Pinprick (11 page)

Shane stood up and walked to the top of the ladder. Jennifer smiled up from the bottom as Shane waved down. As he started to climb down he forgot about the graphic novel tucked beneath his arm and yelped as he felt it slip and fall. It wasn’t that the book was particularly weighty, he just didn’t want Jennifer getting hit by it. The book lay open spine side down. A swirling purple black and navy whirlpool in Space and Time twisted and turned from the pages facing him like an optical illusion, a twinkling light at its centre. A wave of vertigo made Shane clench the ladder to steady himself. For what seemed like hours Shane was transfixed by the image.

“Woah, trippy!” Jennifer said picking the book up and breaking whatever spell it had over him.

Shane let the feeling wash away and continued the descent of the ladder.

“So what’s this? You’re the last person who I expected to catch sneaking out of the attic with a comic.” Jennifer taunted with a crooked smile. The outfit she wore was straight out of Catherine’s wardrobe. Tartan mini skirt and oversized red and black striped jumper.

“You sure you aren’t Past-Catherine-Colbert come to the future to make me feel like a gangly teenage boy again?” Shane said swiping the book back off her with mock aggression.

“What does ‘gangly’ mean?” Jennifer asked crossing her arms across her chest.

“Long, lanky, spindly, tall and thin.” Shane said feeling like a school teacher as he moved towards his room. He heard Jennifer follow him. She sat down on the mattress.

“Umm,” she bit her bottom lip nervously. “You’re probably wondering where your stuff has gone?”

“Yeah,” An inward sigh of relief blew through Shane as he presumed he was about to be told where his diaries had gone to. “As far as I can remember when I packed that box up it was almost full. So you know what happened to the things that are missing?”

Jennifer looked as guilty as sin under his gaze.

“I’m sorry. I was just bored one day, hiding from Angela. She still likes to play hide and seek like a kid and I like to get some time on my own.” She scrutinized her black chipped nail varnish on one hand.

“And?”

“And I took some of your books to my room. I only meant to take the story ones, I didn’t realize the others were diaries. I’m so sorry.” Jennifer began to look frightened, the colour draining from her face.

Shane didn’t know how to feel, there were some strange things written in those diaries, intimate things that no one had seen. Sure he had shown all the nut doctors a condensed version of the diaries which they had kept for their records. He hadn’t wanted to tell them every little thought or flashback in case they thought he was mad. But these diaries contained his innermost feelings about his lost friends, especially Johnny. They were deeply raw, from the heart, encounters with his friends. He had documented every day of his life with them up until the fateful night. He was sure he didn’t want anyone to read them.

Should’ve destroyed the lot of them
, Shane scolded himself.

The tension in the air was palpable as Shane realised he was expected to react in some way. Ah, what’s done is done.

“And where are they now?” Shane said calmly.

Jennifer’s face fell. “The diaries are in my room, but…”

Shane nodded for her to finish.

“I sort of leant the story to a friend.”

“A friend?”

Jennifer blushed slightly.

“Yeah, a boy at school.”

“And does this boy at school have a particular interest in badly written science fiction?” Shane said with a smirk.

Jennifer laughed, relieved at the thought that her uncle didn’t appear angry at her.

“No, no, no, he’s a big reader, proper into horror and weird stuff. And,” her cheeks reddened further, “we think it’s awesome!”

Shane couldn’t help but smile at that. He remembered little about the story other than it was about astronauts that find what they believe is heaven. It was sweet that his niece and her boyfriend liked it.

“So is this a boyfriend as in a friend who happens to be male, or a boyfriend as in I’d better bring him home to meet mum and dad?”

She thought for a few seconds.

“Well I’m kind of hoping for both.”

Shane smiled, “Good answer.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds, the conversation dried up.

Jennifer broke it by standing and moving towards the door.

“I’ll go and get your books.”

“Relax,” Shane said walking to the door with her, “As long as I have them before I go its okay.”

“What’s all this?” Jack’s voice made them jump as he appeared out of nowhere. Shane sighed with the annoyance of another possible run in with his brother-in-law.

“It’s nothing Jack; we were just catching up, talking about school and stuff.”

“Yeah Dad, chill out,” Jennifer said. She slipped past Jack and into the bathroom. Jack watched as the door closed and turned back to Shane.

“Don’t bother playing the loving uncle now. After the funeral you aren’t welcome here anymore. We don’t want anything more to do with you.”

