Six Stories

by Matt Wesolowski

  I thought we were friends then, me and Charlie.

  When Haris showed us the mineshaft, I said that this could be, like, our place. I nearly said clubhouse, some word from the Famous fucking Five. But I felt Dad prodding me in the back so I stayed quiet. I said we could leave booze and fags down here, cos I had that bag – that massive wax army bag of Dad’s. We could leave it in there, but they were all worried in case Haris took it and drank the booze and we’d get in trouble.

  Charlie told the Nanna Wrack story, down in the dark with the candles and Morbid Angel going slower and slower, grunt-grunt-grunt, like it was music for slugs and snails and fat soft things that live below the ground.

  Me and Dad went to look for her in the night after the others were all asleep. Me and Dad, up on the fell looking for Nanna Wrack with our guns and he said, ‘That’s right, son. That’s right.’

  We remembered that day when Dad came back; me and Dad behind the church hall, in the mud and the roses; my soaked socks and the echoes of their laughter in our ears.

  Me and Dad, we had a few months of planning it: stockpiling Mum’s tablets and trying them out. I didn’t write stories in my notebooks anymore – they became actual notes. I made notes: which tablets did what and for how long. It was better than school; school didn’t matter anymore, Dad said, because we had the plan.

  What I have discovered after hearing this, is that, indeed, Brian Mings had a lengthy absence from school between October and November 1995, attending sporadically, with absence notes, which the teachers suspected he forged. Like so much in this story, however, nothing was followed up when Brian made a reappearance in New Year 1996, apparently all well again.

  Speaking to Brian’s old classmates is not as easy. The ones I’ve spoken to simply don’t remember anything particularly significant about him. It seems he just flitted along like a little ghost.

  We will continue to listen to how Brian’s plan panned out. He talks now about the winter of 1995 – Tom Jeffries’ first visit to Scarclaw Fell.

  —The plan took another step forward when we went to Scarclaw in the snow. Dad rode in the bus with us all the way there, sitting in the back beneath the bags. I could just see the little orange pinpricks of his eyes. I sat with Anyu and tried to tell her about Nanna Wrack, about how we’d found her up there on the fell, me and Dad on one of our walks. She wasn’t even listening. I could hear Dad muttering from the back: ‘1/4 diazepam, four hours.’ I had to hold my mouth closed to stop laughing in her face.

  It was a good time, a great time. Just Dad and me in the snow, trekking over the fell while the others hung about in the mine.

  None of the others have mentioned Brian Mings going off by himself like this. Maybe it’s because they didn’t even notice his absence. I hope that’s not the case.

  —That’s when we found the marshes – the big tree that sticks out of there, black, like it’s been hit with lightning. The wind whistles up there, like a long, cold, lonely song.

  Up there’s where Nanna Wrack lives; up there where the water is frozen over, the broken-down house with its great black eyes staring out at you through the snow. We had to creep over the marsh using sticks – big branches like spiders’ legs. I had my parka on and it had got soaked, the furry hood hanging all down my back. That’s where she slept, her hair sticking up through the ice. Her green fingers. We lay down, Dad and I, like best friends. And we whispered into the snow to Nanna Wrack, told her about the plan.

  Brian doesn’t mention any more about the trip to Scarclaw in the winter of 1995, when the incident with the snowballs occurred, and which he, according to Anyu Kekkonen, instigated. Perhaps it wasn’t significant to him? Perhaps, by then, his psychosis had already consumed him; or else it’s been sufficiently covered in the previous episodes.

  Perhaps now, we can attach new significance to whether it was indeed Brian who initiated the attack on Haris Novak, encouraging Tom Jeffries to give him cannabis to eat. My initial idea was that Brian had done it to show off to the others, to fit in. What appears to be his reasoning instead, is something to do with his plan – to expose Tom Jeffries for what he was, or to turn the tide of feeling against Tom. It certainly assisted in creating suspicion around Haris Novak – another deeply unsettling act of manipulation on the part of Brian Mings.

