Garbage Man (10 page)

Then the bone-baby is gone. It has passed through. She tries to follow but she too gets stuck. There's a huge warmth coming from the tiny hole at the end of the passage, huge and powerful. Eventually, she squeezes through.

This time the fall is short. She lands on a stone floor on her feet. The entity has finally put her down. She feels solid, feels her own weight at last and knows she can fall no further. The heat and brightness are coming from a giant blast furnace which occupies one entire wall of this cavern she's standing in. Inside the furnace, molten rock and metal bubbles and spits. She takes a few steps back and turns all about, looking for the bone-baby. The bone-baby has gone.

For a while she thinks it has crawled into the furnace to extinguish itself forever. Either that or to live in the most intense agony it could find. Surely the furnace was the worst torment of all in this damned and forgotten building.

Then she looks down and realises she can't see her feet. At first this makes no sense to her. She looks and looks, not understanding what she sees. There's a misshapen lump of flesh in the way. She steps to one side and the lump comes with her. It's attached somehow. She still can't see how or why.

Something moves within her. Deep inside her abdomen. Buried there.

No wonder the shape makes no sense. It is the flesh of her belly as she has never seen it before. She is pregnant. The bone-baby is inside her. Her shape is unrecognisable because it is her once-smooth, naked belly-flesh stretched over the now foetally-coiled baby with all its wounds. Razors and knives and shattered glass and fractured bones made one with her. Already, its points and breaks, its shattered edges and grimy barbs are tearing through the walls of her womb. She can feel the bone-baby feeding off her insides, draining her strength. She is suddenly exhausted.

The first contraction is a mind-ripping shock. Enough to send her insane in a moment. She understands now what this will do to her. Her uterus shrinks, gripping the bone-baby, trying to force it out. Instead of beginning the baby's journey through the birth canal, this clenching forces the baby's weapons of self-harm into her body. Her liver, spleen and kidneys are skewered in the first few seconds of labour. The amniotic sac is punctured in many places and the fluid washes her legs in a shower of watery gore and mucus. The damage of its downward passage will be her destruction.

The bone-baby has completed its search. It is ready to be born.

And she will be the one to bear it.

***

Tamsin wakes, sweat-soaked, two fists pressed deep into her belly, biting back the scream. There is warmth and wetness between her legs. She puts her fingers there and brings them to her eyes expecting to see the dark signature of blood. Instead she smells urine.

7

The binoculars were handy but she didn't always need them.

Many of the things Mavis Ahern saw happened right outside her house or across the street. Sometimes it was necessary to pretend she was on her way to the paper shop in order to find out where people were going. That kind of surveillance was tricky. She knew she already had a reputation as a meddler. When she followed someone, she had to be absolutely certain they either didn't know who she was or didn't know she was there. She was God's eye in the Meadowlands Estate; she couldn't afford for His eye to be put out through her own carelessness.

The Smithfield girl was up to something. It was obvious to Mavis if not to anyone else. Three times now - each occasion was clearly marked on the Agatha Smithfield record sheet, pinned to the fridge with a suffering Christ magnet - the girl had walked alone along Bluebell Way, passing Mavis's house on the opposite side of the street. There was nothing in that direction worth walking to as far as Mavis could tell. The recreation ground was the other way. The post office, co-op and chip shop were on the far side of the rec. Even The Compass pub, where the youths bought and sold their drugs in the car park, was back past The Smithfield's own house.

Following the girl was impossible; Aggie would notice her immediately, especially after their last encounter. The best view she would get if the girl came past again would be from around the side wall dividing her property from the next door house. She glanced at the times of the sightings; all three were Sundays, one mid-morning when Mavis had not long been back from church, the other two shortly after lunch. It was simple then; the following Sunday, she would be ready. She would devote the day to this one matter. There had to be a way to bring the girl back into the flock but first she had to know the nature of the girl's sin. It would be the power this knowledge gave her that would provide the impetus for the girl to comply with her wishes. Yes, it was blackmail but the ends utterly justified the means.

