The Sandman

by Miles Gibson

  “Are you tired?” she asked suddenly.

  I nodded. Yes. But I did not understand the question. Should I put on my coat or take off my shirt?

  Jane stood up and walked behind my chair, forking her fingers through my hair and making me shiver with pleasure.

  “Did you remember to bring your toothbrush?”

  “Yes,” I said, anxiously searching my pockets. I pulled it out and held it up for her inspection. The bristles had collected all the hairs, loose threads and crumbs from the bottom of my pocket. I picked them off gingerly.

  Jane smiled and stepped into the kitchen. The curtain clattered and she was gone. I sat in the chair and stared at the bookshelves, waiting for my instructions. I stood up and peered at the potted plants, waiting for Jane to creep through the curtain naked and wrap her arms around my waist. Whatever doubts I might have entertained about this intimate encounter were already evaporated. My lack of experience only served to heighten my excitement and curiosity. I waited for the moment when Jane returned wearing nothing but freckles. I waited but nothing happened. Finally I pushed my head through the curtain and peeped into the kitchen. It was empty. I crept inside and discovered that it led immediately into a narrow corridor and at the end of the corridor lay another room.

  I pushed open the door and stepped into the room. I was confused by the darkness. A single candle burned in one corner and its light fluttered madly among the shadows. I screwed up my face and stared blindly into the gloom. Slowly the shadows began to brighten and fill with colour. There was a writing desk and a chest of drawers. A small chair. Against one wall a wooden bed. Upon the bed Nurse Jane was curled among the pillows. She had taken off her skirt and folded it neatly over the chair. Her legs were drawn up tightly against her chest. Her hair sparkled in the candlelight but her face was hidden in darkness.

  At first I thought she was asleep. But as my eyes grew familiar with the light I saw that she was not sleeping but awake and watching me. After a moment she began to unfurl herself and rolled slowly onto her back, propping her head and shoulders against the pillows. Her arms settled into the folds of the sheets and were lost but she drew up her legs and parted them, gazing between them as I stepped forward.

  “I thought you were lost,” she whispered.

  “I was waiting,” I said casually as I dragged off my clothes.

  “I’m ready,” she whispered.

  I reached out my arm and touched her foot with my fingertips. The long toes arched. My eyes stole from her foot, over the motionless leg to the darkness between her thighs. Her limp and passive beauty filled me with despair. I didn’t know where to begin.

  I withdrew my arm and prepared to step back from the bed but she, rising, caught hold of my hand and drew me down among the pillows. We rolled together in the sheets and then she was sitting astride me with her knees locked hard against my hips. I stared up at her in amazement. Her body was slender and very pale. Her hair tumbled into her eyes but she did not brush it away. I picked at the buttons of her shirt until her breasts swung heavy and loose above my face.

  I cupped one breast so gently in my palm I felt the nipple wriggle as it hardened in my fingers. Then she sank down upon her elbows and I covered her breasts with my mouth, teasing the nipples, forcing them erect, making them shine. She pulled away suddenly and sat above me with her spine stretched and her eyes glittering.

  She ran her fingers slowly between my legs and, with all the dexterity of a magician, charmed that shy and crumpled member of the audience into a plump and eager assailant. She rolled it against her palms for a few moments, gripped it firmly at the base, as if she were grasping a dagger, and thrust it smoothly into her belly. She swallowed it with a single stroke and squirmed comfortably. I tried to move within and without her body, but my arms were held against the sheets and my legs were restricted by her weight. Again and again she plunged the dagger into her body, moaning and thrashing her face with her hair, while I could only gasp for breath and watch her, startled and alarmed by the violence of her desire.

  “Does it hurt?” I whispered.

  “It kills me,” she moaned. And it was true, our ecstasies resembled the sighs and whispers of death.

