Sin (10 page)

And everything was ok. I was
sitting in the woods having a laugh with my sister. The fact that
she was dead was irrelevant. The fact that, but a short time
before, I'd caused a young lad to make his car more intimate with a
tree than he'd have probably wanted to was also, for now,
irrelevant. Old times and daisy-chains were the tea on the table
tonight, with a healthy helping of nostalgia for dessert.

"You couldn't help that boy, you
know."

Well that was a custard pie in
the face of memories.

* * * *

"Pardon?"

I was shocked at the abrupt
change of mood. A second ago we were laughing and now laughter had
fled screaming into the night. The forest had darkened and the
trees had closed in making me feel suddenly claustrophobic. I
almost waited for feral eyes to open like slashes in the darkness.
None did, so thankfully my dream hadn't travelled that far on the
express train into Nightmare Station.

Joy seemed unaware of the sudden
suffocation. She wasn't looking at me, instead picking some
invisible piece of cotton or dirt from her trouser leg. Whatever
was there was stuck fast and she stayed intent on it as she
spoke.

"The boy. He crashed and there's
a better than good chance that he wouldn't have if you hadn't been
there, but you couldn't help him. He was lost anyway."

My heart was suddenly squeezed
by an invisible hand that had reached inside my chest and taken a
hold, long, cracked and yellowing nails digging in. I couldn't
speak.

"He killed that poor girl. He
would have done it again. He would. More than once. It wouldn't
have stopped him and it wouldn't have slowed him down. He would
have begun to look for it. The rush. The danger. The badness of it.
He would have become addicted. He was rotting from the inside out
and you did him a favour. You did those little girls he isn't going
to mow down a favour. Hey, you did the world a favour."

Joy's voice wavered, a ripple in
the velvet. I could only stare at her, the hand around my heart
squeezing rhythmically. What was she doing? Justifying murder?
That's what it was! Manslaughter at the very least because I
couldn't help it. But what if I could? What if there was some sick
core inside me, rotting like she said the boy was? What if I meant
for him to die?

What if I wanted it to happen? I
knew. I knew what he had done. Eight years old. That's all she was.
But I didn't feel anger or pity for him. I felt nothing. So what if
that nothing was concealing my pleasure, or my desire? If I'd
reached out to his car with whatever twisted thought or idea
crawled beneath the nothing and made it swerve, and made it
crash...?

What then?

Maybe this was hell and I had
ended up in that furnace and I had been char-broiled and I was
dead. And Joy. Maybe she believed in Heaven and Hell. And maybe,
because of that, we were part of each others' damnation. She was
doomed to try and make me feel better - something that, on a
grander scale had bled her to a husk - and I was doomed to listen.
Her Purgatory was a much more focused and personal version of the
life that had led her, or pushed her, here. Mine was to relive my
own, the tales retold in my sister's vain attempts to justify and
reconcile and appease.

And I hadn't even brought a
picnic.

I mentally gripped the
metaphorical hand around my heart, wresting its grip and flinging
it away. What if, what if, what if. What if Willy Wonka had made
flour instead of every kind of chocolate? Charlie Bucket would
never have been the hero he was and Violet Sludgemonkey, or
whatever her name was, would probably be a redcoat at Butlins by
now. What if Man really had landed on the moon, or men in black
really did protect us from illegal Aliens and the scum of the
universe? What if, in space, someone
can
hear you scream?
What if curry night at the Trawl pub, Toothill, was on a Wednesday
instead of a Thursday? Would the world come crashing down around
our ears like a Paris Hilton CD?

No. I doubted it. So why worry
about it. Or, at least, why dwell on it. Blank it out. Smother it
in Nothing. No pain, no brain. Or something like that.

Of course that wasn't how it
worked. It didn't work much at all, really, but...

Hey ho, daddyo, away we go.

It didn't matter if Joy was
right or not. If I'd saved half a dozen or more children from being
hit-and-run victims at the cost of one stupid, stupid boy's life,
it didn't matter. It
did
matter, but it didn't. Not really.
It was what it was. Life and death. Heaven and Hell. Black and
white.

Heads and tails.

Flip and catch.

"So?" I said.

