Salt Snake and Other Bloody Cuts

  Now he recnogised the girl’s face.

  Forget her long hair. Somehow the face reminded him of how he looked when he was thirteen or fourteen. Sort of clean, unlived in, innocent. The same shaped eyes and nose with a spattering of freckles.

  Spuggy stabbed her. Once. Twice. Three times. Slowly.

  But it wasn’t right. He must have missed, cut himself somehow. Spuggy had split his right forearm open from elbow to wrist; blood washed down his legs like the red wine they had splashed about the cellar earlier.

  He stabbed again.

  This time he only managed to pierce his groin with the steel blade. He was yelling and swearing and screaming. He blundered against the tripods sending the pictures swinging wildly on the TVs.

  Viper could only hear dimly. Spuggy’s face was just a mask, blown up like a Halloween balloon twisting and splitting in pain and fury.

  He struck again at the girl’s breast.

  Again he missed and the huge blade ended up lodged deep in his ribs just above his belly. The screaming mask face seemed to deflate and Spuggy flopped limply down.

  On the screen, Viper could just make out the girl. She was unhurt. Her face, expressionless, still looked how he once did as a boy. She was watching him. He sensed she wanted to help him but didn’t know how. Or maybe he simply didn’t know how to ask for her help.

  Christ, he wished he could breathe. He was locked solid in this concrete hard salt crust.

  Suffocating.

  On the portable TV he saw himself. A large white blob. Like a maggot or an insect pupa. Motionless.

  I’ll get through this. I will live. I’ll drive that vanful of shit back to that stinking slum in the backside of Yorkshire. All it needs is willpower. I’m alive.

  Keep saying it, Viper, mate. Say it Viper.

  Say it, you bastard! SAY IT!

  I’m alive….

  I AM ALIVE.

  I AMM ALLI–IVE!

  I I I AM—I AM

  I …II…IIIIII

  Acorns – A Bitter Substitute for Olives

  “Won the national lottery yet?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Imagine if you won. Your life would be ruled by whims and fancies.”

  I smiled. “I suppose it would. How much do I owe you for the sandwiches?”

  The old man behind the filling station counter picked up the sealed pack. “That’s one eighty. Which number pump is it?”

  “Three.”

  “That’s another ten pounds for your petrol. Thanking you, young man.”

  I handed him a twenty pound note and back came the change, slapped down onto the counter alongside the overpriced cheese and pickle sandwiches. I didn’t mind. I’d finished my Saturday morning shift at the solicitor’s office; now I had a week of freedom.

  I left the filling station shop with the June sun sizzling down. A change was coming my way. I could feel it. A change for the better.

  I bounced down into the driving seat and revved the engine. As I switched on the radio I noticed the music cassette in the player was hers. One of those miscellaneous twenty greatest hits things that’re ninety percent dross. As I drove away from the forecourt I leaned out of the window and chucked the bloody thing into a rubbish bin. “And good riddance.”

  As soon as I hit the motorway, west out of Manchester, I snapped on my favorite James Brown tape, and sang I FEEL GOO-OOD! so loud the steering wheel vibrated beneath my palms.

  That stuffy box of an office seemed a million miles: and Becky Wright, although we’d only split up forty-eight hours ago, had become. just another old flame.

  Yesterday, I’d been talking to Big Jim O’Mara, the office manager, in what I imagine must have been a self-pitying kind of way, about not being able to find a girl that I liked beyond the sex thing. Shaking his head, he’d taken scissors, sellotape and sheets of cardboard from his drawer, pushed them into my hands, and said, “The only way you’re going to get the girl of your dreams, Stephen my old pal, is to make one your bloody self. To your own bloody exacting specifications.”

  “You mean I’m too choosy?”

  “My God, the penny’s dropped at last. I’ve been trying to tell you that for years, soft lad. My trouble is I’m too bloody subtle.”

  Big Jim spoke humorously, but it carried a sharply pointed truth and I felt its sting. He must have seen me wince because laughing the Big Jim laugh he offered me a Polo mint. “So where you going tomorrow, my friend? Back to the old haunt?”

