Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

‘I know who killed your brother,’ he whispered.

He drew back. Nothing.

He leaned down again. ‘Your brother, Francis,’ he whispered. ‘I know who killed him.’

He waited. Still nothing.

‘It was me. I killed him.’

Suddenly those pale hands were fastened round his neck. The arms a blur of black hair, blue with all those deaths. Room for one more. Jed tried to break the hold, but the hands just locked and tightened. He was on the floor and Vasco was above him. He could see Vasco’s face and it was blank. Then black ink began to seep in around the edges of his vision. The stench of stale urine. Like old Mr Garbett. The soiled yellow cardigan, the dusty brown bottle on the floor. The click-click-click of a spool still turning when the tape’s run out. A pair of striped pants, an open fly. A shrivelled penis nodding in the gap. Moscow, Brussels, Helsinki. The click-click-click, won’t someone switch that off? Oslo, Hilversum. The penis uncurling, lifting, swelling. The black ink flooding through his head.

‘Are you all right?’ The Sister was kneeling beside him.

He sat up, touched his forehead. ‘My hat,’ he tried to say, ‘where’s my hat?’ but his voice didn’t work properly.

The Sister spoke to a nurse. ‘I think he wants his hat.’

The nurse handed Jed his hat. He took it, thanked her, put it on. Then brought one hand up to support his throat. He thought he could hear trees. Leaves rustling, leaves in wind. He looked up. Saw Vasco wrestling with three attendants. The struggle was taking place in near silence. That sound he could hear was the sound of their starched white uniforms. Vasco’s limbs twisted and convulsed, but his face was still blank. His eyes, also blank, were pinned on Jed.

‘It was Creed.’ Jed was trying to shout, but his voice would only crack and squeak. ‘Creed told me to do it.’

The Sister gripped him by the arm. ‘This way, sir.’

‘That’s what I wanted to tell you, Vasco. That’s why I came. I’m going to bring that bastard down, but I need your help —’

‘That’s enough.’ The Sister steered him towards the door.

‘He made me do it, Vasco,’ Jed croaked. ‘He made me.’ The doors swung closed. He could still see Vasco’s blank face framed in the square glass panel that made up the top half of the door. ‘Would you like a song?’ he heard the old man cry. A cackle, then he was round the corner, out of earshot.

The Sister took him to see the doctor on duty. After a brief examination, the doctor told him it was severe bruising, nothing more, and prescribed a course of pain-killers. The Sister had the prescription made up for him in the hospital dispensary, then she led him back to the lobby.

‘I think it would be better,’ she said, ‘if you didn’t visit Mr Gorelli again.’

Nobody was in when he got back to the tower. He went and stood in front of the bathroom mirror. The ghosts of Vasco’s fingers had appeared on his neck. He stole a scarf out of Silence’s bedroom and wrapped it round the bruises. He’d tell Silence that he had the flu.

He heated a tin of vegetable soup, but he had to leave all the vegetables. He couldn’t eat, only drink. He couldn’t even swallow the pain-killers he’d been given. It hurt too much. He had to grind the tablets up with the back of a spoon and swallow the powder in a glass of water. He went to bed early and lay on his back in the dark.

He had a dream that night. He was standing in a garden. There was an old man lying on the branch of a tree. Another, younger man stood below him, listening. Jed spoke to them; they both ignored him. He was just turning away when a strange machine lumbered through the air towards him. It looked like the inside of a radio, but it was the size of a helicopter. He watched it knock against a building and veer sideways, narrowly missing a tree. Everybody on the lawn was scattering.

Then the machine swooped down and plucked the old man off his branch. At first he seemed to think it was fun, a kind of fairground ride. The machine jolted, twisted, groaned. It collided with everything in sight, but it always lurched back into the air again. Only gradually did it become clear that this was the machine’s way of killing people.

The old man’s friends managed to pin the machine to the grass. As soon as they’d released the old man they began to attack the machine with anything they could lay their hands on. Some had iron bars, others had planks. One had an axe. When the axe struck, the machine let out a scream, as if it was a human being in pain. Then something even stranger started happening. One moment it looked like valves and pipes and fuse-boxes, the next it looked like a heart, intestines, lungs. It flickered backwards and forwards between the two, it couldn’t seem to decide which one it really was. Still the blows descended, sometimes clanging against metal, sometimes splashing into flesh. Then, suddenly, it assumed its human form. There was even a head, though only the lower half could be seen. And with every second that passed less and less of the head was visible, it was as if it was escaping through a hole in reality, it seemed to be trying to draw its tortured body after it. One of the friends caught on. He swung the axe and severed the head from the body. A scream not of pain now but of rage and the body reared, stood up. It tottered across the lawn, blood spilling from its neck. It grew a new head, and the face was grey and mad. Blood fitted the scalp like a red skullcap. And then it saw Jed, he was hiding behind a tree, but it was no good, the tree was too narrow. It was turning now, it was bearing down on him …

He woke, the sheets cold with sweat. His neck pulsed. It was agony. He got up, went to the kitchen. Ground two more tablets into powder. Drank them down. He leaned on the window, still trembling from the dream.

He never dreamed, never. He thought dreams were bullshit, mumbo-jumbo, a waste of time. If somebody started telling him their dreams, he always switched off right away. That red giant, though. He was hard to shake.

The city lay below, a grid of orange lines, secret parcels of darkness between. He thought of his favourite slot machine. In the bar of the Commercial Hotel in Adam’s Creek. How long ago. All that had happened since. What did it say across the top? ALL WINS ON LIT LINES ONLY. It was the same here. The same now. He’d staked everything on this game. The lines were lit. The rest was up to him.

It was a battle to get in, the waves were strong, but soon he was lying on the other side of the water. The ocean cradled him. Moved him up towards the sky and moved him back again. The last twelve hours came to him in flashes. It had happened with such ease. Elation first, then pleasure. Lastly, fear. And there were gaps between, black enough to be unconsciousness. He remembered feeling he’d been taken by a current, remembered feeling he could wait for the next big wave and ride it to the shore; he remembered thinking he’d accomplished that. Now he wasn’t so sure. He felt as if he might still be in that current’s grip. Even now, he thought, those high-powered binoculars could be trained on him. He turned in the water. A wave lifted him and, looking back towards the city, he saw the grey turrets of the Palace Hotel. Even now, he thought.

When he walked out of the water, Harriet was standing on the beach holding his towel. She seemed to relish his surprise. He took the towel from her and began to dry himself.

‘You shouldn’t be swimming,’ she said.

‘Why’s that?’

‘The red flags are up. It’s dangerous.’

‘I’m a lifeguard,’ he said, ‘remember?’ He rubbed his hair, then pushed it back out of his eyes. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’