Mavis would teach the girl about the love of God first. Then she would teach her about prayer. Right here in the living room. On their knees. Mavis would show her the way. It was time to bring the sheep back into God's pasture. One at a time at first and then, as the flock grew, she would lead them home in droves.

***

It seemed as though winter had no plan to end. Until the weather began to change, any kind of change, Mason knew there was little he could do in his garden.

Other things kept him occupied.

Upstairs there were two spare ‘bedrooms' neither of which he used for sleeping. The larger one contained a wardrobe left by the previous owners. When he had spare items or clothes, he put them in this room in boxes. The air in there smelled of damp cardboard and perspiration. There was a set of free weights in the corner. He used them occasionally to ‘hurt' himself back into his body when the calling he'd first heard in the woods wanted to speak to him again. Lifting weights helped to dampen the effect. If he worked hard enough he could stumble to his bed and fall asleep, still dripping sweat, and wake up clear and silent-minded. Recently, he'd been spending more and more time up there. The way he lifted weights didn't enlarge his muscles, it had the effect of bringing grooves and curves into relief as his fat burned. A vain man would have spent time admiring the effect in the mirror. Mason Brand never bothered.

In the smaller of the two spare rooms he fitted a blackout roller-blind. Testing it in the middle of the day with the door shut threw the room into complete darkness. He changed the bulb in the light fitting for a 25 watt red bulb. From the boxes in the next room he brought four tray-baths, an indoor clothes line, some tongs and developer, stop and acid fixer. He hadn't worn a watch for many years but now he would need one. All he could find was a wind-up alarm clock in one of the boxes. He gave its key a couple of twists and it ticked immediately. There was no work surface so he brought the kitchen table upstairs. It wouldn't be for long, after all. For the moment he could eat standing at the kitchen counter.

As he worked he found he was excited. His hands trembled ever so slightly and it made him laugh to himself. Like a kid again. He mastered the emotion quickly. This was not something he was going to allow himself to get used to. Nor would he do it again once this task was finished. When the room was ready, he pulled down the blackout blind and tested the light levels. It was perfect. He left the room in darkness.

As he shut the door his telephone rang downstairs. He did not recognise the sound. Its tone was strange in the silence of the house. A message coming in from somewhere. A message for him. There was no answering machine. The phone rang and rang.

As if breaking out of a trance he hurried down the stairs and picked up the receiver. He didn't know what to say. Finally the voice at the other end took the initiative.

‘Hello? Mr. Brand?'

‘I . . . yes.'

‘Shall I come round?'

‘No.'

‘We need to find somewhere.'

‘I know.'

‘If I pick you up, we could walk there together.'

‘No.'

There was a short, tense sigh. Words snatched back before they were out.

‘You can't come here again,' he said. ‘People will notice.'

‘I don't care. I don't give a fuck.'

‘I do. I'd like to live here a little longer.'

‘Have you got a mobile?'

‘No.'

‘We'll meet then? Somewhere . . .'

‘Outdoors. Trees and sky for depth and background. Texture and skin. It has to be . . .'

‘What?'

‘Natural.'

‘I wanted some modern stuff too, you know.'

‘Nature is modern. Nature is ancient. It's all the same. You'll get what I give you or you'll get nothing.'

‘Fine. Where then?'

‘Shreve Country Park. Off the beaten track.'

‘I know a place. It's where people go to -'

‘That's no good. On the other side. By the landfill. There's a quieter spot.'

‘It stinks like shit over there.'

‘It's a quieter spot. Take it or leave it.'

‘Fine. What time?'

‘Before dusk.'

‘What should I wear?'

‘It's not important.'

‘Where is this place?'

‘There's a concrete pumping station by the rock dam.'

‘I know where you mean.'

‘Behind that, there's a track leading off the footpath. The gate is broken and overgrown. You'll find it to the left of a hollow tree.'

