Life's Lottery

by Kim Newman

  ‘Well, he won’t now,’ says James.

  ‘Robbo’s not a killer,’ Jessup protests.

  You and James look at Jessup, sneering.

  ‘If he is, he’s gone now,’ James says. ‘And we sit here like pillocks for a while.’

  When will he mention the phone? He’s playing his own game, and hasn’t roped you in yet.

  ‘Tell them, Tris,’ says Shearer.

  Warwick’s face shuts tight.

  ‘I think we have to assume we know each other well enough for secrets,’ Shearer prompts. ‘Tris was …’

  ‘I agreed with McKinnell. Robert is overextended. It’s time to get out while we can.’

  ‘So that puts you on a hypothetical death list?’

  Warwick shrugs at your suggestion.

  Outside, it rains hard. This is that proverbial dark and stormy night.

  You and James get to keep your beds, Mary is gallantly offered the four-poster, which she declines to share with any of the prospective candidates. Jessup, Sean and Shane wrap themselves in blankets on chairs downstairs.

  Warwick and Shearer opt to go back to Colditz. They take knives with them and clearly intend to resist anyone who tries to get at them in the night. You realise that, despite the danger, they intend to take advantage of the privacy of the pens to make love. Maybe it’s the danger that makes them so keen. This might be their last chance, the lucky bastards.

  If you all die, your last physical contact with a woman was Mary stroking your balls with a knife. Not much to show for thirty-seven years.

  Lying on your beds, you and James talk.

  ‘Do you think it was Hackwill?’ he asks.

  ‘My first thought was that it was you.’

  ‘I had the same thought about you. But you’d have started with Hackwill, or Fatty.’

  ‘You too,’ you say. ‘I think it’s most likely Hackwill had it done.’

  ‘He had Jessup pull the boots off.’

  ‘He doesn’t do things himself.’

  ‘He did in the copse.’

  ‘Long time ago, James.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Take your pick?’

  ‘Shane. Hired man. Hard man.’

  ‘What about Mary?’ you suggest.

  James doesn’t answer.

  You wake up and it’s still dark. Not early-morning dark, but small-hours dark.

  You don’t know what has woken you.

  Slowly, you sit up in bed. The slate roof rattles with rain and wind.

  There’s a small torch on the bedside table. You cover the end with your hand and turn it on, making your fingers a transparent red, giving you some light.

  James’s bed is empty.

  Someone is talking downstairs, very low.

  If you go back to sleep, go to 208. If you investigate, go to 221.

  204

  The big discovery is the kids. They make J and J seem precious, but there’s a lot of Jeremy and Jessica in Josh and Jonquil. With Marie-Laure working at the jam factory, you spend time dropping them off at school and picking them up afterwards. Then comes what you call the ‘pre-Mummy’ spell, the two hours when you have Josh and Jonquil to yourself before Marie-Laure gets home.

  At first you just watch TV with them, but soon you start talking, telling stories about pirates, drawing maps that lead to ‘treasure’ hidden around the flat. They argue a lot but quarrels usually pass, like storms. Because they share a room, Josh and Jonquil are closer but thornier than Jeremy and Jessica. They understand territoriality.

  You want to be the world for your kids. You try to furnish their minds with wonders. After all, as you know, many things are possible.

  At weekends, you insist Marie-Laure come along with you and the kids on expeditions. You seek further afield for treasure. You often visit Mum, who is bewilderingly the same in this changed world, and even sometimes see James and Laraine, who are closer to the people you remember than the other Keith was to you.

  You don’t think of yourself and the other as separate people any more. You’re submerged in his life but he’s transformed inside.

  The kids do better at school now, which you suspect is a side-effect of your interest in them. Marie-Laure is a kindlier, tolerant presence. She must have been fed up with the way things were, but is settling down. She gets a promotion at work and you move out of the flat into a terraced house, where the kids get their own rooms.

