by Wayne Hill
MY APPLE TREE, MY LOVE:
MARIE-ANN O’SHEA —
EMERALD O’ THE ISLE.
TOMMY ETCHES A SIDE-profile drawing of Marie-Ann in the top right-hand corner. Once satisfied with the uncanny likeness, he attaches it to the weeping willow under which they first kissed. The bar, the flask, and this tree are the last mementoes that Tommy has of the girl he will always love.
Tommy is consumed now by his alter ego, Astilla. Tommy has boundaries and weaknesses, Astilla — or Splinter — has none. A physical and spiritual rot has been set in motion deep inside Tommy. A battle started over which part of his psyche has dominion. He still weeps uncontrollably every time he thinks of Marie-Ann but, instead of letting his tears fall, Splinter collects them in a silver hip flask located in his breast pocket. Treating some of his love’s dying words perhaps too literally, he looks after his own tears, much to the consternation of everyone he knows in the Lanes. The engraving on his tear-flask is a portrait of his Marie-Ann. He stares at her likeness now and again, usually while he downs the alcoholic contents of his other flask, which is a lot less grand in design. His drinking flask is the flask that Talon gave him, made from small squares of leather sewn together by Daria. Ten times the size of his tear-flask, the patchwork flask swings and bangs around, tied to him and swinging at hip level on a long multi-coloured piece of plaited twine.
THE BAR FIGHTS CONTINUE after the deaths of the O’Shea’s — Marie-Ann’s mother and father take their own lives soon after the loss of their only daughter. After Tommy’s pretty red and green meteor had burnt itself out, there is nobody to care enough to enforce the two main rules of The Weeping Willow:
1. Everyone is welcome (with a song in their heart).
2. Bad behaviour is dealt with (harshly).
Without Marie-Ann, who will remind grieving punters of the rules? Well, there is always Jonesy ...
“COME ON, THEN!” JONESY shouts at the three individuals approaching Tommy's unconscious body outside The Weeping Willow. “Come on, ya bastards!” Jonesy repeats, as the rain pelts down on him and he turns Tommy onto his back, trying to keep his face out of a puddle of mud.
Four shadowy gunmen stand smirking at each other.
“You need to control your boy. He’s too quick with his fists. Doesn’t think past the next punch,” says what passes for the leader.
“Get tae fuck! He’s not in his right mind, ya eedjit! He wants you to kill him.”
Patrons stream from the pub now. Getting as far from trouble, as they can, thinks Jonesy. Fuckin’ cowards!
The four converge on the pair.
The unconscious Tommy lies blowing red blood bubbles. The bubbles of blood slide down from his mouth, and some are popped on his cheek by the muddied rain that leaps up from the dirt puddle in which he is sprawled.
“The problem with you, Jonesy, is that you choose to help those who don’t help you. You protecting this weasel shows your weakness. The fucking Lanes will soon be overrun with these cadet weaklings, you dumb mick!”
The four men begin to laugh at the sight of an old man cradling a teenager. The once-great Jonesy now reduced to this haggard old man, unable to save a troublesome teen.
The evil bastard in Jonesy is pleading with him to just start shooting and see what happens. I’m too old and tired to listen to any more bullshit threats, thinks Jonesy. He tries to assess this mess of a situation. This would be so much easier if I wasn’t so fucking shitfaced!
His rational mind is still there, bobbing around in the sea of his inebriation like a cork. He reaches for it, for some sober sense, knocks it dizzily under several times before he finally lifts it clear. His less drunk mind, still coughing and wheezing from the pickling ocean, comes up with a strange melange of thoughts.