  “I am. This time tomorrow, I’ll be on that motorway and I’m not stopping until I hit Wales.”

  CROESO!

  Welsh for welcome. I’d learnt that much in the six years I’d been coming here.

  As always, I felt the same near electric thrill when I reached Queensferry. Signs became bilingual, the scenery changed as it rose into hills that would soon become mountains the deeper you ventured into Snowdonia. For me Wales always felt more foreign, somehow, than continental Europe. I once read someone describing it as “occult territory”—that it carried an aura suggesting that magical events happened here.

  I held down the car’s speed, resisting a headlong dash across country. The caravan, situated a few miles down the coast from Caernarfon would still be waiting for me, even if I arrived an hour or so later than I intended. But it was hard to resist. My anticipation of walking barefoot in the sea must have been something akin to a blacksmith anticipating that first cold beer after eight hours hammering red hot metal.

  I swapped the manic soul sounds of James Brown for some relaxing Van Morrison and I felt my knotted neck and back muscles begin to unravel. Traffic was light: the sun continued to shine brilliantly down on hills and valleys and the reassuringly solid stone cottages of North Wales. I breathed deeply, enjoying the sheer sense of freedom flow through to my fingertips.

  Yawning luxuriously, I cracked open the pack of sandwiches. I’d expected dry bread and plastic cheese but they were surprisingly good, the pickle having a fair bit of bite; just how I like it.

  Above, white clouds floated through the blue. They reminded me of pairs of woolly shaped men engaged in some weird wrestling bout five thousand feet above the ground. My imagination showed me that one from each pair clasped his hands over his eyes as if he’d seen something terrifying.

  I cruised on, now hardly thinking about Becky. When I did it was like someone I’d known only briefly a long, long time ago.

  Ahead, the estuary at Conway looked as if it had been filled with molten gold especially for my arrival. My eyes tracked the shining expanse of gold as it stretched out before me toward the sea; then the road dipped down into the tunnel that ran below it.

  Perhaps the eccentric old man talking of the whims and fancies of lottery wins, had ground a couple of his Prozac into the cheese and pickle sarnies but I’d not felt this good in months. It didn’t even bother me when I discovered one of the pound coins he’d given in my change was counterfeit.

  As the tunnel swallowed me whole, I began to sing again.

  * * *

  I didn’t bother to unpack when I reached the caravan. I simply dumped the case in the bedroom, then on impulse, instead of making for the beach I headed inland where I knew of a little lane that followed a river up a hillside.

  If forced to name my favorite place on Earth this’d be it.

  Eagerly I crossed the Pwllheli road and all but plunged into the lane, shaded by riverside trees.

  For a moment I stood there, my fists stuffed into the pockets of my jeans just allowing the sights, sounds, even the smells of the place to soak through my skin to someplace deep inside that had become jaded. I breathed slowly… deeply. Honeysuckle from the hedgerow filled my nostrils; the musical swish of water across the boulders refreshed my scorched spirit; bobbing ripples ran downstream in a way that seemed to suggest to me, schoolchildren hurrying eagerly out of class at the end of the day. All around me dappled sunlight patterns danced on the ground, contrasting with pools of deep shade. Turning, I ca
ught the flickering movement of a lizard running up the old stone wall that separated the lane from meadows; scattered across the stones, flakes of white snail shell where birds had dined.

  “If I win the bloody lottery, I’m going to come and live here.” The words that rushed from my mouth caught me by surprise. But I knew: Somehow I’d find a way to live here. And if I found the girl of my dreams along the way then life would be, as near as damnit, perfect.

  Smiling, as if I’d solved a problem that’d been gnawing at my backbone for years, I plucked a succulent stalk of grass from the river bank and continued walking uphill.

  Soon, I left the scattering of cottages behind. When I reached the ford I crossed the river at the stepping stones and pushed on, humming happily, while nibbling stalk after stalk of Welsh grass like it had been plucked from the garden of the gods.

