by Adam Cloake
But tonight, Brogan's blood had washed much of that fear away.
Ben rested his head on the back of the sofa – caressing the envelope to his chest – and contemplated his next step. He had already made some important decisions. He would leave his job, his country, and his current life, behind him. He would become a new person, with a new future, very different from his past. He would finish with the doctors and the hospitals. Their treatments were doing him no good anyway.
The novel he had recently started was far from completion, but he already knew it was the best thing he had ever written. He had begun it the same day he had made the decision to pay his visit to Brogan. He was surprised by how much of himself he had allowed into these new pages, unlike the protective distance he had always maintained before. And he knew why this was so. He had finally chosen to invite his memories of Alan into the process. The spirit of that beautiful boy he had once sat beside – and laughed with – had led his fingers across the keyboard, with less resistance that before. What a powerful team they made!
Yes, he would leave! He would be like William Burroughs, but in his own way, and with his own vices. He would go to North Africa, perhaps bringing with him a battered old typewriter; he would drink Mahia and Chiba; he would smoke the finest hashish; he would take whatever sexual offerings he received, from whomever they came.
Ben knew that, once he went, he would not return home until close to the end.
He would never have real happiness, but he had already given up on that.
The sun felt warm and welcome on the back of Alan’s neck as he walked along the country road. It was mid-September, and he was spending a week at home in Killora. Just like Ben, he was about to begin a new phase of his life.
Alan was spending much of this week walking around the local area, remembering his childhood. He had sauntered up the old, disused railway line, into the hills, and along the coast. Today, however, he was taking an unexpected route, going to a place he had not visited for many years. A place he had not wanted to visit. He was taking this trek because of the thing he now carried in his rucksack – an early morning delivery which had forced him to return to earlier times, and to earlier memories.
One of these memories was recent – just eight months old, in fact. It was the Tuesday morning in early January, when he had woken up to the most shocking news report of his life. The first conscious words he had heard that day were delivered to him – with professional detachment – from his bedside radio.
“Mask!”
“Stitches!”
“Grey Cat!”
He had leapt out of bed, and had spent the rest of the day trying to make sense of the story. By 9am, he had phoned in sick and, for the next few hours – still undressed and unshowered – he had sat on the bed, staring at his laptop screen. He gradually absorbed, with disbelief, the story of the cruel punishment which had been meted out on the other side of the city, just half a day earlier.
Although he had not yet been identified, Alan knew that the victim was Anthony Brogan. He had survived the ordeal, and his life was no longer in danger. Despite his injuries, the victim had managed to offer the Guards a brief outline of the night’s events, along with a bizarre description of his attacker. He clearly had no idea who the man was, but said that he had referred to himself by that singular name: The Remarkable Grey Cat!
Alan had recognised the name immediately.
The intruder had tied Brogan to the bed, naked and gagged. He then began his shocking assault by slicing through the underside of each of Brogan's arms, starting at his elbows. Each incision ran through the man’s triceps, turned a corner at his armpits, and ran all the way down the length of his sides, as far as his knees. When the cutting was complete, the flesh on either side of Brogan’s body had been separated into two flaps, an upper and a lower. His arms, legs, and sides were described as looking like a fish that had been gutted. The perpetrator then peeled back the lower flap of skin, the flap closer to the mattress. In an operation described as crude and amateurish, he then took some heavy black thread, and proceeded to sew this lower flap to the upper layer of the mattress. Although he had used ice to stanch the bleeding, it was reported that blood had spread out from the cuts, making it appear like Brogan was lying on a broad red cape.
“Like a superhero,” a member of the Gardaí was heard to say.
“No!” Alan had thought. “Like a super-villain!”
The Grey Cat had left behind his weapon – the blood-stained rotary blade. It had been left sitting on Brogan’s chest, like some sort of insignia. This tool – normally used by dressmakers – had, on that night, been wielded by a man who clearly wanted to speak to Alan, to tell him something, but who had never found the right language. The awkward, red-haired boy from Art class had grown up to don a PVC mask, and to use Alan’s own instruments – the blade, the needle, the thread – to send him this message of revenge and redemption. It was as if Alan had been in the room with them both, forced to watch the act, but not participate in it, clear in the realisation that the procedure was conferring a benefit on him. This horrific crime had been done to close his own wounds.
