The Five Gates of Hell

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘One time we’re driving along the promenade and these kids start giving us shit. McGowan, he rolls the window down and leans out, with his head all shaved and mirrors on his eyes, and he says, “You’re going to die,” he says, real quiet but so they can hear. “You’re going to die and we’re going to bury you.”’ Jed grinned and drained his glass.

  ‘Nice guy,’ Nathan said.

  ‘McGowan,’ Jed said, and shook his head. ‘We used to call him the Skull.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘It was just the look of him. We all had names. There was the Skull, there was Pig, and Vasco was called Gorilla, just like in the old days. Then there was Meatball –’

  ‘Meatball? Why Meatball?’

  ‘No neck. His head just kind of sat on his shoulders. So we called him Meatball. He was there for entertainment.’

  I was your entertainment once, Nathan thought. But he pushed the memory back.

  ‘What about you, then?’ he said. ‘What were you called?’

  ‘Spaghetti.’

  Nathan laughed. ‘This guy, sounds like he could’ve opened a restaurant.’ He held up his glass. ‘Want another?’

  Jed nodded. Nathan went up to the bar and came back with two more beers.

  ‘It was real power.’ Jed scraped at his cheek with one long fingernail. ‘The things we did then, they were on a different level.’

  ‘So I don’t get it. Why did you leave?’

  ‘I did a job for Creed. Job like that, you get your hands dirty. I had to leave.’

  Nathan nodded as if he understood.

  ‘I ended up in a small town in the desert, you wouldn’t’ve heard of it. I worked in an ice-cream parlour. I sold ice-cream.’ Jed’s face opened like a cave, and Nathan felt a chill pass through. Old bones and spiders, centuries of damp. ‘Fudge Ripple, Swiss Chocolate Almond, Pecan Buttercrunch,’ Jed said, ‘you name it. I sold them all.’

  Nathan couldn’t see it, somehow. ‘You like ice-cream?’

  ‘I fucking hate the stuff.’

  They laughed over that for a while.

  ‘And now you’re back,’ Nathan said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Got anything planned?’

  ‘Yeah,’ and Jed leered, ‘I got something planned.’

  But when he asked Jed about it Jed just shook his head and, lifting his glass again, tipped his chin into the air and slid the beer down his throat, it lay straight and gold along the side of the glass, it looked as if he was swallowing a sword. Then he put his hands flat on the table, stood up, walked over to the jukebox.

  Nathan checked his watch. Almost twelve-thirty. When he looked up again, Georgia was sitting next to him. She was dressed for business. All in black except for a denim jacket and an amber necklace.

  ‘That guy you’re with,’ she said, ‘he’s really ugly.’

  Nathan smiled. ‘I know.’

  ‘You been waiting long?’

  ‘About two hours.’

  ‘That’s not bad for me. I’m practically early.’ She sounded breathless, as if she’d been whirled round and round and bits of her were coming loose.

  It was still the funeral, he thought. That was what a funeral did. It climbed down into your bones and hid. And every now and then it jumped back out again, took hold of you, and shook you till you rattled.

  Jed slid back into his seat. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘new blood.’

  ‘Who’s this?’ Georgia asked.

  ‘We used to know each other,’ Nathan said. ‘Years ago.’

  ‘Old friends,’ Jed said.

  Nathan turned to Georgia. ‘Did you get it?’

  She lit a cigarette. ‘In the end. I had to go out to Sweetwater. Great name for nowhere, that. Hasn’t even got any water at all, let alone sweet. Who names these places? Jesus.’ She blew smoke across the room and shook her head. Then she seemed to realise it was over with, she’d got where she was going to. She slumped back in the seat, let her head slip sideways till it was resting against Nathan’s shoulder. ‘Sorry I was so long.’

  He smiled. ‘Like you said, you’re practically early.’

  ‘Sweetwater,’ Jed said. ‘That’s a real dump.’

  ‘You know it?’ Georgia asked him.

  ‘Used to live there. Every time a plane went over, you had to shout. If you had a bath, you got waves in it.’

  Georgia looked at him. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘They call him Spaghetti,’ Nathan said.

  ‘They used to call me that,’ Jed said, ‘but it’s not my real name.’

