Bloodstorm (11 page)

“Please …”

“A word repeated too many times dilutes its taste, William. It becomes meaningless.”

Defeated, his old anger and arrogance quickly returned. “Fuck you, then! Rot in hell!”

“A fitting imprecation – for yourself, William.”

Outside, a farrago roll call of sounds: a prowling taxi beeped its horn at a lone straggler; the soft thunder from a train heading towards Belfast Central vibrated along the carpeted floor of the apartment; a bewildered gull called for directions. Lost. Forever.

“Do your worst, then. You never had any intention of freeing me. Did you? Answer me, you fucking lying whore!”

She said nothing, and in saying nothing she said everything, shooting him where the priest had left his dirty thumb print, just twelve hours earlier.

F
ROM EXPERIENCE,
K
ARLA
knew that all funeral burials were sombre affairs, but this was minimalist and dour in the extreme: one indifferent minister reading a brief eulogy of indifference; six onlookers nudging each other as two members of the press snapped their photos for the evening edition. Karl doubted if any of the onlookers were members of Chris’s family. More than likely, morbid ghouls attaching themselves to the death of someone infamous.
If a man were judged by the amount of mourners at his funeral
…

This sudden epiphany, that forgiveness can be a mean bastard once it finally enumerates, only added to Karl’s depressive mood.

“What a terrible life, you poor bastard.”

Even the length of time – over a week – to have the funeral finally agreed to by the local authorities, had seemed to Karl to be verging on pettiness with just a tinge of revenge.
We didn’t have the balls to kick you when you were alive, Chris Brown, but we sure as hell can kick you now …

From a selected spot, Marty Harrington, owner of a chain of funeral parlours –
Heavenly Harrington’s
– peppered throughout the city, stood watching his gang of gravediggers lowering Chris Brown’s coffin into the open crevasse. He seemed well pleased with their performance. A few minutes later, he nodded for the clay to be shovelled down.

Upon noticing Karl’s feeble attempt at remaining inconspicuous, he made his way across the grassy path, too eagerly for Karl’s taste.

“Going to the card game tomorrow night, Karl?” asked his
card-playing
adversary.

“Hopefully. I’ll see what happens before I commit myself.”

“Didn’t know you and Chris Brown were friends? Didn’t know he had any,” continued Harrington. “One day he was king of the castle; next he’s nothing but a float in the moat. Can you believe he murdered more people than the number of mourners at this funeral – and two of them are my staff, brought in for the media? At least I’ll get some free publicity out of this. What do you reckon?”

Something in his piss, perhaps, or just the sudden depression brought on by Chris Brown’s funeral, but Karl deliberately ignored the grinning Harrington, and walked away in furious silence. He felt guilty, as if his own apathy had played its part in Chris’s death, and suddenly he realised that today, life was going to take a very serious look at Karl Kane, judge his worth …

Less than an hour later and two streets away from the intended address, Karl stepped from his car, tightening the collar of his overcoat in a vain attempt to prevent the noose of chilly wind tightening against his neck. Scrums of dead leaves covered the streets like unhealed scabs. His shoes crunched them, the sound reminding him of childhood days, playing with his father in the park.

Quickly expunging the thought, he pushed through a busted gate leading down the tiny front garden of the house adjacent to Chris’s.

He rang the bell once; then once more, but got no response. He knocked on the front door. No answer, even though he could detect movement from inside. Peeping through the letterbox, he was quickly greeted with a howl. “Get away from the fucking door before I set the dogs on your arse, you peeping Tom bastard!”

“I only want to ask you a couple of questions concerning your neighbour,” responded Karl.

“Right! That does it. Don’t say you weren’t warned!”

Quickly backing out of the tiny garden, Karl moved to the next house, and rapped on the door.

To his relief, the door opened.

“Yes?” asked a man, filthy shirt and jeans, newspaper tucked under his arm like a sergeant major’s baton. The smell of boiled sprouts was everywhere. It stank like baby shit.

“I was wondering if you could help me?”

“Depends, doesn’t it? Are you lost?” asked the man, his thick eyebrows curving suspiciously.

“No, I’m not lost. It’s actually about your neighbour, Chris Brown.”

“Chris Brown?” The man’s face screwed into a fleshy knot. “Called himself Jim Cusack, the bastard. No one about here knew he was a fucking police tout. Didn’t know we had a rat infestation. You a friend of his?”

