Blood Crazy (3 page)

‘Not if you're going to waste it on anything stupid like dictionaries and exercise books.'

‘Nah. Robbo's selling me a couple of his CDs.'

‘Thank God for that. It's time you started mis-spending your youth.'

‘Don't listen to your brother,' dad said. ‘He'll either end up a millionaire or—'

‘IN JAIL.' We chorused the old Aten catch phrase.

‘There's some spare cash in my tin. Not the one shaped like a coffin. The one with the naked lady – so cover your eyes when you get it.'

John saluted. ‘Thanks, Nick-Nick. You're a hero.'

The image of my brother standing there in the doorway, eyes flashing happily, big freckled face grinning, is nailed permanently to my mind. It was the last time I saw him alive.

He ran upstairs, his feet thumping heavily. I heard my bedroom door open, then footsteps crossing to the bedside table. A pause.

He was counting the money. He'd take not a penny more than he needed. I heard the feet pass back out onto the landing toward his room.

Then nothing more.

‘You shouldn't give your hard-earned away like that, Nick.' Dad shook his head, smiling, flashing that gap in his teeth again. ‘He gets money of his own.'

‘I know, but he fritters it away on history books and junk like that.'

My dad picked up a hammer from the sideboard and pointed it at me playfully. ‘I'll find out how much John's paying for them and I'll give you the money back Monday. Now watch that concert, I've got a job that needs doing upstairs.'

Casually swinging the hammer, he walked out of the room. I trawled through the drawer in the video cabinet for the tape. As always I'd not bothered writing on the memo label so there would be a five-minute interval of swearing and false starts before I found what I was looking for.

As I pulled out the tapes mum came in with a plateful of sliced cake and tea – all part of the Saturday afternoon ritual. In her track suit, her dark hair short and neat, she looked ten years younger than
she was. Within minutes she would get Steve laughing and chatting shyly.

‘I keep telling Nick he should get a decent office job like yours, Steve,' she said, smiling brightly.

‘Oh, I think he enjoys what he does, Mrs Aten.'

‘Judy.'

‘Sorry … Judy. He couldn't stand being tied to a desk.'

‘I hope the police never look in the back of that truck he drives.

There are enough rumours about Mr Karowski to sink a battleship.'

Upstairs my dad had begun his DIY. Thump. Thump. Thump. It sounded like he was tapping nails into solid brick.

My mother chatted happily over the thumping, handing out more cake to Steve who could never bring himself to say no.

‘Found it,' I said as pink lasers cut slices out of the TV screen.

‘Oh, I'll leave you to it. Anyway, I've got a boatload of ironing to do. If you want anything I'll be in the kitchen.'

She left, singing lightly to herself.

As I stood up I noticed my dad's empty can. Lucky she hadn't seen that otherwise dad would have been in for an ear-bruising. Crushing the can, I dropped it into the bin.

Upstairs the hammering stopped.

Suddenly something struck me as strange. Never, ever, in my seventeen years on this planet had I seen dad drink beer of an afternoon.

‘Looks as if it's going to be a good concert, Nick.'

It was. I sat down to watch it and forgot the beer can completely.

Steve kicked us out early.

Well, you have to agree, 8.30 is excruciatingly early for a Sunday morning. His dad was due home by mid-day so he needed to restore the house so it didn't look like a truckful of drunks had crashed through the front door. Which was more or less what had happened.

The girls we hoped would show, didn't. We ended up getting drunker while playfully shoving one another over the furniture.

The three of us hopped over Steve's back garden wall to cut across the fields, leaving Steve to do what he could with the house while repeating for the thirteenth time that morning:

‘My dad's going to kill me when he gets home.'

With the morning sun already hot on our necks, we plodded across empty meadows. My mouth tasted as if a toad had died of the blister in there, then been buried beneath my tongue.

The others went their separate ways as we reached the edge of town, leaving me to plough the last mile through the long grass alone. What thoughts I could keep together mainly centred on how I could do the most damage to Tug Slatter.

I saw no one. I heard nothing. It was only a Sunday morning in Spring with nine-tenths of the population enjoying a lie-in.