The words stung. He didn’t care about Jack’s feelings towards him; they had never made a secret about their mutual dislike for one another, but the thought that his sister may feel that way upset him. Yeah he was a shit uncle and an even worse son and brother but it’s not like he had ever felt welcome, here or otherwise in the village.

“I’m afraid I’ll not agree to that unless I hear it from Catherine herself, Jack.”

Jack scowled.

“She’ll tell you when the time’s right!” He stormed off down the stairs like he owned the place.

Shane wasn’t surprised how immaculate the graphic novel was, twenty years in the dark had preserved it well. The only thing that shocked him was the price by the barcode. Things had changed so much in the last two decades. A reissue of this would probably be ten times the amount of the original. He searched for the double page in the centre where the detailed picture of the vortex was. He flicked through the pages until he found the picture of the vortex in the centre. It was truly magnificent artwork and was so realistic he could literally feel himself being absorbed by it; the way the night sky gradually diluted and bled into the black and purple inverted funnel in the sky. It was like God had reached down from the heavens and smeared the night sky like it was wet paint.

The optical illusion made him feel like he was being sucked up to the sky, towards that blinding light at its centre. He wondered how the artist had painted it. Shane squeezed his eyes shut tight and could see an afterglow of the light. It was so real. How was that possible? He brought the book closer to his face, so he would be able to see nothing but the picture and he opened his eyes. It happened the second he opened his eyes, the falling sensation, the wind on his face and rustling his clothes as he fell towards the light. Then there was nothing but blinding white oblivion and that ever persistent whistle in his head.

Chapter Ten

He floated over trees; their bare branches white from a snowfall. A figure stood on the white circle amidst the trees. The Decoy Pond at winter. The skeletal hand tree protruding from the ice didn’t look right and as Shane floated in a downward spiral towards the figures, he realised what was wrong. It was because it wasn’t a tree in the shape of a hand, but an actual, giant skeletal hand. The boy in front of him was familiar but he hadn’t seen him look like this for at least twenty five years.

His tinnitus drowned out Johnny’s voice but by his wild gesticulations and facial expressions he could tell he was angry. Johnny had tears in his eyes, his face flushed; spittle formed at the corners of his mouth, some of it flew in Shane’s direction as he shouted silently in his face.

What on Earth had he said or done to make his best friend so livid? Shane had no control over his body as his hands shot out and shoved Johnny with all their strength. Johnny staggered backwards at an alarming speed and his head connected with one of the giant skeletal fingers. The crunch of Johnny’s skull cracking was so nauseating it cut through his tinnitus whistle. He fell heavily to his rump and Shane watched as the ice opened like a giant black hole and swallowed his friend whole.

Shane stared into the black hole and then decided to follow his friend into the void.

…It was night time again, he was in the trees. A familiar figure stood in a ray of moonlight with its back to him. The light was like a layer of dust over the shoulders of his leather jacket. Shane knew it was made from brown leather. It was the only jacket Malcolm ever wore.

Shane observed from afar as a figure crept through the tree and approached Malcolm from behind. In his hands, the stranger clutched a large spade. The moonlight glinted off its edge like a blade as the man raised it over his head. Shane shouted out, but it was too late. The spade swung down like a blade and struck side on. It chopped into Malcolm’s skull at the bottom of his hairline. He slumped forward into the open grave at his feet. Shane was no longer on the outside looking in. Now he was standing over his murdered friend and had to climb down beside him to retrieve the spade. It was stuck fast. He had to put his weight on one foot and stand on Malcolm’s back to get it out. When the blade finally gave way he almost fell backwards. Something wet and lumpy came out with it and glistened gruesomely on the spade. He wiped it clean on Malcolm’s leather jacket.

He focused on the way the soil fell as he shovelled it onto the dead boy, transfixed as it changed from black to vivid white like the powdered snow. He was whisked off to another place…

At first he assumed the white powder was cocaine or something, but when he looked closer, he could see four more tablets waiting to be crushed with the knife. When his job of pounding the pills into powder was complete he gently tipped it into a can of extra strong beer.

…His mind’s eye blinked its ethereal lid and the scene changed, he was in a bedroom, Freddy’s bedroom. The ugly, goblin-like Freddy was comatose on the unmade bed, the remnants of a can of super strength beer pooled on the sheets. A pillow was placed over his face and Shane experienced each excruciating moment it took for Freddy to suffocate. He was unable to fight himself, to stop his actions. There was nothing about it. Eventually, the deed was done and he floated up out of himself, up towards the light bulb on the ceiling. He looked down on himself as he sat on Freddy’s bed.