  You’ve become a housewife. You’re still not the world’s greatest cleaning-person but you display an interest in cuisine which affects the family’s health and disposition. The first time you cook a meal for the whole family, including Mum, using only ingredients you can afford on this Keith’s budget, it is a revelation.

  There are struggles and heartbreaks, but there are triumphs and joys.

  You live Keith Marion’s life. And, mostly, are content.

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  205

  After a while, the knot unravels. The question goes away, unanswered. You even find out the other winner’s name (a man’s, French-sounding) but it doesn’t matter any more. Your life is too complex, rich and vibrant for that.

  And you know you have a decision coming up.

  You first think of it when trying to get insurance for your new home — a mansion next to the managing director of British Synthetics at the top end of Cliveden Rise (Sedgwater’s Snob Row) — and are told that actuarial tables done in the States suggest the life expectancy of a big lottery-winner halves the night his number comes up.

  Wealth is lovely. But it can kill you. You could shove it up your nose, stuff it into your stomach or smear it on your dick.

  And you can die.

  Quite a few lottery millionaires commit suicide. Lots more kill themselves by excess.

  Then again, you have to go to 0 sometime, and there can’t be a better way.

  You imagine Dad telling you to spend the money wisely. And some haggard alternate version of yourself telling you to splurge the lot and go out with a bang.

  Which voice do you hear?

  If you spend wisely, go to 228. If you splurge, go to 241.

  206

  The shepherd’s hut is a roofless box of stones. Too old to demolish, it’s useful as a hiding-place for treasure hunts. It affords some cover from the wind but none from the rain.

  You eat a Twix and wait, trying not to think about murder.

  McKinnell’s eyes were frozen. Not just wide with fear, but iced and sparkly. The dripping stalactitic gush from his throat was once warm blood. Someone did that to him. And you and James will do that to Hackwill.

  Morning passes. At this time of year, day is a pathetic, drab, brief interval between eras of darkest, coldest, most dreadful night.

  This isn’t fun any more.

  At last, you hear them coming. James talks loudly, to alert you.

  Through chinks in the stones, you see James and Hackwill walking towards the hut. Tagging along with James and Hackwill is Jessup. Not part of the plan. But Jessup was there at the beginning, in the copse. It makes sense he should be here at the end.

  You unsheathe your knife.

  You assume James will do the deed, but you are a part of it, a collaborator, a co-murderer. You have to be ready to do your bit. Perhaps you’ll kill Reg.

  Their feet are wrapped in bright towels which look like hallucinogenic fungal elephantiasis. Your feet are frozen in scavenged boots. You can imagine what the seeped-through towels feel like.

  ‘Where’s this fucking car hid then?’ Hackwill demands.

  ‘Over the rim. By the hut.’

  ‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers.’ Hackwill strides ahead.

  James bends over to get his breath, incidentally blocking Jessup’s way. He is sending Hackwill to you. You’ll have to do it. Yourself. The messy bit.

  Your heart hammers. This isn’t what you expected. You grip your knife.

  Hackwill is just outside the hut. He turns away from you, lookin
g back at James.

  ‘I can’t see it,’ he says.

  You see the back of his neck. You remember the copse. You stand up.

  If you stab Hackwill, go to 219. If you can’t do it, go to 232.

  207

  You’re still you, but you’re a kid. You’re about seven, which would make this 1966. A good year to put a bet on England winning the World Cup. They were sentimental favourites anyway, so you wouldn’t get great odds. Thinking about it, you wish you’d paid more attention to sport. You could grow up rich if you remembered a few long-shot winners. Here, in the past, you know a lot of things: election outcomes, wars, investment tips (get into computers — now!), storylines of hit books and movies, chart-topping songs.

  Your grown-up mind crams awkwardly into your kid’s brain. It’s not quite like being your adult self in the body of a child. Sometimes, it’s like being a passenger in someone else’s body, lurking at the back and watching as Kid Keith goes through his routine. There are some things you can let him do.

  At school, you find you can’t quite do joined-up writing. Your increased vocabulary is noticeable and you sometimes make assumptions that draw attention. You’re frustrated at the total control adults have over you.

