by Will Maclean
‘Sounds like paranoid schizophrenia.’
‘Where did you find this guy?’ said Kevin, wrinkling up his nose in disgust as he picked at a toenail.
‘He went to my school. He’s all right.’
Kevin chewed on something retrieved from his toenail. ‘He sounds like a weirdo.’
‘Where shall we do it?’ said Tony, to me. As if I might know.
Kevin sniffed. ‘Well, you can drop it here, if you like. I gotta go out in a bit, but you’re welcome to stick around. But no freaking out, OK? If you do freak out, there’s a big bottle of vitamin C tablets in the kitchen. Five of those will take you right down.’
‘Great,’ said Tony, as if Kevin was showing us how the thermostat worked. My heart was beating very fast, as I realised I was on the verge of an experience I neither wanted nor felt I could refuse.
‘There’s tea in the kitchen, too.’
‘Great. Any food?’
‘You won’t want to eat.’
‘What if we do?’
‘I would strongly recommend you didn’t.’
Tony looked sad. He very much enjoyed eating. ‘OK. Have you got a telly?’
‘No! TV rots your brain, man. Worst drug there is. Record player, though. Don’t scratch anything up, and don’t nick my records. I know where each one is, and they’re worth money, OK? Oh – and if you do put music on, don’t play it loud. My woman’s sleeping upstairs.’
‘There’s a lot of conditions attached to taking drugs in your house, aren’t there?’ I said, and instantly regretted it. Kevin stared down his beaky nose at me.
‘Hey, you’re welcome to sit in the cemetery if you’re more comfortable with that.’
‘He’s not,’ said Tony. ‘Shut up, Tim. We’re fine here, thanks, Kevin.’
‘Good. Cos I wouldn’t recommend the cemetery. A mate of mine dropped acid there and saw the Devil. He hasn’t been quite right since.’
I resisted the urge to say something sarcastic.
‘OK,’ said Tony. ‘When should we take it?’
‘It takes about an hour to come up, so … now?’
‘Now.’ Tony grinned. ‘Tim?’
‘Come up?’ I enquired. Kevin snorted again.
‘Take effect. How long it takes to take effect. About an hour.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I just have to nip to the loo. Won’t be a minute.’ Nip to the loo. As if travelling to another mental state was like a long coach journey.
Kevin shook his head and sighed, indicating that I was nothing if not a consistent disappointment.
22
I had passed the downstairs toilet on the way in. It was just as grim as I had surmised it to be from my earlier glimpse, with faded wallpaper and a filthy embroidered toilet seat cover depicting a Pierrot gazing in wonder at a butterfly. I locked the door and thought hard.
What was I going to do? I didn’t want to take LSD, which from everything I’d ever heard was the last thing anyone dealing with grief should go anywhere near. Dad had always maintained that The Beatles became unlistenable after taking LSD, that it had done something awful to their brains. I did not want anything awful done to my brain. I was very clear about this. What was I going to do?
Next to the toilet, on a white wicker table, was a stack of old magazines. Inexplicably, for a house with no television inhabited by someone who apparently hated television, most of them seemed to be the TV Times. An idea formed. Frantically, I began to flick through the uppermost ones, looking for anything that looked remotely similar to the black eye design I’d just seen. Eventually, I found the trademark of a company that made electric razors in a quarter-page advert towards the back. I carefully tore it out, folding and refolding and tearing the area round the trademark so that I eventually had a small square with a design on it which I could substitute for the acid. I was quite pleased with my ingenuity.
Back in the living room, Kevin was shirtless, spraying his armpits with a can of deodorant. ‘You took your time,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ve left it presentable in there.’ The idea that I could make anything in this revolting hole less presentable was preposterous, but I said nothing and slumped onto the sofa. The small square of the TV Times was in my hand. I dropped it surreptitiously on the floor.
‘Right,’ said Tony, cracking his knuckles. ‘We gonna do this?’
‘We’re gonna do it,’ I said. ‘What do we do, just eat it?’
‘That’s right,’ said Kevin, buttoning up a purple velvet shirt.
