How to Make Monsters (14 page)

Then he was away, running back into
the fray. I saw him grab a lanky woman with dirty black hair and pale blue
eyes; he tagged her with the boathook, swinging it so that the point sank into
the bare meat of her shoulder. He tugged her towards him. She was screaming
hoarsely, strangely, tears gouging clean lines through the layered dirt on her
face. And Grandad was laughing, his eyes blazing with a distinctly unhealthy
light.

He wrapped her up in the potato
sack, trussing the whole package with rope that he pulled out in a neat coil
from inside. The woman squirmed quite a bit, but after a few hefty whacks from
the boat hook she went still. I could see the sack rising and falling rapidly
as she breathed; it’s a sight that has stayed with me, haunting my dreams and
staining my waking hours.

Back at the truck, Grandad threw her
in the back, securing her there with a chain that was attached to a small
motorised winch meant for dragging heavy objects. Her breathing was deeper now,
and I thought that she might have passed out.

It was only then that I noticed the
hooves. Where the woman’s legs poked out of the frayed end of the sack, a pair
of cloven hooves could be seen in place of human feet. And then it clicked,
just like that. They had all had hooves instead of feet: the ones that had fled
before Grandad, the little one that he’d cast aside in favour of this older
female…

As we drove back to the house full
night began to bloom; thick black petals of darkness erupting and spreading
across the irrevocably altered landscape. I could hear the woman’s hooves
skittering in the back of the truck, sense her fear, taste her hatred.

“Our family used to own all this
countryside, boy. Long ago, in another time. Your great-great granddaddy was a
very rich and famous man. Well respected – so much that a great writer even
wrote a book about him, making a story out of his work. He was a scientist, you
see; studied genetics. But that was before the government came in and made us
sell them everything we had.”

I felt him turn his head to look at
me as he spoke, but I couldn’t face him. Not yet.

“But we still have special
privileges. License to go where we like, to fish where we want. To continue the
family traditions.”

He fell silent then, realising that
it was too early for me to respond.

When we reached the house he sent me
on in ahead of him, and I heard him grunting as he struggled to unload his
catch from the truck. I went into the cold living room, and listened as he
dragged her up the stairs. She made tiny yelping noises as he coerced her up
each step, and Grandad muttered a constant stream of obscenities to her, or
perhaps to himself.

After about half an hour he came
back down to find me.

I was sitting in an armchair, my
arms wrapped around my middle, and shivering. Grandad stood above me, casting
me in his shadow.

“Okay, boy,” he said. “It’s time”

He reached down and took me by the
hand, pulled me to my feet, and led me upstairs to the small room. There was a
key in the lock, and he turned it and pushed me inside.

“I’m locking you in here with her.
By the time I come back for you, you’ll be a man. Don’t disappoint me, boy.
This is your rite of passage, your route to manhood. We’ve all gone through it,
every male of the clan. Now it’s your turn.”

As the door closed slowly in my face
he gave me an exhausted smile.

I turned hesitantly, almost too
afraid to face what waited for me inside the room, and couldn’t even find an
echo of surprise within me when I saw the hoofed woman sitting naked on the
bed. Her wrists were clamped together, and another thick metal chain bound her
legs to the iron frame. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap, as if in
prayer, and her eyes were downcast, staring at the floor.

At last I allowed myself to admit
what I was expected to do. It was horrible, vile; tantamount to rape. I was
supposed to enter adulthood by coupling with this poor dumb beast, and thus
carry on the proud traditions of my forefathers, the bastards who’d owned this
land long before my father was even born. Had he done this? If Grandad was to
be believed, they all had. Every man who had been born into the bloodline.

I tried to speak to the woman, to
reassure her, but the words wouldn’t come. I was mute with horror. Instead I
crossed the room towards her. As I got closer I could see that she was silently
weeping; and when I put out a hand to wipe away the tears she flinched as if
expecting a blow.

“You’re safe with me,” I said,
silently cursing my Grandad, and every male who had been here before him.
Damning the family name of Moreau.

“Shushshshsh…it’s okay,” I
whispered, caressing her sweaty forehead and pushing damp hair out of her eyes.

She looked up at me at last, those
cool pale eyes heating up with a glimmer of something that could have been
hope. Chest hitching, throat constricting, she opened her mouth and tried to
communicate. The cauterised nub that had once been her tongue flapped mutely in
her slack jaw; it had been cut out long ago, perhaps on the day of her birth,
rendering her speechless.

That was why none of them had spoken
back at the compound. Why they’d just sat in silence, waiting for whoever or
whatever came for them.

Shocked and numb and ashamed of who
I was, I took her in my arms, felt her trembling warmth against my flesh. I
could hold it inside no longer, so I let the rage out in a flood of remorse. I
wept and wept until, a long time later, I finally fell asleep in her dirty
arms.

Grandad stormed into the room early
the next morning, dragging the woman from my bed and carrying her back
downstairs. I was unable to read his expression when he looked at me, but was
convinced that I had glimpsed pride in his eyes.

As I changed my scruffy clothes I
heard the truck pull away outside. A short time later, while I was making
coffee in the kitchen, Grandad returned alone. He hadn’t been gone long enough
for a return journey to the compound. My heart sank and I refused to
contemplate what he might have done with the woman. When he entered the kitchen
he was breathing heavily and his face was flushed a deep shade of red. He
looked like he’d been exerting himself, carrying out some intensely physical
task.

I felt like stabbing him with one of
his carving knives, or smashing him over the head with the kettle. Instead, I
poured him a coffee and we sat together without speaking until my dad arrived
later that morning to take me home.

