The Cut Read online

They’re coming through the plaza, leaping over the tables. Grinner, Chewer and Tie-dye smash some over, blocking our way in front. The barking echoes off every wall as they unleash the dogs.

  Damien’s out, making a run, leaving the engine going with no one at the wheel. Bastard. He vaults over one of the tables with a great swish of coat, like that Interceptor guy.

  ‘He’s gone!’ JJ is furious. ‘Bel, get the wheel!’

  ‘I can’t take this,’ Marcie whimpers. ‘I want to go back.’

  ‘Marcie, no!’ JJ lunges at her, but too late – she’s off in her tight green dress, dodging the Fallies, and is swallowed up by the shadows of the stairs.

  I can’t get out of my seat-belt. ‘Shit shit shit!’ The car, still trundling at about ten miles an hour, clips a bin, and Grinner and Chewer leap for cover. I’m straining at the belt. My thumb stabs again and again on the red release button, with no effect.

  Something wild and angry lands on the bonnet. It’s the scabby dog, scratching the paint up into fountains, barking like a hellhound. Its eyes are skewed, looking in opposite directions. I’ve never been so frightened of such a scrawny creature before. It looks mad and hungry.

  It slides, trying to get a grip on the windscreen. The car slams, still quite hard, into the side of a burger bar. This time I hear the headlights smash. The dog slithers but regains its balance.

  JJ yelps – the creature’s filthy jaws are right up against our windscreen, trying to bite the glass, clouding it with foul breath and spittle.

  The creature won’t take long to find the back window’s gone.

  Behind us, the Fallies are approaching at a run. Except Birthmark, the arrogant bitch – she’s standing on a table with her arms folded, smiling.

  The Alsatian’s in the far corner. It’s watching Damien, who can’t see which way to run. Dreads and Tie-dye are right behind the dog. Dreads has a broken bottle.

  Another smash with those paws and the dog’s going to be right inside here.

  I finally break free of my seat-belt. It whips across my neck and I slam, decisively, on the button for the windscreen wipers.

  The first high-speed wipe smashes the mutt on the side of the head. It gives a terrifying yelp, almost like a human scream. Its teeth are flashing as it tries to bite into the wiper, and in the process the wiper goes right up inside its collar. The blade flips across the bonnet, dragging the yelping dog with it.

  JJ and I watch in horrified fascination as the mutt slides to and fro, trying to get a grip with its legs on the bonnet. It’s obvious that the twisted collar’s getting tighter and tighter, and the dog thrashes impotently. Foam and blood are welling out from between its jaws.

  The Fallies seem to have forgotten JJ and me. They’ve formed a crescent in the corner around Damien. They maybe haven’t realized about the dog.

  ‘Get us out of here, Bel,’ JJ snaps. ‘Now!’

  Tie-dye’s smashed his fist into Damien’s stomach. Damien, bent double, hits the wall, his face red and screaming.

  I’m in the driver’s seat, jiggling the wires again and again.

  ‘I can’t do it!’

  ‘Move out,’ says JJ, coming round the front. I try to ignore the kilos of thrashing dog being slammed again and again across the bonnet. I move back across and he gets into the driver’s seat.

  Dreads pulls Damien up by the hair. He does it with surprisingly little effort. It’s like watching a skeleton lifting an undertaker. Dreads spits at Damien and slices with the bottle, close to his face.

  The engine coughs, splutters.

  I can feel my nerve going. ‘JJ, come on!’

  ‘All right, I’m trying my best!’

  I risk another look over my shoulder. Damien’s face is bleeding from a broad red stripe across his cheek. Tie-dye slams him against the wall again and does a high kick right into his stomach. Damien’s on the floor, now, and Dreads is standing over him with the bottle.

  The engine catches. JJ slams the car into reverse. The broken windscreen wiper skews off, taking the throttled dog with it. I hear a sickening thump.

  My body shakes again as we hit a table behind us. Other tables fall like dominoes, sending Birthmark off-balance and crashing to the floor. I can’t resist a scream of delight as adrenalin pumps into me, and I thump the roof. ‘Come on! Come on!’

  JJ obviously doesn’t like this. He’s sweating and gritting his teeth as he swings the car around.

