The Five Gates of Hell

by Rupert Thomson

  Praise for The Five Gates of Hell

  ‘A tight hypnotic story. Imagine Carl Hiassen and Elmore Leonard teaming up. Imagine Quentin Tarantino and Martin Amis collaborating’ New York Times

  ‘Breathtakingly original. A must’ Cosmopolitan

  ‘Astonishing … The novel is filled with colourful eccentrics and unworldly happenings … quirky characters and supernatural undercurrents … Exceptionally well-written’ Times Literary Supplement

  ‘Incandescent … taut vernacular dialogue, arresting imagery, and a provocative, sinuous plot culminate in a climax that is full of ironic surprises … Thomson is a writer of exceptional gifts’ Publishers’ Weekly

  ‘Beautifully written … as a stylist, he is two blocks ahead of most of his contemporaries’ GQ

  ‘Weird sex and graphic violence, innocence, guilt, and a world where corruption bubbles beneath the surface … David Lynch in print’ Arena

  ‘Compelling … a blend of graphic realism and sheer spookiness reminiscent of Martin Amis and Mervyn Peake … beautifully written’ Independent

  ‘Thomson is a very craft writer … You feel as if you’re being pulled in by the ankles’ Miami Herald

  ‘A visionary work, full of black humour and poetic’ Details

  ‘Thomson has any amount of talent … This is a country not so much of the mind, more of the nerves. You find Tomorrow Bay on the far side of Broken Springs; you meet a barman called Twilight. Should you encounter somebody Thomson describes as “dressed to kill”, the safe thing is to run’ Guardian

  ‘Thomson’s rarefied horror story is set in Moon Beach. It is America crossed with Gormenghast, a chilling, fabulous mirror on reality … An involving and inventive book full of beautiful writing … It has the momentum of a thriller harnessed to the substance of a modern classic’ Scotland on Sunday

  The Five Gates of Hell

  RUPERT THOMSON

  FOR ROBIN AND FOR KATE

  There was an old sailors’ graveyard in Moon Beach. It was the place where the funeral business first put down its roots. Over the graveyard wall, between two warehouses, you could just make out the Witch’s Fingers, four long talons of sand that lay in the mouth of the river. Rumour had it that, on stormy nights a century before, they used to reach out, gouge holes in passing ships, and drag them down.

  There was one funeral director, supposedly, who used to put lamps on the Fingers and lure ships to their doom.

  But times had changed. There hadn’t been a wreck for years, and all the funeral parlours had moved downtown …

  There were very few land burials in Moon Beach any more. It was considered old-fashioned and unhealthy, it was something that only happened to the poor. Instead, the dead were buried in ocean cemeteries, twelve miles out. A special festival was held every year in their honour. Children loved it. Suddenly there were white chocolate bones everywhere and marzipan skulls and ice-cream coffins on a stick. There were costume parties too. You had to wear something blue because that was the colour people went when they were buried under the sea. You could paint your hands and face if you liked, or even dye your hair. That’s what people did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year.

  And then, sooner or later, they turned blue for ever …

  Let the wicked fall into the traps they have set, whilst I pursue my way unharmed.

  – PSALM 141

  And they all went to heaven in a little rowboat …

  – AMERICAN CLAPPING SONG

  Contents

  One

  The Jets

  Moscow, Brussels, Helsinki

  Two

  The Womb Boys

  Tombstone Tattoos

  The Shark Run

  Three

  Colours Everywhere

  Know Your Enemy

  Hard Water

  Loyalty Is Silence

  Teethmarks

  You, Me, and the Chairman

  Cats For Drowning

  Four

  The First Drop of Rain

  Heaven is a Real Place

  Skull Candy

  Five

  Old Friends

  And Spring Came For Ever

  The Octopus Manoeuvre

  The Suit of Bones

  All Wins on Lit Lines Only

  Red Flags

  Yoghurt, Ice-Cream, Minestrone

  The Ocean Bed Motel

  Mackerel Street

  3UR 1AL

  Dead Ends

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  One

  The Jets

  The first time Nathan had the dream, he was staying at his aunt’s house on the Cape.

