David Peace - 1983

BJ, head bobbed and wreathed.

I watch -

No sleep, no food, no cigarettes -

I just watch and I listen:

‘A Fitzwilliam man will appear before Wakefield Magistrates later today charged with the murder of Clare Kemplay, the Morley schoolgirl whose body was found on Saturday in Wakefield. The man is also charged with a number of motoring offences and is expected to be remanded in custody for questioning in connection with offences of a nature similar to those with which he has already been charged. This is widely believed to refer to the disappearance of eight-year-old Jeanette Garland from her Castleford home in 1969, a case which became nationally known as the Little Girl Who Never Came Home and which remains unsolved to this day…’

Thursday 19 December 1974 -

Netherton, Yorkshire.

I wait.

Dawn, I watch a grey-haired woman come out of her front door with a parcel under her arm. I watch her close the door. I watch her come down her garden path. I watch her open her gate. I watch her carry the parcel round the back of Maple Well Drive. I watch her open the gate behind the bungalows. I watch her walk up the tractor path towards the row of sheds at the top of the hill. I watch her slip. I watch her get back up. I watch Mrs Marsh disappear into the end shed with her parcel.

I wait.

Thirty minutes later, I watch Mrs Marsh come out of the end shed. I watch her walk back down the tractor path. I watch her slip. I watch her get back up. I watch her open the gate behind the bungalows. I watch her come back round on to Maple Well Drive. I watch her open her garden gate. I watch her go back up her garden path. I watch her open her front door. I watch her go back inside, empty-handed.

I wait.

Twenty minutes later, I watch a car pull up.

It is a big black Morris Oxford. The driver is all in black. He is wearing a hat. He doesn’t get out. He sounds his horn twice.

I watch Mrs Marsh open her front door. I watch her lock it. I watch her come back down the garden path. I watch her get inside the car. I watch them talk for a minute. I watch them set off.

I toss a coin -

I look at the top of my hand:

Tails -

I wait.

Ten minutes later, I open the gate to the field behind the bungalows. I walk up the tractor path towards the row of sheds at the top of the hill. The track is muddy and the sky grey above me, the field full of dark water and the smell of dead animals.

Halfway up the hill, I turn around. I look back down at the little white van outside their little brown bungalow and their little brown garden, next to all the other little brown bungalows and their little brown gardens.

I take off my glasses. I wipe them on my handkerchief. I put them back on.

I start walking again -

I come to the top of the hill. I come to the sheds:

An evil sleeping village of weatherbeaten tarpaulin and plastic fertiliser bags, damp stolen house bricks with rusting corrugated iron roofs.

I walk through this Village of the Damned. I come to the end of the row -

To the one with the blackest door and the rotten sacks nailed over its windows.

I knock on the door -

Nothing .

I open the black door -

I step inside:

There is a workbench and tools, bags of fertiliser and cement, pots and trays, the floor covered with empty plastic bags.

I step towards the bench. I step on something -

Something under the sacks and bags.

I kick away the sacks and bags. I see a piece of rope, thick and muddy and hooked through a manhole cover -

I wrap the rope around my hands. I hoist the cover up. I swing it off to one side -

There is a hole.

I look into the hole -

It is a ventilation shaft to a mine. It is dark and narrow. The sides of the shaft are made of stone, metal rungs hammered into them.

I can hear the sound of dripping water down below. I look closer -

There is a light, faint but there -

Fifty feet down there.

I take off my coat. I take off my jacket. I lower myself down into the shaft, hands and boots upon the metal ladder -

Everything dark. Everything wet -

Everything cold, down I go.

Ten feet. Twenty feet -

Thirty feet, down I go.

Forty feet. Fifty feet -

Towards the light, I go.

Then the wall at my back ends. I turn around -

There is a passageway. There is a light.

I heave myself out of the vertical shaft into the horizontal tunnel -

It is narrow. It is made of bricks. It stretches off into the light.

I can hear strange music playing far away:

The only thing you ever learn in school is ABC -

I crawl upon my belly across the bricks towards the light -

But all I want to know about is you and me -

Crawl upon my belly across the bricks towards the light -

I went and told the teacher about the thing we found -

Upon my belly across the bricks towards the light -

But all she said to me is that you’re out of bounds -

My belly across the bricks towards the light -

Even though we broke the rule I only want to be with you -

Belly across the bricks towards the light -

School love -

Across the bricks towards the light -

School love -

The bricks towards the light -

You and I will be together -

Bricks towards the light -

End of term until forever -

Towards the light -

School love -

The light -

School love -

Light -

The music stops. The ceiling rises. There are beams of wood among the bricks.

I stagger on, arms and legs bleeding -

Stagger on through the shingle and the shale. The sound of rats here with me -

Near .

I put out my hand. I touch a shoe -

A child’s shoe, a sandal -

A child’s summer sandal. It is covered in dust -

I wipe away the dust -

Scuffed .

I put it down. I move on -

My back ripped raw from the beams, the burden.

Then the ceiling rises again. I stand upright in the shadow of a pile of rock -

I breathe. I breathe. I breathe.

I turn the corner past the pile of fallen rock and -

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

I am falling -

Falling -

Falling -

Falling:

Backward from this place -

This rotten un-fresh place -

Her voice, Mandy’s voice -

She is calling -

Calling -

Calling -

Calling:

‘This place is worst of all, underground;

The corpses and the rats -

The dragon and the owl -

Wolves be there too, the swans -

The swans all starved and dead .

Unending, this place unending;

Under the grass that grows -

Between the cracks and the stones -

The beautiful carpets -

Waiting for the others, underground.’

I am on my back -

Eyes closed -

I am dreaming -

Dreaming -

Dreaming -

Dreaming:

Underground kingdoms, animal kingdoms of pigs and badgers, worms and insect cities; white swans upon black lakes while dragons soar overhead in painted skies of silver stars and then swoop down through moonlit caverns wherein an owl guards three silent little princesses in their tiny feathered wings from the wolf that waits for them to wake -

On my back -

Eyes half open -

I am not dreaming -

I am underground:

In the underground kingdom, this animal kingdom of corpses and rats and children’s shoes, mines flooded with the dirty water of old tears, dragons tearing up burning skies, empty churches and barren wombs, the fleas, rats and dogs picking through the ruin of their bones and wings, their starved white skeletons left here to weep by the wolf -