The Five Gates of Hell (54 page)

Angelo stood in front of Nathan. ‘Who are you?' But there was nothing in his dark eyes, not even curiosity, and his voice was cold as lilies.

Creed answered for him. ‘He's coming on the boat with us. He ought to see this.'

So there
was
a boat. Nathan looked down at Jed, his buckled limbs, his drugged blood. You should've listened. Now look at you.

‘We better get going,' the Skull said.

‘Yeah,' and Angelo scanned the air above his head, ‘maybe someone heard the shot.'

Nathan watched as they hauled Jed's body down to the metal platform, then he turned to Creed. ‘See what?'

Creed didn't answer. He just pushed Nathan down the stairs ahead of him. When Nathan reached the platform he saw another metal staircase, four flights down into the ocean. A white motor launch rocked on the black water.

The Skull and Angelo went first with Jed. They were none too careful. Blood ran from a gash on Jed's left hand where it had caught on a nail. They laid him in the back of the boat, the place where you'd sit with a crate of beer and wait for the reel to spin, that whine and roar as your line payed out. Angelo climbed the ladder to the top deck and started the engines. The water churned into cream at the stern. Nathan sat down, his feet just touching Jed's shoulder. Angelo opened the throttle and the note of the engine lifted an octave. Nathan looked round. Down here, under the pier, it was like a forest of metal. The boat slipped between two rows of pillars, evenly spaced, studded with barnacles and limpets, and wrapped in scarves of seaweed at the base. Then suddenly they were clear. In the open, the uncluttered darkness. The Skull stood next to Angel on the top deck, his forehead sloping. Angelo spun the wheel one-handed, his black curls swirling in the breeze. They were heading out to sea.

Creed was going through Jed's pockets.

‘Could you undo my hands?' Nathan spoke in a low voice so the others couldn't hear.

‘I think you should stay like that,' Creed said. ‘I like you like that.'

‘This is no joke,' Nathan said. ‘My hands are numb.'

‘I said I like you like that.' Creed was staring at Nathan as if he'd never seen Nathan before. This sudden detachment, a withdrawal that was both rapid and absolute, made Nathan feel almost dizzy, silenced him.

He watched Creed find something. Candy wrappers. Creed opened his hand and the wrappers fluttered away, swarmed up into the dark air, like butterflies, like dead skin, like fragments of Jed's soul, and
Creed looked at the sky, then at his hand, it was as if he suddenly regretted having let them go.

The Skull clambered down the ladder in his heavy boots. ‘You found the tape?'

‘Not yet.'

The tape was in Jed's inside jacket pocket. Creed held it up for the Skull to see, and the Skull nodded and grinned.

‘Half a million dollars.' Creed snapped the tape and fed it out into the wind. A thin streamer flickering behind the boat. Then he just flipped the whole thing over the side.

‘He had a question,' Creed said. ‘He wanted to know how I knew.' That soft laugh again. You might've confused it with a breath of wind. ‘He held no secrets from me. I put the food on his tongue. I put the dreams in his head. Everything he did was written in my book.'

It sounded like an epitaph. Nathan had a question too, but he was afraid that Creed's short speech had answered it.

‘He called himself the Leech,' Creed was saying. ‘Did you know that?'

Nathan shook his head.

‘He was going to bleed me dry,' Creed said. ‘Now who's doing the bleeding?'

The Leech, Nathan thought. He hunched over. Jed was still out cold. Some blood seeped from his forehead, from his hand. Not much blood, though, considering his name. It hardly stained the bottom of the boat. Not much of a leech.

In the end Nathan had to ask. ‘What are you going to do with him?' And when Creed didn't answer, he looked up. ‘You're going to kill him, aren't you?'

Creed was staring out into the darkness. ‘He already did that himself. All we're going to do,' and he smiled, almost wistfully, ‘is bury him.'

‘That's murder,' Nathan said.

Creed shook his head. ‘Burial.'

They stared at each other until Nathan had to look away. He couldn't look into those eyes any more.

The boat lifted, spliced a wave. Spray flew past and nicked his cheek. His upper arms and shoulders ached as if his bones had turned to metal.