A slight shift in perception and the bedroom changed. It was now a bright sunny afternoon whose rays illuminated a different room. Posters of David Bowie and
Star Trek
covered the walls. A young couple writhed naked on the bed, a tangle of limbs amongst strewn clothes. As Shane descended he realised that he was the male but had no idea where he was or who he was cavorting with.

He kissed his way up the girl’s flat pale stomach and flicked his tongue over her pink nipples. He felt the tip of his erection push against the soft hair between her legs and gradually pushed himself into the wet cleft that lay hidden below. He raised his face to kiss the girl, to watch the lustful pleasure on her face as he penetrated her for the first time. In that moment Shane realised, with surprise, that it was Daria; he hadn’t seen her without her glasses or clothes before. Shane was amazed at how real the vision felt as he thrust himself into Daria with a speed and determination that he didn’t think he could accomplish in reality. He left his body again, as it bucked and brayed with orgasm, and floated back up, ceiling bound. As the vision faded and changed he saw a now pregnant Daria weeping over a photograph of her and Johnny.

…And then he was George from
Of Mice and Men
and Karl was Lennie. A blonde woman was laying in the straw, her neck all twisted and broken. Karl rubbed his thumb back and forth along a lock of silken hair he held in his hand as he wept uncontrollably. He told him all about the rabbits and then blew his brains out all over the straw.

The bang of gun wasn’t in synch with the vision, Karl was already lying face down on the floor of the barn when the noise sent Shane hurtling out of this insane nightmare.

There was intense pain in his left shoulder and a skull-crushing pressure against his scalp. His eyes felt swollen as he forced them open, his tongue thick and bloated. It tasted metallic…

He woke in an odd position, half-fallen off the bed and somehow balanced on his head and shoulder. He slid his legs off the bed onto the floor and sat up slowly. His head felt three times its normal size. When he scratched at a dry patch he found on his face, flakes of blood were caught under his finger nails. A lump the size of a meatball throbbed above his left eye where he had smacked it on the bedside table.

Shane sat on the floor and waited until he stopped feeling giddy. What did the dream mean? Were they flashbacks? Did he actually murder his friends and cause one to commit suicide or was his mind playing tricks on him? He tried to process the kaleidoscope of jumbled thoughts that fluttered inside his head like a cage of wild birds. The exact details of the visions were slipping away fast but he managed to grab at enough snippets to form an idea of what they meant. He had killed his friends. He had, in some way, shape or form, murdered or took part in the events that led to the deaths of at least five people.

His stomach knotted with panic as it dawned on him that he might be a murderer.

Someone knocked on the door as he got to his feet. He wiped at his face and checked his reflection in the wardrobe mirror.

“Come in.”

Jennifer came in clad in Muppet pyjamas and dressing gown, hair scraped back and tied in a knot on top of her head.

“Are you okay? I heard you moaning.”

Shane looked surprised, “Was I? I’m sorry; I think I had a bad dream.”

Jennifer sighed sympathetically, making him feel like a child.

“Can I get you anything? A drink, something to eat?”

Shane shook his head. He was becoming more and more concerned about how close Jennifer seemed to be getting to him. Was this some kind of weird teenage infatuation borne out of tedium and a thirst for escape? Whatever it was it was starting to make him feel uncomfortable.

Jennifer absent-mindedly picked the Mark Somerfield up as if she needed to do something with her hands.

“Do you think people can have a psychic connection Uncle Shane?”

What the fuck? Where did that come from?

“I don’t believe in that kind of thing as a rule but I guess there are stranger things to discover. Why do you ask?”

Jennifer flicked through the graphic novel and raised her eyes.

“Because I had a bad dream too.”

“These things are to be expected what with it being your grandmother’s funeral in the morning,” Shane insisted. Jennifer didn’t answer; she just stood up in front of him and opened her dressing gown. She slowly started to roll her vest top up exposing her flat white stomach.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Shane whimpered with shock.

Jennifer pulled the waist of her pyjama bottoms down and revealed her naked hip.

