Ghosts and Lightning

by Trevor Byrne

  —Get the fuck out o here yiz pricks! I scream at him. —Get fuckin out!

  Slaughter laughs, the sound all warped and gloopy as he pulls his hand free and it’s black with blood. One o the wraiths stirs, his chin wet with drool I can see it glisten and his milky eyes flicker and I pick up someone’s battered runner and hurl it at Slaughter and it thuds against the wardrobe by his head. The Adidas girl’s arm is on me shoulder and her bubbly underwater words around me ears but I just turn and crash down the stairs wall to banister and through the floatin faces and into the front room.

  —What’s up with yeh? Calm the fuck down.

  Rochey’s wide and acned face in front o mine.

  —He’s in me ma’s room the mad fuckin prick.

  —Calm down for fuck sake.

  —Fuck off.

  —Wha?

  —I said fuck off –

  And a fantastic white flash explodes inside me eyes and I stumble back with a searin pain in me temple. Rochey comes at me again and his fist whacks into me stomach and I bend over heavin for air and people are screamin and shoutin over the thudthudthud and a big meaty thump on the spine sends me to me knees and I stick me palms flat in front o me on the beer-soaked floor like a fuckin dog. I feel like shit I feel like death I feel like there’s a fuckin tumor in me head, a fuckin scorpion scuttlin on me brain. I tuck me chin towards me chest and wait for the next smack and there’s a huge crash and I look up and Rochey’s fallin back against the mantelpiece and Maggit grabs his pink T-shirt by the scruff and pulls him up and hits him full in the face with his head and a forest of arms curls round him and pulls him away and into the kitchen and I crawl forwards hands and knees and me ma’s sad clown is smashed on the floor into half a hundred tiny useless splintered bits.

  *

  Jesus, it’s fuckin freezin. Me arms and face all scratched from the thorns. I stomp down the nettles. Take that yiz cunts. Want me fuckin bike, man, wanna be fuckin out o here. Trust me to make a fuckin holy show o meself. And that horrible fuckin image, man; Slaughter in me ma’s room with that girl. Jesus.

  —Denny, just get back inside, will yeh?

  Maggit’s hand on me shoulder. I turn round and look at him, his dark eyes and gaunt face. Three big splots o blood on his grey fleece. Over his shoulder I can see a girl lookin out the kitchen window, with long, straight black hair, her arms folded. She looks like a nymph. I don’t remember seein her inside. She can’t be older than sixteen. I shake me head and scrabble at the lock on the shed, the paint peelin and the wood rotted to fuck.

  Maggit spits. —Wha are yeh lookin for?

  —Me bike.

  —Bit fuckin early in the mornin, isn’t it?

  —Fuck it.

  —Wha about the witch?

  —Who?

  —In the shed.

  —Fuck her as well.

  —Say she’d fuckin love that. And you as well yeh dirty prick.

  I pull open the door to a deeper dark. Musty fuckin tomb. I stumble in and fall on me knees.

  —Bollix.

  Maggit takes me under the arms and hauls me up. I scramble round the shed. Old damp cloth, sharp corners and rust. Whack the back o me hand against somethin. Grab it. Handlebars and brakes. I pull the bike away from the wall. Lift up a rug and drop it on the table. Where I think the table is. A soft collapse. Drag the bike out the door. Maggit’s standin there, lookin at me. Behind him the nymph’s eyes flash in the dark. He lifts a Corona bottle to his lips and takes a swig, holds it out to me. I shake me head and he shrugs.

  —How d’yeh know about the witch? I say.

  —I saw her at the window. Big gammy eye on her.

  —Wha?

  —Yeh told me about her yeh sap. Have yeh any idea how much yeh fuckin shitetalk, Denny? Specially when yer fuckin drunk.

  —I have to get out o here.

  —Yer drunk. Fuckin pissed. Go to bed. She wasn’t laughin at yeh if that’s wha yer worried about, that girl.

  I shake me head.

  —Fair enough. Don’t say I didn’t warn yeh. Watch yeh don’t get a smack of a fuckin bus or anythin yeh big sap.

