personalities and tabloid journalists, in that order, and Amanda, taking time off from her stacking duties, enriched her vocabulary by chatting amiably with the first group.

  Returning to her book display to straighten a wayward pile, Amanda was shot in the face by an assassin’s bullet that had been intended for Salman Rushdie. She died instantly, and Mr Rushdie was safely hustled from the rear of the building into a waiting car. It seems callous but necessary to mention that Amanda’s jacket was ruined. As her broken body was removed from the restaurant, the embroidered collar became detached and landed under a table, where it was later discovered and pocketed by one of the cleaning staff.

  The cleaner, a young French girl named Gabrielle, was visiting London with her mother and had taken a temporary job to earn a little extra cash. She sewed the dusty collar onto a white work blouse but, failing to find pleasure in the effect it produced, folded the garment away into a valise that her mother was sending back to France. Two weeks later, the package containing the bag was delivered to their gloomy apartment in Paris and taken in by Alice, a friend who was staying there.

  Alice had been dating a jazz musician who was killed in an air crash on the way to his first professional performance. One night, a heroin addict named Charles broke into the apartment and ransacked it, looking for money. Alice, returning late from a poetry reading, surprised the thief in the act and was clubbed to death with the nearest weapon to hand, a ceramic chamber pot. The addict grabbed a gilt mantel clock, a jewellery box and Gabrielle’s package, and fled down the fire-escape.

  Charles bought his fix by fencing the contents of the jewellery box, then boarded a train and alighted at Rennes, where his former girlfriend worked, cleaning house for a young farmer who was purportedly the master of the Château Saint Vincent. However, when he reached the Château he found the building locked up, the windows barred and bolted. Although the property had been sold, the new owner had become seriously ill and was, as yet, unable to take possession.

  Charles sat down on the overgrown steps of the building to think through his next move. He could not return to Paris, for he was too well known to the police, and they would now be searching for a murderer. He studied the crusted needle marks on his arms and knew that he would soon be needing another fix, another chance to keep himself suspended between pleasure and death. What was there left for him to barter now? In the back of his brain, a strange fragment of poetry surfaced; something to do with flies humming over the guts of a corpse. Les mouches … The words were buzzing in his head like the insects themselves.

  He still had the package containing the valise and opened it once again to see if there was anything at all that he could sell. But there was not. Angrily, Charles tossed the case onto an iron drainage grate at the foot of the steps and searched his waistcoat for a joint. He found a squashed brown stub and jammed it in the corner of his mouth. Then he scratched a match against the heel of his cowboy boot.

  He would not have done so had he known that several months before, his former girlfriend, being the last of the Château’s departing staff, had failed to turn off the kitchen gas taps, and the pipes beneath the house were now filled to capacity with highly flammable vapour.

  The force of the match igniting the combustible mists leaking from the drain upon which the valise stood blew Charles into the air like a mad rag doll. He landed on his head in an ornamental garden seventy feet away. The explosion shattered a stained-glass window in the small chapel, which stood to one side of the main building, and blew the contents of the case through it, so that Gabrielle’s white shirt with the embroidered collar fluttered down upon the chapel altar with a silken sigh, to drape itself neatly over the upturned brass crucifix, which stood there patiently awaiting the arrival of the damned surplice.

  The satanic history of the Condorcet family is well documented. Of less common knowledge is the fact that, in exchange for their success in the black arts, the Condorcets were not permitted to leave the Château Saint Vincent. It was written that if they did so, catastrophe would befall all who impeded their restitution and that even in death they would be forced to return and remain, whole or in part, on the ungodly site. The prophecy was now fulfilled.

  Evil Eye

  * * *

  I was commissioned to write this for an anthology of superstitions, but as I’m not superstitious I decided to tackle a related area. The best tale of misunderstood omens is Daphne Du Maurier’s ‘Don’t Look Now’. After all, why should we grasp the significance of future events if we’re not used to reading the signs?

  SIXTY-FIVE MILK ON the wrong side of Rancho Mirage, Todd Cartland began to fall asleep at the wheel. The incessant thrumming of tyres on tarmac dulled his mind and closed his eyes as the Chrysler LeBaron drifted slowly toward the hard shoulder, spraying dirt against the wheel arches. This time he managed to snap himself awake in time. Another few seconds and the car could have finished up just another overturned rusting wreck by the side of the highway. He was still a hundred and ninety miles from San Diego. Time to take a break. The glowing green numerals of the dashboard clock clicked over to 10.15 pm. He checked the gas gauge. Less than a third of a tank left. There was nothing to se
e through the bug-spattered windshield, just the road ahead and a dark patch at the horizon where the hills met the stars. Once in a while a stovepipe truck rolled by, a wall of shiny rib panels and amber lights, like the side of a ship. He reached across the seat and yanked his map back into the dash light, tracing the route with his thumb. He had not planned on breaking the trip until he was clear of the desert, but what the hell; for once he wasn’t on any schedule.