Tony shrugged and patted the cellophane envelope. The two conjoined squares fell onto his palm, and he carefully tore them apart and handed one to me. By the time I’d taken it from him, he’d already stuffed his square into his mouth, grinning as he did so. I dropped my square onto the floor.
‘Dammit,’ I said. I reached down and picked up the square of magazine I’d put there, at the same time placing my foot over the real tab of acid.
And so it came to pass that I sat in a filthy squat, eating a small square of the Dear Katie … problem page of the TV Times, slowly and reverently, as if it were a communion wafer. I wondered if I should comment on the taste. Was acid bitter, as its name suggested? Sour? Sweet? In the end, I elected to say nothing.
‘Doesn’t taste of anything,’ said Tony, and my heart sang.
‘Yeah,’ said Kevin, combing his hair. ‘It’s odourless, colourless and tasteless. But nonetheless, it’s the most potent hallucinogen known to man. And those’ – he pointed to us – ‘were very high doses.’ He wriggled into a brown suede overcoat several sizes too large for him. ‘Right, you two. Gotta see a man about a dog. I’ll be back about ten. Remember – don’t wake my girlfriend, and don’t freak out. And if you do freak out …’
‘There’s vitamin C in the kitchen,’ I said.
He pointed a long index finger at me, the only sign of approval he’d granted me in all the time we’d been there. ‘Cool. I’m glad someone was listening. See you later.’
Five minutes later, Tony went to the toilet and, whilst he was gone, I picked up the blotter of acid from under my shoe and burned it in the ashtray.
Ten minutes later, Tony and I sat waiting for an experience that I knew for sure in my case would not come. All the while, I worried. At the very least, I was going to have to pretend I was also high, which was going to present its own difficulties, as I didn’t know what I was supposed to be pretending. And there were other things to consider. What if Tony did freak out? What form would this freaking out take? If he got out of control, I was doomed – Tony was much stronger than me, and much more determined. He could do both of us a lot of damage if he put his mind to it. I thought it best to take control of the situation now, so that disaster might be averted altogether.
So, whilst Tony went to the horrible toilet yet again, I decided to put some music on. Flicking through Kevin’s records for something calming and familiar, it dawned on me how onerous this task might be. Even reading the names of bands and artists from the LP covers told me I was completely out of my depth. Odin. Dust. Iron Claw. Leaf Hound. Stack Waddy. Brainticket. Electric Sandwich. Tyburn Tall. Sir Lord Baltimore. Lucifer’s Friend. I selected an album at random and put it on, noticing too late that the first track was called ‘World of Pain’.
I wandered into the kitchen in search of the vitamin C. I didn’t want to go in there, and my suspicion that it would be the worst room in the house proved to be well-founded. It was epically squalid, from the first sticky steps I took onto the linoleum. Unwashed dishes and rotting food covered every surface. The cupboards were filled with faded packets of cereal, soup, custard. Some of them bore the tell-tale tear marks of rodent teeth. I dared not open the refrigerator. Despite my resolve not to spend long in there, the vitamin C proved elusive, and it took me several drum solos and half an organ solo until I eventually found it, in a drawer next to an old clay pipe, a prescription pad and a toy car.
‘You feel anything yet?’ Tony was back.
‘No. Shouldn’t w
e turn the music down? His girlfriend’s asleep upstairs, remember?’
Tony sniggered. ‘From what I hear, she wouldn’t wake up if the house was on fire. She’s a junkie.’
I couldn’t see the distinction. ‘Isn’t Kevin a junkie? Aren’t we, for that matter, taking this stuff?’
Tony frowned at me, genuinely puzzled. ‘Tim, what do you think a junkie is?’
I shrugged. I began to get the sinking feeling common to all teenagers when their naivety regarding an adult subject is exposed. ‘I thought it meant … just … someone who’s on drugs?’
Tony shook his head. ‘I thought you were meant to be clever? Junkies are people on hard drugs.’
‘Right.’
‘Heroin.’
‘Right.’
