Mark of the Beast. Brian Ball

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СКАЧАТЬ and drink plenty of milk. All this Alan had done for a year, and yet the ulcer rode in his guts. It was time to counter-attack.

      Tonight, he would get drunk.

      He smiled at the landlord, a large and uncouth man who did not notice his attempt at friendliness. An old drunk with a broad red face stared at the rows of bottles. Alan asked for brandy.

      “And a sherry?” asked the landlord.

      “No. She’s had enough.”

      The landlord nodded uninterestedly. The drunk fumbled with his whisky glass. Alan raised his own glass as the man gulped down the whisky. He felt almost light-headed. Memories tumbled through his brain, unpleasant memories, leftovers from the strange hallucinatory experience in the dingy hall. He blotted them out. The pub was warm and comfortable.

      Alan watched as the man pursued an erratic course amongst the tables. He would pass near Janice. And Alan knew the man would stumble even as he did so. Janice was sipping her sherry as he pitched against her. It was a complete accident—he tried to grasp a chair-back, missed, and knocked Janice’s glass out of her hand. Janice did not say a thing.

      Janice’s hand was still outstretched, so that they formed a tableau, she with golden wine soaking into the flowers of the dress; the drunk mumbling stupidly as he got to his feet.

      “I’m sorry—” the drunk began to apologize. He stared at her hand.

      He would have said more, but Janice’s cold smile stopped him. He looked into her face and shuddered. Then he turned away. She watched him as he stumbled out of the Lounge Bar.

      It was the second time that Alan had experienced fear that evening.

      Once during that odd dream or hallucination or whatever it was—and this was the second time. It was Janice’s look of icy, implacable hostility that frightened him now. The landlord followed him to the table.

      “Sorry about that, sir,” said the landlord. “Can we get you a cloth or something, Missus?” he asked Janice

      “It’s quite all right.”

      “Get the lady another drink, shall I?”

      “No,” said Janice. “I’ve had enough.”

      “He was drunk,” said Alan. “It was just bad luck. I’m sorry I brought you.” He reached for her hand and saw the red mark on the palm. “Have you hurt yourself, Jan?”

      She took her hand away, but not before he had seen the bright red mark. “It’s nothing. A rash. I must be allergic to something.”

      Ideas tumbled through Alan’s mind. The right hand, the hand that had held his left: it was marked, clearly marked, with an imprint that was as red as the berries of belladonna.

      “You have hurt it, Jan. Let me see.”

      Janice stood up. “No, Alan. I want to go home. It’s nothing. A rash. Something I’ve eaten. It doesn’t matter.”

      “It does!”

      Janice’s whole attitude changed. The challenge and the harshness went out of her face as if someone had erased it—wiped it clean and left it open and smiling.

      “See, love, it’s only a bit of a rash. I think it might be eating strawberries. We had some in the shop today.”

      The bad moment passed.

      When they were getting into the Rover, Alan sensed the presence of a figure in a shop doorway. He looked round and saw the heavy, stooped figure of the drunk. Alan couldn’t see his face in the gloom, but he could make out the way the shoulders hunched forward and the head pointed towards he car. Fortunately Janice didn’t see him. It had been an odd kind of evening. Alan was glad it was over.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      RUANE waited for sleep. If he was lucky, it would come soon. He reached for the bottle and remembered it was empty. No whisky; tonight, no sleep. If it was another bad night, the old landlady would throw him out. Already she was suspicious.

      She hadn’t believed he was an out-of-work brickie. One look at his hands had been enough. He looked down at them. Useless soft hands—large enough, but with no skill. Trembling now because the nerve-endings needed the deadening effect of alcohol.

      Ruane shook his head:

      “You’re the fool, Ruane,” he said aloud.

      He put his hands behind his head. Soon he would have to come to terms with absolute destitution and learn its harsh lessons. Where to get a handout. Where to sleep. He thought of the Midlands parish he had once served; the sick teenagers had found a couple of meths drinkers and set light to them. Ruane traced a crack in the limed ceiling and wished for oblivion.

      He was still watching when a thin wavering band of moonlight began to grow so that the flowers on the peeling wallpaper became great white cauliflowers. Ruane pushed aside the two thin blankets and stumbled to the window.

      The terraced house was set high on the north side of the small coal and wool town. Ruane could see clear across the nineteenth-century tenements to the mills; beyond them, the winding gear of the old colliery. At either side of the town, the yellow lights picked out the path of suburban development, house after house neatly set in a small and well-fenced plot.

      His hands shook on the cold window-frame. No skills in his hands, no will to find a job, no wish to live, no especial urge to die. He knew his shambling gait frightened young children.

      Ruane stood for more than an hour by the window. It gave him an odd satisfaction to feel the night’s cold seeping into his bones. He almost fell asleep.

      The flaring pain, when it hit him, sent him reeling back into the bedroom, arms out-flung and legs buckling, head bright with agony. He knew he yelled, but not what he called out.

      Sound echoed inside his skull. One sound, a great malicious yell, something from the far side of the grave, a triumphant, bawling, mocking, slavering sound. By the time its echoes ceased in Ruane’s large head, he heard other sounds.

      “What do you think you’re at! In my house, at dead of night—waking the neighbours—drunk and raving like Barney’s pig? You’re drunk! So give it up, or you’ll be out on the street!”

      Ruane opened his eyes and made out the woman’s scrawny shape against the unshaded lamp. She said it all again. And again.

      He heard. Drunk? Surely not? He counted the drinks again—four. Five. Maybe another. Say six. Then two pints of beer. That wasn’t enough to be drunk on. It didn’t begin to bend the mind’s shadows back.

      Ruane got to his feet. The woman yelled at him again. He pushed past her. He had been standing at the window when the pain jolted him back like a great blast of gunfire.

      “The window frame,” he mumbled. “It swung and hit me.”

      He knew it hadn’t.

      The pain had come from outside, a vicious and grotesque force that burst upon him because he was standing just here.... It came from....

      Ruane СКАЧАТЬ