I climbed the fence into our back garden, scaring the birds up into
a blurry cloud. Then, cutting down the passageway into the front garden, I checked my pick-up. Still clean. Slatter hadn't chosen to do an encore just yet.

I noticed my dad's car was missing from the drive. Nothing unusual about that. Some Sundays he'd drive into town to pick up the newspapers. My mother would probably still be in bed. My brother certainly would. Saturday nights he'd watch old horror films in his bedroom into the early hours – then sleep until lunchtime.

‘HI HONIES, I'M HOME!' It was my customary greeting in a voice guaranteed to sandpaper anyone's nerves.

The usual ‘Shut up! I'm trying to sleep!' never came. They were sleeping with the lid on that morning. I headed for the kitchen.

‘Pigs!'

I shouted it again as I pushed a pile of hacked bread to one side of the table and clicked the top back on the butter tub.

If that was my dad who'd left the mess he was playing a dangerous game. Mum would go berserk. Not that he'd normally do something like this.

Come to think of it, he'd NEVER do anything like this. After eating his cornflakes he'd wash his dish then stick it back in the cupboard. The only other culprit could be—

‘John! You are dead! You'd better clean this lot up before mum sees it.'

No reply. Jesus … Maybe beneath that home-work-loving line-toeing fifteen-year-old there was a rebel after all.

Five minutes later I dropped my empty bowl in the sink and, still crunching a massive mouthful of cornflakes, I went upstairs.

Upstairs the house was tidy and quiet.

I changed into my slob-around jeans. Then I decided to roust John and mention the fact that if he wanted to live until lunchtime he would have to clean up the mess in the kitchen.

I pushed open the door.

And I saw something that stopped my breath.

My brother's bedroom had ceased to exist.

Oh, the four walls and window were still there. But the stuff that made it my brother's bedroom wasn't.

The bed had gone. The wardrobes, furniture and all the posters of Greek temples and Egyptian statues had gone with it. Instead, in
the middle of the floor, nearly touching the ceiling light, was a pyramid.

I stood there and actually laughed out loud.

What I saw was impossible. I laughed again. But this time it was forced. I began to feel cold. Like someone was slowly dipping me into a mountain lake.

Someone had been in here, taken the furniture and then smashed all my brother's possessions. Because that pyramid was built out of books, computer games, childhood toys, holiday souvenirs, comics … Everything that John had ever been given, collected, saved for, bought. Every fucking thing.

Jesus Christ.

That bastard … Slatter.

As I stood there I could see things in my mind's eye. Slatter looking through the bedroom window, bluebird tattoos at either side of his eyes, a grin hacking open his ape face. Then climbing in to smash the place to smithereens.

Tug Slatter had done this. I believed that. But what on earth had he done with the bed and furniture? Where was my brother? He'd have been asleep in here.

I saw it. But a big chunk of me did not believe it.

I didn't move. I just looked. My chest aching, my breathing sounding strange in my ears.

The bastard had been thorough. Far, far more thorough than when he'd done the job on my pick-up with the fruit of his own backside.

Books hadn't just been ripped in two. Every page had been torn to pieces the size of postage stamps. John's computer – he'd loved the thing, he actually polished it – had been reduced to bits the size of my thumbnail.

Shaking my head, mind-kicked, I began picking through the pyramid. Examining a fraction of computer game or a shred of one of John's precious history books. There was his video of the first man on the moon. As I touched it, it fell from the pyramid to expose more of John's treasures. His pirate chest money box, more computer games. A torn mask. A model car. A …

My fingers stopped above the mask.

John never owned a mask.

But here was a life-size mask. It had partly open eyes. Life-like hair. A nose …

I pushed my hand into the pyramid to pull at the mask. It wouldn't come. It had been fixed to something solid.

As I pulled somebody shoved the room. It spun so fast around me I could hardly see the walls and window flashing by. Only the mask stayed in focus.

Made from grey rubbery stuff, it was torn from mouth to ear, opening up a cheek like a parcel, exposing a row of teeth messed with red. The eyes reflected the light shining into the room, making it look as if they were alive. Or had been once.

