I didn’t say anything.
“So I started putting it together, only the damn thing wouldn’t go straight. And I was nailing one side together when the other one slipped, and it fell, right on my thumb.” He looked at his hand.
“Blood everywhere,” he said. “And I screamed. She took me to hospital, and they took the end off. But she kept looking at me, like, I dunno ...”
I waited.
“She looked at me like I was a little kid who’d wet his pants, you know? All the time. Like I’d let her down. And then later, when we got home - later, after - when they took me away. She looked at me then, too. Like something the dog had shat out on the carpet. She looked.
“The last time I saw her, and she looked at me like that. She never visited me, you know. Never did, not once.” His face twisted. “She said she was leaving. I was in the fucking hospital, and she tells me this. She’d been seeing him. Her and the fucking gardener. All the time. Fucking.”
I put my hand on his arm, and he looked at it, and shook it off.
“I sorted it,” he said. “I sorted him. I had a gun, remember me telling you that? And they took me away and they put me in here. But I’m not staying. I’m going to see her again.”
He punched his fist into his palm, over and over. “I can still see her,” he said. “The way she looked at me with those eyes. Those eyes.”
He sat there for a long time. Finally, he stood and turned to me, although he still wasn’t looking at anything, not really.
“You know, people think it’s just a bit of your thumb,” he said. “But it hurt. It hurt.”
He walked out of my cell, then. That was the last time I saw Stumpy Ellis alive.
~ * ~
I woke, staring into the dark. I got the feeling something had woken me, but I didn’t know what. The night was full of noises. Men muttering to themselves; rasping snores; guards’ voices; metal on metal. Prison is never silent, even at night. It was one of the things I missed about the outside - real silence.
Then there was an almighty, shocking bang from the cell next to mine. And a shudder, as though I could feel whatever it was through the walls, the floor, the bunk. The banging noise seemed to hang in the air, echoing.
After that came a wet splatter, like rain, heavy droplets landing on concrete. It seemed to go on for a long time.
Prison was never quiet at night, but it was quiet then, like never before or since. The texture of the air grew heavy with listening, turning to grey speckles before my eyes.
I was the one who broke the silence.
“Stumpy?” I said. “Stumpy? You there?” And there was nothing, not one sound coming back. Not one.
I slipped down from my bunk and went to the bars, looked out into the corridor. There was a wet gleam on the floor outside Stumpy’s cell. I couldn’t see any further, but I heard the footsteps of the guards when they came running. They stopped. Then there was the nearer splatter of one of them losing their lunch outside Stumpy’s cell.
~ * ~
“They say his insides turned to soup,” someone said. “As though he’d taken a dive off a building. Everything smashed up.”
“They say his skull shattered.”
“Every bone in his body, broken, just like that.”
“He must have jumped off his bunk, only they say it wasn’t high enough to do that kind of damage. Even if he’d hung from the ceiling, it wasn’t high enough for that kind of damage.”
It was lunchtime, and it was all anyone could talk about, although I said nothing at all. I just kept replaying those sounds in my head, the bang echoing on and on, and the long splatter that came afterward. The thing Stumpy had said, over and over: “Climb right out. That’s what I’m going to do. Just climb right out.” And the way his eyes had shone when he said it.
I kept glancing around, looking for the librarian, but he was nowhere to be seen.
~ * ~
It was late before they allowed us back to our cells, and when they did there was a black cloth hanging across Stumpy’s bars. It must have been some kind of mess in there if they felt they had to hide it from the likes of us.
I climbed into my bunk and tried not to listen to the silence coming from the next cell, but I did, for a long time.
Something woke me later. It was deep night and my head was thick with the confusion of it, night seeping in through my eyes and ears. Then came a distant snore and I remembered where I was. If there was one thing I wanted on the outside, it was to sleep somewhere out of earshot of other men’s snores.
I looked into the dark, the walls and the bunk taking shape. I looked at the door of my cell. As I watched, the lock pulled back with a loud metallic clang.
After a time, I resumed breathing. The door was unlocked, but no one came to lock it again. It was just there in the dark, an open door, and no one to stop me walking out. Except of course there were guards at the end of the corridor; more locked doors.
All the same, I slipped off the bunk and went to the door. I didn’t touch it, though, not at first. I put out a hand, saw the thick, open bolt, but didn’t touch it. When nothing happened I gave the door a gentle push. It moved easily under my hand, sliding without a sound.
I put my head out into the corridor. I could see a shape further down, a door, more bars, dim light, long shadows. And then I saw the dull mark on the concrete outside Stumpy’s cell, a dark stain where the wet gleam had been. I moved out further and saw the curtain hanging across his cell suddenly fall, billowing as it filled with air, finding its way to the floor.
Stumpy’s cell was much the same as mine. The same bunk, the same box for a wardrobe. But everything was covered in those same dark spatters. The curtain came to rest on the floor, leaving humped whorls and shapes. At first it seemed there was the form of a body beneath it, but then it settled and was only a curtain.
