Bully

by A. J. Kirby

  I grinned. For once, my father and I agreed on something.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Jack flash sat on a candlestick”

  Summit Farm was situated, or so an estate agent would tell you, on the brow of yet another hill overlooking the town of Newton Hills. ‘Stunning views,’ they’d tell you. ‘Marvellous panorama of the hills which form the gateway to the Peak District. You simply have to see this property to believe it. Ancient, rustic farmhouse; acres of land where dogs and horses can roam free; kitchen comes complete with an Aga, dontchaknow.’

  In fact, it was yet another building that had been left to decay. Its greatness was now a thing of the past. Now, all that remained of the house was an empty shell. The land was overgrown and riddled with rabbits and moles and ragwort. The view, such as it was now, was of the billowing smoke from the toffeeworks, and if you could see through that, you’d see the teeming council houses and graveyards that made up the rest of the town.

  Story was, an old man – another old man – had gone completely mad stuck on his own up there. Turns out, he’d killed his wife and daughter and buried them in a woodpile in the barn. After a few weeks, he dug them out and started dressing them up like they were members of the family again. Police found them spread out on the lawn on a rug, taking tea and cakes on a sunny afternoon. But the old feller didn’t go down without a fight. Took two coppers down with him and badly wounded another before they dragged him kicking and screaming into the barn, where they fired round after round of shots into his bearded face.

  Of course, most of the story was all hearsay, but, like the rumours about the Black Panther, they’d seemed to stick. The town’s will was that things like that could still happen, even in the twentieth century. Wild West lawlessness was what the townsfolk voted for, and nobody would touch the place with a barge-pole for years after.

  Of course, Dick told me that there were rumours and stories that started to mix the Black Panther and Mad Farmer myths into one unholy crap-fest. According to him, people had started saying that the Black Panther had been bred – rather like the Hound of the Baskervilles – in that very barn by our mad as a coot farmer and that the reason he offed his wife and daughter in the first place was so as to give the poor old cat a taste for human meat.

  I wondered what they’d all say about us, once this whole thing with Tommy Peaker came to a head one way or another. Maybe they’d say we got what we deserved. Maybe they’d say that we got what was coming to us. But I just knew that in some of the drug dens and the alehouses, on the factory production lines and the too-long shop queues, there’d be whisperings.

  Boys will be boys, they’d say.

  They were only rough-housing, another would agree.

  And the whole damn thing would slip into the annals of history and myth. Problem was, if I tried to excuse our actions like that, all it would bring was more guilt. Because no matter how I tried to look at things, we’d still done what we’d done and this lunatic from beyond the grave was still looking to put us where we’d once put him.

  We walked up past Grange Heights on the way to Summit Farm. Up there, I got the funny feeling that Dick was sticking rather close to me than usual. Perhaps he still believed in the Black Panther, despite all the things we knew. So I trailed cigarettes in front of him for him to follow; leading him like he was a donkey and I held the carrot. And he quivered and quaked his way onto the top of the hill as though he was going to collapse at any moment.

  Once we were at the top, the wind picked up, buffeting into our clothes like it didn’t want us to get where we were going. Dick pulled up the hood of his tracksuit top and drew the cords tight, so all anyone could see of his face was his nose, which was becoming like a dripping tap. I just pulled my army jacket tight around me and narrowed my eyes. I had to keep seeing things as a mission. Had to keep my eyes on the target, otherwise we were lost.

  ‘This is a nightmare, I’m sure it is,’ muttered Dick. ‘At some point I’m going to wake up, passed out on someone’s bloody kitchen floor with my works by my side having had one helluva ride. You’re probably not even here, Bully, are you?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Not here at all. I’m sunning myself on a lovely beach in Spain, with a nice cold cerveza in hand and a nice old view of the birds on the beach.’

  ‘Are they topless, Gaz?’

  ‘They certainly are, mate. And I’m wearing these dock-off aviator shades so they can’t tell I’m staring straight at them.’

  ‘How’s the beer going down?’

