A Missed Murder

by Michael Jecks

  I have heard that snakes can so terrify their prey that the rabbit or mouse is incapable of escape, and all the while that their eyes are held by the snake, they are fixed like a bird to a limed branch. My eyes were gripped by his, and I was unable to move.

  It was truly petrifying. While I stood there, I had flashes of my life pass before my eyes. It was a depressingly short display, and most of it was not inspiring. I remembered things like my father strapping my arse after he found I’d raided his beer savings; waking from a horrible knock to the head to discover I was lying next to a dead man; stumbling over a woman’s corpse. Why do such things happen to me? And, now, the one man I had wanted to see dead was making his way towards me with every intention of skinning and paunching me like a rabbit, if his expression was anything to go by.

  And then there was a miracle.

  The latest man to have been barged aside by Mal’s arm was unaware of the cause of his sudden translocation and decided to take umbrage.

  He was a slight little figure, and my first thought was that he would be crushed like an egg under a hammer, but it only goes to show that a man’s first impression can be significantly in error.

  The initial encounter completed, Mal was about to move on past, when the smaller man turned. Like many others during Mal’s onward progress, he had to blink at the size of Mal’s massive torso. What he lacked in height, as I have hinted before, he more than made up for in breadth.

  But while others took a short glance and quickly decided that they had not been seriously discombobulated by their sideways movement, this fellow was clearly either so drunk that he didn’t realize he was staring at his personal Nemesis or so foolish that he didn’t reckon Mal was dangerous, and he pushed Mal in the back.

  Mal was not a man to intentionally allow an insult to go unnoticed. He turned, and it was rather like a mountain turning, I would imagine. I haven’t seen one, but I can easily believe that there would be a similar sense of shock to see a mountain rotate. I’m sure I heard a grating, rumbling sound, as of rock moving against rock, but I could have imagined it.

  There was a look of incomprehension on Mal’s face. He and the little man stood staring at each other, and from my vantage point I could see the play of expressions that shifted over Mal’s features: from surprise to shock, to bafflement, and finally absolute rage. He lifted a fist like a ham, and I prepared to see the small fellow’s head spring from his body and bounce around the room. I flinched at the thought.

  I heard a loud ‘Oof!’ and when I opened my eyes, Mal was rocked back, his hands on his belly. The small man with the death wish was light on his feet, but he packed a punch like a sledgehammer. Darting around, he punched twice for every one of Mal’s, and although Mal moved as swiftly as he could, wherever his fists were aimed, the little man was no longer there.

  ‘Keep still!’ Mal bellowed, anguished.

  There was another flurry of blows, and the fellow danced around Mal, slamming four rapid punches to his kidneys, then, under a flailing fist, landed a punch on Mal’s throat that had him reeling.

  But that was never going to stop the inevitable. A jab from Mal missed, but before the opponent could spring up and hit him again, Mal’s left fist shot out. It seemed to move quite slowly, compared with the quick-fire blows from the other, but even moving slowly it carried weight. It met the other’s cheek, but that had no visible impact on the speed of the fist. The fist continued on its forward movement, and from where I stood, I could see the small man’s body curving in a delicate arc, both feet leaving the ground, as though his face was now glued to Mal’s fist.

  He disappeared from view, and I felt a momentary sadness. The man had fought well.

  And then I looked up into Mal’s face and the spell was broken.

  I ran.

  The yard outside was in a terrible state. If I had been the owner, I would have been ashamed.

  Ahead of me, a wall enclosed the yard and blocked my path. To the left there was a wall which, my nostrils informed me, was where clients went to relieve themselves. There was a pit nearby, and I didn’t need to look to know what that was for.

  On the right was a large mess. There was an old cookpot, a couple of barrels, but mostly it comprised of timbers, lathes, lumps of plaster and shingles, where once had stood a small extension to the main building. Clearly, it was no more. Beyond that was another wall, but this was the wall to another building, without window or handhold. I could not get away in that direction. Further to the left was another house, with timbers and plaster falling apart. There were hand and footholds aplenty, but none looked as though they would hold my weight.

  I took this all in with one glance. My only possible escape was over the wall before me, but it stood at least four feet over my head. I had little chance of leaping that. Not that I had any choice. I heard shouting from behind me and ran for it.

  When I was much younger, I was quite agile. Yes, I had a small frame and was not known for my strength, but if I was asked to leap into the air, I had some ability. Once, I remember, I sprang into a tree to escape a ravening hound that clearly had rabies or something similar. It was a horrible experience, and I am sure I leaped four feet into the air to snatch at a branch high overhead. After that, I always believed that a man could somehow jump astonishing distances when in dire need. As I was now.

  Alas, my theory was to prove that whatever the abilities of a youth, it was many years since I had been that young. Perhaps my comfortable living over the last year has taken its toll.

  At full pelt, I ran to the wall, springing up and reaching for the top. I slammed into the wall, the breath knocked from my body, my hands scrabbling wildly. It seemed to me that I hung there for some while, as though I had been snagged on hooks. And then I realized that my feet were still on the ground. Absolutely on the ground, as though planted. It was hard to believe, and I stared down with some surprise. Somehow I had landed without noticing. I leaped up again and could see that the top of the wall was tantalizingly close: only a matter of a couple of inches or so from my fingertips when I jumped, but nearly two feet away as I stood there.