  ‘What’s your real name?’ Georgia said. ‘Lasagne?’

  Jed’s smile was a thin flexing of the lips. You’re on the border, it said. Don’t step over it.

  ‘His real name’s Jed,’ Nathan said.

  Georgia was frowning. ‘That’s not very Italian.’

  ‘Who said anything about Italian?’ Jed said.

  ‘So why Spaghetti?’ But her interest was fading, she was looking round. ‘I think it’s time for the bathroom.’

  In two minutes she was back again.

  ‘So what are we doing?’ Nathan said.

  ‘Let’s go back to the house,’ she said. ‘There’s a pool. There’s videos.’ She took hold of Nathan’s arm. ‘We won’t have it for ever.’

  ‘What about Harriet?’ he said. ‘And Yvonne.’

  ‘They’ll be asleep, dummy.’

  ‘It’s a long way.’

  ‘We’ll get a taxi.’

  ‘We don’t need a taxi,’ Jed said. ‘I’ve got a car.’

  Nathan turned to him. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ Jed said. ‘I kind of like driving.’

  They left the bar. Nathan waited on the sidewalk while Georgia bought a couple of six-packs from the all-night liquor store next door. He watched her gesturing under the harsh fluorescent lights. She was making the old man behind the counter laugh. He looked round. Jed was ten yards away, chin tipped in the air, fingers at his throat. Nathan could hear the scratching. Could almost see the dry skin floating to the ground. He walked over to the gutter. It was choked with debris from the day before: flowers, fireworks, skulls. ‘They’ll be asleep,’ he muttered, ‘dummy.’ He must be drunk, he thought, to be talking to himself like this.

  Then Jed was standing next to him. ‘This house we’re going to,’ he said, ‘whose is it?’

  ‘It’s ours,’ Nathan said. ‘We’re selling it. It’s going on the market sometime next week.’

  ‘You got any spare room?’

  Nathan looked up. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, like I said. I only just got back. I haven’t found a place yet.’

  Nathan nudged a skull with the toe of his shoe. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem.’

  The door of the liquor store swung shut on muscular spring hinges. They looked up. Georgia was walking towards them with the beer. They crossed the street to Jed’s car. It was an old Chrysler with steel radials. Mud had dried in streaks behind the wheel arches. Jed must have been driving across country.

  ‘It’s beat up,’ Jed said, ‘but it goes.’

  It looked like it went. The sprawling hood hinted at a powerful engine. The radiator grille had caught flies in its fierce, bared teeth. The numberplate said CREAM 8.

  ‘Nice plate,’ Georgia said.

  ‘Some people don’t get it,’ Jed said. ‘They think I’m in the dairy business. A milkman or something.’

  Laughing, they climbed into the car. They sat in the front, all three of them, with Nathan in the middle. Jed turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled.

  He seemed to know the city well. He took shortcuts all the way across town, streets that Nathan had never even heard of. He drove methodically, seldom raising his speed above thirty-five. Nathan smiled. He could feel Georgia shifting next to him, and knew it was only a matter of time. Sure enough, as they crossed the bridge, she leaned forward.

  ‘You drive very slow,’ she said.
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  ‘It’s habit,’ Jed said.

  She didn’t understand. ‘What do you mean?’

  Nathan turned to her, smiling. ‘He used to drive hearses.’

  There were no further questions.

  When they reached Mahogany Drive, Jed didn’t want to leave his car on the street. He asked if there was anywhere more private. Nathan showed him the small courtyard behind the house.

  ‘It’ll be safe there,’ he said.

  Jed gave him a smile that he couldn’t read.

  They settled in the lounge. It had always been their favourite room. The french windows opening on to the terrace, the pool glittering beyond. Georgia cut some lines. Jed sat in Dad’s red chair and watched TV. He found the cartoon channel, said it was just the right speed. Georgia thought so too.

  ‘How did you two meet?’ she asked.

  ‘Mutual friend,’ Jed said. ‘When we were about twelve.’

  ‘You seen anything of Tip?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘I haven’t seen anything of anyone,’ Jed said. ‘I told you, I’ve been away.’ He smiled. ‘I’m not even back yet, not officially.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nobody knows I’m here.’

