Adornments of the Storm

by Paul Meloy

  “Let’s see to this boy,” he said, and they left the shop and walked into the arcade.

  THE ARCADE WAS a carnival of life and colour.

  Overhead there was light, weak, watery snow-light. The blackouts had been rolled back and there was opalescence to the air. It was cold and dream-like and frosty but there was activity everywhere. There were floor tiles, jade green marble with Art Deco swirls, and now dust and leaves and shadows had been swept, they shone like something excavated, precious, all the dead years brushed carefully away. Throughout the arcade the units were full, working again, and there were flowers in the stall in bunches in buckets, on shelves and in rows at the front, displayed on the jade tiles, and the scent was blissful and extraordinary

  John turned to Bismuth and whispered, “Are you doing this?”

  Bismuth shook his head, an expression of wonder on his face. “This is how I remember it. As a boy.”

  Lesley and Anna came out of the café to meet them. They saw the boy in Bismuth’s arms. Lesley reached out and touched his pale cheek.

  “He’s alive,” Bismuth said, “but catatonic. I can’t wake him.”

  Anna was looking around, peering past the giant. “Where’s Bix?”

  John explained. Anna and Lesley were distraught for him. Lesley held him, the curls of her hair soft against his cheek. John closed his eyes and cried.

  Bismuth carried the boy to the flower stall. Away from the throat-closing stench of the dump and the staleness of the bombsites, he could smell the boy now, the musty airless smell of thousands of nights spent in that refrigerator as a part of Chapel stored away in oblong darkness, like something fossilised in a chamber of black amber. The scent from the stall drew him. He could hear the voices of his friends, John’s sobs, the clatter and bustle of the working stalls around him. Birds fluttered in the skylights. He could hear the people in the café, their voices constantly raised. He stooped beneath the low, sloping roof and stood amongst the garlands and bouquets. He inhaled, clearing his nose of the noisome dregs still clogging his sinuses. Gradually his head cleared.

  There was a bench at the rear of the stall and he placed the boy on it, laying him so that he was curled on his side, with one arm gently arranged beneath his head to support it.

  He stepped back and waited.

  ANDREW CHAPEL BEHELD the refrigerator.

  It stood, as it had always stood, on its platform of rotting cardboard boxes, its heavy door shut against the existent darkness clamped inside, the true polygon of his deepest nightmares.

  He held the burgundy handbag tight against his chest and tried to breathe. Panic froze him, rising in great distorting tremors through his guts, palpitating his heart. Depersonalisation gripped him, reworking his surroundings into something flimsy and absurd, without the substance to sustain an illusion of reality. Everything threatened to collapse, and in that frailty became itself threatening, teetering, a mockery. Only the refrigerator behaved. Its solidity grew immense, a sarcophagus containing the stirring ruin of a god.

  He could hear it calling. It was incessant, a black, smoking cable being drawn the length of space, reptile-cold and subtle as a concealed blade, and into the ventricles of his mind.

  Now he had the jar and the remains it contained he could no longer resist it. He sobbed and took a step closer to the refrigerator. As clouds gathered overhead, great strokes from a dirty brush on a canvas scorched black, he reached out and took hold of the handle. He felt agitation within the jar and dragged his eyes away from the trembling hand that gripped the handle. He cried out as the light burning inside tore at the backs of his eyes. Fire and nightmares, silhouettes of savageries dancing in rooms boarded from the light.

  Inside the refrigerator they would become one and the containment would break. Wouldn’t you like to be whole? the voice said.

  “Yes,” whispered Chapel, and opened the door.

  DANIEL SWUNG THE jeep off the A217 and into the car park of a small McDonald’s next door to the recycling center. He pulled up in a space at the far end of the car park and switched off the engine.

  “Hungry?” asked Trevena.

  Daniel ignored him. He got out and walked around to the back of the jeep. He lifted a roll of canvas and took something from beneath it that he slipped inside his coat, and then he went to the passenger side and opened the door. He helped Mrs. Chapel out of the jeep. She stood staring ahead without focus, pigeon-toed in her furry boots. Daniel took her arm and led her onto the path that ran around the outskirts of the car park. Trevena followed them.

