‘It’s about the house, isn’t it?’ said Gordon. ‘About what you know?’
‘What house?’
‘Cees’s house, you idiot.’
Omar walked out of the room as if he hadn’t heard. Gordon touched the blood. It was still wet, leaving traces on his hand. How can that be? he thought, following Omar across the landing and down into the kitchen. Lolita was waiting for him, whimpering with frustration, at the foot of the stairs.
‘I need to plant those asparagus today,’ Omar said, coming to a halt by the back door. ‘Otherwise they’ll die. I was thinking maybe we could open that well up again. It would be a lot easier than having to carry water from the house all the time.’
‘We’ve already talked about this,’ said Gordon. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Have we?’ said Omar. He paused. ‘And I was reading that you can make them grow white if you want. People say they taste better that way. It’s easy, apparently. You just have to deprive them of sunlight. You sort of bury them alive.’ He grinned. ‘Cool.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Gordon insisted.
‘It is what?’
‘It’s all about that fucking house.’
‘Drop it,’ said Omar, spooning coffee into the filter. ‘Just drop it. All right?’
‘What did they tell you about the house that you don’t want to tell me?’
‘They didn’t tell me anything.’ He filled the coffee machine with water, his back turned to Gordon.
‘I don’t know why we’re arguing about this,’ said Gordon. He held Lolita in his lap until she squirmed to be put down. She still felt cold, he thought, from outside. How had that happened? How had he failed to notice?
‘I’m not arguing,’ said Omar. ‘I’m talking about how to grow asparagus white. You’re arguing.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Omar!’
Omar turned to face him. ‘We can’t go back and put things right,’ he said finally, when Gordon turned his eyes away. ‘If that’s what you’re thinking. You must know that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that what’s done is done. He’s dead.’
‘Are you talking about Cees? What’s Cees being dead got to do with it?’
Omar waited until the coffee had filtered into the pot before speaking again. The room was silent apart from the distant buzzing of a fly somewhere else in the house. ‘All right then, you asked for it.’ He lifted the pot from the machine and held it up to the light from the window, as if to see what else it might contain, other than coffee. ‘They told me the place was cursed. Or one of them did. We thought they were all brothers, but one of them was a cousin. The one who didn’t want to sell.’ He poured coffee into a mug and then, in what looked like an afterthought, into a second mug, for Gordon.
‘Cursed?’ Gordon’s tone was mocking, unsettled. He took the mug, then whistled at the heat and put it down. ‘You’re having me on. Aren’t you?’ At the door, Lolita was scrabbling to be let out. They would fit a dog-flap, Gordon decided. He had a sudden image of her, half in half out, yelping to be freed.
‘I wish I was. You know the English pilot? The one who’s supposed to have sheltered in the cave? He’s meant to have put a curse on the house.’ Omar did his usual scary voice for the word ‘curse’, but it was obvious his heart wasn’t in it. ‘You remember Flea saying he’d had an affair with one of the women in the family? It was actually the sister of the man who built the house. She was supposed to be marrying someone else, but she got pregnant with the pilot. The family went totally spare and forced them apart. That’s why one of them didn’t want to sell. He’s their son. The old man built the house like that because he said you couldn’t trust your family. Flea said he wanted to bind them together and keep them apart at the same time. No one’s ever lived there, not really.’
‘So why didn’t the son want to sell? I don’t understand.’
‘He said the curse would die with them if they kept the house. He was trying to protect Cees. He thought his father had done enough damage already.’
Gordon opened the door for Lolita, then sat down again and sipped at the coffee, to give himself time to think. He saw the fresh blood from the wall on the door, on the handle of the mug. On everything he touched.
‘So what happened to the pilot? After he’d cursed them.’ He couldn’t keep the irony out of his voice when he said the word ‘cursed’. How else could it be said? But Omar hadn’t managed it.
‘No one knows. He just disappeared one day. Foul play was suspected, obviously.’
‘And the sister?’
‘She died after giving birth. Flea told me there was something fishy about her death too. That it might not have been natural. But nobody did anything.’
‘You had quite a little local gossip thing going, didn’t you, you and Flea? And the bastard cousin. While I was looking after Jenny.’
