The Folded Man (12 page)

And he did not sleep till Tuesday. He didn't piss till Tuesday. And on Tuesday, he intended not to think at all.

10.

Wednesday, Brian starts to think. Starts to breathe quickly and starts to fret. Brian doesn't know if he dreamed it. It comes over him like guilt. The house is some sort of rotting womb between him and the world. Brian has a carbolic hangover.

Check the tapes, check the doors. His cycling life – a life on a loop – that he lives out inside.

This folded man on his way to being snapped. The fold at his waist becoming a score.

Ten minutes balanced over the toilet bowl, an hour in the bath. He uses a brillopad this morning. Brian with red legs and a brand new habit. It's some new way to assuage the guilt of inactivity. As he uses the skimmer to fish himself from the bath water and into the box, he knows everybody would think that. Just like he knows a man with proper legs would do more for a dying friend.

He seals the box of wet skin.

Brian makes a plan. Gets up and gets dressed in old wool and moth-bitten blankets. He'll make the time to ring Noah's shop. He'll take the time to confirm these nightmares. And he leaves the house and does it from a call box. He doesn't want people tracing his number. Brian thinking this is one way not to implicate himself. An alternative to finding an alibi on this street without neighbours. Plus it gets him out of the house. Out and away from the ghosts of a bad weekend.

Brian wedges himself in the call box; Colin's secret box in his lap. Last place you'd look – or maybe the first if you were a bastard. Adverts for the Cat Flap clinging on by their last corners of stick. Cassie and the other girls sucking their fingers for him. Good times guaranteed – for much less. Crude graffiti of dead soldiers and old-school NF slogans, always imaginative: PAKIS GO HOME; NO SURRENDER, but without the semi-colon.

Brian burns half his pot of emergency fifty pence pieces in the end. These coins he's collected for a long time – the fiscal section of his archive upstairs.

Our man in this fly-postered phone-box throwing his laughable savings at a dead number for an hour straight.

But Brian has to go home eventually. He lobs a last pair of fifties into the box and pecks out the number. The whispering static. The flat note.

Brian wishes mountains were molehills.

 

Back in the lounge with the telly on loud: bad news and bad debt and Birmingham bombed – those fresh riots already getting larger and worse. Another city burning. Bad feelings forming a sediment in his belly. Bad memories.

He's laid out Colin's box in front of him. Brian and this thing that's covered in dry blood. Sitting, falling, into the gravity well of this grim box. Six sides that took his friend and now this room. It's almost a whirlpool, our mermaid's adrift, his legs stuck together and his eyes closed. Four hours, five hours, face forward for the night. Just him and Birmingham on telly and Colin's box – a kind of singularity punching big chunks out of what he thinks is real and pulling him through. Brian in his stinking wool with that empty fridge nearby. Brian without his savings. Not on a wing, never with a prayer.

Anubis watches Brian from the top. Watches him watch the lines blur. Colin's box starting to talk to Brian about this and that.

Open me, it keeps saying. Go on. The box from the hills, from the van. Birmingham screaming as she burns –

The way the box doubles up when he loses focus. The way each edge whispers about heartache. The way his head swims – bursting, fit to pop.

The monsters are waiting beyond the lid. And the curiosity of change, of Noah's new face. Wondering if Colin's box did all that. If Noah meant all that. If this is why they shot Colin in his purple Transit. If this is why Noah came apart in the belly of his shoe shop. If this is the way to fix his breaking heart.

Thinking of the people on the insides of this stupid island, all of them wishing mountains were molehills. Because with every bead of sweat, Brian's losing salt and losing time.

And time isn't patient. Those hours keep passing –

Brian's so close to opening the box. As if the box is opening him. As if it's some kind of biblical temptation. And Brian is circling the plug hole. Brian's really in the shit; out of frying pans and into fires. The treasure and the reward. His head cracking with fright –

Brian knows. He thinks, I've got to hide this bastard thing. Got to get rid, hasn't he. Won't have the willpower, elsewise. The means to cope with the shrapnel.

