by Tim Lebbon
The landlord and his wife were obsessed with dead people.
The lounge walls were lined with bizarre portraits of “late” famous people. Jimi Hendrix riffed the customers through the hallway and into the lounge proper, and Janis Joplin, Bill Hicks, Laurence Olivier, Graham Greene and Steve MeQueen glared down at patrons as they ordered
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their first drink. Each portrait had some unusual aspect to it… Greene was naked, McQueen had piercing red eyes, Hicks’s likeness was created wholly in cigarette ash and filters. Above the fireplace hung a huge, portrait-sized mirror, bearing subtle irregularities in its surface. Pretty strange, many casual visitors would comment, odd but interesting.
Upon passing through the frosted glass door from the lounge into the bar, any previous perceptions of strangeness demanded serious and instant re-evaluation.
Dotted around the bar were several skeletons, all bearing some strange and disturbing mutation, giving hints of the flesh and bone monstrosities they had been: one skull had three eyes sockets; another skeleton had only four ribs; yet another displayed bulbous evidence of grotesque malformation, nodules and humps and whorls of bone decorating its surfaces, a plastic Elephant Man. Norris the landlord always claimed that every skeleton was genuine, purchased at great expense from dubious contacts he maintained in South America. Dan knew as well as anyone that they were in fact cast for him in Cardiff, created by a young student doctor with a knowledge of, and a penchant for, deformity.
Still, it made for an entertaining locale in which to play pool. Norris called it his pub at the end of the world. Naturally, some folks in the village took exception.
The pool table was the only standard item of furniture in the room, surrounded as it was by false cadavers, bone-tables and amputated-limb
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chairs. At the cueing-off end a heap of congealed plastic on the floor allegedly marked the spot where a witch was once burned at the stake. However much construction work went on above this point, Norris said, however many times the flooring was renewed, her cooked guts always found their way back above ground. It was a disgusting, repulsive idea, but it was also a foot rest. Dan was tall enough, but his friend Justin was a little over five-two-wide as well as tall-and he found it useful.
He was also very loud.
“Oh, Danny boy, Danny boy-” Justin shrieked as Dan arrived.
‘Tuck off, fatty.”
The two exchanged more unpleasantries until Brady emerged from the Gents’.
“Hi Brady,” Dan said.
“Hello Dan.” Brady-real name John WilHams-was one of the quietest, humblest, most pleasant people Dan had ever had the pleasure of knowing. He wouldn’t simply lean over backwards to help a friend in need, he’d put himself in need for them. If ever there was someone who’d take the rap, the blame or a bullet for his friends, it was Brady. Unfortunate, then, that he bore an uncanny resemblance to the notorious Moors Murderer as he had appeared in the mugshots of the time. John Williams’s gaze was doleful instead of evil, his thick hair unmanagable instead of unkempt, but ever since he had hit sixteen Williams had been Brady. When he tried to change his appearance to lessen the likeness, he simply looked like Brady trying not to look
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like himself. It was a nasty nickname, unfeeling and cruel, but it had stuck so hard that even his elderly parents now used it on occasion. People no longer considered its origins. Not even Brady.
“No Ahmed?” Dan asked. Ahmed Din Mohammed was usually the fourth member of their pool team, a tall, dryly witty man with a particular love of old science fiction books and terrible B-movies. He would provide the witty counterpoint to Justin’s outright crudeness, just as Dan was lively and talkative next to Brady’s thoughtful silence.
“He couldn’t get his car out of the drive,” Brady said. “Gave me a ring this afternoon. Totally snowed in, and even if he could get out his wife didn’t want to drive so he’d be sober all night.”
“Him and me both,” Dan sighed.
“Never mind.” Brady took a long, luxurious swig of his Guinness and smacked his lips. He lived five minutes from Bar None.
“Bastard,” Dan muttered under his breath, but loud enough for Brady to hear.
Brady smiled sweetly, tipped his glass again and emptied it. “Get you a Coke?”
Dan slapped Justin around the back of the head as he bent down to line up a shot. “Alright fatty?”
“No probs.”
“How did you get here?”
“Walked.”
“You? Walking? You never even walk when it’s a pleasant seventy in the shade, the sun is
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setting and cars have been banned from all major and minor public roads.”
“Well, you know … it’s snowing.”
“You big kid!” Dan gasped. He shouted across to the bar. “Hey Brady, fatty here wanted to play in the snow!”
Brady looked back, his face giving nothing away. “Freak.”
The three men spent a few minutes chatting, gossiping, swearing and cursing, taking the affectionate piss out of each other as was their wont. Ahmed would have made the group complete, but they made do with what they had and reserved especially harsh judgement for their absent friend. There were only a few other people in the bar, most of whom Dan knew to nod a polite hello to-a local farmer, a young couple who lived in a converted barn just down the road from Bar None, an old widow who still inhabited a virtual shack at the edge of the village. Rumor had it she was paying to have a gas line installed as an eightieth birthday present to herself. She had two walking sticks with her tonight instead of the usual one, and she wore so many layers of clothing that she looked like a jumble sale drinking a double malt.