Omar shrugged. ‘You can see why I didn’t want to tell you. I thought you might believe it and not want us to sell the house.’
‘You thought I might believe it?’ Perhaps Omar was right. Perhaps he would have believed it. Perhaps he did. You will lose what you most love. Was that how it worked? He didn’t want to think about the email. ‘And now you think Cees was cursed?’
Omar shook his head. ‘I don’t know what to think. I mean, of course I don’t think he was cursed. It’s just that, well, so much of the whole business is weird.’
‘And you thought I’d believe this, Omar?’ He drank his coffee, stood up. ‘I’ve never heard so much crap.’ Lolita was yapping to be let back into the house. He stood up to open the door. ‘Thank God we got out of that country in time. Do you remember that dog? The one in the haystack? You can’t tell me no one heard it. How can you not care?’ He shuddered. ‘It’s Padre fucking Pio all over again. You’d have been seeing the Madonna materialise in the garden if we’d stayed there any longer. I blame Angela Frump.’
Omar paled. ‘Don’t bring her into this. For God’s sake, leave her out of it.’ He tipped away what was left of his coffee and rinsed the mug. ‘I’m going to get that well opened up,’ he said.
They cycled into town for lunch on their new bicycles. It was cycling territory, flat, with long straight roads, or it would have been if the traffic had been lighter. How easy it would be to die like this, on the road, swept into a ditch by the displaced air of a passing lorry, Gordon thought and would have said out loud if Omar had been within hearing distance. He realised that he was brooding again, repetitively, on the way Cees had died, each turn of the pedal triggering an image of blood and mashed-up metal, but he kept this to himself. He’d wanted to bring Lolita, tied into the basket in front of the handlebars, but Omar had vetoed the notion as being unsafe, and probably illegal. Both of which might have been true, thought Gordon, although he hadn’t been happy to leave her. He hadn’t been happy either to see how keen Omar was that she would be left. How fast his dream life had been to accommodate her, to nudge Omar subtly to one side so that there was room for them all. His perfect family. But he’d been right, after all. The traffic would have been too much for a small dog tied into a basket. She might have died of fright before they’d arrived.
Omar set the pace, as usual. By the time they arrived in the square, they were tired and hot. They ordered sparkling water and croque-madames, still feeling their way into what the town had to offer. The sun was bright, and hot. Gordon wiped his forehead with a paper napkin, cut his toasted sandwich into quarters, mopping up a drop of fugitive yolk with his finger and licking it clean.
‘Have you noticed how the eggs taste better here?’ he said. Omar nodded.
‘We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?’ he said. Omar nodded again, with a grin this time.
‘I love you,’ he said. Omar grinned more widely than ever. ‘We are all right, aren’t we?’ he said.
‘Of course we are,’ said Omar.
‘No secrets?’
‘No secrets.’
&n
bsp; Back at the house, Gordon called Lolita. He’d brought a scrap of ham with him, from his sandwich. He knew he shouldn’t. He’d read about spoiling dogs with food from the master’s hand, but wasn’t that what he wanted, in the end? That Lolita be spoilt and adore him? He stood at the door of the kitchen, where she’d been left, and called her name, coaxingly at first. Omar was pushing the bikes up the garden to the shed. When Gordon turned round to tell him Lolita wasn’t answering, he’d disappeared. That makes two of you, Gordon said to himself as he hurried into the house. He went from room to room. Lolita had done her business in the hall, two neat symmetrical piles at each side of the main door, but that was the only sign of her. Worried now, he walked back into the garden and along the path towards the shed. ‘I can’t find her,’ he said.
But Omar was also nowhere to be seen. Gordon stood at the open shed door, peering into the darkness, his body blocking the light from outside, a straggle of headily scented honeysuckle brushing his cheek. He could just make out the bikes in the far corner. He thought he saw something shift in that corner, a flicker of something cold and white, lit from within, that moved against the wall. When Omar touched his elbow, he started with fright. ‘What the fuck?’ he said. Omar pulled him away from the shed towards the well. ‘Where were you?’ he said.
