Sufferer's Song

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Sufferer's Song Page 33

by Savile, Steve


  * * * * *

  The crow perched among the brittle bones of Hangman's Oak, blacker than black through the treacle-tinted lenses of his sunglasses, didn't so much as cock its' head or turn a curious eye on the pale cream Zephyr weaving dangerously beneath its elevated perch.

  It took flight though, as the horn blared, Billy holding it down long enough for the sound to falter and fail suddenly.

  Billy giggled, winding down the window to shout, “FUCKIN' REE-TARD BIRD!”' after it, ruffle its’ feathers and send it flapping into the sky. He found it easier to keep the car heading in a straightish line if he didn't push it into moving any faster than a crawl, and kept to hugging the grass bank like a grubbing snail. It took him nearly as long to drive down Moses Hill to the junction with the Spine Road as it did for him to walk up yesterday, but he got there in the end, mud caked all over the wheels and hub caps and halfway up the door panels.

  “Nice and slow,” he mumbled to himself, turning the corner back towards Westbrooke at the bottom. Even with the minimal daylight of six-thirty all but gone, the view through the window was still painfully bright for his changing eyes to cope with unprotected, so the glasses stayed firmly in place and he felt like a star from the films.

  Here and there, as he grubbed slowly into town, puddles of damp sodium mottled the pavement, where streetlights were still there to cast their own shine.

  Mr Barney was standing on the corner by his old school, scowling at someone Billy didn't recognize. They were surrounded by cars, so maybe that was what they were arguing about. Mr Barney waved distractedly, too intent on his own argument to wonder at Billy driving Frank Rogan's clapped out old banger.

  And Billy saw others; faces he knew as well, almost, as his own. Few of them thought even enough to offer a small wave. Billy didn't wave back. On the point of screaming, he stuffed the knuckles of his left hand into his mouth and bit down hard as the need trampled over his mind with the grace of concrete clad feet. Fragments of hunger, images and language that between them lacerated and sliced he saw her face laid bare by the silver relief of the sister moon staking her claim on the day's spoils. Sat alone on the steps of the old stone church, cold and angry with it. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her legs, chin resting firmly in the hollow 'V' between her knees. Already, in the tilt of her face as she gazed listlessly out across the somnolent village street at her feet, Billy could see beyond the rash of goosepimples and the set of her jaw; Annie Lockewood, looking young and lost.

  The presence that had been growing in substance ever since he had stumbled over Pops' hand buried in the dirt of Dipton Wood, fairly howled its delight at finding one so young, so ripe, to sate its burning need . . .

  He shook his head, feeling the coldness of the claw settling around his heart, sensing the tidal flow of images welling, breaking through the straining mental dam and finally rolling over his personality.

  Cold sweat peppered his hairline.

  He reached across to the passenger seat, snatching the cook’s knife, hand closing so tightly around it his bitten down nails drew blood from the calloused heel.

  Listen to ussss, the presence cajoled, no pleading or wheedling now as the sheer weight of it swamped his thoughts and suffocated his personality; a fire-blanket thrown over the beginnings of a blaze.

  “Out! Get out of my head!” Billy howled, slapping at the sides of his head again, knife still in hand but spearing up and out safely. Instead of abandoning his head, the presence forced a startlingly vivid vision in front of his mind's eye, and held it there while he kicked and screamed for it to be taken away.

  Annie Lockewood, the girl on the cold stone steps, was down by the jetty at Devil's Water, with her butter-wouldn't-melt friends, playing hooky. Billy huddled up under the wooden jetty, was crying his heart out. Forget the waves lapping at the water’s edge, all Billy could hear was Annie's mocking laughter. Then the girls were throwing stones down at Big Bad Troll's bald head, and harmless old Billy was hurting. . .

  Billy managed to sit up straight long enough to guide the Zephyr to a stop a few feet down from the church steps. To clench his right hand on the steering wheel. To offer a weak smile to the girl coming down those steps. To lean across to open the passenger door and gesture her to climb in. To stop being Billy the harmless old troll everyone loved like a second son. To start being Billy The Scarecrow.

