Blood Crazy (2 page)

Since it happened – that BIG DAY ONE – I've had plenty of time to wonder if that passion – that obsession – to kill monsters was somehow imprinted onto my mind in the womb. That it was my destiny.

Before I sat down with a pile of paper to write this, I looked at manuals to see how you're supposed to write a book. They say it's important to make you understand what I'm like. What makes me tick. So you will understand why I did the things I did.

Here goes.

I've no real life-time friends. But I had a life-time enemy. Tug Slatter. We fought one another on our first day at school. The first time he tried to kill me – I mean actually terminate my existence on planet Earth as opposed to merely ruining my face – was when we were fourteen. I'd aerosolled TUG SLATTER'S QUEER on the wall of the local scout hut. Slatter broke three fingers of my left hand with a fence post.

Broken fingers don't sound life-threatening, but I was using them to protect my skull at the time.

I left school at sixteen. No qualifications. I've had three jobs: glass collector in a night club. Trainee plastics extruder. And, last of all, driving a pick-up for a general dealer.

So. If you'd seen me walking down the street on that Saturday morning what would you have seen?

A seventeen-year-old, dark hair, jeans, trainers, leather jacket. Your first impression would be, ‘He's a cocky bastard.' (And I was).

You're thinking now I'm nothing more than a small-town bad boy. Maybe. Maybe not.

Mum and Dad watched me grow into what I am with a bemused expression. They knew they could do nothing to change me. My dad's response was, ‘Nick'll either end up a millionaire – or in jail.'

Sometimes my antics would wear down mum's stamina, then she'd grumble, ‘Do you know the sacrifices your father and I have had to make for you?' You know the rhythm of it. You'll have heard it all before.

But I was never in serious trouble. I didn't torture cute animals. And probably the only person who knew the way I ticked was my uncle, Jack Aten.

He was a lot like me. Left school with no qualifications and no desire to join the rest of the pen-pushing Atens. Ambition sizzled inside him. He wanted to be a rock guitarist. For fifteen years he toured with one of those bands who although they play honest to goodness rock music never make it as far as a recording contract.

When I was eleven Jack Aten came back. Starved bony thin, he made you think he'd been somehow scorched.

I guess now he'd married himself to heroin. So it was a case of return home, get off it – or die.

Jack used to spend a lot of time at our house. Sometimes we'd play crazy golf (for some reason he loved crazy golf – then he liked crazy things and crazy people). When we went out on these jaunts he'd always carry a can of beer from which he'd take little sips. He'd make one can last two hours. I thought it was great. I was with this rock rebel.

Now I know he was drip-feeding alcohol into his blood. It knocked just enough of the sharp edges off reality to make life bearable.

Now and again he'd ask in a joke upper-crust accent, ‘I say, Nick-Nick. Am I alive?'

‘You're alive, Jack.'

‘Thanks, old man. Sometimes I forget.'

Nights he'd play his guitar in his room, so softly you could hardly hear it. Whenever I heard the music my skin would prickle cold. The music reminded me of a documentary I'd seen about whale songs. I'd hear the tones of the electric guitar floating down through the floors and I'd remember the part about the whale with five harpoons through its back and how the whale sang as it died. The dying whale song – Jack Aten's gentle guitar sounds. In my head the two things were one and the same.

When I was fourteen life killed Jack Aten. He was thirty-eight. Cancer of the bollocks.

They say some cancers are a kind of suicide, grown by men and women who can't change their shape to fit into the narrow slot that society inflicts on them.

For twelve months I didn't open doors like you and the Reverend Green. I kicked them open. Ask me a question, I'd snarl you an answer. I was a balloon full of rage stretched tight to rupturing point. All I wanted to do was run to a mountain top. Then roar at the sky to bury me.

I was the little kid who wanted to kill monsters. As the years passed the monsters disappeared.

I grew up to enjoy a night out with the lads, a few beers. Happiness was a
Big Mac
. Ecstasy two
Big Macs
.

Now all that's changed.

The monsters have returned.

And I've got the biggest monster of all to kill.