  He was standing on a barren plain with his sister, their hands linked as if to cross a road safely, the way they’d been taught. There were no roads, though, not in this place, no human markings of any kind. No trees either. No scrub. Just dust and stones, distant mountains, brutal sun.

  Then, in the distance, a mirror-flash of silver and the jets came tearing through the membrane of the sky. The air turned to sound, there was nothing left to breathe, and in his ears the stammer of machine guns as the bullets scuffed the dust around their feet, raised rows of ghostly plants that grew one after another in the dry ground, hung in the air, then crumbled, and their hands were pulled apart, and they scattered, screaming, limbs of water, breath like saws attacking wood.

  He woke up. Listened for his sister’s breathing through the half-open door. Couldn’t hear anything. Listened for his father’s slightly faster breathing through the thin wall to the right. Couldn’t hear anything. He could hear another kind of breathing. A breathing he didn’t recognise. Rasping, sucking, rattling. Lungs like chains. The sea.

  He opened his eyes. Everything was white and pale-blue. Curtains decorated with anchors and mermaids, the steering wheels of ships. The skull of a seagull above the bed, a silver coin winking where the right eye used to be. A heap of shells unsorted on the rug, the shells he’d found only the day before. He was in the wrong house. He was staying with his Aunt Yvonne. 121 Ocean Drive, Hosannah Beach, The Cape. He repeated the address to himself, scarcely moving his lips. Dad had told him to learn it, in case he got lost.

  Dad.

  Nathan’s mind slipped back to the sunlit afternoon a month ago, the reason he was here now. He saw himself halfway up the hill. He smelt the melting road, the tar as soft as fudge, you could leave a footprint if you pressed hard enough. The melting road, the trees heavy in the heat. He could even feel the sweat trickling under his grey school shirt. He looked back down the hill, and shouted, ‘Georgia, come on.’

  He walked home from school with Georgia every day. It usually took about half an hour, but that was her fault. She was so slow. Alone he could’ve walked it in fifteen minutes. He stared back down the hill. Look at her. She wasn’t even trying. She was just standing there, one fist pressed to the corner of her mouth. She was probably crying. He supposed he must’ve upset her or something. The hill, it was always the worst part.

  He muttered ‘Jesus’ under his breath, a new word and just about strong enough for what he felt, and, heaving a sigh, began to retrace his steps. He wished he could just leave her behind, it wasn’t far to the house now, another five minutes, but he’d promised, Dad had made him promise, and what if something happened? There were people called strangers and you talked to them and then something happened. He didn’t know what that something was. It was too bad to even talk about. He reached Georgia and stood looking down at her. He could only see the top of her head. ‘What’s wrong now?’

  ‘You left me.’

  He didn’t say anything. Instead, he watched a thick chalk line grow longer in the sky. When you s
crewed up your eyes you could just make out the tiny silver speck of the plane. He tried to imagine the man inside that tiny silver speck and a shiver slid up his spine and vanished into the short hairs at the back of his neck. He wondered how fast the plane was going. Five hundred? A thousand? He looked down into Georgia’s face, her wet eyelashes, her trembling lower lip. If you were a plane, he thought, we’d be home by now. We’d’ve been home hours ago. He looked at his sister and wished she was a plane.

  ‘You left me,’ she said again.

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he said. ‘It’s just you’re so slow.’

  ‘I’m five. If you were five you’d be slow.’

  ‘Not as slow as you.’

  Georgia scowled. She wiped one eye with her sleeve and turned and stared back the way they’d come.

  ‘I hate this road.’

  He took her hand. ‘Come on, George. Just walk.’

  ‘My legs hurt.’

  ‘Don’t think about your legs, just walk. It’s not much further now.’