  Daniel stepped off the path and approached a row of high bushes that bordered the recycling center. He pushed through a narrow gap and took Chapel’s mother through with him. Trevena stuffed his hands in his pocket and glanced over at the McDonald’s, unease gnawing at him. What did they look like? Two men dragging an old lady into some bushes. Fucks sake.

  He ducked through the gap. There was another path running behind the bushes, untended and buckled with weeds. A long palisade security fence ran the length of it. It was at least twelve feet high and each pale ended in a sharp triple-pointed notch. “We’ll never get over that,” Trevena said.

  Daniel winked at him and reached into his coat. He withdrew a formidable-looking crowbar and twirled it in his fist like a baton.

  “Not over,” he said, and knelt down by the bottom of the fence and inserted the crowbar between two of the steel pales. He leaned into it and Trevena could hear him straining. He took a step forward, but heard a sharp crack and two of the pales popped from their rail.

  Daniel looked up and grinned. “Security implications,” he said. “There’s always a way in.” He moved the crowbar along and did the same with the next three pales. He stood up and took hold of the first pale he had forced off. He pulled upwards and Trevena was surprised to see how easily it bent against the high fulcrum of the top rail. He stepped in and helped, pulling the last rails loose.

  Daniel edged through the gap and gently helped Chapel’s mother step over the jagged lip of the bottom rail. Trevena bit his lip, fearful of her catching the backs of her legs on the metal. The parchment skin would tear like an economy bin bag. She made it through unscathed and stood staring into the depths of the recycling center, her mouth half open, dry and soundless.

  Trevena followed and they stood together beneath the glare of the security lights. Daniel took Chapel’s mother’s hand and they walked across the smooth, swept concrete towards the back of the lot.

  CHAPEL STARED AT the interior of the refrigerator, at the yellowed plastic shell discoloured by mould and scuff marks, the rusted freezer compartment built into the top, and saw a sky beyond it, red and streaked with smoky cloud. The image shuddered and shifted sideways as though the fridge had been struck with great force and made to pan across the sky, but the fridge remained there, unmoving on its stack of boxes. Chapel stumbled backwards, still clutching the bag. He couldn’t bring himself to remove the jar even though he felt its desire to be free of the bag. What would it do to his flesh if he pressed his palms against that roaring glass?

  Then the image tipped again and he could see shadows moving against the surface of churned muck. Something blotted the light and Chapel saw the black, draped shape of a monstrous figure as it crashed to the ground and rolled towards the back of the fridge. He apprehended its mass and his skin crawled as it lifted its head slowly from the ground, and the bare skull stapled with shreds of dark flesh hung in the gap. It seemed to gaze through at him, stunned and insensible, the great arms that pushed it up from the ground trembling like the legs of a foal. Its fists ground the dirt.

  And it leapt through the gap.

  Chapel fell backwards and dropped the bag. It hit the concrete with a padded thud, but the heavy Kilner jar didn’t shatter. He kicked his heels and raked himself away from the thing lunging from the refrigerator with the heels of his hands, grazing the flesh, breaking fingernails.

  The creature was trying to force itself through, its great
size wedging it between two worlds. It twisted and bellowed and wrenched an arm through, and this time the refrigerator did move. It rocked and trembled as the creature reached a huge fused fist towards the bag that lay on its side between them. Chapel covered his eyes as the faux-leather began to bubble and melt, turning black and peeling off of the jar. Shafts of diseased light burst from tears in the material and strobed across the yard.

  The creature stopped moving. Its arm froze and its fist stopped reaching and hung, wavering, in the air above the jar. Its skull lifted and peered at Chapel, tilted slightly, the mouth open and baring double rows of teeth. A sound came from the back of its throat, not a bellow, but a whine, and then it was bucking again, the entire refrigerator lifting feet from the ground and slamming down onto the cardboard, as something seized the creature from the rear and gored at it, picking it up and dragging it back to the place with the red, fuming sky.

