The Five Gates of Hell

by Rupert Thomson

  He got out at Mangrove Central. Tip was already waiting at the barrier. The clock in the ticket office said ten-thirty.

  ‘You’re late,’ Tip said.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ and Nathan grimaced, ‘had to wait for my old man to go to bed, didn’t I?’

  Blackwater Bay lay at the east end of the harbour, but from Mangrove Central it was inland, due north. It was an area that he’d been taught to avoid, and he moved on light feet, as if the streets could open up and swallow him. He didn’t know where he was, and said as much to Tip. Tip just nodded, his eyes swivelling in their swollen lids. He was chewing a huge knot of gum. There was no place left for talk. Nathan felt a tightening in his belly now. He felt he was walking towards his own slaughter. No, not walking towards it. Being led.

  ‘This shark run,’ he said, as casually as he could manage, ‘anyone done it before?’

  ‘Scraper did it once.’

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  Tip nodded. ‘PS did it too.’

  Great. Just great. Scraper had always been a guinea-pig. If someone had an idea, they always tried it out on old Scraper. He was one of those people who’d do anything. He had a slack smile that covered both pain and pleasure, so you couldn’t tell what he was feeling, you couldn’t tell the difference. If you’d told him to cut his head off, he would’ve done it, and that smile’d still be on his face afterwards. As for PS, he was nuts. He’d do it for a dare. Just as long as you didn’t make him take those phones off his head. It was no consolation to hear that Scraper and PS had done the shark run, no consolation at all. He wished he’d never asked.

  They were walking along Five Dock Road. Trees lined one side, the grey grass of a park between. Dockyards on the other. This was the east end of the harbour, more than a mile from the bridge. The water stopped here. Half a dozen bays of stagnant, black water, the surface smeared with oil slicks, condoms, orange peel, insults hurled at the water by the land.

  They passed a row of padlocked gates: ALLIED COAL. PIONEER CEMENT. STERLING SHIP REPAIRS AND ENGINEERING. They paused to watch a crane sink its jaws into the open hold of a ship and rise again with a mouthful of coal, dust spilling from between its teeth, grey against the brown night sky, then Tip nudged Nathan in the ribs, held his watch up, and they hurried on.

  They turned down an alley, crossed a narrow iron bridge that spanned a canal. The canal had smooth, concrete banks and held no more than a couple of feet of water, water that was sealed in by a lid of green slime. Metal spars stuck out, like the elbows of people who’d drowned. They climbed over a gate and suddenly they were walking on grass. A breeze clattered in the palm trees that bordered the canal. The grass sloped down to a wall of loose rocks. Beyond the rocks lay the harbour.

  ‘This is the place,’ Tip said, and Nathan, who’d been hoping they’d never arrive, began to shiver.

  As he looked round he saw several figures moving towards him. They fanned out in an arc, ten-feet gaps between them, like a net trawling for fish. The net closed and suddenly Vasco was standing in front of Tip, black leather coat and a cigarette in the shelter of his palm. He pulled on the cigarette and in the brief red glow Nathan saw the faces of the Womb Boys: José PS Mendoza, Cramps Crenshaw, Slim Jimmy Chung, Jed Morgan, Thomas Baby Vail, two others he didn’t know the names of, and the ghost of Scraper O’Malley, half his face caved in, inlaid with silver from that fast car’s fender. They were all there, passing a bottle around. Scraper drank too, twisting his mouth away from the wound.

  Vasco spoke to Tip. ‘It’s almost eleven. What kept you?’

  ‘Trains’re fucked up.’ Tip took the bottle and swallowed a mouthful, then he wiped his lips on his sleeve.

  Why had he lied? Maybe, Nathan thought, because you didn’t mention things like family to Vasco. He wouldn’t’ve known what you were talking about.

  Vasco pulled on his cigarette again, let the breeze haul the smoke across his teeth. He turned to Nathan. ‘You’ve got a pretty bad reputation.’

  Nathan looked at his feet.

  ‘That stuff you’ve been doing, you’ve been doing it at God camp. God don’t like that, Christie. I don’t like it either.’

  ‘I got into his bed, that’s all. I thought –’

  ‘That’s all.’ Vasco laughed, and two or three gang members joined in.

  ‘I was sleepwalking,’ Nathan said.

