When he wanted more substance, he would step right through them as he had with young Joe.
He stole the history of a renowned chef and for a little while knew how to make a soufflé and perfectly roast a tender cut of meat.
He stole the history of a truck driver and knew how to keep awake for many hours, how to make one punch count, how to know which hitchhiker would likely not kill you.
He stole the history of a young woman, because she walked with such confidence he wanted to know what that felt like. He was surprised by her. He expected perhaps lovers, hardline at the office, the feeling of high heels, the sense of success.
He saw murder.
Her name is Alison, but she calls herself Allara. Always has. Alison is for dull girls and she isn’t dull, never dull. At five years old she knew she wanted to be rich and that’s what she worked towards. She didn’t care what she did. She always said that it is the time when you are not working which identifies you properly. A lot of parties. More parties than Alvin imagined anyone could go to, although he’d heard them in the street. Sometimes they’d invite him, a note in the letterbox, ‘All welcome’ in small letters although he knew it didn’t really include him. Once he’d walked as far as the gate, but the sight of all those strangers, the idea of standing amongst them, touching them, made him turn and go back home. Close the windows, turn up the TV, pretend it wasn’t happening. Allara doesn’t mind parties. She loves them. She loves strangers more than anything else, because you can amuse a stranger easily, they don’t know your tricks. She doesn’t like long term friends, doesn’t like boyfriends. All too needy and demanding.
She likes night time lovers she can leave at dawn. She likes breakfast alone, she likes smoked salmon on wheat toast, likes tea, she hates coffee. She is in control is always in control except that night six days ago and that she will never forget.
She will forget.
This one she met at a nightclub, tall, dark eyes, there’s always one in the nightclub who everyone wants and usually Allara doesn’t care, she won’t work too hard for it but this one walked over the feet of other women to get to her. What did he see in her he wanted? Later, at his house, when he tied her up in a soundproofed room and held a long, thin knife to her thigh, she said, “Did I look like a victim? What?” He’d drugged her, that was clear, and she was furious with herself.
“Most women don’t talk at this stage,” he said. He went to a cupboard and pulled out a small box. In it, a dozen women’s watches. Maybe more. “I like to know the time,” he said.
“Is that supposed to be funny? Are you supposed to be the Terminator or something? It’s not actually funny. Predictable, I’d say. Boring.” She actually yawned, but Alvin knew how much effort this cost her. She was used to bluffing men who thought they were stronger than her. She was good at it. “What happens if I need to throw up? Whatever you gave me is making me feel sick.”
“Just don’t.”
“It’s not something you can stop.” Allara began to make vomiting noises. Like her cat. Her cat did this coughing up a hairball.
He looked at her in disgust. His house was very clean, smelt of disinfectant and air purifier. She turned her head to her shoulder as if blocking her mouth.
“All right, go in the toilet,” he said. He untied her, holding the knife to her throat. He dragged her to the bathroom. Her hand over her mouth. She stumbled, faked stumbling, faked weakness. He pushed her inside.
She really did vomit; she didn’t have to fake that. There were no weapons in the bathroom, not even any glass jars. Only a toilet brush, nestled in a tall silver case.
Dry retching, she scooped vomit toilet water into the silver case. Filled it. She knocked on the door.
“I’m ready,” she said quietly. He opened the door cautiously and she threw it, the whole foul thing, right in his face. She only need a second; he covered his face with his hands, grunting, and she kicked up, high into his groin once, hard down on his shin twice, then, when he moved his hands to protect his groin, both thumbs right into his eye sockets. Pulled his ankles, hard, so he landed on his head, dragged him (strong) onto the bed and tied him up so hard his hands would be blue in minutes.
Alvin felt all this, felt the power of it. He’d never done anything like it, never even close, never even stood his ground when someone pushed in front in the bus queue.
Allara left the killer lying on his bed and she went home. She took his watch with her.
Alvin saw why she didn’t report him to the police. She had him still tied there. And each day, she’d go and throw more filth on him. She planned to call the police in a day or two. She didn’t want him to die. But she wanted him to suffer, to feel this terror, to be sure he was going to die. He lay in shit on a soaking wet mattress and he cried when he saw her, whimpered.
Alvin felt this like a thrill, like a bolt of electricity.
~~~
Allara leant against the wall, emptied. She looked at her watch, his watch, as if that would give her some clue, and she pulled out her purse to check her own ID. Alvin thought she was one of the smartest people he’d stolen history from.
Alvin breathed quickly, trying to numb the pain he always felt on exiting a person.
“Are you all right?” she said. She put out her hand to him. If he didn’t know, hadn’t seen a filth-covered murderer tied to a bed, he would imagine her a sweet person, nothing but goodness.
It was strange to be looked at, spoken to, by the person whose history had made his body solid. It felt wrong, almost like watching himself masturbate.
Still solid, he stepped into a phone booth and called the police station. He asked for Detective King, a man who’d at least noticed him and whose brain he respected.
“I’d like to report a murderer.”
She hadn’t moved. She looked at her phone as if expecting a familiar name to pop up there. She looked again at her drivers’ license, then up and down the street.
