Dark Solstice, page 7
Suffer the consequences? I think, my brain having just about enough dry land left to stand on in a sea of fucking abject fear and pure adrenaline.
And then it hits me. This is the witch doing this! Meabh! She’s animating this dead aul doll—or possessing her somehow, one of the two—so she can deliver this message to us.
“Aw Christ, Jamesy,” I say, my voice barely above a fearful whisper. “It’s the fucking witch. The witch is here, inside that fucking aul doll.”
“Aw fuck…“ Jamesy squeaks.
The aul doll stops dead about ten feet from us, and then her body starts to convulse and jerk about like she’s got insects under her skin or something. Unable to look away, I can only watch as something long and black and hairy bursts out of the dead woman’s side, something like a leg that touches down on the floor with a clicking noise that puts a chill right through me. This newly emerged dark appendage reminds me of a spider leg the way it’s bent at a ninety-degree angle. A second later, more of the things burst from the aul doll—from her chest, back and sides—clicking down onto the floor, the noise seeming to echo up and down the corridor. The smell coming off the aul bastard now—the smell of rotten meat—is putrid, causing me to gag as I reel back covering my mouth. Beside me, Jamesy throws up, projectile vomiting a stream of dark red that’s probably pure fucking wine. Between the smell of the aul doll’s insides and the smell of Jamesy’s wine vomit, my gorge rises and I get close to throwing up my own guts.
The aul doll, meanwhile, is now raised off the floor via the spider legs coming out of her body, and she’s now click-clacking towards us on those black, hairy legs, one of which has even erupted from her saggy minge, which makes my poor stomach turn badly, yet somehow, I manage not to throw up.
As horrified as I am, Jamesy is worse. He soon squeals in a high-pitched voice, drops his yellow bags of clinical waste and runs, leaving me standing here facing this abomination as it suddenly darts to the side with frightening speed and runs up the fucking wall and then onto the ceiling where it hangs upside down to look at me.
“Stay. Out. Of. My. Business!“ the aul doll abomination rasps, her last word becoming something like a roar that serves to snap me out of my petrified daze.
Turning tail, I fucking run, hardly daring to look behind me in case that thing is chasing me.
I have no problem finding Jamesy. He’s screaming his way to the emergency exit door and has it open before I even get there. Bursting through the door with the bags still locked in my grip (even though I have no idea why) I run outside after the still screaming Jamesy and don’t stop until I make it to the car.
Jamesy is already standing there, his pudgy face white as a sheet, his body trembling. “Fucking hurry up!” he shouts. “Get the car open!”
“Alright!” I shout back, finally dropping the two bags so I can dig into my jacket pocket for my keys. My hand is shaking like fuck, but I get the keys and open the car. Jamesy pulls open the passenger door, but I stop him before he gets in. “Hold on, Jamesy. You’re not getting into my fucking car with them pishy jeans on. You’ll have to take them off.”
“What?” Jamesy says, flustered as fuck now. “Are you kidding?!”
“No, I’m not. Now fucking hurry up and get them off before I leave you here.”
“Jesusfuckinchrist!” he shouts, not caring who hears him. Then he quickly takes off his soaked jeans and holds them up. “You happy ferfucksake?!”
“Fuck them away,” I tell him. “And take off your boxers as well. Fuck them away too.”
“Jesus Christ! Fuck off, Fergie! I’m not taking my fucking boxers off! Christ, that thing could be coming after us! We need to go!”
“Aye, I know.” I take a quick look around and see no sign of the aul doll. “I think we’re alright.”
“Alright? Are you fucking kidding? Did you not hear what that fucking thing said?”
“Course I fucking did.” Opening the boot, I put the two bags of clinical waste inside and close the boot up again.
“And you’re still keeping that stuff?” Jamesy asks incredulously.
“Aye, I fucking am.”
“But why? Are you not afraid of that witch killing you?”
Opening the driver’s door, I pause to look across at Jamesy, who’s standing shivering in his bright red boxer shorts, even though I told him to get the fucking things off. “I am,” I said. “I’m fucking terrified, actually. But you know what, Jamesy?”
