The Society Of Dirty Hearts (3 page)

“Yeah, maybe. I fucking hope so. This town’s doing my head in. I’m so bored. There’s no one from our year left around, except me and all the dead-heads.” Kyle exhaled heavily. “Anyway, let’s stop talking about this before I get depressed.” He swilled back his beer. “I hope you’ve got your drinking boots on, Jules, ’cos I’m in the mood for getting properly fucked up.”

“I’m driving.”

Kyle’s face creased in disgust. “Aw, what the fuck. Why?”

“I’ve got some dope. I thought we could drive out to Five Springs for a smoke. You know, like old times.”

“Nice idea, bro. Only we can’t go to Five Springs. Haven’t you heard? The coppers are out there looking for that little jailbait bitch.”

“Yeah, I saw. Did you know her?”

“Nah. I spoke to her once or twice in here. She was serious trouble. I heard she fucked her way through half the scuzzballs in town.”

“You’re kidding.”

Kyle shook his head. “And that’s not all I heard, bro. I heard she was selling it.”

“You mean she slept with men for money.” Julian’s lips screwed up doubtfully. “Bullshit. How do you know that?”

“Anyone who knows anything around here knows it for a fact. If you don’t believe me, just ask around.” Kyle chuckled. “Although I don’t think you’ll find too many guys willing to admit to fooling around with an underage prozzie. Tell you what really makes me laugh. The way her mum keep’s banging on about her being abducted. What a load of shit. More likely one of her customers has done her in and dumped her in a ditch somewhere.”

Kyle opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it again as a group of goth-punk types, all black leather, torn drainpipe jeans and fishnet stockings, jet black hair and heavy makeup, entered the bar. There were two men and a woman, mid-twenties looking, and the girl, Morsus. One of the men approached the bar-counter and ordered drinks, while the others seated themselves around a table close to the stage. The girl looked drunk or stoned, her eyes glassy and vacant, a sort of vacuous half-smile, half-sneer playing around the edges of her mouth. Julian watched her out of the sides of his eyes. He couldn’t help but watch her. Kyle nudged him. “Don’t even think about going there, bro. That’s Mia Bradshaw. Jake Bradshaw’s twin sister.”

“Who’s Jake Bradshaw?”

“He’s a serious fuckin’ headcase. Been in juvie more often than you change your underpants. The coppers are after him at the moment for joyriding or something. There’s a rumour going round that he’s hiding out in the forest. Remember? Like we used to. Only for real.”

“Is she mates with Joanne Butcher?”

“Yeah, big-time, they were like twin sisters. Twins of evil, that’s what I call ’em. I know this guy who went with her for a while. He said she’s proper crazy, said she wanted him to do all kinds of weird shit to her.”

“What kind of weird shit?”

“Pull her hair, slap her around, strangle her. That kind of weird shit. He couldn’t handle it so he dumped her.”

Julian felt a twinge of the same sick feeling that’d come over him after his dream. It started in his stomach and slithered, cold and slimy as a slug, up his throat. He pushed it back down with a swallow of beer. Mia seemed oblivious or indifferent to him staring at her, but one of the men was giving him a none-too-friendly look. “Come on, let’s go for that smoke,” Kyle said, tugging at Julian’s sleeve as the man started to stand. Reluctantly, Julian allowed himself to be drawn away from the bar. As they stepped outside, a mocking peal of laughter followed them. Glancing back, Julian saw that it came from Mia. He shuddered a little.

“You trying to get the shit kicked out of us?” said Kyle.

Julian made no answer. He was thinking about Mia, trying to work out what it was about her that’d hit him so hard. It wasn’t her bad girl image. He’d never gone for that kind of thing. It wasn’t her looks, either. Sure, she was attractive – if anything, almost too much so. Her kind of looks did little for him, other than make him aware of his imperfections. No, it was something else, something deeper, beyond his understanding. It gave him chills. He could feel them now, running up and down his bones, like he was coming down with something nasty.

“Anyway, why are you so interested in a pair of no-marks like Joanne Butcher and Mia Bradshaw?” asked Kyle.

“I’m not. Doesn’t it freak you out though? I mean, you expect this kind of thing to happen in a city, but not around here.”

“Jules, man, you crack me up,” Kyle laughed, shaking his head. “You really don’t know shit about this town, do you?”

