John the Revelator (10 page)

His bushy hair was damp. He was pumping sweat.

‘You're like a little green genie up there,' he said. ‘All you're missing is the fecken hookah. Come down here and not have me shouting.'

I scrambled down from the mound and grinned.

‘Hello, Har,' I said.

‘Good god!' He took a step back. ‘John Devine! You're after stretching a bit. Last time I set eyes on you, you weren't as big as a god's cow. How's your mother, son? I haven't seen her this donkey's years. Not since I took that television set off her hands. You were still only a scut.' His bulging shirt shook with suppressed chuckles. Chewing gum poked out the side of his mouth like a crooked tooth. ‘By god, you weren't too pleased about it.'

‘I remember.' I reached into my jacket pocket for my cigarettes. ‘Smoke?'

He took another half-step back and held his hand out like he was stopping traffic.

‘Gave 'em up,' he said. ‘The pipes are bad. Any sense, you'll do the same. Bastard hard, though. Constipated for a month. Got piles on me arse like grapes. But I managed to keep my figure.'

He tugged at the tights around his waist.

‘What brings you here?' I said.

‘Oh, just looking for bits and bobs. This place is a goldmine usually. Want to buy a phone?'

‘No thanks. Those things turn your brain to black pudding.'

‘Ah.' He made a scoffing noise. ‘That's your mother talking.'

He spat his gum into some silver paper, put it back in his shirt pocket, and with a flourish, produced a card and gave it to me.

 

Harry Farrell
Miscellaneous Goods
‘If we can't get it, it can't be got.'

 

‘You need anything son, anything at all, the number's on the back.'

He moved the briefcase onto the passenger side, grabbed hold of the steering wheel and hauled himself into the van.

‘Tell your mother I was asking for her.'

He started the engine. I watched him drive away through the perimeter of rusting car hulks and patches of yellowed grass like crime-scene outlines testifying to recent acts of autocide, and then he was gone.

 

I walked home across the meadows, cutting through a three-cornered field with an old fairy fort in the middle, a stand of evergreens encircled by a wall built from quarry stones. The grass there was long and yellowed. I was exhausted by the day's toil, so I lay down to rest in the shade of the fort. I gazed at the reddening sky, and after a while I could scarcely tell if I was lying flat on the face of the earth or hanging from its underside, magnetised by gravity. I closed my eyes, but the skin of my eyelids didn't so much blot out the twilight sun as merely dim its intensity. My mind wandered, drugged with heat and fatigue, imagining the world as a stone skimming across the surface of space, sending ripples outward across the universe. Or maybe it was a ball bobbing in the vast blueness. A mote of dust floating across the pollen-strewn heavens.

A rustling sound made me open my eyes and sit up, dizzy and confused. When the sunspots cleared, I saw a grey buck hare, not ten yards away. He watched me warily before burrowing into a hole under the wall of the fairy fort. Slow and stealthy, I got to my feet and crept after him in a sort of caveman's crouch, and I climbed over the wall and into the shadowy glade.

The air was rich with pine-needle smells. Cones were scattered on the ground like grenades. It was dank and cool, sheltered by a latticework of overhanging branches. I pushed through the leaves and came to a clearing at the centre of the fort, where the ground rose steeply into a clay mound.

Suddenly cold, I rubbed my arms.

At the summit of the mound was a nest of briars and twigs. I climbed the slope to get a better look. Inside the nest, a single black egg lay on a bed of black feathers. As I ran my fingers over its smooth surface, a jagged line began to work its way across the shell with a wet cracking sound. The egg broke apart and I caught a glimpse of blood-smeared flesh, a single eye, inflamed and rheumy, and I drew back and lost my footing and slipped and tumbled down the slope. Above me, something cawed and screeched. I scrambled to my feet and bolted, headlong through the thicket, thorns and briars scratching my skin, clothes smeared and torn. Hoofs thudded the ground behind me, hot breath on my neck. I cleared the wall and tore across the field, black wings rending the air at my back.

Spears of light seared through my eyelids. I opened them. My shirt was sodden with sweat and I was weakened by the heat. Above me, the dying sun glared down, a bloodshot Cyclops eye.

