Flesh Wounds

by Christopher Fowler

  A short while after his departure, I was walking home from late detention and took a short cut past the backs of the terraced houses a few streets away from where we lived. Ahead, only half visible in the grey fading light, a dead man was standing with his head tilted to the sky, studying something. As I drew closer he sat down with a thud, as if his legs had suddenly given way, and I realised that it was Grandpa. He’d come back. It looked as if something had been eating him, rats perhaps. There were little bite marks all over his face and neck, and one of his arms had hardly any skin at all, only shredded brown muscle. Then I realised where we were, and what he’d been looking at.

  He’d slipped out of care and returned to the house he had shared with Grandma when they were just married. I knew he’d been standing there watching for the sight of her passing by the windows. But she had died long ago. An idea occurred to me – that I could take Grandpa to the cemetery where she had been buried and that they could somehow be reunited. Perhaps I could explain to the caretaker, and he would allow her body to be disinterred. But I wasn’t sure where the cemetery was, and every time I tried to lead Grandpa away he started pulling back. Finally I had to leave him there, standing before the glowing kitchen windows of his youth, staring up through a half-remembered past.

  I never saw him again. I rarely leave my bedroom. I don’t go to school any more. There are just too many dead people about, and it bothers me. They blunder into the garden at night and follow you to the shops and fall down the steps of public lavatories and float past you on the ferry, and it’s undignified. My mother seems to understand how I feel and lets me have most of my meals in my room. She’s become overfriendly with the cocktail cabinet these days, anyway. The extraordinary thing is, the living dead don’t seem to count any more. It doesn’t matter that the stench of corruption is all around us. We’ve grown used to the smell. The government continues to chair pointless debates and issue toothless white papers. The general public has ceased to care or even notice. The fabric of society is gently rotting through, even if the dead aren’t. So I’m formulating a plan, because someone has to do something. Somebody has to care. Somebody has to take affirmative action before it’s too late.

  Kevin Grady, Upper 4B

  ‘It makes you wonder what he thinks about,’ whispered Mrs Grady, pulling the tablecloth in by the corners and removing it. ‘He’ll sit like that for hours on end, just staring down into the street, watching the people come and go.’

  ‘You should be thankful,’ said her neighbour, helping her clear away the cups and saucers. ‘My Joey’s a holy terror these days, out every night mixing with heaven knows what kind of riffraff.’

  She looked across at the chalk-faced child seated before the window, and a cloud of doubt momentarily formed in her mind. It was unnatural for a teenaged boy to sit so still. When you spoke to him he stared back in accusing silence. And the terrible way he looked at you, with murder in those deep-set eyes. ‘Joey tells me he’s doing his homework,’ she continued, ‘but I know damned well he’s running with that gang of his. I have no control over him, and his father’s absolutely no help at all. But your Kevin …’ She furrowed her brow and uneasily turned aside as the boy glanced at her in suspicion. No wonder Kevin’s mother was bashing the Bristol Cream these days, with her son wandering about the house dressed in black, narrowing his eyes at every passing adult. He’d probably grow up to be a serial killer.

  ‘Kevin’s a good boy,’ said his mother firmly. ‘He’s terribly bright. And sensitive. He and his grandad were very close. He’s been a lot quieter since the old man died. Wouldn’t even come with us to the funeral. I hope it doesn’t have any lasting effect on him.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ the neighbour whispered back. ‘Children are resilient. He’s very quiet, though. He should go outside more and get some fresh air. Mix with the others. Swim. Play football.’ She threw the torpid child a look of desperation. ‘Anything.’

  Mrs Grady unfolded her arms from her ample chest and looked about for the sherry bottle. ‘I wish he would, but he prefers to stay in his room watching horror films all the time.’ She poured overgenerous measures into a pair of amber glasses. ‘It gives him such an overactive imagination. I think Kevin sees the world differently to most children. He has some very odd ideas. I’m sure it’s just a phase, but right now, well …’ She turned to her friend and brought her face closer, confiding. ‘It’s … the way he looks at us sometimes. Almost as if he wishes we were dead.’

