Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

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There was a sailor's graveyard in Moon Beach. This was where the funeral business first started. Rumour had it that the witch's fingers used to reach out and sink ships. But there hadn't been a wreck for years, and all the funeral parlours had moved downtown.

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There was a bitter smell. Like metal. No, like oil. And slowly he put it together. Usually he spent at least part of each summer at Aunt Yvonne’s house, but this year she was ill and he’d been unable to go. Dad had sent him on summer camp instead. It was run by people called the Pilgrims. It was a sort of adventure holiday with a bit of God thrown in. They were staying down the coast from Moon Beach in a building that used to be an army barracks, and it still smelt of that thin, dark oil that soldiers rub into guns.

There were three identical dormitories in the barracks, one on top of the other. The stairs that linked the dormitories were also identical. They were strange stairs, wide and deep, their edges sheathed in rubber. His feet didn’t know these stairs the way they knew the stairs at home. He must’ve stumbled almost straight away. This being so, it made sense to think that he’d come from the dormitory directly above. Pleased with this piece of logic, feeling better already despite the bruises on his knee and hip, he climbed back up the stairs and opened the dormitory door. The air churned with the breathing of the other boys. The tall windows were severe with moonlight. He walked to where his bed was, then stopped. He couldn’t believe it. There was somebody sleeping in it. Was he in the wrong dormitory after all? No, look. That blanket on the bed, it was his. He could tell by the satiny edge to it. It was his pale-blue blanket from home. Dad had taken it out of the airing cupboard specially.

He went up to the head of the bed and shook the sleeping boy by the shoulder. ‘What are you doing in my bed?’

‘It’s my bed,’ came the reply.

‘It’s my bed,’ Nathan hissed. ‘You’re in my bed.’

The boy mumbled, shrugged, rolled over.

Nathan checked again, this time by looking out of the window. The view was exactly as it should be. The wide, grey parade ground; the rifle range; four palm trees. It was his bed.

He went round to the other side, shook the boy’s shoulder again. ‘This is my bed,’ he said, ‘honestly.’

The boy opened his eyes. There was nothing in his eyes. No sense, no recognition.

‘You’ve got to go back to your own bed,’ Nathan explained.

The boy lifted his head off the pillow and stared at Nathan with his dark, blank eyes. He spoke very clearly, as if he was reciting something from memory, something he’d learned but didn’t understand. ‘It’s not your bed,’ he said, ‘so go away,’ and then he lowered his head and closed his eyes. In five seconds he was asleep again. Nathan could tell by the breathing. He knew about breathing. He’d spent whole nights lying awake and listening to it, making sure it didn’t stop.

He took one step backwards. He couldn’t risk talking any louder. He might wake someone up and then there’d be a scandal. Someone sleeping in your bed, it didn’t look good. There’d been a scandal at the camp two years before. Two boys were sent home early. They’d been found in the rifle range after lights out. Everyone knew what that meant.

Miserable now, and cold, he did the only thing he could think of: he began to insert himself into his bed alongside the other boy. They were narrow beds and it took him long minutes, with long minutes of stillness in between, to get into a position where sleep might be possible. He must’ve fallen asleep in the end, however, because he woke suddenly and it was light. He was a different person to the person he’d been during the night. He looked around and panicked. The blanket on the bed, it wasn’t pale-blue like his, it was pale-green. He looked across at the next bed and recognised the face. It belonged to one of the prayer-leaders. It was so obvious this morning. He was in the wrong dormitory. The wrong bed.

Praying nobody had seen him, he eased out of the bed. He tiptoed the fifty yards to the door. Opened it without making one single creak, then closed it again, just as silently. Dad would’ve been proud of him. Back downstairs he slid into his own cold bed and, closing his eyes, pretended he’d been there all night.

He realised how narrow his escape had been when, less than five minutes later, the rising-bell began to sound. But, as it turned out, somebody must’ve seen him. Word went round at breakfast that Christie had slept in someone else’s bed. Later that day he was summoned to the padre’s office.

‘So tell me, Christie,’ the padre said, resting his chin on one hand and looking steadily into Nathan’s soul, ‘what exactly happened last night?’

‘I was sleepwalking.’

The padre said nothing.

‘If you don’t believe me, ask my father,’ Nathan said. ‘He knows I do it.’

‘Do you know why you do it?’

Nathan shrugged. ‘My father says it started after my mother died.’

No action was taken, but that didn’t stop the rumours spreading. Overnight Nathan acquired the reputation for being some kind of prostitute and nothing he said could change anyone’s mind. His blond hair and his green eyes were used as evidence against him. The only thing the boys weren’t sure of was how much he charged.

Three nights later he walked in his sleep again, but this time he woke up in a field. Once he’d recovered from the terror of not knowing where he was, he felt only relief. There was nothing scandalous about a field. Though, once again, his absence from his own bed was noted and people thought the worst.

He spent the last two weeks of the holidays at home. As the days passed and the new semester loomed, he was overtaken by a sense of dread. He knew that some of the boys at camp went to the same school as he did. What if they remembered? What if word got out? Dad took him into the sitting-room one day and asked him what the matter was. He told Dad that he didn’t want to go back to school. Dad wanted to know why. It was a question that he found he couldn’t answer. So back he went.

For the first few days he hardly spoke. He tried to will himself into a kind of invisibility. It seemed to be working, because he heard nothing. Then, one evening during the second week, he was leaving the pool with Tip when he noticed a thin figure sitting on the grass bank under the streetlamp. Red baseball cap, acne, spectacles. Something contaminating about him. Like you could get a disease just by looking.

‘What’s he doing here?’ Nathan asked.

Tip looked. ‘You know him?’

‘I’ve seen him around. Blackmailed his mother or something, didn’t he?’

A grin from Tip. ‘You heard about that?’

‘It was all over the school.’

‘Yeah,’ and Tip nodded, ‘yeah, I guess it was.’ He turned to the thin figure who had uncoiled from the bank and was shambling over. ‘Hey, Jed, what’s up?’

Jed didn’t answer. He was looking at Nathan. ‘There’s going to be a shark run,’ he said.

‘Great,’ Tip said. ‘Who’s doing it?’

‘I’ll give you one guess.’ Jed was still looking at Nathan.

Tip understood and looked away. ‘How come?’

‘There’s talk about him. We want to see if he’s guilty.’

Nathan’s heart sank. So they knew.

‘What talk?’ Tip asked, but Jed wouldn’t say.

Nathan spoke to Tip. ‘It’s not true,’ he said, ‘none of it’s true,’ but nobody was listening.

‘He a good swimmer?’ Jed was looking at Nathan, but he was talking to Tip.

Tip said he was.

‘Oh shit,’ and Jed smirked. ‘Looks bad.’

Tip scraped at the gravel with his boot.

‘He’ll do it, won’t he?’ Jed said.

‘I guess.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Jed said. ‘He chicken?’

‘Ask him,’ Tip said.

‘What’s a shark run?’ Nathan said.

Jed took Tip’s sleeve. ‘It’s happening in Blackwater Bay, Saturday night. It’s your job to make sure he’s there.’ Then he turned to leave. Tip turned with him.

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