Stumpy’s door, too, was open.
I stood and swallowed for a while. Then I went in, trying not to step on that stain in my shoeless feet.
There was stuff all over the floor, and those little number tags the forensics boys put down before they take pictures. It was like seeing two rooms: the one they had been over, investigated, and underneath it the room where Stumpy lived and slept and shat. Used to, I corrected myself. There was a radio on the floor, and I half expected the little dial to light up and some song to creep into the room, under my feet, and that was when the hairs on my arms started to prickle. But it didn’t light up, it didn’t make a sound. I looked some more. Stumpy’s uniform hanging in the box, just like mine. His stuff underneath that, a couple of pictures, a newspaper, a book.
A book.
I picked my way over there, half expecting to hear the door lock behind me, but nothing happened. I just went over there and nothing happened and I picked up the book. The cover was some kind of cloth, rough under my fingers. I ran my hand over it and felt grooves, lettering I couldn’t make out. A dark sliver of thread was tucked into the pages. I stroked the cover. A stain had soaked into it and I pulled my hand away. My thumb felt damp, just the tip, and I stared at it.
I turned, and that was when I saw the rope. It hung there in the middle of the room. When I looked straight at it, though, it was gone.
I tilted my head. I could feel those prickles again, but this time they ran all the way down my back, like little hands, unwelcome hands.
I started to edge my way back out of the cell, trying not to step in anything that looked wet. All the time I looked at that space in the middle of the room. Looked up. The ceiling was featureless. There was nothing to hang a rope from. Anyway, it had been low down, as though hanging upwards from the floor, just a few of feet of it and then nothing.
As I pieced it together in my mind I thought I saw it again, just for a moment.
My arm pressed up against the cell door and I almost cried out. I tucked the book under my arm and slipped out of Stumpy’s cell, down the corridor and back into my own
. I tucked the book under the sheets of the bottom bunk and climbed into bed, pulled the sheets over my body and lay awake, this time trying not to think of the book, somewhere beneath me in the dark.
~ * ~
The book was a joke, it had to be. I turned it over in my hands. There was no stamp inside, nothing to show it belonged to the prison library, no publisher’s mark. The first pages were blank. All of them were yellowed and foxed, the edges rough and uneven. Inside the writing was tiny, and it was in script: handwritten, not printed. The ink had faded to a pale brown.
The pages seemed to be full of magic tricks. There were small, hand-drawn diagrams of cards and dice and coins. Coffin-shaped boxes and saws. Ropes and knots and the means of escaping them. And there, on the page with the bookmark, The Indian Rope Trick and Secrets Thereof.
How to make space where there is no space, rope where there is no rope. How to feel with your mind for what you need, and reach out and take it. There was a lot of stuff about dimensions, about how the things you needed were all there, somewhere. Somewhere there was a rope, somewhere a door. About bending things with your mind, until what’s there is also here.
Think of a reason, it said. Think of a reason and the rope will answer. Hold it in your mind as you climb, and the rope will not fail. Hold it in your mind: not the rope itself, or the journey, but the destination.
At the bottom, a note had been added. It was in rough, spiky writing and blue ink, and I could almost picture Stumpy forming the letters, his tongue poking out of his mouth: Go at 4.00 a.m., when the walls are thinnest.
I snapped the book closed and stared at the wall of my cell. Smiled and shook my head, as though Stumpy were having one last laugh. Did I ever tell you how I lost my thumb?
And then I started to dream of it, walking with my back straight, looking people in the eye, a free man. Tasting the air. Just - climbing out. Climbing right on out. And a rope, seen for a moment from the corner of my eye, hanging from nothing in the middle of a cell.
Think of a reason and the rope will answer.
What reason had Stumpy had that could be strong enough? All he had was revenge. I saw again the way he’d talked about his wife, and eyes, and grinding, all the time staring at that thumb of his. His obsession. But it hadn’t been strong enough to get him out.
I had no thoughts of revenge. Everyone I hated was already dead. I had no love either, no one waiting. So I tried to think about why. And what came into my mind was a park, a soft, green park, where people sat in the sun. They splotched the grass in twos or threes or fours, talking and laughing, the girls wearing white halter-tops so you could see their shapes beneath. I stood there. I would stand there, and I would turn my face up to the sun, and breathe. Only that.
His insides had turned to soup.
In the cell next to mine was a rope. It hung in the air beneath a blank ceiling.
I looked again at the book and in that second, just in the corner of my eye, it looked as though the tip of my thumb was gone. My left thumb, from the middle knuckle to the nail, leaving only a thick, flexible stump.
I pulled my hand back, dropping the book. I should burn the thing, I thought. Take a match, strike it on the concrete floor, and burn the damn thing right here in my cell. But I didn’t strike the match, and I didn’t burn it. What I did was slip it back beneath the sheets of the bottom bunk; then I sat down and stared at the wall for a long time.