Omar shook his head, as if to say that didn’t matter. ‘Look at this,’ he said, pointing towards the well.
This was the first Gordon had seen of Omar’s work. The bricks that had been removed from the cowl of the well that morning were stacked to one side, an unbroken wall, waisthigh. But how could there be so many?
‘I didn’t do this,’ said Omar. ‘Someone else has done this.’
Gordon walked across and looked down into the well. He saw a shimmer of water far below, almost invisible, a luminous darkness if that were possible, the shadow of what he had seen in the shed. He fought back the urge to call Lolita. Beside him Omar was moving the bricks. He heard a whimper. Oh no, he thought. But the noise had come from Omar. He was holding the puppy’s limp head in his hands.
‘I can’t get her out,’ he said. ‘She’s been bricked in.’
That night, when Gordon woke to find himself alone, he lay there, the cover thrown off him, his arms and legs splayed out like a starfish in the rapidly cooling bed. He found himself remembering their lunch in town, as though something had been lost, or forgotten, and he would find it only by replaying each moment, over and over again, until the missing fragment came back to him. And what if it was never recovered, he thought. What then? Oh God, he thought. Lolita. He knew he should get up and look for Omar, but he was afraid of what he might find. He might have lain there, thinking, and eventually gone back to sleep if the smell hadn’t struck him. A final gift. Perhaps she had come back too. But he was wrong.
Omar was crouched on his haunches, naked, in the corner of the other bedroom. His face was screwed up with exertion. At first Gordon thought he’d been crying, or trying not to cry, but then he recognised the expression. He tried to pull Omar to his feet, but the other man seemed to be frozen in place above the pile of shit he had produced with so much effort. ‘Oh my God, Omar,’ said Gordon, kneeling beside him, careless of the stench, careless of the smear of shit on the floor where Omar must have moved his bare foot, or lost his balance, careless of everything but Omar. He took his lover’s face between his hands and held it there, searching for something in the man’s eyes. But they saw through him, to somewhere else, some dark place where their dog had died. He might as well have been invisible.
And then he heard what sounded like metal being dragged across the wall to his right, where Omar had stood the night before, where the line of his blood was still glistening. But the sound didn’t come from this side of the wall, where the two of them had imagined they could make a new life for themselves, where flies were beginning to swarm in a humming cloud around Omar’s head and the stench of shit was unbearably, inexplicably sweet as Omar opened his lips to speak – to say what? To drown out the other sound? – and the swarm settled deep, deep into Omar’s open mouth, and ears, and eyes. The sound came from beyond, from some space that shouldn’t exist, some well-shaped space in the wall where Jack Squat had been taught a lesson he wouldn’t forget. The wall was crooked now, at an angle from the room, so that sufficient space might be made for him to die in. Gordon looked up and saw the final lines being drawn, and saw that they were words, the words Jack Squat had sent them both in his final message, if that was what it was. He saw that they were wet with Omar’s blood.
The Niche
1
Billy Lender is crouched between the pushed-out cupboard and the wall, as deep into the niche as he can get. His shorts are tickling the back of his knee, but he can’t move to scratch himself because he might be heard. Behind his head, the radiator gurgles, loud in his ear, scalding hot. If it touches his hand, or the back of his neck, where his hair has just been cut, he’ll get burnt, and give the game away. All he can hear above the gurgle is Mad Millie shouting in the room at the far end of the corridor, in history class, where Billy ought to be this minute. He’d better move now, or he’ll be in even worse trouble. But how can he trust the silence to mean he’s safe? He doesn’t dare think what Mad Millie will do to him for being late. He slapped Jenkins round the head so hard once, for whispering in class, they both lost their balance and Jenkins had blood come out of his ear. He’s going to have to risk it.
Billy edges a half-dead foot out from beneath his leg. The cupboard shifts. He stops, holding his breath, waits for the pins and needles to ease up. If only he’d made it to the library in time, he’d have been safe. He’d have walked out with the others and been at his desk, with Mad Millie writing dates on the board and everyone copying them down in their rough books, ready for homework.
