I shrug it off. Throw more pebbles. Then kick my way back through the snow, turn up the gas fire, get the pen back in my hand and I attack the paper again. I have to get what’s in my head down onto paper.
Throughout my life, I’ve never wondered about the big – and I mean the REALLY BIG – mysteries. And yet over the last eight months I got answers. Answers to those questions that scholars and people just like you have been asking for three thousand years.
I didn’t go looking for them. They dropped into my hands like stones from the sky.
It’s important you know.
What you do with it is up to you.
Chapter Three
All Calm Before the Storm
‘You know where he’ll be. We could take him now.’
‘Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold.’
‘Yeah, and in the meantime that shit Slatter thinks he’s got away with it.’ Steve Price kicked a can rattling away down the road. ‘He’s laughing at us, Nick.’
‘Cold, I said. Not stale. We’ll pay him back. But we don’t rush it. We work out a plan.’
After the burger blow-out in McDonald’s we’d walked back from town to my house.
Steve Price, blond hair, round-faced, with a passion for football and Oriental girls, was my best friend. We’d knocked around together for the last five years. Now he was itching to take a crack at Slatter.
As we’d sat there behind the plate glass in McDonald’s, chewing burgers, we’d seen Tug Slatter parading his ugly, tattooed face through town.
‘You know where he’ll be going, Nick?’
I knew. Slatter was patrolling his territory. Dressed in his uniform of denim shirt, jeans, brown leather belt and pit boots. Cigarette in the corner of his down-turned mouth, shaved head swinging from side to side like a bad-tempered pit-bull looking for someone to bite.
He’d slouch through town from the market to the High Street, trying to catch some kid’s eye. When he did it’d be the old routine.
Slatter: ‘Oi. What you want?’
Puzzled kid: ‘Pardon?’
‘Don’t come that with me. You know what you did.’
‘No. What?’
Slatter, aggressive: ‘You were looking at me.’
‘I wasn’t.’
Slatter moves closer. Eye contact cobra sharp. ‘You did. And I didn’t like the way you were doing it.’
‘I didn’t. I—’
‘Damned well did. You were looking at me.’ Slatter bunches hands. ‘You think you’re better than me, eh? Want to make something of it?’
Kid knows what’s coming now. Frightened, he sees those tattooed fists coming up with their biting snakes and hand-picked letters across the fingers spelling out HATE and KILL.
He doesn’t have to try hard to imagine himself lying on the ground spitting out broken teeth while this ugly ape kicks the living shit out of him.
Slatter: ‘You don’t just walk through town, you know, just staring people out.’
The kid guesses the safest way out. He goes for it. Show this tattooed gorilla he’s undisputed boss.
‘I’m sorry … Look … I really am. I didn’t mean to.’
‘Don’t look at me like that again. All right?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’ (The kids stops short of calling Slatter SIR – just.) I was only walking down … I … I mean I—’
‘All right. But don’t do it again. I don’t like it.’
Respect – induced through terror – is meat and drink to Tug Slatter.
Kicking stones, we turned into my home street.
‘Tomorrow night,’ I told Steve. ‘We want to pick the right time.’
‘What we going to do to him?’
‘After what he did – something that really hurts the bastard.’
‘But what? He’s armour-plated.’
I grinned. ‘Give me time.’
Lawn Avenue reeked of normality. A road of Victorian town houses lined with lime trees that look terrific in the Spring. Kids riding bikes, and the sound of someone playing a piano floating through an open window.
I’d lived in Lawn Avenue all my life. It seemed nothing special to me, but Steve thought it posh. ‘You know, I’ve never ever seen dog crap on the pavement round here,’ he’d say.
‘That’s because all our dogs have their backsides sewn up at birth. You know, you can lay in bed at night and hear them in their kennels just bursting like balloons.’
As we walked up the driveway Steve asked, ‘Still clean?’
‘It better be.’
