Pig Island (9 page)

“Stop!”

I looked back at him. “Only if you tell me what you were going to say.”

He paused, biting his lip, his eyes lowered, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. “A non-harassment order,” he muttered, not meeting my eye.

“What? What was that?”

“I said
a non-harassment order
. Malachi took out a non-harassment order on us. He went to court for it.”

“He went to court?” I echoed. “Oh, Blake,” I leaned a bit closer to him, giving him a faint smile, suddenly enjoying this, “what
did
you do to deserve that?”

‘
Nothing
. Malachi is very unwell. We’ve done nothing wrong.“

“So why’d he get a restraining order on you?”

‘
Because he is insane
! Insane. We’ve done nothing wrong!“ He paused, breathing heavily, wiping his face like it was difficult to control himself. He ripped his binoculars off his head, thrusting them out to me. ”There. Look. His place is a fortress.“

I let the camera dangle on my chest and lifted the binoculars, focusing, moving them through a kaleidoscope of landscapes: the side of a boulder, a pile of rusting drums, the yellow flash of a hazardous-substance label. The opposite escarpment was of a darker rock: it looked geologically totally different from the land we stood on—blacker and more compact. I raised the binoculars and found a consistent line at the point where the trees started and, above it, a faint impressionistic cross-hatched pattern.

“What’s that? Another fence? He’s got a fence just like you?”

“Yes.”

“And when did he put up that little beauty?”

“Two years ago. Can you see the video cameras? They’re trained on us now, Joe.”

I moved the binoculars slowly. The fence ran the length of the top of the escarpment, and mounted in front of it, like H. G. Wells’s tripods, were at least forty video cameras, all pointing out across the moonlit gorge, glinting at us like silent, unblinking eyes.

“If he picks us up on those video cameras then we’re in breach of the order and we’ll never get power of attorney.”

“This is your Gaza Strip wall? This is where it all happens?” I was about to drop the binoculars when they swept past something I couldn’t put a name to. I quickly moved them back, the cross-hatching of the fence blurring with the movement, and—

“Blake?
Blake
, this is fucking weird shit.”

I was looking at a pair of eyes. Smeared and hollow. Below them a snout. A pig’s head. Mounted on top of the fence. When I moved the binoculars to the right I found another—the same pushed-in features, the same hatch-like eyes, lolling tongue. I dropped the binoculars and stared out at the tree-line. Now I could see them—faint blobs of light, one after the other on top of the fence, lined up like heads on medieval battlements, one every ten feet or so just like the gargoyles on this side—stretching away into the distance. “Where the fuck have they come from?”

“I
told
you—Malachi’s very sick. He wants us to be scared.”

“And if I asked Benjamin Garrick, what would he say?”

Blake let his gaze drift out across the gorge. There was something resigned about his voice when he spoke. “If you asked Benjamin he would say that Pan put them there. He would say that Pan can tear a living pig apart with his bare hands.”

Chapter 9

The Garricks, it seemed, had a small following. They had convinced at least fifteen other members of the community that Pan was living on Pig Island, under Malachi’s control. Or worse, not under it. Blake knew I wasn’t going to be put off so the next morning he took me over to their cottage to speak to them. The storm he’d promised had arrived: overnight the island had been caught in a grey squall that sat like a cartoon cloud above it, circling it in grey mists and humid rains. When we set off at eleven, it seemed like the village had disappeared, only the dim orange glow of electric lights on in the cottages coming through the mist.

The Garricks lived at the end of the path that led down to the jetty. Once, their cottage had been painted peppermint green, but now it was faded almost to white, patched in places with grey filler and wet with condensed mist. It was the only cottage with a television set and the aerial rose, spidery, into the mist above the roof. We sat in the well-lit kitchen, with its cheerful gingham blinds, drinking steaming mugs of coffee and eating Susan’s home-made brownies. Sovereign sat on the arm of the sofa in the adjacent room. She didn’t speak but I was conscious of her watching me, an amused, knowing smile on her face. She was wearing a black Avril Lavigne T-shirt and a buckled, pleated miniskirt. Her long thin legs kept jiggling up and down, like she was dancing to a tune in her head.

