Ventriloquists (21 page)

‘Benny…’ Massimo leaned forward: an intended show of sincerity. ‘I’ve also driven past that house a couple of times. There’s filth on duty, I’ll never get in.’

‘Not at night there’s not. They knock off when it gets dark and go home for a mug of Ovaltine. That’s when you make your move.’

Massimo sat back in his chair. ‘All right then, try this one. That house has been explored and examined by all sorts of people. Not one of them’s disappeared.’

‘And how can you be so sure of that?’

‘Oh, come on!’

‘All right.
They
don’t know what they’re looking for.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘They don’t
believe
.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘Yeah you do,’ Benny answered dismissively. ‘You just don’t know it yet. You wouldn’t be sat there listening if you didn’t believe. Where else did Connors go? Where did all the water come from? It’s not rocket science, mate.’

Massimo had gone back to remaining silent: as various constables had instructed him over the years, he had the right to do so. His mind was full and plump: ideas were curling around one another, feeding one another.

Talk about a long shot, he thought. But if what Benny had said was true, what was to stop them using the
intra-rationalist existence
to dispose of the bodies of Nero and Jess? It was beautiful. There was a
poetry
about it. If Massimo or Charlie could get the door open to the other world, the problem of corpse-disposal was solved. As it was, they had talked loosely of dismembering the bodies; had even joked about
eating
as much of the teenagers as they could manage (comparisons with too much turkey at Christmas had been drawn); however, no firm plans had been hatched… and time was moving on. Soon the teenagers would be dead.

Massimo nodded.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said at length.

‘Yes, I know you will,’ Benny answered.

Thought for Food

Connors had meant business. His plan had been to sleep for as long as his body dictated, and then to explore the length of the Nail.

Best-laid plans!

He had awoken sick and convulsing, his face as stiff as papier-mâché with dried blood, his limbs like heavy metal plumbing.

His mouth was like a nomad’s flip-flops and there was no water left in the canister. He was dry. Alone and dry. The thought of walking seemed worse than impossible: it seemed terrifying. It meant that he’d have to leave Elvis behind, and a part of him couldn’t bear to dish out such an indignity. Yet what else could be done? Connors had found no makeshift tools that he might use to dig a hole for the body to rest in; what was worse was the fact that the more he regarded the corpse, the hungrier he felt.

The night had passed in a fever: and something sweet had ridden his dream. The sweetness of pain; the sweet vision of ripped skin. In his nightmares he had eaten the boy’s face.

There was no choice: he must follow the Nail. In fact, it was logical to do so. If he followed the Nail, eventually he would arrive at the skin looking over the sea: the skin adjacent to the cuticle. And then…

And then he didn’t know.

Just walk
.

So he walked. And he was walking now, with the light on his bloodied features feeling like sunburn. More than anything else he desired a bath: he wanted to wash off the dried blood and crisped skin. Half of his body weight would be lost, he reckoned.

Such was the pain in his legs that Connors didn’t notice at first that he had a stone in his blood-soaked trainer. It was only after he’d stopped and removed the article that he understood that it wasn’t a stone. It was a bone. And removing it made Connors feel queasy… Bending over to retch, he wanted to know where the bone had come from.

All the while the Nail was to his left.

Navigational reasons were one thing; also relevant was the ongoing terror of the insects. As far as he knew, Connors remained safe while he walked near the Nail; and while he wasn’t in a frame of mind to be cocky, he believed that the smelly wall would work to his advantage.

For now, at least.

He plodded on. Shuffled on. Nightmare images of eating Elvis returned to haunt him, and he thought back to the boy’s early warning about cannibals living in the hills. Before long Connors had managed to twist the admonition to such an extent that the boy had been talking about
him
. He was one of them. He was starving. The berries and the water were gone, and the next dead thing he saw he would cook and eat, be it human or not. Except…

There was nothing to find. Slow mile after slower mile passed, and the only matter in Connors’s path was dust and greying petals, blown from the close-by hillsides. Only once did he imagine the smell of a fire, but he could see no smoke. Imagination.