  Chapel sat forward, his eyes wide and watched as something huge and made of mechanisms of light cast the monster about on colossal pearlescent tusks, winnowing it hollow. It tossed its head a final, exultant time and the monster blew apart. Chapel witnessed this as an abrupt upheaval of brown, wormy meat bursting from the shredded confines of the cape. The elongated skull hit the ground and split along the frontal suture line and the toxic light bled out, dissipating like embers from a smoldering plague pit.

  Chapel glimpsed the creature of light again as it passed across the aperture and stood over the remains of the monster. It lowered its great, blazing head and stirred its tusks through the muck, drawing the cape aside, and seemed to ponder the dissolution for a moment.

  And then it turned and looked at Chapel. Chapel gasped and fell back onto his elbows. The creature was changing. The plates of light that made it and the thrilling wheels that revolved at its heart were fading, powering down. In a moment Chapel found himself looking at a man.

  The man held out a hand.

  Chapel got to his feet. The jar lay on its side. The bag had burned away almost completely and the jar lay on a bed of melted plastic. He approached it, shielding his eyes from the awful light that pulsed within it. It was weaker now, fluttering, but still wormed at his retinas. And he could still hear the call, desperate now, imploring, promising meaning and wholeness. Wholeness in hell, but wholeness nonetheless.

  He touched it with the toe of his shoe, rolling it away from the remains of the bag. He took off his jacket and threw it over the jar, concealing its contents, and the light that blazed from the eyes of the thing inside.

  The man was still standing on the other side of the refrigerator. He was beckoning. He stepped forward and was about to reach through the aperture but as he did so, Chapel heard a voice.

  “Andrew.”

  Chapel turned slowly, his flesh crawling. His hands clenched into fists and his chest tightened with the old anxiety, a strain of trepidation more primitive, more ingrained than anything generated by these fresh horrors.

  His mother was standing ten feet behind him. She was with two men, one of whom he recognized. His presence there was so surreal, so unexpected that for a moment the shock of seeing his mother was neutralized.

  And then she was coming for him, her dressing gown peeling open to reveal a tatty red cardigan and veined bony shins visible beneath her knee-length floral nightdress.

  Chapel recoiled. The two men were coming for him, too. One held a crowbar in his right hand and was lifting it, a look of bleak purpose on his face. The other man was watching his companion raise the crowbar, and his hands were coming up in a gesture of dissent, his eyes wide and his mouth open to say something, perhaps shout a warning.

  Chapel stumbled backwards, catching the jar with his heel.

  “Andrew,” the old woman said again, and he cowered, a child again, all the decades of bitter criticism and pious scruples she had projected onto him for no-one’s sake but her own burst into his head and he clenched his eyes shut and held up his hands. The tone of her voice exhausted him.

  “You’re dead,” he whispered.

  The man swung the crowbar.

  "GOOD GOD,” SAID Trevena.

  Daniel swung the crowbar again and this time took a chunk of the back of the head off like a divot. It sailed across the yard and landed a few feet away from a metal container labeled Hardcore only.

  The old woman collapsed. One of her fluffy boots had come off and sat next to her white, twitching foot like a petrified and useless little pet, hollow and unzipped as if it had abruptly shat its back out in shock.

  Daniel stood over the woman and clubbed her again and she stopped twitching. Andrew Chapel was moaning, his hands still raised, trying to ward off the horror. Trevena circled the body of his mother and went to him.

  “She’s dead,” Chapel was muttering. “She’s dead.”

  “Fuck me, Daniel,” Trevena said as he knelt next to Chapel. “I think you got her.”

  Daniel stood up straight, his expression serene. He looked down at the old woman and let the crowbar drop from his fingers.

  Trevena put a hand on Chapel’s trembling shoulder.

  Chapel looked up, his eyes wide and full of tears. His hair had fallen across his brow and he looked to Trevena like a man half his age.

  “She’s dead,” Chapel said.

  “Yes,” Trevena said. “How long has it been?”

  “Two months,” Chapel said.

  Trevena held him while he wept.

  TREVENA HELPED CHAPEL get to his feet.

  “How long have you known she was a Toyceiver?” Trevena asked Daniel, glancing at the body of the old woman. She was already liquefying, rotting away inside her garments.