I checked my pick-up. It wasn’t one of Ford’s most freshly minted vehicles but it was mine, it was paid for. I’d resprayed it myself a flame red then stencilled in white above the radiator grille its name – THE DOG’S BOLLOCKS.
That would have made Jack Aten laugh. Sometimes I’m sure I do half-crazy things to amuse his ghost.
‘Clean as a whistle.’ I patted the wing.
‘Anyway, you don’t think he’d be stupid enough to do the same again.’
‘I don’t see why not, Steve. He’s got as much imagination as that worm there. Once he’s learnt a good trick he’ll repeat it ad nauseam.’
‘Ad what?’
‘Until we’re sick of it, Steve, until we’re sick of it.’
‘It looks alright now.’ Steve ran his fingers across the paint work.
‘No scratches.’
‘You should have seen it yesterday. Tyres flat – and he’d smeared shit all over it. Paint work, glass, lights.’
‘Bastard.’
‘It had set like concrete. And I’ll tell you another thing.’
Steve raised his eyebrows.
‘It wasn’t dog shit.’
‘You mean …
‘I mean it was pure Slatter. I couldn’t shift that stink out of my head all day.’
‘What now?’
‘Now we go inside and decide how we are going to hit back.’
‘Hi, Steve. How’s your dad keeping?’
My dad pulled himself to a sitting position on the sofa and brushed cake crumbs off his sweatshirt.
‘Fine, thanks,’ said Steve. ‘He’s taking a load of stone down south this weekend.’
‘So I thought I’d baby-sit for him,’ I said. ‘And make sure Stevie doesn’t get frightened all alone in that big, dark house.’
The three of us laughed easily.
Steve’s mum and dad had divorced years ago. The weekends his dad worked away a few of the gang would stop over at his house and make a party of it. Lately a gang of girls had been promising to stay too. Suddenly weekends were starting to get not just exciting but electrifying.
I told my dad about the murder. He was as horrified as I expected him to be. He kept shaking his head in disbelief. That kind of thing just didn’t happen in a small town like Doncaster.
He looked at his watch. ‘I take it you two lads have come to interrupt my honest relaxation.’ He reached down beside the sofa and came back with a can of beer. He smiled, exposing the gap in his top front teeth through which he could make the loudest whistle I’ve ever heard. ‘It’s not one of those video nasties again?’
‘Not this week. I taped a concert last night. We thought we’d watch it this afternoon … that is, if you’re not watching anything, eh …’
‘This old horse opera?’ My dad took a deep swallow of beer. ‘It’s only the one I saw the night I proposed to your mother. But you watch what you want. It’s as bad as I remembered the first time around. You know nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.’
He stood up. Cake crumbs showered onto the carpet.
‘You’re living dangerously,’ I said. ‘Mother will go absolutely, totally insane when she sees the mess.’
My dad pulled a face. ‘I’m safe. I’ll blame it on you two.’
He crossed the deep carpet that mum hoovered with religious zeal every day and left the empty beer can on the window sill.
‘Hey, Nick-Nick.’ My fifteen-ye
ar-old brother called from the doorway, swinging a carrier bag in his hand. ‘Got any spare cash?’
‘Not if you’re going to waste it on anything stupid like dictionaries and exercise books.’
‘Nah. Robbo’s selling me a couple of his CDs.’
‘Thank God for that. It’s time you started mis-spending your youth.’
‘Don’t listen to your brother,’ dad said. ‘He’ll either end up a millionaire or—’
‘IN JAIL.’ We chorused the old Aten catch phrase.
‘There’s some spare cash in my tin. Not the one shaped like a coffin. The one with the naked lady – so cover your eyes when you get it.’
John saluted. ‘Thanks, Nick-Nick. You’re a hero.’
The image of my brother standing there in the doorway, eyes flashing happily, big freckled face grinning, is nailed permanently to my mind. It was the last time I saw him alive.
He ran upstairs, his feet thumping heavily. I heard my bedroom door open, then footsteps crossing to the bedside table. A pause.
