Ventriloquists (38 page)

Maggie said, ‘That’s twice you’ve alluded to the possibility we might not return. Are you saying it’s definitely dangerous on the other side?’

‘Oh it’s dangerous all right,’ Benny answered. ‘But travelling to Paris could be dangerous. Steer clear of the frogs’ legs and don’t shag nothing near the train stations: that would be my less-than-expert advice. Are you ready, Freddie?’

‘Yeah I’m ready,’ Chris replied.

‘Just one more thing,’ Shyleen added. ‘You said something about an experiment and it’s bothered me ever since. In the house. You said something about your experiment backfiring… I think that’s the exact word you used,’ she said into Benny’s silence. ‘Did
you
start this off?’

‘That’s for me to know,’ Benny answered, ‘and you to find out. Now. Before I lose the will to live… I’ll follow you in Chris. Beauty before age.’

7.

Outside in the back garden, Yasser, Shyleen and Maggie found spots to sit down; they gazed up at the night sky and counted stars, hoping that it wouldn’t rain. Cold enough without a midnight downpour… And Yasser invited into his head the notion that he’d be well pleased at this moment to pull a deckchair up beside the burning shell of Maggie’s caravan… if indeed the thing was still ablaze. He could not recall the last time he had been so chilly.

Shifting his attention from the constellations (which he wished he could name, or at least recognise), Yasser looked at the upstairs windows.
Fireworks,
he thought;
there’s bound to be fireworks
– a discharge of sparks and electricity that could be witnessed on the screens of the windowpanes. A clue, at least, as to what awaited them all.

Nothing.

To all intents and purposes, from the outside the house looked as dead as a doornail. An old blind dog of a house, freezing in the water that drowned it.

They heard nothing. Saw nothing. Said nothing.

And waited.

8.

As soon as they were back in the spore-scented kitchen, their flashlight beams playing tag against every wall and surface, Benny slipped in front of Chris and blazed the trail to the foot of the staircase.

‘These steps’ll be the death of me,’ he remarked as he embarked on the climb.

The treads groaned like tectonic plates.

They crossed the landing, as mute as determined thieves. The tipsy bathroom door they disregarded. The fourth and smallest bedroom was their destination. The air stank of cabbage and peanuts; it was as thick as a storm.

In Benny’s wake, Chris had assumed the ascetic air of a devoted monk, and most of this attitude could be put down to nervousness and servility. Although worried about what might come next, he was respectful of Benny’s authority, in spite of how much he hated himself for caring more than two tin bollocks for the older man’s opinion.

‘And breathe. And relax,’ said Benny.

‘I’m relaxed,’ Chris fibbed.

‘No you’re not. Turn off your light.’

‘My torch?’

‘Turn it off. Mood is everything, mate.’ Flicking off his own flashlight, Benny took a few steps away from Chris and told him once more to relax.

The light in the room had been halved – more than halved. Gravy-thick shadows glanced and danced.

‘I said turn it off, Chris.’

Chris flicked the switch. The colours in the room became more cloak and bullet, there was nothing less than a dark grey.

‘And turn one-eighty,’ Benny instructed. ‘Do it, Chris. I’m not exactly renowned for my carefree spirit and I have three of your mates clamouring for my attention outside.’

Chris turned; his feet shuffled in the filthy swamp that had once been a carpet. ‘I’m sorry I took half a second to respond,’ he said violently. ‘Not everyone’s earned your experience.’

Behind Chris’s back, Benny said, ‘Don’t get lippy with me, cunt. I don’t deserve it.’

‘…Did you call me
cunt?
’

‘Yes I did, cunt. And I’ll say it again. Are you listening? You’re a cunt. And you’re mine. I’m collecting people for my experiments.’

‘What do you mean?’

As Chris turned, there was not enough light to see Benny striding towards him. There was even less light to see what Benny held in his right hand; what he’d collected from the windowsill where he’d left it a few minutes earlier.

He swung it.

Benny swung the hammer and it made contact with the fontanelle on Chris’s head. With no time to scream, Chris buckled; he folded like cellophane in steam.