  Knee deep in buttercups I looked back the way I’d came. The caravans gleamed like toys in the distance, beyond the sea swept outward in a blaze of the purest blue toward Anglesey.

  “I fee-eeel goo-oood—yeah! I fee-yull goo—” My enthusiastic reprise of the James Brown song stopped dead. A woman strode down the hill toward me. Instinctively I knew she wasn’t just another strolling tourist. She wanted to tell me something.

  I took the stalk from my mouth as she hurried toward me. About thirty-ish, she wore her long black hair casually tied back in a ponytail that flicked from side to side as she walked. Next my eyes were drawn to her legs; her jeans were wet to the knees and what looked to be expensive white trainers were caked black with mud.

  Her blue-grey eyes fixed on me with an intensity that was almost shocking as she spoke. “Excuse me; I’m sorry to trouble you but I think I’m in a bit of trouble.”

  Too startled to frame a coherent reply I made a sort of querying sound in my throat.

  “I seem to have got myself locked out of the house. Could you give me a hand, please?”

  I said I would, but I felt something pretty-well close to alarm. Although she appeared in control, there seemed to be a frightened desperation boiling away beneath the surface.

  Conversationally I said, “I’ve been here dozens of times. I never knew there was a house nearby.”

  “We’re well hidden. It’s down there, in that clump of trees. The Old Mill House.”

  “Picturesque. You must…” I began but she hurried down that hillside as if her mother’s life depended on it.

  Even though we were barely a hundred yards from the place, I couldn’t actually see any kind of building until we were almost on top of it. Built of stone, topped with slate, and three hundred years old if it was a day, the house lay in a narrow ravine surrounded by dozens of stunted oaks that only concealed the house because it lay so tar beneath the level of the surrounding fields. As we hurried toward it, I noticed a fast flowing brook run along the ravine bottom then disappear into a tunnel beneath the house.

  She asked abruptly, “You don’t mind?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  She looked up at me with the near luminous blue-grey eyes. “Thank you. I appreciate it. I didn’t know what to do.”

  She led me to the front of the house and turned the door handle. “See? I’ve tried my keys but the doors won’t budge.”

  “This’s your house?”

  “You think I’m some kind of burglar?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. Is it a holiday cottage?”

  “Actually my sister lives here. I’m up from Coventry for the weekend.”

  Twisting a ring on her finger, she anxiously looked up at the windows almost expecting to see a frightening face to appear at the glass.

  Again I looked at her dripping jeans and the muddied trainers. “I’ll see if I can find an open window.” As I started a search of the exterior, I noticed a sports holdall by the door. Even though her manner troubled me I guessed she was kosher. A wooden footbridge led to the back of the house. The windows and doors seemed pretty much secure. Not even an upper window had been left open.

  “Was your sister expecting you?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’d arranged everything with her about a fortnight ago.” As she spoke she gazed down at the stream that flowed through the mill race beneath the house. I looked at her wet legs again and wondered if she’d actually clambered through the tunnel. Which at the time struck me as pretty much an extreme thing to do. Obviously Sis had nipped out to the shops. She’d probably be back any moment to find her sister soaked to the knees and a complete stranger on his tip-toes peering in through the windows of her home.

  I said, “It looks secure. There’s no open windows I can climb through.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As far as I can tell. Perhaps your sister’ll be back soon?”

  “But I’ve got a set of keys to the house. I can’t understand why I can’t open the doors.”

  It occurred to me Sis might have changed the locks and overlooked telling her, but the girl was becoming more and more agitated. She stood with her face to the glass, head tilting as she tried to see inside. I looked the house over again. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  Curtains open, fresh flowers in vases, ground floor rooms tidy.

  “Does your sister live here alone?”

  “Yes.”

  The feeling she injected into the word was enough to tell me that she felt something unpleasant had happened. My own imagination began to conjure images of its own. Lonely house. Woman living alone. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Because in Wales no–one can hear you scream… With an effort I anchored my runaway imagination.

