Into the Darklands

by Nigel Latta

  Jerry didn’t speak. He just shrugged and shook his head as if he didn’t give a shit for any of it.

  ‘OK,’ I continued. ‘Well my style is to be up front from the start. I know you’ve probably spoken to shitloads of shrinks in your time, and most of it’s been a total waste of time, and the reason for that is that counselling is a total waste of time. Right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘At least we can agree about that at the start. Counselling is a load of shit. Someone like you gets sent along to see someone like me and all that happens is my guy goes, “How’s all the criminal stuff going?” and your guy goes, “I dunno.” Then my guy goes, “Well don’t you think you should stop getting pissed and beating the crap out of people?” and your guy goes, “I dunno.” Then my guy goes, “Well how about we look at your thinking errors and develop some more positive coping strategies?” and your guy goes, “Whatever.” Then my guy goes, “Blah blah blah” then he asks if you’re going to get pissed again and your guy goes, “Nuh.” Then my guy goes, “Are you going to commit any more crimes?” and your guy goes, “Nuh.” Then my guy writes some bullshit little report and you go off and have a beer. Right?’

  He smiled, just a little, but it was there. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Total fucking horseshit. Right?’

  That little smile again. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK, then let’s make a deal right from the get go that whatever else we do we’re not going to talk horseshit like that with each other.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Good.’ I de-clicked my pen and chucked it on the desk with my blank sheet of notepaper. ‘You know what gets me the most about all this shit?’

  ‘What?’ Jerry was thawing, just a little, but there was the tiniest spark.

  ‘Well, it’s like, what am I supposed to do? I mean, your life is far more complicated than the six pages of bullshit they stick in your file. How am I supposed to understand the first bloody thing about who you are or what your life is?’ I sighed. ‘Besides, they don’t even want that anyway. They don’t want me to find out anything about who you really are, all they want is for me to fix the bits they don’t like. The system doesn’t give a damn about you but they expect you to turn up for a few sessions with a shrink and change your whole shitty life?’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s the system though, mate.’

  ‘That may be the system but I don’t have to like it.’

  ‘Who the fuck does?’

  ‘Not many of the people I see.’

  We sat for a moment in silence.

  ‘So what do you do it for, then?’ he asked.

  It was a good question. Better still, it was his question. Suddenly I wasn’t the only one who was curious. We were on the road.

  ‘Good question,’ I said.

  When people like Jerry ask you questions like that my advice is, whatever else you do, don’t lie. People like him can smell the bullshit a good mile or so before they see it.

  ‘I suppose I do it because I don’t believe what people out there say about guys like you,’ I said, waving offhandedly at the outside world.

  ‘What do they say?’ He knew only too well, but he wanted to see if I had the gazumph to say it. I have gazumph in abundance in such moments.

  ‘Scum. Losers. Arseholes. Fuck-ups. Throw-away people. I go out to parties and “nice” people ask how come I work with “fuck-ups” like you. Mostly I politely tell them to go screw themselves. My theory is that if you’ve never done anything bad in your life then you have the right to piss on the rest of us who are less than perfect, but I haven’t met anyone who’s shit smells sweet yet.’

  ‘So you’re saying you don’t think I’m scum?’ There was a dare in the question, a hook. We came from different worlds, him and me. I was an educated middle-class professional who probably made more in an hour than he made in most of the week. He was the bottom of the pile. We were so far from equal it hurt the mind just to think about it.

  I shrugged. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Jerry. I think you’ve had your fair share of scumbag moments, and I think if I looked at you the wrong way in a pub you’d break my face without a second thought. But I don’t believe you were always a scumbag, no matter how much of a scumbag you might look now. Kids aren’t born with criminal records, that shit comes later. I’ve never had a baby in here on grievous bodily harm charges. I’ve never had a baby sent to me because he robbed a bank or killed someone.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’

  I smiled. ‘I guess my point is you’re no baby, Jerry.’

  He laughed. ‘No, guess not.’

  That was about as far as I thought I’d get that day, so we shot the shit a little longer, and then went our separate ways.

  The following week started a little warmer than the first, and the week after that a little warmer still. By our fourth session he was actually smiling when I came out into the waiting room to get him, just ever so slightly, but it was there.

  Time is always limited in the Darklands. The currents pull people away just as quickly as they bring them in. Something told me that if Jerry and I were ever going to do it, then we had to do it now.

  ‘Have you ever told anyone?’ I asked him after we’d talked the usual shit for a bit.

  ‘Told anyone what?’

  I looked at him, in that way people do when they lay their cards on the table. ‘Have you ever told anyone why you’re so screwed up?’ I dropped my voice a notch further. This conversation was for him and me alone. ‘Have you ever talked about the old hurts?’ Now, I didn’t know for sure what Jerry’s history was, but the signs were there, all you had to do was take the trouble to notice. You just had to see.

  He became very still, staring at me with eyes that were suddenly cold.

  In the middle of moments like that you can almost feel the world grinding to a halt. There are some questions you ask, and you know you’re walking into places that even the angels fear, at least the smart ones anyway. Souls are lost and found in moments like this. We were standing at the border of the place inside him where the burning winds blew, a place where the nightmares played over and over against a backdrop of rage and revenge.

