Head Injuries (14 page)

    She broke off, breathless. The speed and panic of her recollection had shocked me.

    'You've called the police?' I said, knowing the answer.

    'No.'

    Seamus leaned forward and paused a moment before speaking. I felt like someone who had asked a twattish question of a particularly patronising politician.

    'David,' he said and licked his lips, 'have you been having any dreams? Dreams of suffocation?'

    I blinked at him.

    'I didn't tell you about that.' I said, wishing my lips weren't so dry or the chunk of meat in my ribcage wasn't trying so hard to get out.

    'No,' he said, spreading his hands. The liquid in the bottle trapped between his thumb and forefinger made a treacly journey around the glass neck. In the thick light, I clearly saw his fingerprints smearing its surface. 'I had a guess. See, Helen's been having dreams of fire and thick smoke.'

    'Me too. Well, smoke at least,' I said, thinking of the fumes that had chased me out of sleep before Helen showed up to put the pieces of my back together.

    'So why?' asked Helen. 'Why are we having the same dreams, or if not the same dreams, then how come were sharing the same elements?'

    'It's like…' Seamus began, 'we've opened up our heads and nailed them together so that we're all sharing the same Widescreen movie.'

    'Hmm,' I intoned, gravely. 'Can I have a bottle of that meths you're drinking, Shay? I'm fed up with reality too.'

    'Look,' he said, 'we're sharing too much. We've all met someone. Some weird figure-'

    There are some pretty weird figures right in front of my face, mate,' I spluttered, feeling that I should defend Eve.

    He held up his hand. 'Fair enough, but it's happened. We've met people. And there's some common land in our dreams. We're plugged in to each other, David. It's like we were back at Seven Arches again, isn't it? Don't you feel it too?'

    He was right. If I took the time to relax into the evening, before long I'd notice that we were breathing in time and mirroring each other in posture, expression. Our heart rates would be synchronous. We'd be new-born kittens in a basket.

    'Yeah. But I could still murder a beer.'

    He clumped downstairs to the kitchen and Helen sat down in his place. I felt like a shrink accepting his next appointment.

    'We're going to bait it, David. Tonight.' She smiled and breathed in deeply.

    'Does Seamus know?' I asked.

    She nodded. 'He's brought a stack of beer with him. And some voddie. More than enough.'

    'More than enough for what? Are we going to invite it in for a piss-up? Whatever the shuddering fuck it is.'

    She rubbed my hand with her finger and a tube of ash dropped on to my knuckles. 'It'll be okay.'

    'How will it be okay? How do you mean, bait it? What do we have to do?'

    'Nothing. Remember I said that it came for me when I was at my most vulnerable? We get vulnerable.'

    'Helen, if you think I'm going to spend the evening on the bog with my keks round my ankles-'

    She laughed, though I was only half-joking. 'There are alternatives,' she said.

    What, we hump each other?'

    She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes but that didn't exactly pass as a denial in my book.

    'You've had stuff happen to you while you've been asleep, or pissed? So that's how we approach things tonight.

    We see how it goes. What matters, what seems to be the catalyst, is us being together,'

    'I feel bloody foolish,' I said.

    'This from a bloke who spent the best part of his evening with a balloon down his trolleys.'

    Seamus shivered through the bead curtain and tossed me a bottle. He'd brought the vodka up too.

    'What happens if… something happens?' I said.

    It seemed that nobody had thought of that. I wish I hadn't bothered to ask. Any warmth that was being generated between us seemed to evaporate. We returned to being the edgy creatures of half an hour ago.

    We drank. And Helen put some music on. And we drank. Bottles piled up, empty glasses were refilled. We played drinking games. We wandered around Helen's shop on our own in the dark, drinking all the time. We only stopped drinking to breathe and sometimes we'd snort beer or vodka when we screwed up even that simplest of actions. Sometimes I'd see Vanilla in the dark, curled up on a windowsill or winding like greased mist through the legs of a table. The music grew moodier. I was so pissed, I thought my left eye was trying to slide out of its socket, my vision on that side was so fucked up.

