CHAPTER FIVE
The rain was pelting down and it was the only thing that he could remember, that it hadn’t stopped raining since he opened his eyes this morning. What was the point of it all? It wasn’t like there was much green to water. It just felt like Ireland was the little sink with the shitty faucet that god was too cheap to fix it. That or he just forgot that Ireland was even there.
The police car was gone.
There was taxi waiting by the entrance, but the strange looking middle eastern man inside scoffed when Shane mumbled his way through saving the world, getting to London and having no change.
Shane pleaded to the taxi driver, but he wasn’t listening. There was a football game playing through the radio and it was being spoken in some foreign tongue but still; though he understood not a single word, it sounded so very exciting.
Radio could do that.
“Ya have to help me, man. I have ta get to London, now.”
“Like I said. Hospital to airport, twenty five pounds.”
“Come on man. I’ll write ya a song, just for you.”
“I don’t like music,” said The Taxi Driver.
“Who da fuck doesn’t like music? Dat’s fuckin mad. It’s like sayin ya don’t like sex. I mean, ya may not have it all da time and ya may have wit different kinds, but it’s still grand when ya ave it, right?”
“I enjoy sex. I just do not care for music.”
“What do you like den?”
“Listening to the radio,” said The Taxi Driver.
“Are ya gonna help me?” Shane asked.
The Taxi Driver shut and locked his door, turned up the radio and went back to his newspaper, turning himself away from Shane. As he turned, Shane could see; in the man’s reflection, a stranger’s breath, trailing out behind him.
He turned away for a second and when he turned back, the taxi was gone; as if it had never been there to begin with. The streets were desolate and the only sound came from the horrendous wailing of the stabbing rain pouring from the heavens above and then defeat became his purpose.
Through the blurry grey rain and out in the very distance, came the sound of a roaring engine that sounded like a thousand charging horses galloping along the slippery bitumen. The sound drew louder as the car from which it sang grew closer until a shiny silver hearse burst through the thick fog and sped past his sight and careened off down the road swerving along as if inside some great battle were being undertaken for the control of one’s life or the destination of this body bringing car.
He had no money and he had no car, he had not a penny in his pants and not a drop of whiskey on his breath. How on earth was he to save the world from evil if he could not even save himself from sobriety?
He buried his hands in his loose fitting pants, designed for a man far wider at the hips and longer in the belly than he was and tucked them forwards and upwards in his pockets so as to hold the falling strides from falling down around his ankles.
Though it was pouring down unforgivingly and the wind was playing the grand molester, he felt; inside of his skin, fiery and sexy like, humming a dark tune in his mind that he had heard earlier in the pub, walking down the road with the sound of clicking fingers and lighters lighting, smokers smoking and lovers fighting, dancing scantily in his ears.
He was not far from the edge of town and there he knew there was a tiny pub, nothing grand, no more than a couple of seats thrown about an old garage, but he knew it existed and there he could find himself the inspiration he needed to figure out how he would get to London.
The wind roared louder and as he neared a set of train tracks, just by the edge of town, he saw in the distance, a moment’s respite from this badgering wind and rain.
The old tracks were never used, hadn’t been in such a very long time. The grass and the earth and the insects and the spiders had crawled above and around and under them and made them almost invisible to the eye. But as Shane lifted his right foot over them, his leg found itself in a terrific shake as if he had just dipped his foot into a whirlpool or his head into the swirl of a tornado.
He pulled his leg back and the rumbling and the tingling and the pain just washed away and fell off like an old scab. He lifted his foot again and raised it over the grassy mound and again his skin seared and his muscles twitched and it felt like a current were rushing through his body.
He pulled his leg back again and then nothing. The pain stopped. The pulling on his muscles and in his skin no longer pulled and it felt less like something invisible were trying to rip his leg off from his body.
On the other side of the tracks he could see the road curving and lending its reach to a stalking and looming viaduct that bent and twisted around like a sickly bird, craning its crackling neck to look at first behind and then behind again and then behind again, twisting and turning on itself, bending round and around and around.
And its eyes peered off somewhere in the ominous distance; like a vulture spent upon circling prey, waiting for their attention to slip before it could swallow them up.
But under its wing and beneath its belly, he could see his respite. Shane stepped his foot upon the grassy mound and his whole body quivered. He then pushed himself through an invisible shield that felt like an electrical wave of caution convincing him to turn back now.