  I wave Maggit away and there’s a big ball o sadness hot in me throat. Jesus. I feel like cryin cos fuckin hell, nothin, ever, changes. I haul the bike up the path, bashin the stingers aside. Which way’s which? Fuckin hell I can’t even see straight. Pedals snagged in the weeds. I reef the bike up and out and stumble forward and there it is, the back wall. I pull up the latch and push open the gate. Sodium-lit alley. Bins and all manner o bollix. Stinkin fuckin refuse and a skinny white cat shootin off between heaped cardboard boxes. I hop on the bike and weave through the alley.

  *

  Been here hours, sittin on me bench by the canal with the buckled mountain bike beside me, shivered and half-slept then woke and watched the bleary sun creep over the trees, me addled brain slowly movin backwards through stages o stoned drunkenness and back to head-thumpin sobriety. There’s a massive, cold puke-patch a few feet down from me and I can still smell it. There’s a little bird peckin at it. Me arm’s a bit sore and the ribs on me left-hand side are throbbin dully. Head’s in bits as well. Fuckin sucker punched again. I didn’t feel cold durin the night but I do now. The kind o cold I imagine old people feel in their draughty lonely flats, a cold that gets into yer marrow and hurts. Not that I’m complainin. Well, I am complainin a bit I suppose. I love it here by the oul canal though. Always have. I can see the top o the factories over the trees, a red slanted corrugated roof with a platoon o crows standin there in line, tiny black shapes nuzzlin themselves against the mornin sky.

  The canal’s a lot less deep than yid think, actually. Lookit. A few feet only. The mossed and wavy skeleton of a bike and a fat brown fish dartin from a clump o weeds, everythin lookin flat and wide below the surface. It doesn’t really seem to be movin, either. Near still, flat and scummed and trollied. There’s a pallet floatin near the bank with an old paint bucket and a crumpled lager can and a one-legged plastic doll onboard, strange passengers on a half-sunk boat, off on their travels. I remember seein a dragonfly around here, last year. Fuckin hell, have yeh ever seen a dragonfly up close? They’re huge. Fuckin bird-sized, nearly. Big bulbous faces and giant flashin wings. Legs long and thin trailin behind them. They seem more like animals than insects to me. I know that’s a bit mad, but … I dunno. I kinda have it in me head that there’s a hierarchy o things, like with the rabbits and badgers. I’m not sayin that people are miles above animals, like … or that humans aren’t animals, it’s … fuck, dunno. Insects are definitely lower down than birds, anyway. But not dragonflies. Too fuckin big, dragonflies. I know that’s linkin size to worthiness and I don’t really mean it like that but dragonflies are definitely way further up the ladder than, say, normal flies. Or them ugly little shell-backed scuttlers yeh see under rocks and bits o wood. Nickelbacks, I call them. Like tiny fuckin fossils, or somethin. Shrunk trilobites. Ick. Hate them yokes. Gimme the bleedin willies.

  There’s a fella about fifty or so feet upstream o me, standin on the little rickety pier. Been here a while. He’s probably a hobo or a junkie or somethin. Or both most likely, and definitely a bit doolally into the bargain. He’s wearin billowy grey tracksuit bottoms and a multicoloured jacket. A woolly monkey hat. Patchy grey beard although he doesn’t look that old. He’s mutterin to himself and breakin up bits o bread from a loaf under his arm and tossin them into the water. Big chunky bits. Thing is, there aren’t any ducks or swans or anythin around. Nothin. He’s just throwin in the breadchunks and they’re hittin the canal with a slap and floatin slowly past me and on and up to … wherever. Some homeless supplicant makin his offerins to the green gods o the canal, maybe. Prayin for better weather or a good harvest. Or a decent place on the housin lists.

  Love it here, have to say. I mean, yeah it’s cold and me head’s in a jock and me teeth are rattlin like a set o them Halloween chompers but fuck it, there’s no Paula losin the plot, no Shane threatenin eviction. No job cent
re, no filthy house. No chairs that me ma used to sit on, no programmes on the telly that me ma used to watch. Nothin. Feels like yer miles away from the world, even though there’s a fuckin highway only twenty-odd feet behind me and a load o poxy factories on the opposite side. Fuck it, though: the canal’s penned in by trees and bushes for miles and miles, a thin strip of oldtimes in the middle of a newer, shinier, noisier Dublin. Secluded from all that, yeh know? It might as well be the seventies or wharrever, back when this was all still fields and wildness. Me da used to tell Gino and Shane about how him and his mates had to walk through miles o ditches and empty field to get to the Lough and Quay for a few pints. And back again drunk by moonlight. Back when Clondalkin village was just the old round tower and a few houses and shops. And the canal, o course.