Dan began to relax. The stresses and strains of the past few days-and holidays with his family always contained hidden pressures amongst the enjoyment-melted away like snowflakes on skin. Nikki’s teenage mood-swings, Megan’s surprise revelation that she wanted to move back to the city, that weirdo yesterday afternoon, Megan’s panic this morning over the supposed
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Satanic hoofprints in the snow … all in all, it had been a rough three days.
The longer he stayed, the more tempted Dan became to have a few drinks and walk home. But it was several miles, and he knew that he could freeze. He was above all else a sensible family man … so he stuck to the fizzy drinks, burped and watched his friends getting drunk.
“Good holiday?” Justin asked.
Dan shrugged. “Apart from the freak blizzard turning the easy journey home into Damnation Alley, yes, not bad. Oh, and Megan told me she wanted to move back to the city.”
“You’re moving?” Brady said, looking up from the table.
“No, I just said Megan wants to move back.”
“Shit…” Justin trailed off. “What a bastard.” He drained his beer, frowned and went to buy another round.
“So,” Brady said, leaning against the wall next to Dan. “You’re moving.”
Dan laughed and shook his head, but inside a bitterness was welling up. Yes, Brady was right, they were moving. Megan had stated her intent and that was it, she was as serious as hell… and wouldn’t she love that comparison … and so, eventually, they would be going back to the city. Once Megan said something like that it was only a matter of time before she had her way. Sometimes it took months. Dan resented her because he knew his capitulation was a form of sympathy. But he hated himself more for giving it.
He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d already made an appointment to have their house valued.
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“I dunno Brady,” Dan said quietly. “I thought she loved it here. Thought she was happy. Away from the dangerous city, away from where she was attacked …”
“Maybe she’s got over it and wants to go back to her friends.”
“She has friends here!” But Dan could not convince even himself of that, let alone anyone else. Megan was slow to get to know people at the best of times, an
d out here in the country the chances had seemed less frequent. Although, Dan thought, she rarely tried to make her own opportunities.
Justin returned with the drinks and he and Dan began a frame. The harsh clacking of the pool balls calmed Dan and drew him away from family problems for a while. He forgot the melting snow, the beautiful, moody woman his little girl was becoming, the strange man who had slipped in and out of their car and left the memory of himself behind like a bad smell, and he thought about placing his stripes over the top pockets, planting doubles and leaving the cue ball on the cushion. Considering he was sober he played quite well, but Justin won the game so Dan let Brady to the table.
Dan strolled to the bar. “Hey, Norris, two more beers for the gruesome twosome over there.” As the publican pulled the pints Dan glanced around. “Any new stiff additions?”
“They’re cadavers, Dan, as well you know.” Norris’s eyes twinkled as he spoke. He talked about the false skeletons as if they were his own kids.
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“Well if one of your patrons decides to walk home in this, you’ll have another one to add to the collection. I’d like to hang above the bar, I think.”
“You driving tonight?”
“Yep. Megan didn’t want to drive me up here in this, which is fair enough.”
“Dangerous out there.” Norris moved off to pour another whiskey for the wrapped-up old lady.
Dan chose some music from the jukebox-an old wall-hung unit whose playlist had not been updated for about five years-took the drinks to his friends and started a frame with Brady.
The Cure agonized from the speakers. Brady planted a ball into a side pocket. Norris coughed behind the bar, a true hawking that sounded like a tin of dog meat being emptied. Dan thought about the book fair he was going to next weekend, wondering what treasures he may uncover in dusty corners. He hadn’t looked at his books since they’d been back. He would tonight. A glass of wine when he got home, and maybe a browse at the illustrated Dante’s Inferno he’d picked up two weeks ago. Some gorgeous etchings in there. He closed his eyes, sighed.
The bar door rattled in its frame.
“I bet Nikki’s pussy tastes fine.”
Dan opened his eyes. Justin and Brady were leaning against the pool table, chatting.
“What the fuck did you say?”
“Huh?” Justin asked. Brady looked as tired and bemused as ever.
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“Just then. In my ear. You whispered something about Nikki.”
“Something about Nikki,” Justin repeated, bemused. Dan could see that it was no joke.
He looked around, wondering who else could have said it but knowing there was no one. Norris was changing an optic bottle, The Cure obsessed about love lost in a forest, the young couple were putting on their coats, the old widow still sat in her corner, her whiskey glass doing its best to drink in the single wall light above her. No one close enough … and no one likely to say what Dan had heard.
Tinnitus, he decided. Blocked ears. Ran in his family. And maybe family problems didn’t flee when he was here with his friends, maybe they just went under cover until he was looking the other way.
He bent over to line up a shot. Looked across the pool table at the woman in the corner. Saw that she had taken off some layers of clothing and her headscarf, so that her long black hair, which previously had been grey, flowed down over her shoulders like a slick, and her whiskey glass travelled to her lips to be emptied in one gulp, the hand holding it large and strong and long-fingered.
“You,” Dan said, not knowing whether to be angry or scared.
