The Five Gates of Hell

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘Who was it?’

  Vasco just stared at him. ‘Who do you think?’

  It was only then that Jed realised the full extent of Vasco’s obsession. It was death that was after him. It was death, of course. After all, you couldn’t declare war on death without expecting a bit of retaliation, could you?

  It took Jed almost two hours to dig the gravel out of Vasco’s hands. For the last twenty minutes he worked with a needle, the tip blackened in a flame. And when he dabbed iodine into the wounds, Vasco sizzled through his white lips, the noise of a branding iron on flesh.

  The next day Vasco showed Jed where it had happened. Both his hands were bound, and blunt as the heads of snakes. Dark spots of blood seeping through from the palms, as if he was some kind of risen Christ. Which in a way he was that morning. Down the hill and into Omega. This was dockland. Old warehouses, uneven streets. One narrow strip of sunlight running down the gutter. The rest in shadow. Parked trucks glittering and clumsy. Winches dipping like the beaks of birds.

  ‘Look,’ and Vasco had to punch the air because he couldn’t point, ‘this is it.’

  The skidmarks showed as two loose S-shapes scorched on the tarmac. Vasco walked over, stood in the crook of one of them.

  ‘Scraper’s death,’ he said.

  Jed tried standing there too, and felt an odd sensation. It was as if a shadow had slipped through his body. A different kind of shadow, though. The kind of shadow that the shadow in the street would’ve been frightened of. He saw Scraper laid out on an embalming table, he saw the blur of ginger hair on Scraper’s forearms. Like they were going too fast. But not any more. He heard knives. They sounded like loose change. He shivered.

  ‘You were lucky, Vasco.’ He put all this brightness that he didn’t feel into his voice. He wanted to be lifted up.

  But Vasco wasn’t listening to him. He was gazing back along the street. Maybe he heard the car again. Or not again, but for the first time. The way he should’ve heard it the night before. When he turned to Jed he seemed to have been thinking all the way round something. He was tired, but he was sure. ‘They couldn’t have killed me. It’s not my time.’

  ‘Could you hear it coming?’ Jed asked him.

  Vasco swung back to face him. ‘What?’

  ‘Your death,’ Jed said. ‘You reckon you could hear it coming?’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Jed?’

  Jed turned away. They were standing on the moment of collision, the sun was high and white, and three men were shouting at the end of the street. That was all the world was. A high white sun, some tyre marks, three men shouting. Sometimes it seemed as if he’d always been very old. People said that time lasted for ever when you were young. That was lies. Lies and rosy spectacles. His spectacles had steel frames and time was those tattoos on Vasco’s arm. They were more like time than any clock. Once, in the Empire Of Junk, he’d seen an hour-glass. Now that came closest to the truth. Except you could turn it upside down and start again. So that was lies too. The sand should run out the first time, run right out. Once, and once only. Time wasn’t outside you, it was inside. What was time for Scraper? Thirteen and a bit years, that’s what it was. Time was something that went bad, like fruit. To be used before it was all used up. Though, for most people, the only way to live was to deny that. As Vasco was doing now. And Jed suddenly realised, under that high white sun, on the day after Scraper died; he realised that everyone was scared. His mother was scared. Old Mr Garbett was scared. Even Vasco was scared.

  Though there he was, standing on the street, the word IMMORTAL flashing on his coat like a gauntlet thrown to fate. And he was saying something. ‘I guess you’ll be there to record it when it happens,’ he was saying, ‘won’t you, Jed?’

  Tombstone Tattoos

  Dad was lying in bed, propped on his seven pillows, when Nathan walked in. A bottle of eucalyptus oil stood in a basin of hot water in the corner of the room.

  ‘It should be ready by now,’ Dad said, ‘but you’d better test it first.’

  Nathan moved over to the washbasin. It was one of the holy objects, this bottle of oil. It was ancient, made of ribbed green glass, green as seaweed. It had six sides and a cork stopper. Dad must’ve lost the original top. He’d found a cork that almost fitted and then he’d whittled it down. Now, years later, it looked as if it belonged.

  The oil was fine: not too hot, not too cold. He let the water out of the basin and brought the bottle over to the bed. Dad took off his nightclothes, the blue sweater with the holes in, the torn pyjama jacket, and lay face down, his head turned sideways on the pillows. He flinched as the oil ran across his back, then he relaxed and said, ‘It’s all right.’