When he nerves himself to straighten his leg, he hears a low voice. ‘Gobface.’ He freezes. The voice is a baby voice, the way they say he sounds. He can’t tell who it is. Horton, Sharples, one of the Lees twins. The worst is Sharples. ‘Gobface.’ A giggle, something banging against the wall. ‘We know where you are.’ The voice dragged out as long as the words will go, still in the voice they say is his, Baby Billy, Baby Gobface Billy, like a worm in the ear. ‘Come on, Gobface.’
The weight of his whole body on the bent ankle is too much to bear as the feeling rushes back. His eyes fill with tears. When he hears it a third time – not one voice now, but voices, a chorus of voices; Gobface, says the chorus, and giggles, and a second thump, closer now – he stifles a sob. His other leg is dead. His throat is dry. Pressed back into the wall, into the niche in the wall, he feels the scorch of the radiator on the back of his head. After a second, two seconds, five, he can smell something singe. He jerks his head away. The cupboard beside him rattles.
‘He’s here.’ The voice only feet away now. ‘I can smell him. What a stink. I bet he’s shit himself.’ They laugh. He shrinks down into his bones and skin, as small as he can get; he’s scared they can hear his heart. Does he stink? Has he shit himself? Cautious, he sniffs the air. Sweat in his eyes makes them smart.
This is when he feels it, like a breath on his cheek, or a breeze from below, an earthy smell. He flinches, raises his hand to touch where the breath has been, as though to capture it, hold it against him. But he forgets about the breath immediately when the footsteps stop and he sees fingers curl round the side of the cupboard to shift it from the wall. He braces his back against the radiator. He’ll fight if he has to, he decides. He will.
‘What do you wretched boys think you’re doing?’
The fingers disappear. He feels the breath again, come back like something cool, a damp cloth to calm fever, almost a whisper.
‘Is that Sharples I can see, crouching in gnome-like fashion behind his accomplices?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Come here, you hopeless child.’
He hears footsteps, a slap, a muffled cry. The nearest feet shuffle. Their turn next, he thinks, glee
ful. Their turn to suffer.
‘Now get into whichever class you’re supposed to be in, all four of you, and God help whomever of my esteemed colleagues is expected to teach you anything.’
More footsteps, moving away from him this time, then safety swilling in to fill the space, like water, the parquet shining with it. Messerschmitt to the rescue, thinks Billy.
‘And if I see any one of your loutish faces skulking around the corridors again, under any circumstances, any circumstances whatsoever, it will be my pleasure to introduce you once again to my old friend George. I think you’ve already been acquainted with George, Sharples. Am I right? Your rotund young backside and George are old friends. And that applies to Lees One and Two. Yes, that’s correct, you two. Only Horton remains to be introduced. Am I right? Because that can soon be arranged.’
‘Yes, sir.’ One voice. Sharples? It sounds like Sharples.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Chorus of voices.
‘That’s better. No one likes boys that mumble. Now be off with you, you miserable rabble, before I lose my temper.’
Billy doesn’t think about the breath until he’s in bed, almost asleep. He hears it again, but inside his ear this time, as though something has lodged there and is slowly moving, settling itself in. He tries to hold his own breath to hear it better, but just as suddenly as it started, the noise is gone. He lies still for what feels like hours, unable to sleep, until the house is silent around him, then reaches beneath the pillow and pulls out his torch and the magazine he stole from the shop when he went in for sweets. There’s a man on the cover, his shirt ripped off, tied down by ropes to rocks, with crabs crawling over the rocks towards him. The name of the magazine is Rugged Men. He misread it the first time: he thought it said Rugger Men – he had to look in the dictionary to find out what ‘rugged’ meant. The caption, in bright-red letters with spiked yellow edges like lightning, says the man is being subjected to a torture invented by the Japanese army for prisoners of war. His face is twisted with pain as he strains against the ropes. A crab is crawling across his thigh towards the scrap of cloth that covers the private parts between his legs. Another crab is biting into the ball of his thumb with scissor-edged pincers. Billy feels something stir between his own bare legs, something he doesn’t understand, an unexpected clenching of his flesh against the prospect of pain.
Two Dark Tales Page 8