Salt Snake and Other Bloody Cuts

  The face. That expression…

  At the bottom of the cemetery, the gravedigger scrambling over a brick wall, heard the muffled scream. He wanted to go back and help, he really did, but something drove him from the cemetery as fast as his legs could carry him.

  In the grave, the electrician’s eyes were fixed on that face as Rose Burswick plopped into the hole.

  And after more than sixty years of solitude in her cold and lonely grave, Rose Burswick hugged the handsome young man in the floppy white hat in an embrace that seemed to last forever.

  And the expression on her face stayed on the electrician’s mind as if burnt there by fire.

  She was smiling.

  Front of Head

  August 1.

  I have travelled the world for a long, long time. Yesterday Paris. Today Birmingham. The bronze sculptures and stone sphinxes in Birmingham’s city square remind me of the Sumerian legend of Inana’s descent into the underworld. As she passes through the seven portals of the dead, the gatekeeper strips her of her powers until she is left naked and defenceless to face the terrible judges of the underworld.

  I want to ask everyone in the square the same question: “Can you describe my face?” It’s a question I have asked across the world for a long, long time. But I can only ask one person at a time, because I must remove my mask.

  August 2.

  There is a yard behind the restaurant. Shiny bins overflow with boxes and pizza crusts. I ask the medical student, “Can you describe my face?”

  He examines me by street-light, listing dispassionately: “Eyes crusted with unidentified material. Scalp gathered into a kind of bun at the top of the head; the bunched skin bound with wire. Mouth an inverted U shape: Moist even syrupy. A skin flap lifted on the forehead reveals… Oh Jesus… I can’t go on with this…”

  “It distresses you?”

  “Distresses? I’m—”

  My hand, soft as a feather-filled pillow, suffocates him. I eat the parts that are sweet, then leave.

  August 3.

  Why can no-one describe my face? I ask. They fail. They die. No memories remain of their faces; only the flavours of their sweetness on my tongue. Today I want to rent a theatre and stage a show about faces. Plots unfolding by facial expressions. Nothing else.

  August 5.

  Slept all day yesterday. Pillow over face. I have travelled the world a long, long time. I ask so many people. “Please describe my face.” Now I know it is the sudden shock of my unfamiliar features that ravish their senses. What now? Must — I must — find a way to prepare people for what they will see when I remove the mask. That way I can ask the question. Then smiling in a friendly way they will describe my face. Then we will chat happily and I shall never be lonely again. But how can I forewarn them?

  August 6.

  I know how! I considered writing to certain individuals. Explain my predicament, then ask that I might call on them. But I won’t ask many, many people. I can’t write to them all! Now. I am anticipating visiting so many people and listening to the enchanting descriptions of my face. Happy conversations; a Chinese takeaway perhaps. Friendship for ever and ever. Amen. Oh, I’m so giddy with the idea of it all I forgot to tell you how I will solve my problem. Simple: In my neatest handwriting I shall copy this extract of my diary and send it out to the editor of the publication you now hold in your exquisite hands. It shall be printed. You will know who I am. I shall procure a list of the magazine’s subscribers (the editor will not refuse; I have pillow hands).

  You do not subscribe to the publication, you say? Then, I will follow you home after you’ve purchased it from the shop.

  Don’t worry, wonderful reader, I will find you. Perhaps I’m already peeping at you reading this. Quick! Look back over your shoulder. Nothing there? Perhaps I’m sitting on the edge of your bed, or leaning quite casually against your kitchen worktop, or snuggled up on the backseat of your car; or is that me tap-tap-tapping on your window pane?

  Listen, sweet reader. Do not be afraid. Only be ready, when you open the bathroom door, or pull back the curtains, or switch on the kitchen light, be ready for me standing there; be ready when I ask: “Can you describe my face?”

  And be ready with the answer. That answer I so desperately want to hear.

