by Joseph Kiel
He got in the car and the vigilantes sped off into the night.
Michael ran down to the beach. Poor Danny’s head lolled to one side in the hole, but as Michael kneeled down in front of him he could see that he was okay. Or rather he was going to be okay. His mouth was covered in dried blood speckled with sand and his nose didn’t look too good. And he was still punch drunk, murmuring nonsense to himself.
The tide was edging its way gradually up the beach but Danny would have still had a couple of hours to escape before being drowned. In the back of his mind, Michael seemed to remember this same thing happening to someone in a film. Some cheesy horror movie. Ted Danson had been put in the sand like this while Leslie Nielsen had watched the waves sweep over him on a television screen. But then Ted had come back as a zombie covered in seaweed and avenged him. Revenge always had its own consequences!
The Halo of Fires thugs hadn’t intended to kill Danny, it seemed. Danny hadn’t killed anyone himself so there was no eye for an eye to be had. Presumably they were just scaring him into thinking he would be killed while they waited up at the car until they had to either dig him out again or wait until someone else came along and rescue him. As Michael was now doing.
Whatever their silly intentions, it didn’t disguise from Michael the despicable thing they had done to his friend. They had physically assaulted him, kidnapped him, and endangered his life, all over a matter that was nothing to do with them.
Danny had not broken any laws. Even if he had been seeing someone else’s fiancée, and even if in so doing he’d made someone else angry, this was absolutely no way to deal with the issue. That’s probably what he despised so much about Halo of Fires; they brought a service of gangsterism to the ordinary man. They exploited people’s emotions, their anger, and gave them power and violence, and made them think that that was the best way of dealing with their problems. And not to mention that they did the work that should be left to God.
But this was an indication of the dimming light of insight within people in this town, the same as it was everywhere these days. This was a time of making people pay, of handing out blame and abandoning responsibility. Everyone wanted compensation, but no amount of money or malignant retribution would ever compensate for the real issues.
Danny seemed to recognise Michael as he scooped the sand away from him. He mumbled something but Michael couldn’t tell what he was saying.
‘It’s okay, Danny. We’ll have you out of here and home in no time.’
‘I’m… I’m sorry.’
‘What for?‘
‘I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t have talked to her.’
Michael soon felt something solid in the sand. It was Danny’s arm. They hadn’t buried him very deep at all.
‘Let’s look on the bright side. You’ve done me a very big favour, you know. You helped me get the perfect interview for my assignment!’
Danny managed a smile. His friend was always there to uplift him. Suddenly the world did not seem so dark to Danny.
‘The things I do for you. You’d better get a good mark now.’
Michael smiled back at him. There was still a question he wanted to ask him though, something that was still playing on his mind. ‘Who was she?’
Danny looked up at him and Michael could see that his eyes were regaining their clarity.
‘Stella Connoly.’
‘I see,’ Michael whispered. It was the name he suspected he would hear. ‘I guess you picked one heck of a jealous boyfriend in Samuel Allington.’
‘I didn’t do anything though. All I did was talk to her. She just kissed me goodbye.’
‘Well, be careful, mate.’
Danny leaned his head backwards and gazed up towards the heavens. The clouds had now rolled away and the sky was sprayed with a glittering blaze of stars.
‘Starry night,’ Danny said.
‘Yeah. Think you can see every star in the universe tonight.’
Danny continued to look skywards, looking strangely mellow. ‘You’re lucky, Michael. You know exactly what you have with Faridah.’
‘It’s far from straightforward. The distance thing, I mean.’
‘But if you’re meant for her then distance doesn’t matter at all. You’ll be together one day.’
‘One day, yes.’
‘Do you think that people are meant for each other? That they have some sort of cosmic link between them?’
‘It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?’
Danny didn’t answer, but softly his head was nodding.
It was late by the time they got back to the flat. Both Larry and Eddie had returned home and Larry was practically frothing at the mouth with something he wanted to tell them.
‘Holy hell, Michael, you’re seriously not going to believe what happened to us today!’ he blurted as soon as Michael walked into the room.
Michael calmly took a seat opposite Eddie who had the dog at his feet. ‘Larry, I guarantee you, whatever happened to you, me and Danny got that beat.’
‘No way, not this one! Where is Danny? I want to tell him this one too,’ Larry persisted.
‘He’s in the bathroom. Cleaning up.’
Larry skipped a beat. ‘Why, what happened to him?’
‘You know those Halo of Fires people? Tonight they came and got Danny!’
Larry swallowed hard. ‘What… What did they do to him?’
‘We were in the pub when suddenly they appear. These two meatheads the size of Geoff bleeding Capes grab him and one of them leathers him one in the nose!’
‘My God, is he okay?’ Larry asked.
‘Then they carry him away, bundle him into the boot of their car and drive off.’
‘To the beach?’ Larry asked.
‘Yeah! They took him to the beach.’ Michael suddenly went silent for a moment. His eyes shifted back to Larry. ‘Why…? How did you know they took him there?’
Larry walked over to the window like a naughty pupil being sent to the back of the class. He rested his folded arms on the windowsill as he looked outside.
‘Larry?’