  ‘You on the run or something?’ And Nathan couldn’t help laughing.

  Jed took the question seriously. He pulled his sleeve up. ‘You see this tattoo?’ he said.

  Nathan leaned forwards. He saw a series of blue numbers on the inside of Jed’s wrist. ‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Your phone number?’

  ‘That’s a good one,’ Jed said. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard that one.’ And his top teeth glistened and his mouth turned down at the corners. While the smile lasted, he looked exactly like his car. Nathan pictured dead flies spattered on his teeth.

  ‘So what is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a date,’ Jed said.

  ‘The date of what?’

  Jed leaned back in Dad’s red chair. He made them wait. ‘The date I killed someone,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah?’ Nathan didn’t believe it. But then he thought back, all the way back to the shark run, the SUICIDE/YOU FIRST T-shirt, that sense of contamination, and then later, Central Avenue, his vision of the jacket lined with needles, and suddenly he did believe it.

  ‘Anyone we know?’ Georgia asked.

  Jed ignored her. ‘You remember I told you I did a job for a guy called Creed?’

  Nathan nodded.

  ‘Well, that was the job.’ Jed reached for another beer. A snap, a hiss. ‘All that stuff with the Womb Boys, that was just practice for the real thing. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was.’ He stared at the can and then put it down. ‘I had to do things working for Creed, anyone who got close to him, they had to do things, that’s what Creed was like. I had to do things and then,’ and he looked up and suddenly his eyes looked too pale, almost blind, ‘and then,’ he said, ‘I had to leave.’ He took his hat off, turned it in his hands.

  Nathan glanced at Georgia. Georgia shrugged. Nathan looked at Jed again.

  Without his hat on, Jed looked curiously mutilated, raw, no longer whole. The hat seemed such a part of him, almost like a hand or a smile. His pale-brown hair lay flat and lifeless against his skull. A red line crossed his forehead horizontally as if the removal of the hat had been an operation and had left a scar.

  For a while nobody spoke.

  It was during this silence that Nathan heard a creak. He thought he recognised the sound. It had come from the hallway, it was one of the last six stairs. He looked round and saw the tail of the door handle begin to lift. The door had always been hard to open, ever since Dad had painted the leading edge. Even now, years afterwards, it often stuck. The crack it made as it was pushed from the other side made everybody jump.

  The door opened and Yvonne stood in the gap. She had thrown a coat over her nightgown. Her copper hair lifted away from her head on one side where she had slept on it. She clutched her metal box of garlic in her hand. To keep the devils on their toes.

  ‘I heard a voice.’

  She was staring at the red chair, and at Jed, because he was sitting in it.

  ‘I thought it was him. I thought he was calling me.’

  Nathan stood up and walked towards her. ‘Sorry if we woke you, Yvonne.’

  Yvonne looked at him. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Four-thirty,’ Georgia said.

  Yvonne nodded to herself.

  Nathan put his hand on her elbow. ‘Come on, Yvonne,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you back to bed.’

  At the top of the stairs she stopped and turned to him. ‘It wasn’t him,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  She gripped his arm. ‘But who was it?’

  ‘Just a friend.’

  He helped her back into bed and drew the covers over her. She lay on her back, her eyes wide as a child’s.

  ‘I painted him a picture,’ she whispered.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You think he would’ve liked it?’

  ‘Of course he would.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Now you go to sleep.’

  Back in the lounge Jed was still sitting in front of the TV. Nathan sat down next to Jed, but found he couldn’t concentrate. Jed kept scratching himself. First the side of his neck, then an ankle, then his stomach. It was as if his whole body itched, but not all at the same time. Nathan couldn’t help watching. And as he watched he began to imagine the tiny flakes of dead skin building up around the legs of Dad’s chair. He stared at the piece of floor where the chair stood and saw the flakes of skin piling up like snow, and then drifting.

  And suddenly he couldn’t watch any more. He had to say something. ‘Jed?’ he said. ‘You seen Georgia?’

  Jed didn’t look away from the TV. ‘I think she went outside.’

  Out on the terrace birds were beginning to call from the trees, hinges on the door that would soon let morning in. Georgia was sitting on the steps, one leg drawn up against her chest, her cheek resting sideways on her knee. Only the fingers of her right hand moved, twisting the chunks of her amber necklace. The pool trickled and dripped behind her.