  The Last Barnesley Werewolfa

  HUNTER: PREY

  Evolution created them unequal. When a killer whale hits a seal the outcome is certain. A lion does not fear a lamb. A man shooting crows would never consider the possibility that the crows could strike back. HUNTER: KILLS PREY: KILLED

  He dreamed he was fifteen again. That day it happened the very first time. In the bath, a feeling he could not explain had spread through his body. His heartbeat quickened; his groin tingled, strange thoughts flickered, in his mind. He wanted something.

  He wanted it badly—so very badly. Hunger? Sort of—but not quite. He felt hot, his face burnt.

  Confused, he had swirled the water with the sponge before burying his face in it.

  Suddenly the smell of his brother’s Brut bath soap bit his nostrils. The scent was coarse. Artificial.

  Then he lay underwater, holding his breath, waiting for the prickling sensation running through his body to disappear.

  It didn’t.

  It got worse.

  Now he craved food. Chocolate? No… No… He wanted…

  MEAT.

  Roast beef dripping with pink juice. But the image forced into his head was of raw meat. Blood-red, with a glossy bone as white as frozen milk jutting from the flesh.

  Then it had happened.

  It had happened every month since. Not tied with the full moon as Hollywood told him. No, it was like the female menstrual cycle rising slowly to an overwhelming peak each month. Then gradually subsiding. Oh, he needed meat.

  Give me bloody meat… Want it now! Bastards…

  Jeff Silkstone’s eyes flicked open. He lay curled on the carpet in the corner of a room the smarmy git downstairs had called a hotel room. He couldn’t afford this. Why was he here? His keen nose told him this place was alien.

  Bastard place… I want home… Bastard…

  Jeff Silkstone sprang to his feet, his body, a lithe engine of muscle and bone, carried him with a hunter’s speed and grace to the window. Before looking out on the place he detested, he pressed his muzzle to the window frame and snorted noisily at the draught.

  Hot summer streets. Cars. Fancy gardens. Un-natural perfumes sprayed underarmpits and on the breasts of women masked the delicious odours beneath.

  Cautiously, he looked out.

  London.

  If ever there was a city with a brain this was the one. And with its gigantic brain it hated Jeff Silkstone. It used this monster brain to direct the microbes that crawled within it to torment him.

  Just six days age Jeff had left his native Barnsley for the South.

  Soft South… Don’t believe it. They’re hard bastards… Cunning… Scheming… Cheating bastards…

  “No work here, love,” he’d gently told his wife as they sat in their terraced house in Barnsley. “Look. I’m going to go to London for a bit. They’re crying out for brickies down there. I just want some money to get us on our feet. Even if it’s only to give Michael and Angie a decent Christmas this year. When I saw them last year,”—he shook his large head— “You know, it cut me up.”

  Everyone knows you can’t live on bugger-all. He told himself that fifty times a day. A dozen times a day he told June, “I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to go to London to find work.” And at last he convinced himself. He hated splitting the family up. Especially now he could control the thing—his complaint—that gripped him every four weeks.

  It took twelve painful weeks saving from his unemployment benefit and from June’s monthly pittance as a school dinner lady before there was enough for the coach fare and a cheap hotel until he could find work.

  It started bad. Getting off the Barnsley-London coach, thirsty as buggery, he’d gon
e for a pint. Memory jabbed his brain with white hot spikes.

  “Pint of bitter, please.”

  From up North, eh?” The barman handed him the beer.

  “Aye, Barnsley. I’m down here for the work… Just a minute. You’ve given me change for a fiver. I gave you a tenner.”

  “No squire, you gave me a fiver.”

  Cheating bastards!

  London wanted him to fail. It wanted him whipped. Penniless.

  It was early evening. The weather a humid twenty five Celsius. Prosperous Londoners strolled down suburbia’s leafy avenues to bistros, or to squash clubs, raquets tucked under deodourised armpits, so clean they must squeak—and they all seemed dressed in fifty pound shirts, with hundred pound shoes on their soft feet.