  Jed stepped forwards. He was wearing a T-shirt that said SUICIDE PACT on the front. On the back it said YOU FIRST. ‘You were what?’ he said.

  ‘I was sleepwalking.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘I was. I’ve been sleepwalking for years. Ever since –’

  ‘Ever since what?’ Jed had come a step closer. Nathan could see the dead flakes of skin on his face.

  ‘Nothing’

  ‘OK, this is the thing,’ Vasco said. ‘He does the shark run. If he gets taken, he’s innocent. If he survives, he’s guilty. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ shouted the Womb Boys.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Nathan said.

  Jed stretched his head out on his long, reptile neck and leered into Nathan’s face. ‘Who the fuck said anything about fair?’

  Vasco lifted one arm towards the water. ‘See that?’ He was pointing at a warehouse that had the words VENUS ISLAND CONTAINER TERMINAL painted across its metal roof.

  Nathan nodded.

  ‘What you got to do is, you got to swim to it,’ Vasco said. ‘That’s the shark run.’

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ Nathan said. ‘Why’s it called the shark run?’

  Sniggers from the gang.

  Vasco led him down to the waterline and showed him a sign that was mounted on a metal pole. On the sign was the silhouette of someone swimming freestyle with a red bar drawn through it. Below it were the words DANGER SHARKS.

  ‘That’s why,’ Vasco said.

  Nathan looked round, caught Tip’s eye.

  ‘PS did it,’ Tip said.

  ‘You told me that,’ Nathan said.

  ‘Wore his headphones,’ Jed said. ‘So he wouldn’t hear the sharks coming.’

  PS was nodding. Though he might just’ve been nodding to the imaginary music in his head.

  ‘This is different,’ Vasco said. ‘This is a trial.’

  ‘If a shark gets you,’ Jed said, ‘you won’t feel anything. Just cold.’ He leered. ‘Just cold where a piece of you’s gone.’

  Vasco nodded. ‘Yeah, I heard that too.’

  Nathan stared out into the bay. A few weeks before they’d found a girl’s body floating six miles off the coast. She’d been swimming on Moon Beach and a shark had taken her. Her name, he remembered, was Shelley. According to her mother, Shelley had always been ‘real strong in the water’.

  Vasco pulled his sleeve up and pointed at the tombstone tattoo on his bicep. The name on the stone was Scraper O’Malley. No dates. ‘Just think,’ he said. ‘You could be next.’ His teeth shone in the moonlight. ‘That’s what you’re here for, in this shit-forsaken town. To die. To end up on my arm. I’ll carry the lot of you before I’m through,’ and he tipped his head back, and his laughter was so dry it was like sticks snapping in his throat, and his shoulders shook under his famous leather coat.

  There was a hysteria to Vasco, and it was the first time Nathan had been close enough to notice it. The members of Vasco’s gang, they followed him because they couldn’t follow him. Nobody could go where he went, but seeing someone do that, it made you want to try. They got as close as they could, and when people did that it looked like some kind of worship. Nathan felt the power of this, the blast, like heat from a furnace, and for a moment he forgot to feel scared.

  Tip took the bottle off PS. ‘Here,’ he said to Nathan. ‘Have some, it’ll keep you warm.’

  ‘Yeah,’ PS said, ‘kept me warm,’ and he opened his mouth to laugh and left it open, but no laughter came out. So he closed it again and went on listening to music that didn’t exist.

  Nathan didn’t bother
looking at the label. He just raised the bottle to his lips and swallowed twice. Handed the bottle back again. Nothing at first, then the whole of his insides lit up. He stripped down to his shorts and felt the breeze move curious fingers across his skin, as if it was blind and trying to work out who he was. He climbed over the cold, slippery rocks, climbed down to the water’s edge. So black it looked, just like its name, with bits of smashed gold from the lights on the highway. Feel your way in slow, Tip had told him. There’s all kinds of shit in there. The clash and sneeze of a truck as it shifted gears on the causeway. He wasn’t thinking of the danger, of the sharks. He was too preoccupied with how strange it felt to be standing at the edge of the harbour in the middle of the night with nothing on. The world had never felt so big.

