CHAPTER 3
The morning was only getting worse and worse. It felt like someone had parked an elephant’s arse on his face and when he tried to move, he could feel every pained muscle in his face screaming out for him to stop.
“Ya look like shite. What’re ya in for?” said the old man in the corner.
Shane squeezed the sleep from his eyes like a mangy old orange.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Disneyland,” said The Old Man.
“Yer jokin?”
“Nah, I’m just taking the mickey,” said The Old Man laughing to himself.
“Ya ever had one o dose days?” said Shane.
“What, where ya kill yer boss and get chased down by a hundred cops and you’ve not even da time ta cover yer bare arse? Would ya believe me if I said I have?” said The Old Man.
Shane lifted himself up so that he could see the small cage surrounding him, its iron bars rusted but bolted shut, the cream walls dirtied by drunken hands and the stone beds, no less comfortable than sleeping on one’s feet.
“Twas a woman wasn’t it? Tis always a woman” said The Old Man.
“Aye. I tink. Tink I woke up inside a feckin Bond movie” said Shane.
“I met a woman once. She was quite a woman. I’ll never forget er.”
“What was er name?”
“Oh, that I couldn’t tell ya”
“I thought ya’d never forget er?”
“Ah, a name, ya call wit yer tongue, dis lady, da love o my life, da keeper o my soul, I only called out ta her wit me heart. Her name was da yearnin I felt in me blood and da desperation in me fingertips da moment she left me touch. Her name was da shiver dat crept up me spine when da echo of er voice sneaked up on me and danced about in me ears and in me head” said The Old Man, pulling on the end of his beard.
“Well, what did udder people call er?”
“I’d never know. Even if dey were shoutin in my ear. I’d never hear dem cause dey’d never be dere. She was da only ting dat existed. Da only sight and sound dat ever seemed real. She was da summer sun dat warmed ye up and da rainy day dat kept ya in bed, warm under da covers. She was da care and consideration dat comes out o every tragedy. She was deadly” The Old Man said.
“What happened to her?” asked Shane.
“We spent what felt like da whole me life talkin and muckin around and drinkin and runnin and dancin and fuckin and makin a god awful mess everywhere we’d go and I told er I did, that I never wanted er ta ever leave, dat I wanted dat night to continue forever. But in da mornin, she was gone. She left me drunk, in New Orleans” said The Old Man.
“She packed up and left?” asked Shane.
“She fuckin overdosed. I woke up and she’d fecked off, like dat, just a cold and still version of er. Her fire was gone. She went away and she took me heart wit er. And I wished ta fuck, it was made o stone” The Old Man said.
“Dat’s my story,” said Shane.
“And ya wouldn’t ave told it any different,” said The Old Man.
“Well ya have ta find dem before it’s too late,” said The Old Man.
“How? I’m in here and I don’t know who took em.”
“I can help ya.”
“Everyone keeps sayin dat. What do you want outta dis?”
“Ta be on da right side. Dat’s all. I want to find myself on da right path when da end comes for me. Yer man, he’s already started takin names you know and he’s deciding who ta free and who ta blame. Fuckin prick.”
The Old Man stood up and hobbled towards Shane, his right foot catching on the ends of his beard that twisted and curled from his horse long face down to his dirty toenails.
“What da fuck is dat?” said Shane looking at The Old Man’s hands.
The Old Man took from inside his thick beard a small see though vial in one hand and a shiny needle in the other.
“Dis is yer sword,” he said.
“Nah yer right man. Dat aint gonna help me here. I need ta keep me head clear” said Shane.
“And what makes ya tink sobriety is not an illness?”
“I don’t wanna go ta dat place, need ta focus and save me mammy. Got some bad memories wit da junk. Yer right man.”
“Dis is just da vehicle. Da place never changes.”
“Yer right man, seriously. Sobriety is where I lay me head now. It’s a town, it’s me home.”
“Kid, don’t you know? It’s the same, wherever you go” said The Old Man, kneeling before Shane and filling the needle with a clear fluid.
He flicked on the needle and pushed a tiny bit up and out so that it splashed against the round of Shane’s knee and tickled every nerve in his body.
