Light Errant Page 9

  Jamie twigged what I was doing, after a minute or two. “Neat idea,” he murmured. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Made it up.” I’d taught myself a lot of new tricks in the first month or two after I left home, before I forswore the talent. Now I was forsworn they were all available to me again; and Christ, I’d missed them so much...

  “Ben,” Jamie said, “I think you are going to be a revelation. Could be just what this family needs.”

  Could be, perhaps. Could be just the opposite. I couldn’t tell.

  o0o

  The Island was a place for having fun, reunions are a time for fun and laughter, for boyish folly and childish excess; but not that day. There was just too much other stuff around: behind us, between us, ahead of us. Inhibitions were in, exhibitions out. Despite what he’d said on the phone, we didn’t really play at all. The half-hearted capture of a fluffy rhinoceros at a darts stall to take back for Laura—and bless him, he didn’t say for the baby and showed no signs that he was even thinking it—satisfied us both, though Jamie had been throwing the arrows.

  It was a big rhino. He slung it across his shoulders—like a child, and I could only hope my face wasn’t saying so—and said, “Oy. Were you nudging those darts?”

  “Might have been,” I said neutrally. “Maybe you’re better than you think you are.”

  “Ben, nobody could be better than I think I am. It’s just that I don’t often prove it.”

  “Well. Does it matter? Laura deserves rhinos.”

  He frowned at me, then shrugged beneath his burden. “No, you’re right. It doesn’t matter.”

  It would matter to her, of course, we both knew that. But she wasn’t here, and neither one of us was about to tell her.

  o0o

  We looked at some of the rides with a nostalgic eye, but indecision was a killer. Nothing tempted, nothing was strong enough to tug against the gravity of what we knew, what we weren’t yet talking about, what we had to come to.

  In the end it was Jamie as ever who took the lead, who sighed and said, “I’m hungry.”

  “Yeah.”

  Hungry on the Island meant fish and chips in a cone of newspaper, lager from a can to wash it down; it meant a scramble over seaweed-slippery rocks to get away from the noise and crush of the crowds, to sit with our feet dangling over grey-green depths too unchancy even for us to swim in; above all, it meant talking quietly and seriously, tackling the big issues, facing the facts. We used to do that all through our teenage years, I’d tell him my problems and he’d tell me his triumphs. What goes around, comes around. Here we were again, we had to talk, of course we’d talk like this.

  o0o

  I bought the food, he bought a four-pack, we headed for our private ground. Others had come this way before us, trespassers, intruders; but they’d peeled off left or right, looking for the rock-pools or the caves. We slipped and slithered around the great rock we called Greenbeard for the long tangles of weed that clung to its chin, and there was the boulder we always used to sit on, and there was the long view out with nothing to interrupt it bar the odd container vessel keeping her distance from our shore. This could have been ten years ago, easy, except that ten years ago my family was ever on the up and I was sinking, and right here, right now neither part of that was true.

  My turn to lead off, then. Tang of salt in the air, salt and vinegar both on hot food in damp paper heavy in my hands; I chewed, swallowed, breathed, said, “Who was it, Jamie?”

  “Who was it what?”

  “Died. Which cousin?”

  “Christ. Don’t you even know that?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be bloody asking, would I?”

  The antagonism was all seeming, all defensive, both of us recognised that. He broke off a chunk of fish and threw it at a seagull, the bird dodged it in missile mode then came up beneath to catch it falling, treat it as a treat; Jamie said, “It was Karen. They cut her fucking throat.”

  That much I knew; but, Karen? Karen, Karen Macallan... A moment’s searching, and then I had her. Pale blonde, bit of a damp dishcloth to look at though that had not been her reputation, but I didn’t know if her reputation was accurate because, “Jesus, Jamie, she was only a bloody kid...”

  “Seventeen last birthday,” he said bleakly. “I saw her body, and her head was hanging off, nearly. There wasn’t any blood in her at all. Father Hamish reckoned they’d maybe hung her upside down, to drain it all out. There were marks on her ankles, which might have been the rope. That meant they did it living, Hamish said.”