The third night had almost arrived when he reached the final stretch of the Nail. To his left was the ocean, perturbed and acrobatic. The smell of it was as wholesome as that of a Sunday roast. Connors itched with a wild desire to bathe; but most of all he wanted to drink it. To drink it all up and burp loudly, the king now of all he surveyed.

To these ends he picked his way down to the waterline.

The water was cold. It felt like magic. Connors splashed in the shallows like a kid with a bucket-and-spade: a self-absorbed distraction from the main events. Within seconds he had ripped himself down to his Reg Grundies; and then, with little more thought, he had whipped off his bags and gone skinny-dipping in the ice cube tide. Laughing like a corsair. He didn’t even care that his jewels shrank to punctuation points, to an emoticon. The water chilled his pubis, and the sensation enchanted. And though the taste was too salty, Connors drank from his cupped hands, scoop following scoop, till his belly groaned full.

Then he was sick.

However, there was little to regurgitate; a few strips of tendon-like residua left his gullet, nothing more. Connors had sat down in the place where the waves broke, believing himself to be the luckiest fucker alive.

Carefully as he could, he doused his face and hands and washed away brown blood. And thought about his position.

If he was bathing in the waters surrounding the very tip of one of God’s toes, then the voyage he had taken part in had been on the wild sea that covered the rest of God’s foot. No? Where a toe existed, a foot must be attached; and then a leg, if he sailed far enough. The ankle-bone’s connected to the – shinbone… or something like that, if he remembered the song correctly. With nothing better to do with his time, Connors took the mental trip further: he tried to imagine God’s genitals (he assumed male). Was God the type who liked to play with himself in the bath? Perhaps he was engorged at full throttle at this very moment: an erection the size of Mount Rushmore! His imagination keening, Connors followed God’s body: he travelled a whole summer on the slopes of His chest. He lost breath climbing God’s throat (he bivouacked on God’s Adam’s apple) and remaining full of fire, he moved closer to God’s lips. But the quest was not for the purpose of kissing Him. No. The quest was for the purpose of
talking
to him. Connors wanted some answers. And he wanted them fast. However, the best he could hope for was a long journey – the labour of years, perhaps – in order to speak directly to the Source. If
God
didn’t know what was going on, then who would? He’d crawl into the cunt’s ear for a look at His brain if need be.

The journey would be the work that might see Connors to the end of his days: he was aware of this. Having no better plan, on the other hand, his mind was made up. Just as soon as he recovered…

Dusk was spreading thickly. Thinking about what might live in the ocean, Connors decided to get out while there was still enough warmth in the air to dry his skin. He collected his clothes from where he’d shed them, and climbed back up to a point where the tide was unlikely to reach him. Maybe sleeping near the Nail was a good idea – it had protected him so far – but he was sick of the sight and smell of it; tonight he would rest under a spray of stars only, near a fire he’d build. Parenthetically he wondered if he’d seen a moon since leaving the back garden of Number 11, way back when. He couldn’t remember. If it rained tonight… well, it rained. He’d get wet. A little rain had never hurt anyone.

His dreams did not stand on ceremony. Shortly after he’d closed his eyes (fully dressed once more) his mind played its usual nocturnal tricks; but the images were fanciful, colourful and violent. One moment he was on the ship, incising Chelsea’s teats with a broken bottle to drink the milk that she lactated, while the tide tossed them hither and yon; the next he was interrupting those two boys having sex and begging the alpha male for a turn of his own, even going so far as to display his naked rump in the ritualistic manner of a baboon. He saw Dorman, searching on muddy grass for the top of his head, then attaching it in place with a length of clothesline torn from the garden’s whirligig. And he dreamed of a face so vast that it was impossible to travel between its eyes without aircraft.

When he woke, he believed the dreams still had him. A child stood nearby, her skin as black as the sea itself; she watched him as he sat up, not breathing a word… Connors’s first thought (rapidly discarded) was that she was Elvis reincarnated. ‘Do you understand me?’ Connors croaked, then said again – the first time he had scarcely understood himself. He guessed her to be about six, but then again he had never been good with estimations of people’s ages. Even though only a few metres separated the two of them, Connors struggled in the darkness to make out her features with any confidence; however, his gut instinct convinced him that she appeared stern. Her hair was either tied back or cropped close to her scalp; she was wearing a light pink dress, with sandals on her feet.