The organ solo was still going on. Tony inclined his head towards the record player. ‘Shall we put something else on?’
Time passed. I was still unsure what I was supposed to be feeling. Meanwhile, something was happening to Tony. He rubbed his face and looked around the room slowly, as if he’d never seen it, or anything like it, before. The only account of the ingestion of hallucinogens I had ever read was Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, and my recollection of that was supremely unhelpful. It seemed unlikely that Tony Finch was achieving oneness with the godhead, or seeing the innate is-ness of all things within all things. He just looked confused by the carpet. I made sure I looked confused by it too.
‘Are you getting that?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Shadows.’
‘Yeah.’ I was taking all my cues from him. I was thirsty, but didn’t even want to drink tap water in this place.
Time passed. Tony became engrossed with the wallpaper, and the bi-coloured poster of Jimi Hendrix. Occasionally, he would look at me and smile, and I would look back and do the same, mimicking his smile. Truth be told, I was bored out of my mind.
I suppose we would have sat like that for hours, if the electricity hadn’t gone off, plunging us into absolute darkness. The record player slowed and halted, and the singer’s voice became a slurred, oily growl, then nothing at all.
‘Christ!’ howled Tony. ‘What’s happening?’
‘The electricity went off. I think it’s a power cut. Or the place is on a meter.’
Silence.
‘Do you have any matches?’
Silence.
‘Tony! Do you have any matches?’
‘No matches,’ he said, infinitely sadly.
I ran my hands over the revolting coffee table, feeling the teacups, the rolling papers, the ashtrays, trying to locate the matches I’d used to destroy the acid. Eventually, my hand knocked something onto the floor, and I heard the rattle of a full matchbox. I picked it up and struck a match.
‘Whoah!’ said Tony, his eyes sparkling. ‘Do that again!’
‘We have to find some candles.’
‘Yeah!’ said Tony, very enthusiastic about this plan. ‘Where?’
The match burned down to my fingertips and I swore and shook it out. ‘I don’t know. That’s why we have to find them.’ I was done with pretending. I lit another match, Tony watching it intently. Investigating the mantelpiece, I discovered two candle stubs stuck in empty, dust-coated bottles of cherry brandy. I lit them both and sat back down on the sofa.
‘Wow,’ said Tony. ‘It looks totally different now it’s dark.’
‘Yes,’ I said flatly. ‘Yes, it does.’
‘Flick-ering?’ said Tony, becoming unsure of the word halfway through saying it. He turned and peered at me. His gaze moved slowly away to the empty half of the sofa next to me. He then caught me looking at him, and looked away. But no sooner had he done so than he started to stare at the empty half of the sofa again.
‘What is it?’
He shook his head and looked away again. But only for a few seconds.
‘What?’ I said, exasperated.
‘Why is it with you?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Why is it there?’
‘There’s nothing there.’
He shook his head. I stood up to stretch my legs, go to the filthy kitchen, or the filthy toilet, anything to not be in this room. Tony gasped.
‘You get up,’ he said, in a sing-song voice, ‘it gets up.’
‘For God’s sake.’
‘Thin,’ he said. ‘Tall.’
I felt a cold thrill crawl across my skin. ‘Shut up, Tony.’
‘Tall and thin—’
‘Shut UP!’ I shouted. Tony flinched as if slapped. I walked out of the room as quickly as I could. The floor was a mass of jumping, dancing shadows. Where could I go? I had fancied that I had no place to be in my own home, but I saw now that that was ludicrous. I had no place to be in this house, none whatsoever. It was without light and heat, drifting rudderless through the night like a shipwreck. The hallway outside was entirely black.
The kitchen door fell open a crack and I saw light inside, flickering candlelight. I stumbled towards the door and pushed it half-open.
A figure in a stained white nightdress was digging around in the refrigerator, by the light of a candle stuck into a whisky bottle. Her hair was lank, her arms skinny and bone-white. Even from here I could see the needle marks. I pushed the door open a little further. Maybe the girlfriend would have change for the electricity meter, but I somehow doubted it.