  Tales of Britannica Castle: I. Ginansia’s Ravishment

  * * *

  It’s not too hard to spot the influence here. I’m a great fan of Mervyn Peake, and a greater one after seeing Physical Theatre’s astonishing minimalist production of Gormenghast. I wanted to create a series of political and sexual intrigues populated with demented characters, a closed world of dynastic hysteria. I intended the style to be elegant and allegorical, but the word here I think is lurid.

  THE PROBLEM WITH the spiral staircase to the Northeast Quadrant was the plethora of scorpions, small brass ones, set in spiky pairs on either side of each stone step. Their tails tugged at Ginansia’s dress, snagging on the sapphire-sewn hem and snatching her back every few feet. Finally she was forced to run with the silken material gathered up at her knee, and run she did because she was late for dinner, and the Great Wound never forgave tardiness when it involved the ruination of sweetmeats.

  Although the Princess Ginansia had lived here all her life and knew every room, corridor, staircase, tapestry, window, door and hallway in the castle, she often felt that the building as a whole conspired against her. It was too ornate, as fussy and overdecorated as her mother, filled with dangerous shadows, pools of darkness that concealed sharp little objects that tripped toes, cracked nails and tore skin. In terms of acreage the castle was small, but it was tall. The top five levels had been added by Captain Smackthistle after his legendary victory against the Fire-Tribe Boys of the Infected Mountain. He and his men had returned with all manner of disgusting trophies, parts of bodies which they threaded with gold and silver wire and hung in the heavy blue glass jars that lined the whole of the planetarium.

  Ginansia knew no other home but sometimes dreamed of visiting white open spaces, vast halls of light that were free of clutter and gloom, where nothing was more than a few moments old and she could breathe without drawing dust into her lungs, stretching out her arms to embrace the flaring sun.

  She tripped on the bottom step and nearly overturned one of the huge cracked Chinese vases that stood on the marble pedestals at the base of the staircase. Catching sight of herself in the vestibule’s towering scabrous mirror, she readjusted the dried clematis petals in her hair, carefully tucking them into the auburn folds. She liked clematis flowers because they had no smell; the castle held far too many extraordinary odours to require further olfactory obfuscation by its residents.

  Ahead was the narrow, uneven flagstone corridor that led to the Tarnished Hall and the Seven Sepulchres Of Shame, and beyond that the strangely shaped area formerly known as the Heart Of All Sorrow, which was now simply called the Dining Hall. The floor here was always wet and slippery, ‘perspiring tears’ according to her mother but in reality slick with condensation, because the flues from the kitchen passed across the eastern archway and the fissures in them released steady wisps of steam, wreathing the entire ceiling in swirling mist.

  Ginansia was about to open the enormous iron door to the Tarnished Hall when an elegant figure divorced itself from a cobwebbed clutter of crockery and stepped in front of her.

  Leperdandy pulled a handkerchief from the top pocket of his purple quilted smoking jacket and flicked it under his quivering narrow nostrils, enveloping them both in an overpowering scent of lavender.

  ‘You’re as late as I,’ he sniffed. ‘Your stepfather went in ten minutes ago. The Great Wound will not be pleased.’

  ‘Have you ever seen him pleased about anything?’ she asked, falling into step beside her h
alf-brother.

  ‘Now that you mention it,’ said Leperdandy, ‘no.’

  ‘I dread tonight.’

  ‘I know you do. You must be strong.’

  They passed across the puddled stones of the angular hall, the damp air clinging to their clothes, fattening the fabric with droplets of moisture. The shadowy stone alcoves on either side mercifully concealed the sepulchres, which had given Ginansia such nightmares as a child. In front of her stood the towering armoured suit of St Ethelbar Squeam, one rusted red arm raised high with his spiked mace still gripped in a battered gauntlet, the other perched effeminately on his steel-lace hip. The mummified corpse of the Squeam himself was still inside the armour, and if you raised the protesting visor and peered in you would see that the rumours were indeed true; the ancient knight had somehow turned himself around within the mail so that he was facing back to front – a sign of cowardice before the enemy, some said.