  It had been hard to touch Dad the first time. Everything looked so injured that he couldn’t work out where to start. Dad had sensed his hesitation. ‘Just be gentle,’ he said. ‘Do the shoulders first.’ That was a good thing to say. There was nothing wrong with his shoulders. The damage only began further down. One side of his body sagged where the ribs had been cut away, so his spine seemed strangely marooned. The scars shone like pink wax. You could still see the holes left by the hypodermic needles when they’d drained the fluid out of his lungs. The needles were so big, Dad had told him once, that you could actually see the ends.

  The funny thing was, he didn’t look disabled. If you’d seen him walking along the street you wouldn’t’ve noticed anything unusual. There were no obvious signs or clues. No crutches, for instance. No wheelchair. No, it wasn’t until you saw him naked that you realised the full extent of the damage. Perhaps not even then. You still couldn’t see the lungs. If you watched him closely you could see that he breathed a bit quicker than most people, like a bird, Nathan had always thought, but how many people looked that closely? Dad only had half of one lung and a third of the other. Something like that, anyway. He couldn’t fly in planes or swim underwater. He had to avoid elevators, phone booths, cellars. All those places could kill him. Even bad weather could kill him. That was why everything was so dangerous. That was why he had to be so careful.

  Dad sighed. ‘That’s good. Just there.’

  Nathan worked the warm oil into the shoulders.

  ‘You’ve got the same touch as your mother.’

  Your mother. He always said that. It made her sound so far away, so high up. It was like your excellency, your honour. Your mother.

  But Dad’s thoughts had taken a different turning. ‘Did I ever tell you how we came to live here?’

  ‘No.’

  Nathan smiled to himself. He knew how much Dad looked forward to having his back done, how much it helped, but he also sometimes suspected that it was just an excuse, a chance for Dad to talk to him.

  ‘Your grandmother had just gone into hospital and I’d just come out.’ Dad paused, remembering. ‘She told us we could have her house. She said she wouldn’t be needing it any more.’

  Nathan knew this part of the story. His grandmother had put herself in a mental home, that whole side of the family were a bit mad, apparently, and she’d given them the house for nothing. He prompted Dad. ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘It was spring,’ Dad began, and his voice turned dreamy as he reached back into the past.

  He drove up the coast with Kay, his wife of seven months, beside him. Such happiness: he felt it so acutely, it had almost seemed like pain. There was no highway in those days, only an old switchback road. In the dips you found towns, as secret and intact as fossils, towns with names like Peacehaven and Marble Bay; from the rises you could see ships inching along the horizon, and waves so far away they looked, he remembered Kay saying, ‘like the creases on your knuckles’.

  When they reached High Head they bought ice-creams from a van that was playing ‘Moon River’ (and there the river, magically, was, hundreds of feet below and to the east), the melody all cracked and jangly and slow, and then they crossed smooth grass to the precipice, peered down from behind a low wire fence, and there was the famous
lighthouse, hoops of red and white, it must’ve been sixty feet high, but it looked like a toy, and he said, ‘People come here to jump,’ and Kay took his arm and pressed her cheek against his shoulder and said, ‘We’re so lucky,’ not to have a reason to, he thought she meant, not to even think of it, the misery that might bring you here, though he could never be sure with Kay, she took off in such strange directions sometimes, words seemed to mean different things to her, it was as if she had her own personal dictionary.

  They must’ve stood there for, oh, in his memory it took up more room than some whole years, and then she broke away from him and ran off down the path, and he called out, ‘Careful, Kay, be careful,’ and he went after her, but he couldn’t run, you see, all those years in hospital, they’d sucked the running out of him. When he caught up with her at last, she was standing three feet from the edge in her black ski-pants, they were the fashion then, and her cream wool sweater, rising and falling with her breathing, but three feet from the edge! and there was no fence now, why did she like to scare him so? He took her in his arms, and he kissed the side of her neck and behind her ear, and then he kissed her on the lips, he breathed her in as deeply as his damaged lungs allowed, as if those were his last moments with her, as if he was already beginning to lose her, and he felt he’d never be close enough, even naked, making love, his skin on hers, their bodies joined like hands in prayer, pressed together all the way along, even bellies, even knees, even then he’d never be close enough. Perhaps that was true for everyone, but when he saw her run along the edge like that he sensed the recklessness in her, it had been there all along, but now it frightened him. He had this sudden premonition, that she might leave him behind, alone, but he kept the premonition hidden, he just pulled her tighter to him, his arms were still strong, he pulled her tight against him, so tight that she cried out, ‘Jack, stop,’ and she was laughing, ‘Jack, you’ll break me.’