  The pathway is all pebbled and uneven with a stripe o grass in the middle and the waterway’s never more than a few yards from yeh. No wall or anythin. So easy to fall in. Loads have over the years. Which is the dark side o this place, I suppose. I mean, the water’s not deep here but it is further up, past the lock. Twenty feet deep there. All that still black water. Loads have died there over the years. Fell in drunk or wharrever, which could o happened to me last night, easy. There was a crowd drove a car in about ten years ago and every one o them drowned. Trapped in that horrible freezin blackness as the car filled up. Addicts, they were. Out o their faces on drink and pills and who fuckin knows wha. And then that fella, only a while ago. African fella. Cut up in a bin bag and dumped in the canal. Fuckin hell such fear he must o felt. His head was cut off and everythin and they never found it for ages. In the end this girl, an Irish girl and her ma, admitted to it. They took his head in a schoolbag and brung it to a park and smashed it up with a hammer. Can yeh believe that? Jesus. That such fuckin badness can exist.

  Wha a night. God, Slaughter with his hand down that girl’s fuckin jeans. And in me ma’s room and everythin. Mental fuckin bastard, that Slaughter fella. Epileptic bats and gibberin shadows. How fuckin low and sad and manky this world is.

  Always a fuckin dark side, yeh know?

  Even to the oul canal.

  Bodies. Tears and shite and blood and spunk. Wha do yeh do though? Sit upstream of it all, I suppose. On yer oul half-burnt bench with yer hands in yer pockets and yer chin tucked into yer chest to keep out the cold. Watch the fish and the sad willows.

  Wha else can yeh do?

  There’s always fuckin badness, man. Always.

  THE MAN COMES AROUND

  Took me two days o shiverin and pukin and starin at the telly to get over that fuckin party. Watched a load o old wrestlin videos; the nineties was the best for wrestlin. Paula’s worse than me; she’s barely set foot out of her room. She just appears at the top o the stairs sometimes and shouts down to me for a cup o tea. I had a shower this mornin, shaved and that, and ran the car down to the shops. Don’t think I’ll be botherin with pills for a while.

  I pull the last bag o shoppin out o the boot and slam down the door and that’s when I notice the two gyppos in the glass behind me. Two gypsies on a horse and cart, one old and one young, the cart’s wheels cuttin through the grey, slushy remains o the snow. The older gypsy’s broad and redhaired and the younger one’s lean and grinnin, me own age or younger and he’s wearin a titanic pair o workmen’s boots with the leather tongues flopped out like a couple o Beagle’s ears. They stop the cart a few feet from the car. The young one winks at me.

  —You Denny Cullen?

  I look round, the estate emptied by the cold, then back at the gypsies. —Yeah, I say.

  There’s a huge grin on the younger fella’s face. He rubs his palms on his jeans and sniffs. —I know yer brother Gino well, he says. —He’s great pals with me brother Paddy.

  —Gino doesn’t –

  —I know. He’s up in Ballyer now. I don’t want Gino.

  I set the shoppin bags down at me ankles and place me hands flat behind me on the bonnet o the car. —Can I do somethin for yiz?

  —I dunno, Denny. Maybe yeh can. Yer mates with that Gillespie fella aren’t yeh?

  —Maggit?

  —That’s the one. The young guy looks at the older one, winks a huge wink. The older gypsy gives a little half smile and nods his head. —Him with the big ears and supposed to be on the IRA security council. Gerry Adams’s right-hand man I believe.

  —Well, he’s not, but he probably did say that. He’s –

  —Where would he be now, Denny?

  I shrug. —Dunno, man. Haven’t seen him for a few days.

  Haven’t seen him since the party, actually. All of a sudden I remember the girl, the girl in the Adidas tracksuit. Don’t really wanna remember her, though, cos it gives me this stupid sense o loss, even though I don’t know her and never will. It was nice, though — just that closeness. And then the thought hits me — yer on yer own, Denny, and yeh always will be. No surer thing. The certainty of it nearly knocks me off me feet.

  —Yeh sure now, Denny? says the gypsy. —Not seen him at all?