  To start being Billy, The Giver of Pain.

  “Hiya, Billy,” Annie chirped, squirming on the seat as she slammed the car door.

  Billy nodded, the need spiking his emotions until they were so exaggerated he didn't dare risk opening his mouth for fear of what might come out.

  Annie looked at him then, closely. Saw the sores around his mouth, saw the hollow sockets around his eyes, saw his pinched, painfully thin face, and very nearly panicked.

  “Are you sick, Billy?” she asked. Her voice had a soft, sad, end-of-summer quality to it.

  Sorry Pops. . . Sorry. . . Sorry Pops. . . Sorry. . . The stones were raining down on his head. . . Hurting. . . Billy was hurting. . . Blood trickled through his fingers. . . Into his eyes. . . “M'Okay,” he nodded, offering Annie a sickly, scarecrow’s smile. “You looked cold, so I thought I'd stop and drive you home if you wanted.”

  She shrugged. He could tell she was a little unsure of him but that didn't matter.

  She had been tempted this far, and now, steering the car away from the kerb, he knew just how badly he needed her. And just how much he wanted to satisfy that need - even if that meant losing his mind and his soul to the Devil, in the process.

  - 54 -

  Some parts of Spencer Abel's job really plumbed the depths, and stayed down there long enough for him to feel as if he were drowning in the curdled milk of human kindness; writing up stories on kiddies killed in the name of love; stories on families burned to death by Mum or Dad's careless cigarette; stories on the homeless living in their cardboard boxes because they've nowhere to go and the Government don't care one way or the other; stories on kids and drug overdoses; stories on “joy riders” wrecking families for the thrill of a 90mph chase with the new Police helicopter; stories on pensioners being mugged by gangs of thirteen year olds for two quid in loose change; stories on rape and child abuse; and worse, if there could ever be anything worse than the theft of innocence. . . but so far (and he would never have thought himself capable of saying it, even as recently as yesterday) nothing came close to writing up a friend’s obituary this late on a Sunday night.

  And nothing can when the lad dies – correction, gets cut to pieces and left to drip-dry in a hospital room -- chasing a story I've assigned him to cover without so much as a second thought for the danger that lad was getting into.

  Spencer tabbed down three spaces, saved the file and sent it down to the presses with a single keystroke; first saying goodbye to, and then burying Jason Kelso in his own editorial way.

  Right now, Spencer didn't have a single good word to be said for Investigative Journalism; with or without the capital letters. It was all crap. He had a headache and he wanted a drink. Spencer tried to tell himself he only wanted to give the lad a proper send off, but that didn't wash anymore than the public's right to know did. He needed a drink, and it was nothing to do with any misguided sense of guilt or duty.

  He finished off, booting out of the system, picked up his jacket and wandered down the stairs and out through the side doors in search of a shot of forgetting water.

  The Printers Pie was the closest pub, even if it was a working home-from-home for every hack-journalist and printer in Newcastle. He nodded a polite hello to two men climbing out of a mud-splashed Land rover, then pushed the glass-tinted doors open on the smoky taproom and walked in, tasting the fumes on the back of his throat before he stepped so much as a foot inside. Some tune, very definitely Cajun in origin, was playing too loudly. There were enough people drinking for him to get lost, and that, after all, was why he was here.

  He recognised most of the faces
on both sides of the bar but didn't feel like joining any of the drinking parties, all of which were already very much into the swing of things. So he ordered a double whiskey with ice, then slumped down on a stool for closeness, rolling the glass absently between long thin fingers. He thought about drinking it, and he thought harder about leaving it untouched and just walking out and going home.

  One of the men Spencer had passed outside had taken up the spare stool beside him and ordered a pint of Beamish, which he was toying with now, his look of distaste suggesting it were a rat with two heads rather than a decent stout. His pal was leaning on the bar rail, making a show of drawing a face in the thick, creamy head of his Guinness.

  “Happy or sad?” he leaned across to ask Spencer, before tracing in the exaggerated curve of a frown.

