Twelve Mad Men

by Ryan Bracha et al.

  Anyway, I raised my own hands and the two spectators cheered. We quickly established that there would be no jumping in from said spectators with a grunted exchange. I believed them, especially when the elder of the non-aggressive two offered to act as the ‘fair play’ man. There was a voice nagging at me – and yeah, this time it was an internal voice – trying its best to put some fear in me. No luck. I’d been in fights before where my mouth went dry, my palms got wet and my balls shrank. Typically my heart jackhammered too. Not this time. I put it down to the fact that I’d been through quite a bit that day. A wee bout like this would be child’s play.

  Never mind that this guy had about two weight divisions on me.

  I’m an optimist.

  Things got a bit murky, then.

  All I really remember with any clarity is the ‘fair play’ man holding my head in the river water. That’s not a forgettable experience. Then the pressure was off me and I could hear the ‘fair play’ man’s screams.

  Pike.

  Pike.

  Pike.

  I crawled up the river bank. Fistfuls of grass tore away from the earth. I slipped, slid and fell flat on my face, but I made it. All the while, two men screamed.

  I understood why after I coughed up half that fucking river and hauled myself up into an unsteady standing position.

  The ‘fair play’ man had lost a few fingers.

  There’d been at least one hungry pike out there looking for a midnight snack. Managed to find one. Fisherman’s fingers, what? Even Captain Birdseye would have trouble marketing that one.

  And then there was my sparring partner.

  What the fuck happened that guy?

  Looked like a pike had gotten at his face and throat, but he was bone dry.

  I worked at something stuck in my teeth.

  Oh. Right.

  The third traveller, the youngest and smallest of the three, held a sawn-off shotgun. The business end was pointed at me.

  I asked the fellah if it was loaded.

  He emptied one of the two barrels. Took the legs out from under me.

  Look. Scars. They’re like pebbledash on my shins or something, right?

  No bones broken, though. Healed right up. No idea what kind of cartridges he’d loaded that thing with, but I know I’m lucky to still have both knees. Squatting would be a bitch without them.

  But yeah, I’d landed flat on my face after being shot in the shins. When I rolled over, the littlest traveller stood over me. The ‘fair play’ man was beside him. Both had stopped screaming. They were deciding my fate in that mad wee dialect of theirs. I couldn’t keep up with the discussion so I just held tight and tried not to make too much of a fuss about their legs.

  Eventually they slowed down their patter and told me that a shot to the head would be a kindness and that they had something else in mind for me.

  One of them stomped on my face then. You see the kink in my nose? That’s a daily reminder. Or it would be, if they’d let me have a mirror in here.

  Do you have a camera phone, mate? Haven’t seen myself in a while. Would be good to see how I look now. I know I must be thinner and in need of a bit of a groom. It’s just that I want to make sure that the kids will recognise me if I ever see them again.

  They haven’t visited me yet.

  But they might, right?

  The last fellah that had your job said he’d try and track them down for me. Don’t know what happened to him, but I think he might have been selling me a bag of shite.

  Could you help me out with that, do you think?

  Take some time to consider it, like. Don’t feel obliged to answer right away.

  I’ll be here for a while yet, I’d imagine.

  Yeah.

  I do a lot of imagining these days.

  It bugs the shit out of them because no matter what they do to me here, they can’t stop me thinking. Makes a nonsense out of my captivity and they can’t stand that. No matter where I am, I’m free.

  I’m finally free.

  Ten

  “So?” he asks, still pumping his torso upright like a snake-like piston, “three fifty six, three fifty seven.”

  “So, what?” I say, my eyes drawn in by the square lines of shadows around each and every muscular detail of his thin, but entirely fat-free body. He snorts.

  “Were you even listening? I asked if you had a camera phone? I’d like to see what that shower of shite Father Time’s done to my old face.”

  I shake my head, no, as I pat my pockets in a show of having checked, even though I know I don’t. Do I? I can’t remember.

  “Great deal of help you are, eh?”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “No bother, if you don’t have one then you don’t have one.”

