A Cleansing of Souls Read online

  And he drops to the floor.

  And he weeps.

  It is a forest fire, I tell you. A forest fire……….

  Chapter 16

  Sandy and Tom woke late on Monday morning. She had booked two weeks off from work and was looking forward to spending every minute of that time with Tom. She still felt sometimes though as if she barely knew him. He would sit quietly for long moments, just staring at the Beautiful Guitar or he would stand at the window gazing into the light and into the darkness. But two weeks together would bring her closer to him.

  The telephone broke the peace of the morning. Sandy reached over to answer it, brushing Tom’s chest slightly with her arm as she did so.

  “Hello?” she said, and then “Dad? What is it?”

  After a few moments, she told him she’d come round to the shop as soon as she could and hung up the receiver.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Tom, sleepily, tuning his eyes to the day.

  “It’s dad. I’ve got to go over there. I’ll see you later.”

  “Hang on. I’ll come with you,” said Tom. “What’s happened anyway? What’s the problem?”

  But Sandy wasn’t listening. She was trying to do her boots up and thinking frantically of what she was going to find when she got to the shop.

  “Come on, Tom. We’ve got to go. Now.”

  There was a sense of urgency in her voice that Tom did not question. He dutifully dressed and within minutes they were both rushing down the stone steps of the underground station.

  The train was packed with commuters and the air was thick with mistrust. People squeezed into one another, their bodies touching in mute disgust as the train rocked and rolled its way across Big Town.

  Once off the train, Tom and Sandy ran down the street to the shop. As they neared it, Sandy in front now, they saw a Police car parked outside in the road. Tom was some yards behind Sandy, his lungs finally avenging themselves of the burden of tar they had been forced to carry. He eventually arrived at the shop, taking in huge gulps of air, stooping over, his hands on his knees. Meanwhile, Sandy was in the process of explaining to the policeman who she and Tom were and they were then allowed to enter the shop via the gap where the glass front door had been.

  The shop was a complete shambles. Tins rolled on the floor and newspapers had been torn into pieces and thrown about like so much confetti. Cereal packets had been burst open and their contents sprayed about in erratic circles. The display cabinet beneath the counter had been smashed, broken glass flashing and gleaming between sweets, stamps and packets of football stickers. The tall fridge had been pulled over and milk poured from the milk bottles like pale, creamy blood, oozing around the cans and the cartons and the debris. The top of the floor freezer containing lollies and ice creams had been shattered; slivers of glass mingling sly and unnoticed with the ice. Everything from the shelves had been swept onto the floor by clawing hands. Even the faded, knee high statuette of the little blind girl and her dog had been kicked to the ground, revealing just a few old coins and a used condom.

  Tom looked around at the destruction, the noise of car engines passing by slowly outside the only sound to be heard. When he saw the broken statuette of the blind girl, he felt strangely satisfied. He had always hated those things but had never really been able to explain why. And the condom had been a surreal touch that he momentarily appreciated. That feeling of appreciation left him though when he looked around at the walls.

  For on every wall there were long, straggly letters in red paint forming expressions of hatred, dripping and flowing as if the very walls themselves had bled them into existence. We have all seen those words of ignorance and cowardice and fear. We have seen them on subways, on bus shelters, in lifts, in schoolbooks, newspapers and on the gravestones of the dead.

  Hatred - we grieve for you.

  As Tom and Sandy looked about them, alone and separate, she in shock and he no more than curious, Sandy’s father appeared in the doorway behind the broken counter. He seemed so small and so frail and so very far away. Sandy moved slowly towards him, stepping through the chaos at her feet. She eased her way around the back of the counter and, reaching out for her father, held him to her chest. She looked down upon his head and wondered at him as he shook there in her arms. He was so very small yet larger than you, so much larger than me.

  “Are you all right, dad?” she asked him.

  He looked up at her, his eyes pulsing and twitching. He smiled sadly and nodded.

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “No,” he replied, continuing to hold his wavering smile.

  He saw Tom at the front of the shop and lifted a thin arm in acknowledgement.

  “Tom,” he called, so quietly that not even Sandy heard him. “You like my shop?”

  Tom saw his lips move but that was all. And he could sense the tears that were about to fall from those large and soulful eyes.

  “Is mum okay?” asked Sandy, though she knew deep down that her mother would always be all right. From an early age she had formed the impression that her mother would live forever.

  Her father frowned. It was as if a sudden pain had taken hold of him from within.

  “Your mother is upstairs. I have not wanted to disturb her. Maybe you can be able to see her. I think she would like for you to.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder and moved away from the door to let her go by him and up the stairs.

  Sandy found her mother sitting on the floor in the lounge. As far as she could tell, after a cursory glance, the flat itself seemed to have been undamaged. She felt her heart beat faster and she shivered a little as she imagined her mother and father up here, listening to the sounds of destruction as it happened, listening to the laughter and the anger and the destruction, wondering if it would lead up the stairs to where they lay shaking.