Chapter 3

Julian crept through the house to the kitchen. As he made a sandwich, Henry padded across to snuffle at his hand. He took the snack to his bedroom and lay with Henry curled at his feet, looking out into the darkness beyond the window. He wondered if Jake Bradshaw was really hiding in the forest. He imagined himself in Jake’s situation, sleeping under the stars, living off the land, moving camp every few days to avoid detection. The idea appealed to something within him that longed for a secret place, away from the reality of daily life, away from the pressure to study and achieve.

He closed his eyes, hoping he was stoned enough to fall straight into a blank sleep. He wasn’t. Bright, almost luminous images quivered behind his eyelids. He saw Mia Bradshaw, Joanne Butcher and Susan Carter. They separated and merged like colours in a kaleidoscope, until he couldn’t tell where one finished and the other began. He tried meditating, but it made no difference, so he got up and went to the living-room. His dad was there, too, sat in his dressing-gown, staring at the black walls of glass, sipping whisky. There was no light in the room except that of the moon. Even so, Julian could see that the bags under his dad’s eyes were heavier than usual, the lines on his forehead more pronounced.

“Can’t sleep?” Robert asked. When Julian shook his head, he added, “Me neither.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not particularly. What about you?”

Julian shook his head again. That was the way it was with them. The way it always had been. They’d speak to each other, exchange a few words about this and that, but they never really talked about themselves, their hopes, their plans, their fears. Not when it was just the two of them. There was a kind of distance there, a deadness. Christine was their conduit, the only person who could make them connect. The current of her emotion conducted life between them. In her presence they laughed and joked, argued and cried. They were a family. Without her, they were like two halves of a severed wire.

“Where are you going?” Robert asked, as Julian pulled his trainers on.

“Out for a walk.”

“It’s past midnight. You’ll get yourself into trouble one of these nights going out walking at this time.”

“I’ll be fine. What’s going to happen to me around here?”

“Things can happen, even around here. Just look at this Butcher girl business.”

“Yeah, but I’m not a fifteen-year old girl.”

Robert clicked his tongue against his palate, the way he always did when he was irritated. “Oh, do what you bloody want, Julian. You always do anyway.” He shifted his gaze back to the darkness.

Julian continued to look at him a moment, frowning. Then he went into the kitchen and picked up a torch and a key from a shelf on his way out the backdoor. Henry raced ahead of him as he made his way to a locked door in a thorny hedge at the rear of the garden. Beyond the door, a narrow path rose up a wooded slope. The moon shone dimly through the trees. He didn’t switch on the torch, though. His feet knew the way without light, and they led him forward, anticipating every dip, rise, twist and turn. He couldn’t see Henry, but he could hear him crashing along through the undergrowth. At the top of the rise, beyond a grassy clearing, the path forked into three. Henry was waiting for him there. Julian took the fork that led straight on, which, he knew, wound down into a valley, where it merged with an old cart track that led to a derelict sawmill. Many of the area’s residents had tried to get the sawmill demolished because used needles had been found there once or twice. As he walked, he lit a joint. By the time he reached the cart track, the hot smoke had soothed away the lingering irritation he felt from his encounter with his dad. He hesitated, listening to Henry snuffling after a rabbit or whatever. Usually, he’d have continued on to the sawmill and beyond, but he suddenly found himself reluctant to go any further. It wasn’t the thought of maybe bumping into Jake Bradshaw or some junkie that stopped him. Neither was it his dad’s warning or dope-induced paranoia. It was something else, something in the air. A smell, faint but unpleasant. A smell that didn’t belong amongst the thick pine groves.

Julian flinched as Henry began to bark. He turned on the torch and directed it towards the noise, but he couldn’t see Henry amongst the rows of closely-spaced trees. “Here boy,” he shouted. The barking stopped, but Henry didn’t respond to his call. He stepped off the path, his feet sinking softly into a deep bed of pine needles. Stooping to avoid the lowermost branches of the trees, he followed the beam of his torch. With every step, the smell got stronger. It was like dustbins on a hot day, only much, much worse. He could taste it in his mouth, as if his tongue was rotting. It gripped his lungs, twisted his stomach, dragged him on. He heard the dog growling low in its throat. “Henry,” he hissed. The growling intensified. His torch found a yellow flash of fur. Henry was jerking his head, tearing at something on the ground. It looked like a bulging black bin liner, but some instinct told Julian that wasn’t what it was. His heart stuttered as he made out the shape of a leg, a boot. He rushed forward, kicked Henry. The dog yelped, skittering away. He looked down. His mouth filled with saliva like he was going to puke.

