The Lighthouse at the End of the World, page 13
THE DEESIDE SHUFFLE
Oyster walked to the end of the corridor, opened the rubbish chute, and tossed the bin bag down it. Pulling the drawstring on the vinyl bag tight over his shoulder, he dived up the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time. He needed to lie low tonight and then see Big Mickey as quickly as he could tomorrow. Although he’d managed to get into the building without being seen, he now had to get out of it somehow without being nabbed. But he had a plan.
He got to the next floor up and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Were those footsteps? He leaned over the stairwell and looked up and down. The yellow light from above was swallowed by the darkness on seventh. All the while, the image of the mutilated bird replayed in his mind.
Keep it together. Keep. It. Together. There was a metallic smell as he hit the ninth-floor landing. He stopped once again. The steps behind him might have stopped an instant later. Or were they just echoes?
The tenth floor was a block of shadow. He stopped again and listened. The unsettling thing was that the noises didn’t sound like footsteps, they were more like tree roots being played across concrete.
“Hey?” he called.
There was no response. He smelled mould but also the unexpected, unmistakeable scent of cut grass. The sound came from above him again. Someone is trying to fuck with me.
“Who’s there?” he called.
His voice echoed down the stairwell.
Oyster shook his head and ran upward into the buttery pools of light on the floors above. He kept his head down and focused on getting to the top of the block. Passing the last flat on the top floor, he scuttled up a final flight of stairs to the fire exit. He leaned into the horizontal bar lock that secured it and it clunked open. So far so good.
Emerging onto the roof of the East Tower, he was pelted by raindrops that flooded down from the sodium-bleached sky. The air was alive with the hoots of late-night traffic. He ran across the concrete rooftop, making for his maintenance exit’s twin, the one for the West Tower, on the other side of the roof.
Pulling up his hood to protect himself from the wet weather, he dropped Lucas’s bag from his shoulder and tipped out its contents. Three metal crowbars of varying sizes clanged onto the rain-slicked roof. Licking the water from his lips, he picked up the smallest and slipped its tip into the gap between the fire exit and the door jamb. He heaved at the bar, putting his weight on it and tugging as hard as he could. The frame splintered, but the door itself refused to give. Oyster tried again and again, alternately using his body weight to pull and push at the bar, in an effort to prise the door open, but it would not move. He couldn’t be stuck up on this roof forever.
His frustration and anger boiled over and he yelled and kicked at the door. Why did this shit always happen to him? His entire plan for getting away undetected relied on him getting into the West Tower and sneaking out of its unguarded entrance. He threw the crowbar down and switched to one of the larger ones. While it prised away more of the door jamb, the door itself remained stubbornly in place. Panic fluttered in his chest and he stepped away from the door, backing into something.
There was a crack across Oyster’s temple that sent him flying to the ground. Another blow and another. His hands came up to protect his head, but he was so surprised that he was only abstractly aware of the pounding he was getting.
Part of him already knew who it would be, coming in hard with no warning: it had to be the Urbans. Sure enough, Baby Ed’s pointy features loomed over him in the city-glow and broke into a smile. Oyster had never noticed before, but there was a coy gap between the boy’s two front teeth. He was carrying his prized possession, a metal baseball bat decorated with Panini football stickers he’d nicknamed Nora.
Now the pain arrived, and heavy waves flooded Oyster’s skull, back and arms. He contracted into a pinprick surrounded by agony.
“You been spoken to, dim-low,” Ed said, voice cracking up and down the syllables.
Oyster tried to sit up, but nothing happened. Baby Ed placed the bat down with a hollow ringing. He grabbed Oyster’s wrists and dragged him towards the low perimeter wall that ran around the edge of the roof.
“This isn’t personal,” said Baby Ed, puffing from the effort. “But as it happens, I don’t like you very much. Soz-not-soz.”