  Mine was a sudden death. I pulled her face towards me and thrust my tongue between her teeth, so that I might know the thrill of this double penetration and the life rushed from me with a great shudder. I fell back into the pillows, disappointed. But the dagger was strong and planted deep. Nurse Jane continued to rise and plunge, oblivious to my wasted condition. And I remember thinking, I am here sprawled naked beneath the woman I love, who is also naked but lovely, and burning with an exquisite heat, hair flying, breasts bouncing, eyes closed, mouth open, teeth flashing in the candlelight and I don’t believe it And – although I don’t believe it – I must forget nothing and hoard this memory against the day I am withered and old and alone. I traced the shape of her breasts with my hands, counted her ribs with my fingertips, committed her shape to memory. I watched her face, amazed by her concentration and ferocity, hoping to catch the supreme moment of her own capitulation. I watched her face but when she gave up the struggle she cried out as if she were suffocating, and I could not tell the pleasure from the pain.

  We did not speak. We lay tangled in the ruined bed and fell asleep. When I woke again it was barely dawn. The room was hot. A pale wash of light seeped through the window. An alarm clock purred quietly to itself beside the bed. Jane was turned away from me, her body curled into a clenched fist and her breath reduced to a hiss. I slipped carefully from the sheets. My neck ached and my bones creaked. I clambered into my clothes and stood for a moment, staring at the foot of the bed. Jane was still asleep. I was tempted to try and peel back the sheet to steal a glimpse of her drowsy breasts or plant a kiss on her shoulder. But I turned instead and tiptoed away.

  I wanted to escape before she woke up and offered me breakfast. I didn’t want her to catch me with my face swollen from sleep, my hair in strings and my breath poisoned. I wanted the night to remain extraordinary and untouched by daylight. And that is how it remained for, although I sent her flowers in the afternoon, when we met again we did not speak of that night. It had become a dream to haunt me.

  *

  It was the first week in August when the Daily Mirror published the special feature on my work. It was very interesting. They had managed to obtain photographs of my every victim. There were old wedding portraits, blurred holiday snapshots, ugly passport pictures, the faces filled half a page. There were even one or two faces I did not recognise and, counting carefully, knew I could not have murdered. But it was an education.

  I learned, for the first time, the names of my victims and something of their lives. Patsy’s client, I discovered, had been John Horace, the publisher. The two old ladies had been the Hornet Sisters, famous long ago for a musical comedy act. There were several minor celebrities on the list. It’s funny but I have never had the desire to kill a president or a pope, the pistol waved above the crowd, the screams of the limousines and the bawling guards. There’s no art to the public assassination.

  I had kept a scrapbook from the beginning. But I was especially proud of my Daily Mirror page – it was something special. Here at last the full extent of my work went on public view. There was even a map of London with each murder marked as a small black star. And a long paragraph on the special squad of detectives who were said to be devoted to my capture and conviction. The team included senior police officers and a forensic scientist.

  Until that time I had appeared in the press only briefly and under a variety of pseudonyms. But the police had finally recognised the touch of the master in the application of the blades and the attitude of the corpses. The victims, declared one of the police officers in an unguarded moment, had been killed quickly and neatly. The man they wanted had all the skill of a butcher.

  I had often wondered how the police viewed my work. Once or twice I had even been tempted to phone them and report one of my mur
ders while the blood was still warm; standing on the street at the scene of the crime, watching them arrive with their notebooks and their cameras eager to examine the corpse. I have always wondered about the nature of their loathsome work as they kneel to the carrion, prodding and poking in search of signs of violation. I transform the living into the dead with a kiss of the knife and artful fingers while they wrench the dead limb from limb with morbid fascination. I wonder if we share the same addiction.

  The next day my new name appeared on the front page of every national newspaper, the Butcher, the Butcher, as if shouting the name of death might arrest its career. Men walked into police stations claiming to be the Butcher and tried to confess to my crimes. There were hoax telephone calls to local radio stations and several Butchers wrote letters to the newspapers threatening violence.