“Er, no. Not exactly.” In his mind, Karl heard a cock crowing three times. “I was wondering if you heard anything unusual on the night of the murder?”

A hearty “fuck off” was shouted into Karl’s face followed by the front door being slammed on it, barely missing his nose.

Similar greetings awaited him, as he tried two more houses, all expressing their anger that a social leper minus his bell had the audacity to hide in their neighbourhood.

“Got what he deserved,” muttered the saintly looking old lady at number eighteen, her grey hair newly permed and looking like candy floss gone mad. “And any friends of his should get the same,” she suggested,
sagely, smiling like a sharpened knife. Her false teeth were the only things that looked real.

She watched Karl leave, and he could feel her eyes on his back as he made his way to Chris’s house.

Remnants of police tape remained studded to the front door, warning
Do Not Cross. Murder Scene
. Karl ripped the plastic tape away.

Fiddling the stolen key into the lock, he whispered a silent prayer that it would fit.

It did.

Once inside, he quickly closed the door and fell against it, releasing trapped air in his lungs. He was visibly shaking.
Breaking and entering? What have you got yourself into? Wilson would love catching you here. What if he knows what you’re up to, and is outside watching? Shit. Explain your way out of that, Karl me bucko …

The flat was clinically empty. No plants. No pictures. No obstacles. Nothing physically tangible to associate with the human touch; a virtual prison within a prison. What little furnishings there were in the house appeared incidental and mismatched.

Spots on the pristine linoleum caught Karl’s eye. He bent, investigating them. Round. They were the size and shape of fish eyes. Blood? Rust?

From a kitchen drawer, he quickly removed a knife, using it to cut a ghostly teardrop from the linoleum, before encasing it inside a piece of kitchen roll.

Further on, vestiges of shit imprinted with faded shoeprints discoloured the hallway floor. Karl followed them, in reverse, out into the yard. The small enclosure was covered in dog turds encrusted with late-February flies. Watered blood stretched lazily to an open gutter. The line of blood was like a child’s crayon drawing.

In a corner of the yard, deep lines ran perfectly across a flattened piece of dog shit. Karl bent and studied the lines. Shoe tracks.

“You walked on Paisley’s shit and blood, whoever the fuck you were, trailed it in from the yard.” The dog shit with all its answers left nothing but questions in Karl’s head.

Quickly turning, he headed back in to the house, knowing time
wasn’t on his side. Standing in the hallway again, he wondered if he had missed something? He glanced at the sink in the open kitchen. His throat was parched.
I’m dying of thirst,
he thought to himself, before quickly correcting that jinx of a thought to a simple,
I’m thirsty.

After all the thought of water, he finally decided to postpone drinking in the house. Just didn’t feel right. Like robbing the dead.

Without further ado, he quickly moved towards the room he had been dreading. The bedroom. A more substantial door awaited him at the bedroom.

The door, ajar, made him feel quite anxious. He opened the door further, with the toe of his shoe. The full room came suddenly into view like a silent photo without depth or shadow.

Even from the awkward angle where he stood, Karl could see thick blobs of greasy blood staining the bed’s underbelly region. The blood spoor had run its course, finally congealing into an unruly mess, before forming a barrier against the far wall. Its unnatural colour added to the growing surrealism of the moment. It made Karl feel strangely melancholy.

Bending, he scrutinised beneath the bed, regretting it when a
plum-size
cockroach ran straight across his startled face, the insect’s legs sticky with gooey red.

“Dirty bastard! Filthy stinking bastard …” He hated to admit it, but the insect’s sudden appearance unnerved him, further. Particles of flesh and bone were visible on the carpet. One of the particles of flesh looked like a piece of earlobe. It gave Karl the shits. He wondered why there were two distinct patterns of blood-trail? One under the bed; the other closer to the door.
What the hell is that all about?
The blood beneath the bed was rich black, sombre. Dead. The other trail had more of an
oily-sheen
richness to it. Alive.

A survivor’s?

Easing up from the floor, he scanned the room, hoping to find what he originally came here for in the first place. The cupboard surrendered precious little; ditto the wardrobe with two cardboard boxes and a metal container. A wall mirror in the far corner of the room caught his reflection. His face – bone-white and bloodless – stared back at him in disbelief. Something was tugging at his mind. Something eerily
unsettling. He needed to get away from this nightmare, soon. Not soon. Now.