Only Brian isn't strong
like that. Brian likes to say one thing and do
another. Really, he fancies a glance, just to see, just
to understand. See what the fuss is about, for one.
This thing nobody understands but everybody wants.

And it's funny how ideas set fast:

How it's a fluid movement between intent and the verb.

So he's on it now. He pulls the box fully out of the plastic bag. The edges are cold. The locks feel solid. And yet with light pressure, it hisses, and it opens. He raises the lid. He holds his breath.

Inside he can see himself on the bottom.

Brian's face fills the box.

Pandora's box is already tipped out.

11.

Thursday, Diane doesn't come round to spoil Brian's day.

Nobody's asking, but Brian is through here – in the lounge, watching his CCTV monitor, watching his drive, the rain.

Brian's in his chair – the wheelchair in the middle of his world. All days are the same. All days, every hour – trapped. The fat man in his yawning city. Ageing. Smoking and sleeping between damp walls and under bare bulbs. The fat man who sat through power cuts and water shortages. Listened to new riots and masked radicals on his telly. The same chair at the arse-end of Manchester, old capital of the north. The cold city, the blinking city.

Brian: half a man in an old battered chair. Battling to heaven. Finding some new ways to get numb.

Brian dicks about. Brian thinks on making some phone calls. Brian figures he should get hold of Harry, mysterious Harry, and tell him about Noah. But Brian's useless and forgot the tick sheet back in the shop. Lost his marbles; gave up on his pal and took his gear. And he's hating himself, Brian is. Hates how he got so used and fell so far down this rabbit hole. Rubbed up and left to drown. Hates these things he can't understand. Hating the box and so much hindsight. Hating that he's all out of tinnies. Nobody shaking brollies up any walls now.

So he
leaves the lounge and makes for the bog. Artex walls
to study. Four different walls and a door that won
't lock. The downstairs bathroom still wet from his last
wash. The tin of exfoliant still green, growing a skin
. Sand in the bath; grit in the sink. The skimmer
for his skin propped up against the tiles. The light
cord a two-metre string. Not clean by your standards
; kind of spick and span by his.

But Brian doesn't go in. Brian notices something. Brian stops short of the light cord, swallows hard. Unease is drawn from his toes to his chin. The taste of copper. The dread feeling he's missed something he shouldn't have. The world tipping to its side; sliding around him.

Too late: the hole opens wide and the dread comes through. Fast and hard, hot and dizzy, fear rolling and worse –

The toilet seat is up.

The toilet seat that's never, ever up.

Brian, he breathes
no
. And from behind, muffled, the stairlift starts climbing its chains.

 

Feedback peals across the house – the tannoy singing its filthy tune. The house is finding its mouth and starting to talk.

The voice says, Will you be my friend, Brian? The voice is modulated; distorted through the tannoy. A sound like slow songs from a cassette player out of juice.

All your doors are locked, the voice says. Really easy when you know how.

Brian's mouth hangs loose.

Come back into the lounge, will you? Let's get a good look at you.

Now it's Brian who's alone with his worst dreams.

Don't play silly buggers, the slow voice says. You listen hard, you'll be right.

I –

The person
taps the mic; flat sounds turned to booms on account
of the volume.

This on? I meant it. Don't
bother with the doors. I'm looking after the bottom
of your house.

Brian rolls across the lino, these words
washing round him. Brian gets back in the lounge, seated
three feet over the debris of his life under bulbs
.

Brian hears a noise in the hall. Air moving. Something
brushing the floor.

Got your attention, have I? Good.

A
louder bang. It's definitely in the hall. Brian strains
to look.

There's paper folded up into planes.

Brian
is the quiet mouse caught in a trap.

Please let
's be friends, the voice says.

A book hits the
floor out in the hall.

Brian goes to see.

The
Olympic flag bounces softly from the second stair and unfurls
.