  “As soon as I saw her,” Daniel said. He used his boot to ruck the clothing into a pile. The movement seemed to agitate the process and in a moment there was nothing left of her but what had soaked into the material. Daniel bundled it up and took it over to a waste container. He lobbed it over the side.

  “Why didn’t you kill her then? It would have saved Andrew having to see that.”

  Daniel was wrapping the jar in Chapel’s jacket. He picked it up.

  “Closure,” he said.

  “I’ve seen that done more therapeutically.”

  “I only did what he wanted to do himself. He needed to see her. It makes it real.”

  “But it wasn’t her.”

  “Yes, it was. As much as it needed to be.”

  Trevena and Daniel looked at Chapel as he spoke.

  “I didn’t see her when she was dying. I didn’t go to the funeral. Whatever that thing was had taken her essence from that house, whatever was left of her seeped into every fucking surface. I could feel it, all through the meat of that thing. She’s gone now.”

  “You phoned her, from your house.”

  Chapel laughed and shook his head. He looked at both men and Trevena saw that the amusement was sour.

  “You’re clever, but just lucky,” he said. “I made that call over two months ago. A son’s duty call. I haven’t used the phone since.”

  FLASHING BLUE LIGHTS lit up the entrance to the dump.

  “It’s the rozzers,” said Trevena.

  Daniel spoke to Chapel.

  “Do you know what you are?”

  Chapel shrugged. He looked worn out, drained. “I have an idea.”

  “Come with us.”

  Daniel led Chapel to the refrigerator. He felt Chapel pull back, withdraw from the opening. The irony was not lost on Daniel. To find freedom Chapel would have to trust them and step into the thing that had haunted him his entire life. The aperture trembled and the figure on the other side, the tall blond man, appeared to flicker like an image on a screen that was about to lose resolution.

  “What about the police?” Trevena asked.

  “What are they going to find?” Daniel said.

  “CCTV?”

  “Three blokes disappear into the back of a fridge. We both know what’s going to happen to that tape.”

  “You cl
ubbed an old lady to death,” said Trevena. “Technically.”

  “There’ll be no evidence. Besides, I waited until we were in a blind spot.”

  “You worked that out?”

  “It’s not the Tower of London, Phil. It’s a tip. Camera on the gate, couple on the fence. Probably caught Chapel when he was going over the first time.”

  Daniel stepped up into the refrigerator, ducking beneath the freezer compartment. He backed through the gap and held both hands out. He felt the rubble beneath his boots and smelt the stink of the dump. Trevena stood behind Chapel and put his palm in the small of his back.

  “Go on,” he said.

  Chapel took a deep breath. He squared his shoulders. He turned and looked at Trevena and his eyes were a little wild. Trevena could feel him shaking, could sense he was ready to bolt.

  Daniel nodded and reached out and grabbed Chapel’s arms. Trevena shoved.

  Chapel went through and Trevena followed.

  AS THEY CROSSED the bombsite, Trevena appraised the man they had rescued. Chapel walked with his head down, picking his way with great caution over the rubble. He walked between Index and Daniel but seemed uninterested in their presence or what they carried. Daniel held the jar; Index held Bix.

  Trevena considered what he knew of the man, which didn’t amount to a great deal besides what Chapel had told him of his childhood and what Trevena had himself discovered. Trevena could identify with much of what Chapel had told him. They were of the same generation, and most of what Chapel had spoken of resonated with Trevena. Trevena’s childhood had been poor but happy. He had grown up in a village in East Anglia just outside Cambridge, typically plain and pastoral, and holidays had been taken in Hunstanton, Southwold, and—if it had been a particularly lean year—Great Yarmouth. Holiday camps and caravans, hot summers and the cold North Sea. But Trevena had been spared the endless revisits; his parents had died within a year of each other when he was in his twenties. No routine obligatory trips to see the folks, struggling to find a role, or a persona to project back into their unchanged world, a transaction to negotiate in order to remain something preserved for them, for their sake. He had been set free. Chapel had never known that freedom. His past was a set to which a part of him must always return, to enact a crippling role. There must be places and people there, unchanged in outlook but older, superimposed like the structural modifications made to the road he had grown up on, constantly there, constantly reminding him of the tyranny of his mother, of the fractured childhood that had been taken from him.