The bad guys have rifles, and no side arms aside from one — one of the long-range pickers has a side-arm. Why not shoot that fucker first? ... or, alternatively, just shoot off his trigger finger. (As if I could hit his fuckin’ finger from here!) Errrr, no. No good. No good, that anyway ... By the time I get to the other gunmen, I’m fuckin’ riddled with bullets! What if I wait? Wait until one takes a swig of grog? I could maybe use Tommy as a human shield? Maybe move Tommy around like a puppet? Spin him around as if he’s dancing, make them go ‘what’s going on here?’ Make ‘em laugh, and then kill ‘em. I could steady the pistol on Tommy boy’s shoulder. No. No, the noise would blast the poor kid’s eardrum to bits — although, it is a good move! (I’ll have to remember that one for another time.) Ah, got it! I shout Bowdon over and he drags one off up that tree and the rest start shooting at him. He’s like ‘Fuck you guys! I’m gonna eat this fucker, up here, and then I’m gonna come down and eat you guys!’ He’ll take a few rounds before I shoot the rest, but he can take it. No! No. Shit! Bowdon’s not here, is he? He’s away some place, fishing ... What day is it? .... he goes fishing on a Thursday... Do I have any cigars left...?’
Just then, a glowing flint spark of an idea lights up Jonesy’s racing mind. There will be a low survival rate for many people if this goes wrong, though, and a greater chance of his own death. It’s a horrific idea, but he is too pissed to think of anything else. And, besides, he wants to get this over with. Fuck it! he thinks.
Using Tommy’s body as a visual shield, pretending he needs to lift the boy to his feet, he attaches a silencer (designed by Tommy) to his six-shooter. The shot is a difficult one. Very difficult. It would be a one-in-a-thousand shot even if he were sober. He is not sober, he never is — he is rat-arsed! It was a very hard shot: a thirty-foot plus hip shot through a window at a moving shot glass — It will be a shot glass if this works out! he thinks, sardonically — that is half full of scotch. The glass Jonesy is shooting at belongs to Hector. To many in the lanes, Hector is an enigma. To people who have missioned with him, he is essential. In the bar, he is cold and quiet, distant, mildly gloomy and occasionally hilarious, although he never laughs. To outsiders, who have just appeared in the Lanes and are causing trouble, Hector is the most psychotic person in the universe.
The shot is fast and deceptive. Jonesy’s gun remains holstered, and the shot is accomplished with a falling motion. The rifle men all have the same thought — to them it seems as if the old man has tried to lift the injured young man but has fallen because of the extra weight.
Several of the people remaining in the pub run out, leap over the balustrade surrounding the porch, and hightail it out into the darkness.
“Are you fucking mad! Fly you fools!” a long-bearded man in strange robes tosses over his shoulder at the four gunmen — a Parthian shot, as he, too, is swallowed by the night.
“’The fuck was that?” asks the older rifleman of the younger ones, staring at the direction the bizarre old man fled. He notices people hiding in various places around them as if a show is about to start.
Jonesy tilts Tommy’s body sideways on the ground to make an adequate wind block and maybe to shield himself from stray bullets. Hunched behind Tommy in an almost foetal position, Jonesy pats himself down, looking for his cigars. He likes to smoke a good cigar while he waits.
The gunmen turn their attention back to the bar. A dark shape is in the doorway of the bar, an odd shadow. This silhouette alters slightly as the man tilts his head to one side, observing them all as a bird of prey might consider a cowering rodent. The riflemen see that a mask covers the lower part of his face. The mask only enhances this man’s raptorial appearance; it is grey, metallic and pyramid-shaped — much like a beak.
“Double Oban. No ice. Three drops of water,” says the man, his voice crackling like speaker feedback. From behind the mound that is Tommy, Jonesy’s finger stabs out towards the gang. He would say something, elaborate, but he is too busy enjoying his cigar.
“What the fuck is this guy?” one of the riflemen asks.
“Cruster, I think, but I thought they were all dead?” says another.
“They all have the same tribal names, don’t they?” the leader of the rifl
emen muses. “What says you, boy? What do you go by? ...Juan? ...Jose? ...Jesus? ...Sucre?”
“Hector. My name is Hector. The others you mentioned are all lost. Taken down into the deep darkness. My brothers,” the odd man says in his echoing voice.
“Shouldn't you be the other side of the wall, looking for your mad mermen friends and swimming around with the Buckies, like a mackerel or a fucking narwhal? Too dry here for you! Go on, get you in the seaweed!"
“Like suicidal dolphins!” adds another rifleman, a little behind in the conversation.
Hector takes his coat off, folds it, and places it on the pub’s wooden decking. He rolls up his sleeves and presses a few places on his forearms.