  He played the game where you have to step in between the cracks on the sidewalk, except he invented a new forfeit: if you stepped on a crack you had to run three paces. He knew that in games Georgia always did the things you weren’t supposed to do; she couldn’t resist treading on the cracks and so she kept having to run three paces and they reached the top of the hill without her even noticing.

  That was the hard part over. From the crest of the hill you could see the corner of Mahogany Drive, which was where they lived. Another hundred yards and they’d be home. Still, he must’ve let go of her hand again, because he was alone when he turned into the driveway and saw Aunt Yvonne’s station wagon parked outside the front door.

  He ran back to the gate. ‘Guess what, George.’

  Fifty yards away, Georgia stopped, looked up. She was too tired to guess what.

  ‘Aunt Yvonne’s here,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  But he couldn’t wait for her. He ran into the house through the back door, and it was like running from day into night, his voice sounded far away and he couldn’t see, only the dim shape of Dad with his head in his hands, and his aunt’s voice somewhere overhead.

  ‘Your mother’s dead,’ she told him, and he cried because the word had such a dull, empty sound.

  She tried to explain. ‘When someone dies,’ she said, ‘they go away.’

  ‘When do they come back?’

  ‘They don’t,’ she said. ‘They don’t come back.’

  She seemed to want him to ask more questions, but he couldn’t think of any. He stared at his shoes, the toes pale from kicking stones.

  ‘Auntie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can I go and play in the garden now?’

  A sigh came out of her, and her face crumpled up. He stared at her for one long moment and then ran out of the house. Someone called his name. He ran down the garden, the inside of his head all blank and hollow, smooth as the lawn beneath his feet. He didn’t stop until he reached the wild part of the garden, the part he called the Jungle. He stood still, in gloom that was almost green. He looked up, past branches tipped in orange, into the deep blue sky where the chalk line that the plane had drawn was just beginning to break up.

  The next day, after breakfast, Yvonne asked him if he’d like to come and stay at her house on the beach. He’d been before, some other summer, and he remembered the excitement of those words ‘house on the beach’, but things were different now, with different meanings, so he thought for a moment, then he said, ‘What about George?’

  ‘She’s going somewhere else.’

  A whirl through his stomach as he thought it might be for ever and ever, like prayers. Yvonne put her hand on the back of his head. ‘It’s only for a few weeks,’ she said. ‘You’ll be back together before you know it,’ and he looked up at her, with her copper hair that fitted on her scalp like a magnet and her smile that was bright, missed lipstick and crooked teeth, and suddenly he trusted her again, and could smile back. So it was settled.

  The day came for them to leave. Dad called Nathan into the lounge and pressed a silver coin into his hand. ‘I just wanted to give you something,’ he said, and then he turned his head away. Nathan clutched the coin in his fingers and stared at the table leg, how it had an ankle, and how the ankle curved into a golden paw. How one of the claws was chipped.

  Dad waved goodbye from an upstairs room, his face rising in the window like a pale moon, smudged craters for his mouth and eyes. A full moon seen through glass. Bad luck, as Yvonne, who was superstitious, might’ve said. She wore her special fish brooch that morning. She believed that fish were sacred. ‘They’re the guardians of the soul,’ he’d heard her say, and he couldn’t pretend he understood. She’d been wearing the brooch for a week now, ever since her sister, his mother, ever since it happened. It stood for loss, it was so she remembered, it was how you could tell she was sad. You’d never have guessed otherwise. Yvonne dressed like someone from another time. Which time, though, nobody could ever quite decide. Dad was always asking her where the costume party was; it was one of his jokes. For the drive up north she’d fastened her copper hair in a canary-yellow headscarf. Triangles of turquoise swung from the lobes of her ears. She wore dark glasses with tortoiseshell frames and a silk blouse that wrinkled and shimmered like a piece cut out of the ocean. A small box, made from the same metal as her hair, hung from a chain around her neck. Inside the box was a clove of fresh garlic wrapped in a twist of crackly red paper. To thin her blood, she said, and keep the devil on his toes. But it was still the fish brooch that you noticed most. When the man in the gas station leaned one friendly smeared forearm on the window and asked how much she wanted, Nathan watched the fish catch his eye and reel it in, and suddenly the man was stepping back and ducking his head and muttering how sorry he was.

