Horsehead Man

by Rory Barnes

  ‘Bulltwang,’ says the hoon called Rats Eyes.

  ‘Listen, fella,’ says Tanya. ‘Me and mum had to go over there and pick up the bits. There was pills everywhere. Under the bed, under the wardrobe, down the cracks. We was crawling round like mice. My Aunt Vera couldn’t pitch in and help because she had no legs.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know jack …’

  ‘I’m telling you, Rats, they’re the first things to go: the extremities. Auntie Vera’s hands weren’t too flash either. They were starting to go the same way as her legs. It’s because of the paucity of oxygen. See, if you’ve got empathy your lungs are stuffed. Which means that you get bugger-all oxygen into the bloodstream. And oxygen is the fuel of life. At least it is for animals including humans. For trees it’s the other way round. Trees thrive on carbon dioxide.’

  ‘Shut up, Tanya.’

  ‘All right. Rats, you say something interesting for a change. Go on, fella, give of your wisdom.’

  ‘Listen, Tanya,’ says Rats Eyes. ‘If people with empathy don’t have any legs and the cop says Scalp’s got empathy, how come Scalp’s got legs?’

  ‘Yeah, Tanya,’ say two or three other hoons.

  ‘Yeah, Scalp,’ says Tanya turning to me. ‘How come you’re not flat on your back in bed with a tank of oxygen?’

  ‘Because,’ I say, ‘there’s a difference between empathy and emphysema.’

  And then Tanya cracks up. She’s giggling and hooting and falling about. And she looks real wicked. She’s got these dimples on her cheeks and her eyes are sparkling. And her waist is all trim and brown. And she says, ‘I know that.’

  ‘So if you know it,’ says the hoon called Christo, ‘how come you were bulldusting on about empathy when …’

  ‘Because I haven’t even got an Auntie Vera,’ says Tanya through her giggles. ‘I was just telling Rats an improving story. I was showing him the error of his ways. Him being such a weed artist. More like a major industrial polluter than a boy.’

  If anybody else had said that, Rats Eyes would have decked the poor sap. But Tanya is laughing so much she is infecting the other hoons, even Rats. Rats doesn’t laugh exactly. But he smiles. I catch Tanya’s eye and she winks at me.

  Without thinking I say, ‘Want to go out with me, Tanya?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ says Tanya, still laughing. ‘Just square it up with me mum first. Where we going? The South Pole?’

  ‘I thought we could see Exterminator Gator,’ I say.

  ‘That’s meant to be real wicked,’ say a couple of hoons.

  ‘You serious?’ Tanya says to me.

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  Tanya stops laughing and looks me straight in the face. I’ve never wanted to be just an ordinary kid in an ordinary kid’s body so much in my life. I want it so much it hurts like a broken arm.

  ‘Okay, Scalp,’ Tanya says after a couple of seconds. ‘You’re on. But you’ll have to check with Mum first. I’ll butter her up, but you’ll have to give her a call.’ And she blows me a kiss and picks up her school bag and starts to drift towards the door with the other hoons. ‘See you tomorrow, Scalp,’ she says. ‘Take care. We don’t want you catching too much empathy. I wouldn’t get too lovey-dovey with the blues brothers if I were you. Know what I mean?’

  Tanya and the others are almost out of the door, but suddenly they have to stand back to let the guy in full undertaker gear come barging in and steal a bike.

  Chapter Three

  I was madly trying to figure out who my kidnappers were and why they wanted Bluey Doig when I heard the growl of a souped-up engine and a screech of tyres.

  ‘Right, you lump of garbage,’ a new voice roared. ‘I’m going to do you.’

  There was a thin line of light at the bottom of the furniture van’s doors. I dropped onto my stomach and managed to get one eye so close to the floor that I could see out of the back of the van. What I saw was the sofa plonked in the middle of the lane with the undertaker sitting in it breathing deeply. The two workmen in their overalls were each perched on the sofa’s arms, one at each end. As I’ve said, they were an ill-matched pair. One was a solid-looking citizen in a pair of overalls, the other was a weedy little shrimp, almost a midget, wearing blue jeans and a bright silk T-shirt over his skinny chest. A few metres behind the sofa was the ute, and clambering out of the ute’s cabin was a very angry yahoo.

