The Blood of Angels

by Stephen Gregory

  Christy had kept out of the way while the dogs took the brunt of the man’s frustration. Now he felt a wonderful, surging thrill inside him. This was the kind of adventure he was looking for, after the ordered routine of the orphanage: a house surrounded by foaming sea, a mad man and two booming mad hounds, defending the territory from anyone foolish enough to venture within range of whatever weapons came to hand . . . With a squeal of excite­ment, he lunged for the potatoes and braced himself to hurl the missiles from the window.

  ‘Let me do it, Mr Clewe!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll get him! I got him last time, didn’t I?’

  He leaned from the landing. The windsurfer was turning his craft just below the window. The sail flapped, a glistening, strug­gling thing, and for a moment the youth fought to control it, too busy to glance up at the house although he’d come so close deliberately to draw the fire of the man who lived there. As Harry stood back and watched, his chest heaving, his mouth opening and closing, Christy took aim and threw.

  He threw twice, three times. The potatoes missed by yards. They splashed into the water, nowhere near the youth or his purple sail. Before Christy could reach for more ammunition, the sail bulged with a bang as the wind filled it and the board sped away. The man and the boy could hear the windsurfer laughing.

  ‘Useless bitch!’ Harry shouted.

  There was more and greater pandemonium. Harry exploded all his anger and frustration. He lunged at Christy, seized him by the hair and shook him so hard that the boy could feel the teeth rattling in his head. He jutted his face to the boy’s face and shouted hoarsely, spitting crumbs of crumpet, ‘Bloody fluke the last time, was it? Beginner’s bloody luck, was it? Now all you can do is stand there and throw like a bloody useless feeble girl! Why the hell do you come here?’

  He shoved so hard that Christy staggered, fell backwards and only saved himself from rolling down the stairs by grabbing at the banister. With an expression of terrible disgust, Harry wheeled away and turned his anger on the dogs, which had been barking wildly all this time. Lashing out with his feet, he drove them into the bedroom. The bellowing and barking continued, louder and louder, a scuffling of snarls and grunts as the man pursued the dogs round and round the fireside furniture.

  Christy struggled to his feet. All the strength was wrung from him. Sobbing with anger and humiliation, blinded by tears, he crossed the landing to the window again. As he leaned on the sill, the house itself seemed to tremble with the slap of the waves, the gusting wind and the dreadful commotion of the hysterical man and the hysterical dogs. A hundred yards away, he saw the flash of the purple sail, slowing and stopping and turning, no more than a blur through the welling tears.

  The noise increased. The house rang with a futile, impotent rage. The man’s words clanged in Christy’s head, and every word was a wound, which sent a lancing pain through him. Trying to blot out the roaring sounds which still came from the bedroom, he knelt at the window. As the sail grew bigger and bigger, he steadied his breathing, but the blood was pounding in his head and his chest. He felt for the gun which was leaning in the corner and he pointed it out of the window, resting the weight of the barrel on the sill.

  The noise from the bedroom reached a howling crescendo. Either the man was beating the dogs to death or the dogs were dis­membering and devouring the man. Christy didn’t care which. He sighted down the barrel. The purple sail filled his vision. It raced closer and closer until he could see the flying, golden hair and the shining, black, muscular body.

  He held his breath. He felt for the trigger. He heard the flap of the sail as it came within yards of the house. And the last thing he saw before he shut his eyes was the windsurfer’s face below him, how it looked up at the window and changed from a broad, bright grin to a look of disbelieving horror . . .

  Christy squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The bang was deafening. The recoil slammed Christy so hard in the shoulder that he tumbled backwards, fell away from the window and sat down with a thump at the top of the stairs. He let go of the gun, which clattered to the floor. Dazed almost to uncon­sciousness, he lolled against the banister. His head was ringing. His ears buzzed. His eyes stung, as the cordite smoke whirled around him. The whole house seemed to rock with the force of the explosion.