  You would like a cup of coffee, but when, after nagging, Mum lets you have one — very watered-down, you notice — the taste is vile. You still have kid tastebuds.

  School custard induces a spasm of horror.

  You wonder if you could write Jaws or compose ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’. If you could, it’d be hard for a seven-year-old to reach a mass audience. And 1966 probably wouldn’t embrace those things anyway.

  The colours are different back here.

  You cry, easily. The world you left for this seems thin and remote.

  Are you a kid with a wild imagination?

  You catalogue the toys and books in your room. You remember them all. Here are The Buccaneers Annual and Red Rackham’s Treasure — a pristine copy, which you remember as covered with orange scribble — and which you make a note to keep away from little James and his crayons. And here is a tin of shiny new marbles. Unchipped and perfect spheres, with intricate coloured swirls. Glassies.

  At last, you’ve found them again. No, this is before you buried them.

  You finally believe what you’ve done and grip the tin in triumph. You have found treasure.

  What to do next?

  If you bury the tin as you remember doing the first time round, go to 218. If you hang on to the tin and break the cycle, go to 239.

  208

  You drift back into fearful sleep, haunted by dreams of human-legged, red-eyed spiders. You stand again outside the copse, roots growing from your feet, fixing you in place.

  ‘Mental,’ Robert Hackwill shouts, ‘Come here! Come on. I’ve got someone you know here.’

  ‘Keith,’ squeaks James, ‘I’m weeing myself. They won’t let me go to the lavvy.’

  ‘Your brother’s a little shit. He’s no good at all.’

  ‘Come and see your brother,’ Reg Jessup says.

  You see Robert and Reg, holding James by his shoulders. James’s shorts are dark at the crotch. Wee trickles down his legs. He starts sniffling.

  ‘Everyone heard two shots ring out,’ Gene Pitney sings, ‘one shot made Liberty fall…’

  The bell goes for the end of break. The other children run off, back to the classroom.

  The dream grips hard. In a few seconds of sleep, years will unfold. You are afraid that if you go into the copse, you will die. And if you die in this dream, you will die in your bed.

  ‘Come on, Mental,’ Robert says. ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’

  ‘Much,’ adds Reg, laughing.

  It’s no longer a dream. It’s the real thing.

  If you go to the classroom and get on with your sums, go to 6. If you go to a teacher and tell what’s happening, go to 10. If you go into the copse to help James, go to 14.

  209

  Worst-case scenario: you start, as if after a moment of dozing, and find yourself sitting in the assembly room at Ash Grove, looking down at an exam paper. All around, your contemporaries get on with it.

  You can speak Japanese. You can estimate the short-and long-term progress of the stock market (c. 1990). You could put a bet on Britain and Argentina going to war in 1982.

  But you’re looking at a maths O Level exam paper.

  This is not what you were expecting.

  You remember this exam as a bastard the first time round — you had to revise intensively to get up to speed — and recall you only scraped a Grade C pass.

  You’ve used a calculator for so long you barely remember how to multiply or divide in your head. And the paper is from the ‘New Math’ period, full of sines and cosines, base eight, fractions and other arcana.

  You look around.

  You’re struck by the impossibly young faces — they must be fifteen or sixteen — and are painfully aware that even the thickos are beavering away.

  Your hands are frozen.

  You hold a biro but can’t bear to sully the white spaces of the paper. Fail this exam and you scramble your whole future. You can’t even go back, for you might well find that botching this crucial moment would lead to you to becoming a homeless derelict in the ’90s rather than a successful businessman.

  Fuck fractions.

  If you try to complete the exam, go to 249. If you try to get out of here, go to 263.

  210

  You look round the room and know it has to be Hackwill. If he didn’t do it himself, he ordered it done. Now he’s trying to fit James for the frame, claiming your brother is the homicidal maniac. You have to take the initiative.

  ‘You wanted Warwick dead,’ you say, directly.