    'Hey, if my left-hand vision is screwed, does that mean the right side of my brain is buggered too? Right, Shay?' I said, laughing, but Shay was keeping himself to himself, staring out of the window towards the lighthouse, the pulse of which was discernible as a pale flicker over the roofs. If he acknowledged me at all, it was as a vague hunching of the shoulders. I heard his breath, thick and glottal, catching in his throat. I smelled petrol.

    'I am hammered,' I said, lurching towards him and knocking over one of Helen's waterworks. 'Shit.' I scrabbled around on the floor for the various rivets and associated machinery, hoping Helen hadn't heard me wrecking her shop.

    Seamus was coming round, turning towards me every so often and favouring me with a look that was none too pleasant. He sported a big liquid smile, a slick of saliva coating his chin, like a wrapping of cellophane. The top half of his head was pitch black, cut out by the shade provided by a stack of shelves.

    'Cock off looking at me like that, Shay,' I said, and banged my head getting up as someone shouted at me from upstairs.

    'David! Da-vid!' she called, but her voice had slowed down in my befuddled state so that she sounded male. But then another call, definitely female this time: 'David!'

    The figure was rising to its feet. I cut my hand on one of the metal angles, I was gripping it so hard. Sobering quickly now, I whispered to my self.

    'All right… it's all right.' I backed into the counter and edged along until I fell backwards through the gap. He was outlined against the window, the scattered, misty pulse of the lighthouse powdering the tip of his head.

    He wasn't going anywhere. But the smell of petrol was more intense. It was as I turned to crash out through the back window that I saw the powdering effect of the granular light wasn't down to the lighthouse after all-it was smoke. He'd opened his great wet mouth and his voice was the rasp of a match on sandpaper.

    'Heaven marching,' it breathed.

    

    

    It was hard to read Frank's handwriting; the blue ink had run slightly on the paper so that his eight looked like a six. The note beneath the number was legible enough though: DO THE RITE THING. YOU'LL SEE US AGAIN. STAY TITE, FRANK AND TONKA.

    I didn't much care for the part which read
you'll see us again,
but I had to stop being so judgmental; Frank and Tonka were all right, if a little coarse. I imagined them shaven and sweet-smelling, dressed in retiring fashions, drinking Ribena-much easier to control. I rested the paper against the telephone and placed a couple of ten pence pieces within easy reach.

    I thought of Helen, quenching my early morning thirsts with water passed from her mouth to mine.

    'Oh God,' I whispered. What she'd said had been so underhand yet she expected me to swallow it in the name of liberty. I fuck, you fuck, he fucks, she fucks, we fuck. I was annoyed and embarrassed at the way I'd let myself get swept along. She'd seen my interest in her but instead of curbing it she was happy to let me pant away like a dog expecting his treat. And she'd lost me my job. Not that I was bothered. After last night's fun and games, I was desperate for a different face, a respite from the pressure and the panic.

    I dialled the number, got a kebab house. I apologised, tried the six after all and a female voice said: 'David?'

    Warning signs flashed in my head but I'd already offered a hello. 'Good guess or do you call everyone David?' I was pleased with the confidence I was displaying. Usually, in situations like this, I get so flustered it's as though I'm aphasic.

    'I knew it would be you. It's that time of the night-people get lonely and like to chat. I'm glad you called.' Her voice was tease-slow, I could tell the words were being spoken through a smile. In that instant I saw her on a canvas, her face a broad sweep of blue acrylic. And of course, her eyes were closed.

    'I'm glad you answered. It's kind of strange, the way this has come about? Don't you think?'

    'Not really. Would you rather have cornered me in some bar and asked me what's a nice girl et cetera? I talked to Deep Pan. He sorted it out for me.'

    'So,' I said, my nerve beginning to flag-why did I always shit it when women were direct with me? 'Let's have a drink… or… something.'

