I could do it in seeming, at least: ride the riot and pretend that things were other than they were, that it echoed me, my fury made manifest. Silently in the noise, a jerk of my head gestured Carol onto the queen seat. When I felt her hands on my waist like a signal, not letting go, I kicked the stand up and we were away, movement’s wind in our hair though the night had no wind of its own.
o0o
Hazel’s bike was a Beamer, cool and raked and black as her bad heart, loud and strong as her soul, powerful like she’d always longed to be and never was. Sublimation, I guess, like everything in her life. Like her power over me. Lacking what she wanted, she took what she could, and why not? Nothing special in that, nothing different.
I turned deliberately the wrong way when we hit the dual carriageway, felt the question in Carol’s hands and ignored it, hunched low and felt my way through unfamiliar gears until we were flying north, the road unreeling dizzily below us.
I wasn’t going anywhere, only going for its own sake, only wanting to be gone. Travelling without hope, because that had to be better than the other thing, being hopelessly still.
That I could do this at all, that I could drive a bike tonight was something else I had to thank my closest cousins for. Mostly, whatever Hazel chose to take up I’d gone out of my way to avoid. But Jamie was all teenager with none of my hang-ups, he’d wanted the thrill of speed and noise, he’d wanted to be dark and hot and ultimately cool in leathers; and when Marty had offered to teach him I’d tagged along, not eager but invited, never good at saying no. We’d spent a Sunday afternoon in an abandoned quarry, wrecking the gears of an old Bristol; and we’d gone back to their house high as kites, with bruises and torn jeans and a new skill in our skinned and filthy hands. After that Jamie had taken up scrambling with a passion, and again he’d taken me with him as often as I was around. I’d been mechanic and mud-scraper much more than driver, not to be thought to be competing with my sister; but once learned, it wasn’t a knack that went away. Long years since I’d touched any bike at all, and I could still find the old kick lurking somewhere in my bones, still lose myself in recklessness and rush.
Couldn’t lose the night, not entirely. Couldn’t drive out of my skin, and wasn’t remotely tempted to drive altogether out of my life, to throw the bike in a screaming skid under the wheels of an oncoming juggernaut. Even if Carol hadn’t been with me and clinging tight, that wouldn’t have been an option. I’d seen Hazel cruelly dead tonight; however weak I felt, however useless, weak and useless was better than that.
o0o
Somewhere over the border — and I’d crossed more than one border that night, but this at least was physical and clear, territory well marked, explored and explicit — Carol drummed with both fists on my back, patient no longer. I turned my head, and she yelled above the engine’s roar: “I need a piss, Ben! Can we stop? Please?”
I nodded, suddenly feeling stiffness in my shoulders and a pressure in my own bladder also, and a pounding ache behind my eyes.
I could have pulled over on the hard shoulder there, we could have used the bushes; but I recognised this road now that I was looking to do that, wanting to know where we were. There was a service station, I remembered, just a couple of miles ahead. More comfort for Carol, a drink of water and with any luck some paracetamol for me...
I throttled back just a little, from crazy down to mere urgent, matching the swing of my mood. Unlocked from a near-trance I was coming down fast, only in a hurry to stop now; the lights of the service station rising ahead were nothing but relief.
I pulled up on the forecourt and Carol was instantly away, looking for the toilets before I’d even switched the engine off. I followed her more slowly, stretching and swinging my arms, grunting at the snag of muscles too long tensed.
Empty my bladder and fill the tank, two priorities; but first I fished in all my pockets, gleaning what coins I could find. My throat was achingly dry, but I didn’t have enough for coffee and pills both; so I bought the pills, and washed three down with water from the tap in the gents’.
When I came out, Carol was waiting.
“Okay?” I asked her.
She nodded. “How are you?”
I shrugged. “Sorry about the hell-ride.”
“No problem.” She gave me a quick hug, gentle now, with the fever of horror drained into the night and the wind. “What now, what do you want to do?”
