Peter May - The Blackhouse

I saw Calum glance down, and when he turned back again his face was sheet-white in the moonlight. There was an odd look in his eyes, and I felt my stomach lurch. I just knew something bad was going to happen. ‘Fin, I was wrong. I can’t do it’ His voice was quivering and breathless.

‘Give me your hand.’

‘I can’t move. Fin, I can’t move.’

‘Yes, you can. Just give me your hand and we’ll get you back on the roof.’

But he was shaking his head. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t .’ And I watched in disbelief as he just let go and slipped backwards out of view. I could not move. It was as if I had been turned to stone. There was a yawning silence, and then a dreadful clatter on the fire escape below. Calum never made a sound.

It must have been a full half-minute before I could bring myself to look. He had missed the second-floor platform completely, falling another whole floor to land on his back on the handrail and slide down on to the metal grille. His body was twisted at an unnatural angle, and he was not moving.

Right then felt like the worst moment of my life. I closed my eyes and prayed fervently that I would wake up.

‘Macleod!’ My name came up to me from below, and I heard a clatter on the fire escape. I opened my eyes and saw Angel on the platform. He had the ladder out there again, and was fumbling to slide the extension up the rungs. The top of the ladder scraped across the wall just beneath the crenellations. ‘Macleod! For fuck sake, get down here now!’

I was still stone, the same granite as the walls, a part of them, locked there for eternity. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the prone, twisted form of poor Calum thirty feet below.

‘Macleod!’ Angel almost bellowed my name. Blood rushed back through my frozen veins and I began shaking almost uncontrollably. But, still, I could move again. And with jelly legs, I clambered like an automaton through the crenellations and on to the ladder, going down it faster than was safe, my hands burning on the cold metal. I had barely reached the platform when Angel grabbed my jacket. His face was inches from mine. I could smell the stale tobacco on his breath and for the second time that night felt his spittle in my face. ‘You don’t say a word. Not a fucking word. You were never here, right?’ And when I said nothing, he pushed his face even closer. ‘Right?’ I nodded. ‘Okay, go. Down the fire escape. Don’t even look back.’

He let go of me and starting climbing back through the window, leaving the ladder where it was, leaning up against the wall. I could see washed-out frightened faces in the darkness beyond. Still I didn’t move. Angel glared back at me from inside. And for the first time in my life I saw fear in his face. Real fear.

‘Go!’ He slid the window shut.

I turned then and ran down the rattling steps of the fire escape until I reached the first-floor platform. There I stopped. I would have to step over Calum’s body to reach the next flight of stairs. I could see his face now. Pale and passive, just as if he were sleeping. And then I saw the blood seeping slowly across the metal from behind his head, thick and dark, like molasses. There were voices coming from somewhere in the grounds below, and outside lights came on at the front door. I knelt down and touched his face. It was still warm, and I saw the rise and fall of his chest. He was breathing. But there was nothing I could do for him. It could only be a matter of minutes before they would find him. And me, too, if I didn’t go. I stepped carefully over him and ran down the final flight of steps as fast as I could, jumping the last half-dozen and then sprinting for the cover of the trees. I heard someone shout, and footsteps running on gravel. But I didn’t look back. And I didn’t stop running until I reached the bridge at the Community Centre. In the distance I heard the wail of a siren and saw the blue light of an ambulance flashing up through the trees towards the castle. I leaned over the rail, holding on to it to stop my legs from buckling, and threw up into the Bayhead River. The tears were streaming down my face in the freezing February wind, and I turned and hurried across the main road to begin the long, slow jog up Mackenzie Street to Matheson Road. The lights were out in most of the windows now, and I felt like I was the only person still alive in the whole of Stornoway.

By the time I got to Ripley Place, I could hear the distant siren of the ambulance on its return journey from the castle to the hospital. If I had believed in miracles, I would have asked God for one right there and then. Maybe it’s my fault that I didn’t. Maybe if I had, Calum would have been okay.

That was the last time I saw him, and I have lived with the memory of that final moment ever since. The spattering of freckles in a chalk-white face. The tight, carrot curls. The blood like treacle on the metal beneath him. The impossible twist of his body as it lay in the moonlight.

He was airlifted to a specialist unit in Glasgow. We heard through the grapevine that he had broken his back and wouldn’t walk again. He never returned to school, staying on the mainland during those first months for intensive therapy. It’s amazing how quickly time grows new skin over open wounds. As it became clear that the true circumstances surrounding what really took place that night were not going to surface after all, new memories replaced old, raw ones, like healing skin, and poor Calum gradually receded from the forefront of all our minds. An old wound that only hurt if you thought about it, and so you didn’t. At least, not consciously. Not if you could help it.

He knocked on the door, but the clackety-clack of the loom continued uninterrupted. Fin drew a deep breath and waited until there was a pause for a change of shuttle. Then he knocked again. There was a moment’s silence, then a voice told him to enter.

The inside of the shed was a dumping ground for almost everything imaginable. An old bicycle, a lawnmower and strimmer, garden tools, fishing net, electric cable. The loom itself was set in the corner, the walls behind it lined with shelves of tools and stacks of different-coloured spun wool, all within easy reach of the weaver. There was a clear passage to it for the wheelchair, and Calum sat behind the loom, large metal handles jutting up at either hand from the mechanism below.

Fin was shocked. Calum had put on a huge amount of weight. His once delicate frame was round-shouldered and gross. A great collar of flesh propped up his chin, and his ginger hair was all but gone. What was left of it had been cropped, although it still kept its colour. Pale skin that never saw the sun looked bleached, almost blue-white. Even the once vivid spattering of freckles seemed to have faded. Calum squinted at Fin standing in the light of the doorway, his green eyes wary and suspicious.

‘Who’s that?’

Fin moved away from the door so that the light was no longer behind him. ‘Hello, Calum.’

It was a moment or two before Fin saw recognition in Calum’s eyes. There was surprise there, too, for just a second before a dull glaze passed across them like cataracts. ‘Hello, Fin. I’ve been expecting you for twenty years. You took your time.’

Fin knew there were no excuses he could make. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for? It wasn’t your fault. My stupid idea. And as you see, I didn’t have wings after all.’

Fin nodded. ‘How have you been?’ Even as he said it he knew it was a stupid thing to ask. And he only did because he had no idea what else to say.

‘How do you think?’

‘I can’t imagine.’

‘I bet you can’t. Unless it’s happened to you, how can you possibly imagine what it’s like to have no control of your bowels or your bladder? To have to be changed like a baby when you soil yourself? You wouldn’t believe the sores you get on your arse when you have to sit on it all day. And sex?’ A tiny bitter breath of laughter forced its way between his lips. ‘Well, of course, I’m still a virgin. Can’t even have a wank. Couldn’t find the damned thing even if I wanted to. And the irony of it is, that’s what it was all about in the first place. Sex.’ He paused, lost in some distant memory. ‘She’s dead, you know?’