****

That weekend was never
mentioned again; not by my Grandad on the rare occasions that I saw him
afterwards, nor by my dad. And certainly not by myself. The subject, it seemed,
was taboo, verbotten. So much remained unsaid.

Grandad died five years later,
succumbing to a quick and reasonably painless heart attack whilst reading a
book on genetics. I wasn’t sorry; I felt little, if any, grief.

My mother went not long after,
continuing the legacy of the women in our family dying first. Dad was
distraught, and moved into the big old house near Fell. He became a hermit, a
recluse; didn’t even turn up for my graduation from university, or my wedding.

He did, however, surface when my son
Teddy was born. The old man made the long drive south when the boy was six
months old, bearing gifts and smiles and congratulations. Sarah, my wife, was
pleased that the family was together, but I just wanted the grizzled old
bastard out of my life for good. I certainly didn’t want him anywhere near my
son, and after two days of silent pressure he got the message and returned to
his house of memories.

Now Teddy is approaching his twelfth
year, and my father has started writing to me. Long, rambling letters about
tradition and manhood, and anecdotes about when I was a little boy. He even
mentioned Grandad in the last missive; and suggested that I let Teddy go and
stay with him for a weekend. That he could take the boy fishing, like Grandad
did with me.

He even guaranteed that my boy would
return to me a man.

Even after all these years I’m
afraid to tell him the truth of what went on in the small room that distant
summer night when I was twelve years old. It was always assumed that I had done
what was expected of me. Become a man. But the truth of it is that I will
remain forever a small boy, crying hot tears into the grimy, sweat-stinking
breasts of something only partly human - a beast I’d thought existed only in
cheap fictions, and whose shabby progenitors had been created long ago in my
families own tawdry House of Pain.

Last week I went back there for the
first time since that weekend. I told Sarah that I was going to visit my dad.
That we were trying to work things out. Instead I took his key and went looking
for the compound. The fishing spot. It took some doing, but eventually I found
it. A clearing within a dense band of trees and heavy foliage, lean-to shacks
and flyblown shelters clustered in little groups. Raggedy, semi-naked figures
sitting by waning fires, dragging their chipped hooves on the dusty ground,
scratching their mangy hides against the rough-barked trees, or just staring
mutely at a purely conceptual space located somewhere beyond the great
electrified fence.

Soon the time will come when my son
will be summoned to go fishing with his Grandad. Part of me knows exactly what
I’ll say when that call comes; another, deeper, much younger part of me isn’t
so sure. Perhaps that’s the time when I will truly become a man after all.

SOMETHING IN THE WAY

I

“A first sign of the beginning of
understanding is the wish to die.”

Franz Kafka

“Many people attest to the existence
of snuff films even though no one has ever actually seen one.”

D.I. Sebastian Fawkes, North
Yorkshire Police, Scarbridge Division.

The bar downstairs had
closed over an hour ago, sending the drunks and the party people careering off
into their own or each other’s beds. After the music stopped, the silence
seemed deafening to Pierce, and he turned on his radio to fill the gaps. Johnny
Cash sang about some unnamed Hurt in his familiar aching voice; Pierce closed
his eyes and drifted in someone else’s pain for a little while. The darkness
behind the lids coiled like snakes; Pierce found the illusion strangely
comforting.

Various street sounds filtered
through from outside: distant stumbling footsteps, cats fighting over the
contents of dustbins outside the takeaway pizza joint, car engines purring along
the main road, the intermittent ticking of the traffic lights on the corner,
changing up and down through their coloured sequence. Pierce slipped into a
light doze, the music and night sounds and serpentine blackness lulling him
like a nursery rhyme; his breathing became low and regular and his body relaxed
for the first time in days.

Another noise, this one more alien
to his ears, arose from outside the window, but he ignored the stealthy
slithering and drifted into a light doze. The sound continued, growing closer,
whatever produced it getting in the way of Pierce’s dreams. It was as if a part
of the city itself were reaching out a hand to form an impenetrable barrier
around his feelings.

A sudden high-pitched squeal from
one of those battling felines pulled him rudely from his slumber and he emerged
like a swimmer from the sea; the low slithering sound receded, drawing back
into the greater soundtrack of urban life.

He blinked his eyes and clenched his
fists, suddenly unaware of his surroundings. When at last he recognised the
inside of the cheap room above the down-market bar, he relaxed, but only
slightly. He reached out towards the old nightstand, his hand grasping the
spiral-bound notebook he kept there, next to a red ballpoint pen. It felt cold
and dry, like the skin of a reptile. He pulled it to his chest and clutched it
there like a bible, or a treasured thing; and indeed it was treasured. The book
was his lifeline, his mind-map, and his mission. It was all he had left, and to
lose it would mean the end of everything he’d ever known.

Pierce got to his feet, running a
hand through the coarse hairs on his broad chest. As he walked to the bathroom
he felt crumbs and dirt on the soles of his bare feet. How had he come to this?
Living in a single dirty room above a pick-up joint in a drab northern town,
watching transient couples come and go from the vantage point of his smeared
window. A twinge of regret tugged at his stomach, trying to make him remember
as he pissed in the dirty toilet bowl and stared at his unshaven face in the
mirror above the chipped cistern instead, feeling watched by eyes other than
his own from behind the glass.

He didn’t want to remember. He
didn’t want to forget. All he wanted was an answer to it all; any answer would
do, and he felt that he was so close to one that he could almost touch it. He
glanced back through the doorway at the notebook he’d placed on the bed. The
words in that book were his route to that answer, clues to lead him to some
sort of revelation. Or were they just the empty doodling of a mad man, straws
to be clutched at the wrong end of midnight in a cold bed in a lonely room with
nothing to keep him warm but a manufactured sense of purpose?