‘Hello?’ I said nervously. My voice was loud and precise. ‘Erm – I was wondering—’
The figure in the filthy nightdress straightened up awkwardly, like a rusty pair of scissors closing, and, stroking a stray strand of her greasy hair to one side, turned to me and smiled. I saw the thin line of a scar on her forehead.
‘Hello, Tim.’
‘Janice?’ My voice was hoarse. She was almost unrecognisable. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her skin was pale. She had lost weight, and her cheeks were sunken. She was smiling, a crooked, unpleasant smile, her hair the colour of pond mud. Her eyes glittered with malice.
‘You haven’t seen her yet, then?’
I took a step back, stung. Janice smiled again, and might have said more, but her attention was caught, as if by a sudden movement. Something just beyond and behind me. She stared at it with all of her concentration, as Tony had done, and I turned.
There was nothing to see but the empty hallway.
A surge of fear carried me through the front door and out into the street, where I didn’t stop running.
23
I awoke next morning with a feeling of nagging catastrophe.
The full magnitude of abandoning Tony had hit me hard, and I was determined to go looking for him, find out if he was OK. I had a terrible feeling that something appalling had befallen him, entirely due to my absence. Perhaps he had jumped out of a window, believing he could fly. Wasn’t that what people who’d taken LSD did? I was heading for the door when Dad stopped me in the hallway, carrying a piece of dowel and a pot of brown paint.
‘Tim! You’re in a hurry!’
Why does he want to talk now? I thought.
‘I am, yes.’
‘I thought you were staying out last night?’
‘Well, I came home. Dad, I really have to go out—’
‘All right. Well, I just wanted to pass a message along. A friend of yours called last night and asked you to call him back. He said it was important.’
I didn’t have any friends. What was he talking about? ‘Did they leave a name?’
‘Yes, Graham someone.’
‘Graham?’ Good God. ‘Did he leave his number?’
‘Yes. It’s on the little pad by the phone.’ Dad gave a perfunctory smile that indicated the conversation was over, and padded off.
And there it was, Graham’s number, with a Suffolk prefix. Why would he want to speak to me?
I tore off the page, folded it up carefully and slipped it into my pocket, before setting out to look for Tony.
Where might Tony be? T
he shopping precinct. The park. The demented playground of our abandoned factory. I considered all of these locations, until I at last realised that I was avoiding the obvious. Tony would almost certainly still be at the one place I didn’t want to go to, the house where I had left him, last night. I had to go back, just to be certain Tony was all right. The guilt of leaving him, drugged and vulnerable, had ballooned from a nagging ache to something close to panic.
I had managed to find my way back home from the strange, crumbling house last night, in the dark and in a state of distress, so I was confident I could find my way back in daylight. But finding the house again was not the problem. Even confronting Tony was not the problem. What I dreaded most was seeing Janice again.
I had been stunned by the change in her, and not just the physical signs of addiction and deterioration. It was as if the moment that had once possessed her in the attic was now her whole mode of being, unashamed and brazen. And, of course, it was also what she had said, which seemed designed simply to wound. That single sentence, more than anything else, told me who she was now, and I knew I never wanted to see her again.
I was slipping through the orange mud of the pathway through the woods, turning these thoughts over, when I saw a figure coming towards me. It walked softly, carefully, as if the world were made of porcelain, and to tread too heavily would be to invite disaster. This demeanour was so different from his normal unselfconsciousness and natural carelessness that I barely recognised him.
‘Tony!’ I said, genuinely relieved. ‘Er – are you OK?’
‘Hello, Tim,’ said Tony peacefully. ‘I’m fine.’
‘How are you feeling?’
Tony smiled sardonically. ‘You tell me.’
‘Look—’ I began. Tony waved his hand.
‘It doesn’t matter that you bottled out of taking it, Tim. You just should have told me.’
I was going to protest, then stopped myself. ‘How did you know?’
‘I knew last night. There’s no way you could have gone where I went and acted normal.’ He looked sad. I couldn’t be anything other than a let-down in this world, it seemed, even to Tony Finch.