“All I want, gentlemen, is for you to get me a fresh drink to replace the one that you smashed. Then I want you to pick up all the broken glass and put the pieces in the bin for Jonesy. Not really a massive request, is it? To replace something that you broke. It’s not like I’ve asked you to search the deep for the remains of the Burj Khalifa and transport them to one of the moons of Saturn, is it?” asks Hector striding towards the four men. As he walks towards the first man, his hands clearly change into claws with serrated blade-fingers — ideal for climbing, cutting through ropes — and mutilating men.
“Freeze Hector! You just hold it, now, and Freeze! Get back inside and we won’t have any trouble now! You hear me?” a now trembling rifleman babbles.
Hector stops for a moment and scans the man.
“Freeze?... Have you ever been frozen?... In a block of ice for a year? Nobody coming. Screaming inside. Watching fracture lines slowly cross your vision. Your only entertainment? Tonal changes, as day shifts to night, and the endless creaking of the ice.”
“Look, mister, just turn around. Back inside! Now! I will shoot you dead!” another rifleman says, stepping tentatively toward the frightening man and brandishing his firearm.
Hector starts walking towards them again. “As I said: A double Oban; no ice; a few drops of water.”
The riflemen all open fire.
The first bullets hit Hector in the legs and groin, but he does not slow and does not feel any impact. Bullets strike his chest, and they whine away, ricocheting with lines of sparks. Some of these careening bullets hit the puddles near Tommy and Jonesy, some rip through Jonesy’s cigar cloud. But Jonesy, luxuriating in the taste of his cigar, does not notice.
As Hector continues his implacable approach, the gunmen shuffle backwards, firing and reloading as quickly as they can. But the bullets have no noticeable effect on Hector, and the riflemen know it. The man closest to Hector smells strongly of urine. He is out of ammo and fumbling pathetically at a knife on his belt as Hector rams his finger knives through the rifleman’s eyes and face, his thumb-blade squealing through teeth on their way to the softer flesh of the upper palette. Moving like a wraith, with unnatural speed he drags the impaled man, screaming and gurgling, out into the darkness. His friends continue to shoot blindly at shadows, calling in vain for their man. They hear the sound of rending flesh and a short gut-wrenching scream that dwindles to gurgling, as the man chokes on his own blood.
The echo of the man’s dying scream is eaten by the uncaring darkness...
...then there is silence.
A distant, soulless, mechanical voice seems to simultaneously come from everywhere and nowhere: “Oban, no ice; water.”
A decapitated head rolls out of the darkness — red holes where his eyes used to be, teeth all broken and jagged — spraying blood on to the boots of his friends. They scream as the cheeks of the head start to twitch, as the last remaining life force departs, almost pulling the ruined mouth into a grotesque caricature of a smile.
“Fuck this for a lark! Let’s get gone,” pleads one of the three remaining riflemen, looking nervously around.
“If any of you fucking run,” says their leader grimly, “I will shoot you myself.” Then turning to the surrounding shadows, he calls, “Who the fuck are you? You bird-faced fuck! Come out and taste some vengeance!”
The man reappears behind two of the men, clothed in shade and looking like a raven. He squeezes their heads together and, as they fire their weapons wildly and scream, Hector whispers to them. “I’m the cold blue skies of the north, the explosion at the start of time, the permanent eclipse. I’m the worrying activity at the centre of the galaxy. Smoke from the dormant volcanos on mars, a lit match on titan. I’m the slime mould that forms towers to escape on the bellies of passing insects. I’m the frequency never heard. The burnt pages of the Nag Hammadi codices. The lost gnosis, the Elusinian Mystery. The imminent meteorite strike, the incurable virus. The hubris of the gods and the suffering of the leper. I’m the seething despair of the damned, I’m the silence in-between all of this. I’m the tremble at the end of time and the constant murmuring of all life. As the whole world shakes — I remain still.”
This whispered litany is only punctuated by hollow popping and deep crackling noises as the skulls of the two men become a pulpy mess. One blob of a head and, below, two necks, two bodies and eight limbs — all spasming.
“A sea-anemone, perhaps?” muses Hector, as he admires his Frankenstein’s monster-like creation. “Or maybe an unusual octopus? Aha!” He snaps his fingers, with a damp shhnick sound, spraying lumps of gore and congealing blobs of blood into the air. “A sea spider! Yessir, a pycnogonid is definitely what you boys look like.”