I remember looking at the thing and seeing a mask.

But I hear myself shouting:

‘John! John! John!'

Then I was in the street. My throat burning like I'd drunk bleach. I was still shouting. This time for help.

It was like a dream – you shout but no one hears.

Lawn Avenue was empty. The trees shifted slightly in the morning breeze – and I stood there and screamed to a world with stone ears that my brother lay dead in his bedroom. His face nearly torn in two.

‘Where we going, Steve?'

We were walking along Thorne Road. Christ Church, shining as white as a bone in the sun, hurt my eyes. Overhead, rooks circled like black snowflakes. The traffic lights at the junction flicked through red, amber, green. There were no cars on the streets.

‘Steve. Where we going?' My throat burned as the words came out.

Steve walked by my side. I'd not seen that expression on his face before. It reminded me of a kid at school whose dad had been broken in half in a factory accident. No expression. The face looked like it had been chiselled from concrete. Only the eyes leaked pain.

‘Steve …'

He stared straight ahead. I didn't know if he was ignoring me or whether my butchered throat couldn't produce a voice.

Why was I walking with Steve? Toward town, sure. But what for? Doncaster's a ghost town Sunday mornings.

Steve, why did he look like that? Maybe his father had fallen asleep at the wheel and … shit … why didn't my brain work? It was as if I'd lost a lump of the stuff – the lump with the memories …

Christ, I must have been in one hell of a fight. Who'd hit me so hard that I felt like one of the living dead? It'd have to be someone like Slatter.

SLATTER!

Memory exploded inside my head.

Back over the garden fence that morning. Hacked-up bread in the kitchen; John's bedroom; the pyramid.

I yanked at Steve's arm, spinning him to face me. ‘Steve. Slatter's killed John. I – I got back this morning. I went into his bedroom. It's all – all … I found John. He'd ripped his face. He's dead, Steve, he's dead.'

Steve looked at me. His stone face not altering. When he spoke it was very low. ‘Nick. Don't you remember? You ran back to my house. You told me about John.'

Steve began walking but I grabbed him by the arm. ‘I'm getting Slatter for this. I'm going to tear his skin off. I'm going to do what he did to John.'

Steve shook his head.

‘Steve, you don't have to help. I'll do it myself. I'm going to kill Slatter. John will …' The words jammed up inside of me. I screamed and kicked a wall. ‘I'll get the bastard. I don't care if I do time … Slatter … SLATTER!'

I was losing it again. I came to with Steve holding me by the shoulders. He looked me in the face for a full ten seconds before he said something that nearly knocked me flat.

‘Nick. It wasn't Slatter.'

‘Of course it was Slatter. Slatter wants to destroy me. My pick-up. Then John … I'm—'

‘Nick, listen. It wasn't Slatter. Keep still. No, I'm not letting go. Just listen. Slatter didn't kill John.'

‘Of course it's Slatter.'

‘No.'

‘If it wasn't Slatter who the hell was it?'

‘I think it was …' He broke off, shaking his head furiously. ‘I don't know, I don't know.'

I pushed him away and walked in the direction where Slatter lived. My pace savage.

Steve followed, having to jog to keep up. We cut off Thorne Road into rows of terraced housing that fill the budget end of town.

‘Nick … Wait. Give me five minutes to explain.'

‘No way. Slatter's dead. That's the end of it.'

Ahead on the pavement a mother was seeing her young daughter off to Sunday school. Zipping up her coat and kissing her on the lips.

‘Steve, get off me. Let go!'

He'd hooked his hand around my jacket collar. The only way to shift him was to batter him in the face. And I was ready to do it. Then shove by mummy kissing her little girl. The only thing that existed for me right then was the aching need to baptise my hands in Slatter's blood.

‘Nick. For Chrissakes stand still and listen.'

‘Let go.'

‘Listen.' Steve spoke slowly; he was willing the words into my brain. ‘Listen to me. It wasn't Slatter who killed John. Slatter was nowhere near your house. In fact, Slatter is probably already dead.'