He was counting the money. He’d take not a penny more than he needed. I heard the feet pass back out onto the landing toward his room.
Then nothing more.
‘You shouldn’t give your hard-earned away like that, Nick.’ Dad shook his head, smiling, flashing that gap in his teeth again. ‘He gets money of his own.’
‘I know, but he fritters it away on history books and junk like that.’
My dad picked up a hammer from the sideboard and pointed it at me playfully. ‘I’ll find out how much John’s paying for them and I’ll give you the money back Monday. Now watch that concert, I’ve got a job that needs doing upstairs.’
Casually swinging the hammer, he walked out of the room. I trawled through the drawer in the video cabinet for the tape. As always I’d not bothered writing on the memo label so there would be a five-minute interval of swearing and false starts before I found what I was looking for.
As I pulled out the tapes mum came in with a plateful of sliced cake and tea – all part of the Saturday afternoon ritual. In her track suit, her dark hair short and neat, she looked ten years younger than she was. Within minutes she would get Steve laughing and chatting shyly.
‘I keep telling Nick he should get a decent office job like yours, Steve,’ she said, smiling brightly.
‘Oh, I think he enjoys what he does, Mrs Aten.’
‘Judy.’
‘Sorry … Judy. He couldn’t stand being tied to a desk.’
‘I hope the police never look in the back of that truck he drives.
There are enough rumours about Mr Karowski to sink a battleship.’
Upstairs my dad had begun his DIY. Thump. Thump. Thump. It sounded like he was tapping nails into solid brick.
My mother chatted happily over the thumping, handing out more cake to Steve who could never bring himself to say no.
‘Found it,’ I said as pink lasers cut slices out of the TV screen.
‘Oh, I’ll leave you to it. Anyway, I’ve got a boatload of ironing to do. If you want anything I’ll be in the kitchen.’
She left, singing lightly to herself.
As I stood up I noticed my dad’s empty can. Lucky she hadn’t seen that otherwise dad would have been in for an ear-bruising. Crushing the can, I dropped it into the bin.
Upstairs the hammering stopped.
Suddenly something struck me as strange. Never, ever, in my seventeen years on this planet had I seen dad drink beer of an afternoon.
‘Looks as if it’s going to be a good concert, Nick.’
It was. I sat down to watch it and forgot the beer can completely.
Chapter Four
Life Is a Bastard
Steve kicked us out early.
Well, you have to agree, 8.30 is excruciatingly early for a Sunday morning. His dad was due home by mid-day so he needed to restore the house so it didn’t look like a truckful of drunks had crashed through the front door. Which was more or less what had happened.
The girls we hoped would show, didn’t. We ended up getting drunker while playfully shoving one another over the furniture.
The three of us hopped over Steve’s back garden wall to cut across the fields, leaving Steve to do what he could with the house while repeating for the thirteenth time that morning:
‘My dad’s going to kill me when he gets home.’
With the morning sun already hot on our necks, we plodded across empty meadows. My mouth tasted as if a toad had died of the blister in there, then been buried beneath my tongue.
The others went their separate ways as we reached the edge of town, leaving me to plough the last mile through the long grass alone. What thoughts I could keep together mainly centred on how I could do the most damage to Tug Slatter.
I saw no one. I heard nothing. It was only a Sunday morning in Spring with nine-tenths of the population enjoying a lie-in.
I climbed the fence into our back garden, scaring the birds up into a blurry cloud. Then, cutting down the passageway into the front garden, I checked my pick-up. Still clean. Slatter hadn’t chosen to do an encore just yet.
I noticed my dad’s car was missing from the drive. Nothing unusual about that. Some Sundays he’d drive into town to pick up the newspapers. My mother would probably still be in bed. My brother certainly would. Saturday nights he’d watch old horror films in his bedroom into the early hours – then sleep until lunchtime.
‘HI HONIES, I’M HOME!’ It was my customary greeting in a voice guaranteed to sandpaper anyone’s nerves.