The final rifleman had made a bolt for it just before his two friends were pycnogonified. He has ammunition left, but there is no point. His only thought is survival. He remembered what his father had said to him once, “Those who run away, live to fight another day.” Utter bollocks, of course, but the man did not see many other options. Running in the dark, occasionally turning to check if the raven-man was following, the rifleman trips over a protruding rock and cracks his head open on a wall. He lies on his back in the moonlight, eyes watering and staring into nothing, breathing haltingly, and bizarrely thinking of a moment he had long ago with someone he loved, and how things could have been completely different.
Hector — his left hand now a large cube, his right an elongated sickle — walks over to the man napping on a rock. He rolls the rifleman onto his back and kneels next to him. It is important to Hector that the man, who would apparently rather die than buy someone a drink, hears his words.
“I’m the shadow on the lonely side of the morning. I’m the worrying groaning of a bridge underfoot in the evening. I’m the blue path in the corn fields that ends suddenly at dusk, to the maddening caw of murderous crows. I’m the creaking floorboards in another room when you sit alone at night. The insidious decay of time. The death whisper of ancient trees choked by creeping ivy. The desolate place where sound no longer exists — the cold, grey tomb spoke of in myth. The endless scream. The permanent ejaculation. You will find me inside all things void of light. I dance from one life to another, just as your memory plates flit from dome to dome. That’s who Hector has become.”
Hector beats and tears at the man’s ribcage. The people, who moments ago refused to replace Hector’s drink, all now resemble fleshy absurdities. Patrons start to fill up The Weeping Willow again, slowly coming out from their hiding places. Those with sense do not look at Hector’s handiwork, most of those without sense vomit. As people file in someone mutters, “Ain't right to do that to a man — any man! - no matter what they done. It just ain’t right.”
Hector, job done, is pulling out individual ribs from the dead men and throwing them into a quickly growing pile. The only person who seems to have the stomach to watch Hector is Jonesy, puffing on what remains of his cigar, he eyes the raven-like man with apparent interest.
“Hey, Hector! That looks like it was hard work. You must be thirsty. Did you want another drink?” asks Jonesy, flicking his cigar butt away. “Last orders don’t apply to you tonight, Hector. We’re drinking, me and you, fella!” says Jonesy cheerily, putting Tommy his scrawny shoulder and walking into the pub. As he
sets him down, he notices blood soaked into Tommy’s sleeve. Jonesy drags him over to the light of the bar and sees a bullet hole through Tommy’s right hand. The wound is covered in mud.
“Fuck. Fuck! Fuck! That looks bad ... exposed tendons and everything!” says Jonesy. “Why did you have to start a fuckin’ fight with those mad bastards! You nearly died! Now look at your hand, you ...stupid, young ... fuckin’ stupid kid! All mouth and no fuckin’ thought, that’s what it is. You have two ears and one mouth for a fuckin’ reason, you know! ... Aannd you’re still unconscious probably because of blood loss... Fuck! This is worse than I thought. I better get you fixed up, fuckin’ pronto!”
As Jonesy scoops Tommy up again, to take him upstairs, there are a couple of patrons in his way. Jonesy swings the unconscious man’s legs at them, and Tommy’s heavy blast boots send the pair flying over a table.
“If I’m walking, you’re fucking moving!” shouts Jonesy to startled patrons as he passes, lugging Tommy up the old wooden stairs.
LOST IN HIS CONVOLUTED thoughts, Hector does not hear Jonesy’s offer, nor does he notice Jonesy taking Tommy back inside the pub. Using his forearm — the miraculous tech-coating there morphed into a translucent saw for the purpose — he is amputating limbs from the corpses and stacking them in another pile next to his pile of ribs.
Hector pauses, mid-butchery, and an image slides into his mind, like the fade used in old films. There is a green field and in its centre is a small, wooden house, chimney producing smoke like a contrail. On a tree-swing hanging from an old oak tree, a child is being pushed by a woman. Nearby, watching the pair at play, is an old man, sitting on the porch of the house, sipping iced tea and stroking a large chocolate Labrador dog called Treacle.