  “I could find a mirror?” I suggest, but hoping he declines, simply because I don’t want to go and wrestle one from Richard Godwin, who won’t even let me into his room. Gerard lets out a negative grunt. Four eleven, four twelve.

  “No, don’t go to any trouble. Gone this long, another few hours won’t make a difference.”

  Four forty, four forty one.

  “Hours?”

  Four fifty six, four fifty seven.

  “Yeah, when I go for my, therapy. I’m sure Dr Bracha will have some sort of reflective surface I can lay my beady eyes all over.”

  Four seventy nine, four eighty.

  “But it’s,” I say, bringing where my watch should be to my eye line, in order to dispute his idea that therapy will be anytime soon. Where my watch should be, but isn’t. It’s. It’s. Dr Bracha. My mouth dries up. Gerard Brennan is far too engrossed in his exercise to notice the involuntary gasp that whistles through my nose.

  Five oh one, five oh two.

  The hiss of him powering through the half century easily overcomes the sound of my throat constricting and attempting to swallow what little moisture there is in my mouth.

  Five twenty five, five twenty six.

  “Dr Bracha?” I say as nonchalantly as I can, I cannot afford to freak the lunatic out. It’s got me nowhere near an answer so far, “is he in the building?”

  Five fifty, five fifty one.

  “Oh aye, he never goes home that bastard,” he grunts, “a wee fuckin’ workhorse, so he is,” he grunt, “he’ll be upstairs somewhere, with the nurses.”

  That’s the last thing he says to me as I slam the door closed. His sit-ups count never breaks pace as I lock it behind me. The corridor moves by beneath me and the CCTV camera blinks its red light at me as I approach the doors to the stairwell. Once, twice, thrice, infinity. I’m tempted to check on Allen Miles’ room to see who got the better of who in the great tussle between Vincent Melluish and Gary, but not enough to stop. I have a lead. I’m a flight of stairs away from an answer. The stairs disappear behind me and I’m at the mid-level platform. Out of the window I can see that the rain has started to come down. The tip tap of the chubby droplets hammer against the window. I don’t remember getting to the next floor but there I am. My hands grasp the thick steel handles of the double doors and pull. Nothing. They’re locked.

  Through the small glass windows I can see light. I can see movement. My hand smacks against the surface of the door. Once. Hard. Nothing, except for that tinny tubular echo which bounces from the narrow stairwell. I try again. Twice. Hard. The same echo. My fingers snake around the bunch of keys on my belt and I’m prodding each one into the lock. First one way, then upside down. Nothing. Again. One way, then upside down. Nothing. This continues for over half of the multitude of keys that fill the large ring. Then it happens. Hallelujah. Open sesame. Let me fucking in. The bolt slides from the barrel and the door opens before me. The light up here is brighter. Cleaner. It fucking well works, is the main gist of what I’m saying. Not like the ground and first floor.

  I walk along the clinical, and altogether more modern looking hallway. Doors pass me by. One for a Professor somebody, doctor of something. Professor somebody else, doctor of something
else. Nurses’ quarters. I stop in front of that one. Brennan mentioned nurses. I knock. Nothing. My hand clamps tight around the knob, and I-

  “Can I help you?” A voice calls out. A man. Another northerner. I can’t see anybody though.

  “Hello?”

  “Who are you looking for?” the voice asks.

  “Dr Bracha,” I say.

  “You’re looking in the wrong place,” says the voice.

  “Where should I be looking?” I ask.

  “Upstairs,” the voice says. I take small and tentative steps toward the source. My shoes make sticky clacking sounds with each step.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “I go by several names,” says the voice. Of course it fucking does. Who doesn’t around here?

  “And they are?”

  “Well, me mam called us Gareth, Gareth Spark. But me friends know us as Langbard.”

  My steps continue along the hall. The nurses that Brennan promised are nowhere to be seen.

  “Well, Gareth,” I say, “I’m the night guard,” I say, “I’m here to check on everybody, to make sure they’re alright.”