He faced into the wind. And there, across the water, less than a hundred yards away, he saw a white light glowing. At first he didn't recognise it. Then, as they edged closer, he realised with a shiver
where they were. They were approaching one of the ocean cemeteries, and that white glow would be a memory buoy. They shouldn't be here, he was thinking, not after dark. These were the sacred territories, these were the pastures of the dead. He found himself remembering the shark run he had undergone all those years ago, the moment when he grew tired and his legs dropped. That deepness where anything you thought of became real.

They passed within a few feet of the buoy, their engines idling now. An angel knelt beside a cross, the whole tableau lit from the inside. Nathan leaned forwards to read the inscription: ANGEL MEADOWS. And then some quotation from the Bible, but he could only make out one word: SLEEP.

The Skull stood in front of Creed, hands on his hips. ‘I guess this'll do, won't it?'

Creed nodded.

Angelo flicked a switch inside the cabin and the lower deck lit up. There were colours where there'd been none before. The green and brown of the Skull's fatigues. The red of Jed's blood. The white of Creed's face, the black of his eyes.

Angelo and the Skull began to load clear plastic bags of white stones into Jed's pockets.

The Skull noticed Nathan watching. ‘We cleaned out the ovens yesterday,' he said. ‘These are what you might call,' and he grinned, ‘the leftovers.'

When they'd used up all the bags they hauled Jed's body down to the stern.

‘Anyone want to say anything?' the Skull asked.

Creed turned away. ‘Just drop him.'

There was a moment of stillness, unintentional, then the two men heaved the body over the side. Spray rose into the air and flopped on to the deck. Nathan watched as Jed floated just below the surface in the part of the water that was green, almost transparent, lit by the boat's bright lamps. He saw Jed's eyes flicker open, close, flicker open again.

He woke up and he was drowning.

It was as if he'd been born into a world where the only element was water. He struck out with his hands, kicked with his feet, but the
water wrapped all his movements up, stole all their strength. He struck out, kicked again. Rose to the surface. Drank the black air down. Drank some water too. He could see lights, hear voices. They were talking about him. They were saying goodbye. Was he leaving?

‘Goodbye, Spaghetti.'

‘Spaghetti.' A laugh. A laugh he recognised. ‘Place in lightly salted water. Cook for ten minutes.'

‘Lightly salted water?' Another laugh. A different laugh.

And then another voice: ‘Place in lightly salted water. Cook for ever.'

It was like being food. And the cooks were all laughing, they were jolly men with big faces, they were in a good mood.

Then the waves swirled in his ears, and he was falling back. He reached for the surface again. Drank black air and water mixed. Drank it down like medicine and choked on it. He wanted to call out, but he had no space in his mouth for words. He began to see images. One flowed into the next, as if they were made of water, water of many colours, water that held shapes.

He saw a man rise up out of the ground like something growing. Rise naked from the ground, mud tumbling off his shoulders, off his belly, off his thighs. Stumbling back through the big trees, back into the village. He heard a woman's lazy voice. ‘They didn't have no room for him,' she was saying. ‘It was like, wait for the next bus, you know?' And her head tipped back, she was laughing. A glimpse of all her cavities. One molar filled with amethyst. He wanted to warn her. They'd lift that in the morgue.

He had other things to say, about the naked man, about the bus. He tried to shout, but his body turned over. He was under the water, his body rolled like gas. His ears were loud, his mouth was stopped with earth. He was heavy, dreamy, deaf.

He made one last effort to rise up, to throw off this cloak of water, cloak of mud. He was standing at the temple gates. He couldn't see the guard, except as a shape. There were gloves on the guard's hands. It must be cold in heaven. Then a still, calm voice. A voice you couldn't disobey. ‘Enter.'

He found words. ‘I'm not ready.'

‘Why would you be here, if you weren't ready?'

‘Tell me I'm not ready,' he begged. ‘Send me back.'

‘It's too late for that.'

‘Please let me go back. I'll sit outside my hut. I won't speak to anyone. I'll be mad. Just send me back.'

‘It's too late. You're here. It's your time.'

Then he was high up, on Blood Rock. The wind draped flags across his back, and Celia lay below him. Warm dust blew into her hair, her armpits, the corners of her eyes. He brushed the dust away. The blood had dried in brown streaks on the inside of her thighs. He moistened the blood with the tip of his tongue. Her hand flexed in his hair. He moved back up her body to her face. She gazed up at him with so much distance in her eyes that he felt like the sky, he felt that far away, he felt she loved him.