  We’re ready. JJ has his hands steady on the wheel.

  ‘We can get out,’ he says. He doesn’t look at me. All we can see is Dreads screaming, brandishing the bottle, and Chewer and Grinner hauling Damien to his feet by his collar.

  Tie-dye is looking in our direction. His eyes open wide and I can see his finger lifting to point at us.

  ‘No.’ I’m firmly gripping JJ’s arm. ‘We don’t leave him.’

  ‘Then we’re dead!’

  ‘Get him, JJ. Or we’re finished.’

  His eyes meet mine. For a second, no more. He looks cold, resolved, so unlike my JJ that I almost flinch. I realize he is actually prepared to leave Damien. And I have to ask myself whether I am too.

  Then JJ hits the accelerator and heads straight for the Fallies.

  *

  I sigh, lean back in my chair, because that’s the hardest bit to remember.

  The tape isn’t going to stop. I close my eyes against the harshness of the spotlight. I can see an angry, greenish after-image. I can see foam gushing from the mouth of a dead dog. Foam and blood.

  I can smell the roasting flesh of the dog, mixed with the scent of bergamot and orange.

  No, that’s not right, surely?

  *

  JJ slams the brakes on, jolting me back and forth. The Fallies scatter, dropping Damien. JJ then edges forward in jerks, keeping them on their toes, as he finds the switch to get the side windows open.

  Behind us, I see Birthmark scuttle for the cover of the stairs.

  Momentarily, I think of Marcie.

  Damien, his head bleeding, is heaving himself up on my door handle.

  ‘Come on, then, if you’re coming!’ I scream at him, and pull him in the open side-window. He lands in the back with a thud and a gurgle, and before his legs are even inside the car, JJ is moving us. With one intact wiper still swishing uselessly across the bonnet – across the dog-blood – the Rover smashes a path through the scattered tables.

  We make it to the mall in just a few seconds. On the back seat, Damien, head in hands, yowls like a wounded animal.

  JJ’s handling the car like a pro. As horses go, my little JJ is pretty dark.

  ‘We haven’t got Marcie,’ I say to him.

  ‘I know. She’ll have got out. We’ll pick her up.’

  We’re back at the escalator and the shattered Woolworths entrance.

  About forty metres to go.

  The red light is still flashing on and off. Police from hell, I think with a sudden chill. I glance on to the back seat. There’s a pungent smell of bile. Damien, bleeding profusely, has been sick. He’s got his head between his knees, but he’s still breathing.

  Thirty metres.

  The car picks up speed. I close my eyes tightly and all I can see is a pair of opaque lenses above a plaice-white face, with –

  Twenty metres.

  With a jagged, Zig-zaggy-Stardust-stripe of a birthmark –

  My God – no! –

  She is there in front of us, white legs straddling the glassy gash of our exit.

  Birthmark. Her face contorted in rage.

  Fifteen.

  Something in her hands is gushing out white clouds, spewing globules on the walls and floor around her.

  Ten metres.

  Birthmark, screaming profanities, shoots the fire extinguisher like a gun, splattering our windscreen and wheels.

  ‘JJ, slow down!’ I scream.

  He hits the brakes. The car’s gripped by the foam as if on a moving pavement. There’s nothing JJ or I can do. The windscreen is
almost totally covered. There’s a soft thud of flesh.

  ‘Jesus.’

  It’s a white-out, everything’s white and bright, we’ve stopped dead, white like that toilet seat (so long ago) and I don’t want to look in case I see red, the splash of blood on snow, the red of a crimson harlequin-faced demon. ‘Jesus Jesus Jesus.’ As I say the name, it becomes more than a name, I realize what I am saying and I see his face, I see the whiteness of the Turin shroud in my mind’s eye and I see his kind face reaching down to kiss me, I feel the nails driven into my body, I feel the knife in my hand cutting skin, opening his wrists and I’m watching the white clouds of his spirit pour out and over me –

  ‘Bel –’

  Focus on something. Focus on clarity, like white and red. I’m back in primary school saying, Our father which art in heaven, Harold be thy name, the king don’ come, Di will be done. That’s what we said. I really thought the Lord’s prayer was some sort of allegiance to the Princess of Wales –

  ‘Bel, for God’s sake!’