‘What did they do to him?’
‘They buried him in a hole. I ran after them and found him so I dug him out again.’
Again, the room was unnaturally silent.
‘So, your story was…?’
Larry breathed in deeply. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He left the room.
Michael turned to Eddie. ‘What’s up with him?’
‘We met them Halo of Fires as well today.’
‘Really?’
‘Asked us to help them out with something.’
‘Help them out?’
‘Yeah. Asked us to dig a big hole at the beach.’
Michael was lost for words. He put his head in his hands as he stared through his fingers at the door Larry had just walked out of.
‘How could you?’
‘We didn’t know it was going to be for Danny, like. And hey, it’s not our fault he’s been a knobhead.’
‘You don’t care, do you? You don’t care it was your friend in there.’
Eddie shook his head sharply as he stared at nothing on the floor. ‘Why should I?’
‘You selfish bastard.’
‘Language, mate. That must be ten Hail Mary’s.’
‘Oh get lost. Why do we even bother with you? You’re just a complete waste of time.’
‘Oh well, nice to know how you feel, Michael. Yeah, that’s really Christian of you. You’re all the same, you bunch of fucking hypocrites.’
Michael began to wonder if he’d slipped into a nightmare. Danny assaulted by a bunch of ruthless vigilantes, their own friends assisting in the deed. He hadn’t been so angry in a very long time, and the words seemed to be slipping off his tongue on their own. That just made him even more angry. He knew he had to detach from these feelings. Had to rise above them. Rise above.
Eddie got up. ‘And you know what? Danny ain’t my friend. And I don’t want your stupid friendsh
ip and to play your gay-arse pool games.’
He left the room and Meriadoc poked up his head as he watched his master walk away. He then turned to Michael and looked at him as if to say: ‘What are we going to do with him?’
Michael just shook his head. It was strange how one’s whole world could turn upside down in the space of one evening.
Part 6: The Harbour Master
Chapter 6.1
The cigarette protruding from Floyd’s mouth was about to burn out. He’d initially taken a few drags to help settle his nerves and calm his mind but those heavy thoughts were swarming through his mind like an infestation of cockroaches and not even the fading wisps of smoke could distract from them.
A gust of wind swept by and lifted the fragile line of ash from the butt and into his eyes. He brushed the back of his hand over his face as he spat the butt onto the ground. As was his habit, he then snorted up a gulp of mucus from his throat. Instead of scuffing his foot over the discarded cigarette to make sure it was out like most people did, Floyd liked to gob over his fag ends. It was just a Floyd thing. He was a good aim when it came to spitting, and the brown wad of slime fell precisely on it.
It was a glorious sunny day at Floyd’s amusements and the screaming children were out in force on the dragon roller coaster, the waltzers, and all the other exciting rides at his world of fun. They munched on toffee apples and big clouds of candy floss the size of their heads. They played on arcade games and teddy bear grabbing machines. There didn’t appear to be any unhappy faces anywhere. Anywhere except for the face of the mucus-spewing Floyd, that was.
Floyd hated children, absolutely despised them. They didn’t contribute anything to society, and yet these days everything seemed to be about children coming first. Adults were living in a child-friendly world, when really it should have been the other way round. Television, Christmas, thirty mile an hour zones everywhere you went on the roads, it was all geared towards kids. All the useless crotch droppings wanted to do was play all the time, or cry until they were playing. That was because they didn’t have the mental faculties to behave differently. Floyd had been told how the human brain only finishes developing at nineteen years of age, and that children only stop thinking animalistically when they’re around thirteen. Put simply, children couldn’t really be considered normal human beings.
He could live with the fact that his amusements provided them with a place to enjoy themselves. Every scream of excitement he heard was another quid in his hand. Every shoot-em-up game that rotted their minds and every sweet that rotted their teeth just increased the numbers on Floyd’s bank balance. He liked it when the kids gorged themselves so much on junk food and then went on a ride that span the vomit out of them. That was a pleasant reminder to Floyd how their selfish overindulgence had made them suffer. That’s what all the brats deserved, and, for that reason, Floyd had purposely modified every single one of his rides so that they would go that little bit faster.
Floyd was in a strangely contemplative mood this afternoon. After receiving the letter, he’d come outside for some fresh air and the cigarette. He’d been standing there for about ten minutes just staring numbly into space like a waxwork model. All of a sudden he had so much to think about.
In the periphery of his vision he noticed one of the horrible little brats standing beneath him. How long had he been there? As Floyd peered down at him he saw that the boy was sniffling quietly as he tried to suppress his tears. He was around seven years of age, had shaved brown hair and dewy brown eyes.
‘Excuse me, mister,’ the little boy timidly said, swamped in Floyd’s long shadow.
Floyd crouched down so he could hear the little boy properly. He beamed a friendly smile to him. ‘What’s the matter there, soldier?’ he cheerfully asked him, suddenly adopting a bright tone of voice. He’d learnt early on in this business that it was profitable to be pleasant to the customers.
‘I can’t find my mum anywhere.’
The kid had an ice cream cone in his hand. It was raspberry flavour and had started to melt, sticky crimson lines staining down the boy’s fingers. He wore a navy-blue T-shirt that said something about it being US Army property. Some heroic trooper this little ragamuffin was.