  There was a diner sign approaching on his left, vertical letters in yellow neon blinking out an illegible message, a gas station beyond that. He slowed the car and swung it onto a brush-covered slip road, gently fishtailing the vehicle as the rear tyres slipped on sand.

  The diner was called Buddies, enough of a fifties design throwback to have been considered retro-fashionable in the city. Out here it was just another truck stop, with red and blue plastic seats, stay-hot lamps above the meal point and ancient waitresses in tennis shoes.

  Cartland pulled into the lot beyond the picture windows and turned off the engine. As he opened the car door the cold desert air hit him, a clear fifteen-degree drop from his last step outside. Still dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, he removed a chilled sweater from his bag in the trunk, slung it over his shoulders and entered the diner.

  The waitress, a plump late-forties blonde with ‘Myra’ stencilled on her badge, checked out his designer shirt on the way to the booth in the nonsmoking section, probably thinking he was a little uptown for the establishment. She dropped a well-thumbed menu in front of him. ‘Your waitress will be with you in a moment,’ she said, displaying her dental plate. ‘That’ll be me again.’

  ‘Thanks. Where’s your men’s room?’

  She hiked her thumb. ‘Out back and left.’

  He walked to the rear of the overlit diner, taking in the Muzak version of an old Willie Nelson song. Eight people in the place, including the two waitresses. A blackboard hanging over the counter; ‘Today’s Special – Meatloaf & Gravy’. This was good. Diners had a reassuring homeliness that hotels lacked, even when they tried to copy it. He was glad to be free of Phoenix. Free. It was a concept that would take some getting used to. He cupped his hands in the washbasin and splashed icy water on his face. His reflection stared back, tan and forty, a little lost.

  He wondered how long he’d be able to hold out, firing off toward the coast with no real purpose. He’d called the office, told them he was taking the rest of the week off, and it was only Monday. What else could he do?

  Staying on at the house was out of the question. Amy would never have allowed it. Anyway, the place was in her name. He knew that by now all the glass would have been swept up. She’d probably have arranged for the chair to be replaced, too. Amy was infinitely sensible, always practical. He dried his face and returned to the table, taking his time with the menu.

  ‘What can I getcha, honey?’ The waitress was back, pad poised.

  ‘You still have the special?’

  Myra looked at him with the wisdom of ages. ‘Honey, we always have the special, only by this time of night it ain’t so special.’ Her eyes flicked to the chef, who was scratching himself with a spatula. ‘Steak’s good.’

  ‘You sold me.’

  ‘Comes with fries or jacket potato, sour cream.’

  ‘Fries. And a beer.’

  ‘Miller, Coors, Budweiser.’

  Behind her, headlights crossed the glass as a steel-sided big rig pulled in and doused its engine.

  ‘Miller’s fine.’

  ‘Be right up.’ She packed her pad and went for the ice water.

  The entrance door opened and closed. A young man in a cowboy hat and a canary-coloured truck jacket took the nearest counter stool. He was in his mid-twenties, dressed for riding distances, blue jeans and worn boots. Handsome. Vaguely familiar.

  The waitress set out his beer and cutlery. It was a slow night. He could tell she was going to talk to him.

  ‘You headin’ for San Diego?’

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘Ain’t nowhere else to head for on this route. You got the desert on either side, Palm Springs if you play golf and you’re real old, a few small towns but nothin’ you’d want to visit. You come from Phoenix?’

  ‘Guess you must be clairvoyant, Myra.’

  She looked up and smiled, creases through make-up. ‘Not me. I leave that stuff to Sasha. She’s good, too.’

  ‘Who’s Sasha?’

  ‘She’s kinda like a palm reader, she lives out back o’ here. She came from Russia originally. They hounded her out ’cause o’ her powers. Said she had the evil eye on her.’ She looked around the diner. ‘Guess this is about the farthest away you can get from Russia.’

  Cartland was intrigued, but mostly he was killing time until his steak arrived. There was no one else waiting to be served. The cowboy had ordered direct from the cook. ‘So, can she tell me my future?’

  Myra rested one hand on her hip. ‘Up to about five years, she reckons. All depends. She says it gets hazy after that. I says to her, “Sasha, I can’t even remember back five years, I don’t know how you can manage it forwards.”’ Shaking her head, she went for the steak platter.