  The water rose past his knees. Another couple of feet and he’d be able to push himself forwards and begin. Over his shoulder he could see the Womb Boys fanned out on the rocks. Silent now, just watching. This was their evening’s entertainment. A small red light glowed. Vasco’s cigarette. Like the light that shows on a machine when the power’s on. No use delaying this. He faced the container terminal again and pushed himself forwards, into the harbour.

  He swam breaststroke, that way he could keep his head out of the water. It also meant he couldn’t cut through the water as efficiently, it meant he was slower. The waves were small, but they came in quick succession, they kept slapping him in the face, always on the same cheek. He tasted oil on his lips.

  Halfway across he heard Dad’s voice. Wrap up warm, Dad was saying. Don’t forget to wrap up warm.

  Nathan began to laugh. He drank the harbour, one mouthful, then another. He was choking now. He had to stop, tread water, he had to fight for breath. And that was when the fear took hold, in that moment, when he was upright in the water, when his legs were dangling, he pictured what might be lying on the bottom, there’d be bodies, there’d be people who’d turned blue with cold down there, and what if one of them reached up and seized him by the ankle, and then he remembered the sharks, their teeth sinking into him, their grip like ice, just cold where a piece of you’s gone, and he began to swim as fast as he could, he switched to freestyle, swam the way he swam when he was swimming for the city, he was back in the pool on Sunset Drive, he tasted chlorine now instead of oil, he even heard the cheering, that tinny rushing sound, and the next time he looked up he was only twenty-five yards out, and he still had his legs, and he could see the Womb Boys sitting on a parapet, they must’ve run round by the highway, or else Vasco had stolen a car again, he was always doing that, apparently, that was why he’d been expelled.

  He lowered his legs, but his feet sank into sludge, so he swam as close to the island as he could and then crawled the last few yards on hands and knees, through the shallows, over cans and bottles and plastic bags, and up on to the towpath, and it wasn’t until then that he heard the voices:

  ‘Guil-ty, guil-ty, guil-ty.’

  Vasco stepped forwards. ‘Sharks must be busy someplace else tonight,’ he said, and everybody laughed.

  Nathan wanted to join in, but it was hard to laugh, his teeth were chattering too much. He was beginning to shiver again, and the wind made his skin feel like metal.

  ‘Where are my clothes?’

  Tip threw him his clothes. Nathan wrapped himself in his sweater, and stood hunched, his hands clasped under his chin. Tip handed him the bottle, almost empty now. He took a mouthful, swilled it round, and spat it on the concrete.

  ‘That water,’ Vasco said, ‘bet that water tastes real bad.’

  PS pushed his phones away from his ears. ‘Swallowed about half of it myself,’ he said. ‘Never been the same since.’ And slid his phones back over his ears again. Tss-Tss-Tss.

  The gang howled. PS and his jokes.

  Jed came over. ‘Bet you were shit-scared.’

  ‘Anyone would’ve been,’ Nathan said. ‘You would’ve been too.’

  Jed pushed his thin lips out and shook his head.

  ‘Yeah, you would,’ Nathan said.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Jed said and, reaching behind him, he produced the sign that said DANGER SHARKS. ‘There’s no sharks out there.’

  Nathan was staring at the sign.

  ‘Yeah, it’s the same sign,’ Jed said. ‘Vasco got it a few weeks back. Didn’t you, Vasco?’

  Vasco was smoking a cigarette on the parapet. He seemed bored now, his fires had burned low. He blew a long slow trumpet of smoke into the night. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Ripped it off from some beach. Some beach somewhere.’ He eased down off the wall and flicked his stub into the harbour. Tss. ‘Let’s split.’ He had this way of talking to nobody in particular. The sky or something. But everybody listened.

  The Womb Boys began to slope off down the causeway. Nathan picked up the rest of his clothes and was about to follow them when Jed barred his way. ‘Not you.’

  He had to find his own way back. By the time he got home, it was after two. Closing the front door, his hand slipped and the lock snapped shut.

  ‘Shit,’ he whispered, and stood in the hallway, listening.

  He heard a creak from Dad’s bed and a click as Dad’s bedroom door opened. Dad’s voice, wary and thin, floated down from the landing. ‘George?’

  Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Nathan saw Dad appear at the top, one hand clutching the banisters.

  ‘It’s me, Dad. Nathan. I’m just going to bed.’

  ‘I thought I heard the front door.’

  ‘No, it must’ve been the kitchen you heard.’

