by Robert Young
As the stops rolled by and the carriages emptied I relaxed. But those minutes, those interminable moments, were tortuous. Each body that passed by me, pressed against me, felt like a test.
Just like back in that hospital room, waking up and seeing that nurse, that otherwise plain and homely nurse, transformed into a goddess by the force of my own lust and desire, I was assailed by temptation.
Girls in makeup and heels and their going-out gear sat and leaned and talked all around me. A pretty, plump redhead with her nose in a book tried to look engrossed in the pages but her eyes darted about, met mine, too often for that to be true and I scarcely saw a page turn. More than once my gaze was returned, emboldened as they were by the wine or cocktails, or having been chatted up all evening by charming young City types.
The men returned my gaze as well, but most of them out of aggression and in response to a perceived challenge. Had they looked lower they would have seen my knuckles, white as I gripped the seat hard and tried to sit tight and weather this storm.
For everywhere within the tight confines of this train was the smell of it. That maddening, dizzying scent that reminded me of Issy and her bedroom and the horror and that one fleeting terrible, exquisite moment.
At the most rural-looking stop I sprang out of the seat and fled into the night. It did not take long to reach the edge of the streets and the fields beyond and I walked for as long as I could, changing direction each time I saw lights ahead of me.
I did not want houses, I did not want cars. I must not be near people. More importantly, they must not be near me.
Chapter 16
There are many miles between them now but the process that is happening to one of them slowly, inexorably, is happening to the other too. It is a matter of acceptance.
With his eyes more open than they have ever been, his hearing clearer, sleep deeper, Roth feels like a small town boy landed in the big city and the world of possibility and opportunity it presents him is matched only by his newfound appetite to consume it all.
There have been women of course, none like the one he was disturbed with a week or so back. She had been both exquisite and difficult all at once. The old woman next door had felt simple and easy and tasted of surrender.
But with the line breached, there could be no retreat and Roth was immersed in this new existence. He had thirst and hunger, drive and lust. He had craving and satisfaction, sought fulfilment, found release.
He had quickly learned that the best results were yielded from those occasions where he was at his most demanding and ferocious. It was not so much that the fear it engendered was exciting to him - at least no more than it had always been - but somehow these were the times when the results were purest.
He was no stranger to the look of fear in the eyes of someone faced with their own limited mortality or the manifestation of fight-or-flight responses in people's faces and in their body language. He was accomplished at producing those reactions and had sometimes done so even when it was not necessary, just for the feeling of power and control that it gave him.
On one occasion, perhaps a year ago, a terrified woman clinging furiously to her bag had fallen silent and acquiescent when Roth looked her square in the eye and said 'I like it more when you fight.' And on the single occasion that Roth had taken someone's life, during a fight in prison, Roth had quickly established the upper hand and as he overpowered his opponent and knocked him to the floor, he clearly announced, in earshot of the few watching inmates, 'I'm going to kill you now. I'm going to put this fucking blade in you,' watching him all the time, never breaking eye-contact.
People left Roth alone after that but it was a turning point. Being so ruthless and cold so publicly had served its purpose well enough, but he had recognised then the path he was on and precisely where the lack of 'impulse control' as the case worker had called it, would take him.
Even so, for all Roth's new low key, low profile attitude, this new burgeoning sense of rebirth and growing power meant that he could indulge himself all the more.
He was still careful, still as out-of-sight as he had trained himself to become - more so now in fact - but the chance to really assert himself was irresistible, in more ways than one
So each time he had done it, each new one he had claimed, the more he noticed that delicious correlation between the fear and the roaring, surging clarity he felt when to took them.
It was like being dropped into an ice bath but with none of the jolting unpleasantness and jarring shock. Just total exhilaration, pure and clear and defined. Roth could not get enough.
Chapter 17
The backpack I had filled and taken with me that night I left home had a few clothes, a washbag and various old camping items that I had unearthed from the back of a cupboard. They had been unused for several years but the small stove still worked and the twice-used gas canister seemed full enough. There were plastic plates, a spork, a utility knife with several practical fittings and several not so practical. A frying pan and a chipped enamel mug that had been with me since cub camp, about twenty years back.
The sleeping bag was in decent condition, if a little fusty, but that would soon air out, and it rolled up and tucked in snug to the space in the back pack designed for it.
The sleeping bag had proved useful since I could cocoon myself within it completely, which minimised discomfort beneath the deep shade of a thick canopy of bushes in a stand of trees where several long days had been spent. The corner of an old barn had been darker and draughtier - both pluses in the hot days - but gave essential shelter from the October rains that were inevitable.
I found myself moving on after a few days in each stop. The trees and bushes of my first spot had seemed isolated and quiet but waking on the third evening I heard voices and music and no more than forty yards away down the slope a group of teenagers had collected in the gathering darkness to drink together undisturbed. My private little spot not so private.
Now the barn was behind me too and though there had been no signs of anyone coming or going I thought it better to keep moving. The longer I lingered, the greater the chance that I would begin to leave signs of habitation. And it might mean that by ghosting into the night now, I would have the option to return another night. It seemed sensible to have a number of options like this so I could keep moving between them, keep shifting about.