On the brink of defeat, Karl turned to leave, and by sheer fluke spotted the tiny whiteness poking like a shirttail from the back of the wheelchair. He touched the wheelchair, gingerly, imagining he could still feel the heat of Chris’s body on the seat. Quickly, he eased the ream of pages from the wheelchair’s hidden back compartment.

In a cupboard to his right, he found an empty plastic
Tesco
bag; placed the pages inside.

Outside the bedroom, he quickly eased the door shut, suddenly realising that he was – despite his prior sanctimonious thoughts – robbing the dead.

About to make his way to the front door, Karl suddenly found the entire hallway to be filled with shadows. Was someone outside, looking in through the frosted glass of the front door?

Shit!

Someone
was
testing the handle. The door did a little rattle. The rusted sound of the letterbox being pushed open went straight to Karl’s gut. He could see fingers poking through. Someone looking straight at him?

Oh fuck …

With adrenalin pumping, Karl quickly ran for the back door, knowing that someone would in all probability be waiting for him to rush into open arms, capturing him. He could hear wood and glass crunching as the front door went, smashed in with force. Someone was shouting. His name?

Oh fuck!

Had someone told Karl that he would be capable of scaling a ten-foot wall in a matter of seconds, he would have pissed himself laughing. Jumping into his car, he wasn’t laughing. But the pissing couldn’t be ruled out.

S
EAN
H
ARRISON’S FATHER
had taught him
how
to hunt; taught him the gentle squeeze of finger on metal, its power and strength. What he
hadn’t
taught him was the gun’s mule of a kickback when he landed three feet away, on his arse, his shoulder feeling like it had been torn from his body.
‘Only experience can teach you that
,’ laughed his father, lifting him out of the muck.

Only experience
…

Now years later on a dismal Sunday morning, Sean watched his own son, Robert, prepare for the baptism of fire, could see eagerness mixing with nerves in the young boy’s face, pictured himself all those decades ago, nine years old.

Both father and son were kitted out in serious camouflage, as if entering a bad war-torn zone rather than good-hunting territory.
Stencilled on the front of Sean’s camouflage jacket was the legend:
The Buck Stops Here!

“Will it hurt, Da?” whispered Robert, anxiety edging his tiny voice. The rifle held tight against the young boy’s chest dwarfed him.

For a moment, Sean considered his son’s words. “Not you. The pig, perhaps, but only if we don’t get it with one clean shot. We have to get it with one shot. Otherwise, we create problems for ourselves. Understand?”

Robert nodded dutifully, swallowing hard, his tiny Adam’s apple protruding from his thin neck like a robin’s egg.

To Sean’s right, the river coiled out in a great black ribbon of silence, slick as oil. Fluted ripples alone disturbed its perfection. Trees threw charcoal shadows across its edge. Further up, the river cleaved the hunting area in two, all the while hugging a stretch of ground where carcasses of rusted household goods were infested with the rotten stench of animal dung from the nearby zoo. Along the river at night, weird things were said to happen. Strange sounds. Strange smells. Packs of wild dogs going crazy …

Originally, the river had no name, becoming a dumping ground for household goods and dead animals. Then a local poet christened it Apothetae. It wasn’t until later in life that Sean understood the river’s apt name.

Sean and Robert began moving further into the forest with absolute silence of motion, the bright afternoon sun dulling directly behind them. A stiff breeze helped disperse the scent of dead fish, and muddy grass descended into thick carpets of slush along the embankment.

Abruptly, Sean heard something rustling through the blankets of bushes and drooping leaves. Craftily behind them, from the undergrowth, came a sound, low and quiet. The sound grew and fell and then grew again, like someone blowing on an empty bottle. The hairs on Sean’s neck nibbled like tiny fish.

“It’s okay. I think it’s just a dog,” said Sean, reassuringly. There was no immediate response from Robert, whose startled face resembled a mask.

A few seconds later, Robert whispered, “Da … it’s watching …”

“What …?” With a jump, Sean’s eyes captured something in the far belly of the forest, holding it in breathless interest. An almost indiscernible movement – distinguishable only by its textured shape – helped Sean to focus. The wild boar’s eyes were coal. Piercing. Probing.

How long have you been watching us?
wondered Sean.

“It’s smirking at us, Da.”

“Don’t be silly, Robert. All boars look like that.”
You
are
smirking.
The smirk made Sean feel like an interloper.

The boar’s tusks were buckled into some sort of devilish curve. It remained motionless. Watching. For some inexplicable reason, its intentional stillness spooked Sean.

Fish popped for air, breaking the eerie silence.