Joy frowned, puzzled. I could
see why. My reaction, or lack of one, would puzzle me too, if I
wasn't me. In fact, it did to a certain extent. Why wasn't I
breaking apart, little bits of me drifting off into the Nothing
that waited in the shadows to engulf me? Why was I just
hey-diddly-dee-a-normal-life-for-me?

"So?" she asked. "What does
'
so
' mean? Is that all you can say? 'So'?"

"Yes," I answered. "So. So what
if I am responsible. So what if I'm not. It's done."

I realised, suddenly, what was
wrong. I knew why I was numb. The same sweet self-preservation that
stopped me knock, knock, knocking on a furnace door. It was too
much. All of it, and if I let myself feel that, I'd be dragged down
Life's little plug hole into the sewers below.

"I can't take it," I said. "I
don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I just... I just
can't do it."

Joy put her arms around me. She
smelled of Jasmine. Her cheek was warm and soft against my own.
Were my dreams torturing me now? All these memories of my dead
sister pummelling me, taunting me. It wasn't FAIR! I felt like a
yo-yo, spinning between laughter and sorrow, smiles and frowns,
mental clarity and mind-numbing despair, my string wrapped around
the finger of some demonic child who was having simply marvellous
fun at my expense.

I pushed Joy away and stood up.
This was a lovely dream, what with the ghost, maggots and rotting
flesh, but it was only serving to make me feel worse about myself
than I already did. Joy's reassurances did more to wind me up than
calm me down. I knew she wasn't being patronising, she wasn't like
that. Well, my sister wasn't like that when she was alive. This
deceased version was an invention of my own psyche, so I supposed
it could be as patronising as my mind felt it wanted to be.

I was going round in circles. I
should have stayed, happy as a hamster with my very own wheel, in
the mental home. Dr. Connors would look after my bank account and
me, and everything would have been hunky-dory, Jackanory. Yes. Of
course it would.

I feebly tried to push Joy away
again as she moved towards me, arms wide. She batted my attempts
away and wrapped me in her Jasmine blanket. I let my breathing
settle and slumped against her. She held my weight easily,
obviously empowered by my subconscious - she could never have
carried me in reality.

Her voice smothered me in velvet
calm, easing my anguish. "Sshhhh," she whispered, though I hadn't
said anything.

I took a deep breath, my face
buried in her shoulder. A second one succeeded in steadying me
enough to support myself. She let her arms drop and looked at me,
her face full of concern.

I smiled weakly, then took a
third deep breath and smiled again, stronger this time.

"Fartypants," I said.

"That's better," she said, the
concern fading. A hint of it lingered still, but she looked more
her usual perky self. I hoped I appeared the same. I hoped that, if
I looked happier then I would be. If I seemed more confident, that
confidence might worm its wicked way inside. "Plonk it, rancid
pits," she ordered, indicating the base of the tree I'd been
sitting at.

"Yes, Miss."

I eased myself back down onto
the grass and leant against the trunk. My back protested as the
lumps and bumps of the bark found more places to dig into but I
ignored it. I wasn't into self-mutilation or any of those whipping
rituals religious types indulged in, but I did feel that a taste of
pain myself was somewhat deserved.

"So," I said, hoping again to
bring the conversation back on track. I left the word hanging, not
really knowing where to take it. This was my dream, but I figured
Joy could lead the way for a wee bit. She left the word where it
was for a long time, head low, face expressionless, except for the
eyes a-sparkling. Then she picked it up and had a play.

"So indeed," she said, lifting
her eyes to me. The corners of her full lips raised slightly: "What
are we going to do with you, brother of mine?"

I didn't answer. I wanted the
question to be rhetorical so she'd provide her own response.
Perhaps then I might have some idea myself. If not, this would be a
short chat and, as good as it was to be reunited with Joy, I may as
well wake up. If my mind, in the form of my sister, wasn't going to
give me any answers whatsoever, then I'd have to fumble my own way
- and that thought scared me way down the road to Shitless and half
way into Witless.

"If only I could tell you the
things you need to know," she said. "It would be so much easier.
You'd be so much happier." She paused and chewed her bottom lip, a
habit I'd grown tired of trying to slap out of her. "Maybe you
wouldn't be happier actually, but at least you'd
know
."