  ‘My sister just died,’ Aunt Yvonne said. ‘This is her little boy.’

  She turned away and stared through the windshield, into the light, and Nathan could see her right eye through the side of her dark glasses, could see the tears shuddering on her lower lid. Back on the highway she rolled her window down and stepped hard on the gas pedal, it might’ve been a beetle the way she crushed it into the floor. The needle on the speedometer leapt and trembled. Ninety, ninety-five. He thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t. He thought she was brave.

  It was six hours to Hosannah Beach and he didn’t glance at the silver coin that Dad had given him, not even once. All the way he clutched it tight in the palm of his hand and felt the bevelled edge bite into his skin. They arrived in darkness, the headlights trained on a stand of cactus, its leaves a pale chalk green and sharp as the fins of sharks. Waiting in the car while Yvonne unlocked the house, he brought his hand up to his face and opened it. His sweat had the bitter smell of hot metal, hot and bitter, this was what leaving home would always smell like. Through the open window he heard the wind in the pine trees and the ocean, he couldn’t tell which was which, he was too drowsy now from the long drive, and then Yvonne’s voice, calling him inside.

  He woke early and listened. Nothing. He lifted his head. Morning lay against the window in a thick grey fog. He left the warmth of his bed and crept downstairs, thinking he would be the first, but when he turned into the kitchen he found Yvonne adjusting the shoulder-strap on her black swimsuit. Her skin looked dry and brown and crinkly like the paper Dad gave him to paint on when it rained.

  ‘I was just going for a swim,’ she said. ‘Would you like to come?’

  The house stood on a low cliff overlooking a stony beach. A narrow footpath led down steep rocks to the sea. There was a handrail, made out of wooden posts and faded orange fishing rope. You had to hold on tight, otherwise you might fall. He let her lead the way. She held one arm out in the air as if the footpath was a tightrope. The backs of her thighs rumpled and quivered. Once on level ground she became strong again. He liked the way she marched across the beach, as if she was leading an army, the stones chink
ing under her wide bare feet like chain mail.

  The water was colder than he was used to. He swam until his lungs burned, then he wrapped himself in a towel and explored the beach. He found a skull wedged between two rocks and managed to prise it loose without breaking it. He showed it to Yvonne.

  ‘It’s some kind of gull,’ she told him.

  ‘Can I keep it?’

  She laughed. ‘What would you do if I said no?’

  He smiled, but was uneasy.

  Then he looked down at the skull again, his skull, and a strange pleasure eased through him. Everything spread outwards from the object he held in his hand, everything spread round him, unlimited, available.

  Back at the house, after their swim, they ate a breakfast of eggs speckled with fresh herbs from the garden and waffles soaked in maple syrup and tall glasses of cold milk.

  ‘You know, I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen you swim,’ Yvonne said. ‘You’re pretty good in the water, aren’t you? You were made for it, I’d say.’

  ‘Dad says it’s in my blood.’ Nathan licked a trickle of syrup off his finger. ‘You know when you get hot and sweat? That’s how you can tell. You taste it and if it tastes like salt, it’s because the sea’s in your blood. Dad’s got the sea in his blood too. He told me.’

  She was smiling down at him. Sometimes, when she smiled, her whole face seemed to wobble, like a drop of rain just before it falls off a twig.

  For the first few days the weather stayed damp and grey. In the early afternoon the sun would almost burn through, you could sense the blue sky somewhere high above, the blue sky planes fly through, and then the light would fade and the mist would come ghosting in off the ocean, over the dunes and the marshland, over the withered silver bushes that looked like bits of witches, over the old coast road, and you had to switch your headlights on if you drove to the store, even though it was still daytime, otherwise some tree’d step out and put an end to everything.