“What?” he says, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind or something.
“I’ve never felt more alive than I do now,” I tell him, smiling, feeling like I have lost my mind a bit, but in a good way. “Now get them fucking drenched cacs off you and get the fuck into the car so we can go back to your flat for a well-earned drink.”
8
As I mentioned before, when I first met Jamesy Stone, the silly cunt shot himself in the foot. This was back in the early noughties when I was running with a Dissident Republican group that I don’t care to name. Not because of any great loyalty to the group or to protect the integrity of the group or any such nonsense, but because the boyos I ran with were all a bunch of cunts and their useless fucking group doesn’t deserve mentioning.
But if that’s the case, Fergie, you might be saying, then why was I a member of said group for a few years? Good question, amigo, and I’ll try to answer it as honestly as I can. The main reason I ended up involved with Dissident Republicanism was because I thought it might be a good way to attract women, and also to earn me some respect from people. Yeah, I know, honourable reasons, right? In my defence, I was in my twenties, and all you want in your twenties is fanny and respect from your peers, so joining a paramilitary group seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one stone, like.
But after joining up, I quickly realised that becoming a terrorist wasn’t going to get me laid. In fact, I probably would’ve had more chance if I’d joined the local chapter of Virgins for Christ, if there even was such a thing in Greytown, which to be honest, I don’t think there was. I mean, this is fucking Greytown we’re talking about here, a town where every cunt loses his virginity on the same day they start drinking and smoking. But anyway. The women I wanted to bed were generally not impressed by men who considered themselves “freedom fighters” nor indeed “hard men,” both things me and my compatriots thought of ourselves as.
Not that I could tell anyone I was a paramilitary anyway, but if I could’ve, it wouldn’t’ve mattered much. And as for earning respect, well, most people in Greytown thought all paramilitaries were cunts and belonged in jail, so the only respect you got was from those who were in the know—your fellow group members. And even the respect you got from them was dubious. Most of the time, I was just tolerated by my fellow freedom fighters, most of whom looked down on me because of my Uncle Davey, an ex-Provisional IRA man who turned tout in the nineteen-eighties and got himself shot for it. In paramilitary circles, there’s nothing worse than a tout, and unfortunately for me, the stigma of my uncle’s actions affected the way certain people looked at me. The only reason I was accepted into the group at the time was because they needed somebody to help build a few bombs, and I happened to be good with electronics and such, being a washing machine repairman at the time. Because you know, repairing a washing machine is a lot like building a bomb. Aye, right.
So anyway, I joined up and had the craic for a while, learning to shoot a gun, learning how to build a bomb and various incendiary devices, and generally enjoying being a part of something at last other than a group of idiots who stand around street corners drinking Bucky and shouting at strangers. Spides, in other words. Now I was drinking Bucky with idiots who had guns and access to Semtex explosives, which was a step up in my books.
But once the novelty of being a card-carrying Dissident Republican wore off, it started to get a bit shite, like. There were meetings for a start…endless fucking meetings where we discussed how best to get the Brits out of Ireland, and the best methods for hurting them in the meantime, and showing them how we meant business, and that the war wasn’t over just because the fucking IRA had surrendered (even though they would vehemently deny they did so).
In practical terms, this usually meant organising wee lads to start a riot that wrecked our own estate, and on occasion, shooting cops. Well, one cop anyway. I had nothing to do with that. When I heard about it, I felt sick to my stomach, so I did, and I realised I was in over my head, especially when the cops kicked down my door one morning and dragged me off for questioning. I was interrogated for three days. One cunt of a cop stuck a pen up my ass. You ever had a biro shoved up your hole? No, I didn’t think so. It fucking hurts, I’ll tell you that much for nothing. It hurts even more when the cunt holding it moves it around inside you as you’re bent over a fucking table with your bags around your ankles, the smell of your own shite filling the room. You’re screaming like fuck while some other cop looks on, demanding that you tell him you did it, that you shot a policeman in cold blood. And when you don’t—even though you want to just to stop the pain and humiliation—the cop doesn’t let up. “You must know who did it then! Who was it? Tell me or he’ll shove that fucking pen so deep that I’ll be able to pull it outta your fucking throat you Fenian cunt!”