“Showing you the scar where me and Angela were separated.” she ran a fingertip along a pale pink line that ran down ten inches of her hip. “They sliced us apart here. For as long as I can remember Angela has always been able to know when I’m about to jump out on her, what I’m about to say, and sometimes if I’m gonna hurt myself. She says she feels a tingling sensation down her scar whenever I’m near her, like they cut too close and left some of me in her.”

Shane thought this was ridiculous but didn’t say so, he had seen a documentary once that investigated the connections between identical twins. It was a case study of Sam and Simon Shrimpton, who were both in their seventies and had lost contact with each other sixty-five years previously. In the documentary the two men were reunited and the program unearthed some shocking similarities between them. Even though they had both been born in Somerset they had both ended up living in the West Midlands. Unbeknownst to them, most of their life they were less than fifty miles apart. They also had similar careers, one a bookseller, the other head librarian. They had both married women called Claire within five years of each other, they drove red cars, had three children apiece and, most disturbingly, had been hospitalized at the same time when they had their appendixes removed. Finally they were both diagnosed with type two diabetes in the nineties. Shane wondered if it was all fabricated for the television program at first, but over the years he had heard quite a few stories with similar similarities. So, even though he was too sceptical to believe in psychic bonds between people, a part of him, albeit a mere molecule, always doubted his beliefs.

“Do you remember your dream?”

Jennifer looked at him with emphasized seriousness, and then averted her gaze as though she were ashamed.

“There was a guy in a brown leather jacket and really greasy long hair. He had a massive conk, like this,” she held a hooked finger over her nose. Shane didn’t like where this was going. “He was constantly chain-smoking and he wasn’t making sense. He kept saying you must lead Uncle Shane to ‘The Whistler.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

Shane shook his head and waited to see what else she had got to say.

“He kept whistling, except it wasn’t a proper whistle, it wasn’t a natural noise someone should be able to make with their mouth. You know when you’ve been too close to a really loud speaker, or if your ears pop? Kind of like that but it hurt, Uncle Shane. It felt like it was going to melt my brain.”

Shane felt numb all over. Was she describing his tinnitus and Malcolm? He peered at her face; her eyes looked heavy and swollen with unsatisfying sleep. He believed her. But how could this be possible? His diaries? Had she been through his diaries?

The idea left an elephant in the room and from the sound of it Jennifer had dried up, she was waiting for him.

“It’s probably from reading my diaries Jen,” he said trying his best not to sound like he was scolding her for doing so.

Jennifer shook her head defiantly and wrapped her arms around herself.

“No, no it wasn’t anything to do with the diaries. This man in the leather jacket said something else too.

“Johnny’s not happy about what happened to Daria and if this isn’t over with soon there’ll be even more lives lost.” Jennifer wiped away tears as soon as they had surfaced. “Not just Gran and Granddad’s.”

Shane could feel the anger rising in him, what the hell was this deluded little bitch going on about?

“My father died from lung cancer that he failed miserably to keep a secret, from the amount of crap he smoked, and my Mother had a massive stroke that shut down her system and kissed her ‘goodbye’! There is no connection between my friends’ disappearance and their deaths!” He had gone too far, he knew it, but couldn’t contain it.

The close knit community was a facade, coffee mornings, school fetes, fucking bric-a-brac Blue Peter bring and fucking buy sales. It was all fake.

The old fuckers who couldn’t handle an ounce of change, who wouldn’t let the past stay buried. Their precious little hamlet was forever tainted by his black history and for as long as he was alive he would never be allowed to forget it. He let out a bitter laugh which scared Jennifer, but he didn’t care. How ironic that he was to be forever reminded of something he couldn’t remember? The poison in this place that had spread throughout the village via newspapers, news bulletins and old fucking housewives tales over garden fences was etched into the roots and foundations of every tree and building in this place.

Brantham, ‘burnt home’, its name couldn’t be more fitting. He knew what it was like for his parents afterwards, they were blamed, and he had fucked off as far away from the village as he could, yet they remained in the place they called home. But it was a burnt home, the black smouldering scorch mark he had left on this village had not only condemned his own soul to the abyss but his blood’s as well. Father of a murderer, mother of a murderer, sister of a murderer, nieces of a murderer. Where would it end?

He doubled over and stuck his head between his bony knees, and calmed his breathing.

“Look, I’m sorry for snapping. I’m sorry for coming here. I wanted to prove a point. I thought I was doing the right thing. It’s just I wished people understood how frustrating it is to be blamed for something when you don’t know whether you are guilty or not.”