  Oh, sweet. It had to be symbolic, draining her of Macallan blood; never mind that hers would have had no spark of magic in it, except the background buzz to mark her as a carrier. All our women had that, at least, but nothing else. Nothing of benefit, if talent was a benefit; and there were times—like when they’re hanging you upside down, bleeding you to death, maybe?—when yes, for sure it was.

  Though they’d have done it in daylight, I guessed, to be doubly sure.

  I only wished they’d try it in daylight with me.

  Last time I’d seen Karen was the day they held the wake for Jamie’s brother Marty, first victim of Uncle Allan’s cull. The day I’d been brought back into the family, my rebellion crushed under the dominant will of my twin Hazel, who’d been victim number three. Death was haunting us, hounding us, in this generation; but Karen was the closest a Macallan could come to a blameless innocent, and that did make a difference, I thought.

  Uncle James had been using her as a servant that day, to take coats, to fetch and carry. All the use he’d ever seen for her, most likely; but, “Jamie, what’s your father doing about it?” Surely to God he had to be doing something.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t got an inside track any more.”

  “How come?”

  “Dad’s not talking to me. I’ve taken on your mantle, bro, I’m the new black sheep. Living with cattle, making a baby outside the family, I’m a disgrace.”

  He didn’t sound too distressed about it; but it must have been harder for him than it had been for me, and I’d found it hard enough. Too hard, at the last. And Jamie had always belonged, always had a place right at the heart. With Uncle James chief of the clan now, losing his father’s approval must be like losing the family altogether, being sent into exile; and I knew how that had felt for me, and for him it must be worse, and I didn’t believe his smile and I didn’t know what to say.

  So of course I said nothing, only chewed and swallowed and lobbed chips at gulls in lieu of hugging him; and at last it was Jamie who said, “Christ, Ben, what are we going to do?”

  “Dunno. Not much we can do, is there?” I was still burning to avenge Karen, but less inclined than ever to sign up with Uncle James to do so. Jamie had been my route back into the family circle, and that route was blocked, it seemed; and what could two lads do alone? “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Always a solution, short-term; always another aspect to a trip to the Island. A walk on the beach might come first, before we crossed the causeway, if we were meeting friends or girls; if we were just the two of us it usually came after, a slow saunter in the dark to look at the stars and dream aloud a while before we headed home.

  Midday sun and beach parties changed the ritual, but not dramatically. Kids were paddling, all along the water’s edge; Jamie had boots and jeans on, so we couldn’t join in properly, but I kicked my deck-shoes off and went barefoot just where the incoming tide seethed onto dry sand. He scuffed along parallel with me, a couple of metres higher up the beach: easy talking distance, but we didn’t really talk. As far as I remember, the only things he said were said to the rhino that still lay across his shoulders.

  o0o

  We’d done half the length of the beach, and it’s a long beach; I suggested turning back.

  “Not yet,” Jamie said. “I want to watch the kites.”

  Fair enough. I sat down and put my shoes on again, and we both watched the kites that dipped and soared
overhead, guided expertly by a bunch of thirtysomethings who’d probably been doing this since they were teens and hadn’t grown out of it yet. After a minute my neck got cricked, so I turned to watch the water instead, where a couple of jet-skiers were bumping and bouncing and falling off in the surf while their machines gently screamed.

  Only one thing out there making more noise, another engine. I searched for it, found it: a low black Zodiac, the twin propellors of its outboard threshing the water, occasionally threshing the air as it skipped like a thrown pebble over the waves. It was heading inshore, racing or chasing shadows, and I wondered if it was going to drive right up onto the beach. Looked like it. I nudged Jamie, nodded my head without taking my eyes away from the inflatable.

  “I got it,” he murmured. Of course he’d got it. Everyone on the beach had got it by now, you couldn’t ignore the noise or the hurtling turtle shape of the thing, or its manic rush towards land.