‘You're doomed,' she whispered. Her lips were hardly moving on her broken teeth. ‘You're doomed.'

‘And you,' he said, ‘what about you?'

‘That's just the thing.' The same whisper, the same slow-moving lips. As if she was very tired or weak. ‘I know I am. I've known it all along. But you. You don't know, do you?'

He wanted to make light of this, he wanted to laugh like some brave warrior. Not even a smile came.

‘You don't understand,' she whispered, ‘do you?'

He was standing, he was walking in sand, he was standing still. He saw the drop of rain on his shoulder, crouching on his shoulder like a spider. He tried to brush it off, but it wouldn't go. He ran, but it clung to him. He saw the drop of rain, as if he was outside himself, and suddenly he knew the truth about it.

It had never told him he was special, it had never told him that at all. He hadn't listened properly, he hadn't understood. He heard it speaking now, he heard it for the first time, the voice in the rain.

‘What are you doing here?'

That finger on his shoulder. You. You're trespassing. You don't belong.

You're doomed.

A man walked towards him. Dark hair, black eyes, gloves. That still, calm voice again.

‘You'd do anything for me, wouldn't you?'

And his own voice, passive, ‘Yes.'

‘You'd lie.'

‘Yes.'

‘Steal.'

‘Yes.'

‘Kill.'

‘Yes.'

‘Die.'

His eyes were open now, and he was falling away. It was the clearest it had ever been. He could see a light, but he was staring up through dark air, air like green glass, the light seemed warm, it seemed to glow like the dial of a radio, but it was an old radio, someone had just switched it off, the light was slowly shrinking, the light was fading, slowly, slowly, he knew how they worked, he'd watched it happening so often, soon there would be nothing.

One moment Jed was floating in that transparent, green water, the next he sank out of sight, into water that no light could penetrate. It was as if he'd been sucked down by some immensely powerful magnet.

‘Goodbye, Spaghetti,' the Skull said.

Creed consulted his watch. ‘We should be getting back.'

Angelo climbed back up to the top deck. He started the engines and swung the boat round in a tight circle. All Nathan could see, even when he closed his eyes, was Jed's face in that lit water, Jed's face held fast, as if in gelatine. There one moment, as if preserved for ever; gone the next, as if it had never been. Jed had done it all wrong. He should've slipped in like a dagger, between the ribs of the city. But no, he'd creaked and crackled his way down V Street, he'd swaggered along in his top hat and black suit, his purple car, and all the vultures there. Everything that happened afterwards had started in those first few moments of defiance: ‘It's me. I'm here. I'm back.' He'd worshipped Creed too long; the suicide was so deep in him, he didn't even know it was there. In a way Creed was right when he said that Jed had killed himself. A sudden scratching sound. An echo of Jed's fingers on some part of his pale, pocked body. He turned. But it was just the Skull scrubbing the deck, removing the last traces of Jed's blood.

‘Nathan?' Creed stood in the doorway to the cabin. He'd taken off the suit of bones. He was wearing his usual dark clothes again. The ceremony was over.

‘Come here, Nathan.'

Nathan stood up, walked across the deck. It was hard to balance without the use of his arms. The bones in his legs ached, the way they used to when he was fourteen. He wanted sleep.

Creed gripped him by the shoulder and steered him into the cabin. Once they were inside, he locked the door, then he turned. ‘You've been holding out on me.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.' Nathan took a step backwards, and felt the wall of the cabin with his wrists.

‘Lie down,' Creed said. ‘Face down.'

Nathan didn't move.

‘You want me to get help?' Creed said.

Nathan lay down on the bunk bed. He tried to focus on the sound of the ocean, he tried to use that sound as a key to open the cabin door, to rise into the air, to be somewhere else while this was happening. Because it was going to happen.

Cushions were placed under his head and chest so he was almost kneeling. The top cushion was a kind of green. A kind of blue. What did they call it? Turquoise. It was all he could see, this turquoise cushion, as it pressed against his left cheek. That and the fake teak of the cabin wall.