There was silence on the line for a while. He listened to quiet white noise. He thought he could hear her breathing. Suddenly, he didn't want her to change her mind.

‘I'll have a can of mace with me, you know.'

‘Bring whatever makes you feel safe. I don't care. Before dusk tonight. That's not long from now. Don't be late.'

He placed the receiver down and stood unmoving in his hallway for a long time.

***

The old camper van hadn't moved from its parking place on the block-paved frontage of his house since he'd arrived six years previously. The tyres were long since flat, there was green and yellow mildew growing on the rubber sealant around the windows and windscreen. Rust expanded from several sites like a skin disease. People had made their complaints from time to time but it was his property and his car. There was nothing they could make him do about it unless someone proved the vehicle was a danger. Most people had learned to simply leave Mason alone and that was how he liked it.

The only part of the camper that still worked was the rear door through which the tiny living space was accessed. Some nights when he couldn't sleep he would take an A4 pad and sit on the dampening foam cushions by candlelight and imagine he was back in the woods. It was a dangerous pastime because it was the kind of activity that opened him to the calling. Some nights he missed the woods so much he was happy to take the risk. And, if he heard the calling, he wrote what it said.

If he needed to shop for anything or go anywhere, Mason rode a bicycle. The bike came from the recycling centre at the Shreve tip and that was the place he was most likely to go when he needed something. Winter was giving way, releasing its grip, weakening as the Earth progressed around the sun. Although it had held Shreve tight in its clamped fist this year, time was prising its fingers free. Perhaps no one else would know the change was coming for another few days - when the weather began to soften - but Mason felt the changes in his blood the way he felt the phases of the moon affect his mood. He needed new tools and new pieces for his old tools. The tip was the place to find them.

He cycled off early to miss the traffic, cold morning light gleaming on the speckled chrome of his handlebars.

The tip was a great place. It opened at 7am and closed at 6pm in winter, 8pm in the summer. People took their bags of garden waste and old furniture and broken TVs and all manner of leavings. Most of it went into the crusher ready to be taken to the landfill. There were bays for separating items out of the rubbish; places for wood, glass, cardboard, electronics, broken domestic appliances, hardcore, soil, green waste and metals. But many people still dropped items for separation into the main waste bay.

As Mason cycled past the entrance to Shreve Country Park he was unable to stop himself from glancing in and smiling at the memory of what had taken place there. He had done a good job, a professional job. In spite of the guilt he felt over letting himself be manipulated into working again, he had the girl's word that she would receive his knowledge. He pushed the smile away quickly when he saw someone leaving the car park on foot. It was a man walking two panting, salivating bulldogs. It looked more like the dogs were walking him. Mason didn't make eye contact, he never did, but he recognised the man from Bluebell Way. There was a faintest waft of cigarettes as he cycled by; that and the odour of the overheated mutts.

His journey took him around the town's small ring road and off on a dead-end road leading to the tip. As he cycled along this road, three trucks full of collected waste turned out of the tip's entrance and grumbled past him. He was buffeted by dust, diesel and the smell of waste - something he almost relished. So sensitive was his nose that he could put a fair guess on what each truck contained.

The staff knew him and knew also that he wasn't one for conversation. Instead they nodded to him and smiled. Mason liked to think he had the respect of the people that worked at the tip. He doubted they were very well paid, but they, like him, could see the value of all the things the rest of the town threw away. He was quite sure they capitalised on it whenever they could.

Mason parked his bike outside the office where it would be safe and walked around to the portakabin where they displayed dumped items ready for resale. He spotted a box of books and went immediately to it. Here was something more for his shelf in the shed. He looked for classics mainly but sometimes a modern thriller would catch his eye. As he rummaged, a car pulled up at the main bay. Mason glanced up and saw Richard Smithfield's Volvo pull in. He edged quickly to one side. This was a man he had no desire to talk to or meet. Ever.