  At the last moment, the Zodiac swung across the face of a wave and its engine cut. It lost momentum quickly in the heavy swell, but the tide would still bring it in if it just sat there...

  Just sit there it did not. There were two men in the boat, I could see that now, though I couldn’t see their faces; they seemed to be wearing hoods or masks, balaclavas maybe. They bent and lifted something, something long and black and plastic, gleaming in the light; and they threw it over the side.

  It floated, or I thought it did, just about. It was hard to see, so low in the water.

  The engine howled again, the Zodiac sped off out to sea; already a crowd was forming at the water’s edge, a couple of boys in trunks were wading out to fetch in this strange sea-gift.

  “Come on,” Jamie said abruptly, urgently. “I want that.”

  He dropped the rhino, and ran. I wasn’t on his wavelength, quite, but this had to be important to make him abandon Laura’s present.

  It’s hard to run on soft sand, but we ran hard; and after a few seconds I cheated. Grabbed a bit of sunlight and helped us out, leaned a little on the beach ahead to compact it and give our feet something to push against. That wasn’t easy either on the fly, on the run, on the instant; but I managed after a fashion, though the result wasn’t the straight true path I was reaching for.

  I don’t think Jamie even noticed.

  We pushed our way through the mill when we got there, and found the boys just hauling their burden out of the water, leaving a slug’s trail for the waves to wash away.

  Black plastic sheeting, sealed and roped and knotted tight around its secret contents; and already I think we knew and every adult there knew and most of the kids most likely knew too what that contents was.

  We knew who it was meant for also, we didn’t really need the direction spray-painted on the plastic, Deliver to James Macallan.

  Only thing we didn’t know, we didn’t know who it was inside. Jamie wasn’t going to wait for his father, to find out; he was tearing at that plastic with his bare hands, before he realised the nail-breaking futility of that and pulled a knife from his pocket.

  Snapped the blade open, hacked through the sheeting; people were already covering their children’s eyes or leading them away.

  Ripped the wrapping open and it was Cousin Josie, a hard bastard I’d wished in hell a dozen times or more, but I would never have wished her this.

  Five: Liverish Allsorts

  How did I know it was Josie? God knows, perhaps; I don’t. You wouldn’t have thought there were enough clues even for her nearest and dearest to name her, and I must have been pretty much her furthest away, her least dear.

  Somehow, though, I knew her. Not from her peach-blonde hair, distinctive enough in life but clagged and matted now, dark not with seawater that hadn’t had a chance to get at it, dark only where it was clotted with her blood. Certainly not from her face, which had once been a work of careful art but had become a jigsaw, torn into scraps and flaps of skin that clung to what was red and black beneath. In places—on her forehead, on her chin, on the bridge of her nose—there hadn’t been enough red stuff for the skin to cling to, so it was gone, and what there was instead was stained bone. Like Webster I saw the skull beneath the skin, where before I’d never even seen the skin for all the foundation and blusher and shader and such that it routinely wore. Unlike Webster I wasn’t looking for it and didn’t want to see it, didn’t relish this too-close confrontation with the ultimate memento mori.

  Cover her face, I thought, mine eyes dazzle: she died young.

  Jamie wasn’t listening. No telepathic touch between us, not just now. Far from putting her back into a decent darkness, he was still chopping at the plastic, cutting the ropes away, exposing more and more of Cousin Josie.

  No new sight to him, I suddenly remembered, or not in her original condition, cold and stiff and living. He was one of the few who would have seen her adult face uncovered, au naturel. She’d been one of his conquests when we were sixteen or so and she must have been twenty, and none of us lesser lads could understand why; he was smiling and mysterious, not faithful by any means but seeing her, sleeping with her for months before she called it off. His first older woman, I suppose, with many tricks to teach him; and his parents’ presumptive approval for it too, keeping it in the family, very proper.