  Opening the doors of the Dining Hall tugged a chain that rang a sharp little bell somewhere beneath their feet, a warning to the kitchen staff to be on their toes. The great table, arranged in cruciform and draped in holly-green cloth, was occupied along its far side, and the inhabitants swivelled their eyes disapprovingly to the latecomers.

  ‘Is it too much to ask that we might share a meal together on the eve of your age-coming?’ boomed her stepfather, his sole good eye glaring wetly beneath a bunched, bushy brow as he jutted from the table, an acre of emerald linen splayed at his throat. Globules of venison soup hung in his immense beard. A dripping spoon jutted from his meaty fist. His vast shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell with the wheezing passage of his breath, like an old steam engine labouring with its load. Scarabold the Third of the royal family Bayne, the Great Wound himself, Doer Of Dark Deeds, Rectifier Of Wrongly Wrought Rites, Warrior, stepfather to Ginansia and father to Leperdandy (by a different mother), had watched the severed heads of his enemies bounce down the steps of the Imperial Museum during the Great Siege of ’28 with less passion than he now displayed at the tardiness of his offspring.

  ‘The Italian Courtyard is half flooded,’ replied Ginansia glibly. ‘I had to go all the way around and through the Under-Chapel.’ She had, in fact, spent too long at her toilette to register the crepusculation of the hour. These days she was rarely on time for anything. It was one of the few ways she had left of showing dissatisfaction with her circumstance.

  ‘Your father has something to tell you, dear,’ called her mother, ignoring the steaming monarch at her side, ‘just as soon as you are settled.’

  Mater Moribund Bayne had outdone herself tonight. Her sticklike form, so thin that her ribs could be discerned through the purple bombazine of her gown, was bedecked with ropes of jewellery that glittered and shone and swayed about like the lights of a pier in a gale. She was guyed up with so many cascading loops of amethyst and opal that it was a wonder she managed to hold herself erect.

  ‘Come and sit near me, both of you,’ said Dwindoline with a kindly smile. Leperdandy’s mother was Scarabold’s other wife (it being quite legal in these parts for a king to operate a marital duopoly) and, because she was wed to the Great Wound second, occupied a slightly inferior role in the household to Mater Hari (as they called her behind her back).

  Plump and lumpen and draped in various shades of pheasant brown, Dwindoline was pleasing and pleasant and resigned to the sidelines of the royal menagerie. She tended her weakling son and her infuriating half-daughter unobtrusively, trying to provide the maternal concern they deserved and certainly didn’t receive from Moribund. As the children (children! Ginansia was hours from her eighteenth year and Leperdandy was soon to leave his teens behind) accepted their places opposite, she looked along the table, nodding to the Decrepend so that he might commence the Blessing, smiling blandly at Asphyxia, who was sulking behind her goblet, and at the bulbous, bibulous visage of the Quaff, who had already drained his.

  ‘O Cruel, Cruel Gods, Please Hear The Lowly Call Of This Great Family,’ bellowed the Decrepend, who clearly had little faith in the power of prayer and planned to be heard through the more physical expedient of shouting, ‘We Give Most Humble Thanks –’

  Most humble, thought Ginansia, the word has been excised from the castle dictionaries.

  ‘– For The Sheer Lack Of Harm You Have Bestowed Upon Us In Your Infinite, All-Seeing, Wicked Wisdom –’

  Ginansia caught her half-brother’s gaze and held it. Their aptitude for passing messages was so finely honed that the merest ocular twitch could signify histories. They had grown up side by side in the tall moss-green castle, had hidden together from their ranting, stamping father, had rescued each other from the freezing grip of the moat’s shattered crust, had fought secret battles behind the dust-filled curtains of the Red Theatre in the attic. They were childhood allies now standing on the cusp of adulthood.

  The Decrepend droned on, his narcotic tone pitched above the sound of falling rain. Scarabold’s thick forefinger impatiently traced the edges of the livid ridged scar that crossed his face, the result of a sword blow that had honourably granted him the title of the Great Wound. He threw the Decrepend a look of hatred. The Blessing had to be given again in full if someone joined the table late. Beyond the windows of the tall, narrow Dining Hall, the sky was black and greeny grey, bruised clouds implicitly inclement. Here in the castle the family was safe and secure. Outside the forces of chance raged on.