Oyster tried to reply, but his tongue felt like a dishcloth. Baby Ed stepped back to the landing and retrieved the baseball bat. He tapped Oyster’s right temple with it and Oyster flinched. The pain was everywhere now. He tasted blood in his mouth and his nose was spongey. He thought of the knife in his back pocket and he tried to twist around to grab it, but his arm hurt too much.
“Big Mickey’s got beef with you, disciple. Proper vexed, so he is. Skipping out with his green? Not very smart. I always figured you to have more up top than that. At least, street enough not to come crawling back to your shitty crib after you’d done it. You and Broadsie both.”
Oyster shook his head.
Ed grinned. “Yeah, we know all about your plan to split the cheddar.”
“That’s not it,” said Oyster, his mouth bubbling blood.
“Don’t you chat me,” replied Ed. “I could give you another sparking with Nora here, but Big Mickey says, ‘Make it brutal, not fatal.’”
Oyster shut his eyes and turned his head away, instinctively trying to make sure Ed couldn’t see him blub. When he opened them again, he was surprised to see water lapping around the boy’s trainers.
“Sea?” said Oyster.
“No sea here, disciple,” Baby Ed squeaked.
He knelt and tapped Oyster’s head with Nora again.
“Something’s wonky up here,” he said. “I’ve spasticated you proper.”
Oyster squinted. He saw Baby Ed, that was certain, but behind him was a wall made from mismatched bits of furniture and chunks of timber. He recognised it immediately as the one he’d scaled in Greater London. This was wrong, something must have come loose in his head, but the vision wouldn’t go away.
The concrete beneath him was covered in black beads of volcanic sand. The white noise of waves splashed around him as they washed against the base of the bric-a-brac wall.
The cold water played over Oyster’s feet. Behind Baby Ed, sitting on the top of the wall, was a figure. The man was dressed in a white T-shirt and baggy engineered jeans. His greying hair had been close cropped. He sported an immaculately trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee and a pair of Aviator shades.
“Dad?” said Oyster. The word slipped out of him before he could stop it. But no doubt, it was definitely Lucas.
“I’m your daddy now, pig,” said Baby Ed.
Whatever it was that Oyster was looking at, he alone could see it. Baby Ed adjusted his jeans by tugging at his oversize belt buckle. He unzipped his flies and pulled out his cock.
“Don’t look too close, you fucking wannabe,” he cackled.
“Fuck off,” said Oyster, trying to shuffle himself backward with his feet.
“Hold still, this is hard to do on demand,” said Ed.
He whistled to conjure a yellow jet of piss which sprayed onto Oyster, who groaned and twisted away.
“I needed that,” said Baby Ed, shaking himself off and doing up his flies. He wiped his hands on his jeans.
“Big Man wants you breathing, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt. So, I reckon another love-tap from Nora here and I’ll dump you off the roof. Lost your footing running away, innit? I can explain it all away. Proper tragic.”
Grains of sand washed under Oyster’s fingers and the smell of the sea assaulted his nostrils. Lucas looked down at him from the edge of the surf now, shaking his head. He removed his sunglasses. There were empty sockets where his eyes should have been.
Baby Ed raised his baseball bat, ready to swing it. All Oyster could do was raise his own arm in a feeble gesture of defence, but the blow never came.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Oyster thought there might have been a flash of light. But when he recalled it later, perhaps it had just been lightning. It seemed as though a lot of time had passed, but also that no time had passed at all. Lucas and the seawall were gone.
He tried to sit, but his head felt like an elephant had sat on it. Lying back again, he licked his lips and tasted blood, along with a harsh saltiness that he realised must be Baby Ed’s piss. He spluttered and spat, trying to rid himself of the taste. At least his teeth were in one piece, he thought. His left temple had taken the brunt of Baby Ed’s attack, and he probed it gently, crying out as pain lanced across his forehead.
“Oh, do stop whining,” came a voice that Oyster immediately recognised as Primrose’s. The man was sitting hunched on the low parapet that encircled the East Tower’s roof, watching the storm break over the rest of the city.
“It’s no Greater London, but this is still quite the view, isn’t it?” the man continued.