I settled back and opened my notepad. The only way I can help you is if you tell me everything,“ I said. ”We’re going to talk about Malachi—and you’re all going to tell me what you know.“

Susan Garrick flushed a very bright red. She looked from me to Blake and back again. “I don’t like this, Blake,” she said. “I don’t like this attitude. What happened to our agreement of March 2005?”

“Susan, there wasn’t an agreement,” he said levelly. ‘
You
said you wouldn’t talk about it to outsiders, but I didn’t make that promise. I’m acting in the interests of the whole community.“

“Well, I can’t help it,” she said, running her hands over her arms where goosebumps had risen up. “I can’t help thinking that if Malachi knows we’ve talked about it he’ll send that—that
thing
over here again. I’m not happy about provoking him.”

“Mr Oakes,” Benjamin said to me, “do we have to do this? All we want is for you to tell our story. To tell how difficult it’s been on Cuagach—but how devoted we are to it. We just want Malachi off the island so we can go over there and exorcize whatever it is he’s tempted into living there.”

“Benjamin, Susan,” Blake put down his coffee and leaned across the table, taking their hands in his, “Susan, Benjamin, this is important. Joe has told me that he won’t do the story unless we talk about it.”

Susan stared at me. “Is that true?”

“It’s important to get the readers’ interest,” I said, Joe-diplomat wise. “They need to be drawn into a story.”

She looked at her husband, who shook his head and shrugged. “Blake always does get his own way,” she said sullenly, dabbing at the few brownie crumbs on her plate. “It’s always been the same.” She turned her eyes to him. Her parrot-blue shirt made her face look old. “If I speak, Blake, please try not to undermine me. I know you only do it because you’re scared, but it wounds me.”

“I won’t undermine you, Susan. Just tell yourself that if the public knows about Malachi’s madness it can only strengthen our case.”

“But that’s just it,” she said, appealing to me. “He’s not mad. He’s evil. He’s dabbling in things that no Christian should be in involved in and everyone, even Blake, knows it.”

“Dabbling?” I said. “What’s he dabbling in?”

She fixed me with her pale green eyes. “Where there is light, Mr Oakes, there is darkness in equal measure. Let me put it simply: this is no madness. Malachi has learned how to summon the biforme.”

“The biforme?”

“Half man, half beast.” She lowered her voice and leaned a bit closer to me, searching my face accusingly. “Why? Don’t you think it’s possible? Where do you think those mine shafts in the south lead to?”

I opened my mouth to answer. Then I closed it. Basic hack rule: never express doubt or ridicule. When someone says they’ve seen Elvis’s face in the roof insulation, don’t laugh. “Mrs Garrick,” I said carefully, uncapping my pen and writing ‘biforme’ on the pad. I could feel Sovereign in the other room eyeing me, waiting to hear what I’d say. “Blake suggests that the—the
biforme
on the video is Malachi himself. Disguised, maybe. He thinks that—‘

“I know what Blake thinks,” she said crossly, “but
he
hasn’t seen that monster. And I have.”

“You’ve
seen
it?”

“Ah,” she said, pleased with herself. “You see? I
told
you to take me seriously.” Smiling now, she got up and went to a drawer in the painted dresser that stood against the wall, returning to the table with a sheaf of papers. “Almost three years ago, long before that wretched video came out.” She placed the papers in front of me. “It was late. Everyone was already in bed and it was my turn to get the laundry from the kitchen. I was walking down that path over there …‘ She leaned forward and pointed out of the window in the direction of the refectory. The mist outside was rolling in thin spirals. ”… when I had a feeling …’ She hesitated. “I had this dreadful feeling that I was …‘ She put her hand to the back of her neck, like she was reliving the moment. Grey shadows of raindrops on the window dribbled down her face like tears.

“Yes?” I murmured. “You had a feeling that you were … ?”

She coughed and shook her head. “That I was being
watched
. All the hairs went up here—you know—on the back of my neck and I looked up and I saw it. Sitting in a tree, like a lion or something.”

“OK,” I said levelly. I put down my pen and picked up the top sheet, unfolded it and flattened it on the table. “And this is …‘ I was looking at a charcoal drawing, slightly smudged and creased in places, but kind of skilfully drawn. Most of the paper was filled with sketched leaves, but a few branches showed through, and on one of these a carefully sketched human foot gripped the branch with the prehensile strength of a monkey. Squashed in next to it was a buttock and … Oh, Christ, I wanted to smile … a
tail
. Dangling down at least two feet below the branch.