  Losing the battle, Spencer tipped his glass in a silent salute to Jason and chugged his whiskey down in a single swallow, wincing as it went down. It had been that long in coming, he had forgotten just how sharp a decent whiskey was. By the time he remembered, the line they drummed into him and other sufferers at every A.A. meeting he could recall, was there to ruin the sensation: No matter how long you're dry, you're only ever one drink away from becoming an alcoholic all over again. Never forget that, but learn to live with it before it kills you. . .

  He caught the barman's eye and ordered a second double, as with the one before, Spencer chose the suicide path, downing it in a single swallow. Right now he didn't care about living enough to let the pat A.A. lines bother him enough to stop drinking.

  “Bad day?” One of the lads from the Land rover asked, setting his condensation peppered glass down on the bar.

  Spencer thought about ignoring him, and then shrugged. “You could say that,” he agreed in the end, trying to catch the barman's eye for a third time, and this time without success.

  That didn't appear to worry the newcomer. He took out his wallet, making a show of thumbing through the wad of notes before pulling out a cash point crisp five pound note. Smiled across at Spencer. “Let me get this one in, why don't you? Richie, what do you want?”

  “Just a Coke for me.”

  “No problem, and what's yours? Don't tell me, a whiskey, right?”

  Spencer looked mildly embarrassed, and he knew it. Even his muddy reflection in the mirror behind the bar looked uncomfortable with the stranger's show of generosity. “You don't have to,” he assured him, only half-hoping the man would withdraw his offer. He didn't, of course, but conceded some ground.

  “You can get the next one in, deal?”

  “Okay.”

  Dishing the drinks out, he introduced them both. “I’m Rob, this is Richie.”

  Richie smiled, and Spencer was struck by just how uncomfortable the younger man looked, sat in a strange pub, drinking with a complete stranger. He knew all too well just how he felt, and misreading the situation, decided it best to drink up and start building a few rickety bridges to span the gulf between them.

  After all, it didn't do to get lost alone. Even Hansel had the comfort of Gretel's hand when the woods were at their darkest.

  * * * * *

  Spencer Abel did not just fall from the wagon, he swan-dived face first into the road, literally.

  Between them, Rob Duncan and Richie Dickinson plied him with enough whiskey, gin and mixtures there in, to sink his proverbial battleship three times over. And still he kept knocking them back just as steadily as Rob and Richie could put the full glasses down in front of him. The music had gone full circle, from Cajun through to Prince and his electronic imitators, and as the night wound on back to steel drums and reed flutes.

  “C'mon fellas,” he shouted, pushing himself to his feet. “Know a good club. . . We can getta drink. . .”

  He nearly fell then, but for Richie's hand snaking out to steady him he would have, and taken two of the three bar stools down with him.

  The fact that he was drunk didn't hit him until he staggered out into the car park, supported by Rob and Richie, and the cold night slapped him across the face. Suddenly he needed the toilet desperately, could feel his testicles starting to shrivel and his bladder burn and didn't think he could control it even if he wanted to. He thought, for one giddy moment, that he was actually going to piss himself in the street.

  He tried to turn, slurring a sentence even he couldn't follow. A sharp stabbing pain flowered in his kidneys. And suddenly he was losing his balance and this time no one was trying to hold him up. The tarmac rushed up as Spencer Abel's face ploughed into it.

  Giggling as he pushed his hands beneath him, Spencer struggled to rise, felt the weight on his back, holding him down.

  Weakness, cool like the whiskey before, flowed through him and he slumped onto the ground. . . The smells of petrol, sickly sweet and burned rubber, acrid, smothered his senses. . . Heard a shout and an engine gun and roar. . .

  * * * * *

  “Hold that bastard down,” Rob yelled, jumping into the Land Rover.

  Richie pressed down hard on the Gazette editor's shoulders, pinning him to the ground. The fight had evaporated almost as soon as his face hit the tarmac, but that didn't mean that Richie was about to loosen his hold, no matter how sick the thought of what they were doing made him feel.

  He pressed his knee down between Abel's shoulder blades, keeping him pinned.