  Even though it bewildered him why they should lash out so much on clothes Jeff didn’t begrudge them their wealth. All he wanted was the opportunity of work. He’d do anything. He’d slog away night and day if only it would produce some real cash for himself and his family. When was it when June last bought a new dress? He consoled himself with the thought that in a another twelve hours he’d be back to normal. Jeff Silkstone—a Barnsley man in his late twenties, nothing out of the ordinary; the ample-fleshed frame and full, amiable face that was common to that Yorkshire backwater.

  As he looked out, he saw a girl on a bicycle. She was about twenty, her brown legs flashing deliciously against the loose white skirt. Instinctively, he snorted at the window, scenting she was ovulating.

  Oh… he craved meat… Meat and sex… He didn’t know what he wanted—killing or fucking. But the feeling was strong—it was soooo bloody strong.

  Something was going to bust. He’d lose control. He’d lose it alright, soon. He thought of his wife. He thought of his kids. Their faces at Christmas. Their happy surprised faces as they saw all those mysterious parcels beneath the Christmas tree.

  He dropped onto all fours and ran to the cardboard box under the table. It contained a pig’s head. He bit into it, crunching easily through the skull. Inside, the brains were as sweet as honey.

  By regulating his diet he could almost control this thing now. If he locked himself away with a bucket-full of horse meat, pigs’ heads, offal, he could satiate his meat lust until it passed.

  Normally that was.

  This time it was hard. London. London. Stinking London. It stirred up his fury. It was claustrophobic. Hot. The people were weak, soft blobs. Two-legged blobs that made natural victims. They cried out to be chased and torn to pieces beside their gleaming BMW’s, or devoured on their own prim little lawns. He ached to castrate these smarmy pampered men with one snap of his massive jaws.

  He gnawed furiously at the pig’s head, gobbling down the eyes like ripe cherries.

  For a little while this satisfied him.

  He dozed, thinking of the nights it came over him. He would slip from the house to lope through Barnsely’s darkened streets, the oblong silhouettes of terraced houses, his neighbours asleep, unsuspecting. He remembered the night runs over the black spoil heaps that surrounded the coal mines, then through the woods toward Pennistone. There, in a glorious rush of energy, he would hunt rabbits or crack open the occasional sheep.

  Hunt… The thought sent a scalding river of blood through him.

  Waking, he went to the bathroom to shower. There he caught a glimpse of his beast shape in the mirror. The teeth. The silver-black fur matted with sweat, his panting flanks, the coal-black eyes that shone as if a fire crackled inside his head.

  This place was bad. Lust and fury burnt him, from his cock to his brain; it surged like molten metal.

  Meat… Give me so much fucking meat!

  He was going to go. It was all coming to a head.

  He saw himself bursting out of this stinking room and savaging everyone in the street.

  Hold on… Hold on.

  He was in the room, heading for the door.

  No… Don’t you… Please don’t…

  Inside the conflict between beast and man raged like a war. He wanted to howl. Howl until the windows cracked.

  By the door was a table. He fell to his knees, gripping it until his claws sank into the wood with a faint crackling sound. Hold on, he thought desperately; hold on until the rage is pumped out.

  The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a book. He picked it up, feeling the brown plastic covers stick to his palms. Paper smells breezed into his nose. He turned it over.

  Gold letters spelt: HOLY BIBLE.

  HOLY BIBLE.

  CHRIST… GOD… THE FATHER…

  …THE SON.

  For a moment the humid air was still; in the distance music—slow, cooling music drifted across the face of the over-heated city.

  Jeff Silkstone’s mind cleared.

  Slowly, carefully, he lifted the Bible to his lips.

  Then with a single, crunching bite his chisel-like teeth punched it through from Genesis to Revelation.

  Seconds later he flushed the wet pulp, all that remained of the book, down the toilet.

