Beneath The Skin Episode 34

Walt fixed the kid with a hard stare. “Have you been in my room?” “No.” Too quick, too sheepish. “In my bag? Have you been in my bag?” “No.” Even faster. William was studying the wall behind Walt. There was a downwards slant to his mouth and his eyes looked a bit shiny; Walt hoped he wouldn’t cry. He hated weeping women and crying kids were worse.

“That’s okay. I just thought... Er, never mind.” The kid ducked away.

Walt had been in his room earlier, folding up his clothes, putting his socks into a pile for washing. He had gone through his pack; it was a kind of ritual, a thing he did the way other people check for keys, change, their phone. This was all he had in the world now, this bag.

Bergens had to be packed correctly, and always upright, so as not to disturb the layers. Heaviest items went at the bottom, jammed against the frame to protect your back: uniform trousers, or jeans now, and then T-shirts. Socks and boxers went together at the top. The rope was old and had never lost its dampness. It was heavy, so it went at the very bottom. He checked it at least once a day, for security.

When he’d checked that afternoon, the rope had shifted, as if someone had tugged at it. Walt had never moved it, or taken it out. It remained at the very bottom of the pack like a coiled snake, waiting. To check it was enough, for now.

Feathers

The noose is tight around his neck, and the more his desperate fingers prise at the rope, the tighter it becomes, biting into his flesh. The weight of his body makes it worse. He is swinging from the tree, a dead weight. Breathing in short grunts, he jerks his legs, trying to break free.

His skin is burning, caked in something treacly, clotting in lumps, and tough as concrete. Stuck to this are handfuls of feathers, soft, pretty, white ones. A single feather drifts weightlessly to the ground, curling like a new leaf.

He tries to claw at the black, peeling it off in strips that take his skin with it, until all that’s left is his flayed body, still alive, bloody and jerking, hanging from the tree.

He came awake with a great gasp, like a man drowning, coming up for air. His heart was pounding. He was stuck to the sheets with dried blood. He wanted to scream but his tongue was paralysed, too big for his mouth. Slowly, slowly, he focused on the light creeping through the gap in the yellow curtains. White walls, white ceiling, cracks around the light fitting... And sweat, not blood, dampening the sheets.

He struggled to sit up and snap on the bedside light. Only those who have survived the dark know the comfort of a 40 watt bulb. He hid his face in his hands for a very long time, massaging the agitation from the tight lines around his eyes. A sigh shuddered through his whole body.

Lowering his hands he reached over and tipped the alarm clock towards him. It was one of those old-fashioned travel ones, in a salmon-pink shell. Must have belonged to someone’s granny. It was six in the evening. It was the birds that had done this. He’d gone down to the basement looking for William. Mouse was making the tea and fretting. He shouldn’t be down there, she’d said. What was he doing down there, when Cash In The Attic was on?

Maybe he prefers watching Death In The Basement, Walt had joked, but she’d chosen to ignore that. He’d gone outside, made the familiar slog down the basement steps, through the silent, shivery shop. The animals, as always, watched his progress.

William was staring transfixed at something hanging from the beam.

It was a kebab of dead birds. They were strung up like onions in a gardener’s shed, their beaks turned outwards, blue eyelids fine as tissue. A swarm of feathers; blueblack, charcoal, mud-brown. Walt spotted the orange-red bib of a young robin.

The stack of birds, the shape they made, and all those feathers... He’d served with an old-timer who’d been in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The lad had seen a girl stripped once, in Belfast, for consorting with a British soldier.

Her head had been shaved and she’d been covered in tar and feathers and tied to a tree. This anecdote had stayed with Walt for years, superseded by a more recent catalogue of horrors, but still there at the back of his subconscious. It was the feathers; how something so soft and pale and bonny could be used to crucify someone. He’d told William to come on upstairs, his mam was looking for him. He wanted to push him towards the exit. William, soft and pale and bonny, should not be contaminated by Alys’s world.

He hadn’t felt like any tea, just went up to his room.

“It’s shepherd’s pie,” Mouse had called after him as he trudged up the stairs, not believing anyone could resist. He’d pulled over the curtain and lain down on his bed, enjoying the cool comfort of the quilt.

Until he’d fallen asleep.

Light

He’d come down to the kitchen to raid the fridge and found William and his mother zipping themselves into their coats. There was a suppressed fizz of excitement about them that made him sad.

“You can come with us!” William bounced up to him. “We’re going to see the Field of Light.”

Walt risked a glance at Mouse. Her face was carefully neutral. “What’s the Field of Light when it’s at home?”

The kid inhaled an important breath. “It’s in a square and it has nine thousand five hundred lightbulbs and you can walk through it!”

“It’s an installation,” Mouse said. She was pulling on a knitted cap, self-consciously rearranging stray strands of fringe. She looked lovely, and he wanted to tell her that.

“Installation, my a**e,” he said. “Robert! Watch your language.” William giggled. “Please come with us. Can he come with us, Mum?”

“It doesn’t sound like he wants to.” Mouse turned her back, gathering up her purse, her keys.

“I just don’t get modern art. Look what it does to your sister.” Mouse spun around and fixed him with a cold stare. “Sometimes I think you think too much. Do you want to come with us or not?”

He nodded. She made a mocking afteryou gesture towards the door.

It was a kebab of dead birds. They were strung up like onions in a gardener’s shed, their beaks turned outwards

More on Monday.

Beneath The Skin, by Sandra Ireland, is published by Polygon, £8.99. Her latest book, Sight Unseen, is out now.