by Peter Murphy
The chapel cast the longest shadow of all.
I remembered what Father Quinn told us when we were preparing for our Confirmation, that hell isn’t necessarily a place full of devils and demons and people burning in everlasting lakes of fire, hell can simply mean an absence of God.
Religious objects appeared everywhere. The sacred-heart lamp in the kitchen. The crucified Christ shackled to the rosary beads my mother kept on her bedside locker. The plastic Madonna filled with holy water that Mrs Nagle brought us back from Lourdes one year, its sad mother’s eyes downcast and crestfallen.
I sat on the monument most afternoons and watched the swimmers set off for the Soldier’s Hole, rowdy, lanky youths with towels and togs tucked under their arms. I envied how easy in their skin they seemed, how careless and sure of themselves, as though they’d never known what it meant to feel separate, trapped under the magnified sun like an ugly insect under glass. Wretched and unclean.
The nights were the worst. The air was suffocating and clammy and close. Endlessly, obsessively, I replayed the memory of that morning in the barracks when I spilled my guts about the break-in at the chapel, about Jamey and Gunter stealing drink and cigarettes from The Ginnet. The darkness swirled with stories I’d read about sleepwalkers who commited murder, or drunks who blacked out and perpetrated abominable acts and woke up none the wiser except for the stains on their hands. I lay in bed, exhausted and sticky with sweat, the sheets twisted into knots.
One morning I came downstairs to find my mother sat at the kitchen table, the Ballo Sentinel spread out before her.
‘You got a letter in the post,’ she said, indicating the mess of brochures and bills and junk mail that had accumulated in the middle of the table. I found the letter and tore open the envelope, and my stomach rolled over when I recognised Jamey’s spidery handwriting, the letters crammed together like lifeboat passengers. I took it out onto the front step where I could read it in privacy.
15 Fairview Crescent
Ballo Town
Well, John,
A lot of effluent has passed under the overhang since last we spoke. As you can see from the address, this letter comes to you from the extraordinarily unremarkable hamlet of Ballo town. Yes, it came to pass that Maurice put the house up for sale and we moved back here. They said it was to be nearer me when I have to go, so they can visit more often, but I think it’s cos they couldn’t bear to show their faces in Kilcody any more.
By now you’ll have heard that they gave me a year on remand in Balinbagin Boys’ Home. Dee keeps asking why I did it, but I can hardly enlighten her, can I? You’d be better qualified to answer that one. You got away jammy, my friend, but I don’t begrudge you a bit of it. Let’s just blame it on old Rimbaud, shall we? Maybe we took him a bit too literally.
I’ve been thinking about what happened but I can’t say too much for obvious reasons. Never put anything incriminating in writing. Or on tape.
I won’t forget that little lesson.
I can’t remember much about the trial, except our solicitor wanted it done and dusted, fast. There was a lot of muttering and legal jargon and barrister language and the judge asked me how I pleaded and I said, ‘Guilty, your honour,’ just like they told me. It’s a strange thing to say those words in a court of law. I didn’t understand what was going on most of the time, at least not until the judge handed down my sentence. I understood that well enough.
The solicitor said I’d probably only serve six months tops. I’m not worried, to be honest. These places are not what they used to be. Tell you the truth, I’m more concerned about Gunter. Apparently he thinks I shopped him over the Ginnet job and various other business enterprises it’d be unwise to mention in writing. I never said a word. The big lug can’t blame me if there’s a stoolie in his camp. The sooner I start serving my sentence the better. Incarceration is probably the safest thing for me!
Anyway, gotta go.
People to see, stuff to do.
Or not.
Later,
Jamey
I folded the letter and shoved it into my pocket. When I went back into the kitchen my mother was squinting at the newspaper. The optician had prescribed reading glasses but she refused to wear them, said they made her look like a librarian. Her face was set in a scowl.
‘Good lord,’ she said. ‘Did you know anything about this?’
‘About what?’
She tapped the front page of the paper and passed it to me. It was the second item, after a big piece about the introduction of parking discs. I scanned the story and did my best to approximate an expression of horror.
Local Youth Convicted of
Chapel Desecration
...the chapel was so seriously desecrated—consecrated hosts were removed, and the altar was defecated upon—that a rededication ceremony was held before Mass could be celebrated there again. Police have not ruled out rumours of local youths involved in bizarre Satanic cult rituals...
‘Jesus,’ I said.
‘Language, John.’
‘Sorry.’
I could feel her eyes on me as I read it more closely.
‘It says he admitted it,’ she said, her face inscrutable. I put the paper down and went to the sink and got a glass of water. She stood with her back against the table, arms folded.
‘Did Jamey ever mention this to you?’
‘This is the first I heard of it.’
Her mouth curled.
‘I find that hard to believe.’
Something made me think of those true crime stories where they know the murderer is guilty if he’s able to fall asleep in the interrogation room.
‘Someone must have put him up to it,’ I said.
‘I wonder.’ My mother unfolded her arms and shook her head. ‘He seemed like such a nice chap. But I can tell you right now, that’s the last you’ll see of him, in or out of Balinbagin. If any son of mine got up to that kind of carry-on, no matter how hardy he was, I’d box the two ears off of him. And then I’d let the Guards deal with it.’