  Gradually, as the noise subsided to a muffled echo, as the pealing in his ears faded and was replaced by a high-pitched whine which suddenly stopped when he shook his head, there was a profound stillness. The bang had erased all the sounds of the sea and the wind, all the sounds of the house, and left a silent emptiness. The dogs stopped barking. The man stopped bellowing. As Christy sat on the landing and smeared the gunpowder tears from his cheeks, Harry came slowly out of the bedroom and stared around him, gaping, blinking, opening and closing his mouth like a big, bleary-eyed fish. When his gaze fell on Christy, he frowned as though he couldn’t quite place the befuddled figure who was sprawled on the floor, as though they might have met before, a long time ago, but he couldn’t remember when or where it had been. Christy stared back. Neither of them spoke. When the dogs cocked their heads out of the bedroom to sniff the swirling gunsmoke, Harry turned and pushed them gently back again, closing the door with the tiniest of clicks.

  No more shouting. The pandemonium was over. A great calm had settled.

  Harry moved to the landing window and looked out, standing there with his back to Christy. He looked for a long time. Then, with an enormous sigh, he knelt to the gun, picked it up and leaned it in its usual corner. When at last he turned to the boy, the frown had gone, replaced by the flicker of a smile.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ he whispered, breathing the words so quietly that Christy could hardly hear them. ‘What have you done? More of your beginner’s luck? What’s my little mermaid done now?’

  He crossed the landing with his hand outstretched, and squatted very close.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he whispered. ‘We can’t be frightened. We’re going to be too busy. Come on, up you get.’

  He took hold of Christy’s hand and pulled him to his feet. Still deafened, his ears popping, the boy staggered a little, grabbed at the man’s arm to stop himself from falling over, and then allowed himself to be led across the landing. They stood together at the open window and looked out.

  The purple sail was floating in the water. It rippled and flexed on the surface, like a gigantic Portuguese man-o’-war. The board bobbed about, tangled in the bright nylon cords. The youth was moving too, feeling into the waves with his hands and splashing his long, black, shiny legs.

  But he wasn’t swimming. Face down, his body jerking uncon­trol­lably, he struggled to keep afloat. As Harry and Christy watched from the window, they heard a horrid gurgling noise from under the water, and then the youth lifted his head above the surface long enough to let out a bubbling cry before he went under again. He was drowning. With every spasm, as he kicked and beat at the water, the sea around him changed colour from sandy brown to a deeper, darker red. He was drowning in a swirling stain of his own blood.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ Harry was whispering, and then he simply mouthed to himself without making a sound.

  Christy stood beside him, too numb to say or do anything. He saw the stain grow bigger and bigger and blur the outline of the purple sail, and he saw how the redness coloured the bright blond hair on the head which lifted and plunged, which gurgled and squealed in the bloodied water.

  When Harry said, ‘Well, come on, we’ve got things to do,’ in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, the boy followed him meekly downstairs. There, without a moment’s hesitation, they both low­ered themselves into the waves, waist-deep in the hallway; then, hand in hand for support on the treacherous footing, they waded to the front door, squeezed past the piano and into the open sea outside the house.

  The water was icy. The gale whipped a spray off the waves which spattered in their faces like hail. Fighting against the suck of the tide, they trod their way around the si
de of the house, struggled to the next corner and turned into the field which the landing window overlooked. It was difficult going for the boy, who was wiry and strong; the man was heaving with breathlessness, cold and exertion, as the water beat on his chest and splashed into his face. But it was Harry who fought on and on, tugging Christy with him. It was Harry who breasted the waves in front of the boy, taking the brunt of the spray. It was Harry who kept up a stream of encouragement, urging Christy to wade strongly onwards, to feel for obstacles underfoot, to brace his body to the flood. As a slick of blood coiled round the house and welled against their chests, it was Harry who turned the corner, waded the last few paces to the stricken windsurfer and reached him first, who grabbed a handful of hair and lifted the face out of the water.

  ‘Help me, Christine!’ he shouted. ‘We can float him back to the front door and get him inside! Come on! Help me!’

