Blueeyedboy (41 page)

Of course I don’t believe in ghosts. I scarcely believe in the living. And yet, that’s just what I became, a shadow of my brother. When the Emily scandal broke, I reinvented his story. I already had his gift, of course, thanks to my own condition. Which made it so much easier to make them believe that I was telling the truth.

I started to wear Ben’s colour, his clothes. At first just for practicality’s sake, because my own clothes were too big. I didn’t wear blue all the time. A sweatshirt here, a T-shirt there. Ma didn’t seem to notice. The scandal surrounding Emily White had made me into a hero; people bought me drinks in pubs; girls suddenly found me attractive. I’d started at Malbry College that term. I let Ma believe I was studying medicine. My teenage skin had finally cleared; I’d even lost my stammer. Best of all, I was still losing weight. With my brothers gone, I seemed to have lost that ravenous need to consume, to collect, to swallow everything in sight. What started with Mal had ended with Ben. At last, my craving was satisfied.

5

You are viewing the webjournal of

blueeyedboy
.

Posted at
:
21.56 on Tuesday, February 19

Status
:
restricted

Mood
:
wistful

Listening to
:
Judy Garland
: ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’

Well, Clair – you got your way. I finally went back to Group today. With everything going so nicely to plan, I think I can allow myself a little harmless distraction. Besides, this may be the last time –

It’s a little powder-beige box of a room with a spider plant on a shelf by the door and a picture of Angel Blue on the wall. The chairs are orange, and have been arranged in a circle so that no one feels inferior. In the middle of the circle is a small table on which there is a flowered tray with a teapot, some cups, a plate of biscuits (Bourbon creams – which I hate, by the way), some lined A4 paper, a bundle of pens and the obligatory box of tissues.

Well, don’t expect any tears from me.
Blueeyedboy
never cries.

‘Hello! It’s so great to see you,’ said Clair. (She always says that to everyone.) ‘How are you feeling?’

‘OK, I guess.’

I’m rather less articulate in real life than I am online. One of the many reasons that I still prefer to stay at home.

‘What happened to your face?’ she said. She’d already forgotten my fic, of course – or decided it had to be all in my head.

I shrugged. ‘I had an accident.’

She gave me a look of fake sympathy. She looks like her mother, Maureen Pike; especially now that she’s reaching that age. Forty-one, forty-two; and suddenly it all moves south, no, not to Hawaii, but to some bleaker territory, a place of dry gulches and fallen rocks and holy rolling wilderness. A far cry, indeed, from
ClairDeLune
, who posts erotic fic on my site and who claims to be only thirty-five. Still, as you must have guessed, who we are on
badguysrock
can differ wildly from our real-life selves. As long as it stays a fantasy, who really cares which role we adopt? Cowboy or Indian, black hat or white, no one makes a judgement.

And yet, these games we like to play are linked to an underlying layer of truth – an untapped stratum of desire. We are what we dream. We know what we want. We know that we are
worth
it –

And if what we want is wickedness? If what we want is iniquity?

Well, maybe we are worth that, too. And the wages of sin is –

‘Tea?’ Clair indicated the flowered tray.

Tea. The poor man’s Prozac. ‘No, thanks.’

Terri, who takes her tea black and always ignores the biscuits – but who will eat a whole tub of chocolate-chip ice cream the moment she gets home – patted the chair beside her.

‘Hi, Bren,’ she simpered.

‘Fuck off,’ I told her.

I ran my eyes over the rest of the group. Yes, they were all there. Half a dozen assorted headcases; plus would-be writers; soapbox queens; failed poets (is there any other kind?); all desperate for a chance to be heard. But only one of them matters to me. Bethan, with the Irish eyes, watching me so hungrily –

Today she was wearing a sleeveless grey top that showed the stars tattooed down her arms.
That Irish girl of Nigel’s
, Ma calls her, refusing even to mention the name.
The one with all those nasty tattoos
.