Alvin had already faded or he would at least have directed her home.
Reported in the news the next day, Allara would not know what ‘Serial Killer Found’ meant. Shockwaves through the community. Abhorrence. Relief. Alvin was proud to have played a part. There was no indication the police were looking for Allara.
He loved helping the police, and he started to follow them around. Sometimes Detective King, but sometimes the street police, following without them knowing, learning from them and watching their mistakes.
There was a violent incident, the stabbing of a gay man in an alley at the back of the pub. There were no witnesses but plenty of observers now, sitting in the pub drinking beer.
There were five police in there, notepads out, asking questions. Trying to win the crowd over, get the right words out of them.
“Which of you did it?” one cop said, wanting the easy way out. “Which of you saw something?” They all laughed, and he did too. They walked around the room checking driving licenses, seeing who was who. That was all they’d be able to do unless they had something to go on.
The observers were silent. They didn’t like the cops being there. They drank their beers, nudged each other, looked at the cops with eyes half closed. They had drugs in pockets, they had weapons in the toilet, they had things they didn’t want known.
Alvin ran his hands through each shoulder until he found the one whose heart beat faster, who tasted blood in the back of his throat. He pressed his shoulder into the man’s chest and stole these words:
Killing a faggot isn’t murder.
Alvin stepped inside this one and stole his history. He’d picked correctly; freshest was the feeling of the knife plunging into the victim’s chest, the sound of it coming out, the quick wipe and where the knife was hidden. There would be evidence in the man’s home of homophobia and photos on his phone of other crimes.
Alvin felt a greater sense of self-belief in this man than any other he’d entered. No sense of his own stupidity (why sit in the pub and drink? This pub? Why not drink e
lsewhere and perhaps come back in a week, when the crime is forgotten?) and a great disdain for the police; they won’t catch me I’m smarter than them I don’t care how much school they had they won’t catch me.
This one had the taste of onions on his breath, his skin was rough. He had three children who he loved with a deep passion and Alvin could see this man would kill for them. Thought he had killed for them, that ‘faggots’ would destroy their world. He saw that this man (he was Dean) would protect children because he had not been protected. Only his older brother, dead, why take him why take him and leave these others on earth.
~~~
Made flesh by this, Alvin said quietly to the police closest to him, “It was the one with the death metal t- shirt. He threw the knife on the roof. His friends will turn on him for the following reasons. One called Pete, he slept with his girlfriend. One called Will, he stole money from him. One called Dylan is a childhood friend. He killed his cat.”
The cop wrinkled his brow. “Do I know you? Worked with you? How do you know this stuff?” He reached out. Alvin stepped back into the shadows. He could feel the back of the chair as his legs touched it, but the feeling faded. He loved the sensation.
He could smell the perfume of the women around him and it made him think of Allara. He wondered if she was at home, all right, wished he could see her. He wished he’d known her as a live person because she seemed kind, as kind as Mrs. Moffat, and she was strong and would help him clean out his house. Sort out his father’s clothes, his mother’s crockery. She’d help him make the house nice to live in.
She wouldn’t, though. He knew that. He knew now how people behaved, and that the only way she’d notice him was in pity.
~~~
Word spread of Alvin. He hung around the cops and sometimes they’d call for him, although none of them recognized him. He liked solving the crimes.
He didn’t want to steal the history of the old man. Not that old, sixty-five, but old enough. Suspected of a series of rapes, granny rapes they were called but most of the women were true loners, no family. No grandchildren. Most of them had to call police themselves, get themselves an ambulance. Most of them had nobody. This old man, Billy, one of a dozen or more suspects.
Alvin liked leaving the guilty blank, although regretted that this meant they couldn’t feel the guilt.
He made sure the police understood the consequences of stealing history. “You realise they will no longer remember, once I’ve taken it? You gotta be damn sure he’s guilty. Once I suck the history, he’s not getting it back.”
“That’s all right. We’ll work around it.” They all began to understand that he wasn’t always there, couldn’t always be seen. But they had worked with psychics in the past and this, this was just another variation.
The hardest part was following through with the information. Because he was them, he felt them, and it seemed as if he was turning himself in.
Alvin thought that if Billy was guilty, he shouldn’t be allowed the release that taking his history would give him, but the man didn’t feel guilt anyway. Alvin didn’t want this history, but the police convinced him. “We need him. We need this guy done for. You can help us.”
And he did. Saw what others couldn’t see and the grannies were safe. There was always evidence, things left behind. There were always frightened people who could be more frightened by someone bigger and scarier.
Calls himself Billy, always did, makes people feel friendly towards you, name like that, makes them think you never quite grew up and you’re childlike boylike a lotta fun with a good sense of humour. But they don’t laugh at even your best jokes they just smile with that vague old lady smile which is supposed to be polite but is rude as all fuck, rude as all fuck smiling at me when you don’t mean it.