Aye, that wasn’t a fun time for me. Despite telling the cunts nothing, I still ended up in the clink for being a member of a terrorist organisation.
But, before that miserable time, I met Jamesy. Part of our group’s remit if you like, was a strict anti-drug dealing policy, which meant we targeted any dealers who were selling their wares in our area of Greytown. What that meant was, if you didn’t give us a cut, we would knock your cunt in. The few dealers around the area paid their dues, but there was this one cunt who didn’t. His name was Swany on account of his long neck. A big drip of a cunt he was. He was also a Prod from the other end of the town who liked to deal his wares down our end, which was reason enough not to tolerate him. It was decided that Swany was due a punishment beating, and that I was the one to do it. Me, on my own, like. Which was a fucking joke because punishment beatings were always a three or four-man job, not a fucking one-man job. But as I said, certain cunts in the group didn’t like me much, and this was their way of getting at me. I think they hoped I would end up getting my own cunt knocked in, or else arrested. Either option would be a good result for them.
But being a stupid cunt, like, I took it upon myself to prove the cunts wrong. So I says fuck it, no problem. I’ll get Swany by myself. Just pass me that fucking baseball bat there…
And away I went one night, driving up to an alley where I knew Swany did most of his dealing. Putting on my balaclava, I grabbed the baseball bat from the back seat and got out of the car. I had a bottle of wine in me by this stage, so I was feeling fairly brave. I’d also spent the last hour psyching myself up to dish out a big can of whoop ass that Swany, and my superiors within the group, would never forget. As punishment beatings went, this one would go down as legendary. Or so I thought, anyway.
Swany was standing at the top of the alley, so I walked around to that side, intending to whack the cunt from behind before he could see me and get a chance to run. With Bucky and adrenaline gushing through my system like molten metal, I took a run at Swany and whacked the back of his skinny fucking bird’s legs before he even knew what hit him. The cunt screamed and then went down, continuing to scream because I’d hit him a fair whack, like. I was pretty fucking pleased with myself as I stood over him. “Right cunt!” I said in the scariest voice I could muster, and then I told him who I belonged to and why I was there.
“Fuck you, you Fenian cunt!” was his reply, and then he tried to get up.
Oh no you don’t…
I moved to hit the cunt again, but stopped when I heard a voice say, “Don’t fucking touch him!”
Looking down the alley, I saw this fat cunt in a woolly mask and black bomber jacket come walking up with a ballpoint hammer in his hand, and I thought, Who the fuck is this? Is this one of our guys come to check on me or something?
But even with the woolly mask on, I could tell this new guy wasn’t one of us. I just knew the cunt was a Prod. You can always tell, can’t you? “Who the fuck are you?” I asked the newcomer. “Fuck away off! This doesn’t concern you.”
“Oh, it concerns me alright,” the new guy said. “I’m supposed to give this cunt a beating.”
I stare at him, and at the ballpoint hammer in his pudgy hand. “With that?”
He held the hammer up. “Aye, what do you think?”
“Bit fucking much, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Bit much beating the cunt with a hammer, isn’t it? You’ll probably fucking kill him.”
“Is that right?”
“Aye, it is.”
“An what are you doing then?” he said, getting all defensive, like.
“I’m dishing out a punishment beating. What the fuck’s it look like?”
“Who for?”
I told him the name of the group I was there on behalf of.
“This isn’t your fucking territory,” he said. “What are you doing up here? This is our territory, not yours.”
“Whose territory?”
“The UVF’s.”
“Aw fuck. Not youse cunts.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means yiz are useless cunts. Just fuck off and let me finish this cunt, will ye.”
He stepped forward then and pulled out a pistol. He didn’t aim at me, but just held it down in front of him a bit. “Are you sure you want to talk to me like that?” he said, trying to sound threatening, but instead sounding like someone who was trying it on. He probably didn’t know what to do with that fucking pistol, and as it turned out, he didn’t.