  What is deeply unsettling is the callousness with which Brian discusses Anyu and the others. Throughout this series we have been led to believe that Brian had a fierce attraction to Anyu Kekkonen. But now, as this episode unfolds, it seems increasingly likely that this could well have been a front, a way to carry out his plan. What is apparent, however, is Brian’s hero-worship of Charlie Armstrong. It is, of course, possible that Brian associated losing Charlie as a friend with his father’s disappearance. It is also possible that Brian was attracted to Charlie, but couldn’t express it. By now, though, I doubt Brian Mings was capable of what we know as love.

  —The last day of the summer holidays, Dad was waiting for me in the house when I got in. Mum was asleep on the sofa, mouth open, catching flies.

  ‘C’mere son, c’mere,’ he said, and he ruffled my hair.

  We both looked at Mum for a bit and I could feel a strange feeling building up; like a cross between anger and wanting to cry.

  ‘Shhhhh,’ Dad said, and he put his arm around me.

  I wanted to tell him about Damien Wright, who’d smashed up his biro and stuck it down my back. But Dad got the notebook out and had all the charts going: the pills and times and doses. His hair was all brambles and he left a great soil mark where he sat; blue curls of smoke coming off him.

  ‘Will you come with me?’ I asked, and his laughter was the rustle of leaves and the crick-crick of a magpie.

  He showed me the graphs and the figures and the list of names. We were all set. Derek would be bringing the big bus round in a couple of hours and we knew we had to get Mum up in time for that; give her some coffee and brush her hair.

  The first night we were at the centre I was scared in case it didn’t work. Every time we went outside, I could feel Nanna Wrack looking at us from the fell, from her home beneath the mud, between the roots of that black tree. The ice had melted, of course, and she was hungry. My dreams that first night were all fingers and teeth rising up from the marsh.

  When we ate breakfast, I thought of me and Dad and Charlie flying a kite on the fell, listening to ‘Where the Slime Live’, the three of us smoking cigarettes and singing along.

  And it was easy, just so easy; easier than last time, in the winter, the trial run, when Tom saw me slipping Mum’s pills into Anyu’s vodka. No one believed him, anyway, just like Dad said they wouldn’t.

  I remember lying there on my bunk on my back. I’d been there for the last few hours and none of them had noticed. I was getting good at being invisible, Dad told me from beneath the bed. I lay there for a few hours, watching them all start to get drowsy; start to lie down on their beds. I had all the booze in Dad’s big army bag, with my notebook in the secret pocket with the doses and the charts. I knew exactly who was getting what and how long it would take them to go to sleep.

  Tom was all pissed off, staggering about, telling Charlie to stop being such a gayboy, but Charlie fell asleep first. Then Eva. Then Anyu last. I could never quite get it right with her. I told Tom I was still up if he wanted to have a smoke, and he told me to keep wanking with my nob this big and I was laughing until he shouted at me to fuck off.

  That’s when I waited. Those hours went by like a dream. I could hear Dad slithering about under the centre, and Nanna Wrack rumbling away on the fell. When the daylight started coming in, that’s when I waited for the signal. Nanna Wrack would send a bird – one of the big black carrion crows – and that’s when it would be time.

  I took a last look at him, lying there in his sleeping bag, and I wondered what he was like as a baby – whether he was a nasty little boy who took people’s toys, or if he was kind. I looked in his face and it just looked like he was made out o
f wax, as if someone had slipped in and swapped Tom for a wax dummy. I was starting to get scared, so I poked him in the face, prodded him hard, just to see if he really was wax.

  ‘Come on son, come on!’ said Dad. And there was a big ragged crow outside and I got up from my bunk.

  I was starting to get too excited and my stomach was rolling around. I nearly got it all wrong and forgot to get one of Eva’s bras from her bag. I wanted it for proof – in case anyone ever wondered why someone like Eva had lowered herself to go with someone like me. I had to be quick, trying to find it but my hands were shaking and I suddenly thought that maybe what I was about to do wasn’t right. But she’d slept with him; she’d slept with Tom fucking Jeffries, hadn’t she? If that wasn’t punishment enough!

  So that’s why I climbed into her bunk, because Anyu woke up and stared out at me, and for a moment I thought she was going to start screaming. So doing the best quick-thinking I’d ever done, I climbed into Eva’s bunk before I went to get Tom.