Oyster managed to sit up this time. Primrose sat with his back to him, wearing a raincoat that boiled as though the body beneath was in constant roiling motion, like something that wasn’t entirely fixed. Nearby, Baby Ed lay in a bloody knot.
“Fuck. What did you do?” said Oyster.
“You really are beginning to mount up a significant amount of debt on your account. We do hope you can pay it off.”
“What did you do to him?” asked Oyster again.
Primrose cleared his throat.
“He’s still alive. If you can call it living. Honestly, we do wonder how you lot stand it. Take all this time nonsense, for instance.”
He held up a finger tipped with a grubby nail.
“One second. And another. And another. Like tiny rabbit turds all in a row. We cannot fathom how you are able to stand it. It’s like ordering steak and chips and then the waiter brings the peas one at a time.”
Oyster rolled over and stood to his feet. His head hurt catastrophically.
Primrose pointed at the prickle of city lights that ran to the horizon.
“The place was better in the good old days. What is this all about, anyway?” He waved at the other blocks on the estate. “All living on top of each other like insects in a hive. This civilisation of yours isn’t right, anyone can see that.”
Primrose turned away from him, addressing himself in a whispered monotone to the city:
“‘The cloud-capp’ d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve.’”
“Very impressive.” Oyster tried to shrug but his whole body ached. He gulped in a breath. Hurting as he was, he wasn’t going to put up with Primrose’s schtick. “So, you voted Brexit and now you’re all sad about it. Who cares?”
Primrose looked at him, appearing genuinely crestfallen.
Oyster fought past the pain. He bent over, supporting himself by leaning on his legs. This was maybe a chance to get some answers himself.
“He was one of you lot, was he not? Shakespeare? So, you’re not entirely clueless as a species—”
“What are you up to with Deano?” interrupted Oyster. He tested his left arm with his right hand. It was tender to the touch. He prodded his jaw; it was sore, but thankfully that seemed to be about it.
“Up to?” Primrose turned his hands palm upwards and assumed an innocent air. “Why, nothing. But since you mention it, you owe us twice over now. You really should come and work for us. There are things you need educating on, boyo.”
“Absolutely not,” said Oyster. “And don’t call me boy, you plainclothes prick.”
Primrose shrugged. “Uff, such language. We are not the po-po, as we’ve already said. Do try and pay attention. There are wonders and horrors that you are not capable of comprehending. At least in your currently reduced state.”
“And what would they be?” said Oyster. He stood, shakily. His head throbbed and he was exhausted.
Primrose sniffed.
“The Hermeneutical Mysteries. How to get a high score on Ghosts and Goblins. Your father.”
The vision he’d had when Baby Ed attacked him flashed into his head again. He leaned against the parapet and breathed in hard, steadying himself, riding out the aches all over his body. The concrete slabs at the base of the tower lurched and he wanted to puke. He breathed in to steady himself and stepped back from the edge. A gust of wind brought the sound of distant police sirens.
“People keep talking to me as though I know nothing about that man,” Oyster said.
“But you don’t, not even the first thing,” said Primrose, turning back to look over the city.
Oyster swallowed. He’d kept his curiosity hostage for so long he had forgotten what it felt like; he’d buried that need to know beneath layers of concrete, locked it away in a room at the back of his head and thrown away the key. Now, it rose suddenly, zombie-like, in a way that overwhelmed him.
“Tell me this,” he said, “if you’re such a big, bad OG: why all this hide-and-seek nonsense?”
Primrose nodded. “Let’s just say you aren’t the only one in reduced circumstances at the moment. Ergo we are, at present, forced to work through intermediaries. But this state of affairs will not persist. The human cycle is closing again. We are growing in strength all the time. You will need to choose a side.”
Primrose’s words possessed an odd hypnotic quality.
“So what did you mean, ‘working for you’?” Oyster said. The words had escaped from his mouth before he’d had time to think them through.
Primrose didn’t move.
“Well, first off, you come with us,” he replied.
“And…?” said Oyster.