It's not a monster you'd recognise immediately. It doesn't look like the ones you see in kids' books, with leather wings, claws and teeth like steak knives. But it's a monster all the same. And if I don't kill it it will eat my bones as sure as you shit tomorrow.

In a way, this book is an instruction manual on how to kill that monster. Because remember this.

You, too, have your own monster to kill.

That's why I'm locking myself away in here for a month. I'm just going to sit down and write the bloody thing as it comes, all right? No frills, no poncey literature. But nor am I going to cut corners, or
cut the bad things. This is what happened to me. Also it'll help clear my mind for what I've got to do next.

No one's likely to find me here. It's February. It snows like someone's torn a hole in the sky. The house is miles from anywhere. On three sides of it there's thick forest. In front there's a dirty great river that's more than a mile wide.

Sometimes, to clear my head after hours of word crunching, I go down to the shore to skim stones. There are still a lot of things floating in the water. They look like rotting logs, hundreds of them, day and night, going with the flow of the river down to the sea. I'll throw pebbles or snowballs at them. In the same kind of way any other seventeen-year-old would.

The only time it looks bad is when the undertow rolls them over. One end of the rotting log lifts smoothly out of the water. Then you know what it really is. You see the holes where the eyes were.

I shrug it off. Throw more pebbles. Then kick my way back through the snow, turn up the gas fire, get the pen back in my hand and I attack the paper again. I have to get what's in my head down onto paper.

Throughout my life, I've never wondered about the big – and I mean the REALLY BIG – mysteries. And yet over the last eight months I got answers. Answers to those questions that scholars and people just like you have been asking for three thousand years.

I didn't go looking for them. They dropped into my hands like stones from the sky.

It's important you know.

What you do with it is up to you.

‘You know where he'll be. We could take him now.'

‘Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold.'

‘Yeah, and in the meantime that shit Slatter thinks he's got away with it.' Steve Price kicked a can rattling away down the road. ‘He's laughing at us, Nick.'

‘Cold, I said. Not stale. We'll pay him back. But we don't rush it. We work out a plan.'

After the burger blow-out in McDonald's we'd walked back from town to my house.

Steve Price, blond hair, round-faced, with a passion for football and Oriental girls, was my best friend. We'd knocked around together for the last five years. Now he was itching to take a crack at Slatter.

As we'd sat there behind the plate glass in McDonald's, chewing burgers, we'd seen Tug Slatter parading his ugly, tattooed face through town.

‘You know where he'll be going, Nick?'

I knew. Slatter was patrolling his territory. Dressed in his uniform of denim shirt, jeans, brown leather belt and pit boots. Cigarette in the corner of his down-turned mouth, shaved head swinging from side to side like a bad-tempered pit-bull looking for someone to bite.

He'd slouch through town from the market to the High Street,
trying to catch some kid's eye. When he did it'd be the old routine.

Slatter: ‘Oi. What you want?'

Puzzled kid: ‘Pardon?'

‘Don't come that with me. You know what you did.'

‘No. What?'

Slatter, aggressive: ‘You were looking at me.'

‘I wasn't.'

Slatter moves closer. Eye contact cobra sharp. ‘You did. And I didn't like the way you were doing it.'

‘I didn't. I—'

‘Damned well did. You were looking at me.' Slatter bunches hands. ‘You think you're better than me, eh? Want to make something of it?'

Kid knows what's coming now. Frightened, he sees those tattooed fists coming up with their biting snakes and hand-picked letters across the fingers spelling out HATE and KILL.

He doesn't have to try hard to imagine himself lying on the ground spitting out broken teeth while this ugly ape kicks the living shit out of him.

Slatter: ‘You don't just walk through town, you know, just staring people out.'

The kid guesses the safest way out. He goes for it. Show this tattooed gorilla he's undisputed boss.

‘I'm sorry … Look … I really am. I didn't mean to.'

‘Don't look at me like that again. All right?'

‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.' (The kids stops short of calling Slatter SIR – just.) I was only walking down … I … I mean I—'

‘All right. But don't do it again. I don't like it.'

