Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

Silence in the room except for the bottle emptying into Tommy’s throat. It was strange but, since they’d started talking about getting rid of Donald, the baby had quietened down. Now it was sleeping on the bed. Tommy wiped his mouth and handed the bottle to Nathan, who passed it straight to Pete. Tommy bared his teeth. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Listen,’ Nathan said, ‘maybe we can do this without making any mess. Maybe we can do it clean.’ Though he hadn’t sampled the contents of Tommy’s bottle, he felt drunk.

‘What the fuck you talking about, clean?’ Tommy said.

So Nathan told him.

One night they were all sitting round the same as usual, in the kitchen this time, Pete and Tommy and a friend of Tommy’s, they were sitting round drinking the whisky Tommy’s friend had brought over when they heard footsteps in the yard. They all watched the door as it opened and Donald’s face poked round the edge, and then they all looked at each other and they all thought the same thought: Now?

There was a moment of absolute stillness. Nathan thought of the shotgun locked under his chin; he’d held himself so rigid that night that he’d ached for three days afterwards. Only Donald was moving in the room — lighting his pipe, shaking a paper open.

That was when they jumped him.

Suddenly Donald was tied to his chair with the flex from the lamp, the plug still attached. Pete gagged Donald with an apron that had a picture of a spaniel on it. Tommy set fire to some of Donald’s hair by mistake. It must’ve been the pipe. They spent some time telling him what they thought of him. Tommy had to make it up, because he’d never met Donald before. It’s strange to see someone crying without using their mouth. It’s hard to watch. They turn red and the tears fall out. There’s hardly any noise. It’s like those dolls.

They stood Donald in the back of Tommy’s pick-up truck, then they climbed into the cab. It was a thirty-mile drive. They took the side roads. They didn’t want any cops pulling them over and asking them what they were doing with a man tied to a chair in the back of their truck. Once they had to stop at a red light, and they heard Donald whimpering. ‘They’re all cowards,’ Tommy said. ‘Deep down they’re all fucking cowards.’ Most of the time they couldn’t hear anything because of the engine.

Then it began to rain.

It was after midnight when they reached the place. The gates were open so they just drove right in. They got out of the truck. That smell of rotten meat, and the warm rain running over their heads and hands. Tommy shot the bolts on the tailgate and let it drop. The chair had toppled over with Donald still attached. His cheek pressed against the studded metal. One eye blinked as the rain splashed into it. He must’ve thought they were going to kill him, but that was why they didn’t have to. The fear was the same. Tommy peered upwards, through the darkness. The pyramid loomed above.

‘On top, you said.’

Nathan nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘Right.’

A dead dog lay close by. Three of its legs had been sawn off. Tommy’s friend stood over it. ‘Who’d do that to a dog?’ he said. ‘Who’d do that to a poor, defenceless dog?’

Tommy took him by the arm and led him to the chair. ‘Get the front.’ He turned to Pete. ‘You help him.’

Tommy and Nathan lifted the back and, between the four of them, they half-dragged, half-carried Donald to the top. Once there, they set him upright. Stood back, breathing hard. There was a curious silence, a moment when it seemed that something might be said. But nobody spoke. The wind moved the hair on Donald’s head.

They ran back down, huge crunching strides. Tried not to think what they were treading on. When they reached the bottom they automatically looked back. Donald was an inch high. Nathan nodded to himself. It was right. Donald had wanted to rule. Well, he could rule that pile of trash. He could be Pharaoh of that pyramid, a Pharaoh with a crown of flies.

Tommy’s friend shuffled in the dirt. ‘Think the rats’ll get him?’

Tommy laughed.

‘What about the gag?’ Tommy’s friend said. ‘Think we should’ve taken the gag off?’

‘They’ll find him tomorrow,’ Nathan said. But it was hours till tomorrow. There was plenty of time for Donald to think things over. Smell the smell of his own foul behaviour.

Tommy looked up at the pyramid, then out towards the ocean. ‘Some view he’ll have,’ he said.

Then they drove home.

The next morning India-May wanted to know where Donald had got to.

Nathan looked her in the eye. ‘He left.’

‘He left late last night,’ Pete said. ‘He didn’t want to disturb you.’

India-May looked from one to the other, colour creeping up her neck. ‘Where’s my chair?’

‘What chair?’ Pete said.

‘You know what chair.’

‘I’ll get you another one,’ Nathan said.

‘I didn’t ask you to get me another one, did I? I said, where is it?’ Nathan shrugged.

India-May turned and whirled across the kitchen. Her dress shrieked as it caught on the corner of the table and tore. ‘Whose house is this,’ she said, ‘that’s what I’d like to know,’ and slammed the door behind her.

But they did get her another chair, and put it in the old chair’s place. She didn’t thank them, but she did start using it, and perhaps that was all the thanks they could expect. She was using it a week later when Nathan walked in through the kitchen door. It was close to midnight and India-May was the only one up. She was making necklaces, which was a form of meditation for her, a method of forgetting. Coloured beads mingled with flecks of tobacco and grass on the surface of the table, and the air was draped with smoke that smelt as sweet as creosote. Lumberjack sprawled on the tiles at her feet, whining sofdy in his sleep like a damp log on a fire.

Nathan sat down.

She looked at him, her fingers threading the beads blind. She might’ve been calculating something. The amount of trust she had left, the days till the end of the world.

‘What’s new?’

‘I’ve come to tell you that I’m leaving.’

She nodded. ‘I had a feeling you were going to say that.’

He told her it was like the moment when the tide stops coming in and starts going out again. It seems like nothing, but suddenly everything’s different. And the longer you wait, the clearer it becomes. It was a pretty lie.

But she was nodding. She understood this kind of talk. He’d almost learned it from her.

‘Where will you go?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Somewhere further up the coast.’

‘You going to work on the beaches?’

‘I think so.’ He pushed a bead around on the end of his finger. ‘What could be better than saving people’s lives?’

She recognised her own line and smiled.

He knew how their voices would sound from above. The hum of a plucked string. Like warmth, if you could hear such a thing.

‘I wish —’

‘What?’

He wished he could explain about Donald. But he knew she’d cut him off. That’s old history, she’d say. That’s cats for drowning. In any case, at some deeper level, perhaps she already understood. And in the future would remember.

He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

Lumberjack’s paw tapped the floor. Lumberjack was dreaming. Once, last fall, he’d walked Lumberjack to the pine forest in the next valley. Lumberjack had started barking and then, just as abruptly, stopped again, and in the silence he’d heard a tree come down. Lumberjack had looked up at him, as if for approval, his tongue dangling from his jaws. No wonder there were no trees left standing round the farm. Lumberjack had sawed them all down with his voice. And now he was dreaming, dreaming of some great forest stretching out in front of him …