  There was no handy foothold or loose brick by which I might pull myself up. Nothing. Only …

  I hurried to the collapsed building. There must surely be some kind of box or barrel in there, something I could put in front of the wall to help me clamber over.

  There was! It was a barrel, quite ancient, and I picked it up and set it down, and climbed up on it, wobbling precariously, expecting at any moment to feel Mal’s ham-fisted grab for me, but there was nothing other than a roar from inside the tavern, as though Mal was remonstrating with another member of the fraternity in there.

  I stood upright, wobbling on the circle of safety, reached up, and just as my fingers gripped the top of the wall, I had a sickening sensation.

  There are many very clever fellows who assert, so I’m told, that in life it is vital to remain steadfastly positive, no matter what. They think, and I have little reason to doubt them, that the good Lord will listen to those who do their best to help themselves, and He is more likely to look on such folks favourably and lend a helping hand. In my position, He should have seen me as a perfect case. I was in danger of my life, yet here I was, struggling on manfully, clinging to the top of the wall over which, if I could only clamber up, I would find safety.

  Perhaps these clever fellows have had different experiences from me, because personally I find that no matter how positive I try to be, the sad fact is that I routinely find myself gammoned. At the final hurdle, I learn that I was deceived to be so optimistic. As on this occasion.

  My fingers were on the top of the wall, and I was just smiling with relief when this little premonition of disaster crept into my consciousness. The sickening sensation I mentioned was a sort of rocking, slipping feeling, as if I was on a ship crossing the Thames in the foulest of wintry weather. I don’t know whether you have been caught in a gale on the Thames – I haven’t – but I can imagine it w
ould be like this. The ground was moving, as though the soil was itself turning to water. My feet trembled, then wobbled; they seemed to have turned to jelly. Suddenly, they could not support me.

  Of course, my legs were fine. This was the consequence of my selecting as a support a barrel that had been thrown out on the rubbish heap. Perhaps, if I had thought this through, I would have realized that any barrel set out there was likely to be rotten.

  There was a crack, and the topmost bindings that held the staves together snapped. Suddenly, released from their captive cooperage, the staves flung themselves free, like so many condemned prisoners on their way to the gallows who unexpectedly find their wrists unbound.

  With no staves, the barrel top disappeared from under my feet. I was suddenly without support, dangling by my strained fingers from the brickwork of the wall. I know that my eyes widened in horror. Safety was over there, on the other side of the wall, and all I needed to do was lift myself up and drop to the other side of the wall. I heard a high keening noise and realized that it was the breath whistling in my throat as I strained my arms to lift myself over. I scrabbled with my feet, but my boots were not made for such climbing, and I could not find even the smallest lip or groove. Instead, I felt my fingers relinquishing their hold.

  I had time to reflect that if this was all the good that positive thinking could achieve, then God was a practical trickster. I was betrayed, I thought, and He was responsible. I fleetingly felt a sense of guilty remorse for such an irreligious idea.

  Not that it mattered. I fell.

  Falling always seems to take a long time. Have you noticed?

  I have had some experience of falling. There was a time I was scrumping apples from a neighbour’s orchard, when the irate owner saw us, and I fell from that tree flat on to my back. Seeing the farmer approaching, I left the apples behind and fled as fast as I could. I had already experienced his vengeful punishments before and had no desire to do so again.

  That time we had escaped, too, me and my two comrades in theft. We found our way to a thick hedge, where we knew of a decent hollow, and we would have got clean away, if only our friend, always known as Whelk for some reason, had not farted in the effort of restraining his laughter just as the farmer drew level with us. But for that, we would have evaded capture. As it was, I got a flogging to go with my sore back.

  This time was different, though. I fell, aware of the sound of splashing from nearby as the staves, or some of them, fell into a puddle or something. Their precise location was unimportant to me. I fell into the barrel, and although much had disappeared, when I tried to move my feet to regain my balance, I suddenly found myself toppling. The bottom cooperage, you see, was intact, and my feet were entangled. I overbalanced and fell back.

  The odd thing was that I did not fall to the ground, as such. Yes, I was lying horizontal, I was sure. My legs, snared as they were in bits of barrel, were resting against the ground, and yet my head and chest seemed to be suspended in mid-air. That was the thought that came to me: that I was floating. I whipped my hands out to either side, replicating Christ’s crucifixion, giving me my second blasphemous thought in as many moments. You know how sometimes a feather can seem almost to hang in the air over a candle? It will flip, whirl, turn, and sometimes rise for no apparent reason. That was how I felt. Except there was something else making itself felt. A certain smell. Not the repellent odour of burning feather, either. This was infinitely worse.

  I mentioned before that there was a wall, and nearby a pit. The pit was not the well. It was a ‘necessary’ for those for whom a mere wall to piss against was inadequate. In falling, I had managed to topple so that the whole of my upper body was dangling over this cesspit, and the smell that rose from it was hideous in the extreme. I do not know what sort of food the denizens of that tavern were prone to eating, but whatever it was, it must have been an unhealthy diet.