  He flexed his fists in the silence and I heard his knuckles crack.

  I dropped my voice again, focusing in on him like he was all there was. ‘You have a good heart, Jerry, I can feel it in there. It’s faint, but I can feel it. I wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true. You’ve done some terrible things along the way, but you have a good heart. The problem is it’s buried under so many years of shit I think you’ve forgotten where you left it. I think you still look for it from time to time, but I worry that you’ve almost given up hope of ever finding it again.’

  He said nothing. Just that cold stare wrapped in old scars and prison tattoos.

  I meant it all. I never lie about things like that. If I say he has a good heart I have to believe it without question. He won’t believe me unless I do. ‘Does a human heart still beat under all that evil shit, Jerry?’ We sat like that for what felt like hours and seconds all at the same time. All the while I’m staring right at him, not breaking.

  Then he swallowed, and I saw his eyes glisten. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear what he was saying. ‘I think it stopped beating years ago.’

  ‘When you were just a little fella,’ I said quietly. It’s not mind reading, it’s just a safe bet.

  He swallowed again, and then nodded, his movements suddenly small for such a big man.

  ‘Long before all this shit,’ I said, waving my hand around at the walls.

  He nodded.

  I leaned across the table and ripped his list of convictions out of the file, tossing it on the floor between us. ‘And long before all this shit too.’

  He nodded again.

  ‘Tell me about that,’ I said.

  Here’s something else you need to know: never say those words
unless you’re prepared to go all the way down to wherever it is he really lives. Never ask someone to go to those places unless you’re prepared to go all the way with them. Anything else would be cruel.

  Jerry started to speak, slowly at first, as if each word was a terrible weight, but then faster and faster. Some things find their own momentum. Some things find their own way out. Especially the old hurts. As he spoke I let the pictures form, looking back all those years to the place where he really lived. The place he’d never left. Seeing in the dark.

  Jerry was seven the first time it happened. He’d been lying in bed asleep when he’d heard a noise. At first he hadn’t known what it was, but little by little he realised what it was: breathing.

  ‘I thought it was some kind of fucking bogeyman,’ Jerry said, his voice impossibly tight.

  In my mind I saw the little boy lying in his bed listening to the night breathing. His fingers white against the sheets, peering out at the darkness in the hall. Then he sees something slowly crawl from the shadows of the hallway. It pauses for a moment, like a snake tasting the darkness, then it quietly slithers over the floor towards him. Terror locks his body tight against the darkness. He can’t move. He can’t cry out. All he can do is watch as it comes closer and closer.

  Then it’s beside him, and he can hear its ragged breath. The bed moves as it slides a dark arm under the sheets. For a few seconds he can’t breathe, literally can’t breathe. He waits for the feel of its claws ripping through his skin. But it hasn’t come to eat him, at least not in that way. Instead of claws his skin feels the touch of clammy fingers, and he learns at seven years old that the night steals from some children. The night steals in the worst of ways.

  ‘I cried,’ Jerry said, small tears staining his cheeks wet. ‘When he…when he buggered me,’ and he spits the word out like it burns his mouth. ‘It hurt that much I fucking cried. But he just put his hand over my mouth and kept going.’

  Jerry was raped by his father from the age of seven until he ran away from home at 14. When he wasn’t being sexually abused his father would drink and alternate between beating him and beating his mother. He got in trouble the first time with the police when he was only 10. He was kicked out of school for fighting when he was 11.

  All those years, lying in the dark, waiting for the night to take on human form. Waiting for the sour touch that curdled his skin and curdled his heart.

  Can you picture that? Can you see that poor wee boy lying trembling in his bed? Can you hear his muffled screams through the fingers that cover his mouth? Can you feel his pain? His rage?

  Now can you see the man who grew from that boy? Sitting with his layers of scars and prison tattoos. Can you see the man who has been all but consumed by never-ending nightmares that play out in his head over and over like the beating of a drum? Can you see him? Can you really see him? In his fist he holds a paper tissue that’s wound so tight it’s like a small white spike. ‘Sometimes,’ he hisses, ‘sometimes I just get so fucking angry.’ He looks up at me, and his eyes hold more pain than eyes were ever meant to hold. ‘You know?’

  We sat there in silence.

  ‘Listen,’ I said at last, gently. ‘Can you hear that, Jerry?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Listen.’

  We sat there for a moment together, me and this hardened criminal. This violent repeat offender. This man-boy.

  ‘That’s the sound of a beating heart.’

  ‘Sometimes…’ His voice faltered and he swallowed. ‘Sometimes I feel dead inside. You know?’

  I nodded. ‘I know, but the thing with hearts is that they beat whether we believe in them or not.’

  He looked at me for a moment, this violent angry man, seven and 70 all in the one body. And as always I feel the familiar sadness, a familiar ache, for a little boy alone in the night with no one to save him. Even monsters begin as little boys. Especially monsters.

  In the end, my job is really about nothing more than seeing in the dark. I have to try and find long-forgotten things in the absence of light, often in the absence of hope itself.