“Easy, Robert … easy …” Sean could feel his scalp tingle, every hair on his body crack with static. The tension in his neck was trafficking to his spine, forcing all muscles to harden like dry clay.

“What … what do you want me to do, Da?” asked Robert, his voice uncertain, anxious.

Sean licked dry lips. “Slowly bring the rifle up. That’s good.
Nice and easy.
No need to hurry …”

The black in the boar’s eyes was rimmed with bloodshot. The colour gave Sean the willies.

There is something terribly wrong about the boar, its size, demeanour, its smirking defiance. It seems to be toying with us.
Then, just as quickly as it surfaced, the eerie creature vanished.

“It’s gone, Da,” said Robert, relief in his tiny voice. “Hasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Sean smiled falsely. “But just let’s be vigilant. We’ll move across the river, go downstream for a while. Then we can – “His words were abruptly stolen by a sound jolting through his bones and muscles. The sound was silence. Not even a bird. He realised, ominously, that the beast had halted somewhere in the forest, listening for their movement.

Are you smelling us, sniffing us out? Bastard … where the hell are you …?

Without warning, the boar lurched, muscles propelling it forward at an incredible pace.

Taken unaware, Sean fumbled like an amateur for his rifle, the safety
catch on.

Damn!

The pig had picked him out. Kill the most dangerous first; destroy what remains.

Fumbling, Sean finally managed to click the safety off, and aimed from his waist, feeling the collision as the pig hit him, grinning and grunting. His finger never reached the trigger. The beast’s impact was like a freight train.

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

“Da! Da!” sobbed Robert, shaking the motionless body of his father.

Dazed, Sean managed to shake the swampy mist from his head. His one-time ruddy face was the colour of cambric. “Robert …? Are … are you okay? How long was I out …?”

“I … I got it, Da! I got it …”

“What? God …” Rugged at Sean’s feet, the boar stared up at him, its black eyes dull, its mouth no longer smirking. “You … you did it … you did it, Robert! My god … you did it …”

Pushing himself slowly up from the ground, Sean’s body felt like it had just received a good kicking. He hugged Robert. “I’m sorry, Son. I should never have brought you here.”

“I killed it, Da! My first pig. I killed it!”

“And what a pig to kill!” Sean quickly wiped snot and blood from his own nose; tears from Robert’s face. “Now, I need you to gather some kindling. I’m going to gut this beast, here where we stand. Little point dragging its shit and piss home with us, is there?”

“But … don’t you want me to gut it? You said last night I would have to do it.”

Sean smiled. It hurt. “I’ll do this one for you. You’ve earned it. Big time. Go on now, but be careful. Listen out for any sounds.”

Robert exhaled stale air. The relief was evident on his small face as he ran to gather wood.

Deep down, Sean knew he shouldn’t be taking it personally, but he
couldn’t help his feelings. The boar was quietly breathing. Defiance had returned to its eyes.

“Normally, I would put you out of your misery, Mister Boar, with one good slice across your throat.” Sean produced a serrated knife, catching his reflection in it, not liking what he saw. “But I want you to suffer.” He placed the knife’s point directly beneath the boar’s throat, and cut slowly, deliberately.

Mating wood pigeons scattered from a tree, startling him, angering his blood further.

“Scream, why don’t you? Scream and I’ll do it quickly.”

The creature only stared at him, uttering not a sound.

“Scream, you bastard, the way you made me scream in front of my son. Scream!” In a frenzy of knife cuts, Sean was splattered almost instantly with the boar’s blood. “Scream, damn you … damn you …”

Seconds go. Minutes came. Fury spent.

Exhausted, Sean watched the contents spill from the boar’s gut like a bloody slot machine at Vegas. He remembered how he had once found an entire wasps’ nest in the stomach of a pig – with some of the wasps still struggling for survival in the bloody mess.

Kneeling closer, he inspected the first item released from the boar’s gut, using his knife to separate it from the slippery intestines. The carcass of a dead bird was in the bloody soup
du jour
. Mostly vegetation and spongy plant life made up the rest of the menu: roots, berries and tomatoes. A wild turnip, savagely chewed, added flavour.

“You could have given those so-called celebrity cooks on TV a run for their money, Mister Boar,” smiled Sean, nerves and relief hitting home. Then, just as suddenly as the smile appeared, it collapsed.

The boar was suddenly smirking, defiantly once again, its eyes laughing. The animal’s eyes were in sharp contrast to the turnip’s bloody eyes.