  The yahoo stood in the road for a second. ‘Hey! You!’ he yelled. ‘I’m talking to you.’

  The undertaker lifted his head and turned to look back over the sofa at the yahoo.

  ‘And what can I do for you, my good man?’ he enquired.

  I was a bit surprised by his voice. I thought he’d been the one I’d been talking to, the guy who reckoned he was Nebuchadnezzar, but this was a different voice entirely. Nevertheless, it was familiar. I’d heard it before somewhere. But I didn’t have time to think about it.

  ‘Don’t get smart with me, fancy pants,’ the yahoo said. ‘You could’ve scratched my duco.’

  ‘Scratched your duco? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Listen, boofhead. There’re laws about molesting other guys’ vehicles. If you can’t afford your own, you can bloody keep your bike away from decent people’s wheels. I work for my crust.’

  ‘Bike?’ said the undertaker, ‘Bike? I see no bicycle here, my man.’

  ‘I’ll fix you,’ yelled the yahoo. ‘I’ll learn you to tailgate.’

  He reached into the back of the ute and produced a tyre-lever. As I watched through the slit at the bottom of the door, the yahoo advanced on the undertaker on the sofa. The undertaker didn’t move, but the two workmen stood up and confronted the yahoo.

  ‘You stay out of this,’ snarled the yahoo. ‘It’s him I want. He was fartarsing around in the traffic. Hanging onto the back of me ute. He could have got killed. I’ll murder the moron.’

  ‘Calm down, mate,’ said the little runty guy. ‘I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.’

  ‘I’ll come to an arrangement with his nose,’ snarled the yahoo. ‘A re-arrangement.’

  ‘Like a nice chesterfield?’ said the other workman, and I recognized him as Nebuchadnezzar.

  ‘Don’t smoke,’ said the yahoo, looking from one workman to the other. He was starting to realize he was outnumbered three to one.

  ‘I was talking about the sofa,’ said Nebuchadnezzar. ‘The settee, the one-piece lounge suite. This little baby.’ He patted the sofa’s arm. ‘Want it?’

  ‘Compensation for all your trouble,’ said the runty little workman. ‘We’ll bung it in the ute.’

  ‘Where’d yer get it?’ said the yahoo.

  ‘I paid good money for it,’ said the undertaker. ‘I’m not sure I just want to give it away.’ He sounded a bit pissed off.

  ‘Shut up, Alex,’ Nebuchadnezzar said to the undertaker. ‘You were fooling around with our friend’s splendid customized utility. So you’ve got to pay compo. All right?’

  The undertaker didn’t say anything, but the yahoo said, ‘Yeah, that’s right. Compo.’

  ‘Okay, Alex, shift your bum,’ said the runty little workman.

  Suddenly I recognized all three men. I knew exactly where I’d seen them before. They were Bluey Doig’s footie-playing mates. The last time I’d seen them they’d been guests at Bluey’s wedding. This had been just before Bluey’s strange disappearance. Just before Bluey had died of a brain hemorrhage. Just before I’d inherited his body.

  I watched as Alex, the undertaker, stood up with bad grace allowing the other two to pick up the sofa and sling it in the back of the ute. The yahoo stowed his tyre lever, got into the ute’s cabin and roared off without saying another word.

  ‘That was a thousand bucks worth of good sofa,’ Alex said.

  ‘Stop whinging,’ the runt said. And then he came over to the furniture van and gave the door a good thump just above my head and yelled, ‘Right-oh, Bluey me old mate. We’re taking you for a nice little ride.’

  I heard the th
ree of them get into the driving compartment. The engine started and the furniture van backed out of the dead-end street with a horrid beeping noise. Then the driver put it into first and we lumbered away. I thought perhaps I’d better keep lying down, squinting out of the crack at the bottom of the door, keeping track of where we were going. But after a few minutes, and a few twists and turns, I was lost. We could have been going anywhere. I sat up and leaned against the side of the van. In the gloom I could see the frames of the two bikes lying on the floor. I started to plan my escape.