Nasty
is my mother’s word for those things over which she has no control. My photographs. My orchids. My fic. In fact, I rather like Bethan’s tattoos, which help to hide the silvery scars that she has had since adolescence, and which criss-cross her arms like spiders’ webs. Is
that
what Nigel saw in her? That passion for stars that echoed his own? That furtive, perpetual sense of distress?

In spite of her garish appearance, Bethan hates to be stared at. Perhaps that’s why she hides herself beneath so many layers of deception. Tattoos, piercings, identities. As a child, she was docile and shy; mousy; almost invisible. Well, that’s Catholicism for you, I suppose. A perpetual war between repression and excess. No wonder Nigel fell for her. She was that rare individual: someone more damaged than he was.

‘Stop staring at me, Brendan,’ she said.

I wish she wouldn’t call me that.
Brendan
has a sour smell, like something damp in the cellar. It makes my mouth go fuzzy-felt dry, and its colour is – well, you know what it is.
Bethan
is no better, with its snuffy scent of church incense. I preferred her as
Albertine
; colourless, immaculate –

Clair intervened. ‘Now, Bethan, please. You know what we said. I’m sure Bren didn’t mean to stare.’ She gave me one of her syrupy looks. ‘And seeing as you’re here, Bren, why don’t we start with you today? I hear you’ve been going out more. That’s good.’

I gave a shrug.

‘Where have you been going, Bren?’

‘Around. You know. Out. Town.’

She gave a wide, approving smile. ‘That’s really great to hear,’ she said. ‘And I’m so glad you’re writing again. Is there anything you’d like to read for us today?’

I shrugged again.

‘Now, don’t be shy. You know we’re here to help you.’ She turned towards the rest of the group. ‘Everyone, would you please show Bren how special he is to all of us? How much we want to help him?’

Oh no. Not the fucking group hug. Anything but that. Please
.

‘I do have a little something—’ I said, more to divert their attention than because of any need to confess.

Clair’s eyes were fixed upon me now, hungry and expectant. It’s the look she gets on her face sometimes when she’s telling us about Angel Blue. And I
do
look rather like him, of course – that, at least, was not a lie – which means, thanks to the halo effect, that Clair has a soft spot for me, and a tendency to believe what I say.

‘Really? Can we hear it?’ she said.

I looked across at Bethan once more. I used to think she hated me, and yet, perhaps she’s the only one who really understands what it is to live every moment with the dead, to speak with the dead, to sleep with the dead –

‘We’d love to hear it, Bren,’ said Clair.

‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’ I said, still directing my gaze towards Bethan. She was watching intently, her blue eyes narrowed like gas flames.

‘Of course,’ said Clair. ‘Don’t we, everyone?’

Nods all around the circle. I noticed that Bethan stayed perfectly still.

‘It may be a little – edgy,’ I said. ‘Another murder, I’m afraid.’ I smiled at Clair’s expression and at the way the others leaned forward, just like pugs at feeding time. ‘Sorry about that, guys,’ I said. ‘You’re going to think that’s all I do.’

6

You are viewing the webjournal of
blueeyedboy
,
posting on
:
[email protected]

Posted at
:
22.31 on Tuesday, February 19

Status
:
public

Mood
:
clean

Listening to
:
The Four Seasons
: ‘Bye Bye Baby’

He calls her Mrs Baby Blue. She thinks she is an artist. Certainly, she looks like one: her dirt-blonde hair is artistically tousled; she wears paint-spattered jumpsuits and long strings of beads and likes to burn scented candles, which help the creative process, she says (plus they get rid of the smell of paint).

Not that she has accomplished much. No, all her creative passion has gone into raising her daughter. A child is like a work of art, and this one is perfect, she tells herself; perfect and talented and good –

He has been watching her from afar. He thinks how beautiful she is, with her neat little bob and her blanched-almond skin and her little red coat with the pointed hood. She looks nothing like her mother. Everything about her is self-contained. Even her name is beautiful. A name that smells of roses.

Her mother, on the other hand, is everything he most dislikes. Inconstant; pretentious; a parasite, feeding off her daughter, living through her, stealing her life with her expectations –

Blueeyedboy
despises her. He thinks of all the harm she has done – to him, to both of them – and he wonders:
Would anyone really care?

