Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

‘Pack his stuff.’

The important packing was already done. It had been done for days. The sheet, the hat, the tape. They were all locked in the car. The rest didn’t matter.

They threw his clothes into a case and wedged it shut. Part of a shirt poked out of the side. It was like a sandwich. The lettuce leaves never quite fit. Celia would’ve liked that. She always liked it when he brought food into it. Ever since their first night. The night of the chicken. But there was nobody here who’d understand.

They pinned his arms behind his back and hauled him down the stairs. It was difficult. The landing was narrow, and the stairs were steep. The men were wide, they didn’t fit. For the first time he really liked the place. For the first time he felt as if he belonged.

‘You going out, Matt?’ Mrs O’Neill called out. ‘Bring me a Rocky Road, would you?’ Until one of the men pulled the door shut in her face. Goodbye, Jesus. Goodbye, Donald Duck.

He was going out. Out into the dark. But still orange. The street lamps. Hotel windows. A passing truck. They pushed him up against a fence. It was someplace near the railway tracks. He could smell that corroded metal on the wind.

‘Celia says you been bothering her.’

She’d said something. Good. He supposed he must’ve been relying on her. If she hadn’t said something, none of this would be happening. And it had to happen.

‘Celia says you been,’ a pause, ‘messing with her.’

They were obedient men. They had their orders, they were only doing what they were told. The rain, his christening, and now these men. It was right. Thinking about it, you might almost say that he had given the orders. He nodded. Yes, the orders had originally sprung from him.

The first blows didn’t hurt. They were just surprises, even though he’d been expecting them. The streetlamp leaned over, then it blew, a yellow flower with long tapering petals, petals snapping off and dropping through the gloom, dropping on his body, on his eyes. Then a sudden white flash of pain in his ribs and his own voice crying out.

And then another voice: ‘Don’t break anything. He’s got to drive out of here.’

Still following orders. That was good.

They must’ve put him in his car. He woke at nine minutes past one. He pushed the door open and was sick.

Afterwards he sat with his head against the window. At ten to two he was sick again. Initiation always hurt, it had to.

When he looked out through the windshield he couldn’t see anything at all. He glanced in the mirror. A few scattered lights, the slant of a roof, a gas pump. They’d driven him to the edge of town. They’d pointed him in the right direction. The rest was up to him.

He drove all night. It wasn’t fear, it was completion. As the light spilled back over the hills, as the sun came up in a strange place, he pulled over to the side of the road and cried. That was normal, he supposed.

Now it was three days later, and the bruises were sunset colours: yellow, purple, brown. He’d been beaten like metal, like the edge of a scythe. He was sharp. All doubts, all fears, all hesitation, beaten out of him. He’d left them behind, along with that job in the ice-cream parlour and that rented room with its bright-green walls and its bedbugs and its carpet tangled with other people’s hair and nails. They were outlived, redundant. More dead skin for the carpet, more ghosts for the cemetery. He coasted down the centre lane, and the darkness seemed to cushion him. He felt as if he was tunnelling, as if he was going to strike it rich. The lights of other cars swung across his face, glinted on his glasses’ steel frames, glinted on the battered satin of his black top hat. He was smiling.

In two hours he’d be switching to Highway 12 because he wanted to enter the city from the west. It would be about five in the morning by then. At that time, just minutes before dawn, the tall buildings looked like piles of ashes. The place would feel like his then, his for the taking. He squeezed the gas pedal and reached into his pocket for another piece of candy. These were new ones. He’d found them earlier that day. They were called Peppermint Surprises and they were very good. He wondered how he could’ve stood that ice-cream parlour for so long. He’d always had a sweet tooth. Maybe it was something to do with that.

In the end he timed it all wrong. It was after sunrise when he passed the famous billboard that marked the city limits. A girl in a bikini about to lob a multicoloured beach ball. The ocean, palm trees, white hotels. WELCOME TO MOON BEACH, it said. SUNTRAP OF THE SOUTH. He shook his head. There were more doctors in Moon Beach than anywhere else. More lawyers. More grief therapists. More rest homes. More obituaries. It was a place where people went to die. And yet, year after year, it went on pretending to be a beach resort. He remembered the time someone climbed the billboard scaffolding. They sprayed a line through the word SUN and sprayed the word DEATH above it in black: WELCOME TO MOON BEACH. DEATHTRAP OF THE SOUTH. For several days the famous billboard actually told the truth. It was after Vasco’s time, but it was exactly the kind of action he would’ve taken.

He sensed the first stirrings of rush-hour, bright cars speeding past, as if by starting early and driving fast they could reach the weekend quicker. The wheel gripped tight between his fists, he released a few sarcastic words. He wanted candy now, he wanted to feel it splinter against his teeth, but when he checked his pockets he found nothing. He must’ve eaten them all. He glanced in anger at the empty wrappers piled on the seat beside him. They shifted, hissed. They looked like scales, he thought. As if, somewhere in the car, there had to be a naked fish.

CITY CENTRE 8.

Steam was lifting from the waterways. The moored launches glared in the early sun. He waited for a stoplight, then he pushed his glasses up and rolled the bones in the back of his wrists against his eyes.

He stopped at Diana’s Gourmet Diner. The air outside the car smelt hot and damp, as if the world was sweating. He clipped his sun lenses over his glasses, sighed as he descended into cool, deep green. He took one step and his leg buckled. Maybe those power-station bastards hadn’t broken anything, but Christ, they’d certainly come close.

He pushed through the door and took a stool at the counter. The waitress set a cup of coffee in front of him. He drank it right down. He asked her for a second cup, then he ordered eggs, wheat toast, and orange juice. A rustle next to him and an old guy in baby clothes sat down. Yellow towel shirt with blue stripes. Pale-blue shorts. A gurgle every now and then. These old Moon Beach guys, they were all the same. They’d lost their wives, they drove big cars too slowly, they talked about gambling and operations. His focus shifted from the old guy to the old guy’s morning paper: WIDOW SUES FUNERAL PARLOUR. GANG-SLAYING IN RIALTO. HYDRO-CARBONS POLLUTING CITY AIR. It didn’t seem like much had changed.

The old guy snapped him a look. Pretty fast, considering. ‘You got a problem?’

‘Just tired, that’s all. Been driving all night.’

The old guy looked Jed over. His head flicked up and down a couple of times. It was like someone painting a wall. ‘You’re one of them funeral guys,’ the old guy said, ‘ent yer?’

‘Used to be.’

‘You ent gonna get me, young fella.’

Jed smiled. ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

‘Oh no, you ent gonna get me. I’m gonna live for ever, I am.’

Jed eyed the old guy carefully. ‘I’d say you’ve got about another eighteen months.’

It would’ve been hard to say which way the old guy was going to tip. At last his mouth cracked open and all this dry laughter came rustling past his teeth. Old newspaper, the shed skin of snakes, fallen leaves.