He dropped to his knees and wobbled. Muttered something – gasped something – and Benny swung the hammer at Chris’s head once again… Embedded as they were in the near-darkness, Benny’s aim was a triumph of experience over fortune.

The sound of bone caving in was a kick. Benny grinned. Although he couldn’t actually see Chris toppling forward, he felt it. Indeed, he heard it. Perhaps he even smelt it.

To make sure of the programme of events, Benny bent at the waist and swung the hammer again. And this time he used his torch to make sure.

One down.

Three to go.

9.

In Benny’s experience there was no qualitative difference between the thicknesses of the male and the female skull - both examples would cave in when addressed by a hammer. In spite of this earlier research, however, he did not choose the hammer when it came to Shyleen. Partly he was worried that a hammer blow might kill her (and this one he wanted to keep alive); and partly he fancied a change. After all, swinging a weapon like a hammer was very much a younger man’s game, and he still had three more to get through tonight.

And what a night! A
bumper
night! Made all the more juicy for being wholly unexpected, these visitors having played into his hands.

‘We’re going upstairs,’ Benny said as he began the climb.

‘What happened to the other torch?’ Shyleen asked. ‘The one Chris had.’

‘He took it with him.’ Benny grinned. He hadn’t thought about his first victim’s torch but his position on the stairway meant that he could lie convincingly. ‘I didn’t expect that to happen,’ he improvised further.

‘So…’ The sound of Shyleen’s footfalls on the wet carpet; a jingle of some jewellery, if Benny wasn’t much mistaken – a couple of bracelets, perhaps. He’d fence those. ‘It was a painless journey. For Chris, I mean.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Benny answered.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I don’t know, but I doubt it was painless.’ Benny had reached the upstairs landing. ‘Y
our body will be disintegrated and then re-fused on a plain beyond our current comprehension as human beings. You can’t tell me that’s not gonna sting a bit.
’

Shyleen’s ensuing silence sang of anxiety; Benny imagined that he could sense it – sense waves of the stuff – as she made it to the top of the stairs. Benny pointed the beam into the first bedroom and said, ‘We’re in here.’

Although Shyleen did not sniff the air as she entered the room – she was aware of her nostrils flaring. Twitching. She was trying to smell a sign (any vague sign would suffice) of Chris’s crossing. An olfactory echo of some kind – an electric air, perhaps; a lakeside storm sensation – a salty ozone cologne. But no, the room stank exactly the same as the rest of the house stank, of water damage and no through air…

Until the torchlight was extinguished.

‘Hey!’

As soon as the light went out, the smell changed dramatically, and this change was accompanied by a hissing sound.

In the filthy darkness, Shyleen tensed.

Hiss.

‘What’s happening?’ Shyleen demanded.

The smell had moved closer to her senses – claustrophobically close, in fact. The stink of burnt sugar and of muck-spreading on countryside pastures… It assaulted her nostrils while the hissing sound continued. The hissing sound –

Hissssss…

…like an aerosol can… spraying –

Spraying me.

- spraying its poison into the localised atmosphere.

In order to block her nose as best she could, Shyleen raised her hands to her face. Both her nose and her eyes had started to leak; both her mucous and her tears seemed as hot as bathwater – hot and abrasive… Wanting instinctively nothing more than to scream or to voice a protest (she wasn’t sure which), Shyleen opened her mouth; not only the stench but a foul taste flooded in, and Shyleen choked. She coughed.

Surely she had swallowed perfumed fire. No words could she squeeze out; a coughing fit had overtaken her, but Shyleen knew that she had to get out of the room. She had to get out of the house… but one step at a time. Bent at the waist and coughing madly, she walked in the direction that she believed the door to be in - the direction directly opposite the night-blackened window.

Whatever Benny had squirted at Shyleen was affecting her vision – her sense of balance also. Her throat was as raw as gravel; her eyes burned. She couldn’t speak. However, what was worst of all was the way that the darkness had started to launch itself directly at her face. She ducked deeper.

…
spraying me…

‘You are feeling very sleepy,’ Benny intoned in a mock-illusionist’s stage voice, lightly accented.

