The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  He blinked and squinted to adjust to the glare. A drop of sweat- no, not sweat- ran into his eyes. Excruciating, burning pain caused him to scream and rub his eyes. At that point he realized that his hands had been tied together at the wrists. Through blurred, painful vision Phillips saw the silhouette standing above him, the face a shadow beneath the strip lighting.

  "Wakey, wakey," the man chuckled. "Had a nice sleep have we?"

  Phillips knew where he was then. He knew the voice too. Tom Somebody. The pressure at his ankles alerted his dulled senses to the fact that he had been bound their too. He opened his eyes again.

  Tom Saunders patiently rolled himself a cigarette. He looked nonchalant, like a man taking a break from some outside weekend work. Phillips also noticed the uncapped jerry can placed next to Tom Somebody's work boot. At that point he realized that he had not in fact pissed himself but was covered in petrol. Saunders noticed the direction of Phillips' gaze. He chuckled once more; again like that indulgent avuncular stereotype, sharing a joke before he resumed coating the garden furniture with weatherproof.

  "Yes, Craig," Tom agreed warmly. "You are indeed covered in petrol. Very wise to keep a bit in the garage, I thought, while you were having a little sleep there. Many a time I've ran out before I could finish with the petrol mower." He raised his eyes in a shared silly-me expression that, for a reason that Phillips would never be able to explain, frightened him more than anything else.

  Tom Saunders took out his Zippo. He lit his cigarette and took a deep, satisfying drag. "Ahhh," he exhaled. "My bird wants me to give up you know. She's never smoked you see. If she had, she'd know how fucking difficult it is, wouldn't she?" Again, that all-friends-together-we-know-the-score gesture. "She even bought me some of those patches, you know? Didn't work though. Addiction runs deeper than chemical reliance, I told her." Tom's eyes flickered and for a moment he looked as though he was unsure of his surroundings. He blinked and smiled again. "Fucking women, eh?" He mused for a while smoking, occasionally flicking back the Zippo lid and flipping it closed again with a metallic schink! "I don't suppose you'd know about that though would you? You probably haven't got a girlfriend, 'specially judging from that shithole." He jerked a thumb in the general direction of Phillips' house. "Your average, self-respectin' woman wouldn't wear that stink for long, would they?" Phillips had no inclination to defend his abode. He had eyes for the lighter in Tom Saunder's hand and nothing else. "You wouldn't want a bird here though would you? If you had one, she'd want to know what you got up to down here, wouldn't she?"

  Phillips stared at Tom Saunder's right hand.

  Tom stepped forward and planted the heel of his work boot firmly on Phillips' crotch. Phillips howled.

  "I said, wouldn't she? You ignorant, sick fuck!"

  "Yes! Yes! Yes-" Phillips sobbed.

  Tom looked at him coldly; the friendly bloke next door was gone. There was only distaste now.

  "What are we going to do with you then, eh? Perhaps we should try out some of your tools. What do you think?" Tom Saunders pulled a cutthroat razor out of his jacket pocket and opened it carefully and deliberately. He knelt in front of Phillips, one hand holding the cutthroat, the other resting over his thigh, cigarette in the corner of his mouth causing his eye to smart. "Shall we start with this?" He held the razor six inches from Phillips' face allowing him to see the reflection of his fear in the blade's shiny stainless steel. Phillips shook his head violently. The blade swept down in a looping flash opening his thigh in a clean horizontal gash. He watched in horror as his sodden jeans darkened with his own blood. Only a few seconds later it began to sting. Phillips commenced a low moan, holding his hand over the wound.

  "This should help," Tom Somebody crooned and poured the rest of the petrol into Phillip's lap. Sickening pain flowed through him. The world wavered. He beat his joined hands against his forehead and gritted his teeth against the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. "Please, p-p-please," he stammered, "don't- please-" No longer worried about how he sounded, snot bubbling at one nostril in much the same fashion as the countless victims of his schoolyard rule of terror, Phillips began to cry. Tom finished his cigarette and crushed it under his heel. He leaned against the workbench and grimaced at the grotesque deconstruction before him. He sighed.