The usual ‘Shut up! I’m trying to sleep!’ never came. They were sleeping with the lid on that morning. I headed for the kitchen.
‘Pigs!’
I shouted it again as I pushed a pile of hacked bread to one side of the table and clicked the top back on the butter tub.
If that was my dad who’d left the mess he was playing a dangerous game. Mum would go berserk. Not that he’d normally do something like this.
Come to think of it, he’d NEVER do anything like this. After eating his cornflakes he’d wash his dish then stick it back in the cupboard. The only other culprit could be—
‘John! You are dead! You’d better clean this lot up before mum sees it.’
No reply. Jesus … Maybe beneath that home-work-loving line-toeing fifteen-year-old there was a rebel after all.
Five minutes later I dropped my empty bowl in the sink and, still crunching a massive mouthful of cornflakes, I went upstairs.
Upstairs the house was tidy and quiet.
I changed into my slob-around jeans. Then I decided to roust John and mention the fact that if he wanted to live until lunchtime he would have to clean up the mess in the kitchen.
I pushed open the door.
And I saw something that stopped my breath.
My brother’s bedroom had ceased to exist.
Oh, the four walls and window were still there. But the stuff that made it my brother’s bedroom wasn’t.
The bed had gone. The wardrobes, furniture and all the posters of Greek temples and Egyptian statues had gone with it. Instead, in the middle of the floor, nearly touching the ceiling light, was a pyramid.
I stood there and actually laughed out loud.
What I saw was impossible. I laughed again. But this time it was forced. I began to feel cold. Like someone was slowly dipping me into a mountain lake.
Someone had been in here, taken the furniture and then smashed all my brother’s possessions. Because that pyramid was built out of books, computer games, childhood toys, holiday souvenirs, comics … Everything that John had ever been given, collected, saved for, bought. Every fucking thing.
Jesus Christ.
That bastard … Slatter.
As I stood there I could see things in my mind’s eye. Slatter looking through the bedroom window, bluebird tattoos at either side of his eyes, a grin hacking open his ape face. Then climbing in to smash the place to smithereens.
Tug Slatter had done thi
s. I believed that. But what on earth had he done with the bed and furniture? Where was my brother? He’d have been asleep in here.
I saw it. But a big chunk of me did not believe it.
I didn’t move. I just looked. My chest aching, my breathing sounding strange in my ears.
The bastard had been thorough. Far, far more thorough than when he’d done the job on my pick-up with the fruit of his own backside.
Books hadn’t just been ripped in two. Every page had been torn to pieces the size of postage stamps. John’s computer – he’d loved the thing, he actually polished it – had been reduced to bits the size of my thumbnail.
Shaking my head, mind-kicked, I began picking through the pyramid. Examining a fraction of computer game or a shred of one of John’s precious history books. There was his video of the first man on the moon. As I touched it, it fell from the pyramid to expose more of John’s treasures. His pirate chest money box, more computer games. A torn mask. A model car. A …
My fingers stopped above the mask.
John never owned a mask.
But here was a life-size mask. It had partly open eyes. Life-like hair. A nose …
I pushed my hand into the pyramid to pull at the mask. It wouldn’t come. It had been fixed to something solid.
As I pulled somebody shoved the room. It spun so fast around me I could hardly see the walls and window flashing by. Only the mask stayed in focus.
Made from grey rubbery stuff, it was torn from mouth to ear, opening up a cheek like a parcel, exposing a row of teeth messed with red. The eyes reflected the light shining into the room, making it look as if they were alive. Or had been once.
I remember looking at the thing and seeing a mask.
But I hear myself shouting:
‘John! John! John!’
Then I was in the street. My throat burning like I’d drunk bleach. I was still shouting. This time for help.
It was like a dream – you shout but no one hears.
Lawn Avenue was empty. The trees shifted slightly in the morning breeze – and I stood there and screamed to a world with stone ears that my brother lay dead in his bedroom. His face nearly torn in two.