  The cowboy took a sip from the neck of his beer, set it down and surveyed the room, sharp blue eyes shining in the shadow of his hat brim. For a long second he caught Cartland’s gaze and returned it. Eyes like the tinted glass of a Mercedes windshield. A relaxed face cut in neat, tan planes. Then he turned back to his beer.

  ‘Enjoy,’ said Myra, placing an oval plate before him. The steak was vast, the gravy elastic. For the next twenty minutes he chewed and watched, chewed and thought. Mostly, he just chewed. Amy sponging the wine from the wall and the carpet, Amy emptying the dustpan into the bin. Maybe he should have stayed to help before taking off. No, she wouldn’t have wanted him to. Too much had been said to resume conversation. Funny, for weeks they had barely spoken at all, then this fountain of anger erupting between them, shattering the uneasy truce. A few home truths, a few nerves touched. A point reached where real damage was done, even if they’d both taken back their words.

  The pie looked good. It was under glass on the counter. The cowboy had some, forking each mouthful thoughtfully. Cartland ordered a piece and coffee to flush it down.

  ‘Myra, is there a decent motel around here? I don’t want to drive on tonight.’

  ‘Sure, at exit fifteen, about eight miles west. It’s all lit up, you can’t miss it. You wouldn’t want to take a picture of the place but it’s clean.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  His pie arrived as the cowboy laid down some change and slowly rose from his stool. By the time Cartland looked up again, he was gone. He turned away Myra’s offer of a refill, asked for the bill instead. Somehow the place seemed less interesting now than when he had walked in. He left a large tip, feeling vaguely sorry for the waitress. He took a mint from the tray and looked back, watching her clear his table. She smiled thanks across at him.

  ‘Don’t forget what I said about Sasha,’ she called. ‘She’s got your future all laid out, I’ll bet.’

  Curiosity got the better of him as he walked back to the car. He turned back around the side of the diner and spotted the low wooden building hedged with cacti. The hand-painted sign on the porch read, ‘Madame Sasha sees the truth – $25.00’. It seemed a reasonable deal. The sign was decorated with the usual astrological crap, glowing eyes, stars, electric flashes. Beyond orange wool drapes the lights were on. As he walked toward the building he fingered the billfold in his pocket, smiling to himself. If Madame Sasha could figure this one out, she knew a damned sight more than he did.

  ‘Kindly sit over here on the cushions.’ The woman waiting in the lounge was old and tiny, jerky in her movements, like a long-neglected doll. If she really came from Russia, there was no evidence of it in her voice. Her speech had the Lone Star twang of a Texas preacher. The room was bright, decorated in earth tones. Clay pots, Navajo rugs and too many cacti, most of them marked wit
h For Sale tags. Cartland settled into the cushions and sat back. There was no table between them. Wasn’t there always supposed to be a table? As if reading his mind the old woman slowly shook her head.

  ‘I don’t see your future by studying palms or laying out cards. You can pay me first if you like. Cash.’

  Cartland dug out two tens and a five. She pocketed the notes in her dress and seated herself in a kitchen chair opposite. Her slippered feet barely reached the floor.

  ‘Then how do you do it?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll show you. Come, sit forward. D’you have a lucky object on you?’

  ‘No.’

  She released a crackly sigh. ‘You’re one o’ them rational types, I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t believe in trusting things to luck,’ he said.

  ‘What, you never bet on a grey horse because it felt right? In my country, there’s a fair amount we believe in that ain’t rational to the Western mind.’

  ‘We have that kind of thing too.’ Cartland shrugged. ‘Step on a crack, seven years bad luck – kid stuff.’

  ‘You believe?’

  He hauled short a laugh, scratching the side of his nose. ‘Uh, no, not exactly.’

  ‘You should. It never hurts to keep an open mind.’

  ‘Right.’ He had been expecting some kind of full-blown mystic preamble to her routine. Instead, Sasha became brisk and businesslike, as if she was running some kind of homeopathic medical practice. He pulled himself to the edge of the cushion as she manoeuvred a metal lamp stand between them and switched on its small, bright light.

  ‘We’ll do it this way,’ she said. ‘I read eyes. In the old country there were many beliefs concerning their power. Often the eyes were cut from the newly dead and kept. I saw my father do it once. A distant uncle, he lay on the bier in his black suit, skin whiter than ice. My father dug his fingers into the dry sockets and pulled his old eyes free, cutting the tendons with a knife. Real tough muscles. I was supposed to turn away but I looked. Please stare at the shade and hold still.’ She hunched forward and gently pulled the skin beneath his left eyeball downward. ‘Each cornea is different and has its own individual markings. As unique as your fingerprints.’