  There is a boy shaking me by the arm. He’s got big, endearing eyes and a floppy fringe, and his face is filled with panic. His name is Joshua James McCann.

  His name is JJ.

  ‘Bel! Come on, we’ve got to get her in!’ He’s opened the car door.

  ‘What?’ I am confused.

  ‘The girl! Come on!’

  In front of me, through a haze of drying white foam, a single windscreen wiper judders across the bonnet of the car. There is something caught up in the blade. It looks like a clump of bloodstained hair.

  I twist round in my seat. Damien still has his head down, breathing hard, sounding like he’s about to retch again.

  The first rule of disaster, someone said once, is to panic about one thing at a time.

  *

  So what happened then?

  I sigh, closing my eyes against the light.

  We – JJ and I – got out. She was crouched on the floor next to the fire extinguisher.

  And was she badly hurt?

  Yeah. Well, no. Well – she didn’t seem to be. No blood or anything, and she was breathing and that. Kept sobbing something about her leg.

  And it was JJ who suggested . . .?

  Putting her in the car, yeah. (Shrug.) Well, we had to do it. There was nothing else we could do. We threw her in next to Damien and hoped for the best.

  And then?

  And then we went out the same way we came in. We found Marcie sitting in the car park, dribbling into her dress. She had foil crumpled in her lap and a straw up her nose. We didn’t say anything. We just picked her up and shoved her in the back as well.

  And . . . that’s when it all started to get rather worrying. Right?

  Right.

  *

  We’ve managed to clean the windscreen up and to fix the wiper vaguely back into place. No one’s in control except for JJ and me.

  The road swishes past. Night air, more chilly now, floods in through the back window. Lights of tartrazine-orange against dark blue skies. Even in September, the sky’s not totally dark at this time. There are clouds, moving like great, monolithic spaceships.

  JJ and I are not looking at each other. We are quiet, the car is quiet. It smells of rust, engine fumes and vinegary bile.

  Marcie, fish-eyed, smiles to herself as if she has discovered a secret in her little world. I doubt she’s noticed the extra passenger.

  Damien clutches a handkerchief to his cut. It was messy, but not that deep – he’s suffering more from the punch and the kicking. He’s a big lad – he was prop-forward in the First XV – and it takes a lot to knock him down.

  ‘How are you doing back there?’ I ask, without looking round and without sounding like I care too much.

  ‘Not . . . too bad.’ Damien coughs and splutters, producing something that I don’t especially want to see. ‘What happened? What’s she doing here?’

  He nudges the semi-conscious Birthmark, who’s lolling against him. I glance in the mirror. She’s a greyish-white, mushroomy. Her mark’s like a giant bloodstain, and her mouth’s slack and glistening.

  ‘Don’t ask me.’ I nod to JJ, who’s concentrating on the road. ‘He picked her up. I haven’t yet found out quite how far off his rocker he is, but I’m sure he’ll enlighten me.’

  A boundary sign looms, an angular ghost in the night: Teysham.

  ‘You’re going home, Damien,’ I tell him. ‘And you’re taking Miss Mermaid there with you.’

  He groans, clutching at his head. ‘But – wait – I’ve . . . got to get cleaned up first –’

  ‘Got a bathroom, haven’t you?’

  We’ve arrived at a village square with a war memorial and a telephone box as its two silent guardians. Not far away, a vixen yelps, sounding worryingly human.

  ‘Right, get out. You too, Marcie.’

  ‘Me too, Marcie,’ she says in a far-away voice. ‘Meatoo Marcie. Meat two veg.’ She chuckles, opens the door and waves vaguely at me. ‘Bye, then.’ She falls out of the car and lands on the verge by the telephone box.

  Damien, staggering a little, helps her up. They’re like a couple of lost souls in the moonlight. I grin at them.

  ‘Come on,’ I say to JJ. ‘We’ve got to lose this car.’

  I just hope that neither Damien nor Marcie is going to have too clear a recollection of tonight.

  We accelerate away in the dark. Through the shattered windscreen I see them hugging each other in the village square, like the last people on earth.

  We slow down at Marsh Avenue, a big modern development. Tasteful five-bedroom houses, with twisty porch pillars like barley-sugar sticks. Garages, big enough to be little houses themselves. Gravel and neat lawns. Not unlike where I live.