  “Of course you are,” he says, “where’s that fat cunt Benny?”

  “Dead. Allen Miles killed him.”

  Gareth emits a slight gasp. Then a hum, of sorts.

  “Well, I can’t say he didn’t deserve it. I can’t say the same for Amanda here, either.”

  My feet edge me further along the hall, and still there’s no sign of the person that Gareth Spark’s voice belongs to. Who the fuck is Amanda?

  “Where are you?” I ask.

  “Keep walking, you’ll find us.”

  So I do. I edge further and further into the corridor. A door on the right is open. On the wall is the familiar slate, with the words Spark, Gareth upon it.

  As I round the corner enough to give myself a clear view into the room the first sight I’m met with is a pair of feet. Women’s feet. They belong to the headless corpse of a woman, presumably Amanda, sprawled out on the floor. A lake of blood which starts at her open neck covers the rest of the linoleum, and disappears beneath the bed upon which Spark sits. In his lap he gently cradles the head of the corpse. Thankfully the face is pointed toward his stomach, and not gasping a desperate posthumous plea to me to help her. My stomach rolls and I dry heave the nothing I had for dinner up. My knees weaken and I feel my hands slap against the hard floor as I my gag reflex continues to betray me. Spark chuckles a little, before looking down at the head.

  “Well done,” he says, “you found us.”

  The Wild Hunt

  By Gareth Spark

  1/

  I watched her fall by the fence in the same way the snow fell, slowly, as though something the world was halfway through forgetting. I rubbed my good eye with the back of my hand, not certain I'd seen anything at all. I hadn't been awake long.

  The forest on the far side of the valley was heavy with snow, a still and burning silver shimmering between my gaze and the slow turning heaven. It was a girl; she raised her arm slowly, gripped the wire of the fence and pulled herself to her knees. Her skin was as pale as the world behind and her hair was wet and long. A buckshot scattering of dark crimson patterned the snow beside her. I laid the tools back in the trailer, breathed deeply and then worked toward her through the snow. The drift against the wall was thigh deep and the cold ran into my boots. “Hey,” I yelled, ploughing towards her. My voice didn't get much use and I winced at the bang of it against the snow's silence.

  She was in her late teens and barefoot, dressed in dirt-stained jeans and a flimsy green T-shirt thick with blood. Her hair was bottle blonde and she lifted her face towards my voice as though sensing the heat of it, a creature turning to face the current it has to fight. Her left eye was swollen purple and scarlet and blood had dried beneath her nose and across the delicacy of her jaw. Pale channels marked the progress of tears through the grime across her face. She gripped her side with a wet, red fist and whispered something in a tongue I didn't know. Her voice was dry and small. I stood above her, glanced around at the forest and the low-lying land beside the river; nothing moved beside the steady snow.

  I pulled the jacket from my shoulders and draped it around her. There was a stink of sweat and blood above the electric sharpness of winter falling upon itself. She jerked away when I touched her and I lifted my hands, palms facing her, hoping to show I was no threat. “That's all right,” I said, “I'm OK, you see? It's all right, but you have to come with me, love, out of this bloody cold, you really have to.”

  Her skin had a crystal blue tint, the first sapphire flush of hypothermia. 'You've got to let me help you,' I said, moving towards her, as you'd approach a dog you can't trust not to snap. Cold sank through my shirt, a wet chill, as though I'd collapsed through the surface of a frozen pond and the first thrill of ice had faded, leaving only the heavy draw of winter.

  She gripped my shoulder, lifted herself up and snarled with pain. The snow sat about her hair and melted in her blood-filled lashes and she looked at me, and then glanced away. I accepted her weight. “That's it,” I said, gasping the words a little, as my wet boots sought purchase beneath the powdery snow. There was no wind, no light on the land save the sour sun sieved through cloud thick and dark as tarnished steel. 'That's it, come on.'

  She inhaled sharply through her mouth at the first step, and then whispered through the wet frame of hair fallen across her face. The girl stumbled through the snow and I felt her tremble against the joint of my shoulder.