‘You’d do right,’ I said.
She harrumphed and washed out her mug and went into the bathroom to get washed.
I sat at the table and went through the rest of the paper. My eye caught on one of the headlines dominating the features pages.
Missing Asylum Seeker Feared Victim of
Human Trafficking Ring
by Jason Davin, Staff Reporter
Fears are on the rise that Jude Udechukwu, the 20-year-old Nigerian asylum-seeker who disappeared from Kilcody recently, could have been the target of gangs using the threat of black magic in order to coerce innocent victims into slavery.
Last week the Sentinel office received a telephone call from a man alleging himself to be friends with the Nigerian. He wished to be identified only by the name Okenawe. He said he was flatmates with Mr Udechukwu and a number of other illegal immigrants earlier this year in West London.
According to the caller, Mr Udechukwu said in January he was kidnapped by several men in the city of Lagos in Nigeria one evening and driven to a derelict house on the outskirts of the city. He was gagged and bound to a chair and held captive for several hours. For the duration of his ordeal, his face was smeared with blood and he was forced to eat animal parts. He was eventually set free and instructed to return with a large sum of money within 24 hours. If he failed, he was told he would be decapitated and his family cursed.
In what was later revealed to have been part of the scam, Mr Udechukwu was contacted by a man who offered him a chance of escape, using forged documentation and a plane ticket. He flew to London via Milan, where he was given a mobile phone and told to await further instructions. It was there he met Mr Okenawe.
Over a period of some months, both men were involved in various benefit-fraud rackets, in which they were forced to make a monthly repayment, plus interest, to a local contact, for ‘expenses’ (airline fare, fake passport, accommodation). They shared a room with a dozen other men and
women, some of them teenagers. Most of the girls were involved in prostitution or employed as poorly paid servants. If they did not maintain their payments, they were warned, their bosses would use supernatural powers to find their families and kill them.
According Mr Okenawe, as the weeks went on Mr Udechukwu grew more fraught of ever clearing his debt and spoke of fleeing London. He said the plan was to hitch-hike to Swansea and take a ferry to Ireland. After he disappeared, Mr Okenawe assumed that was what had happened. When an Irish friend showed him this newspaper’s report of Mr Udechukwu’s disappearance some weeks back, he contacted the Sentinel office. Mr Okenawe fears that Mr Udechukwu may have been tracked down and even killed by members of the gang who were blackmailing him.
Incidents of ‘muti’ or ‘obeah’ ritual killings, while still rare in the West, have been on the rise recently. Some years ago the headless body of a man was found floating in the Liffey, and last year in the Midlands, a disembodied torso was found in a suitcase. The Zulu word ‘muti’ is shorthand for any medicine practised by sangomas, or traditional South African healers. ‘Obeah’ is a form of witchcraft. It involves the human sacrifice of a pre-pubescent.
The practice of black-magic medicine has given rise to a thriving trade in recent times. Several years ago the South African government set up an inquiry into witchcraft and ritual murders after a spate of kidnappings and deaths in Soweto. Investigations revealed that the harvesting of brains and reproductive organs of one person could fetch thousands of pounds. The organs of Caucasian men were deemed even more valuable, because of their business prowess. Reports revealed that body parts removed from live victims were considered more valuable because the screams of the victims made them potent. The vast majority of traditional healers will have nothing to do with the trade, but anyone with enough money can buy remedies made from human body parts.
When contacted by the Sentinel, a local Garda spokesman said they are taking Mr Okenawe’s claims seriously. They are currently considering a full investigation.
I folded the paper, strangely comforted.
Days crawled by on their bellies. Books were a poor substitute for Jamey’s company. I was bored out of my mind, and it didn’t take long for my mother to become browned off with my presence.
‘John,’ she said, ‘you can’t mope around the house all summer. We may find you a job.’
‘What kind of job?’
‘Nicky Gibbons is hiring pickers.’
She’d obviously thought this one out in advance. One phone call and I was hired.
We all gathered at the pick-up spot on the crossroads at half six on the dot. Nicky’s Renault 4 pulled up and a bunch of us crammed in, mostly kids my age or younger, clutching buckets and tubs, clothes caked with dried muck. Nicky dropped us off at the gate and drove off to collect the next crew. We dragged ourselves through the yard and assembled on the headland. The air still had traces of early morning chill. I cast my eyes across the field, rows and rows of dew-drenched strawberry plants stretching off into the next county.
We got to work, feet planted on either side of the drills, fingers groping through the leaves. The sleeves of my jumper were soon drenched and my wrists itched and the sickly sweet fruit juice stung the hangnails on my fingers. All morning an unnatural quiet hung over everything, disturbed only by the rustling of plants. Sometimes I heard strains of music drifting queerly from the depths of the mist and I stared off at the surrounding landscape, feeling like a convict on a prison road crew, contemplating the freedom beyond the ditches.
Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to set off across those fields and disappear into the whispering woods, just vanish into the will-o’-the-wisp, become a ghost drifting through narrow laneways, to walk until it felt like I no longer existed, like I had already died, hit by lightning or one of those big articulated trucks bound for Ballo harbour, so suddenly that my soul could not escape my mouth and got trapped in some purgatorial realm of in-between things, doomed to following my shadow, my shadow following me, and sometimes two shadows walking in tandem, another me and another Jamey.
I tried to shake off the mood and get back to work.
When my bucket was full I lugged it to the top of the drill and dumped its contents into a blue plastic tray, and when that was full—three buckets did the job—I slotted a second tray on top. My backside was soggy from squatting in mashed fruit. My back ached and I had to keep changing posture to get any relief.
Pickers moved steadily down the drills, grubs working on a carcass. The plants dried out as the sun crawled up the sky’s curvature. The first break was at eleven. Nicky’s wife Greta brought the teapot and we all lined up with our mugs. I sat on my coat and ate my ploughman sandwiches and listened to the other pickers discuss the weather, and if it would hold, and if it rained what kind of rain would it be, because a shower would mean we’d wait in the haggart and drink tea until it passed and then get back to work, but anything heavier meant we’d be rained off altogether and have to come back another day. Nicky was always loath to let that happen; he had a harvest to bring in. No matter how dismal the downpour he’d stand in the doorway of the haggart and look off into the sky say, ‘I think it’s clearing up, lads,’ and a chorus of voices would assure him that no, he was seeing things, it was down for the day.
The other pickers were a motley lot. The Flynn twins were only nine or ten but could pick more buckets per day than I could manage in a week. I made a point of stacking my trays as far away from them as possible in order to minimise the humiliation. And there was Larry Mythen, a red-headed giant, six foot plus in his socks. They said he got violent when he was jarred and that he’d done time in gaol. I looked at his open face and gentle eyes and couldn’t picture it. Then there was Carol Cassidy, tall and coltish, with sparkling eyes and long brown hair, skin-tight jeans tucked into her wellingtons. I was village-idiot smitten, but she only lasted a week before she found better things to do with her summer. And then there was Trigger Quigly, a squat little sparkplug of a man who sprayed spittle when he spoke. He seemed harmless enough, but all the women gave him a wide berth and said he was a dirty bugger.
After I’d eaten my sandwiches at break I swapped my bourbon creams for two cigarettes from a chap with a harelip and smoked them an inch at a time, carefully dousing the tips with spit and placing the butts in my shirt pocket.
The pickers filed back into the drills. Towards the last part of the day my mind wandered and I got careless, filling my bucket with hard white berries that hadn’t ripened yet and soft mushy ones that came apart in balls of must.
Around five o’clock Nicky appeared on the headland to tally up the numbers in a ledger. He went through my trays plucking out the bad berries and asked me to take a bit more care in the quality-control department. We stacked the trays in the trailer for delivery to the fruit factory. It was hard work.
When I got home in the evenings I was fit for nothing but dinner and bed. My hands were permanently stained with grime and juice. I slept deep and dreamless and when the alarm went off I put my filthy clothes back on and packed my lunch and waited at the gate. Every morning I prayed for a rain-off. Two more weeks passed, and then the drills would yield only shrivelled kernels. Nicky Gibbons dropped round to the house with my cheque and told me it had been a pleasure and if I was interested he’d hired a bus to take us to the amusements at Ballo harbour for a day out and would I come. I told him that sounded like fun and he could count me in.
The morning the bus was due to take us to Ballo, another letter arrived for me. I stuffed it in my jacket and hurried to the crossroads. The regulars were barely recognisable in their clean T-shirts and pressed pants, faces scrubbed and hair washed. Their excitement was infectious. We boarded the bus, the younger kids already getting stuck into their sweets and bags of crisps, the rowdy ones horsing around in the back seats. As the bus pulled out, I opened Jamey’s letter and began to read.
15 Fairview Crescent
Ballo Town
&
nbsp; John,
I had this dream, this really trippy dream where I was in hell, then I woke up and I was in hell, dreaming. Anyway, the dream started with me in court. The judge passed sentence and the stenographer typed and the cops clapped me in irons and took me down into a sort of an ante-room and stripped me, and the gaoler came, a no-faced man with yellow fangs, and he pulled on a rubber glove, made a fist, ordered me to touch the floor and said, ‘Spread ’em like jam, son.’ And when he was finished having his evil way with my innards the guards brought me to the showers, blasted me with hoses and powdered me with delousing powder and disinfectant and made me carry my kit around and around until we paused at a kind of vestibule and the gaoler said, ‘Read it and weep, son.’
I read it—Abandon hope ye who enter here—and we kept walking until we came to a door.
‘This is the hellovator,’ said the gaoler. A computerised voice droned, Going down. The lift lurched and I watched the light above the door, counting off the levels, one to nine. There were yellow Post-Its stuck to each number, and the door opened at each floor.
1—the virtuous pagans and unbaptised children
We saw feral brats rummaging in rubbish.
2—the carnal
Leprous beggars in drag wriggling through the gutters, mewling for alms.
3—the gluttonous
Jabba The Hut munching a moneyburger.