  Her mother was murmuring words that appeared somewhat incoherent and strange to Sandy, eyes closed, arms held in peace upon her lap. A passive strength pervaded her. She was praying. And Sandy knew that her mother would have been praying not for her own safety, nor even for the safety of her husband. She would be praying for the souls of the people that had wrecked the shop, the people that had left her husband terrified that morning. She would be praying for them.

  Sandy made a cup of tea. She brought it in and placed it on the floor by the peaceful figure of her mother who was in such a holy state of grace, she barely noticed the presence of her own daughter.

  Downstairs in the shop, Tom had begun helping to clear things up. Sandy’s father had taken some bin bags from the storeroom and together they filled them with the soggy newspapers and the broken cartons.

  The policeman left. There was nothing further to be done. They would log it. These things happen, unfortunately, Sir. These things happen.

  When Sandy returned to join Tom and her father, she was subdued and thoughtful. Her father looked at her, his eyes wide and questioning.

  “She’s fine,” said Sandy, meeting his gaze with the eyes of her mother.

  “Tom,” she said, moving over to him now, “I’m going to stay with mum and dad tonight. I need to be with them. I’m worried about dad.”

  Tom glanced at the small man who was struggling to tie up one of the full bin bags. “No problem,” he said, continuing to fill his own bag.

  “I’d just be wondering how they were all the time if I was at home and they were here. It would just be for tonight.”

  Tom laid the heaving bin bag to rest for a moment and spoke to her.

  “You don’t have to justify it,” he said gently. “I’d be the same.”

  And for a brief moment, he saw his mother and father before him and guilt assailed him with a sickening rush of vengeance. And he felt shame. Just for a moment - shame.

  “Could you do me a favour, Tom? Could you just pop back to the flat and get my nightdress and a few blankets. Dad sold my bed when I moved out. Do you mind?”

  “But what about all this?” he added, eyeing t
he still shaken interior of the shop. “Don’t you want a hand with it?”

  “Tom, you go,” interjected Sandy’s father, who had moved unseen to stand beside them. “Come back when it is nice again.” He smiled as best as he was able. “You are a good man, my boy. A good man.”

  Tom filled the rest of the bin bag and put it outside the front door before saying goodbye to Sandy and her father. He stepped out into the light feeling a terrible loneliness. His heart beat fast and hard and he felt a panic within him though he did not know from where it had emanated. Somewhere something out of his control was happening. It was as if things were moving again now, moving on as if the real world had caught up with him at last, followed him and tracked him down. And now it was surely ready to snare its prey.

  Fate gets you in the end. Through the powers of coincidence, timing and cynicism it gets you.

  When Tom arrived back at the flat, he found the door to be slightly open. He thought nothing of it at first and just went in. It was only when he opened the door to the lounge that he froze. He was just going to get a quick drink before gathering together Sandy’s things. The stereo was gone. There was just a gap where it ought to have been. He walked over to the corner of the room and stared at the four small indentations in the carpet.

  And as he stood there, it became clear to him what had happened. An overwhelming feeling of coldness consumed him. His throat tightened and it was a struggle even to breathe. He dare not turn. His heart beat now not within his chest, but within his mind. He tried in vain to concentrate, to rise above the beat of his own heart, but that thumping sound filled the entire room now. At last, after a minute or an hour, he turned, still dizzy on his feet.

  It is fear, just fear.

  And then comes a moment of relaxation. So the television and video were gone as well. Ah well. He breathed slower now, regaining control of his senses. He went into each room of the flat, fear coming and going, relief following sharp upon its heels. Finally, he came back to the lounge and stood there. Nobody else was in the flat. They had been and gone. He was alone.

  And then emotion indescribable struck him like a wrecking ball, crashing through the window taking him with it.

  The chink of light was gone; that one unique candle of hope and aspiration that had always burned within him, that indefinable, inexplicable object of hope.

  That escape route from a turgid life, the one, single element that kept him from thinking of Little Norman twenty-four hours a day. It was gone.

  The Beautiful Guitar.

  The Beautiful Guitar.

  He tore from room to room, under the bed, in the wardrobe, behind everything, above everything, inside everything. He slammed his fist against the wall of each room as he left it with a force that shook it to its roots. He had murder within him now, a rage that propelled him like a tornado. By the time he stopped, he was exhausted.

  When the crutch is removed, the body will fall.

  And the body did indeed fall.

  The Beautiful Guitar was still the key to his dreams. It had lain beside him in the torment of his youth and it had stayed with him on his arduous foray into adulthood. It was the receptacle of his essence, the mirror of his being and the last refuge of the child within him.

  And now it was gone.

  If he had found the Beautiful Guitar broken and shattered in the street outside, at least then he could have touched it, held it, kept it from weeping. But for it to just vanish like that, well that was more than he could take.

  So he did what he always did, what he had always done and perhaps always will do.

  He ran.

  He just ran.

  And he runs now out into the streets of a thousand faces. His chest aches and his mind burns as if the fire that had once burned in his heart had now risen until it could rise no more. He has to keep moving to prevent himself from thinking. He just runs and runs, wayward and relentless. And as he runs, the people about him begin to change, to develop inconsistencies and deformities. He becomes acutely conscious of their strangeness. They move in incongruous ways. Their faces are contorted, eyes so deep and black they could be lumps of coal. Their mouths are huge and wet, their teeth crunching and grating like some broken contraption of days past.