“Can you see how it was sitting?” She lowered herself to a squat next to my chair, holding on to the table for balance. In the other room Sovereign blew air out of her nose, disgusted by her ma. “See? Like this.” Susan lifted her blouse so that I could see her haunches in the brown leggings pressed down against the hiking boots and tweedy socks she wore. “I could see all of this part.” She drew a vague circle round her foot and buttocks. “From here to here. I couldn’t see here—where the tail joined to the body—because it was hidden in the trees, but I could see the tail itself.”

“How long was it in the tree?” I picked up the next sheet. The same image, a slightly different scale.

“Not long after I screamed. It scuttled away.”

“We searched the whole of this side of the island,” said Benjamin. “Couldn’t find it. And, believe me, we looked.”

I riffled through the sheets, seeing the same image over and over again. “The feet are human.”

“Yes—and all of it’s got skin like a human, even the tail. Quite brown—you know, a sort of leathery brown. I saw it close enough to know.”

“It’s latex. A clever costume,” said Blake. “Malachi must have his reasons.”

“Well,” Susan said, straightening and putting her hands on the table, leaning forward to look Blake in the eye, “answer me this, Blake. If it was a costume how did he make the tail move?”

“It moved?” I asked. “What do you mean, it moved?”

“It twitched.” She used her hand to imitate a muscular flick. I thought immediately of a snake or a shark. “You know, like a cat does.”

I dragged my eyes away from her hand and looked at Blake, waiting for an explanation. “Look,” he said, impatiently, “you can write it any way you like—it doesn’t really matter what’s going on over there. Just make sure that the message is clear. Malachi is behaving intolerably. He’s insane. With enough contributions we can turn this island over to the people who care about it.”

“I want to know what else Susan’s seen. You know about the pigs’ heads on the fence?”

“Everyone’s seen those,” said Benjamin. “But there’s more.” He turned in the chair to look to where Sovereign had been sitting in silence. “Tell Mr Oakes what happened to you.”

But Sovereign wasn’t paying attention to her father. She was smiling at me in that disconcerting, knowing way, like she was laughing at me, her feet in their pink plastic sandals tapping away distractedly. Benjamin turned and followed her gaze, as if it was a solid entity stretching across the room, and when his eyes landed on me his expression changed. “Sovereign!” he said sharply, making her jump. “Did you hear me?”

“What?” she said, blinking like she’d been asleep. “What?”

“Tell Mr Oakes what you caught in the trap. The trap.”

Her face cleared. She smiled at me. “After Mum saw—well, you know, after she saw all that weird stuff, I was like, my God, this is so cool, so I made this—this, like,
trap
thing.” She nodded out of the window. “Out there in his forest. Because I’d, like,
never
seen Malachi, right? Only in photos, y’know? So I’m, like, I’ve really got to get to the bottom of this, see what this dude’s up to, and so I went over there and dug a hole and I had it all covered up like some jungle thing—kind of cool, actually—and I left it for a few days. Then I went back.”

“Shall we show him what you found, Sovereign?” said Susan, getting to her feet and pulling a fleece from a peg on the door. She had changed since I first arrived in her kitchen: she had a victorious air to her, like she knew she was close to winning the argument. “Shall we go to the freezers and show him?”

We took umbrellas. They didn’t do much good—the rain was like a mist, atomized like we were standing near a jungle waterfall. It got into everything—our ears, our eyes. In the short walk to the refectory we were all covered with a fine dew.

“I’m so into photography,” Sovereign told me, as we walked. “I’m the girl for you if you ever need someone to carry your bags, hand you lenses and shit. When I did the trap I had this totally wicked idea. I made this, like, tripwire thingy? Hooked it up to a camera—stuck the camera in the tree above the trap, so that if anything went into it I’d get a photo.”

“But Malachi ripped it down,” said Blake, as we stepped inside the refectory. “He found it, didn’t he?”

‘
Something
ripped it down,“ Benjamin said. ”We don’t know it was Malachi. We haven’t established who or what did it.“