  ‘He was my business partner.’

  Shearer snorts. A crack in the solid front.

  ‘You don’t have partners, Hackwill,’ you say. ‘You don’t have friends. You have accomplices and victims.’

  ‘This from the man whose brother tried to kill me.’

  ‘We’ve only your word on that.’

  ‘All right, Marion. Let’s put it to a vote. Who believes James Marion, the sadist who’s been rubbing our faces in shit for days, is capable of murder? Show of hands.’

  Hackwill raises his hand. Shane and Jessup follow suit. Shearer folds his arms. Sean dithers, then puts up his hand. You look at Mary. She keeps her hand down. Momentarily, you wish she’d vote with Hackwill to keep in with him, get him to lower his guard.

  ‘Four-three,’ Hackwill says. ‘James, of course, gets no vote.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ you say.

  ‘What about Ben?’ Sean asks.

  ‘Oh him,’ Hackwill sneers.

  In that sneer, you catch something chilling.

  ‘Mary, check on McKinnell would you?’

  Read 220, go to 243.

  211

  This is out of control. You’ve been trying to put it together in your mind and the only story that makes sense — providing you ignore the boots from beyond — is the one you like least. It means you’ve been shut out of the family business, but left to clear up the mess.

  James killed Warwick, then tried to kill Hackwill. Why couldn’t he have fumbled the first shot and scored the second?

  ‘You killed Warwick, you bastard,’ you say to Hackwill.

  You have to hit this hard. You need the others behind you if you’re going to protect James.

  ‘What do you know?’ Shearer asks you.

  ‘Warwick wanted to back out of the Discount Development,’ Mary puts in. ‘Like McKinnell. Hackwill needed them in, or the whole thing goes up in smoke. It’s a seven-million-pound boondoggle.’

  Shearer is convinced. He stands up and spits in Hackwill’s face. Shane hits Shearer. Mary throws Shane. She always could outfight him.

  ‘I’ll see you pay,’ Shearer sneers at Hackwill.

  Hackwill doesn’t even bother to deny the accusations. You worry thi
s means he has some proof. He knows, of course. James tried to kill him. On his way back, he must have worked it out. The signs have been there all along, proving James was spinning out of control. It was going beyond a joke — poisoned porridge, impossible boots — and someone was bound to die.

  James killed Warwick just to frighten Hackwill: a warm-up act for the big finish.

  Mary makes a move for the stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Hackwill demands.

  ‘The toilet. Do you mind?’

  Mary goes upstairs, and comes back down again.

  ‘That was quick,’ Jessup says.

  Read 220, go to 244.

  212

  ‘Kay,’ you say, using Shearer’s first name for the first time, ‘you’re not as upset as you were yesterday. Are you getting over it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Jessup snorts. ‘Keith thinks you’re a wife-killer, old fruit,’ he explains, delighting in someone bullying someone else as usual. ‘Reckons you shoved Trissy in the hole.’

  You’re disgusted with yourself. You hate the idea of Jessup toadying to you. It puts you on a level with Hackwill.

  But who else would have done it? Most murders are committed by immediate family members, and Shearer and Warwick were a family.

  ‘Tris was putting it about all over,’ Jessup says, digging in. ‘Couldn’t get enough arse, they say. You must have hated that.’

  Resentment of gays runs deep in Jessup. It occurs to you that the bully’s sidekick is almost totally sexless himself. Is there something you’re missing here?

  ‘Tris said Robbo could have him.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ says Hackwill.

  ‘I didn’t say you took him up on it. As I recall, you hit him in the face.’

  ‘Sounds like a motive,’ says Shearer. ‘I’ve been queer-bashed enough to know the story. You straights get so worked up about the fucking come-on, the smallest let’s-get-to-know-each-other look. A lot of breeders think that’s an invitation to murder.’

  Hackwill looks at Jessup, at the end of a very long rope with his lifelong toady. By sticking it to someone else, Jessup has merely swung the suspicion back on to his master.