  ‘A beauty, mate. A bit cold, like, but the bubbles are dead refreshing. Hold on; some bird’s coming up to see if I want her to light my ciggie.’

  I looked over at Dick. He was watching me with rapt attention, so wanting to believe that everything I was saying was true; that we weren’t up here on some godforsaken hill being chased by the Frankenstein’s monster we’d created in our own stupid carelessness; that we weren’t walking towards our doom.

  I sparked up another cigarette. I was running low now, but couldn’t let Dick know. That was the kind of news that was liable to push him over the edge. He reminded me more and more of that dog-gone mummy’s boy Selly. And Selly had always been a little distracted out there, like Dick was now, but one day when the toilet paper ran out, he just exploded. Started firing off round after round into the toilet bowl. Blowing it to smithereens. Of course, out there, boys being boys, we all had a right laugh about his reaction. But I think deep down, we all shared that fear of his; we were so close to the dividing line that all it took was one push and we’d fall headlong into that other world where Tommy Peaker can exist and spears from some lonely desert rebel hideaway can suddenly appear in a flat in fucking Newton Mills.

  As soon as we reached the dry stone wall which marked the far boundary of Summit Farm lands, we saw the signs of Twinnie’s presence. It was clear now why it had been so obvious to the neighbouring farmer that something was amiss. Because the whole top field was littered with dead livestock. Some had had their throats ripped out; others burned where they were killed; still more were speared to the ground with what looked like makeshift arrows. It looked like a scene out of American Werewolf in London or else some awful scene of ritual sacrifice.

  ‘Fuck,’ whistled Dick. ‘He’s not exactly hiding himself away up here is he?’

  ‘That’s if it’s him killing all these animals, and not Tommy,’ I said.

  Dick shot me a baleful glance. A wounded glance. He didn’t want me to mention Tommy’s name any more. And in a way, I couldn’t blame him. But at some point soon, he’d have to face the reality of the situation. There were no more drugs…

  I vaulted over a low part of the wall, where it looked like something heavy had crossed and dislodged a number of the stones. Even I didn’t want to think what that heavy thing might be. Dick followed, somewhat less successfully than me, despite my half-foot, and ended up collapsed on his arse on the Summit Farm side of the wall, just missing a cow pat. For a moment, I felt like cracking up laughing, but decided against it.

  Perhaps the main reason I decided against laughing was because I felt the whistle of a bullet rocketing past my ear. So close, I thought, that it may have even clipped me. Just afterwards I heard the echo of the gunfire ricocheting back off the hills. I threw myself down on top of Dick and tried to cover him as best I could.

  ‘What was that?’ he whimpered.

  ‘Bullet,’ I said, starting to crawl down the slope, pulling him after me. I was aiming for the cover of a small mound of earth a few feet away.

  Another gunshot. Louder than the ones out there in the desert. This one was using some older weapon. Something like a good old-fashioned blunderbuss. Absently, I wondered what the kick-back on those things was like; liable to take a feller’s shoulder right out, I suspected. Unless they knew what they were doing.

  Thankfully, this shooter didn’t really know what he was doing. The second shot cleared the dry stone wall. And the third barely even made the top
of the small mound. But sooner or later, everyone finds their range. Even halfwits like Twinnie, if that was really him shooting.

  ‘Don’t come any fucking closer,’ someone shouted. ‘I’m fucking armed and fucking dangerous.’

  It was Twinnie. I’d have recognised the voice anywhere. The fact that his speech was peppered with swearwords was a dead-giveaway even if the strong Newton Mills accent was not.

  ‘The only person you’re a danger to is yourself!’ I yelled back.

  And I swear Twinnie let that fourth shot go even though he must have recognised my voice.

  ‘Dickhead!’ I shouted. ‘Shot shooting.’

  I hadn’t even stopped to think where the fourth shot might have landed. Until I heard the groan from Dick underneath me. Somehow, he’d allowed his leg to slip into Twinnie’s wayward sights, and somehow Twinnie had made a direct hit. Blood was now shooting from the fleshy part of Dick’s thigh. Quickly, I tore off my fatigue jacket and wrapped it around the leg. A makeshift tourniquet to try and stop the bleeding.