“Aw Christ!” Swany said, still lying on the ground. “Don’t let him shoot me, ferfucksake!”
“Relax you big string of piss ye,” I tell him. “No one’s shooting anybody here. Isn’t that right, ye Loyalist cunt?”
“Who are you calling a Loyalist cunt ye Fenian cunt?” the UVF guy said, stepping forward as he raised his gun and pointed it at me.
For a few seconds, I froze as I stared down the barrel of that gun. No cunt had ever pointed a gun at me before, so it was a new experience, and one that I didn’t like very much. But the cunt’s hand was shaking, and I could practically smell the stress sweat of him as he stood glaring at me with what seemed to me like fearful eyes. This cunt wasn’t going to shoot anyone, I realised, and so I calmly reached inside my coat and pulled out my own pistol, which I’d brought along just in case. I was glad I did.
“Aw fuck!” Swany said when he saw my gun. “Now there’s two fucking guns. Aw Jesus…”
“Shut up you,” I said without looking at him. “You’ll get yours in a minute when this cunt here lowers his gun and fuck’s off back to where he came from.”
The UVF cunt’s hand was still shaking, and I could hear his breathing, which was fast and shallow. The cunt was bricking himself. He was so afraid, in fact, he couldn’t lower his gun, and I began to worry that the stupid cunt would shoot me accidentally if his finger jerked too much from the stress. So I made a decision, which in hindsight, may have been the wrong one, but I was feeling the pressure and not really thinking straight myself.
I lowered my gun slightly and shot the UVF cunt in the leg.
Swany screamed in panic.
The UVF cunt screamed in pain and shock, and as he staggered back, he discharged the pistol he was holding and shot himself in the foot, causing him and Swany to scream again at the same time.
My response was to burst out laughing. “You dull cunt!” I said. “You shot yourself in the fucking foot!”
“Fuck you!” he screamed back. “You shot me in the fucking leg first!”
“I told you to lower your fucking gun and you didn’t listen! Don’t fucking blame me!”
I almost felt sorry for the stupid cunt as he lay there bleeding out all the over the alley, screaming like he was going to die. “I’m going to fucking die!” he shouted.
“You’re not going to fucking die,” I told him. “You were only shot in the leg.”
“And my fucking foot!”
“Aye, but that was your own fault. So was the one in your leg.”
“Fucking cunt!“
“Don’t call me a cunt. It was you who—”
“Shut up,” said a voice from behind me as I felt something cold and hard pressing against the back of my skull.
Aw shite, I remember thinking. I’m going to fucking die. That’s a gun pressed against my head and I’m going to fucking die.
“Drop the gun,” the voice said, and I did as I was told, letting the gun fall out of my hand, where it hit the concrete with a clacking sound.
“Look,” I said, now holding my hands up in the air. “All this is just a big misunderstanding.”
The newcomer moved around to my front. He was a big cunt wearing a woolly mask and black bomber jacket, same as the cunt I’d just shot.
Great, I thought. Another fucking UVF twat.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, now pointing the gun at my face.
“I’m nobody,” I said.
“Is that right?” the UVF guy snarled as he kicked my gun away. He then turned slightly, still aiming the gun at me, so he could speak to his fallen comrade. “Jamesy, ye useless wee cunt ye, what the fuck’s going on here? Who is this cunt?”
“Some fucking Dissident from down the town,” Jamesy said. “Cunt shot me in the fucking leg!”
“But not the foot,” I said. “Stupid cunt did that himself.”
“Shut your mouth,” the UVF gorilla said. “I wasn’t asking you.”
“Listen,” Swany said as he lay on the ground, looking like he’d shit himself at this stage. “Can I just go so yousens can sort this out between yourselves? I mean—”
I flinched at the sound of the gunshot, unable to keep from staring at Swany’s brains and skull fragments after they were spread all over the filthy concrete. “Jesusfuck!” I shouted at the UVF cunt, who after shooting Swany, now had his pistol trained on me again. “What you do that for!?”