  But the boy recoiled from the glistening black body. Staring with disgust at the crimson scum which the youth had churned into froth, Christy lunged away, as though he might wade back into the house and hide in the bedroom until the nightmare was over.

  Harry reacted with surprising agility, despite the weight of the water around him. Holding the windsurfer with his right hand, towing him so roughly by the hair that the youth let out a horrible, high-pitched, gargling shout, Harry surged after the boy and grabbed him to a halt, expertly hooking the belt of his jeans.

  ‘You did this!’ he bellowed. ‘Look what you’ve done! Look! And then help me to fix it!’

  He summoned another burst of strength and rattled the wind­surfer’s head so hard that flecks of spittle flew onto Christy’s face. ‘You did this!’ he shouted again. ‘Not me! Think of the trouble you’re in if you don’t help!’

  So the boy helped. As the windsurfer squealed like a piglet and writhed his slippery body, the man and the boy took hold of his arms and towed him back the way they’d come. They struggled to the front door, and there, with an immense effort of pushing and pulling and bending, they manoeuvred him past the obstructive piano; until at last, after a more strenuous battle than they’d had with the conger eel, they slid the youth into the calmer waters of the hallway and beached him on the stairs.

  There they all lay, spent: Harry, retching and spitting; Christy, staring aghast at the thing they’d brought in; the windsurfer, mewing very softly, his eyes closed, his mouth opening and closing, his hair plastered about his forehead, his face and fingers terribly blanched.

  The lull lasted less than a minute. Christy tore his eyes from the windsurfer and glanced at Harry Clewe. There was a curious blurring of expressions on the man’s face: a flickering smile and a tic, a shadow behind the eyes which warned of another outburst of violence. The windsurfer had stopped mewing. He was moaning, louder and louder, thrashing his limbs as though an electric cur­rent was passing through him. Christy stood up and started to yell, ‘Do something, Mr Clewe! Please do something!’ which made the windsurfer open his eyes, roll his head from side to side and groan more and more loudly still.

  So the lull was over. Harry struggled to his feet. He took Christy by the hair, as he’d done before in a fit of blinding anger, and he shook him until all the teeth in his head were rattled loose. Then, leaving him blubbering like the girl he pretended to be, Harry knelt to the windsurfer. Roaring, he shook him too, and the youth squealed shrilly, the blond head lolling as though the neck were broken.

  Again it was pandemonium. A fourteen-year-old boy hysterical with panic; a youth who might or might not have been dying from a gunshot wound; a man unmanned by uncontrollable fury . . . Certainly, the little lull was over.

  ‘Shut up!’ Harry roared at the windsurfer. Then, ‘Help me!’ he roared at Christy.

  Christy started moving, in a kind of trance. He obeyed the man, blubbering noisily, responding to the bellowed instructions like an automaton. Together they floated the windsurfer across the hall and into the living room, oblivious of the youth’s gurgle of pain as he bumped on shingle and jagged rocks. And all the time, Harry shouted so wildly that his face was swollen and his mouth was frothed with spittle, ‘Shut up! For fuck’s sake, shut up!’ while he shook the youth as hard as he could; then at Christy, ‘For fuck’s sake, help me! You did this! Not me!’

  They dumped the windsurfer in the shallower water near the fireplace, and squatted beside him. All three of them were delirious with panic and pain and exertion. Harry reached to the windsurfer’s throat, took hold of the zip and tugged it down. The youth screamed more loudly and more horribly than he’d ever screamed before. The suit split open as though the body were slit from throat to navel, and a pile of steaming, slithering guts fell out.

  The noise reached another crescendo.

  The windsurfer, seeing the wound, feeling his hot young life spill out, started to chatter like a chimpanzee.

  Christy threw back his head and howled, amazed at the heat and smell and the sheer quantity of the stuff that slopped from the windsurfer’s belly.

