Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

‘You’re doomed,’ she whispered. Her lips were hardly moving on her broken teeth. ‘You’re doomed.’

‘And you,’ he said, ‘what about you?’

‘That’s just the thing.’ The same whisper, the same slow-moving lips. As if she was very tired or weak. ‘I know I am. I’ve known it all along. But you. You don’t know, do you?’

He wanted to make light of this, he wanted to laugh like some brave warrior. Not even a smile came.

‘You don’t understand,’ she whispered, ‘do you?’

He was standing, he was walking in sand, he was standing still. He saw the drop of rain on his shoulder, crouching on his shoulder like a spider. He tried to brush it off, but it wouldn’t go. He ran, but it clung to him. He saw the drop of rain, as if he was outside himself, and suddenly he knew the truth about it.

It had never told him he was special, it had never told him that at all. He hadn’t listened properly, he hadn’t understood. He heard it speaking now, he heard it for the first time, the voice in the rain.

‘What are you doing here?’

That finger on his shoulder. You. You’re trespassing. You don’t belong.

You’re doomed.

A man walked towards him. Dark hair, black eyes, gloves. That still, calm voice again.

‘You’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you?’

And his own voice, passive, ‘Yes.’

‘You’d lie.’

‘Yes.’

‘Steal.’

‘Yes.’

‘Kill.’

‘Yes.’

‘Die.’

His eyes were open now, and he was falling away. It was the clearest it had ever been. He could see a light, but he was staring up through dark air, air like green glass, the light seemed warm, it seemed to glow like the dial of a radio, but it was an old radio, someone had just switched it off, the light was slowly shrinking, the light was fading, slowly, slowly, he knew how they worked, he’d watched it happening so often, soon there would be nothing.

One moment Jed was floating in that transparent, green water, the next he sank out of sight, into water that no light could penetrate. It was as if he’d been sucked down by some immensely powerful magnet.

‘Goodbye, Spaghetti,’ the Skull said.

Creed consulted his watch. ‘We should be getting back.’

Angelo climbed back up to the top deck. He started the engines and swung the boat round in a tight circle. All Nathan could see, even when he closed his eyes, was Jed’s face in that lit water, Jed’s face held fast, as if in gelatine. There one moment, as if preserved for ever; gone the next, as if it had never been. Jed had done it all wrong. He should’ve slipped in like a dagger, between the ribs of the city. But no, he’d creaked and crackled his way down V Street, he’d swaggered along in his top hat and black suit, his purple car, and all the vultures there. Everything that happened afterwards had started in those first few moments of defiance: ‘It’s me. I’m here. I’m back.’ He’d worshipped Creed too long; the suicide was so deep in him, he didn’t even know it was there. In a way Creed was right when he said that Jed had killed himself. A sudden scratching sound. An echo of Jed’s fingers on some part of his pale, pocked body. He turned. But it was just the Skull scrubbing the deck, removing the last traces of Jed’s blood.

‘Nathan?’ Creed stood in the doorway to the cabin. He’d taken off the suit of bones. He was wearing his usual dark clothes again. The ceremony was over.

‘Come here, Nathan.’

Nathan stood up, walked across the deck. It was hard to balance without the use of his arms. The bones in his legs ached, the way they used to when he was fourteen. He wanted sleep.

Creed gripped him by the shoulder and steered him into the cabin. Once they were inside, he locked the door, then he turned. ‘You’ve been holding out on me.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Nathan took a step backwards, and felt the wall of the cabin with his wrists.

‘Lie down,’ Creed said. ‘Face down.’

Nathan didn’t move.

‘You want me to get help?’ Creed said.

Nathan lay down on the bunk bed. He tried to focus on the sound of the ocean, he tried to use that sound as a key to open the cabin door, to rise into the air, to be somewhere else while this was happening. Because it was going to happen.

Cushions were placed under his head and chest so he was almost kneeling. The top cushion was a kind of green. A kind of blue. What did they call it? Turquoise. It was all he could see, this turquoise cushion, as it pressed against his left cheek. That and the fake teak of the cabin wall.

He gasped. That feeling of being filled in a place he’d never thought of as being empty.

Through the door, somewhere else, quick.

Somewhere far away. He saw black children dancing on sand. They were Twilight’s children. They had names like Morning, Noon, and Siesta (she was the lazy one), because that was where they were in their lives. And even though it wasn’t raining, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, he could hear the old woman playing her flute. And there were children dancing on sand, and their hair was tied back with ribbons and string, and they were pure.

It was only the burning that suddenly spread through him like something spilt that told him it was over. He curled up on his side, facing the wall. That safe, fake teak. A wetness spreading under him.

‘You’re lucky,’ Creed said. ‘I did it the nice way.’

Nathan didn’t answer.

‘You’re lucky I didn’t let the Skull loose on you.’ Creed unlocked the cabin door. ‘Skull?’ he called out. ‘Hey, Skull.’

The Skull’s shaved head appeared in the doorway. He grinned at the sight of Nathan, naked from the waist down.

‘He doesn’t think he’s lucky,’ Creed said. ‘Tell him how lucky he is,’ he said, ‘that I didn’t hand him over to you.’

‘No point you handing him over to me,’ the Skull said.

‘Why not?’

‘I had him already.’

‘That’s right. I forgot.’

Nathan spoke to the Skull. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘In the motel. You did it for me there.’

‘Did what?’

‘You know. Did it.’

‘But,’ and Nathan was talking to Creed now, ‘that was you.’

‘How would you know,’ the Skull leered, ‘with that mask on your head?’

‘That was you,’ Nathan repeated, appealing to Creed.

Creed snapped his lighter open, lit a cigarette. ‘Me once, him once.’ He snapped the lighter shut again, tucked it into his pocket. ‘Fair’s fair.’

The Skull was still grinning, knots of muscle standing out on his jaw, his teeth slick with saliva. It was true. That was what the truth looked like.

‘Creed?’ It was Angelo, up on deck. He sounded alarmed. ‘There’s a patrol boat coming.’

Creed spoke to the Skull. ‘Keep him quiet.’ He left the cabin, closing the door behind him.

A police voice came through a megaphone. ‘Cut your engines. We’re coming aboard.’

The Skull sat on the bunk opposite Nathan. He drew a four-inch knife out of his boot and tapped the blade against his palm. He tilted his head towards the roof. A vein pulsed in his temple.

The engines died. Only the slapping of waves and then a bump as the patrol boat tied up alongside.

Creed spoke first. ‘Good evening, Sergeant.’

‘What’s your business out here, sir?’

‘We had a report that one of the buoys had come loose in Angel Meadows. We’ve just been out to check on them. Here’s my licence.’

A silence.

‘That seems to be in order.’

‘If you need verification, just call Lieutenant Gomez down at O Street. He’s got the details.’

‘I don’t reckon that’ll be necessary. Sorry to trouble you, Mr Creed.’