Joanne Butcher didn’t look like her photo. Her livid face was bloated and blistered. The eye sockets appeared empty, but peering closer Julian saw dozens of milk-white maggots squirming in them. Her lips were drawn back in a grotesque parody of a smile and a black tongue protruded through them as if blowing a raspberry. Something that might’ve been dried vomit or blood was crusted over her chin. Watery pus oozed from teeth marks that Henry had inflicted on her throat and face – at least, Julian assumed Henry had inflicted them. If it hadn’t been for her reddish-purple hair, which lay so lankly against her skull that it looked painted on, he wouldn’t have been able to identify her. She was wearing much the same outfit as Mia Bradshaw had done in The Cut – leather jacket, red plaid miniskirt, ripped fishnets, military boots. Her skin showed green with a marbling of purple-black veins through her tights. There were things crawling all over her, not only maggots, but also fat blood-sucking flies, beetles and mites. They moved like groping fingers under her clothes.

Julian stood staring at the corpse as if it was something beautiful, mesmerising. A dribble of vomit escaped his mouth and dropped onto it. Automatically, he swiped the back of his hand across his chin. A sound gradually seeped into his shocked senses – a gnawing sound. He shone the torch at Henry, who was hunkered down chewing on something that was maybe a stick, or maybe something else, something ripped from Joanne Butcher’s corpse. More vomit came up. He spat it out and snapped, “Drop that. Drop it!”

Henry jumped up and retreated a little, the thing dangling out of his mouth like a withered tongue. “Stay,” Julian said, in a voice of warning. He moved towards the dog. The dog turned and ran in the direction from which they’d come. He gave chase, stumbling over roots, blinking as branches lashed his face. He quickly lost sight of Henry, but he didn’t stop running. He ran all the way back to the house as if he was being chased by a ghost. His dad was still up.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” asked Robert, looking in alarm at Julian’s scratched, sweat-streaked face.

“I…found…her,” Julian gasped, struggling to find enough breath to speak.

“Found who?”

“Joanne…Butcher.”

The already deep lines etched into Robert’s face deepened. “Are you sure?”

“Dead sure.”

Robert’s voice grew hesitant. “Is she…is she dead?”

Julian nodded. “She’s over by the sawmill. Rotting.” He dropped onto the sofa, covering his face with his hand.

“The sawmill,” exclaimed Robert, as if that explained the matter. “I’ll bet she overdosed. I don’t know how many bloody times I’ve told the council they need to tear that place down. Perhaps now they’ll listen.” He reached for the phone.

“What you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m phoning the police.”

A short time later several police cars arrived at the gates, sirens screaming. Robert buzzed them in, fretting about Christine being woken. She didn’t wake, though. She lay wrapped securely in deep, medicated sleep. A thickset man with a police veteran’s moustache introduced himself as detective inspector Tom Benson. He told Julian to lead him to the body, which Julian reluctantly did. Although it wasn’t a cold night, he couldn’t help but shiver as they made their way there. He itched for a joint to take the edge off his nerves. If anything, the smell seemed even worse than before. It hit him in the gut like a fist. He doubled up, heaving. He couldn’t bring himself to go within sight of the body again.

It was getting light by the time Julian finished giving his statement. “How long will you be in town?” asked Tom Benson.

“A week or so.”

“Good. I’ll probably need to talk to you again.”

While Robert showed the policeman out, Julian went to the bathroom. He stood under the shower a long time, scrubbing his skin as if it was polluted. Before leaving the bathroom, he listened at the door. He didn’t want to bump into his dad, have to hear him say,
what did I tell you
. Henry was asleep on his bed. There was no sign of the withered thing. He woke the dog and shooed him out the room. Bone-tired, he lay down and tentatively closed his eyes. He knew he’d see the corpse, and he did. He seemed to smell it too. He lay there for as long as he could bear. Then he got up, flung open a window and sucked in great lungfuls of the morning.