All things considered, he thinks maybe not. The world would be cleaner without her.

Cleaner
. What a wonderful word. In blue, it maps out what he does, what he is and what he will achieve, in one.
Cleaner
.

The perfect crime comes in four stages. Stage One is obvious. Stage Two takes time. Stage Three is a little harder, but by now he is getting used to it. Five murders, counting Diesel Blue, and he wonders if he can call himself a serial killer yet, or if he first needs to refine his style.

Style is important to
blueeyedboy
. He wants to feel there’s a poetry, a greater purpose in what he does. He would like to do something intricate: a dissection; a beheading; something dramatic, eccentric and strange. Something that will make them shiver; something that will set him apart from the rest. Most importantly, he would like to watch; to see the expression in her eyes; to have her know at last who he is –

He knows from his observation that when she is alone in the house, Mrs Baby Blue likes to take long baths. She stays in the bath for an hour at least, reading magazines – he has seen the telltale watermarks in the bundles of papers she puts out for recycling. He has seen the flicker of candles against the frosted window glass and caught the scent of her bath oil as the water rushes into the drain. Baby Blue bathtime is sacrosanct. She never answers the telephone; never even answers the door. He knows this. He has tried it. She doesn’t even lock herself in –

He waits in the garden. He watches the house. Waits for the glow of candles and the sound of water in the pipes. Waits for Mrs Baby Blue; and then, very quietly, lets himself in.

The house has been redecorated. There are new paintings on the walls – abstracts for the most part – a scarlet and brown Axminster carpet in the hall.

Axminster. Ax. Minster. A red word. What does it mean? Axe-murderer. Axe. Minster. Murder in the Cathedral
. The thought distracts him for a moment, makes him feel dizzy and remote, brings that taste into his mouth again, that fruity, rotting sweetness that heralds the worst of his headaches. He concentrates on the colour blue; its soothing properties, its calm. Blue is the blanket he reaches for whenever he feels alone or afraid; he closes his eyes, clenches his fists and thinks to himself –

It’s not my fault.

When he opens them, the taste and the headache are both gone. He looks around the silent house. The layout is as he remembers it; there’s the same lurking scent of turpentine; and those china dollies,
not
thrown away, but under glass in the parlour, all starey-eyed and sinister among their faded ringlets and lace.

The bathroom is tiled in aqua and white. Mrs B is reclining, eyes closed, in the water. Her face is a startling turquoise – some beauty mask, he conjectures. There is a copy of
Vogue
on the floor. Something smells of strawberries. Mrs B favours bath bombs that leave a sparkly residue: a layer of stardust on her skin.

Stellatio
: the act of unconsciously transferring bath-bomb glitter on to another person without their knowledge or consent.

Stellata
: the tiny fragments of sparkly stuff that find their way into his hair, his skin; three months later, he’s still finding those bright flecks around the house, signalling his guilt in Morse code.

He watches her in silence. He could do it now, he tells himself; but sometimes the urge to be seen is too strong; and he wants to see the look in her eyes. He lingers for a moment; and then, some sense alerts her to him. She opens her eyes – for a moment there is no shock at all, just a wide, blank amazement, like that of those dollies in the hall – and then she is sitting up, a surge of water pulling at her, making her heavy, making her slow, and the smell of strawberries is suddenly overwhelming, and the glittery water splashes his face, and he is leaning into the bathtub, and she’s punching at him with her helpless fists, and he grabs her by her soapy hair and pushes her under the surface.

It is surprisingly easy. Even so, he dislikes the mess. The woman is covered with glittery stuff that transfers on to his skin. The scent of synthetic strawberry intensifies. She heaves and struggles beneath his weight, but gravity is against her, and the weight of the water holds her down.

He waits for several minutes, thinking of those pink wafers in the tins of Family Circle, and another scent emerges from the lightning chain of words –
Wafer. Communion. Holy Ghost
. He allows himself to relax; gives his breathing time to slow down, then carefully, methodically, he goes about his housework.