  ‘I’m hit,’ cried Dick. ‘I’m dying man, I’m dying.’

  And then someone who vaguely resembled the Twinnie that I once knew was standing on top of the small mound, looking down at us, shotgun still cocked.

  ‘You’re not fucking dying you twat,’ he growled.

  It was only when we found Twinnie – or when Twinnie’s shots found us - that I truly understood what Burt had meant by the purpling. Because even the man’s skin was purple. He looked like he’d applied too much hair dye and it had started to run off his hair and onto his face, staining it in the process. And apparently, that first time we saw him, he’d even been wearing a thin layer of flour over his face so as to disguise the colour somewhat.

  He had long, lank hair now and a thick beard; all purple-tinged. And his eyes burned fiery bright with knowledge and pain. The only aspect of him that was recognisably Paul Morton were those sharp features; the long, thin nose; the tiny mouth which we once joked – but never after that first time – looked like a cat’s arse; the jagged edges of his cheek bones.

  Without any compassion whatsoever, he dragged Dick off the top field as though he were one of the animals that he’d shot; I crawled behind this terrible twosome, too much in shock to even attempt to walk. When I got to the front door, Twinnie pulled me to my feet by the collar of my t-shirt and sneered into my face.

  ‘You look after the fucker,’ he said. ‘He’ll only end up dragging me down.’

  I tried to stare him down. Tried to see if there was anything human left inside him, but couldn’t see even the remotest of signs.

  ‘Dragging you down?’ I tried. ‘Why? What are you doing here? Who are you hiding from?’

  ‘I think you know that as well as I do,’ he said and crashed through the door into his hideaway. Inside the farmhouse at Summit Farm, he’d set up a cranky looking camp bed and a small gas-powered cooking stove. He’d surrounded this by a series of traps that he must have found in the barn. I couldn’t think where else he would have picked them up from. On the whitewashed walls, either he or the demented farmer from myth had scrawled the words:

  You’ll never take me alive.

  ‘Well; what you looking at?’ he shouted at me. ‘Drag him in here and either cut his leg off or kill the fucker.’

  I still couldn’t move. A million questions raced through my mind. At what age do you become fully responsible for your actions? When does the irrepressible desire to be boys being boys suddenly change, and you become negligible for your actions? When does blame start to be bandied about?

  Twinnie picked up a spade from underneath his camp bed and walked towards me, swishing it this way and that. Eyes ablaze. I still couldn’t move. Perhaps this was how it should end.

  After all; how do you live with yourself for the rest of your three score years (or whatever it is) knowing that you’ve done something so terrible that anyone who knew would shun you and treat you like the leper you are? Sure, you can change your identity. You can become Lance Corporal Gary Bull, but deep down, you’ll know who you are right down to the rotten core of yourself. That black hole which is there in place of your heart, just like Twinnie’s. Your identity is killer. Your stock in trade is killing. Your name hardly matters any more.

  My eyes appealed to him: Do you walk down the streets of your home town knowing that everyone that passes can somehow look right through you and see the emptiness within? Are you like me; broken and maimed, so the only thing you can do right is keep on punishing yourself and punishing yourself until there’s nothing left on that photo on your ID badge that remotely reminds you of yourself as you once were?

  The spade connected with the side of my face. The same side that I’d thought had been skimmed by the bullet. And all I could think was: Once there was family and a fiancé and living a lie, but that could only last so long. The purpling had begun. The bruising of yourself until you were black and blue and bloodied and not a man at all, but an amalgam of half-finished apologies and guilt that grows until it can remain buried no more and erupts.

  Blows rained down on me. I saw my own blood waterfalling into the air. And I saw the madness in Twinnie’s eyes. I saw how he was pinning the blame on me for how his life had panned out, just as I was pinning the blame on him.

  And then, just as suddenly as it had started, Twinnie’s attack stopped.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bully,’ he said, half-smiling. Wiping away my blood from the side of his face with the sleeve of his big black Barbour coat. ‘I had to be sure that it was you, mate. And now I am. Nice to see you, me old mucker.’