“Go back,” I lied. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but, “I need to talk to Uncle Allan.”
“Ben...”
“It’ll be all right.” Now, it would be all right. I’d established something by walking away from him, some ghost of independence, for which I thanked her with a silent, speaking arm around her shoulders.
Back at the bike, I rolled it over to the petrol pumps and unlocked the cap.
“Um, Ben...” Carol was looking worried, checking her purse again. “I can’t help, I’ve got nothing left, hardly...”
I grinned at her wearily. “Then I guess your criminal career begins tonight. This morning,” I corrected, noting the first faint tinges of light on the horizon. “I’m a Macallan, remember? We don’t pay for mundane things like petrol, it’s a family tradition...” And this was Hazel’s bike, after all. It probably wouldn’t recognise, would refuse to run on fuel honestly bought and paid for.
“Christ. Won’t they send the police after us?”
“They might. Whether the police will catch us, that’s something else.” And nothing to worry about if they did. But it was a different world that Carol came from, hard to remember that sometimes; so I grinned at her again for reassurance, habits of childhood asserting themselves again. I’d had troubles and anxieties enough for any kid to cope with, but fretting about the law had never been a feature.
Tank full and bladders empty, “Hop on,” I said, “let’s go home.”
Gunned out of there without even a glance towards the kiosk, where someone even now was probably reaching for the phone. Don’t waste your time, heart, only I couldn’t be bothered even to give them the message, even with just a flicker of my eyes.
o0o
Twenty minutes later, a policeman pulled us over.
As kids we always called it the Great South Road, at least when we were headed this way, back to town. Roads run in both directions, we used to tell our less-flexible elders, why choose one and not the other? And south was always downhill, it seemed to us, everything drained from Scotland. Or England sucks, we used to say, giggling. Whatever, there was always this impulse on the road that took us home, hurry faster, we felt it dragging at our wheels, drawing us on; and whatever they said, we knew the adults felt it also. Journeys back were always quicker.
Despite my intentions, my reluctance, my implied promise — sorry about the hell-ride, I’d said, and meant it— I felt that same urgency waiting again, lurking on this road as it always had. Not even a motorway, just a dual carriageway with bad sight-lines and a dreadful reputation, but it sang to me of speed, of rushing home under the paling sky, racing the dawn back to town.
So I was doing that regardless, crouched low again with a hard wind flattening my hair and the weight of Carol’s head sheltering behind my shoulder. Her eyes closed, I guessed, only her tight grip anchoring her to me, to whatever reality I offered her this long, long night...
And then, like the final surreal joke, one last cast of a bent and weighted die by a malevolent god, there was another bike pulling slowly abreast of us. This one white as against our black, flaring with lights against our darkness; and just to complete the contrast, the bobby who bestrode it was decked out in all the gear we didn’t have, helmet and gauntlets and luminous green bars on his jacket, look at me!
I did that, I looked at him; and one leather finger jabbed towards the hard shoulder. Jabbed, and jabbed again.
I could have ignored him, I suppose. He wasn’t going to ride me down, or shunt me off the road. I could have driven straight and true, all the way back to tow
n with him at my shoulder like an escort. But I thought that if he was stupid enough for this, he was stupid enough for anything: to call up reinforcements, perhaps, to bring the helicopter over and radio in for road-blocks up ahead.
It was generosity, nothing more, that pulled me over. Not to blight the man’s career with such a great, such an insurmountable mistake.
God, the mistakes we make...
o0o
He was a heavy, leering man with a thick moustache; and oh, he was enjoying himself this early early morning. He took his time, doing everything in slow order: gauntlets off, helmet off, notebook in one hand, pen in the other. He gestured for us to stay where we were, on the bike, but I wasn’t planning to move anyway. I’d kicked its stand down to save my having to hold it, but I liked the warmth and the weight of it beneath me, the sense of power contained, controlled. I collected illusions of power sometimes, gathered them to me, treasured and hoarded them against a certain need; and I needed this now. Weak and angry both I felt, dangerous and useless.