  Listening to all the happiness, happiness that had actually produced him, Nathan had felt lulled, comforted, but suddenly the vision of Dad holding his wife, that love and worry, it mirrored his own too closely: his fingers faltered.

  Dad noticed. ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘You stop then.’ Dad sat up and, reaching behind him, pulled his nightclothes on.

  Nathan put the green bottle back in its place on the glass shelf above the washbasin. He wanted to hold Dad tight and stop him dying. He didn’t want to be left behind, with everything to do. He just hoped he died first. One silent jet looped through the room. Or almost silent. A sound like tyres in rain. He ran the hot tap fast and reached for the soap.

  ‘Are you all right, Nathan?’

  ‘Yes. I’m fine.’

  ‘Nothing’s worrying you?’

  The water was almost too hot for his hands. He shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘If you’re worried about something, you’ll tell me, won’t you?’

  He nodded. He switched the tap off, dried his hands.

  ‘Thank you for doing my back.’

  He turned at last and smiled at the sight of Dad propped on seven pillows in his ragged clothes.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said.

  The day before Scraper’s funeral Vasco took Jed with him to the tattoo parlour. ‘You’ll meet Mitch,’ he said as they jumped a bus on Central Avenue. ‘Mitch does the best tombstones in town.’

  Central Avenue had always been Jed’s favourite street. As its name suggested, it ran straight as an arrow through the heart of the city. Aloof in the west, accustomed to the tick-tock of high-heels and the trickle of limo tyres, it hit mid-town and slummed it, movie-theatres, fast-food stands and go-go bars, neon and slang, then it moved further east, turning sullen and jangly, stained with cheap wine and bad blood, only to end its life under the concrete pillars that supported the Moon River Bridge. Mitch’s tattoo parlour was just west of here, in a section known as the Strip. Wedged between a sex cinema and a liquor store, it had a window that was opaque, pasted over with skulls and knives and snakes. The sign above the door said TATTOO CITY in old cracked gold paint that reminded Jed of circuses.

  He followed Vasco inside. Mitch was sitting in the back of the store, trying to prise the grease out from under his nails with a key.

  Vasco stood in front of Mitch. ‘Slow day.’

  Mitch winced as he dug too deep. Then he looked up, saw who it was. ‘Christ, someone else dead?’

  ‘You shouldn’t complain,’ Vasco said. ‘Someone dies, you get to do another stone. You do another stone, you make money.’

  Mitch tossed the key on to the table and stood up. ‘Real big shot, aren’t you?’ He looked at Jed. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘This is Jed,’ Vasco said. ‘He records stuff.’

  Mitch left his eyes on Jed, but absent-mindedly, the way you might leave your hand in your pocket. Something Jed learned about Mitch the first time he saw him: Mitch didn’t ask many questions; either he knew already, or he didn’t want to know. Something he recognised too: the use of silence.

  Mitch moved over to the table that held his instruments. He’d worn his jeans so long they looked polished. His hair hung down his back in lank tails, like the seaweed under the pier.

  ‘He’s a blackmailer,’ Vasco added.

  ‘Only when it’s really necessary,’ Jed explained.

  ‘Necessary?’ Mitch said. ‘Jesus, what a pair.’

  Vasco grinned at Jed.

  Mitch turned round, the needle-gun in one hand, the spray in the other. ‘So you want this tombstone or what?’

  Vasco sat in a chair, his bare arm braced against the edge of the table. He already had three tombstones. Lucky (obviously he hadn’t been, not very), Jack Frost and Motorboy, their names in blue block-capitals, no dates. Now Scraper.

  Mitch worked without speaking. There was only the buzz of the needle-gun and the hiss of the disinfectant spray. About halfway through, a guy in a sleeveless leather jacket walked in. He showed Mitch his tattoo: a hooded man with a double-sided axe.