Some people shouldn’t think of some things, I knew that. I was one of those people. Waiting: I was good at waiting.
But somewhere, in the cell next to mine, was a rope. Go at 4.00 a.m., when the walls are thinnest. I swallowed.
However stupid the idea of the rope, it was too late. I knew I couldn’t let it go, and it wouldn’t let go of me.
~ * ~
The cell door wouldn’t open. I tried to slide it, and it wouldn’t move. I got my weight behind it and pushed, hard, but it wouldn’t move. Of all the things that occurred to me that might go wrong, I never once thought the door wouldn’t open.
I glanced at the clock. It was 4.03 a.m.
I kicked the door. It still wouldn’t open.
I sat down on the bottom bunk, and felt the book beneath the sheets. All the air went out of me and I sat like that, my head down, for what seemed a long time. When I looked at the clock again, though, it said 4.07.
The rope, I thought. I had to get to the rope. Now, when the walls were thinnest. I reached out and put my palm to the wall between my cell and Stumpy’s. It felt thick and solid and cold.
And then it came to me: it had to be mine. Whatever this was, whatever crazy game, it had to be my reason and my rope.
I closed my eyes and saw the park. A group of kids were playing Frisbee by the lake. The Frisbee spun, too high, out over the water - and was snatched from the air by a young lad, who fell back to earth, laughing.
I opened my eyes and the rope was there. It hung in the middle of the floor, a strong, thick rope, in a little pool of spring light. I dropped to the floor and kneeled by it, but I didn’t touch it, not yet. I put my hand into that light, feeling it on my skin.
And then I saw my hand, really saw it, and drew in a sharp, hissing breath.
My thumb was gone. My left thumb. Not all of it, just the part from the middle knuckle to the tip.
I turned it in the light and it was a short, thick stump. Pulled it out and my hand was whole again. I grabbed the rope, pulled on it, and it held. It was a strong rope, a good rope. But there was a sour, sick taste in the back of my throat, and I wondered just how far away Stumpy was.
Dimensions, the book had said. Bending things with your mind, so that what is there is also here. What if Stumpy didn’t fall, not really? What if he climbed until he found a door, only it didn’t lead to a park, or a house, or a gazebo: it led to a place a little like this, and through the door was someone a little like him. And he bent things with his mind, and turned them, and he changed places.
Because at this time of night, at 4.00 a.m., it seemed the walls between were thin. I could feel it, like I could taste that sour taste in my mouth. They were thin, and in that moment, it didn’t seem like Stumpy had gone very far at all.
I swallowed. Stumpy believed in payment. You always had to pay for things, even if it was just a story. It was what he saw as right, his way of slapping meaning on the world. What had he said? I always pay. I always pay and I always expect to be paid.
Now I had to pay. I had Stumpy’s book, after all. And I thought of his wife with the gardener, grinning, laughing, while Stumpy worked on her gazebo, making a love seat just big enough for two. I closed my eyes, and thought of hitting, and eyes, and of grinding. And in the middle of it all, a rope.
I thought then how lucky it was that Stumpy had shown me that picture, the photograph of his wife; how lucky it was I knew what she looked like. Because I had a feeling I’d be paying her a visit real soon. And then we’d have a chat, a quiet little chat, me and Stumpy’s wife. Payment.
I looked up, swallowed hard, trying to get rid of that taste, and I tried the rope once more. It was solid. So I took hold, and lifted my feet from the floor and wrapped them around it. I closed my eyes, then opened them again, but didn’t look down. I saw only that park, the sunshine, felt the clean air in my lungs. I saw them, and held them in my mind, and I started to climb.
<
THE CASE OF DEATH AND HONEY
Neil Gaiman
I
t was a mystery in those parts for years what had happened to the old white ghost man, the barbarian with his huge shoulder bag. There were some who supposed him to have been murdered, and, later, they dug up the floor of Old Gao’s little shack high on the hillside, looking for treasure, but they found nothing but ash and fire-blackened tin trays. This was after Old Gao himself had vanished, you understand, and before his son came back from Lijiang to take over the beehives on the hill.
This is the problem, wrote Holme
s in 1899: ennui. And lack of interest. Or rather, it all becomes too easy. When the joy of solving crimes is the challenge, the possibility that you cannot, why then the crimes have something to hold your attention. But when each crime is soluble, and so easily soluble at that, why then there is no point in solving them. Look: this man has been murdered. Well then, someone murdered him. He was murdered for one or more of a tiny handful of reasons: he inconvenienced someone, or he had something that someone wanted, or he had angered someone. Where is the challenge in that?
I would read in the dailies an account of a crime that had the police baffled, and I would find that I had solved it, in broad strokes if not in detail, before I had finished the article. Crime is too soluble. It dissolves. Why call the police and tell them the answers to their mysteries? I leave it, over and over again, as a challenge for them, as it is no challenge for me.
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