"Know what?" I asked. Things I
needed to know? I wasn't appearing on Who Wants to be a
Millionaire. I didn't need to phone a friend or ask the audience.
Good job really because the only audience I currently had was maybe
the odd owl or squirrel. Anyway, what did I need to know that I
didn't already? This dream was going the way of a Twin Peaks
episode. It was following some twisted path I couldn't see,
swinging back on itself and then taking a completely different
route. I felt like Kyle MacLachlan was conspiring with David Lynch
to hijack my brain and turn it on its end. All we needed was some
cherry pie, a damn fine cup of coffee, and we could all sit down,
have a picnic and figure out which outcome would be the weirdest
and as such the one we'd use. At least Kyle was investigating a
murder whereas I was committing them.

I wondered if, in a court of
law, murder in absentia was a punishable crime. If I had an alibi
tighter than Jacob Marley's business partner, even though I
admitted to having done the crime - and thanks to Mental Homes R
Us, done the time - would I still be sent down, joining the chain
gang on a one way trip along the Green Mile? Maybe I could get Tom
Hanks' or Michael Clarke Duncan's autographs.

I doubted a defence of "I wasn't
there m'lud" would be sufficient to get me off. But death by proxy.
What would be the maximum sentence for that? Six months? Life?
Would there be a frying tonight, with old Sparky, the electric
chair?

Ask me another.

Death by proxy. That's a phrase
and a half, ain't it?
Murder
by proxy, perhaps - get some
other schmucky-duck to do the deed. But
death
by proxy? How
did that work? If it's my time that's up, is DBP (as we
affectionately don't call it) giving my extinction ticket to the
next customer, like at the deli counter in Asda?

"I'll have half a pound of
bullet to the brain and three slices of cardiac arrest please. Oh,
hold on, you go first, pal."

"Cheers mate! Make mine a
quarter of honey roasted dismemberment please. No, wait. Make it
six ounces."

"Certainly sir. We've got a
special three-for-two offer on aneurisms this week. Can I tempt
you?"

"No thanks, I'm good with the
dismemberment."

Death by proxy - giving your
place in the queue for Snuffit & Keelover to the next bloke,
nice guy that you are.

My sense of dread and guilt,
which had been rebounding around the forest like a squash ball shot
from a cannon, slammed back into me once more. What if that was
exactly the case? What if I was missing my appointment with the
Other Side by passing it on to other people?

If I was meant to die the day
the number 5 bus drove into the Post Office instead of into me?

If I was meant to die today, the
next victim of a teenage idiot more intent on his mobile phone than
on the road?

I jumped when I felt Joy's hand
on my shoulder.

"Sin?"

"Sorry," I said, shuddering. I
suddenly felt cold even though the temperature hadn't dropped
noticeably. The closeness of the trees, the canopy of leaves and
the blanket of clouds all did their bit to keep the afternoon's
warmth from escaping.

And me.

"What is it?" she asked.

I shook my head. What was the
point? She'd only tell me I was being stupid. Maybe she was right.
Maybe my head was running after David Lynch, hoping to be sucked
down the convoluted drain of his imagination.

But still. As ever. What IF?

I
so
needed to get a
grip! What if the world really was flat, with only the 150 foot
wall of the Southern Ice between us and an eternal drop into
Oblivion? What if the Bermuda Triangle was an extra-terrestrial
King's Cross, with trains (or ships and planes) leaving every
fifteen minutes or so, stopping at Peterborough, Newark, Doncaster
and Alpha Centauri?

What if anyone actually gave a
toss?

I took another one of those deep
breaths people recommend to steady your nerves. Was there some
magic medicine in air? I suppose there was. Oxygen. Daft question
really.

"Nothing," I said, managing a
half hearted smile. The other half had a go, but couldn't quite
manage it. Oh well, a smile is always half full rather than half
empty.

I needed to get this dream
going, if, indeed, it was going anywhere. For all I knew it could
be tomorrow or next week by now. It had been so long since I'd had
a sleep that wasn't drug induced, I figured my body could be making
up for lost time. Perhaps Joy was here to keep me occupied while my
body recuperated. Dreams being what they were though, I could have
just dozed off for five minutes. Either way, if there was a point,
I wished Joy would get us to it.