  The clamour lasted for nearly a month and then it went wrong. One morning I was the most dangerous killer since the Black Death. Women buried their faces in their skirts, men slipped penknives under their pillows, children were forbidden to walk in the streets. The next morning the Butcher had been arrested and the police were already making guest appearances on the early TV news. I couldn’t believe it. The Butcher had hardly been given time to sharpen his knives. And now it was finished.

  The nation rejoiced. The newspaper editors managed to find a photograph of the killer and ran special Butcher souvenir editions. The TV producers tried to thread all their old news reports together and run Butcher specials. A crowd gathered outside Paddington Green Police Station where the Butcher was rumoured to be chained in a cell. The Sunday Times, that same week, published ten thousand words on the murders – the moral and political significance of the psychopath in society – and even managed a couple of paragraphs on the man who confessed to the crimes.

  His name was Morris Hudson, an unemployed painter and decorator who lived in an attic in Brixton. He was arrested for trying to steal a car and immediately confessed to the Butcher murders. It was madness. He was only seventeen years old. He didn’t look bright enough to tie a knot in his own bootlaces, let alone conduct a series of rather artistic murders. But the police were holding him and the police must have had their reasons.

  It was a problem. If I could resist the knives it was more than likely that poor Morris Hudson would be found guilty of the Butcher’s crimes. If I killed again the idiot would be set loose and the game could continue forever. I wasn’t tired of the sport. I had no regrets. And yet, here was a unique opportunity to hang up my gloves and retire from the profession. I could finish my history of conjuring. I could allow my love for Jane to become a comfortable habit, an opium to cloud my memory and help me finish my life in peace. If I could resist the knives.

  I tried to dismiss Morris Hudson as a victim of his own imagination. I had found a book about a Victorian theatre of magic called the Egyptian Hall and I set about reading it. All manner of monsters and miracles were presented on the stage of the Egyptian Hall. The Scorpion Woman, the Invisible Boy, Doctor Leech and General Tom Thumb. But none of them held the same morbid fascination as Morris Hudson. I found it difficult to concentrate, I laboured over the pages and could not gather my thoughts. It was impossible.

  I abandoned the idea of reading and washed the windows instead. When I had finished I felt better and searched for something else that would waste my energy and help me sleep. I scrubbed out the kitchen but my old rubber gloves sprang a leak and I had to throw them away and walk down to Woolworth and find a new pair to finish the job. I chose a bright yellow pair with long, sporty sleeves that reached almost to my elbows. The palms were coated with thousands of tiny nipples which, according to the packet, gave them extra grip on small and slippery objects. I could not resist holding a knife in my fist, to test the clutch of the nipples on steel, and before I knew what had happened I had packed my tool bag with the gloves and the knives.

  I hid in the bedroom with Hubert’s Conjuring Encyclopedia but when I turned the pages a Polaroid fell out and fluttered to the floor at my feet. When I picked it up I saw Marlene peeled neat as a banana, with her frock split open from the shoulders to the thighs and a splash of colour against her neck.

  It was getting dark. I phoned Nurse Jane to beg her to lead me from temptation. A walk along the Embankment. A plate of Chinese noodles. Anything that would keep me from sitting and thinking alone. But the telephone rang and was not answered. Ten minutes later I was driving into North London.

  I chose one of those big, expensive apartment blocks in St John’s Wood. It looked like a Victorian hospital with gold trimmings. There was a complicated security lock on the door but someone had left the door unlatched and I managed to slip inside without being challenged. While the Butcher was held in handcuffs the rich widows of St John’s Wood felt safe enough to leave their cages open. I quickly found the fire stairs and clambered to the roof. I was hoping to find an isolated attic where I might work my mischief beyond earshot of inquisitive neighbours. But I found, instead, a large penthouse that ran the length of the flat roof and was approached along a short gravel path, flanked by pots of ornamental shrubs. It was a most peculiar sight and seemed to float in the night sky with nothing but a distant church spire to link it with the earth. When it rained or when there was fog, the place must have floated remote as a Pacific island, forgotten and invisible to its neighbours. It was the perfect spot for a murder.