  "They should give me a fucking medal," Tom said. "People like you, going through life inflicting pain on anyone that crosses your path and then- when you leave school- and you realize that you have no one left to pick on, you start torturing animals. And do you know the sad fucking truth of it? I'll be put in prison for doing this. You'd be given treatment for being the victim of a mental illness. He can't help it, the bleeding hearts would say, it's an illness." Saunders’ eyes were obsidian; there was no more emotion there than on cold, grey slate. "Don't cry, Craig," he soothed. "Don't be scared. I'm not going to cut you any more-"

  "Thank you thank you please I'll never-" Phillips' eyes were wide with desperate hope. "I'll never do it again I'm sorry so sorry-" Tom smiled down at him and nodded. Phillips somehow managed to get on to his knees in front of Tom in a bizarre parody of the Catholic Communion. "I'll stop. I will, I'll get help-" Tom held up his hand. Phillips closed his mouth but his eyes continued to beg with that crazy, desperate zeal. Tom shook his head.

  "Now I'm going to set you on fire," he said and smiled. He flicked open the Zippo, once more the talisman of Phillips' life and ran his thumb over the wheel. A blue flame emanated from Tom Saunders’ fist. Phillips gaped- a savage shown fire for the first time. The warmth between his legs informed him- dimly- that, this time, he had indeed pissed himself.

  Tom Saunders took a step towards him.

  "Tom," a breathless voice said from the open doorway. "What the fuck are you doing?" Phillips heard the other man's boot heels.

  "Don't-"

  There was the urgent scrape of boot heels. The owner of the voice launched himself past Phillips at Tom. The two men hit the floor struggling.

  Whether it was through the pain, the burning fumes in his eyes or the sheer relief, Phillips didn't know, but as the darkness opened before him, he accepted it gratefully.

  …………………..

  Part Two

  The Land of the Green and the Grey

  Chapter Five

  1

  Measton 20

  Rennick 25

  Halton 28

  The Beetle's full beams gave Weaver glimpses of the Cotswold landscape that had been so familiar throughout his childhood but it now seemed like the backdrop of someone else's dreams. Since exiting the M40, the roads had become narrow and unpredictable and, never an assured driver, he slowed almost to a halt at times; the forest roads were particularly terrifying; sharp bends would give the impression that the road had disappeared altogether causing moments of unease as he half-expected the VW to hitch and bump into a ditch or over the edge of a sheer drop.

  Measton 20

  It had been five years. Not a lifetime but enough water under the bridge to push his thoughts inevitably towards the dark nostalgia that he associated with his hometown. It was a graveyard after all- a place where people were buried. His father had been represented by a gravestone for as long as he could remember, anyway. There had been photographs of the man that had been his father on the walls of his infancy through to the day he had left for university. But that was all. Douglas Weaver had died of cancer at the impossibly young age of thirty-seven, leaving in his wake a wife and infant son and despite his mother's efforts to keep the man alive in his son's memory as the tall, smiling man with the Cotswold hills in the background, invariably the image that arose when he thought of his father was that of the once white slab of stone. Barbara Weaver had followed sixteen years later. A middle of the night call from Measton had ended a terrible dream about yet another bridge. His mother's younger sister, Aunty Susan. Come home as soon as you can, your mother's very ill. Yes David it is serious. It had been serious enough that, by the time Weaver had arrived, she had bee
n gone for several hours. Another gravestone gathering green moss and birdshit. In the years that followed, his visits had dwindled to nothing. There never seemed to be a good enough reason to return. The best friends of his youth had gone their own ways he guessed. He wasn’t really bothered. Besides, Weaver had felt like an interloper for as long as he cared to remember; an outsider in his own town. It happened. He knew of others who had experienced the same feeling; those inclined to travel, to want to experience something else, to get out of the rut. Whatever. And as time pushes on, it takes something dramatic to pull you back. And when you get older it seems that something dramatic usually tends to be something bad.