  —Yeah. I … look, I dunno what’s goin on but I haven’t seen Maggit in a while and I don’t know when I’m likely to. Is there some trouble or somethin?

  The older fella picks his nose. His nostrils are huge, cavernous. The younger one scratches his stubbled cheek.

  —Well, Denny, yeh could say that alright. Y’see, this oul Maggit fella done somethin on me cousin.

  —Right.

  —Right indeed. Now bein the fella I am Denny, I can’t sit round and scratch me arse all day knowin this. Yeh get me?

  —Em. Sorta. Wha did he do?

  —Well. I’d rather not get into the details, Denny. All I’ll say to yeh is that Niamh is just turned sixteen year old this week. Now. I can do one o two things. I can either bate the absolute bollix out o this Maggit chap. Yeah? And I do mean the absolute bollix Denny when I say that. Or I could take somethin off him instead.

  —OK.

  —Y’see, Denny, I’m not a violent man.

  The older fella gives his little smile again.

  —Well fair enough, I’ll throw a few digs when I need to but I’d rather do a bit o business, that’s the best way, I’d say. That’s more civilised. And Niamh, poor confused girl that she is, well, she likes this Maggit gobshite. Sure who could resist a freedom fighter like himself? Great mate o Bobby Sands that he was. God she’d be terrible upset to hear he’d had the face kicked off his head.

  —Look, man, wha are yeh tellin me all this for? This is fuck all to do with me. I don’t know wha the hell Maggit gets up to. He’s a waffler. That’s his own thing.

  —Don’t worry, Denny. Sure I know it’s nothin to do with you. Thing is. I’m not lettin this go. It’d be as easy to bate this Maggit chap but I won’t. For one thing I don’t think he’ll be around for a while, cowardly little sleeveen that he is. So I’ll tell yeh what I can do for yiz. Y’see, I’ll –

  —This is nothin to do with me, though.

  —Look, Denny. Here’s what’s happenin, yeah? I’m havin that car offa yiz. Yeah? Now, I know yer mate Maggit owns a share in it so ye two can work out the money he owes yeh.

  —Ah here. There’s –

  —Denny. I’m not a robber. I won’t take that car off yeh. You’ll bring it up for me, as a peace offerin. Yeah? Just drop it by the haltin site on the Fonthill Road. Then we’ll be quits.

  I just stand there, lookin up at him. Me feet and hands are freezin.

  —I don’t believe this, I say.

  —Isn’t it a tragedy?

  The older fella laughs.

  —My name’s Franno, by the way. Francis Ward. Been nice to meet yeh Denny. And here, I have somethin for yeh. Franno swivels and reaches behind him, pulls at somethin. The older guy farts; it sounds like a wet rumbling. Franno rummages away then turns back round and he’s holdin a little black pup by the scruff, its back legs pumpin slow and useless. A weak yap-yap-yap.

  —That’s a little present from Niamh for our good comrade Maggit, says F
ranno.

  I reach up and take the pup, wha the fuck for I don’t know, and pull him in to me chest, all squirmin bones and squashy warmth.

  —I’ll see yeh soon so, Denny, says Franno, still grinnin his huge grin.

  —Gyup! says the giant redhead and he flicks the reins and the horse stomps its front hoofs and flares its nostrils and tosses its head and starts off through the snow.

  *

  I set the dog down on the floor and he looks up at me for a second and yaps and sniffs the greasy skirtin board. I open the press beside the cooker and dump the old Cornflake box in the bin and replace it with the new Cheerios. Then I rummage in the bread bin and stick a couple slices o Brennan’s under the grill and flick on the kettle and sit down at the kitchen table. The little pup’s yappin away, big hazel-coloured eyes and a little white tip on his tail. Victor’s shabby copy o Huckleberry Finn is lyin on the table beside the pepperpot and I open it and look at the same paragraph for a few minutes but I can’t concentrate so I get up and look in the front room. The place is in bits. Battered beer cans and curry trays, overflowin ashtrays. Some fat bloke asleep on the sofa under a sheet, two big feet stickin out, one stuffed into a red sock and the other free and hairy. I close the door and pull the tray from under the grill and the toast’s half burnt. The pup’s standin in a little yellow pool. I grab him and head upstairs and knock on Paula’s bedroom door.