  The van trundled along. After half an hour I moved across to the Trackmaster, bumping along on my bum. If I was going to escape, I reckoned the Trackmaster was my only hope. I had a good look at the ramp, now also lying on the floor of the van. It was made of a couple of heavy planks held together with steel plates. The ramp started to figure in my plans.

  I was a bit worried about my shop. Just handing it over to the local hoons wasn’t the brightest idea I’d ever had. But I’d had no choice and I’d only expected to be away for five minutes. The thing was, the hoons might drift off. They might just leave the shop open and unattended. Or worse — they might try out the stock. Take a few shiny new bikes out for road tests. Or worse still, track tests. They might decide to do a bit of business — sell themselves a BMX or two at substantial discounts. I had a feeling Tanya would keep the rest of them in line for a while, but only for a while. Then she’d be keen to go home, same as everybody else.

  The van stopped moving. It had done this before a few times, but that had been at intersections and traffic lights. Then there had been the background noise of other vehicles. Now things seemed much quieter. I heard someone get out of the cab and there was the sound of a gate being pulled open. The van moved forward a few metres and stopped. The engine cut out.

  I got to my feet and picked up the ramp. It was heavy, but not so heavy that I couldn’t lift it. I managed to get it upright and then, as quietly as I could, I leaned it against the twin back doors of the van, fair in the middle, pushing against the join. It was on an angle of about forty-five degrees. Then I picked up the Trackmaster and stationed myself at the foot of the ramp. I waited.

  I waited about five minutes. I was getting bored. Then I heard footsteps approaching the back of the van.

  ‘Okay, Bluey, we’re going to let you out. Just don’t try anything stupid.’

  I tensed myself. The front wheel of the bike was hard up against the leaning ramp. I was going to have to move with split-second precision when the time came.

  ‘Can you hear me, Blue?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘He can hear you, Alex,’ Nebuchadnezzar said. ‘Just open the damn door.’

  The sounds of a padlock being undone and levers being pulled were loud in the empty, dim space of the van. Then suddenly there was a crack of light between the doors. They started to open and the ramp scratched against the metal as it collapsed, hurrying the process along. The doors flew open. My captors cursed, ducking for cover. I started pedaling up the ramp while it was still falling. For a split second the ramp was on the level — half in the van, half sticking out into space. I was on it and pedaling like a dingbat. There was pure air in front of me. I was almost out of the van when the ramp seesawed, the back half flew up off the van’s floor as the front slammed down towards the ground.

  This was no ordinary drop-off. This was power assisted. I flew. I had air. I was airborne good and proper. But the pure air in front of me wasn’t quite so pure. It had a large wire-mesh gate stretched across it. I might have known.

  The front wheel hit the mesh. I hit the mesh. The wire had a bit of a bounce to it. It was like hitting a vertical trampoline. Within a split second me and the bike were going back the way we’d come. We hit the dirt in a heap — somewhere between the back of the van and the wire mesh gate.

  ‘That wasn’t too bright, Bluey,’ the little fella said.

  ‘I could have been killed,’ Alex the undertaker said.

  ‘Right-oh, get him inside,’ Nebuchadnezzar said. I was getting the idea that Neb was the bloke in charge.

  Alex and the runt picked me up, one to each arm, and frog-marched me across an industrial backyard and into the back of a large building.

  I guessed it was a factory or a warehouse.

  Chapter Four

  It was a warehouse and it was half empty. There were a number of crates and barrels and old bits of machinery lying around on the dusty concrete floor. In one corner there was a pile of dirty foam rubber. The grubby concrete walls had no windows and the only source of light was the corrugated plastic panels in the saw-toothed roof. The one thing that didn’t look like junk was a large, new, bright yellow, fork-lift truck. I was marched over to a corner of the warehouse and into a makeshift office behind some moveable screens. The office had a desk, a couple of chairs and a vast bank of filing cabinets against one wall. The whole place was covered in dust. While the little guy and Alex held my arms, Nebuchadnezzar went over to the filing cabinets and gave them a push. They moved silently sideways, the whole collection must have been on wheels. Behind the filing cabinets was a large steel door with a console full of buttons. Neb punched in a code and the door slid open and disappeared behind the filing cabinets.