    She was laughing, the sound deep and throaty. Her face smeared and yawned, the blackness of her mouth spoiling the bright colour around it. Her lips were too red: I must tone that down a little. The fun slipping from her throat looked like orange feathers-I liked that.

    'I find you really attractive, David. When you were sitting with that friend of yours-Seamus is it? I watched the way you kept pursing your mouth. It was like you were getting ready for a snog. Nice mouth. You keep it in good nick, I can tell. Bet you use lip balm.'

    I was kind of taken aback with this machine-gun delivery but her honesty, although disorienting, I didn't find a threat, which made for a refreshing change.

    'You aren't ready to see me, are you?' she added.

    'I'm not sure,' I said, thinking,
How the hell?

    'Let's give it a week. I'll meet you at two o'clock next Saturday, yeah? Half Moon Bay.'

    'Half Moon Bay,' I said, thinking,
where the hell?
Then the line went dead.

    

    

    The next morning I packed a small bag and caught the bus into Lancaster. It felt like I was running away, but Eve was playing some kind of anchor now, so that it was reasonable to assume I would allow myself to return once I'd been able to shake off Helen's grasp: her fingers had reached deep into my flesh and melded there; they'd be difficult to pull free. I thought of how our evening had drawn to a close, the way the night had been bleached by the reluctant dawn while we huddled nervously in side streets listening to something screaming and tearing up and down the village like a miniature hurricane. Helen had soothed me while I vomited and cried into a steel bucket once we'd gathered the nerve to return to Helen's shop and check it out. All I could think of as I retched was what she might fashion out of the bucket once I'd finished with it. I wondered if it might get a price tag and a place on her display shelf.
Morecambe Bay,
she could call it.

    The shop had been empty, of course. Vanilla had been torn apart on the counter where he'd settled down to sleep last night. I couldn't believe how much blood was contained in a cat.

    I could smell scorched phosphor, by the window, and there was a small pool of something clear that I didn't want to dabble my fingers in.

    'Must have been someone who wanted to torch the place,' I said, hopefully.

    'No, David. It was contact,' Helen said, sobbing over the remains of her pet. 'We didn't have any luck upstairs.'

    
What,
I felt like asking, in a bitter flood that had me tasting last night's sick,
Shay couldn't get it up? Trying too hard to he vulnerable?

    I left them, astonished that they were considering breakfast after what had happened. I agreed to come back but pleaded exhaustion and a need to reclaim a little sanity back home. 'I need to consider what I'll do for work, anyway,' I said. 'Bar jobs don't seem to be a good idea.'

    On the way back to the train station in Lancaster, I found myself on a street I recognised-dimly-from the night of the party. On a whim, I decided to see if any of the members of Lettuce were still around and if there'd been any developments regarding the murder. I heard a thin, scratchy piece of music as I turned a corner and knew I'd stumbled across the party's locus. The vocals for the piece stitched into the noise after a second or two but were unable to smooth its rough edges. I saw the pimpled purple door just before it crashed open and a person my age flew on to the path. He picked himself up and stood looking into the hallway, weaving about like a weighted rubber toy that was designed never to be knocked over. He must have thought better of taking umbrage with the person who'd launched him, choosing instead to totter away and make gestures towards the door, which had already closed.

    I was oddly happy to see that the party was still going, albeit in an understandably listless manner, as though they were partying for the girl's sake, as a tribute to her. Perhaps it was because I had contributed to it and breathed its excesses-had been a victim of them, in fact-that I found it so appealing, like owning a ticket to an early concert by The Police before they became massive. The house seemed much smaller in the daylight, prompting me to wonder how it could have accommodated so many people at once. There must have been over a hundred sweaty bodies causing that clamour. It was shocking that nobody had seen anything. Maybe they had and had been so eckied up that they thought it had been kind of cool and, when you thought about it, a human, a really charitable act really. Jesus.

    I knocked and waited, though the door swung in under the weight of my knuckles. A man wearing sunglasses ducked into the hallway, his arms bent upwards from the elbow like I'd just pulled a gun on him. 'Yes mate?'