  UNWELCOME TRUTHS

  A COUPLE OF FRIDAY nights ago I was sitting at home watching a movie. My wife was out and so that meant I wasn’t stuck with a compromise movie (you know the kind—those awful ones about relationships where no one gets blown up), so I could watch exactly the kind of violent escapist muck I love.

  Just as I was biting into my burger and fries an unwelcome truth came knocking at my door. Feeling somewhat irritated I paused the movie and got up off my couch.

  ‘Yes?’ I asked, opening the door with a somewhat irritated tone.

  There was a small well-dressed woman standing there holding a plastic bucket.

  ‘Hello,’ she chirped, ‘I’m collecting for (bleep).’

  It could be worse, I thought to myself. It could be one of those completely annoying door-to-door sales bastards flogging off some stupid coupon system thingy. God, how I hate door-to-door salespeople. They thrust something into your hand and then talk a hundred miles an hour trying to sell you something as they assure you they’re not selling anything. The only way to deal with them is to immediately cut them off with a curt ‘no’ and close the door in their face.

  ‘What’s (bleep)?’ I asked, stalling for time and looking for a reason to close the door. My mind was still firmly focused on my burger and the movie.

  ‘It’s a charitable trust that works with troubled young people.’

  Great, I thought to myself. I do this all day and now my Friday night gets interrupted as well.

  In my world Friday nights are sacrosanct. That’s my time. You will always find me with takeaways and a movie. Don’t ask me out, I probably won’t come. Don’t ring me, I probably won’t answer the phone. On a Friday night, you better just let me be.

  ‘I already do lots of work with difficult kids,’ I said, stepping back and beginning to close the door.

  And here’s the interesting bit; here’s the piece that kicks the ground out from under me. She just looks at me and says: ‘Really?’ It’s her tone that’s the kicker, because she says it in this strange maybe-I’m-interested-maybe-I-don’t-believe-you way. Standing there I can’t for the life of me tell which one it is.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, feeling slightly off-balance. ‘I do.’

  She just smiles. She doesn’t say ‘OK’ or ‘thanks anyway’ and turn away—which would be the polite thing to do—she just stands there smiling with teeth that seem suddenly incredibly white, like they’re painted on. ‘What do you do?’ she finally asks.

  And I still can’t tell if her tone is saying she thinks I’m lying or she really wants to know.

  ‘I’m a psychologist.’

  ‘Who do you work for?’ Still with that tone.

  ‘I work in private practice, but a lot of my work is with troubled kids.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Oh? What does ‘oh’ mean? I don’t know whether I should be feeling pissed off or whether I should just laugh.

  There’s something about her that’s kind of freaky though, the way she just stands there and asks her off-beat little questions.

  Perhaps she’s some kind of Charity Demon, I wonder, some creature from another dimension? Maybe in a moment a long forked tongue will flick out and she’ll hiss at me before plunging her hand into my chest, ripping out my heart and putting it in her white plastic button with all the rest. Then she’ll lick my warm blood from her fingers as she moves on to the next house.

  ‘Well,’ I say, stepping back again, ‘I’m just busy with some stuff so…’

  ‘Sure,’ she says, briefly smiling even wider. ‘Nice talking to you.’

  And that tone is really beginning to rattle me now, because it feels like she’s pointing invisible fingers at me.

  ‘Bye then,’ I say, closing the door and watching her walk off through the glass.

  ‘Good riddance,’ I mutter, resuming my position on the sofa with a puffy, indignant anger. I do lots
of work with troubled kids. I don’t need some little door-to-door do-gooder making me feel defensive.

  I do plenty. I do my share.

  But it’s not as if you don’t get paid for it, a little voice piped up from somewhere up the back of my head. I hate that little voice, because it’s usually right about things I’d rather believe were wrong.

  ‘Yeah, but…’

  In fact you get paid pretty well for what you do, don’t you?

  ‘Well, yeah, but the point is that I really care about the kids I work with. I’m not just doing it for the money.’

  Fine, but you couldn’t spare a few bucks for the lady?

  ‘Of course I could, but if I gave away money to everyone that turned up at the door I’d be…’

  What? You’d be what?

  I paused. Stupid little voice with its stupid difficult questions. ‘Well anyway, I help lots of kids so shut up.’

  Uh huh.

  ‘What?’

  Nothing.

  ‘No, obviously you have some problem, so what is it?’

  Look around you.

  ‘Why?’

  Just look around you.

  So I did.

  Now what do you see?

  I sighed. ‘A bunch of stuff.’

  What kind of stuff?

  ‘Nice stuff.’

  How much did your takeaways cost?

  I shrugged grudgingly. ‘I dunno. Ten bucks or so.’

  You couldn’t have gone without the ice cream and let that woman have a couple of bucks so maybe some screwed-up kid could have an ice cream instead of you? You of all people should know what their world is like.

  Like I said, I hate that little voice. ‘I guess I could have.’

  Could have?

  ‘Should have,’ I muttered.

  So why didn’t you?

  ‘I guess I was just being selfish. I guess I just wanted it for myself.’

  I guess you did.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. So what do you want me to do about it now?’

  You tell me.