  It brought to mind a young doe I ran down, during the spring. I remember I killed the engine, climbed into the green night, knelt in the starlight glow of the back road and laid a hand on the creatures flank as it died. I felt the thud of the doe's final heartbeat and a tear burned from my good eye for the first time in twenty years. There were even tears in the socket where my left eye had once taken the world. It surprised me you could weep from nothing, over nothing.

  The snow was heavier now, relentless as only things offered by the sky can be relentless; flakes that were brilliant as candle flames flickered against the sky. I glanced at the girl's naked feet; they were raw, painful, and shone as if stones polished by the rain. She mumbled in her strange language; it was a feathery, melancholy incantation. “Where you from, love?” I asked. I needed to keep her alert.

  She said, in English, “I can't believe it.”

  “What can't you believe?”

  She didn't reply.

  The truck and trailer stood by the fence I set out that morning to repair. It was a broad, fallow field, the last of my land before the National Park. The vehicle slanted on a rough track, dark beneath its frosting of snow. I reached for the door with my free hand. The girl's weight pulled at me and in spite of the cold, I felt the prickle of sweat beneath the band of my old baseball cap. My gloves were slick and I missed the handle once before managing to click it open. “In you get,” I said, pushing the girl with my shoulder. Her legs draped out of the side and I saw she was near enough unconscious. I lifted her feet into the vehicle. There was an old wool blanket inside the footrest and I spread this across the girl. She sat up and glared at me. Her unwounded eye shone bright green flecked with gold and I knew she wasn't looking at me but at something far off, something only the dying recognised.

  I smiled at her nonetheless and asked, “What's your name? What do they call you”' She lay back without answer. “Fair enough,” I said and pushed the door closed. I headed to the rear of the truck and uncoupled the trailer.

  “You have trouble now,” I said, glancing down at the valley and the slow steel of the river. “Lord help us, you've got nothing but trouble.”

  I drove steadily down the track and onto the dirt road for the hills. I got out, closed the gate behind me. Gristhorpe stood on the opposite side of the valley; a glow of lights turned against the January dark. Behind was my place and miles of snow-struck forest. I climbed back in, turned the vehicle left on the road, stee
ring for the channels cut by passing tractors through the snow, twin black lines leading through the blizzard. The steady stream of blood leaking from the girl's side electrified the frigid air and I felt an old sick feeling, one that hadn't troubled me for more years than I cared to put together. A ghost rose behind my concentration, a face that usually lay quiet in a grave of years and forgetfulness and I shook my head as a dog might shake away the rain.

  The pines growing either side of the gate leading into my place were lost in the blizzard. I left the engine running and climbed out into the grey world. The old iron of the massive gate burned my hand as I heaved against its dead weight, swinging it back into the trees with a mournful creak. The brim of my hat was thick with snow and I took it off and shook it hard as I walked back to the vehicle. The headlights beamed through the curtain of snow and I got in, looked the girl over and drove a hundred yards to the old farmhouse. The skeleton of a barn, roofless and naked to winter, towered behind the low slate roof of the house. A six-foot high tower of tractor tyres, an old Nissan on bricks, the ruin of a washhouse, a trailer grimed white and grey, a square of hay beneath a tarpaulin for the horse; my place wasn't that great. The house was on the eastern side of the yard, Skelder Moor behind it, stark against the sky; the stables and the sour fruit smell of dung, hay and horse breath. Pools of ice thick before the stable doors, hoof prints glittering in the pale morning.

  I headed to the porch, unlatched the door and went back for the girl.

  She slid on the cigarette burned leather with a moan. “Come on,” I said. Blood ran in rivulets across the beige hide of the seats. She whispered as I lifted her from the vehicle and I felt the snap of pain in my gut, thought I was going to drop her, then settled myself square on the slush, mud and churned up horseshit of the yard. Took a step, grunted, swallowed back a pang of regret for the lost strength of my arm and trudged heavily to the door. I was getting old after all, lucky to have reached the age I have, tired most mornings and every single night, alone upon the earth.