  I flinched away from him as he knelt over me, but he didn’t touch me. Just stared into me with those fiery, beady eyes.

  ‘You’ll be reet,’ he said, in a voice devoid of any emotion. ‘Just rest your head a minute and then go out and see to Dick, will you? He’s making a racket that’d wake the fucking dead.’

  With that he sloped back off to his camp bed and flopped down, picking a porn magazine up from the floor. He didn’t bother looking back over at me. Evidently there were some engaging articles in Twat Weekly these days. The only issues I’d seen out there in the desert had been at least two years old and well ‘thumbed.’ I lay on the cold stone of the farmhouse kitchen, gradually becoming aware that Dick was indeed screaming the place down. Occasionally, I tried to get up, but the pain in my head, and in my foot was unbearable. Some hidden, Twinnie-like part of me kept telling me that we should just leave Dick outside, to attract the thing that was once Tommy Peaker or perhaps the slavering mob of men from Newton Mills. But I argued myself down. At some point in this whole damn mess, surely my brain would kick into gear and some sort of feasible plan would present itself. And besides, if there was anyone I wanted left for dead, it was Twinnie.

  Dick was in a bad way when I finally got out into the courtyard to see him. He’d lost a lot of blood despite my tourniquet and was sweating profusely, although some of that may have been down to his lack of drugs. As soon as he realised that it was me crouched by his side and not Twinnie, he grasped my hand.

  ‘I told you; he’s off his head, Twinnie is,’ he gasped. ‘We should never have come up here.’

  In the distance, the wind began to howl. Or at least I hoped it was the wind. It reached the farmhouse, trickled along the corrugated iron of the barn and whipped into the plastic sheeting which covered some farm truck or other. It was as though Tommy was reminding us that he was still watching; still laughing.

  ‘Twinnie saw Tommy as well. He must have, judging by what’s written on that wall… That means we all have, Dick,’ I said, trying to cover up my wounded friend as best I could. ‘This thing’s going to come to a head sooner rather than later, I reckon. He has us where he wants us, and now it’s up to us to decide how we play this. But don’t worry, I’ll try and sort your leg out for now at least.’

  ‘We’ll be legless together, just like the old days,’ said Dick, but there was absolutely no trace of mirth in h
is eyes. I gave him a wink, and that probably just looked as though I was trying to blink back the tears.

  I climbed to my one and a half feet again. Felt myself almost buckle and fall, but righted myself by holding on to a drainpipe. From inside the farmhouse, I caught the faint smell of cooking. Whatever Twinnie was cooking did not smell good. I tried to ignore the sick feeling that it inspired in my gut and looked around for some way of getting Dick under cover. It was going to rain soon – in fact, a full on storm seemed likely judging by the thick black clouds overhead – and I didn’t think I had the strength for any more dragging. Neither, for that matter, did Dick.

  I made up a makeshift stretcher for him out of a decorative wheelbarrow in the garden and somehow managed to wheel him across the courtyard and into the barn. Without any natural light in there, it was difficult to see what was lurking in the corners, but I consoled myself with the fact that at least it wouldn’t be Twinnie.

  I slipped back out of the barn and into the courtyard. Already spatters of rain were pebbledashing the concrete. Already, the clouds overhead were starting to breach and the first signs of the storm were beginning. I lurched over, back to the farmhouse, guiding myself along the walls. Propping myself up. When I reached the door, I took a deep breath and entered the stench.

  ‘You chopped his leg off?’ barked Twinnie, from his camp bed. ‘Otherwise that was fucking fast work, soldier boy.’

  He gave me a mock salute and nearly spilled whatever crap was in his plastic bowl all over his purple legs. I simply smiled back at him.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve managed to get him in the barn. Thought I’d come back in here. I’m looking for a knife to cut his tracksuit bottoms off him. So I can get a proper look at the wound you gave him.’

  ‘Or is the knife to slit his moaning, drug-addicted throat? Huh?’