But, if Brogan was a villain – whether super, or not – what did that make his attacker? Was he the same as their childhood bully? Was he perhaps something worse? Or had he taken a huge risk, just for Alan’s sake, with some twisted form of best intention? Despite its abhorrent nature, had The Grey Cat believed that his actions were, in some way, heroic?
Alan had spent weeks pondering these questions.
Despite his horror that such violence could be committed on his behalf, he grew to accept that the man inside that mask had made a sacrifice for him, had gambled part of his own soul for him – a part that was not already damaged. Alan hadn’t read as many comic books as Ben, but he knew that even the most valiant of superheroes have to make sacrifices. They could do little without them. And, for weeks, Ben’s act had forced Alan to ponder the sacrifices that he had failed to make himself, and to recognise that time was flowing past him, like the river in Killora. Despite Alan’s resistance, the feelings of shock and disgust which he had experienced that cold Tuesday morning eventually became tempered with lukewarm acceptance. The act was done, and could not be undone. And it had been done for him. He even felt some satisfaction at this. Having been initially appalled, was he now becoming grateful for the deed?
And so, he had chosen to acknowledge Ben’s gift to him, tainted though it was. Before the end of January, he returned to a website he hadn’t checked for years. The images on his screen had never looked as inviting as they did that day. All those pictures of happy students milling in and out of their classrooms in Dun Laoghaire Institute, just a few miles from his own flat. All those tempting details about Art courses and Design courses. All that future to help block out the past.
In late January, Alan did two important things. He filled out the application form on the college website, and he composed a letter of resignation to his employers.
And now, eight months later, he was back in Killora, with just ten days left until the beginning of his new Costume Design course. His parents had expressed some disappointment and concern at his decision, but this had made no impact on the sense of lightness he continually felt throughout the spring and summer.
And then, that morning, a package had arrived – the one he was now carrying with him, across the meadow, and down towards the river.
Because of its size, the postwoman had rung the doorbell and delivered the envelope into his own hands. Standing in his parents’ hallway, Alan had torn open the flap, becoming instantly aware of the faint scent of old paper. From the envelope, he pulled out a sheaf of drawings. They were all damaged, but they had all been carefully repaired with Sellotape. Because it was such an unusual delivery, it took a few moments before Alan had even recognised what they were.
Now it was the early afternoon of another late September in his home town, and he found himself sitting on one of his mother�
��s old towels, breathing in the scent of freshly-cut grass. It had been mown twenty-five times since his last visit to this place.
The sound of the river was as welcoming, and as peaceful, as ever.
Alan took the envelope from the rucksack, and held it in his hands. His name and address were hand-written in heavy black ink. He ran his still-graceful fingertips along the letters. The post-mark in the corner was the name of a city he had once considered visiting, but knew he probably never would:
“Casablanca”!
Carefully, he removed the sheaf of papers from the envelope. It felt so much better holding them here, in this warm place, rather than in the shadowed hallway of his family home. Slowly, he leafed through them, remembering their creation from a quarter of a century earlier. He recalled what he had been thinking and feeling as he had sketched each one, what the day had been like, which song had been playing on the radio.
They were all here: Lamarr, Hepburn, Bogart, Flynn.
And Ingrid Bergman, her face bathed in African sunlight – the same sunlight that probably now caressed Ben. Or tormented him.
He found a small blank corner of a page, one free of tape, and began to sketch. Beginning with a pair of pointed ears, the colour of graphite, he created a masked face, whose eyes burned with cruelty, but promised valour and public vigilance.
In the company of his earliest heroes and heroines – from his childhood to his present – Alan spent much of that afternoon wrapped in the memory of his first friend. He admitted to himself that, over the years, he had thought about him more frequently than he had imagined. Had Ben found contentment? Was there peace in his life? Especially now, after his crime?
He mused on how there are different types of friendship, and different ways in which people show the strength of their feelings. The friend he had lost in this meadow all those years ago had invested probably everything he had, everything he was, to demonstrate this truth.
Although he had not spoken to him for over two decades, Alan acknowledged that Ben was the best friend he had ever had.
Table of Contents
Black Hellebore. 1
Conall 36
A Brother of The Light of Truth. 42
Shore. 70
And Watch The Living. 74
Peter The Hero. 86
Creatures. 95
Don’t Do This!. 124
Grey Cat. 131