 

School was out long enough for the novelty to have worn off. The radio kept saying it was the warmest summer in years, that burn-time was down to an all-time low of twenty minutes. Everywhere felt central heated.

Slathered in my mother's sun cream, I met with Jamey outside Donahue's pub. He was slouched against the wall as though posing for a photograph, one boot flat against terracotta brickwork tagged with faded Tippex swastikas and Crass logos and H-Block slogans.

‘You gonna help me spend this?' he said, waving a wad of notes.

Earlier that day his family had left on holiday, entrusting him with the keys to the house. Dee was nervous, and when his dad's back was turned she slipped him a handful of twenties ‘for emergencies'.

‘I've to meet someone inside,' Jamey said. ‘Have a pint with me while I'm waiting. I'm buying.'

We ducked into the pub. The dank shade and stale beer smells were a welcome relief from the blazing sunlight. A television blared over the bar. To the rear of the room, on a small stage set into an alcove that looked like a midget Santa's grotto, a man in a short-sleeved summer shirt plugged a mandolin into a buzzing Peavey amp. He fiddled with a crackling lead and ran a plectrum over the strings. The chord rang out, almost medieval-sounding. Satisfied, he turned the amp off, killing the hum, and nipped out to the beer garden for a smoke.

Jamey brought two pints over to the corner snug and set them on the table.

‘Who you meeting?' I said.

‘Gunter Prunty. Biker type. Works in Waxon. Remember I told you about the fags and booze I ripped off from The Ginnet? His idea.'

I never understood why Jamey got involved in this kind of stuff. He was capable of doing the dumbest things.

‘I kept lookout while he went in the skylight,' he said. ‘Gunter cut me in.'

We were just getting stuck into our second round when the main door opened. Sunshine flooded the room and backlit three tall men in wax jackets and heavy boots. The biggest of them wore elaborate sideburns and a goatee and had an oversized head like a St Bernard's. His hair was done in a sort of greaser pompadour, tapering off in an aerodynamic spoiler at the collar.

‘Speak of the devil,' Jamey said under his breath.

Gunter strode over to the bar and put his elbows on the counter and his right boot on the foot rail. He was well over six feet tall. As though sensing he was being stared at, he scanned the room. His eyes stopped at our table. Jamey raised his glass and dipped his head. Gunter nodded back. His friends climbed onto the high stools.

‘The one with the ponytail is Fintan,' Jamey said, barely moving his lips. ‘He works in the glass factory in Ballo. The ferrety-looking lad in the denim jacket is Davy. Acid casualty. Scrambled his medulla oblongata.'

Gunter bought a pint of stout and took a gulp. He hitched up his baggy-arsed jeans and lurched towards our table. He moved like a man who'd spent time inventing a whole new way of walking. You could feel the impact of his motorcycle boots as they clodded off the wooden floorboards.

Jamey slid over in the seat.

‘Boys,' Gunter said, and put his stout on the table. ‘Mind if we join you?'

He beckoned the other two over without waiting for an answer.

The musician came in from the beer garden, strapped on his mandolin and plucked out a melody. He closed his eyes, put his lips to the microphone and began to sing in a nasal, reedy voice rendered metallic by the dinky PA.

‘
Well, the cuckoo,
' he whinnied, ‘
she's a pretty bird, and she wobbles as she flies.
'

We all huddled in the snug like shaggy beasts. It was hard to hold a conversation, so we watched the singer until he took another break. Gunter bought us a round. He removed a match from between his teeth as one of the bar girls set the drinks down.

‘So, Jay,' he said. ‘You still writing them yarns?'

‘On and off.'

‘Tell us one.'

‘What, now?'

‘Aye. No such thing as a free drink, ever hear that said?'

I could imagine the conflict in Jamey's mind. He wouldn't appreciate being talked at like he was a performing monkey. But at the same time, he loved the attention.

‘Ever hear the one about Philip Divilly?' he said after a few moments' consideration.

Gunter gulped from his glass.

‘I did not,' he said, wiping foam from his lip. ‘Tell me.'

Jamey cleared his throat.

About fifty years ago, Philip Divilly was considered the finest tenor in the whole county. The sound of his airs used to put people in a trance. Women fell in love with him on the spot.'

Fintan raised his head and glowered, a dog disturbed from its thoughts.