  So did the doddering Decrepend, who suddenly ended his prayers with a thud, smiting the table with a brittle-boned hand in an attempt to drive home his celestial-bound message.

  The soup was now cold and curded, and Moribund snapped her fingers at the servants, who scurried to remove the bowls. Scarabold seized the moment to address his stepdaughter. The clearing of his throat was like someone shovelling coal.

  ‘Ginansia, your arrival at the eighteenth year of your life demands the surrender of your maidenhood, and it is my duty as your father –’

  ‘Stepfather.’

  ‘– to appoint a suitably equipped suitor. In short, it is time for your deforestation.’

  ‘Deflowering,’ nudged the mater.

  Ginansia stared furiously at her stepfather, whom she grudgingly respected as a warrior but considered an odious beast as a human. Since the death of her real father, his every entrance into her mother’s bedchamber had multiplied her loathing tenfold. ‘I suppose I have no say in this matter.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ thundered Scarabold. ‘You have no knowledge of allegiances, alliances and allegations. You could not possibly know who would be most suited politically to this penetrative act. The decision has already been made, the bargain struck. The rupturer of the royal crust will mount you at midnight in the appropriate manner, in accordance with the law of the land. The ceremony will commence at half past eleven. Your mother will attend the preparations, and Dr Emeric Fangle will be on hand to instruct you in matters of hygiene.’

  ‘Dando,’ hissed Ginansia beneath her breath, ‘you have to set me free from this.’

  ‘We agreed you’d go through with it,’ replied her half-brother quietly. ‘It’s an awful obligation, but it’s not as if you have to marry him or anything. You never even have to see him again.’

  ‘I know I said I’d do it but I can’t. It’s a stupid, revolting law.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ snapped the Quaff suddenly, slopping his claret, ‘it’s just a matter of keeping your legs open and your eyes shut. The women of the family all undergo the ceremony.’

  ‘The women of this family,’ replied Ginansia sulkily. Somewhere beyond the walls of the castle was another way of living, where families weren’t knotted together like rat kings, biting, baiting and barely breathing in the tightest of tangles. Somewhere were places where the young ran wild, where freedom abounded and life was open to an endless azure sky …

  ‘Drifting! Drifting!’ screamed Aunt Asphyxia suddenly. ‘See, she barely attends to your words, the minx! She needs the member in he
r fast to take her mind from rumination!’

  ‘Surely you wish to know the identity of your pronger?’ asked the Decrepend.

  ‘I wish to know nothing!’ cried Ginansia angrily, shoving away from the table and grabbing her half-brother’s hand. ‘Dando, come with me to my suite.’ The boy pushed awkwardly back and joined her, grimacing apologetically to his parents. Dwindoline pouted in sympathy.

  ‘And see she is ready at the appointed hour!’ called Moribund, already losing interest as she twisted in her chair to berate the servants for the delay between courses. Behind her, the senior chef bore a huge tureen of bloody meat and knobs of bone, his gore-streaked apron a testament to his bitter, frantic labours. Asphyxia licked her fingers in anticipation.

  Ginansia ran. Behind her trailed Leperdandy, the crimson side ribbons on his striped leggings flapping and snapping as he raised his knees in pursuit. ‘Gin, please wait, I can’t run as fast as you!’

  She flew ahead, vanishing around each stone corner with her sapphire gown ruched up around her knees. She will have to calm herself, he thought, or accept sedation before she discovers the identity of her romancer. Abandoning pursuit, he watched her fleeing figure fold into the misted gloom.

  Scarabold was breaking wind in the armoury. His efforts thundered through the filigreed gilt portcullis of the baroque chamber, resonating through the trellis like pummels on a tambourine. A luckless valet named Ratchet shared the room while he attempted to attach a pair of scarlet epaulettes to the fidgeting monarch’s ceremonial battledress. The Great Wound raised a cheek of his ample rear and released an alarming fusillade, then fell back against the ambergris velvet cushions on his dressing bench. The valet grimaced and continued thrusting needles into a doublet.