  We stop for a second.

  ‘Listen,’ says JJ.

  There’s a whine, like a motor, echoing down in the valley, and a faint clanking of glass. I peer out, down the hill, try to see. A square of light is disappearing down towards the coastal road.

  The milkman’s been. I need to clear the dry, beer-cask taste from my mouth. First of all I take great gulps of the fresh night air. Then JJ stays and watches Birthmark while I hop over a couple of gates and grab some sleek white pints from Marsh Avenue doorsteps (dodging a cat in one of the drives). They’re so smooth, like little bombs of milk. We gulp them as we judder along, down into the valley. Out through the country lanes, towards the downs and quarries.

  Birthmark is lolling quietly in the back seat, sometimes making a low moaning sound. I’m not quite sure what we’re going to do with her. I lean back, try and give her some milk, but she won’t lift her lips to the bottle.

  At one point we have to cross a B road, and a bright coach thunders past, followed by a petrol tanker and three cars. Hearts thumping, we get across, back on to the lanes and a world of darkness and over-hanging trees, where no one will see us pass.

  The night washes in through the car, smelling of pine needles and dung and the burning of petrol.

  We drive on, in deathly silence.

  *

  Getting rid of Damien and Marcie was a smart move. They’re dead wood in lots of ways. One too brash for his own good, too anxious to prove himself, and the other just a stupid whining bitch.

  We could have found out where Birthmark came from, taken her home, lost the car and forgotten it all. I kept looking at her in the mirror, that strange, segmented harlequin-face, and shuddering as I thought of the Fallies descending the escalator, and the frenzied dog clawing at the Rover’s windscreen.

  She didn’t look or smell like a Fally. More like a Trav. So did Dreads, too, actually. Like one of that band who hang around Canterbury in their combat jackets, smoking draw and barking at passers-by for money. Keeping a scrawny dog so they can claim an allowance, which they spend on drink while feeding the dog on scraps.

  We drove on. This is how it was.

  *

  I notice that her eyes are closed now.

  I tell JJ to stop
the car, but he doesn’t.

  I scream at him to stop the car. There must be something frightening in my face, because he takes one look at me and swerves into the verge.

  It’s silent and still in the valley.

  I look down at Birthmark.

  Her face tips towards me, sending my heart pounding. Her mouth drowns in a sudden gush of clear fluid, frothed with a white foam. It’s welling up, drenching her face, glistening the birthmark. It leaves the flesh tight, glossy; it’s like frozen meat shrink-wrapped in plastic. The sound of the fluid dripping on to the floor of the car is gunshot-loud in the night. Still her eyes have remained closed.

  ‘Come on,’ I say to JJ. ‘Help me get her out.’

  *

  You got her out of the car?

  Yeah, that’s what we did. It was totally dark and still and we couldn’t even see any lights of houses for miles around. On one side of the road there was woodland, sloping down.

  And the jacket? What happened about the jacket?

  We – I – well, I don’t know. It must have come off as we were . . .

  Yes?

  Dragging her along.

  Dragging her along. Right. You didn’t know if she was dead or alive, and you didn’t stop to ascertain. And what did you do then?

  We rolled her down the slope.

  And then we drove away.

  *

  The car judders and protests as it is put through one of its final punishments – the dirt track down into the old quarry.

  I need some air, so I’m out, round the front of the car, leaning back against the bonnet with my hands deep in Imelda’s jacket. I gulp down the last of the milk, wipe my mouth and sling the streaked bottle away into the bushes.

  The moon’s crept out from behind the clouds, picking out some details of the old hollow. There’s a few old stumps of tree, deformed and knobbly, like trolls. Mangled metal, almost natural sculptures of rust reaching up into the night, with twisting green leaves trying to reclaim them for the earth. On the crest of a rise just in front of us, there is the crumbling brown skeleton of a car – looks like it was a small hatchback.

  There’s a gentle rustling sound, and some scurrying and scrabbling in the bushes. Otherwise, it’s still.

  What a night. Exhaustion is beginning to wash over me now, and pain’s coming back from that cut on my head. I feel slightly dizzy, and put a hand to my forehead, but the Rover steadies me.