‘Pishróg,' he muttered.

‘Go on, son,' Gunter said to Jamey. ‘Don't mind him.'

‘Well,' Jamey continued, ‘the men of Balinbagin didn't like that one bit. So they got together and went to see an old tinker witch famous for curing warts and shingles and shit. Long story short, they asked her would she put a hex on him.'

Fintan tightened his ponytail and yawned.

‘Pish,' he said, ‘róg.'

‘Shut your cake-hole, Fin,' Gunter snapped.

Jamey ignored the interruption and continued with the story.

‘She refused at first,' he said, ‘but they kept driving up the price until she couldn't refuse any longer and she went to work with her rabbits' feet and bowls of milk and eye of newt and toe of frog and all that jive.'

Jamey's voice grew louder, gaining confidence in the story. His speech patterns had begun to mimic Gunter's gruff tones, and I wondered if Gunter noticed.

‘One morning Philip Divilly woke up and his voice was gone. All the boys of Balinbagin were delighted. But they made a bad mistake. When it came time to pay the witch, they reneged on the deal and offered her half what they'd agreed on. She told them to shove their money and sought out Philip Divilly. She told him about how all the men of Balinbagin were set again him. Well, he went apeshit. He vowed revenge, and the witch was only too glad to help. She told him that come the next full moon, he was to stand on the crossroads and at the stroke of midnight begin to sing. Didn't matter what, so long as he opened his mouth.

‘So he went out to the crossroads and when midnight struck he drew in an almighty breath and let it out and a great wind rose up and sparks flew around him like a bonfire, and a spirit flew into his gob and he was changed from a man into a sort of wraith.'

‘What's a wraith?' Gunter said.

‘A demon. Y'know, like a ring-wraith. His face grew long and a goat's smeg grew on his chin and he stretched to twelve feet tall and he looked a right mad bastard.'

‘A bit like Fintan here,' Gunter said, and planted a slow-motion punch on his friend's jaw. Fintan affected a horrible parody of a grin that vanished from his face as quickly as it appeared. Jamey went on talking, his voice as portentous as a preacher's.

‘So he wreaked a terrible vengeance on the men of Balinbagin. He broke into their houses while they slept and slit their throats and pulled out their tongues and ate their hearts and drank their blood.'

He paused for breath and a sip of his drink and then continued.

‘He still walks the roads at night, and anyone who hears his voice is lulled asleep. And he takes out a slash-hook blade and slits their throat and puts his mouth to the wound and sucks their soul out through their windpipe. And he keeps those souls in his pocket and sells one to Old Nick every Halloween in exchange for another year on earth.

‘They say if you put your ear to the ground any summer's night you can hear his boots on the road no matter where he is in the county, and the only protection from him is to sing at the top of your voice so you can't hear his magic airs.'

Jamey took another slurp of his beer, sat back and folded his arms.

‘Is that it?' Gunter said.

‘That's it.'

The musician in the corner started tuning up his mandolin for another song.

Gunter said, ‘How come you never spin yarns like that, Fintan?'

Fintan shrugged and said, ‘You ever hear the one about Snow White and Pinocchio?'

‘I think I've been spared that one,' Gunter said.

‘Aye,' Fintan continued. ‘Snow White is sitting on Pinocchio's face moaning tell-a-lie-tell-the-truth-tell-a-lie-tell-the-truth.'

Gunter cackled and threw more stout down his throat.

There was a bad feeling in the room, squalid and muggy. Somehow, the beer had soured in my mouth.Dust motes danced in the shafts of window light; everything had taken on an amber cast. I got to my feet.

‘What's up?' Gunter said. ‘The company not to your liking?'

‘I may go,' I said. ‘I'll see you later, Jamey.'

Jamey nodded, but wouldn't meet my eye, only a quick sidelong glance, as if I'd seen something I wasn't supposed to see.

‘Later,' was all he'd say.

 

A harvest moon rose in the mackerel sky as I walked home, alcohol buzzing in my head like background radiation.

My mother was sat at the kitchen table. Before her was a bottle of Powers, a glass and a Silk Cut Blue burning in the seashell ashtray. A tallow candle gouted in a saucer, its aquarium light playing across her face.