  All thoughts of Mal and his breadknife left me. Just at that moment, the only thing that I could think of was that his knife was much less terrifying than the thought of falling headfirst into a well of … well, it didn’t bear thinking of. It would not be a pleasant death, drowning upside down in a deep pit filled with ordure.

  My hands reached the edges of the pit without difficulty. My left hand met with a damp slipperiness which I didn’t want to think about. Whatever it was, I held on. Just now, holding on was the only thing on my mind.

  Have you ever been forced to hold up weights with both arms outstretched? At first it is easy. You compliment yourself as a splendid fellow for being able to show such stamina and fortitude. And then a slight doubt comes to mind. It is the tremble in one arm, a slight sensation of weariness, like the first little flakes of snow that herald a blizzard. Only a tiny tremble. Nothing more. But it is the precursor to disaster. You become aware of the tendons on the upper side of your shoulders, and a kind of red-hot agony begins to spread from the shoulders to the upper chest, the arms, and in a short time you are ready to scream and rail against the torture.

  Now imagine that you are suspended over a terrible pit, and you know that your fate is not a gentle death, but drowning with … that in your mouth.

  No, Mal’s knife seemed oddly unexceptional.

  Which is lucky, because as I was thinking this, I heard a snigger. I looked up into the upside-down features of Mal.

  ‘Oh! Hallo, Mal!’ I said.

  I have a very fixed memory of that sight. If someone ever tells you that the sight of a man upside down is amusing, you can tell them from me that there is a world of difference between the smiling features, say, of a paternal-looking fellow with an affable smile, and the angry, vengeful, rage-filled glower that met my eyes. It was like looking into the face of the Devil himself.

  ‘Hello,’ I said again, and smiled.

  I daresay that his view of me was little more appealing. Still, suddenly his black mood seemed to dissipate, and he grinned. That was itself a scary sight. ‘You’re a bit stuck, ain’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You need help.’

  I could not argue with his reasoning. His logic struck me as sound. However, while I had been hoping for a helping hand, Mal had other ideas. He carefully stepped around the cesspit until he was standing by my left hand. Very slowly, he placed his boot on it and began to lean with all his weight, grinding slowly.

  There is nothing I can say that could possibly describe the pain of that. It defies accurate portrayal. If you have ever yourself hung dangling over a hideous depth like that, with a crazed madman trying to turn your hand into paste on the stones of the pit’s sides, all the while staring into your face and smiling with a kind of fiendish glee, perhaps you’ll have some idea of how I felt, but even so, until you have met Mad Mal the Loaf and seen how vicious, vindictive and evil he looks, you cannot have a true feeling for it.

  I closed my eyes and screamed. Someone could have heard me, I thought. I didn’t want to look up into his face, and I didn’t want to fall, but I knew I must. What a way to die! What a last few moments, waiting to drown in drunken tavern guests’ turds!

  Over my screams, I heard a dull but pleasant sound. It was rather like a bell, but a cracked one. There was a kind of reverberation, but it died all too soon, and then all I heard was a kind of rattling and whirling. I was reminded of that disk of metal which had made such a hideous and prolonged noise in the alley when Humfrie knocked out poor Jeffry, but this time it was briefer, or else I lost interest in it as I became aware of other things.

  First, I was quickly to appreciate that my hand had been seriously hurt. It felt as though someone was trying to flatten it with a red-hot iron. The pain was unremitting, seeming to thunder into flaming glory, and then sizzle slightly, before launching itself into even greater efforts of anguish. Then I was aware that it felt as though my hand was failing. I could not keep gripping the side of the well with my hand. It was impossible to maintain any kind of hold, partly because of the agony, but also because of the slimy su
bstance that lay beneath it. And no, I still didn’t want to know what it was. All I did know was that my left hand was incapable of holding me up.

  ‘Give me your hand.’

  I opened my eyes with astonishment to find myself staring up into Agnis’s serious face. She reached down and gripped my wrist. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘What have you put your hand … ugh!’

  Of course, the splendid girl had been quick to see what was happening when I darted out of the room. In a glance, she understood that my life was in danger if Mal got anywhere near me, and rushed to my assistance. When she reached the yard, pushing past certain unsavoury types who were, so she said, egging Mal on, she caught sight of the rubbish where the extension had collapsed, and took advantage of the broken cookpot, which explained the bell-like tone when she swung it at the back of his head.

  She pulled me up, helping me disentangle myself from the remains of the barrel, and I walked with her, past the snoring form of Mal and to the door, me nursing my flattened hand against my breast. The smell from it was not pleasant, and it was clear what I had grabbed hold of at the edge of the cesspit, but that didn’t matter just now. All I knew was that the damn thing hurt.

  The men in the tavern drew away respectfully as we approached, although whether because of the odour I drew with me or because of fear of Agnis, I am not sure. I saw the table, with Jeffry’s daughter, and I caught a glimpse of Michol in the farther corner, eyeing me with as much keen interest as any of the other drinkers. I suppose, to the inmates of the tavern, it was a rare thing to see one of Mal’s victims still walking.