  Children lie on the ground, trembling with a huge fear as the shadow of society soars above them. A young man plunges a knife deep into the heart of his lover and they can’t put her back together again. Old men and women lean against one another as holes open up in the ground around them, enticing them, cracking the floor beneath their weary feet.

  There’s a rumbling in the sky and it cracks open, erupting, spitting out its fury onto the world, onto Tom.

  The people cower beneath the rain and beneath the shattering light that crashes down upon them, pure arrows of fire. Tom’s eyes are closed now as he runs and his legs take him through the rain and the hail, through the bodies and the blood.

  He sees all of this.

  He sees it all.

  Finally, he burst out into a clearing and staggered to a halt. He opened his eyes and looked about him. At first, he thought he was on some kind of waste ground, rubbish and debris everywhere. But as he strained for breath and clarity of vision, he saw the people. They were ragged and torn, prostrate against the earth, some asleep, none dreaming.

  Is this where the abandoned fall? Is this where it all ends? Is this my destiny?

  He managed, after some moments, to pick out a blurred figure advancing unsteadily towards him. It was the thin frame of a boy wearing a dirty grey anorak and jeans that were so crusted with dirt they could have been fashioned purely from mud alone. He was perhaps sixteen years old, this boy. His face was streaked raw and his hands were deep in his stiff, cold pockets. Tom stood watching him, mesmerized as the rain fell, unable to move. The boy halted a yard from him and looked up at him with huge brown, beautiful, pleading eyes. And the boy spoke in a voice pitiful and plaintive.

  “Can I sleep with you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Tom. “Yes.”

  And at that moment of relief, he sensed a movement behind him. It was a large man, tears upon his face, a man broken with emotion.

  So Tom turned and saw his father.

  They moved slowly towards each other beneath the blackening sky.

  And the father held the son to his chest.

  And the father kissed the son.

  THE CLEANSING

  Chapter 17

  The early morning of late summer gazed down upon John as he walked through the quiet, serene hospital grounds on his way to the ward. As he approached the main entrance, he consciously cleared his mind, listening to a song in his head. He did this every time he came to work. It was as if he were preparing to cross some barrier between the real and the unreal, though as days passed and his experience increased, he found it more and more difficult to comprehend the difference. He turned the key in the lock and let himself onto the ward.

  The corridor was dark as the semi-recumbent night staff had yet to open the curtains. John heard movement towards the area of the office when he was some ten yards away. He slowed down his pace. It didn’t pay to catch staff sleeping. He would just give them time to smooth their rumpled clothes and prepare their wide-awake countenance.

  On going into the office, John acknowledged the nurse that had been in charge that night, but the nurse did not respond, so frantically was he looking for his spectacles. So John picked up the patient list clipboard and began his tour of the ward, checking that all patients were accounted for. It was a routine job that was done at the start of every shift – a nice easy way to begin the day.

  Female dormitory. Eight patients. All present. All breathing.

  Male dormitory. John held his breath. You could bottle that smell and destroy armies with it. Nine patients. All present. All breathing.

  First side room - fine. Second side room - fine. Third side room - fine.

  Michael’s room.

  The window in the door was fil
led with light, so much so that John couldn’t see in. He opened the door as quietly as he could. And Michael’s body hung before him.

  There was a smell in the room that John would never forget. It was a sour, acrid smell, a mixture of sweat and urine and death that would taunt his senses for months, years afterwards. He called calmly for help and two of the night staff stumbled into the room. One turned away immediately, the other entered. John stood on Michael’s bed and tried in some way to support the limp body. It was so heavy and damp. He almost toppled forward. He moved his hands up to the tie that Michael had used to hang himself and tried to tear it, rip it in half to bring the body down. The night staff just stood there, unable to speak or move.

  John turned in anger.

  “Just get me some fucking scissors!” he shouted and the night staff exited immediately, relieved, leaving John to stand on the bed alone with Michael’s body floating beside him. John tried to breathe deeply and as he did so, everything slowed a little, just dropped down a gear.

  The night staff returned with some scissors and one of the other morning staff that had just arrived on duty. John got off the bed and, with aid of the morning staff, pulled the mattress onto the floor beneath the hanging body. He then took the scissors and climbed onto the metal frame of the bed. The morning staff held onto Michael’s legs as John severed the tie and bravely helped lower Michael to the mattress. The body dropped down with a thud. John immediately jumped down and knelt beside Michael’s head, instructing the morning staff to feel for a pulse. There was none. Neither was there a heartbeat.

  John instructed the night staff to make the necessary calls. Then he looked down upon Michael. The face was almost yellow. There were grey lines upon it. He looked thirty years older. The neck was raw, bearing the marks of the tie. It was like some wax model from a horror film. John was not shaking yet. That would come later. As would the tears. But for now, he was in control. He turned to the morning staff, who was standing over the body unable to take his eyes off it, and told him that they should try CPR. Finally understanding, the morning staff knelt beside Michael’s chest.