  ‘How’s Yvonne?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s all right’

  ‘Her hearing his voice like that,’ and she shuddered.

  He sat down beside her. ‘It was only us. She was half asleep and all mixed up. She’ll have forgotten by morning.’

  It was still dark in the garden, but dawn had spilled across the sky like acid. It dripped down into the trees, eating night from between the branches. The hedge was no longer the silhouette it had been an hour before; hundreds of individual leaves stood out. When you had been up all night, dawn was like a magic trick: even though you knew what was coming, it still managed to surprise you. It was sinister too: you realised just how slowly the world turned, how slowly and relendessly; you realised there was no escaping it.

  Georgia broke the pool’s dark surface with a racing dive. He saw her rise again, her black hair shining, tight against her skull. He looked back towards the house. There was a white face framed in the lounge window. It was Jed, he realised. But not before he’d gone cold. Dad used to stand like that. Stand at the window, looking out into the garden. Then he used to tap on the glass. He couldn’t shout. He had to save his voice, his breath. He couldn’t open the door either and come out. The air itself was dangerous. Too humid, too moist. It collected in his windpipe like moss, it blocked his narrow lungs. Nathan always thought it looked as if Dad was trapped, as if he wanted to get out, but couldn’t. Or he was dead already, under glass. Once, when Dad tapped on the window, Nathan had shouted, ‘Do you HAVE to do that?’ And then, when Dad had looked at him, wounded, he hadn’t been able to explain why he was angry.

  The sudden sound of flung beads. But it was just the water spilling off Georgia’s body as she climbed out of the pool. She stood beside him, wrapped in a thick towel, her hands bunched under her chin. ‘I just remembered. He said he killed someone.’

&n
bsp; Nathan smiled up at her. ‘It was probably just the coke talking.’

  Jed was folded up in the red chair when they went in. One hand supporting his cheek, asleep. The TV was still on. A cartoon chipmunk danced across the lenses of his glasses.

  Georgia tilted her head sideways, read the numbers on his wrist. ‘You’re probably right. It’s probably just some phone number.’ She yawned. ‘I’m going to bed.’ She kissed Nathan on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ She laughed. ‘I mean, afternoon.’

  He waited till she’d left the room, then he looked down at Jed again. The early morning light caught on Jed’s skin like torn fingernails on wool. He touched Jed on the shoulder.

  Jed’s eyes slid open. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘You did kill someone,’ Nathan said, ‘didn’t you?’

  The laughter sifted out of Jed’s nostrils. ‘Where am I sleeping?’ he said.

  And Spring Came For Ever

  He shouldn’t have talked so much.

  The lights turned red and Jed was so angry, he stamped on the brake much harder than he needed to. His bald tyres screeched on the hot asphalt. A woman almost toppled off her gold high-heeled sandals. She was wearing a T-shirt that said I CAME TO MOON BEACH AND LIVED.

  BUT ONLY JUST, Jed thought, through gritted teeth. BUT ONLY JUST.

  It was Monday morning. The sun cut down through the sky like a guillotine. He could still feel all that beer and cocaine behind his eyes, he could still feel them in his blood, like grit. His skin didn’t seem to fit this morning. He should’ve known better. He had to keep his eyes clear, his blood pure.

  He drove down the promenade and parked close to the Ocean Café. This was where he was supposed to be meeting Carol. He was early. He sat behind the wheel, the radio murmuring. He watched people in bright clothes flash by like parts of a headache. Friday night. OK, so he’d talked too much. But really, who was going to remember? Nathan and that sister of his, they were both so trashed, he doubted they’d remember anything. And even if they did, what of it? Stories about murder and tattoos and gangs, who’d believe stories like that, specially in cold daylight.

  He leaned back in his seat, tucked a piece of candy into his cheek, sucked on it thoughtfully. Stories were his ticket to places, they always had been. Now they’d taken him to Blenheim. The word brought a smile to his face. Say there actually were vultures on his tail. They’d never dream of looking in Blenheim. It just wasn’t him. It wasn’t anything like him. He’d really landed on his feet this time.