  Weaver dabbed at the passenger seat with the palm of his hand until he located his cigarettes. He took one out and put the cigarette lighter to it, slowing down again, nervously eyeing the road. The back roads to Measton were dimly lit.

  2

  The telephone was ringing again. In semi-wakefulness, he knew that he would go out to the hall, pick it up and hear the voice of Susan Callaghan telling him that there had been an accident. He turned over to tell Lisa that there was something wrong back home but of course there was no Lisa, no piles of unread books gathering dust in the corner, no poster of the black chick with the sensational afro and the split up the side of her skirt and smoking a spliff on the wall because this was now; his mother had been in her grave for over ten years. He sat on the edge of his bed and turned on the bedside lamp before answering. The Mickey Mouse alarm clock (weird- a present from Lisa because he just never could make the 9am lecture) informed him that it was ten past four.

  "Hello?" he said tentatively.

  "Hello." An official sounding male voice. "Am I speaking to David Weaver?"

  Police. Fuck. Bad news.

  "Yes, you are. Who is this, please?"

  There was a brief cough on the other end of the line. The kind of cough that people give before delivering something difficult.

  "This is Police Constable Hendricks, sir. I am calling from Measton."

  Fuck.

  "Can I just check, sir, that you are the nephew of Mrs. Susan Callaghan-" For a moment the past and present overlapped; in the lamplight the room seemed to tilt with the sensation of déjà vu.

  "Fuck. Sorry. Yes. I am. What's wrong with Auntie Sue?" He held his breath, anticipating the blow. PC Hendricks told him the basic facts of the case. Susan Callaghan had been hospitalized a few hours before with severe trauma as a result of an attack by an intruder. She was in great discomfort as well as deep shock and had lost some blood but PC Hendricks had been given to understand that she was in no imminent danger. Weaver recovered himself sufficiently to press for details. Who had broken in to her flat? Was it a thief or someone with- he shuddered at the thought- another motive? PC Hendricks paused at that point leaving Weaver in no doubt that there was more to tell.

  "The point is, sir, Mrs. Callaghan asked us to contact you. You see, her daughters need to be with family until she is well enough-"

  "Okay. No problem. I'll leave immediately and be there by morning." Weaver agreed readily enough but he was confused. "What about their father? Why can't they go to him for a few days? I know he likes a drink but-” He stopped himself, aware that he was thinking aloud.

  Hendricks coughed awkwardly. "That won't be possible, sir." Weaver reached for his cigarettes. "Mr. Callaghan was involved in the incident." Weaver's hand paused, floating in mid-air, inches above his smokes.

  "In what way was he involved?" Weaver's voice sounded distant, even to himself. In his mind the figure in the picture, eternally reaching, flicking to the dark-haired boy in his bathroom mirror (stick it in your eye) and back. The policeman was talking again. "We can't be sure of the details at this point but I can assure you that we want Mr. Callaghan to help us with our enquiries."

  And then it hit him; it had been Eric. Good old, red-faced Uncle Eric. The man who had taken him fishing off the weir as a boy; dependable Uncle Eric who had been the first port of call when a man was required around the house, despite his mother's eternal obduracy.

  "You can't be serious, surely," he said around the filter of his Marlboro as he lit it. "Eric isn't like that. He-"

  "Sir," the strident interruption surprised Weaver. "Nothing about this incident makes sense. There are a lot of strange things going on at the moment. Now, Mrs. Callaghan's daughters are staying with friends- fortunately they were away for the night when this occurred."

  "Thank God," Weaver whispered despite the fact that he had been an atheist since he had been old enough and able to question things for himself. “Okay. Tell her I’ll be there by morning.”

