David Peace - 1983

You reach the row of sheds. You walk along. You come to the last one:

The one with no windows and the black door -

The black door banging in the wind and the rain:

The door to hell .

You step inside -

The pictures on the wall have gone.

There is a workbench and tools, bags of fertiliser and cement, pots and trays.

There is a hole in the ground. It is surrounded by sacks and a piece of thick and muddy rope hooked through a manhole cover.

You look into the hole -

It is a ventilation shaft to a mine.

You squeeze yourself down into the shaft -

Your hands and boots upon the metal ladder;

You start down -

Everything is wet. Everything is cold. Everything is dark;

You come down to a second horizontal passage -

There is a dim light from the end of the passage;

You turn around. You pull yourself out of the shaft into the tunnel -

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

You think you can hear familiar music playing far away:

The only thing you ever learn in school is ABC -

You crawl upon your fat bleeding bloody belly across the bricks towards the light:

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

Crawl upon your fat bleeding bloody belly across the bricks towards the light:

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

Upon your fat bleeding bloody belly across the bricks towards the light:

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

Your fat bleeding bloody belly across the bricks towards the light:

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

Fat bleeding bloody belly across the bricks towards the light:

School love -

Bleeding bloody belly across the bricks towards the light:

School love -

Bloody belly across the bricks towards the light:

You and I will be together -

Belly across the bricks towards the light:

End of term until forever -

Across the bricks towards the light:

School love -

The bricks towards the light:

School love -

Bricks towards the light:

School love -

Towards the light:

School love -

The light:

Love -

Light.

The music stops. The roof rises. There are beams among the bricks.

You stagger on, on fat legs and fat feet -

Through the muck and the mud, the sound of rats here with you -

Near .

You stumble on a shoe -

A child’s summer sandal, covered in dust -

You wipe away the dust -

A child’s summer sandal, scuffed.

You leave it. You go on -

Back ripped raw from the beams and the bricks -

Until the roof rises again and you can stand in the shadow of a pile of rock.

You wait. You wait. You wait.

You turn the corner past the pile of rock and -

Fuck -

You see two skeletons lying on a bed of dead roses and old feathers, skulls turned up to a faded sky of bricks once blue, black cotton wool clouds stuck here and there among dim swinging Davy lamps -

Two skeletons entwined in osseous embrace -

Their black son rising out of the ground into the dim lamplight -

Into the lamplight, a hammer in his hand:

Leonard Marsh -

Little Leonard Marsh, a hammer in his hand -

Head shaved and chest bare, coming towards you -

His chest in bloody scars, it reads:

O LUV .

You do not move. You wait for Leonard Marsh -

A hammer in his hand, coming towards you.

You do not move. You wait until Leonard Marsh is almost upon you -

A hammer in his hand, coming towards you.

You raise the brick in your fist. You bring it down hard into the side of his head -

Leonard Marsh howls. He tries to bring the hammer down -

The hammer in his hand.

You raise the brick in your fist again. You bring it down hard again -

Leonard Marsh howling, trying to stand.

But you are behind him now and you have his hammer in your hand-

‘Remember me?’ you whisper.

Blind with his blood, you stop -

In this one long tunnel of hate, you see yourself;

In the ten broken mirrors -

The boxes and the bones -

The shadows and the lights -

The tape recorders and the screams -

The dead flowers and the feathers -

You see yourself and Leonard among the feathers -

Among the wings;

Your feathers and your wings -

Both stuck with his blood.

His mouth opens and closes again -

You put the hammer down.

‘No-one even looked,’ he whispers.

‘I know,’ you nod.

‘No-one.’

You wipe the tears from his cheek. You kiss his head. You say: ‘I know.’

He closes his eyes.

You put your wings over his mouth -

‘The children of sinners are abominable children -

Your wings, huge and rotting things -

‘And they frequent the haunts of the ungodly .

Big black raven things -

‘Children will blame an ungodly father -

Heavy and burnt, over his mouth.

‘For they suffer disgrace because of him .

He tries to raise his hand -

‘But whatever comes from the earth returns to the earth -

Tries to stop you -

‘So the ungodly go from curse to destruction.’

Stop you -

D-1 .

He walks up path. He knocks on door.

‘It’s not locked,’ I shout downstairs.

He opens door. He steps inside.

‘Up here.’

He turns. He starts to walk upstairs. He reaches top of stairs. He stops.

Door is on its side, blocking his path.

He can see my mother lying on floor of back bedroom.

He climbs over door -

I turn -

Turn from out of front bedroom -

I thrust knife though his coat -

Through his coat, deep into his belly:

‘Hello,’ I say.

I pull knife out. I push it back in -

Back in, up and under his ribs.

‘Hello from back seat hard on last bus home, one that got away and lived to tell tale, from Barry Gannon and Eddie Dunford, Derek Box and his mate Paul, from my mate Clare and her sister Grace, Billy Bell and his spilt pint, from John Dawson and his brother Richard, Donald Foster and Johnny Kelly, from Pat they fucked and left behind, Jeanette Garland and her mum Paula, from Susan Ridyard and Clare Kemplay, Hazel Atkins and every missing child in this whole fucking world, from Graham Goldthorpe and his murdered Mary, Janice Ryan and Bad Bobby Fraser, from Eric Hall and his wife Libby, Peter Hunter and Evil Ken Drury, from Steve Barton and his brother Clive, Keith Lee and Kenny D, from Two Sevens and Joseph Rose, Ronnie Angus and George Oldman, from lovely Bill Shaw and Blind Old Walter, poor Jack Whitehead and Ka Su Peng, from Strafford Public House and Griffin hotel, Millgarth and Wood Street nicks, from Gaiety and both St Marys, motorways and car parks, from parks and toilets, idle rich and unemployed, from Maggie Thatcher and Michael Foot, from SWP and National Front, IRA and UDA, from M &S and C &A, Tesco and Co-op and every shopping centre in this wounded, wounded land, from shit they sell and shit we buy, my old mum and Queen sodding Mum, from kids with no mum and mums with no kid, Black Panther and Yorkshire Ripper, from Liddle Towers and Blair Peach, black bodies in Calder and ones in Aire, from all dead meat and my dead friends, pubs and clubs, from gutters and stars, local tips and old slag heaps, from ladies of night and boys in bogs, headlights and brake-lights, high life and low, from mucky mags and dirty vids, silent pits and page three tits, from Nazis and Witches, West Yorkshire coppers and their bent mates, from all little shits and things we get to see, dead bodies piled up in first-floor bars, stink of shotguns mixed with beer, sirens that howl for ten long years bloodstained with fear, from one that got away, un-lucky one, from Dachau to Belsen, Auschwitz to Preston, from Wakefield to Leeds, Stanley Royd and fucking North, from West bloody Riding and Red Riding Hood, final solution and wrath of God, from Church of Abandoned Christ and her twenty-two disciples, Michael Williams and Jack’s wife Carol, from pictures and tapes, murders and rapes, from whispers and rumours, cancers and tumours, from badgers and owls, wolves and swans -’