  Luckily, Dad’s head was blurred with all the pills he took to sleep. The front door and the kitchen door made completely different sounds. Normally he would’ve realised that.

  ‘Please try and be quiet, Nathan.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad.’

  A few minutes later he lay down in bed and stared into the darkness above his head. It hurt to lie to Dad and he wished he didn’t have to, but Dad was so fragile and the truth could smash him. He only lied to protect Dad. Isn’t that what you did for someone you loved, lied for them? And his lies were soft, like pillows. They were good lies, he told himself. They were white. And, having convinced himself of that, he turned over, and drifted into sleep.

  When Vasco went missing, Jed didn’t even notice at first. Vasco was always out, doing his rounds or lying low. He always had business to attend to. There was stuff that was hot to be shifted. He was dealing too. Not that Vasco approved of drugs. It was just that he was fighting a war, and drugs were the most efficient way of raising finance. ‘After all,’ he’d say, ‘politicians do it.’ Sometimes he’d be gone for twenty-four hours. Then he’d call Jed from some apartment, some bar. Or he’d simply turn up at the house. Not this time. This time Jed didn’t hear a thing.

  On the third day Jed went upstairs to look for Mario. Maybe Mario would know. Maybe those Gorelli ears had picked something up. He knocked on Mario’s door. Wheels trundled over the floor and the door eased open.

  Over Mario’s head Jed saw dark lounge suits hanging from the picture rail, and sepia photographs of the handkerchief factory in its heyday framed in gold. The light in the room was muted and brown, and the air smelt of Mario’s paraffin lamp and the oil that he used to lubricate the moving parts of his two wheelchairs.

  ‘You know where Vasco is?’ Jed asked.

  Mario seemed irritated. ‘How would I know that?’

  ‘I just thought you might’ve heard something.’

  ‘No.’ And then Mario’s head tipped cunningly on his neck, and the eye nearest to Jed gleamed, and he lurched forwards, as if he’d been shot in the back, a pearl of spittle on his lower lip. ‘I thought I heard a thousand-dollar bill today. Do you think,’ and his eye gleamed up at Jed, shiny as glass, and just as dead, ‘do you think they make thousand-dollar bills?’

  Jed didn’t know about thousand-dollar bills, but he knew about Mario. Just then, suddenly. He knew why Mario had never fucked anyone. Mario was too selfish. He wanted to keep a
ll his sperm to himself. Nobody else deserved it. And so he looked like a Roman emperor and rode around in wheelchairs and pretended he could hear money. What a character, people said. Isn’t he good for his age? they said. But he wasn’t a character and he wasn’t good for his age. He was a piece of shit for his age. He was a fraud.

  ‘There’s no such thing,’ Jed said, ‘and you fucking know it.’

  He didn’t even wait for Mario’s reaction. He whirled out on to the landing and stood there, trembling. He’d have to try Reg. As he stamped off down the corridor, his footsteps fascist on the floorboards, it occurred to him that he’d never actually set eyes on Reg. Not ever. Not even once.

  He knocked on Reg’s door. A silence, then a tiny scraping sound. He could feel Reg staring at him through the Judas eye.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m looking for Vasco.’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  Jed rested his cheek against the door. Like a confessional, only nobody was telling anybody anything. He heard the Judas eye scrape shut, then the creak of floorboards as Reg backed away.

  ‘Reg?’ He knocked on the door again. ‘Reg!’

  But Reg had withdrawn deep into the room. He’d pulled Jesus over his head like a blanket and he wouldn’t be coming out for a long time.

  The streets seemed empty that morning. Jed scoured the neighbourhood. Somebody had to know something. It was a hot day. Only faded curtains stirring lazily in apartment windows.

  At last he found Silence, Tip’s ten-year-old brother, standing in a patch of wasteground, throwing stones at a row of tin cans. It was one of Silence’s favourite things. He couldn’t hear the stone hit the can, or the can hit the ground, but he liked the way it looked.

  ‘You seen Vasco?’ Jed said.

  Silence picked the words off Jed’s lips, neatly, one by one, the way you pick fleas off a dog. He shook his head and began to hunt around in the scrub grass. Eventually he found what looked like a piece of a bicycle. He drew a circle in the mud, a circle with two slit eyes and a downturned mouth.