Brian's archives are coming down the stairs. Planes and
books at the bottom of the stairs.

Bananas in pyjamas
, says the voice –

Stop it, Brian says. Stop whatever it
is you're doing.

There's a rumble over the
boards above.

A box of skin splits open, bursting with
cream flakes.

Brian recoils from the view in front. He
closes his eyes, forward another few feet – so used to
the topography of his house he doesn't need to
see. That thing they say when you're young: can
you get out of your house in smoke, in the
dark, in the black. Count the stairs and remember the
steps, our kid. 'Cept you'll have to roly-poly
, won't you, our kid –

Brian's in the hall
now. He hammers the stairlift buttons but they're all
dead.

I told you, the voice says. This is my house now. And I'll save you the trouble of checking the phone, too.

What is this? Brian says. What do you want?

Your skin looks very yellow, Mr Meredith. Are you drinking enough water?

How –

And the state of this place –

Stop it.

Tell me where the box is, and we'll be good pals, you and I.

What box?

What fucking box, Brian? The box you already looked inside.

Brian's chair creaks.

You think we haven't seen everything? That we don't know? You have something you don't need; don't want; don't have any right to have. So make this easy for us both, and you'll have a new friend plus a clean sheet.

Brian shakes his head. Brian's eyes are all wet. Brian's voice is warbling with the stress. I don't know how to help you, says Brian.

Then I'll make it easy. People pay me to make collections. You have something a lot of people want collected.

Right.

The box, Mr Meredith.

How did you get in here, you sneaky bastard?

Cloak-suit. Same way anyone naughty does anything.

And if you take the box, then what?

Like I said. You get a new pal. Friends in right places. People who'll give you all you're after.

You don't know what I want.

Don't I?

And if I don't hand it over?

Well, we all have our insurances. I won't be handling it myself – you'll meet somebody in town to make the drop. Trams are running today, aren't they. Thursday, isn't it. So you'll take the box into town and meet our contact by memorial column. I've brought a lead container. You'll find this at the bottom of the stairs. The change you'll need for the train is in an envelope on the container.

Who are you?

Could ask the same of you, putting it like that. Had to put your head over parapet, didn't you?

I'm not doing sod all for anyone.

Not what Anubis tells us, is it?

Brian looks at the statue.

Ah. There you are, the voice says.

Upstairs, Brian hears laughing.

Help us, the voice says, and you won't be done for it. We're all friends, Brian. Really great friends.

Through the wall, Brian hears the stairlift chains moving –

Done for it? Done for what?

– The sound his stairlift makes with a full load.

Brian closes his eyes. Emphysemic breathing. Brian reels backwards in the hall, surrounded by his archives and the half-light of outside.

Brian opens his eyes behind his hands. Sees the container on the second step.

Sees the swollen feet coming down from the dark, dark, dark, over the red carpet. Sees her red dress. Sees her red scalp. Sees her red and black skin coming down over the red, red, red carpet.

Everything red.

Diane –

Just in case you thought we weren't serious, the voice says from top of the stairs. The shadow at the top of the stairs.

Ian's voice.

She's better off this way, you know. Better than muddying some other shores with that other paki she married. The thought of them breeding –

Brian's chest is crushing him –

So when I've confirmed you've made the drop, an undertaker – pal of mine – pops round, and our matter's resolved. Might even sort your carpets. And for your peace of mind, I've written extra instructions you'll find in an envelope on the top. Bit of cash as we've said. There's some diazepam there too. Help a man of your composition, that. And I'll lock up, of course. Can't have anybody walking in here.

His hand on the wall. His head lolling around.

Diane –

Fail to show up, it's your friends from The Cat Flap next. Talk to anyone, I'll have a lynch mob round here faster than you can spell paedophile.

Diane –

Well go on. Best get moving, hadn't you? Wouldn't want your house growing secrets.

Outside, Noah's Nissan Cherry is parked opposite.