  “Look,” I said, “I can break in. Providing you give me your consent—okay?”

  She nodded quickly with relief. “Yes. Good idea. Here. Use this.”

  She handed me a rock the size of a tennis ball. Pulling my sleeve over my fist to protect it against the glass I rapped it sharply against the pane.

  It shattered first go. After pulling some of the dagger shaped slivers of glass out of the frame I opened the window from the inside, then climbed in.

  I asked her to pass in the keys then immediately left the room and found the front door.

  Now it was easy to see why she couldn’t unlock the door. Two steel bolts held it shut. Drawing the bolts, I opened it to find the girl already there.

  She looked in cautiously as if expecting to see something unpleasant lying on the floor, her blue grey eyes wide in the gloomy interior of the house. She looked up at me. “If you’ve got the time… Would you mind coming with me to look through the house?” She smiled, but what I noticed more was the way she swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “Of course I don’t mind.”

  I was ready to offer to go first but she led the way. Mouth dry as paper now, I followed. The house, dark, silent, felt as cold as a cave.

  * * *

  The urgent voice was her sister’s: “Anne. Don’t—I repeat: don’t—come to the Mill this weekend.”

  “I meant to phone before I set off this morning, but…” She shrugged.

  For a moment we both stared at the answerphone as if it would reveal all like some modern oracle.

  “It doesn’t mean—”

  “No, it doesn’t mean anything.” She forced a smile. “My sister designs clothes.” She gestured taking in the workroom we were standing in with its cutting table, sewing machine, desktop computer and bundles of exotic looking fabrics piled high on shelves. “She probably had to visit one of her buyers at short notice. She travels all over Europe you know, particularly Italy; they love her work in Italy.”

  She spoke in a rapid tremoring voice. Maybe I should have put a reassuring arm round her. But I was a stranger. What could I do?

  “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  She forced that smile again, her blue-grey eyes shining. “Come through into the living room. You must be ready for a rest. I’ll just change out of these wet things.”

  I walked through the door she’d pointed at and sat
down on a sofa. Above me, beams darkened by centuries ran in uneven parallel lines across the white ceiling. Tasteful furnishings and fabrics complimented the bare stone walls. In the corner sat the kind of music system millionaires buy.

  We’d spent twenty minutes searching the house.

  No sign of the sister. During this we’d introduced ourselves. Anne Morris, seemed quite self-composed considering her sister had disappeared from the house while mysteriously leaving it securely locked from the inside.

  “That’s a photograph of Carol and me taken last year.” She’d pointed to the framed photograph of her and a woman older than herself with shoulder length black hair. She, too, had the same striking blue-grey eyes.

  As I waited for Anne to return, I let my eyes wander over the room which seemed such a contrast to my own minimalist bachelor fiat. Slap in the middle of the carpeted floor was what appeared to be an ancient stone water trough; around five feet long and a good thirty inches wide, it had been topped with glass to create, I supposed, a novelty coffee table. It was only as I looked closer that I saw it had no bottom.

  At least no solid bottom. Surprised, I realised I was looking down into near darkness at the mill stream rushing through its tunnel beneath the house. The thick glass excluded the sound of the water but when I touched it I felt its vibration tickling my fingertips.

  “There’s a light. There at the end.” Anne strode in vigorously brushing her long hair.

  I pressed the switch. Instantly a concealed spotlight in the tunnel shone on the rushing water. For a second I stared mesmerized. I can best compare it to seeing a stream of Guiness. The black liquid flowed into the observation chamber, turning to creamy white foam as it flowed out the other side.

  “It’s remarkable,” I whispered, watching fascinated as gallon upon gallon of water sped by.

  She gave a half smile. “Sometimes Carol and I would spend whole evenings just staring down through the glass. There’s something hypnotic about it. Carol said it’s better than television.” Mentioning her sister struck the smile from her face. “I’ll get the coffee.”

  When she returned with the tray she said simply, “Stephen. I don’t know what to do.”