He pushed his whole body through until he stood on the grassy mound, his feet rumbling on the shaking metal below the surmounted dirt and the air around his face shook, not as a blowing wind, but as if it were molecules or the salt in a bag of chips that was being shaken up and down before being ripped open and savagely consumed.
A viscous wail ripped through his ears and almost tore them off the sides of his face were it not for his quick hands clasping upon them and his knees, helping to lower his body to the floor, curling up like a frightened echidna.
The wailing grew louder and louder and louder and his ears were set to explode. At first came the sound of a train’s whistle that pierced through his mind and then; as if eyes swelled, came the sound of children screaming, playful at first and then seemingly raveled in torment as if that thing they cared for where being constantly and endlessly taken from them.
And he heard sirens wailing and kettles boiling and bombs exploding and heated cats crying out in horned desperation and the intensity of it all slithered against this skin and pulled at each and every hair upon his arm lifting them up like a puppet’s strings into the dancing molecular air and as they lifted, so too did his arms while his hands, they rested like heavy plates against his straining face.
And “stop it” he screamed but it wouldn’t give in, the sound of the torment he kept nestled within; of his mind and his heart, in the pith of his soul, from the sorrow of which he could never let go and all of it surged from his nether to his skin, from the void in his heart came his echo of sin and the bottles he drank and the verses he cursed and the hearts he had broken; like bubbles he burst and they all started moaning and cursing his name and they all said “I love ya and I hate you the same.”
“Yer hardly an anchor and I’m barely a man,” he said to his screaming thoughts.
It sounded now like the train that he couldn’t see, and for all good logic couldn’t have been there, was rattling along those buried tracks so that his feet were coming up from under him and giving way to his arse.
And he looked to his right and then lo and behold came a sight to beseech to bequeath from one’s soul. A lover he kept, of whom left him alone and made of his heart, a fragment of stone.
And he looked to his right and he saw her face like a burning sun roaring down the tracks and around her the air seemed to circle and swarm and the molecules that danced and shook in the air all panicked and ran in despotic despair and her love was like a runaway train and there was nothing he could do except to unclasp his hands and throw out his arms and open his heart for his soul to disarm for a weapon it was and for time it had been, a place for his hurt and for every broken and poisoned and forgotten, promised dream.
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“Yer fuckin jokin,” he said.
“Hiya love. Are ya grand?” said Teresa’s Ghost.
The air had settled. The rumbling beneath his feet and stopped, having coursed its way through the soles of his shoes, through his tingling nerves, along his fidgety bones and into the cavern of his heart so that as he spoke and as he looked Teresa’s Ghost in the eyes, his heart thumped; like maniac on a bathroom door, threatening to ignite them both in the repression of his passion and undying love.
“Yeah, grand”
“How’s yer mammy”
“Yeah, she’s grand. She’s workin now. Sellin lipstick. Shite work, her boss is a cunt, but da money’s ok, pays da bills ya know.”
“But she’s grand yeah?”
“Yeah, she’s grand, aside from da kidnappin dough like.”
“Aye, heard about dat.”
“Are ya mad at me?”
“Don’t be daft.”
“It’s ok Shane. I’m not sore or nutin. I left you remember.”
“Aye, you did. And it fuckin hurt. Ya promised ya wouldn’t leave and ya did.”
“We promised a lot o shite, you and I. Remember when we met, on dat cold Christmas Eve? You promised me Broadway was waitin for me.”
“What da fuck did I know? I was just a fuckin kid and you, you were so fuckin pretty. Id’ve said anyting, promised anyting.”
“Ya did Shane, and I believed ya and look what it did for us.”
“I could have been someone.”
“Yeah, well so could anyone but I wasn’t wit just anyone was I? I was wit the great Shane MacGowan and look what it did for me.”
“Were we dat bad?”
“We were da Johnny Cash to Sid and Nancy’s Rick Springfield.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have had it any udder way. I loved ya, Shane. I always did and I don’t blame ya for what happened, not at all. A love like ours, it was always gonna end in tragedy, but da tragedy was not in how I died but what ya did to yer heart”
“You did it. Ya left me drunk and all alone, ya turned me heart to fuckin stone.”