The darkness was sapping Shyleen’s strength; her consciousness had all but retreated. To the throb in her temples – insistent as a parade’s bass drum – she fell down on the stinking single bed that the room contained.

Her mouth was dry.

…
spraying me…
she thought once more before her consciousness flew away on wings fetid and dark.

10.

Gripping his canister like a truncheon (at shoulder height), Benny waited until Shyleen’s breathing had levelled out; until she had exhaled away her panic. Then he flicked on the torch and shone the jaundiced beam at his victim. The approach of her unconsciousness had paralysed her facial features into a mask of horror that could not have been bettered on the face of a French mime. Her mouth was open - invitingly so, in Benny’s opinion.

‘How long do I have, I wonder?’ he whispered to himself.

Shortly after meeting Shyleen for the first time, Benny had pictured her lowering the fly of his trousers with her pursed lips. After all, it had been a long time since he’d stripped and fucked an Asian girl. (And never before had he shared his erection with an Asian
boy
. He had high hopes for Yasser.)

‘Why not, as the actress said to the bishop.’

Benny squeezed his trouser pocket – to check on the progress of his tumescence… Nothing doing; soft as a Labrador’s turd. But there was time. There was time. If either of the other two outside were to enter the house, Benny would hear the intrusion, even in the throes of passion. He could disengage quickly, and –

‘Fuck it,’ Benny whispered. Laboriously kneeling down by the side of the bed, he sat about removing Shyleen’s trousers.

He’d always been speedy in the sack.

Old age or no old age.

11.

The first thing he thought was that he’d been mugged again.

Thirteen years earlier, he’d been mugged outside London Bridge station, near a throbbing flock of black cabs. A prick with a flick had demanded money. Chris had said no. And the wanker had not understood the mass of the situation. Not willing to practise what he preached, he had held the knife but hadn’t used it: he’d lost his bottle. He had fought Chris with fists alone.

And lost.

Chris had pushed the wanker down a flight of stairs and had left him for dead. The wanker had hit his head on a wall. His head had resembled a Bolognese. And Chris had left him.

He’d felt good.

But he didn’t feel good right now. Chris imagined that he was the one who had been abandoned at the foot of the stairs. For a few seconds.

Pain information sank codes into Chris’s brain. His head pulsed: a headache from the end of the world; an Armageddon migraine… Chris tested the rear of his scalp with numb fingers. He felt wetness, an adhesive quality.

‘You piece of shit,’ he murmured while attempting to stand.

His fingertips his only guide, he left the bedroom.

He heard commotion. The sounds were distant and extraterrestrial.

‘You prick,’ he muttered; and believing that the angel’s wing might have saved him from a certain death, and that his luck had held for one more day, he crossed the landing…

12.

‘I really don’t like this,’ said Yasser.

‘Nor me.’

Yasser waited. In the field behind the house, a couple of owls performed a brief duet.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked finally.

‘
You know what’s going on. He told us to wait,’ said Maggie.

‘I’m not talking about Benny. I’m talking about your matches and petrol.’

‘Oh that.’

‘Yes,
oh that
… What were you thinking?’

‘I’m paving me way.’

‘To what?’

‘To me future.’

‘Oh. And that’s cool, I suppose.’

‘Quite hot, I’d imagine.’

‘…Is that supposed to be a joke?’

Now it was Maggie who waited. The owls sang again and Maggie said, ‘That’s
two
owls, by the way. One does the
turwit
and the other one does the
turwoo
. Did you know that?’

‘I did as a matter of fact.’

‘But don’t you wonder why the second owl doesn’t start the conversation some time? Might be nice to hear
turwoo turwit
.’

‘We don’t get too many owls in Bury Park,’ Yasser answered, and then he realised what Maggie could be saying. ‘We’re the owls, you mean? You want to speak first?’

‘Heaven forfend! Just an observation… Do you think many people were hurt in the fire?’

‘That’s between you and your conscience, I’d say. You’ll find out soon enough when you’re in court. On charges of arson and manslaughter. If you’re lucky.’