  This is chilling. The tone of Brian’s voice betrays a relish for what happened that night. He speeds up and he lingers on the finer details. It is at this point that I wonder about Brian Mings’ psychosis – wonder whether it isn’t just a convenient cover story for the spurned boy with the huge imagination.

  —‘What, what?’ Tom was saying.

  His eyes were all bloodshot and his limbs were all floppy. The others were asleep, but every move I made was huge and loud. Tom was heavier than I thought, as well. As I lifted him, he started waking up more. ‘Fuck off Brian, man,’ he mumbled. ‘Fuck off; go back to bed. What are you doing, you queer? You fucking little gay.’

  I told him to shut his fucking mouth, but he did that face – that fucking face, which is a bit like a wink and a bit like a sneer. And I felt my fists against his mouth and he shouted then and I thought, this is it, that the game was up.

  He started to get to his feet, but his legs were like a baby deer’s, all wobbly. I could see he was just about to start shouting, to start screaming, and if that didn’t wake up the others, it’d wake up Derek in the room down the hall. That was when I pulled out the knife, the big one from the kitchen with the black handle. Suddenly Tom wasn’t so hard.

  ‘I’ll shout out; I’ll wake up the whole place,’ he said, as if he could read my thoughts. I just laughed at him and kicked Charlie, who was lying right there. He didn’t even budge.

  ‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘Go on, then, Tom. Why don’t you just cry out and then I’ll stab you up.’

  At first I thought he was going to laugh. I saw his face twitch, and I swear down, I would have done it – stuck that knife right in his belly. I think he knew that, so he shut up.

  I’d never felt so brave in all my life, and I could see Dad skulking around outside, the wind pressing dead leaves against his ribs. And I could hear Nanna Wrack – her stomach rumbling; the sound of worms writhing in the earth.

  ‘Get out of here and get the bag,’ I said.

  Tom tried to make a run for it when we got out the window, but I was too quick, and it was in that moment I realised how much taller I was than him; that he was really small, like a little kid.

  ‘Get up there,’ I said.

  ‘Where are we going? Where are we going?’ he kept saying. But I wasn’t listening because it was getting light and I could see Nanna Wrack up there on the fell, and her hair was black and green, and her mouth was full of gorse. I pushed Tom forward, and he was saying, ‘Sorry, sorry, I promise, I promise.’ But I wasn’t listening to that, either, cos Dad was beside me and he was saying, ‘Go on son. Go on,’ with his voice that pushed us further up the fell.

  When we got to Nanna Wrack’s house, I think Tom knew he was going to die, because he started crying and telling me about his mum and his dad, and how he wouldn’t say anything to anyone about all this, and how we could be friends.

  We stood there on the fell with the new day shining behind us. He was crying, and right then he looked like a little kid, and I nearly fell for it, I nearly fell for his lies.

  ‘Please, Brian, I’m sorry.’

  ‘What are you sorry for, Tom?’ I asked. If he’d said he was sorry to Dad, if he’d got down right then and said sorry to Dad, said he didn’t mean to drive him away like that, and that he would help us be a family again, I might have let him go. I might have.

  But as I was thinking all this and Tom was crying, I lowered the knife and he kicked out at my hand. It stung like a wasp and I heard Nanna Wrack give out a great big scream, a scream like there was a hole in the world.

  Tom started running then, shouting out. But he didn’t know the fell; he didn’t know what I knew. I scrabbled around on the ground for a second, found the knife and started chasing him.

  I could see Dad, this shadowy figure running at Tom. I was screaming to Nanna Wrack: Have him! Have him now! And soon Tom was in the marsh, mud all over him, screaming and screaming. He was sloshing about, up to his knees in water, and his voice was bouncing off the fell, crying for his mum, his dad, the police.

  He was quicker than me, so quick and I thought it was over, that we wouldn’t catch him. But then I smelled fags and Dad was beside me.

  ‘Go on, son,’ he said, and handed me a big flat stone. I threw it at Tom.

  Nanna Wrack and Dad cheered because it was a direct hit. It made a crack sound and I saw a bit of blood. Tom just fell on his face in the mud.