“Is this your own motorcycle? Sir?”
I looked him in the eye, and told him yes. Felt Carol stir behind me, but she didn’t say anything.
“Uh-huh. Well, I’ll check that in a minute, on the radio. Won’t help you much, even if it’s true. Stealing a tankful of petrol, doing a hundred without lights, without helmets... Got any insurance?”
“No.”
“No.” He made a note, then said, “Can I see your licence, please?”
“No.”
“Left it at home, have we?”
“No. I don’t have a licence.”
“Ah.” Another note, and, “Are you sure this is your own bike?”
I just shrugged and went on looking at him, waiting for the one question I wanted, what’s your name? I was looking forward to that.
It was Carol who spoilt things, wanting to make them easier. Trying to appeal to some supposed better nature in the man, she said, “Look, go easy, will you? It’s his sister’s bike, and she’s, she’s dead, she’s just died tonight...”
“Dead? How’s that, then?”
Carol made a noise, a vague and helpless noise, took her arms from my waist and was no doubt making a vague and helpless gesture also, have a heart, I can’t tell you that... I didn’t turn my head to see it, just kept looking at the cop.
“Doesn’t look like a girl’s bike to me,” he said, sucking at his moustache as he paced around us. “Dead or alive. Just sit still, son,” as I twitched. “Tell you what I’ll do, then, I’ll call the number in, shall I, and we’ll see what Swansea has to say?”
He walked back to his own bike, and fiddled with the radio there. I felt Carol’s hands on my arm, heard her voice softly hissing, “Talk to him, for God’s sake, Ben! You tell him, tell him who you are, he’ll believe you...”
I shook my head, didn’t take my eyes off the man. No giggle left in it now, but family pride still had a say. Held sway, even, stronger than I’d thought. I wasn’t going to explain myself to a policeman, nor plead for clemency. Not tonight, not any night.
A minute of silence then, broken by the hiss-and-crackle of interference on his radio. Busy old fool, I thought, unruly Sun, warming up the atmosphere, setting everything awry. Just peeking now over the horizon, we’d be full in the light of it in a minute or two; and how many dawns had I seen in my life, I wondered, and never any as grim as this, rising after a night of such desolation...
And then a voice, little more than modulated hiss-and-crackle, and I wasn’t even trying to listen in; but the policeman was fascinated. He nodded, asked a question, listened again.
Eventually he came back to us, staring at me now with too much interest altogether.
“What Swansea says,” he said, “is that the bike’s not been registered with them at all.”
What, had my sweet sister not filled in the paperwork? Goodness, what a shock.
“But there’s a note,” he went on, “on their computer. Belongs to a Macallan, they reckon. A girl, like you said, miss. A Hazel Macallan.”
“That’s right,” Carol confirmed quickly, altogether too eager to please.
“Mmm. We know about the Macallans. Even up here, we know all about ’em. Really dead, is she?”
I heard Carol swallow against the confirmation of that news, felt her nod against my back. Heard her voice, thinned now with enormity, with what little memory she had, what she could have seen of my sister. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, she really is...”
“Not the first, the way we’ve been hearing it.”
“No...”
“No. Someone’s doing our job for us,” and oh, the gloating pleasure in his voice as he said that, the radiant approval. Knowing himself safe, this far from town and the sun coming up: even not knowing me, he knew enough not to worry. Not to check his tongue. “And you, son, you’re nicked. Your family’s writ don’t run this far,” or not in daylight. “That’s if you’ve got any family left by now. Best thing to hit this coast in thirty years, the guy who’s taking your kin to the cleaners.”
And I stood up suddenly, with the image of my sister’s ruined face in my eyes to blind me; and the sun’s light fell across me as I rose. And I could feel nothing but heat in my finger’s ends, fire dancing to be free; and I could hear nothing but screaming as I freed that fire, as I lashed it and lashed it.