“And then we tell you all about the thing you call Lucas McLellen.”
His dad’s name triggered a memory of the time he’d fallen into the Wandle near his nan’s in Runnymeade as a kid. Lucas had fished him out. They’d caught the bus home and hadn’t been able to get a seat, so he’d sat on Lucas’s lap all the way home, soaking him through and through.
There was lightning somewhere over Tooting Common. The world was shifting under his feet. Going with Primrose made a sudden sense. The life he’d built up. His friends. The Urbans. That was all over now. As sure as shit was shit. But then he thought of Cess; this shifty fucker had threatened her.
“Nah, ain’t happening. Get lost, creep-o.”
“As you please,” replied Primrose with another sigh, coat twitching in the wind. He slid over the parapet and into the nothing beyond.
Oyster lurched forward and peered over the edge in horror, but there was no sign of Primrose on the dark tarmac below. He shook his head in disbelief. Too much weird shit had happened to him in too short a space of time.
Nearby, Baby Ed groaned. So, Primrose hadn’t lied, the boy was still alive. Oyster had to make himself scarce. Suppressing the very strong urge to go over and give him a kick in the teeth, he saw that the East Tower maintenance door was now open. Another dubious gift from Primrose? He scuttled across the roof and into the dark, echoing comfort of the stairwell. He slammed the door shut behind him. Ed didn’t look like he’d be up and about anytime soon, but the door ought to keep him off Oyster’s six. He tested his temple again; it hurt like fuck, and was already swollen, but remarkably nothing was broken. His head ached and his jaw throbbed, but he was still in one piece.
He picked his way down the stairs as quietly as he was able. The building filled him with an odd mixture of familiarity and difference. Everything about it was the same as his home tower, except that they were mirrored. It even smelled different as well. It was more antiseptic, cleaner somehow.
As he threaded down the stairs, he tried to work through his next move. He did his best to ignore the pain in his side and in his head, but each step jarred him, wounding him anew. He needed somewhere he could hole up for a bit. Given that the Urbans were out for his blood, his options were limited. He wanted to see Broadsides to warn him that he was on Mickey’s shit list too, but that, he knew, would be a mistake.
The stairwell was deserted, and he was thankful for reaching the ground-floor fire exit without running into anyone. Peering through the door’s mesh glass into its lobby, he could see only streetlights and the glistening black of the car park beyond. He slipped his hands into his pockets and his hand closed around an unfamiliar square of card. He pulled it out and caught sight of Kaminsky’s business card. Hadn’t he chucked this away?
It read:
On the reverse side was an address in St John’s Wood.
LAMASERY
Ach, my gods. What the fuck happened to you?” said Marya Petrovna to Oyster as he stood in the doorway of her top-floor flat. She was dressed in a scarlet dressing gown, decorated with what looked suspiciously like tiny yellow swastikas.
“Got dooked up,” he mumbled without meeting her gaze.
“By the Ascended Ones. That smell!” she said, holding her lapel up to her nose and wrapping the robe more tightly around her. “You smell like goat has made water on you.”
Oyster shrugged.
“Can we just get the humiliation bit of this out of the way? I need a place to crash for a few days, you down with that?”
“I need cigarette just to get rid of smell,” she said and pulled her tobacco purse out of the robe. “But yes, of course, dear. You stay as long as you wish. Come in. Come in.”
Marya Petrovna opened the door wide and turned down a cramped hallway. Oyster followed, hopping to catch up with her.
“Close the door,” she shouted over her shoulder, “and take your shoes off.”
“What’s with the Hitler Youth chic, anyway?” he called after her.
Marya Petrovna tutted volubly from further down the hall.
“These are sauwastikas, ancient spiritual symbol. Those employed by the bohemian lieutenant and his thugs were rotated…” she made a spinning gesture with a blunt finger, “…laterally.”
“Well, that told me,” Oyster said with a sigh as he slipped off his Air Max. “I suppose there’s no chance that you might be a Nazi with your nightie on inside out?”