“Ya did it yerself, Shane. If ya love sometin, ya gotta be brave enough to let it go, ta live witout it, dat’s love.”
“Dey took me, mammy.”
“I know and ya have ta find her. Ya have ta do a lot o tings, Shane. All dose promises, dey happen today; savin da world, savin da memory of our love and savin me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Shane, god is taking everyting back. He’s clearin da tables, fillin his pockets. Ya can’t let em do it. If he does, it all ends. Da me dat exists now dat will keep existin, only does so in yer heart. If god clears da table, you won’t exist and I won’t exist.
“Why is god doin dis?”
“He’s bored. He’s like a fuckin child, grown tired of his wee game. Spiteful little cunt wants ta pack it all up and he can. Dere’s no heaven Shane, outside o god’s imagination. If he stops tinking all o dis, we’re fucked.”
“Everyone’s talkin about a fuckin song. I can’t remember it.”
“Ya don’t want ta remember it, Shane.”
“I want to, I do and I’m fuckin tryin, I am. I swear.”
“You remember how ya found me wit da needle in me arm?”
“No. I don’t wanna remember that shite. Don’t go dere. Dat’s not how I want ta remember you. Not at all.”
“Ya sang a song to me, Shane when ya pulled da needle from me veins and closed me eyes. You were so sad and I’d never seen ya cry before dat. You were dis tough man, dis strong punk; drinkin and fightin and spittin and cursin and dere ya were, weepin and spillin water from yer eyes and ya held me hand Shane, and ya sang ta me. Ya ave ta remember not da song, but da needle in me arm. Tink about da needle, me cold lips, me still eyes and me silent heart and da sound o yers, beatin like a slave drum, den da song will come ta you.”
“I can’t. Like, literally, I can’t. I fuckin burned dat memory.”
“It’s dere, Shane. Ya just gotta break troo dat stone and find it. Don’t try ta remember da song Shane, remember ha hurt, remember me leavin you, remember our love. You sing dat song ta god like ya did to me, he won’t so bored and omniscient anymore and he’ll leave good enough alone.”
“I can’t.”
“I love you, Shane,” said Teresa’s Ghost, kissing his cheek before disappearing from his sight.
He could feel the rain again in its relentless descent and he stepped over the tracks onto the patch of grass on the other side. The screaming of playful and tormenting voices was no longer present. And though the wind parried in his ear, the air and sky abounding sounded so still and silent compared to where he had just come.
He rested for a moment under the viaduct, feeling the wind rushing through but having a lid on the pouring rain. The wind circled in his ears and he could hear again, the constant whispering that had befriended him.
“Come and see,” it said cunning and kindly at the tip of his ear.
Shane ventured on and as he walked he looked quickly over his shoulder taking a last glance. Wherever he was headed and whatever he would face would have it so he would never ever go back to place that he once called home.
He reached a tiny flicker of light that was dancing provocatively with the surrounding darkness. When he neared he could see brisk shadows fleeting past the entrance; little breaks in the light as if hundreds of feet were dancing about, taking their pitchers back to their lovers and toasting to the excess of loveless abandon.
The name on top of the bar read ‘Bad Seeds’ and it looked like no place he had ever been and it was this strangeness that beckoned at his curiosity and willed him to turn that rusted handle.
The handle screeched like a vulture in mourning, standing over its brother’s carcass; exalting its broken heart whilst sharpening its beak for supper. And the sound came, not from the door, but from the looming and dooming viaduct of whose perch he had just left behind.
He could hear hundreds of feet all shuffling about and the sound of music blaring through straining speakers and barmen screaming over the top of drunks, all clambering over one another, feverishly yelling for more.
He turned the handle until it clicked, the door swung open and there before him was an empty room; without light, without shuffling, without clambering and without raised voice.
There was just a couple of old wooden stools strewn about a dusty concrete floor and a few tables turned on their ends and nothing much else. Shane walked in; out of the storm, and brushed off the water that was collecting on his skin like misery in a drunkard’s poetry.
“Can I buy you a drink?” spoke a voice somewhere in the dark.
Shane went looking with his eyes, scanning left and right, zooming in and out of the dark and further dark until he found; in the midst of the darkest part of the bar, a tall shadowy figure who, even without a hint of light dressing his skin, still cast an incredible shadow from where his feet tapped against the wooden rest at the bar, to well beyond the bar, somewhere within the expanse of the looming viaduct from back whence he came.