And over my sister’s face now I could see the policeman’s, laid with flame. I saw his mouth work, I saw his hands tear at his cheeks where my bright fire danced strictly in line, palely in the sun but leaving a dark path marked. I heard his cracked bellow and Carol’s scream to underscore it; and I heard the hot sounds of his bike afire, and still didn’t hear what I was listening for, my sister’s voice to tell me I’d done enough.
Twelve: Light Must Fall
There were chords in the air, though I could not follow their music. There were rhythms stranger than life — all life is rhythm, but not vice versa, Jacko — and colours I could see but never name. The sun laid threads on the breeze that my fingers found and plucked at. Afterwards, needing to label what I’d learnt, I thought it was like tripping: like times when I’d taken acid or mushrooms and seen the world through a different window, finding new patterns in what had only ever seemed chaotic.
At the time, though, it was only anger: all my life’s anger right there in my hands to be hurled at the man who’d invoked it.
What brought me back, who brought me down was Carol. She snatched at me, seizing my arm and pulling it out of the weave of light, so that I lost grip on the net I was casting; and I turned on her in my fury, reaching to snare her also in a new web of fire. And saw the terror that was in her, branded on her face; and lost hold of the anger in that crucial moment, and let it all go, not to harm her.
Stood sobbing, staring, seeing her face blur beyond my fingers; and she was crying too, but against me rather than with me, everything she knew about me suddenly as disjointed as everything she knew about the world.
The air crackled now with questions that neither one of us was asking, or wanting to ask. I couldn’t have told her in any case, what I’d done or how I’d done it; and sure as God made little green apples to be sour on your tongue and sour in your belly, I didn’t want to ask how the policeman was.
o0o
Had to look in the end, though. Had to grind the heels of my hands into my eyes and lift my head and look, only to see what I knew already, all I was certain of.
That stupid, stupid man. Thought he could mock a Macallan, for God’s sake, thought he was safe? Believed the rumours and figured it was okay to gloat in sunshine? If I’d been my sister maybe he’d have had longer to enjoy himself, but not long. Half a rotation, maybe; a little longer still if he was lucky with his timing, but only till the moon rose in darkness. And that would have been max. If she’d called a cousin, starshine would’ve been enough.
But bad cess to him, it was me he pulled over. Me he sneered at, with my fingers still clammy from the touch-memo
ry of my sister’s body; and me finding something in sunlight in answer, finding the family blood suddenly in me after all, though perversely twisted twelve hours out of true.
Me raging, a Macallan come unexpectedly into his true and terrible power; and him lying thrown onto his back, a fire-tossed destruct, a shell burned and broken and cast away. His bike was fallen and still flaming behind him, but that was only a smoke machine and a sound effect, only background, like the thin traffic that slowed and saw and hurried on away with no one stopping.
His arms outhurled, palms upward, I could see how his hands were scorched; but his sleeves weren’t marked at all, nor his legs, nor the lower half of his jacket. Up towards the collar, though, closer to his face: there there were scorch-marks and stains, molten nylon with seared edges, something’s gone bang around here.
And his helmet, his white helmet had black to border it now, and again it was half charred, half molten in a frame around his face.
Only that his face wasn’t there any more, or nothing you could call a face. First glance, that frame seemed empty; took a good close look really to see detail. Black in black: within the helmet’s shadow his face, all his head was a seamed and blasted ball, flesh seared black and deeply trenched where the cords of my net had tightened.
Put plain, with the horror of it put aside, the facts remained: he was dead, and I was a murderer.
o0o
Join the club, my family ghosts, all my ancestors whispered inside my skull. A little late, but nonetheless welcome, they giggled as Carol moaned behind me, as I choked and turned away from the rancid smells of burning. And so dramatically done, they celebrated, well done, lad, never seen it done better. And in daylight, too, that much we never managed, no, not at all, not a chance of it for us...
Dead of Light Page 14