I stumbled across a small farm with a sign hanging out front with the words 'Farm Shop, Cider' hand-painted on it. One of the old farm outbuildings had been converted into the 'shop' which roughly translated as a trestle table with some fresh muddy vegetables piled onto it, a tall glass fronted refrigerator stocked with cheese, bacon, sausages and gammon steaks and next to that a stack of egg boxes and trays of fresh eggs.
At the back wall there were three huge barrels of cider marked dry, medium and sweet.
This I discovered after forcing what must have been a very old brittle padlock. That or I didn't know my own strength.
Inside I took eggs, bacon, sausage and some cheese and then, despite having not touched cider since my teenage years - and even then the fizzy type, rather than this still farmhouse stuff - I grabbed a large plastic container from a box near the barrels and filled it from the medium one. I grabbed a few vegetables from the table and headed swiftly off into the night. Nothing stirred in the farmhouse, no light or sound.
It was the most food that I had seen since leaving home and I was determined to eat this. It was fresh, farmhouse food. Unfussy and unprocessed; just good honest fare. Not only that but a drink of something alcoholic appealed to me on more than one level. My palate craved something stronger than the water that had been all I had drunk but it was more than boredom. I needed oblivion.
Because as much as I tried to keep moving, keep busy, keep focused on the moment (whatever that meant) there were thoughts and memories that were seeping in again and would not for long be ignored.
They were taking form, getting louder, crowding
my senses and they would assail me at unexpected moments. Those teenagers earlier in the copse of trees? For a fleeting second I saw the three lads from the estate that I had fought with, beaten, plus several reinforcements. And then my mind and vision cleared and it was just some local kids.
But my bodysock of a sleeping bag, my private head-to-toe sack that contained me through the day, was not always empty, not always just me. I woke next to Issy one time when the fever roared and scorched me from without and all I could think was that she might cool me with her cold stiff flesh.
But she wasn't there, and nor were the estate-lads or that powerful, hunched ball of fury that had pounded and battered me that night before fleeing like a wraith. Every branch that swayed and cracked, every fox that moved through the darkness was not him, but it always took long frightened moments before that fact would render itself into my thoughts.
I was alone out here and had managed to achieve largely what I had set out to do and avoid any contact. Something had happened to me and something was still happening, accelerating even, catalysed by what had taken place in Issy's bedroom that night. But not one piece of it made any sense.
How would being found in someone's driveway lead me to a burns unit? From where had this acute agoraphobia sprung that dominated my daytime and when would this unseasonal heatwave break?
There was more. The struggle to eat properly. The ferocious strength and speed that manifested occasionally. The clearer eyesight in darkness, the heightened sensory perception of sound and space. That man in Issy's bedroom and what he did to her. Her weak hand on my neck and the faint tug of my head toward her throat.
There was an answer in there somewhere and there was no way that I could put all of those puzzle pieces together because then I would have to see what it was, what I was.
Better then denial and to seek after oblivion. I walked with the food for an hour, along pathways, hedgerows, across fields. Eventually I found a spot where I could sit secluded and undisturbed. I fired up the camping stove and I fried bacon and sausages and I nibbled on the strong cheese as I waited and drank from the cider which was surprisingly drinkable. Not necessarily pleasant, but not too harsh or heavy and after the first few swigs it got easier to tip back.
The bacon and sausages were delicious; crisp and tasty rashers and plump, sticky, herby sausages that spat fatty juices down my chin and for a little while I had a fleeting sense of normality.
The moment that I began to hope was, I suppose, the moment that it was snatched from me and my stomach lurched and heaved and expelled the food again.
I knew that it was not what my stomach wanted, though I had been able to eat and keep down food in the days after leaving Issy. Perhaps this was some delayed reaction to that trauma. Some physiological response to the horror I was refusing to contemplate.
It was an explanation that would do for now, sufficient in the absence of the real one.
Though the food would not settle in my stomach, a few cleansing swallows of the cider did not come back at me and tentatively I supped at the large plastic container and kept supping.
Eventually I would find my oblivion in that cool darkness. But not before I had set up my cocoon for the morning, in amongst the tangle of a bramble hedge where the thorns would tear scratches in the flesh of my arms. Scratches that would weep blood into the lining of the sleeping bag but leave no trace on my skin when I awoke.
*
I was packed and away early the next evening and heading off south, dark skies and blinking stars to my left hand side and a fading sunset to my right.
The reason for my haste was the manner of my waking. Stirred by nearby sounds I had looked out through the top of my sleeping bag, and there, just yards away past the bramble, stood a deer.
It looked at me, saw the eyes peering at it from the gloomy undergrowth and it froze - just for the merest pause - and then bolted. It had barely taken its third swift step and span a half turn away before I was grasping it around the throat and stomach.