Brand stood from his seat and approached the bar, never once glancing at Dan. He walked stooped like an old man, and he was not as tall as Dan had at first thought. Five-ten, maybe. Certainly no giant.
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“What did you say?” Dan said, loud enough for everyone in the bar to hear him above the music. As if on cue the song ended, a loaded silence replacing it.
The young couple looked at him, the old farmer in the corner aimed a rheumy glance his way, Norris looked up from counting change at the bar, but Brand simply stared down into his glass, waiting for it to be filled.
“You,” Dan said. “Oddball. What did you just say to me?” He realized how thuggish that sounded, the cliched You looking at me? which he’d heard many times in pubs in the city but never out here. It wasn’t Dan, that type of behavior. He was as much a hooligan as Megan was a rock star. But this guy had offended his family, insulted his daughter … and frightened him, truth be known. He had frightened him badly.
Just how the hell did he whisper into my ear from all the way over there?
Norris poured. Brand drank and smacked his lips, settling the glass back on the bar with a reverence usually reserved for churches. Dan noticed the scarring around his left eye; raised, rough skin, his eyelid twisted, as if someone had attacked him with a cheese grater. He was surprised he hadn’t seen it in the car.
Then Brand glanced at him, almost dismissive, a casual look with hooded eyes. “I didn’t say anything,” he said. “I’m here for a drink. It’s cold out there, you should know that. And the last thing I want to do …” He indicated his glass to Norris, who dutifully refilled it from a bottle of Glenlivet. “… the very last thing, is to talk to you, Dan.”
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“How do you know my name?”
Brand paused with the glass halfway to his lips, frowned, looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes.
Got him, Dan thought. He can’t answer that one. But his triumph vanished when he mentally asked the question once more: How does he know my name?
“Let’s see,” Brand said, and now Dan was aware that the rest of the pub were watching. Norris had even turned the jukebox down, so that Paul Weller sounded so far down in the tube station that he could hardly be heard. “You picked me up in the blizzard, took me a mile or two, ejected me from your car into the worst snowstorm this county has known in living memory, left me for dead … and you’re worried that I know your name.”
“I’m worried about what the fuck you’re doing following me! And if you mention my daughter one more time-“
“Dan,” Brady said, touching his shoulder.
Dan shrugged him off. “No, Brady,” he said, without taking his eyes off the tall, dark-haired whiskey drinker. “This guy’s up to something. Just look at him-“
“Dan,” Norris said from behind the bar, “you really should calm it a little. I may have a pub full of cadavers, but I’ll not have any trouble in here, especially from one of my regulars.”
“Norris!” Dan said, disbelief hitching his voice. He heard the door open and looked just in time to see the young couple quietly slip out.
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Fleeing a forest fire, Dan thought. Leaving the party early.
“The man’s just having a drink. He’s been waiting for a lift, he says, and he’s keeping himself warm. And he has taste. Glenlivet.”
Dan glared at Brand for a few seconds, the taller man returning his gaze with an expression so devoid of emotion that Dan had a brief, crazy idea that Norris had hired him as just another corpse.
“You stop talking about me and my family,” Dan said. “Then we have no problem.”
“Okay. Whatever.” Brand nodded, eyebrows slightly raised in innocent surprise.
“And you don’t talk to me. Say anything like that again-“
“I didn’t-“
“Anything!” Dan shouted. “Anything like that and I’ll make you regret it!”
“Jesus Christ, Dan,” Justin said from the pool table. Dan could hear the shock in his voice, the surprise that his mate was acting the thug.
Dan turned his back on Brand and looked across to his two friends. The atmosphere was hazed from Justin’s cigarettes, thickened in a very different way from how alcohol usually narrowed the room for him. This was not tunnel vision, it was a blurring of sight, something that made everything more confusing instead of targeting his concentratio
n at one specific point. Brady and Justin stared back at him, the latter openly aghast.
He turned back to Brand. “And let’s leave it at that,” he said.
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Brand nodded. “Of course.” He lifted the glass to his lips.
Dan walked back to the pool table, feeling small and foolish even though he’d just scored an important victory, for himself as well as his family. He was certain of that. A victory.
“Still,” a voice said, “I’ll bet her tight little cunt tastes of honey.”
Dan spun around, and his turning body-his anger, his frustration, his hidden weaknesses that even he was sometimes unsure of-added momentum to the swinging pool cue in his hands.
It would not happen, he knew. He could never win now because he never had before, never did, never would. Brand would duck and wrestle the cue from him-
-it was the thick end, the grip end sweeping through the air, heavy enough to do some real damage-
-and turn it around, handing out the beating Dan intended for him, giving it back. Because Dan never won. He never succeeded. He had not been there for Megan as she suffered, and he was rarely ever there for himself. There was an angry person here, true, someone trying to defend his family’s honor, but it was Dan, and he could not walk away having triumphed. By trying to help he would only hurt himself some more. That was simply how his life ran.
He had not been there for Megan, not when she needed him most. He had dabbed her blood and bathed her cuts and bruises, but when the bastard was actually hurting her, beating her-