  So yes, I thought, Jamie had a particular reason to be so cold and stiff himself now, dragging silently at ropes and sheeting, his face focused on her cold stiff body. At least she wasn’t naked, they hadn’t done that to her, though she wore only knickers and a skimpy blouse and that brutal mask of blood. Made it easier to see the damage she’d taken, with no extra layers in the way. Assuming you wanted to see the damage, of course, which I didn’t and Jamie apparently—no, definitely—did. He’d have to, no reason else to peel back the plastic and give her, us, nowhere to hide.

  Not only her face had been chewed up—and yes, I thought, that’s what it was, even her skull had been channelled by a grating tooth. Like she’d been tossed to the pigs for a titbit, and snatched back too soon for them but too late, much too late for her.

  Her face destroyed, that was all she’d ever cared about: medically speaking, that was the least of it. No one ever died of being ugly. That particular jigsaw could have been reassembled and patched where pieces were missing, though they could never have sewn her looks back on.

  Her hands were a ruin also, almost worse. Raw red pulp, both, with fingers missing. I saw unwelcome pictures in my mind, how she’d tried to protect herself, her face, same thing: how she’d wrapped her arms about her head, perhaps—and yes, there were bite-marks on her elbows too, I could see them now—and then how she’d pushed and scrabbled at whatever-it-was, the hound from hell, from the Baskervilles, wherever; how it had been monstrously undeterred, and snacked on her fingers before it came through to her face.

  Face and hands gone, all three; and her throat was gone too, only a hole dark and deep enough to dive through, to come up God knew where, what lies beyond a black hole? That’s what had killed her, the rest was cruel cosmetics and I wondered if there was art in that too. Did they know her? Did they know about her make-up and her manicures, was this irony they’d practised here?

  Jamie was kneeling over her now, rocking slightly, making no noise. We were entirely alone, the crowd melted and the beach almost empty behind us, and I was utterly certain not one of them had gone to phone for the police or an ambulance or anyone.

  Which made it my job, though I really, really didn’t want it.

  I crouched beside Jamie, talking against his silence, just in case some hidden part of him might be listening.

  “I just need your phone, Jamie, okay? We need to call someone, this isn’t for us to handle...”

  Someone I’d said, as if there was a choice. Big joke. Times of crisis, you go to the top, of course you do, you yell for the big cheese to come get you out of this. Used to be Uncle Allan, but I’d killed him. Now...

  Now I unclipped the pouch on Jamie’s belt and took the phone out, and he
reacted not at all. I stood up, stepped back, puzzled over the keypad for a moment before I worked out how to work it; then punched a number that was no puzzle at all, that came readily to my mind, utterly unready as I was to use it.

  It rang once, a few times, many times; I was set to give up when at last someone answered. “James Macallan,” he said.

  It was, it was himself, gruff and abrupt and charmless as ever. My least-favourite relative, even still, even knowing everything that Uncle Allan had done to us.

  What, no butler? I thought, startled beyond words; I’d expected a minute’s grace while the menial fetched the man. It marked a change indeed, if Uncle James was answering his own phone. The former uncle never would, though he were sitting right beside it.

  “Yes? Hullo?”

  “Hullo, Uncle James,” I said, with an effort. “This is Benedict.”

  “What? What in the world do you want?”

  Nothing in the world that he could offer me, that was for sure. “I’m on North Sands with Jamie,” I said. “You’d better come.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s Josie,” I said, and stalled unexpectedly. She’s been killed, I wanted to say, her body’s here, but I couldn’t get the words out.

  Didn’t need to. He knew of course that she was among the missing; my awkwardness told him the rest. “Dead?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He grunted, said, “Wait,” hung up.

  I folded the phone up neatly, reached to hand it back to Jamie, saw that he still wasn’t seeing me or anything I did, and hunkered down again to put it back in its pouch, on his belt, without his noticing at all.

  o0o

  Three Macallans on a beach, utterly alone: and only one of us was easy. Josie had had it easy all her life, she was the epitome of a full-blooded female cousin, taking what she wanted, tyranny her birthright. She’d have paid her dues to the family too, I was sure of that, married inside the clan and done her best to produce sons, if she’d lived so long.