“Dis will show ya what ya need ta see and nutin more. Ya have nutin to fear lad from a sword in yer hand” said The Old Man, looking Shane in the eye as he blindly took his arm with his left hand just under the elbow and pressed the cold needle into his vein with his right, sliding the cold steel into his vein until the clear fluid turned a bright red and as Shane closed his eyes, The Old Man pushed down on the plunger and cast Shane thoughts outside of the jailhouse walls.
His mind’s eye burst with a definitive brightness; a blinding white light. And as he squinted through the blur, he could see the outline of figure, walking down a long winding path as all poetic paths seemed to be, holding the reigns to a beautiful white horse. And the figure had; following behind it, a carriage that was carried along by itself and it creaked and croaked as its big wooden wheels turned over the bumpy tracks, the loose rocks and the shifting sand.
Shane stepped into the light and then through it until the brightness gave way to an expanse of courtly colour and splendid scents. Well, he wasn’t in fuckin Dublin that was for sure. He stood hiding behind a tree, one whose trunk could have hidden a thousand of himself.
The strange figure walking a beautiful white horse was whistling a tune, something he didn’t know yet something that felt so familiar, like how a baby must feel when it discovers its own voice and he wanted; like the screaming child, to sing out the tune from the bottom of his belly past the top of his lungs and out onto the dusty trail through the line of shaking leaves.
He fought the temptation and instead stayed still and spying, peaking around the sides of a mammoth tree, ignoring the strange figure and seeing past his beautiful white horse and finding himself instead drawn to the insides of the large wooden carriage that pulled along slowly behind stranger and his horse with not a rope between them to pull it along.
Yet on it went, its wheels creaking and turning and its momentum, never waning as if the air of strangeness alone, were the inertia pulling it along.
As the strange figure, its beautiful white horse and the moving carriage edged along the winding dusty track, Shane followed, creeping step by step through thick leaves and brush, holding his breath every time he lifted his foot from the bristly brush and every time he broke apart the leaves to lay another back down.
Shane crept slowly up behind the carriage wondering to himself, what in god’s name he was doing. He grabbed onto the back of the carriage and lifted himself up as the giant wheels turned and the massive cogs cranked, pulled along by some magnificent specter.
And inside the carriage; hidden in the darkness of the canopy, Shane pulled back three blankets that uncovered three stones with each of them named as trophies for three graves; his own, his mother’s and his lover’s.
“What da fuck is dis,” he said out loud.
The carriage stopped.
The horse neighed.
The patter of footsteps fell deafly silent.
“Bollocks,” said Shane again.
The horse huffed and puffed a sigh of discord and from beside it; and coming towards, was the sound of shuffling feet, returning from whence they came, back towards the waiting carriage.
He heard his heart screaming out to him and threatening to burst out from his chest and run up along the winding path away from his ignorant body and it sounded like a fantastic
idea, if only he could convince his legs to do the same.
“Come and see” hissed the voice travelling beside the carriage.
There was nowhere to run. The sides of the canopy started to bend and warp as the strange figure ran its long fingernails against the sides and the sound of its scraping hands was like grinding gears in the inside of his mind.
There was nowhere to run.
Shane lay down next to the stones and pulled the blanket over his body so that its pungent fibres worked their way up his nose and down his throat. He fought to still his heart and heavy his lungs and he did well; slowing his fearful pacing breath, until he turned his head and saw himself lying stiller than he; like a board, with his eyes and mouth sewn shut and his hands pressed against his chest where a run of stitches, covered the mark where his heart had been torn out from his chest.
“Come and see” hissed the voice, now standing at the rear of the carriage, its hands gripping the rail and pulling up from the dusty track to just before the very place where Shane was hiding.
He could hear its breath sounding out like the hum of an idling motor. He held his own and played dead.
“Come and see” hissed the strange figure again.
Under the blanket, Shane reached around with his hands, his fingers working like tentacles to feel and find anything that he could use or fashion as a weapon. He slid his hand around slowly and gently, careful not to scratch the wooden floor and bump the blanket keeping time in his favour.
His hand slipped into the pockets of the dead man beside him; into his own pockets and he took from them a small vial different to the one he had taken before. He clenched his hand around the tiny bottle and dragged it slowly towards his face, twisting the lid between the bends in his fingers until it slipped off and rolled down the length of his body. Shane rested the vial against his lips and let the whiskey roll onto his tongue.
“Come and see” hissed the voice again.