  ‘Right-oh, Blue, down we go, mate,’ said the runt.

  There was a high, wide, concrete stairway behind the steel door, leading down into the ground. The stairs were dimly lit and went down at a gentle angle. You could have bumped a small truck down them.

  ‘Er, look,’ I said. ‘You might not believe this …’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ said Nebuchadnezzar. ‘Down the stairs, Bluey.’

  There was nothing for it. I set off down the stairwell into the ground with the others following close behind. When we finally reached the bottom there was another steel door with more buttons to be punched. We walked through into total darkness. I could hear Nebuchadnezzar fiddling with switches on the wall. Suddenly fluorescent lights began to come on. We were in a steel forest.

  I’d never seen anything like it. We were in a huge concrete cavern, at least as big as the empty warehouse above. Standing in long, gleaming rows were ranks of stainless steel cylinders. Each one must have been a couple of metres thick and four or five metres tall. There were dozens of them.

  ‘Keep walking, Blue.’

  We walked along an aisle between the cylinders. I noticed that each cylinder had a red and yellow logo stenciled on the side. The logo was of a chicken emerging from an egg in front of a lurid rising sun. The little chook looked peculiarly dopey. The aisle we were walking down led to the middle of the steel forest. In a sort of clearing were a number of steel operating tables, trolleys and bits of equipment covered with green cloths and a sterilizing machine. Big lights hung low over the tables. Nebuchadnezzar pointed to one of the steel tables which was surrounded by steel chairs.

  ‘Sit down, Bluey,’ said Nebuchadnezzar, ‘and start talking.’

  I sat down. The other three sat down. We looked at each other across the shiny, grooved surface of the operating table.

  ‘Well …’ said Nebuchadnezzar.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘as I’ve been trying to tell you, I’m not Bluey Doig.’

  There was a moment’s silence as the three men looked at each other. Then Alex the undertaker said, ‘Well, tell us, then — and it had better be good — if you are not Bluey, who are you?’

  I decided there was no point in bluffing. I said, ‘Bluey Doig is dead. I’ve just inherited his body.’

  ‘Left it to you in his will, did he?’ the little guy said.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It was more a case of finders keepers.’

  ‘Finders keepers,’ said Nebuchadnezzar. ‘Finders keepers eh? Er … could you tell us, if it’s not too much trouble of course, where you … er … found Dr Doig’s mortal remains.’

  ‘In the back of an ambulance,’ I said.

  All three men looked at each other again. It seemed
to me that a bit of doubt was finally entering their minds. The last time they’d seen Bluey Doig he’d been carted off in an ambulance after he’d had an accident at his own wedding.

  ‘Well, could you tell us, perhaps,’ Nebuchadnezzar went on, ‘how you came to, er … possess Bluey Doig’s body. How you came to inhabit it.’

  ‘I didn’t have a body of my own,’ I said. ‘Just a brain. So this friend of mine went and stuffed …’

  ‘What “friend” is this?’ Nebuchadnezzar said.

  ‘Just a friend,’ I said.

  ‘And doesn’t he have a name?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ I said. I was thinking like mad. I was keen to convince these bully boys I wasn’t Bluey Doig, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea to dob in Rachel.

  ‘Well what is it? This name of this friend?’

  My mind went blank. ‘Umm …’ I said. ‘Wittgenstein.’ It was the only name that came into my head, even though it was Rachel’s surname.

  ‘What sort of weirdo name is that?’ Alex said.

  ‘It’s that mad broad’s name, that’s what it is,’ said Nebuchadnezzar.

  ‘What mad broad?’ said the little fella.

  ‘The one Bluey was going to marry. Whatshername? Rachel.’

  ‘Rachel!’ the other two said in unison, ‘Her?’

  There was nothing I could do. I had to fess up. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s what she does: mucks around with brains. She’s a top neurosurgeon.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Nebuchadnezzar said, ‘Let’s get this straight. Bluey Doig died. And Rachel Wittgenstein went and installed someone else’s brain — your brain — in Bluey’s body?’