  I tiptoed in and out of the potted shrubs, hoping to peer through the penthouse windows, but the blinds had been drawn and I could see nothing. So I took a deep breath and rang the bell. There was a rattle of chains and the door flew open.

  He was a big man in a red silk dressing-gown and patent leather shoes. He looked like an ancient heavyweight boxer who had spent his career having his nose broken and his mouth split open in a fairground tent. His face had been battered into a shapeless mask, hard as leather and mottled with scars. At a distance you might have thought he had a stocking pulled over his head. His grey hair had been shaved to a stubble so that his ears seemed to grow naked from his skull like a pair of sickly truffles.

  “Good evening,” I said with a smile.

  “Who are you?” he asked in mild surprise. He peered around in the dark as if waiting for someone to arrive and introduce us in a formal manner.

  “Is Benny here?” I inquired.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Benny,” I said, “He promised me he would be here.”

  “You’ve got the wrong address.”

  “No,” I said, “Benny promised he would be here tonight.”

  “There’s no one here called Benny.”

  “Yes,” I insisted, “He said he’d be here by eight o’clock.”

  “I’ve been alone all evening,” he said flatly, “I don’t know who you are and I’ve never heard of Benny. Goodnight.”

  “You’re alone?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  I smiled and pushed him backwards through the door. He spluttered and swore at me but he was too alarmed to offer any resistance. He fell back into the room and I kicked the door closed with my foot.

  The room looked as if it had been assembled by a designer who specialised in small brothels for syphilitic kings. One wall was hung with pink mirrors set in flamboyant gilt frames. Another wall was covered in gloomy oil paintings of Victorian nudes with buttocks the colour of butchers’ lard. Beside the door a marble table with legs of twisted antlers supported a bowl of peacock feathers. In the far corner a naked blackamoor held an electric lamp shaped like a bowl of tropical fruit. And in the centre of the room, set upon a low wooden stage, stood a grand piano.

  “Sit down,” I said gently.

  He walked across the room and sat down at the piano. He tapped out a little tune with one finger. I knelt down and opened my bag of tools. I peeled on my new rubber gloves, watching him and trying hard to ignore the extraordinary surroundings. I selected a knife, weighed it in the palm of my hand, stood up and walked to the piano. The man
in the dressing-gown did not move or make a sound. He just sat there and watched me approach.

  I thought, he is frozen by fear. I shall raise my hand and stroke his ear with the knife. He will fall into his music and be gone. But when I reached the piano he shook his head and smiled.

  “Listen, I’m a rich man,” he said cheerfully, “You don’t have to hurt me. I like you. You’ve got spirit. I’ll give you whatever you want. Paintings. Jewels.” He raised his hand and gestured about the room, inviting me to choose a prize.

  His voice, in contrast to his face, was smooth and precise. When he talked he flicked his tongue in and out like a lizard. It was very sinister and I thought, yes, he is a huge reptile in a dressing-gown, slow but cunning and waiting for the moment to catch my fingers in his jaws. I was frightened, of course I was frightened, for there is a moment in any confrontation when it is not yet decided who shall be victor and who shall fall victim. He could have cracked my ribs or broken my neck. He could have pulled a pistol from his dressing-gown and blown off my head. Anything might have happened.

  “I’m not interested,” I said with a smile.

  “Money,” he suggested. “I’ll give you money. A suitcase full of money.” The lizard flicked his tongue and watched me with a yellow eye.

  “No.”

  “Women. I could let you have women. Beautiful women. Hungry women. All colours. Whatever you want.” Now it was his turn to smile as he sat and waited for my reply.

  “No.”

  “Boys? You like boys? I understand. I’m a man of the world –I’ve enjoyed the odd boy myself. Whatever you want I’m prepared to give you without a struggle. Throw that knife away.”

  “Blood,” I confessed.

  “What?”

  “I’ve come for your blood,” I explained. I didn’t want to frighten him, but he didn’t seem to understand the situation.