Respect – induced through terror – is meat and drink to Tug Slatter.

Kicking stones, we turned into my home street.

‘Tomorrow night,' I told Steve. ‘We want to pick the right time.'

‘What we going to do to him?'

‘After what he did – something that really hurts the bastard.'

‘But what? He's armour-plated.'

I grinned. ‘Give me time.'

Lawn Avenue reeked of normality. A road of Victorian town houses lined with lime trees that look terrific in the Spring. Kids riding bikes, and the sound of someone playing a piano floating through an open window.

I'd lived in Lawn Avenue all my life. It seemed nothing special to me, but Steve thought it posh. ‘You know, I've never ever seen dog crap on the pavement round here,' he'd say.

‘That's because all our dogs have their backsides sewn up at birth. You know, you can lay in bed at night and hear them in their kennels just bursting like balloons.'

As we walked up the driveway Steve asked, ‘Still clean?'

‘It better be.'

I checked my pick-up. It wasn't one of Ford's most freshly minted vehicles but it was mine, it was paid for. I'd resprayed it myself a flame red then stencilled in white above the radiator grille its name – THE DOG'S BOLLOCKS.

That would have made Jack Aten laugh. Sometimes I'm sure I do half-crazy things to amuse his ghost.

‘Clean as a whistle.' I patted the wing.

‘Anyway, you don't think he'd be stupid enough to do the same again.'

‘I don't see why not, Steve. He's got as much imagination as that worm there. Once he's learnt a good trick he'll repeat it ad nauseam.'

‘Ad what?'

‘Until we're sick of it, Steve, until we're sick of it.'

‘It looks alright now.' Steve ran his fingers across the paint work.

‘No scratches.'

‘You should have seen it yesterday. Tyres flat – and he'd smeared shit all over it. Paint work, glass, lights.'

‘Bastard.'

‘It had set like concrete. And I'll tell you another thing.'

Steve raised his eyebrows.

‘It wasn't dog shit.'

‘You mean …

‘I mean it was pure Slatter. I couldn't shift that stink out of my head all day.'

‘What now?'

‘Now we go inside and decide how we are going to hit back.'

‘Hi, Steve. How's your dad keeping?'

My dad pulled himself to a sitting position on the sofa and brushed cake crumbs off his sweatshirt.

‘Fine, thanks,' said Steve. ‘He's taking a load of stone down south this weekend.'

‘So I thought I'd baby-sit for him,' I said. ‘And make sure Stevie doesn't get frightened all alone in that big, dark house.'

The three of us laughed easily.

Steve's mum and dad had divorced years ago. The weekends his dad worked away a few of the gang would stop over at his house and make a party of it. Lately a gang of girls had been promising to stay too. Suddenly weekends were starting to get not just exciting but electrifying.

I told my dad about the murder. He was as horrified as I expected him to be. He kept shaking his head in disbelief. That kind of thing just didn't happen in a small town like Doncaster.

He looked at his watch. ‘I take it you two lads have come to interrupt my honest relaxation.' He reached down beside the sofa and came back with a can of beer. He smiled, exposing the gap in his top front teeth through which he could make the loudest whistle I've ever heard. ‘It's not one of those video nasties again?'

‘Not this week. I taped a concert last night. We thought we'd watch it this afternoon … that is, if you're not watching anything, eh …'

‘This old horse opera?' My dad took a deep swallow of beer. ‘It's only the one I saw the night I proposed to your mother. But you watch what you want. It's as bad as I remembered the first time around. You know nostalgia ain't what it used to be.'

He stood up. Cake crumbs showered onto the carpet.

‘You're living dangerously,' I said. ‘Mother will go absolutely, totally insane when she sees the mess.'

My dad pulled a face. ‘I'm safe. I'll blame it on you two.'

He crossed the deep carpet that mum hoovered with religious zeal every day and left the empty beer can on the window sill.

‘Hey, Nick-Nick.' My fifteen-year-old brother called from the doorway, swinging a carrier bag in his hand. ‘Got any spare cash?'