  "I have informed their friends' parents of the incident and will tell them to expect you in the morning. If you have a pen and piece of paper, I will give you their details."

  Weaver had scribbled down the addresses and telephone numbers and called Paul to ask if he could borrow his car. As he waited for Paul to drag himself from his sofa the policeman's- Hendricks? - words returned to him. There are a lot of strange things going on at the moment. Odd thing for a copper to say over the phone. Paul answered.

  3

  The Cotswold Hills were black against the copper light that heralded the sun.

  You are entering: MEASTON

  Historical Riverside Town

  As the VW surmounted the last hill into the outskirts of the town, an incline that Weaver remembered well from the countless bicycle rides of his childhood, fields grudgingly gave way to housing- still dwellings yet remote enough to feel like countryside until, inevitably, the growth of the housing estates linked them to the town proper. The Red Disease, Paul called it, a term that Weaver thought more than apt considering the seemingly identical housing projects on the edge of every town in the country. A mile down the hill and houses lined each side of the road as the sight of Cornhill Church marked the beginnings of the town. He swerved around an idling milk float and looked to see the face of the milkman and sure enough- for fuck's sake! - it was still old Johnny Pinchin. The sound of his engine and the fact that he had his windows wound up did nothing to assuage his absolute certainty that the milkman would be whistling. Pinchin's melodies had formed part of the soundtrack of his youth.

  Ash Road had not changed. It remained- as it always had- in need of tender loving care. High Street's overlooked poor relation with Secondhand Bargains instead of the ever illustrious Peters and Son of Measton. You bought your designer credibility and conservative respectability on High Street; on

  Ash Road you bought your drugs and kebabs. Above the filthy fronted shops, bedsit land reigned supreme. Weaver experienced a rapid playing card flicker of images: cigarette burned armchairs and naked lightbulbs; rooms with no curtains but the best sound system money could buy; backstair entries on rainy Tuesday nights adding to the sense of wrongdoing, as though buying a sixteenth of dope made him General Noriega; fucking Alison Hayes on her sister's sofa while babysitting; Raysan coming in with blood flowing from his scalp and fainting among chip papers and ashtrays (and when he came round- hilariously- revealing that his insane girlfriend, Hayley, had whacked him with a stiletto); at the tender age of fifteen, watching in horror as two skin heads breathed in glue out of a Mother's Pride bread bag; a whole succession of ghosts from a previous life constructing a bridge between then and now with an eye for detail that was impressive and wearing by turn. Ash Road gave way to Bridge Street straight on or Riverside to the left. Weaver pulled into a parking space along Riverside.

  He pulled his parka hood tightly against his face; it was a clear, sunny morning but he remembered that cheek numbing February chill well-enough to remember to throw in a decent coat. For the first time in- how long?- five years, Weaver stepped onto the old bridge that had figured in his childhood dreams consistently, recurring over the years in his conscious and subconscious imagination. At the centre of the bridge he looked out over the river, wincing at the wind chill that whipped up off the skin of the river and onto his face. He viewed th
e waters of his memory snaking away into the distance. He knew that around the bend in the river, the monolithic railway bridge stood as it had done in his dreams ever since Grant's death; the bridge between little Davey Weaver and adult David Weaver, artist and part-time nutcase. Then there was the river and, of course, the ring. Weaver lit a cigarette and crossed the road to the side of the bridge that he had been on that day when, as a young boy with his mummy, a wedding ring seemed to burn a hole in his pocket. Rivers, bridges and rings. How symbolic he thought and looked down into the sluggish water. How very fucking symbolic. The soil of a child's mind was a fertile ground for the cultivation of symbolism. Experience, he mused. It makes you and it mars you. There was his portfolio- a catalogue of the imagery that had pre-occupied his dreams ever since the summer of '76. It makes you and it mars you. Who had said that? Shakespeare probably. The ring had an inscription he remembered.