Connors put a hand on his chest and said, ‘My name’s Chris.’ He opened the same palm in the girl’s direction. ‘And what’s
your
name?’

She didn’t answer.

Well, fuck the introductions; there were more important questions that needed answers. Pointing at his mouth, Connors asked, ‘Do you have any food? I’m very hungry, I’ve been walking… Oh never mind. Do you have any
food
?’ Wearily, Connors clambered to his feet.

The girl was as fast as a tumbling gymnast: the knife she produced from a scabbard attached to her back was at least as large as the span of his hand. She held it at head height, in the stance of a javelin thrower.

‘Woah there!’ Connors said. ‘Chill your boots! Just stretching me legs!’

The girl watched him. She said something in a language that he couldn’t understand; couldn’t so much as recognise. He stepped closer to what lingered of the fire: tiny embers glowing and a modicum of warmth expelled.

‘Only asked if you had
food
,’ Connors muttered. ‘No need to cop an attitude and a fucking
knife
. Why’d you even stop and wake me, eh? That’s what
I’d
like to know…’

‘Ruth.’

Connors faced her. ‘Your name’s Ruth? Put the knife down, eh? You’re making me nervous. It’s nice to meet you, Ruth. Now moving on to my second question…’

‘No. No I don’t have food.’

Connors grinned sourly. ‘Well that’s just pie and gravy, that is,’ he said. ‘What use do you think you are to me, then? Eh?

‘You’re hangry.’

‘You bet your life I’m angry!’ Connors shouted. ‘I’ve been stuck on a boat and attacked by some pretty fucking hardcore midges.
You’d
be angry!’ He paused. ‘Did you say angry or hungry?’

‘You’re hangry.’ Ruth mimed a spoon to her mouth.

‘Yes! Do you know where I can find food? Are you
with
people?’

Are you a cannibal?
was a question that flashed through his head.

The knife was either for protection or to hunt, Connors reasoned as she lowered it and reholstered it behind her back. Perhaps she’d popped out for a bite to eat herself.

She said, ‘Come.’ She turned her back on Connors and walked away from the Nail, inland. At least it was in the direction that he’d planned to travel in anyway. So he followed her.

Familiarity with the terrain, and her youth, made Ruth light on her feet; before they had covered half a mile she had increased the distance between them by ten metres or so. Connors kept losing sight of her, but sirened on by a warbling, ululating song that she had started to improvise, he was sure that he was proceeding the right way. Every now and then her pink dress flashed in the starlight.

Up ahead, more singing. Although Connors wondered why they couldn’t decide on one tune between them, he was grateful for the sound of the tribal choir that he could hear. Grateful too for the smell of something cooking. The fragrance seemed Sundayesque (it made him homesick): if it wasn’t pork roasting, they could twist his nipples and call him Patricia.

(It wasn’t pork roasting. No pig had been slain for this evening’s feast, but Connors would have to wait another thirty minutes before learning this fact.)

By Connors’s arithmetic, there were thirteen or fourteen mud huts gathered around a waist-high fire in a central clearing of a twenty-metre radius. Probably twenty-five people, some with skin hues as dark as Ruth’s but others as pale as bone, sat in the dust near the flames; it was their collected voices that Connors had listened to. Nor did they stop singing when he approached with Ruth; if anything, the volume rose exponentially with every half-metre that they covered. As if they had been waiting.

Connors was welcomed warmly. Quickly finding the tribespeople’s smiles contagious, Connors was offered a sweet hot drink, something like chicory, which he sipped gladly. Over his pained shoulders they dropped a blanket made of hide, to keep him warm. He sat on the ground near the fire, shaking slightly, his brain fuzzy as he tried to learn the harmonies of some of the songs. Singing along, perhaps, would demonstrate his amiability and his thanks.

In a greedy manner he consumed three bowls of a spicy broth, only later learning that its chief ingredient had been a dead boy that they’d found, marinated in stock brewed from the skeleton of a ravaged dog.