  Mitch only took his eyes off Vasco’s tombstone for a moment. ‘It’s shit. Who did it?’

  ‘I got it when I was drunk. Can you fix it?’

  ‘Yeah, I can fix it. For a hundred bucks I’ll put in some background too. Make it look real killer.’

  ‘What about tomorrow?’

  Mitch nodded. ‘Don’t come in here drunk.’

  The guy grinned foolishly and left.

  Mitch looked at Vasco. ‘There are too many of those.’

  Otherwise it was silence. Homage to Scraper.

  Vasco didn’t speak to Jed until they left the place. Then he said, ‘One day I’ll probably be covered with tombstones.’ He turned to Jed, laughing. ‘One of them’ll probably be yours.’

  Jed looked at him, just looked at him.

  Vasco pushed him in the chest, trying to jog the needle that was saying the same thing over and over. ‘No need to get all fucked up about it. It was only a joke.’ He ducked into a doorway, lit a cigarette, then stepped out on to the sidewalk again.

  Jed watched the wind bend the smoke out of Vasco’s mouth and off into nothing. So you’re going to wear my tombstone, he thought. So tell me something. Who’s going to wear yours? Tell me that. Don’t talk to me about I’m fucked up.

  He looked through the tattoos the way you might look through church windows, but before he could see Vasco all laid out like some martyr carved in stone he shook the picture loose and hit Vasco on his arm, the arm that wasn’t a graveyard, hit Vasco so hard that he fell against a store-front and the glass bulged inwards, creaked and almost gave.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Vasco said.

  Jed grinned. ‘Let’s go get a beer or something.’

  Scraper’s funeral was discount. Special offer. Free silver crucifix pendant thrown in. You could always tell. It took place in one of the cemeteries that ringed the northern suburbs. You could see them from the freeway, bare hills covered with a stubble of crosses, bleak places
even in the famous Moon Beach sunshine. The poor were buried there. The lost. The forgotten.

  The Womb Boys arrived early and sat on stones at the top of the slope. Vasco had taken his bandage off, and his memorial to Scraper looked painful; the new bright blue of the tattoo had raised a raw red welt (though, according to Mitch, this only ever lasted a day or two). They watched the hearse trickle along the gravel avenue. Bald tyres, dented fender. A thin squeal as it braked. Vasco scowled and lit another cigarette.

  Two men in moth-eaten black lifted Scraper’s coffin on to a stainless-steel trolley and wheeled it across the grass. They looked like waiters in a cheap restaurant. And then the ultimate insult. Scraper was buried at the bottom of a slope. He wouldn’t even have a view. There were only two people there who hadn’t been paid. A man in a brown suit and a woman in a veil. Scraper’s parents. They looked guilty and ashamed, as if death was a crime their son had committed.

  ‘For Christ’s sake.’ Vasco stood up suddenly. ‘This isn’t a funeral,’ he said, ‘this is a charade.’

  That night Jed and Vasco sat up late, working on a plan of revenge. It was Jed’s first active contribution and he was gratified to find that Vasco backed almost every one of his suggestions. The following evening Vasco called a meeting in the house on Mangrove Heights. The gang assembled in the dining-room at nine o’clock. Tall white candles burned in the two silver candelabras that Tip had stolen from a church the week before. Mario rolled overhead like distant thunder.

  Vasco rose to his feet.

  ‘This time we’re taking extreme measures. This time,’ and he smiled grimly, ‘it’s Gorilla warfare.’

  So he’d heard the whispers with those ears of his. So he knew his name. Laughter shook the room.

  ‘What’ve you got in mind?’ Cramps Crenshaw asked.

  Vasco passed his hand across a candle’s flame, then looked down at his blackened palm. ‘Another fire.’

  Two nights later they met outside the construction site of a new funeral complex in Meadowland. It was on the far side of the river, just south of Sweetwater. Standing by the security fence, Jed suddenly remembered this area as fields. When he was young, Pop had taken him for walks here and, together, they’d given names to things. There was an old dead tree that Pop had called Winchester because it was the vague shape of a rifle and because he couldn’t be called Winchester himself. Jed peered through the fence at the levelled ground, he peered at the yellow bulldozers, the colour of cowardice, and suddenly he felt the anger Vasco felt. A different root, but just as strong.