He’s Billy but he’s also William, working quiet in the corner, 35 years in the office and no one comes to him for the corporate knowledge, do they? No one asks him what he knows until the day he retires and they send him off as if surprised he’s still there. They don’t know what’s inside his head. He’s seen every last one of them stripped naked begging for it. Male and female, they’re all begging for it and he’s the one to help them. Good things come in quiet packages and they know it, begging for it.
The ones begging the hardest are the old ladies. All done up with their nice shoes bought 40 years ago and their coats reeking of moth balls because they don’t think a coat needs cleaning, not when you just wear it shopping every day for a hundred years. Stockings, the brown stockings, that’s what gets him going and he could never tell you why but pinching the nylon of the thigh? Squeezing it up and then getting the fingernails in and tearing? Don’t get me started do get me started I’m started just thinking about it.
~~~
Detective King shook Alvin’s hand gently. “I’m still a bit concerned we can see you like this. Just for a little while. But you’re doing good work. Very, very good work.”
“That wasn’t too pleasant.”
“Think nice thoughts. Think about pretty things. That’s what I do. Dandelion heads. Smell of peach blossom. Taste of mango. Think of that kind of thing.”
“Sometimes I think of Mrs. Moffat. Remember her?” Alvin felt breathless. He didn’t usually make such honest statements.
“We all remember her. Lovely lady. Tragic. Tragic. That husband of hers still locked up, you know. She’s still on her lonesome, far as we know. Couple of us keep track, make sure she’s okay, you know? Tragic life. Tragic.”
Some nights he struggled to keep all the history separate. Parts of it he forgot, but some he would remember forever. The suck of history is always stronger in the place it happened. Alvin learnt to smell it in the air, hear the echo.
Sometimes on these confusing nights he would wander, looking for Allara. He knew where she lived; he remembered that from being her. But she was no longer there and he wondered if she had made it home. It made him even lonelier, thinking of her.
~~~
His body became sludge, then bones. The imaginary nuns were left alone and he managed to collect his mail when he was flesh. Each day, like a real job, he went to the police station.
He loved taking history. Live the lives he never lived. Though sometimes he tired of stealing the history of the guilty and wanted innocent history.
He entered Number Eight, a house full of noise and light. He’d never dared speak to them because they seemed so enclosed, so happy. They had a lot of friends and he wasn’t one of them. He took the history of the son, a surprising history of cruelty to animals, a fascination with blood.
Miss Evans is so mean and she hates me. Mum thinks she is just young and getting used to the kids but she hates me and Mum isn’t on my side. She told the principal and the principal said I had to be better behaved but this Miss Evans is the one. If I make her sad she might be nicer. If I kill her cat she will be nicer and if I let her know it was me she will hate me even more but if I’m nice to her about her cat and give her a card with a cat on it to make her cry she won’t hate me any more.
Alvin felt sadness, that there was no innocence in the world. He had lived a life so protected. He wondered if he should approach Miss Evans, who clearly had some pain ahead of her, but decided against it. It was not his business. Not his concern.
Back in his home, he stared at the candle, one glowing item in his dark house, lit or not. He thought of her, Mrs. Moffat. He wasn’t alone in finding her delightful. The other cops made jokes (were they jokes? Alvin passed his arm through a shoulder and discovered; no. serious) that they would go comfort her in her long time of loneliness. She didn’t even have her father now; he’d been placed in an old people’s home.
If there was one thing Alvin had learnt, it was that the subtle approach could work. She’d think he was crazy if he appeared before her, slavering. This way he could watch her at her best, with her father.
He knew he could have followed her everywhere, watched her at her daily activities but he would not d
o that. That was not the sort of person he was. She might come to know him and perhaps he could stay with her sometimes, sit in her loungeroom while she stuffed envelopes for charity. Cooked for new parents. All the things he was sure she did.
He waited, instead, in the foyer of the home her father lived in. Sat and waited, invisible in the chair near the harsh-voiced receptionist, watching the comings and goings.
A visit to an old person’s home was ripe with possibility, full of history. Leaving them lost for thought and diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Alvin sometimes wondered how many sufferers were that way because their history had been stolen. It crossed his mind.
Alvin didn’t take much of them after a while because sometimes the memories were tattered. Hard to tell truth from false memory.
The older they were, the scratchier the history. He knew he had to get them before the history started to disintegrate.
When he had a body, he could smell when the history had turned. Women in particular took on a greasy scent once they become of a certain age. Once they passed the age of procreation, they lost their sensual allure.
There were perfumes developed to cover this up. To counteract the nasty smell of history rotting on the breath.
He watched the innocence of old age. Old faces look innocent. Lines of age hiding all other clues. They could have done anything, these people, but now all they were was old.
He didn’t care or think of the fact that history was lost once he stole it. He forgot the stories, usually, and the stories were lost to them. All their experiences, all the things that justified a life.
He heard people say that Mrs. Moffat’s father was the last living person to have seen Dame Nellie Melba perform. He was five when he saw her sing and always his favourite dessert was Peach Melba. He would never taste it again.
~~~
Quiet and unseen, Alvin watched as Mrs. Moffat arrived. Followed her to her father’s small mauve room.
The Gate Theory Page 6