“Aye, dat’d be grand, tanks.”
A light flickered behind the bar and a man that hadn’t been there before suddenly appeared and he had a dirty glass that was stained in a colour no man could pronounce and he slid the glass across the bar so that it stopped just shy of Shane’s thirsty hands and the flicker died and the man behind the bar went with it.
Shane held the glass to his lips and though it smelt like something that would be more suited to greasing an engine mount, it was the closest he had come to a pint all day; a day that had felt so much longer than any he had had in his whole life.
He threw the glass back and the liquid ran down his tongue and scolded the back of his throat and set a fire in his belly and when it warmed his blood, there was a small tingle in his eyes before the lights he had seen and the sound and yelling he had heard and the bustling and the shouting and the clambering and
the shoving and the fighting and the loving and the dealing and the whoring, they all spun about before his eyes as if they had always been there; men bumping into one another and offering a gentleman’s apology before taking their drinks back to their game of cards and scantily dressed ladies, skirting about the bar, curtsying and giggling and waving their fanned feathers about as they moved from lover to lover.
The Tall Handsome Man at the other end of the bar; he whose shadow cast wherever he stood, kicked out a stool from beside him that slid along the floor like the dirty glass had, along the dusty counter until it rested against Shane’s foot.
“Pull up a seat Shane,” said The Tall Handsome Man.
The Tall Handsome Man tipped his hat and then looked back at his empty glass and poured himself another whiskey. Shane took the stool in his hands but was amazed and his attention was baffled by the sights of which he saw all about him.
There were gun wielding card thieves, heisted around a table, chewing straw and sneering over the tops of their losing hands and they all had mistrust as their fervent affection and the same busting maiden courted the desire and good heart of each and every one, walking in a circle about the table, her delicate hand burnishing their worn muscled backs and to each she gave her veracious word that on the winning of one hand, should they clear a whole table, the winning hand they would take would be hers.
Beside them; on tables alone by themselves, were drunkards and poets with heartbreak to tell.
Shane took his stool and walked slowly over to where The Tall Handsome Man was quietly seated, drinking his long glass of whiskey like it were water on a summer’s day. He looked to his left and noticed a writer busily writing away and he noticed his own name etched upon the paper and he looked at me and then he looked through the book, up at you and he knew we were watching, but what could he do? He was just a character in a story.
Shane took a breath. His head was feeling light. The liquor in his belly was fading and the burning lights about him started to wane somewhat and the shouting and heckling became a distorted hiss and slowly started to turn its volume towards silence again.
“Quick, drink this,” said The Tall Handsome Man handing Shane another glass of what may or may not have been some kind of a paint stripper.
Shane threw the drink back and after his throat and stomach finished their argument and burn, the lights and the sound and the bustle and bargaining all returned to a comfortable tumult.
“What is dis? Is dis real?” asked Shane.
“You have to keep drinking, to keep it real. Everything you see here around you is entirely real, but you can only see it while your soul is bathing in booze.”
The Tall Handsome Man clicked his fingers and the barman brought over a bottle of whiskey and placed it kindly in front of Shane, pouring the first full glass for him.
“Cigarette?” asked The Tall Handsome Man.
“Ya read me mind,” said Shane.
The Tall Handsome Man pulled from his pocket, his red right hand and with it, a single undented cigarette and it didn’t at all seem worrying or peculiar.
The Tall Handsome Man’s red right hand drew from a dusty black coat that covered a long mountainous arm that attached to a giant of man who was handsome and striking and tall and aboding and he was such a height that if he were to stretch out his arms, he could embrace the world or maybe even block out the sun.
“I’m here to help you, Shane.”
Worry met with curiosity and it birthed an odd gurgle in Shane’s voice.
“Who are you? You’re not like da udders are ya?”
“You mean The Man with the Terrific Shades?”
“Yeah, dat’s da one. Who is he? I mean, he’s real isn’t he? I did see em.”
“He’s an angel”
“A what?”
“An angel. A soldier of heaven.”
“Yer fuckin me right?”
“No Shane I am not. And the only you see him and all of this” he said, moving his head and eyes about the bustling bar, “is by drinking. It gives you powers Shane. Powers that nobody else has.”