‘Don’t cry, soldier. What does she look like?’
‘Her hair is black and red. She’s wearing a pink T-shirt.’
Floyd put on a thoughtful face even though she sounded like every other moronic slob that came to his amusements.
‘You know what? I’ve seen your mother! She sounds just like the one I spoke to a minute ago.’
‘Do you know where she is?’ the boy asked hopefully.
‘Well, she’s gone!’
‘Where to?’
‘Oh you won’t find her! No, she’s left. She told me that she didn’t want to see you anymore because she hates you.’
‘She did?’
The boy’s bottom lip began to quaver as he hopelessly lost his fight to keep away the tears. Raspberry ice cream trickled down his arm and onto his bright trainers as tears dripped from his cheeks.
‘That’s what she told me. She said you were a worthless piece of shit and she wishes she’d had you aborted because one lousy fuck wasn’t worth all the years of misery you’d brought her.’
Floyd stood up again, the same pleasant smile still on his face.
‘What… What should I do?’ the boy pleaded.
‘I don’t know! I’ve got my own problems! Looks like you’re on your own, kiddo.’ He looked away from him and muttered: ‘Now fuck off, you little spaz.’
‘I don’t know where to go. I don’t know where she is,’ the boy mumbled as he looked around himself, the enormity of his apparent situation starting to hit him.
Floyd hadn’t expected the boy to buy his story so well. That was another thing with kids, they were always so gullible.
‘Okay, kid. Have you heard of Hameton Island?’
The boy shook his head.
‘It’s an island about a mile off the coast from here,’ Floyd went on as he pointed towards the sea. ‘That’s where your mum went.’
‘How did she get there?’
‘Same way you’re going to. She swam.’
‘Thank you, mister,’ the boy replied, and then sheepishly started walking towards the beach.
Floyd choked down his laughter. After all that and the brat was thanking him! He started to fantasise about the headline in the next edition of the Harbour Gazette, telling of a drowned little boy washed up on the shore. That would be a great reminder to the town of how shitty the world could be.
If God or his heavenly messengers really cared about the wellbeing of their children, like this lost boy here, then why wouldn’t they have guided him to someone else, someone who would have given a crap about the boy’s predicament? The truth was that Floyd was actually proud of the fact that he was an absolute bastard. It was important to have shits like Floyd in God’s world; they were, in fact, just as important as the saints and the Mother Teresas.
From the very beginning, Floyd had been groomed to hate. It had been his purpose ever since he’d been born. Even as a mentally undeveloped child he’d started his teaching under him, learning what the world was really about beneath the veil. And when he’d become an adult, a proper human being, he’d then understood it all properly. Evil didn’t really exist, it was not a force of nature found within the heart of any man that walked the Earth. But if someone did want to become evil (without becoming a loon in the process, that was) the only way to do this was to apply one’s mind to a doctrine of evil. And over the years Floyd had learnt about this very well.
One thing he’d been taught under this doctrine was that extinguishing someone’s life should not be considered any worse than extinguishing a cigarette end. And so, when he’d been called by him to ‘extinguish’, Floyd had developed his own way of doing it. It was just another Floyd thing. Instead of putting a bullet in the head of that dealer who miss-sold them, Floyd had extinguished h
is life in a much more elaborate fashion. Having severed all of the guy’s limbs with power tools and realising that the guy still hadn’t died, Floyd had thought it would be really evil to then use his circular saw over the guy’s face. The man’s screams had certainly sounded funny with half of his face sliced off. He still managed to scream for a few seconds more when Floyd cut open his midriff and made his intestines start slopping out onto the floor. He had told him he was going to make him spill his guts, after all.
Extracting as much suffering from this man as possible, and not feeling one ounce of remorse in doing so, was a sign that Floyd had successfully transformed his mind into evilness.
It was one of the most satisfying experiences of Floyd’s life, the point where he’d realised he’d made it. He’d become a masterpiece of evil, but it was all undermined when Henry Maristow started tagging along with him. And what a really dumb mistake that was.
They got on okay at first. For a couple of months there was even a semblance of friendship, as Henry was slowly introduced to the workings of the Network. It all went wrong with that Forseti business when Henry could not break free from his conscience and took matters into his own hands.
What a fuck up that was. It was so embarrassing for Floyd, for everyone. No wonder everything went down the pan after that. Floyd was left to do all the explaining to the boss, of course. Not that he had to do it face-to-face, for it was rare for people to be an audience to him. Floyd could actually count on one hand the number of times he’d actually met him.
Usually contact would be by letter, like the one he had in his trench coat pocket right now. It had been many years since Floyd last received one of them, but he still remembered their characteristics. That same meticulous handwriting. The same way he signed them. Three initials, indicating the only name that people knew him by, and the name that no one ever liked to hear: The Harbour Master.
There in the middle of his mechanical playground, as the giant teacups continued their tedious spinning and the mindless children scampered around him like rats in a laboratory cage, Floyd read through the letter again. It was a call for reconciliation, a call for the two of them to bring their forces together again.