  …dust to dust, ashes to ashes… crap to crap…

  The beast knew all about the great lie.

  Jeff Silkstone grinned a wolfish grin.

  For the next hour he gnawed the pig’s head or showered. Or dreamed. Ten years before, when there had been others like him.

  At night they had unleashed the monthly blood lust in a rushing cataract of action: running, leaping, hunting, killing. Then during the peaceful moments just before dawn, the blood drying on their muzzles, they would stand on the hilltops overlooking Pennistone. There, their delicate noses could scent divinity in the fresh north-easterly breeze.

  For a while he lay on the bed panting, his pink tongue hanging from the corner of his mouth. Bit by bit the beast retreated. The convoluted primate brain was taking control of Jeff Silkstone now. He felt his biceps thinning, the great knots of muscle around his shoulders softened. Soon he would be like any other man.

  He’d won the round this time. The beast inside would be dormant for another month. He would work, earn money. He breathed deeply, feeling good for the first time in days. He was winning—he could believe he was actually winning.

  Fresh air. He needed just the scent of it. He opened the window. Outside, an iron fire escape ran down to a neglected garden. Around that ran a high fence, screening it from the street.

  He had an idea.

  He would slip down to the garden for a while. It would be a relief after the claustrophobic shabbiness of his room.

  As long as no-one saw him everything would just be fine.

  Eagerly, Jeff padded down the steps, the rust gritty beneath his bare feet.

  But no longer had his feet crunched into the deep grass then he heard a savage snarl.

  Smell?

  Dog!

  He spun round to see a big black bitch growling threateningly at him.

  Kill… Snap it open.

  No, he reasoned. Avoid trouble. Dead dog? Questions asked.

  Over the fence to his left were some trees. Probably another garden. He could lie low until it was over.

  Gracefully, he bounded over the high fence.

  To land in the middle of a congested street. The smell of heated bodies hit his nostrils. Hundreds of people. They were looking at him.

  Run run run.

  But where? This was a city. An enormous city, malignant, bloated with people.

  He began to retreat into the bushes that formed a green strip between pavement and fence.

  “My God… What on earth is that thing?”

  The voice came from the dry lips of a man in a suit.

  “Shouldn’t be allowed. Frightening the kids. It’s not decent.” A woman’s voice — narrow, mean.

  A crowd formed around him, a great clogging mass of people. Dogs came, snarling menacingly.

  A taxi driver: “Must’ve come from a bleedin’ circus.”

  Young men in blazers with tennis raquets laughed raucously and pointed. “
The filthy beggar’s stark bollock naked.”

  “Pervert!”

  “Should be ashamed of himself, I say.”

  “Ugly, hairy thing.”

  Boys began to throw stones. One caught him on the nose and he cried out in a strange howling voice.

  “Bloody foreigners.”

  Half a house brick cracked against Jeff’s shin.

  “Wants locking up. These folk do what they bleedin’ well like. Yid’s, wogs, I-ties, Arabs—they’re all the bleeding same.”

  Jeff Silkstone tried to limp past the crowd, but his way was blocked by a dozen young men with cricket bats. The badges on their blazers proclaimed: Nazarene Sports & Social with Cricket Club scrolled in gold across the breast pocket.

  “Call the police.” The voices were angry now.

  “Bugger them,” came a high pitched male voice. “They’ll only tick the sod off and let him go.”

  “He’s right! Come on, let’s give the rat a damn good thrashing.”

  Individuals had turned into a crowd; then they had turned into a herd. Now they had become a mob. A mob with a purpose. Destroy the deviant, the outsider—the monster.

  Jeff sensed they would attack. He read their smell as easily as someone reads a newspaper.

  They attacked.

  Walking sticks, tennis raquets, cricket bats became weapons. They hacked, stabbed and clubbed at his arms and head.

  “Stop it! Please stop it, you—oooh-ugh…” A cricket bat cracked against his teeth.