The power in the animals haunches threw me almost clear as it bucked but my arms clung and my fingers dug into the soft fur over taut muscle. It made a strange low panicked noise and it kicked and jumped but was not used to such weight clutching it, had no natural predators out here in the rolling Kent countryside where wolves had not hunted for centuries.
The fear gave it strength as it jumped and tried to run but I had a firm hold on it and was dragging it to the ground. But then my footing slipped, the deer thrust forward and my hands came loose from its neck. They slipped across its smooth back and my fingers were sliding down the hind leg even as it kicked me in the face.
In less time than it took for the frightened animal to plant its front hoofs into the ground ready to kick away again with its powerful hind legs I was up and on top of it, a forearm across its throat and the other hand clamped hard over its snout, pulling up and back and around. A crack and a shudder went through it before it went limp.
I dropped the beast and stared down at it for a moment, frowning. And then I flipped the knife from my pocket, opened the throat and closed my mouth across the fresh, warm wound as it continued to kick and twitch for another half minute.
Packed and ready to move, I rinsed my face, head and hair with cold water from a plastic bottle and then looked again at the dead deer. It was large and powerful looking, though young and the terror in its eyes seemed fixed there now, a final record. My little pocket knife was not well suited to the task but I tried anyway and managed to hack away a large chunk of haunch.
I still had some food and half the large plastic cider container with me so I figured when I had found a new spot to stop, away from here where the smell of a dead animal would begin to attract all kinds of attention, I would try again to eat, perhaps build a fire and roast it, perhaps cook it with the potato and onion in some cider.
Perhaps I would keep this meal down. Perhaps last night’s sausages were just not cooked through. Perhaps all this would stop.
The night felt different as I moved, clearer and more open. For a spell I started jogging at a brisk pace, the backpack bouncing and clanging the pot and mug as I went up a hillside and then down into a small valley. It felt like there was energy to burn and I was restless and anxious and needed to be somewhere else. I jumped across a stream, clear across the eight feet to the other bank and kept moving.
When the urgent feeling dissipated and I didn't feel so edgy I continued hiking and following the same rules as I had established in those first few days, to steer clear of roads where possible, avoid any lights that might suggest houses or settlements and most importantly, people.
Eventually, when I found a small lake and a stand of trees I decided to stop and make my fire and cook my venison. I sliced and fried the bacon in the pan until the fat began to run and then added onion to sizzle, then the venison, cut into smaller chunks and to that added some cider up to the lip of the small pan. It simmered over the fire for an hour before I touched it and as I waited I drank more of the scrumpy.
It was delicious when I ate it, rich and unctuous and warming. I'm sure the makeshift, outdoor, improvised nature of it added a certain something to the whole affair but I felt content for a while afterward and but for a passing moment of nausea, kept it down.
I pondered that for a while as I lay on my back gazing at the extraordinary sight of the Milky Way. Out here, zero light-pollution, it was magnificent and arresting. In London, you could forget it existed.
Perhaps a corner was being turned. The thing with the deer was not something I wanted to dwell on but not throwing the food back up was progress. Emboldened, and clinging only to the positive signs that I wanted to acknowledge, ignoring the horrifying ones, I slept in the trees by the lake that day, with less cover. The fever was there but much reduced and though I lacked the courage to emerge from the sleeping bag, I felt somehow like this awful phase might be passing, that this madness might be brief and beatable.
Because it was madness of a sort wasn't it? All these things that had been happening since I woke up in hospital, since whatever it was had put me there.
It would not be the first time I would cling on to false hope, but it would be last time I would enjoy such naivety. A change was coming, and it would take me down as surely as I had the deer.
*
I slept soundly that day once the tiredness overcame the discomfort of the heat and as I drifted off I tried not to think too much about the things that were happening to me and more than that, about my failure to confront them.
I knew that zipped up inside this sleeping bag there was more than one thing that I was hiding from but each time I wondered on some aspect of it - my problem keeping food down and the infrequency of eating, my hypersensitivity to daylight and that dread feeling that only after the moment I had shared with Issy at the end, and also after killing the deer the way I had, was there a feeling like a pulse in my veins - my mind shut it all down, drawing sharply away as if burnt.
I tried to think constructively and evasively. What would I do when this phase was over? What would I say to people once I was able to be near them again, when I could bear to be in the same room without feeling overwhelmed and ravened?
I considered how best to find help for this strange condition, convinced myself - poorly - that these symptoms of some post-traumatic reaction were not just treatable, but commonplace. I drew assurance from the rational and logical mental processes that I was still capable of in reasoning this out which could only point to a positive outcome, one tantalisingly close on the horizon.
Such slender threads do we cling to when the ground beneath us drops away and the abyss beckons.
But they sufficed for a spell until sleep came, and I had peaceful and dreamless rest.
When I woke again it was still light, though beginning to fade. I felt encouraged by my sensible reasoning and decided that if I were to take on this problem, I had to do so slowly. Climbing out of a zipped up sleeping bag seemed therefore a perfectly achievable goal and out I climbed into the early evening light and watched for almost thirty minutes as the sun slipped down out of the sky.