  He wished to God he had had more to drink than the one pint of Guinness and a few Cokes. He wasn't so sure he had the stomach necessary for the next thirty seconds –

  The Land Rover's engine gunned and roared, Rob standing on the accelerator to get the revs going, and then it was creeping forward, the front wheel twelve inches from the editor's head.

  Richie looked about quickly, scanning the dark street for unwanted observers. As far as he could see, they were alone and unwatched, but that didn't mean a thing. The menagerie of dim shadows might have been hiding a thousand eyes, the way the layers of shadow within deeper shadow overlapped and accentuated the backstreet chiaroscuro, and Richie wouldn't have known any better.

  He hoped to Christ his three kicks to Abel's head had knocked the poor sod out. He tried to tell himself that was why he wasn't struggling, and thought he was going to throw up anyway.

  He held his breath, doing his best to swallow it down. Richie said a silent prayer for Spencer, and another one for himself as the front wheel started to roll over Abel's skull. The Land Rover riding it as if it were no more of an obstruction to be negotiated than a rock to be climbed.

  He closed his eyes, feeling almost feverishly sick. Heard the bones start cracking. Heard Abel's gut-wrenching screams. Opened his eyes in time to see the scalp peel slowly back from the skull to leave the plate of Abel's forehead exposed – then closed them again as the bones gave in to the remorseless, crushing weight of the Land Rover. One of Abel's eyes bulged like a water-filled balloon in the tightening clamp of a vice. The dome distorted under the irresistible, creeping pressure. His ear ripped away, gristle and blood pumping into the ragged hole in the side of his head. One second Spencer's screams were terrible, the next they were less, even, than whimpers.

  Richie was on the point of running, his eyes locked on the frosted glass doors of the pub, expecting them to slam open, when finally, with the full weight of Land Rover bearing down on the pressure points of temple and jaw, Abel's skull caved in.

  The blood-spattered remains of Abel's corpse spasmed violently under a shock of convulsions, the electricity of death shocking its system, then, as if it were only just beginning to understand the horrendous extent of the damage, seized up, clutching at the tarmac, and died.

  Blood was running away down the camber and into a drain.

  Richie was shaking badly. Scared and out of his depth, and it just kept getting worse. He pushed himself to his feet, collapsed onto his knees and vomited, and was still heaving when there was nothing to bring up except his stomach lining.

  Crimson fluid was splattered over everything, darkened to a wet oily black on the road, a
s if an irate artist had taken it upon himself to hurl pots of red paint here, there and everywhere. A sticky amalgam of blood, bone shards and the pulpy matter of the brain itself, smeared around the shoulders of Abel's headless body.

  He tried again, but could not stand. A second later he started screaming hysterically.

  “Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Rob yelled down at him. He jumped down out of the Land rover, planting his feet in the pulverized remains of Spencer Abel's head, grabbed Richie by the scruff, and hauled him to his feet and into the Land Rover's cab. Richie stumbled, slumped into the wing of the Land rover, one shaking hand leaving a bloody print on the metal panel, then he was in and Rob was slamming the door to keep him there. Screaming or not.

  Behind the wheel again, Rob leaned across, hooked his fingers in the collar of Richie's shirt and pulled him closer, until there was less than six inches between them; Richie was screaming into his mouth. Rob slapped him across the face, shook him, and back-handed him again. “I know kid,” he hissed, “but if you don't fucking well shut up I'm going to dump you here and to Hell with you. Now shut the fuck up and let me concentrate.”

  - 55 -

  Night lay heavy over the Northumbrian hills, its' darkness denied even the welcoming silver of moonglow. A few stars peeked through the thick rolls of cloud. There was a storm in the air, but the coming rain was the very least of Kristy's worries.

  Hunkered down beside her, Robin Stone was going through a few very restrained stretching exercises, working the tension out of her shoulders, kneading it out of her calves and thighs. She was kitted up like a Green Beret in an army surplus camouflage jacket, black jeans and eighteen-hole Doc Martin’s; her face blacked out roughly with smears of boot polish, eyes masked by dark glasses. A carbon copy of Kristy and the others.

 

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