“Like Batman? Or Stretch Armstrong?” asked Shane.
“Yes Shane,” said The Tall Handsome Man, feeding him the confidence he needed.
The Tall Handsome Man reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of green papers and placed it on the table.
“What’s dat?”
“It’s more than enough money to get you to London.”
“Jaysus, dis will buy me a plane,” said Shane counting the money.
“It’s important that you remember one thing.”
“Da song, I know”
“No, the song will come to you if you let it. What I have to tell you will keep you alive long enough for that to happen.”
“What is it?”
“You must be drunk or anchored to junk.”
“Yer fuckin me.”
“Those men who were chasing you, they’re not the only ones. There are other angels and there are humans too and they are all counting on the fact that you will fail. To see them, you must be inebriated.”
“Was dat you followin me before?”
“You’ve seen me many times. You’ve seen me in your nightmares; you’ve seen me in your dreams.”
“You killed da priest?”
“No, that wasn’t me. I am not a collector of souls. That was death, the son of god, JC and his path is before yours, taking every hand before you can play them. You must travel faster than he and make peace with your sufferance. As long as you are drunk or on junk, you can see them and you can stop; all of them. And you can save us all Shane.”
“And why should I trust you? Who are you?”
The Tall Handsome Man lifted his red right hand from his dusty black coat and pulled out a set of keys and handed them to Shane.
“You’ll need a car when you get to London. There is one waiting for you at the pier.”
“Wait a minute. How da fuck do I get to London and what fuckin pier?”
“There’s a river that runs beneath the viaduct.”
“No dere’s not. I was just fuckin dere.”
“There is now,” said The Tall Handsome Man taking a sip of his whiskey.
Shane looked out the windows that only moments before had not been there and he saw a set of flashing lights that too had not been there and he heard the sound of a fog horn, howling like a lonely wolf into the night, calling him to its attention.
“Are you da devil?”
“Would it alarm you if I was?”
“Why would da devil want ta save da world?”
“Why would god want to give it up?”
“Dis is his workin?”
“You have a choice Shane; to drink or not to drink. One of which can save your mother, your lover and the world. And the other can save the kingdom of heaven.”
“What do ya mean? Me mammy or heaven? What da fuck is happenin?”
“This is the apocalypse Shane and you are the catalyst. God has left the order in your hands, or in your forgetful mind and only you and the curse of choice can determine the fate of existence.”
“What should I do?”
“Take the boat train to London. Find a man called Savage. He’ll take you to the twin graveyards. There, you’ll find the thing you’re looking for.”
“Ya look familiar. Do I know ya?”
“A man like you has no need of man like me, not of what I can tailor for a man anyway.”
“Do ya make coats?” asked Shane.
The Tall Handsome Man took from his dark coat and file and from it he pulled a single sheet of paper.
“When the song comes to you, use this paper and this ink to write it down.”
“Dat’s a fancy lookin file. What is dat” said Shane, leaning his head to his right, reading the names that were scrawled along the tops of each folder.
“They are askers of more. Those who waited upon a coming storm. Tiny insignificant pebbles that traded their souls
to become stars.”
“You’re da fuckin devil himself. Jaysus fuckin Christ, me mammy told that, hold on, is dat Bono’s name?” said Shane is mild amusement and distraction. “He’s in yer file. I fuckin knew it. Talentless git. Had ta be voodoo. Who else ya got dere?” said Shane, poking at the file. “Am I in dere? I’ve done some tings on da grog I can’t remember.”
“A man like yourself doesn’t beg for quarters at the crossroads,” said The Tall Handsome Man.
“But Bono, he did. Mortgaged his feckin soul. Dat’s brilliant. Feckin hilarious. Explains a lot” said Shane.
“Everyone has being saying it all along. Punk will save the world and you will be its Messiah” said The Tall Handsome Man.
“What if I can’t remember da song? What den?”
“The trumpet will sound and the horsemen will ride in and time will stop.”
“Why does god want to kill everyone?”
“Cause he can be a prick like that. Here take this, you will need it when your vision fades” said The Tall Handsome Man handing Shane a small bag filled with junk before he vanished and then there was nothing but a spinning stool in an empty room with no lights and bustle, except for the sound of an idling boat and an impatient captain.