  And Harry, with a mooing cry that was almost like laughter, surged out of the water. He waded to the mantelpiece, reached for the ammonite and waded back again. As Christy stared and howled, the man smashed the stone onto the youth’s head. He smashed with the ammonite four times, accompanying each blow with a gritted shout.

  ‘Shut! . . . Up! Shut! . . . Up!’

  The windsurfer shut up. His face was stove in. Teeth and tongue and bones were mashed in a scarlet pulp.

  Christy shut up, too. So did Harry, although his breathing was very loud. The blows with the ammonite had the same effect as the shotgun blast had had. As the water subsided, a great stillness fell.

  For a long time, the man and the boy said nothing. They knelt in the pool, on either side of the dead youth: Christy, with his eyes and mouth wide open, his hands to his head, clutching his hair in his fingers; Harry, cuddling the coiled, black fossil to his stomach. After what had seemed like hours of nightmare, but had lasted no more than a few minutes, the house was profoundly silent.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was silent for a long time. So long that, when the sea had drained out, the man and the boy were still kneeling in the pools it left behind. The room was twilit, although it was only midday; the cobwebbed cornices of the high ceiling were lost in shadow and the walls were cast in a submarine gloom. For more than an hour, without moving a muscle, the boy stared at the hole in the windsurfer’s stomach and all the stuff that had come out of it; while the man, his head bowed as though he were praying, stared at the blooded ammonite.

  Christy moved first. He lowered his hands from his hair, dropped them into his lap and knitted his fingers together. Harry glanced up. His own fingers started to move, caressing the sticky, dark clots on the fossil. Still, for another ten or fifteen minutes, neither of them spoke. The room grew darker. The shadows, which had formed on the ceiling like thunder clouds, seemed to fall until they cloaked the huddled figures and the body of the wind­surfer which lay between them. Soon, the bright blond head had gone dull, and the guts were as black as the rubber suit they’d spilled out of. The man and the boy looked at one another until their faces were lost in darkness. Harry let go of the ammonite, so that it rolled into the puddles with a splash and a thud . . . and this, the first sound in the house since the ammonite itself had caused such a deadening silence, signalled that the silence was over.

  The boy blinked very hard, as though he’d been asleep and had had a nightmare. When he saw that the nightmare was real, he gasped, peering again at the dead body. He looked at the pulp where the face had been, trying, in his mind’s eye, to rearrange the teeth and the splintered cheekbones to resemble the face that the youth had had. He pointed to it, lifting a trembling hand.

  ‘You did this, Mr Clewe’, he whispered. ‘Not me. He was alive until you did this.’

  There was another silence. In the darkness, Harry shrugged and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I did that.’

  Then, with his hook,
he pointed to the wound in the youth’s belly that the shotgun blast had made. ‘And you did this, Christine,’ he whispered. ‘Not me. He was alive until you did this.’

  The boy shuddered so violently that his teeth rattled. ‘Yes, Mr Clewe,’ he whispered. ‘I did that.’

  So they stared at the wounds they’d made. When Harry said, ‘We both did it, we did it together,’ the two of them nodded their heads. Harry reached over the mass of the windsurfer’s body. Christy reached out as well. And they joined their icy hands, grip­ping until they could feel the warmth of a bond between them: a bond forged in blood, sealed in silence.

  At last Harry stood up. He heaved himself to his feet, aching with a terrible cold in all his bones, and stretched his arms and legs to get the circulation going. Treading across the room, he gently put the ammonite beside the photograph of Helen. Then he leaned his forehead on the mantelpiece and closed his eyes. He remained there, without moving. He tried to think what he was going to do next, but his mind went stubbornly blank. After a while, he heard footsteps go squelching out of the room, but he didn’t lift his head or open his eyes to look. He listened as the footsteps crossed the hallway and tramped upstairs, as the bedroom door was opened and then closed a few seconds later. The footsteps came downstairs, crossed the hallway and went outside, through the front door. Harry didn’t know why the beachcomber had gone upstairs and then outside. He didn’t care. He rested his forehead on the mantelpiece and squeezed his eyes shut.