  Nanna Wrack was rising up out of the marsh behind him, and it was either him or me. So I pushed him down. He was strong for a little kid, but the three of us – me and Dad and Nanna Wrack – we held him down there until he was still, and his screaming was gone, and all I could hear was the sound of my heart beating and the sound of Nanna Wrack feeding.

  Of course, no one thought to look at the toxicology of anyone’s blood that night. The teenagers were fully compliant with the police, admitting that they had drunk alcohol and taken drugs, so presumably, that sort of detail wasn’t necessary during the inquest. There was no reason, of course, for the investigating officers not to believe Brian’s story. He, like the others, had simply fallen asleep and woken up to Tom Jeffries missing. The mud on his boots could have been easily attributed to that day’s walking on the fell to Belkeld. And, of course, he had Eva Bickers’ bra.

  Supposing what Brian says is all true – that he drugged the others and forced Tom outside onto the fell; supposing that’s how it happened, how was Tom Jeffries’ body not discovered for nearly an entire year after he went missing?

  Let’s hear why.

  —We waited until he stopped moving, waited for Nanna Wrack to have her fill. We stood there in the blue light of the dawn. I wanted to feel happy, to scream and cheer, but I felt Dad’s gun in my back and he said, ‘We’re not finished yet, son; remember the plan.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ I said, and we pulled Tom’s body out of the marsh. His face was all covered in slime and mud, and his mouth was open.

  With the mud and the marsh it seemed to take hours, but we used the knife and we got him into that black bag, the one he used to get into. I was saying, ‘Why don’t you want to go in the bag, Tom? What’s wrong with it? It used to make me laugh so hard, Tom, you getting in the bag.’ But he was saying nothing. We zipped it up and dragged it all the way across the fell to Haris Novak’s place. Shoved it in the coal scuttle. It smelled like the dead in there – Haris’ dead animal tomb.

  That’s when I went back and had a shower, waited for the rest of them to wake up. All the time I could hear Nanna Wrack whispering, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ And Dad’s hand in my hair: ‘Well done, son. That’s showed him; that’s showed him at last.’

  Of course, the other victim in the wake of all this, was Haris Novak. He’d been the one who’d agreed to keep hold of the bag for the teenagers, promising not to tell anyone about it on pain of terror from the Beast of Belkeld. Remember, it was Brian Mings that insisted Haris do this.

  As I was rendering this audio, I realised that Brian M
ings must have returned to Belkeld nearly a year after he’d murdered Tom Jeffries and moved the body back, for Harry and his friends to find. By then, of course, Haris’ old house was empty. No one had thought to check the disused coal scuttle around the back. And Haris himself was probably completely oblivious to what was in there.

  If we recall, Brian knew that Haris dragged animal corpses from the fell and buried them in his mother’s garden. Was part of his plan to implicate Haris in Tom’s death? There is even, of course, the possibility that Haris, in a panic, did find Tom’s corpse in the coal scuttle, and buried it. I find this is unlikely, though.

  There is another huge question here. Was it Brian that Harry and his friends saw, creeping around Scarclaw Fell that night? Did seeing him prompt them to take out the dogs and search for the Belkeld Beast?

  Possibly. The stench from the decomposed body of Tom Jeffries would certainly have attracted Harry’s dogs – perhaps masking Brian’s scent as he escaped over the fell.

  From the research I’ve done into Brian Mings, he was very good at keeping himself hidden. There is no social media account and his employment records show he worked for several telesales companies in his home town.

  So what prompted him to exhibit the body of Tom Jeffries? Why risk exposing himself a year after murder.

  And why now does he tell his story, twenty years later?

  Brian Mings has clearly spent much of his time following my career, learning about the way I operate and being able to fool enough people into believing he was me in order to create this series. I will allow him to complete the postscript to his own story.

  —The thing is, I always knew I was going to be famous. At first I thought it was the music; maybe it would have been if Mum had bothered to tune that piano instead of taking pills all day. Then I thought it was the stories; but school spoiled all of that, with their rules and their ideas about what sort of stories are acceptable and what sort of stories aren’t.