Geoff Black rubbed at his paint covered hands as he waited
for his pint in the Red Lion public house. Tina had wanted the boy’s room
finished today, but lack of wallpaper paste and enthusiasm on his part meant it
would have to be completed tomorrow. Tina was on her way to B and Q to buy the
paste and he was taking a well earned rest from DIY home decorating.
The pint arrived on his table with condensation running down
the outside of the glass. It was delivered by Sal, who waited on the tables in
the Red Lion.
“Eerr Sal,” Geoff grunted as he lifted the welcoming glass
up to eye level.. “This is a bit of alright. A’int it?”
“Yes Geoff, you can’t beat a good pint on a day like this,”
she replied collecting a few empty glasses of the table.
As he sipped his beer Geoff began to daydream and as usual
his thoughts returned to the streets of Bagdad
where he had soldiered two years before.
He was immediately engulfed in the heat, the dust and the
terrible stress of being under fire. The day dream gathered momentum and he
imagined that he could hear the men, his army colleagues talking in hushed
tones.
“We’re pinned down skipper,” hissed Ken James to the group’s
leader, Tommy Danton.
“Yes, I know James, but we have to get passed this street,”
Danton growled. “The rest of the boys are on the west side!”
Geoff sighted down his rifle sights and checked the empty
street. Debris and burnt out cars lay all about and any of these piles of
rubble or rusting metal could harbour a sniper.
“Looks clear to me, skipper,” whispered Geoff. “I think we
should make a break for it.”
Gathering up their rifles and packs the soldiers crept out
from where they had been sheltering. The silence was almost as bad as the sound
of bullets. No one knew if and when the enemy would begin firing again.
Geoff was leading the small group of men towards a
neighbouring street; Geoff kept watch on the approaching corner and then turned
to check on the progress of the rest of the men.
“Black!” shouted Danton suddenly. “The corner……incoming!”
Geoff swung his rifle around and loosed off a shot at the
figure that had appeared from round the corner. His aim was good and the bullet
obliterated the head of the person, a small boy who fell to the ground with a
sickening thud. Geoff dropped his rifle and ran to the small bleeding body.
A woman who had been standing at a doorway in the street
began to wail and cry out. She ran to where the boy lay and picking him up
began to cradle his headless torso to her breast. Very soon she was coated with
his blood and presented a macabre spectacle.
“Black! Black!” shouted Captain Danton. “Get the medic!
Quickly…!
“I don’t think the doc will help, skipper,” said Ken James.
“Black’s totally done for him!”
A crash woke Geoff from his reverie and looking down he
realised that he had dropped his glass, smashing it and spraying beer all
around.
“Oh Sal….I’m sorry,” he said as he bent to pick up the bits
of shattered glass. “I was being careless.”
“Just leave it Geoff, I’ll clear it up. I’ll get you another
pint,” Sal said turning to the bar. “Don’t try to pick up the glass you’ll cut
yourself and we’ll have blood everywhere!”
At the mention of blood, Geoff saw again in his mind’s eye,
the little body clasped in the blood soaked woman’s arms. The little train,
which the boy had been pulling behind him, was lying on its side in the dust,
splashed crimson with the lad’s blood.
Geoff shook his head to clear the vision and then rushed out
of the pub into the street.
People were about and some stopped in their tracks as Geoff
rushed by, unsure as to the reason for his hasty retreat.
By the time he got
home Geoff was out of breath and feeling nauseous. The day dream had been so
real. He thought that the time spent with the Army psychiatrists would have
alleviated these hallucinations, these bloody loss of reality episodes. That
was the reason that he had been shipped off back to Britain after the incident. The
public outcry that had followed the shooting had threatened the stability of
the country and the ‘top brass’ had decided he should be quietly ‘removed’.
His demob from the Army had happened six months later after
a military court martial. Geoff was deemed to have overstepped his duty by
firing on a civilian and after a suitable period of time with the Army
Psychiatry team, he was drummed out of the Army.
“Geoff. Geoff!” came a cry from behind him. It was Tina.
“Have you forgotten your keys again?” she said laughing, as she unlocked their
front door. “I’ve got superfast paste so you may be able to finish Billy’s room
tonight. Pretty please?”
Geoff and Tina looked round their son’s newly painted and
papered bedroom.
It was well past midnight ,
but both parents felt the pleasurable tiredness that came with a job well done.
“Right Geoff,” said Tina. “We’ll get some posters for him
and stick them on the walls. It will give Billy a real sense of his own room.”
“Yes,” said Geoff ruefully. “It may encourage him to keep it
tidy!”
As Tina went through to the toilet to wash her hands Geoff
took a last look round. Yes, he thought, they had made a really good job. They
worked well together and over the years had become quite adept at the
do-it-yourself projects.
Noticing something on the wall at about eye level, Geoff
crossed the room and touched the small dark spot with his finger. As he touched
it something like a small electric shock went through his finger and he stepped
back. He touched it again but got no similar effect.
“The boy’s posters will cover it up and no one will ever see
it.” He said to himself as he snapped the light off and closed the bedroom
door.
By the time Mr and Mrs. Black got to bed that night it was 2 am and they quietly crept around the
bedroom trying not to disturb Billy who lay on a camp bed at the foot of their
bed.
“It’ll be nice to have Billy back in his own room,” Geoff grunted
pulling the bed clothes over him. “We might manage to rekindle some of our
animal passions.”
“Aye,” said his wife. “That’ll be right.”
Putting the light out, Geoff plunged the room into darkness.
All he could hear was the steady susurration of Billy’s breathing. Soon it was
joined by his wife’s and Geoff rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes.
It seemed to Geoff that he had just fallen asleep when he
woke aware of something moving in the darkness of the bedroom. He leant over to
the bedside light and switched it on.
The sudden burst of light caused Geoff to momentarily shut
his eyes. Gradually he opened them and was shocked by what was before him.
He was back at the shooting incident in Bagdad .
The woman covered with blood was holding out the boy’s decapitated body and
screaming at him.
“Yo English devil! Yo will pay dearly for this murder! Katar
will avenge my son! He will come for you!”
Suddenly Geoff felt himself being shaken and the scene in
front of him vanished and was replaced by two very concerned looking faces,
that of Tina and Billy.
“Geoff, what’s wrong? You were screaming and pointing across
the room!” said Tina hugging Billy to herself. “You must have had a nightmare.
What was it? All those paint fumes?”
The next morning Tina let Geoff lie sleeping as she got
Billy ready for school. She had looked in on the boy’s bedroom and it seemed as
if everything had dried out satisfactorily. Billy had looked in too and had
admired his parent’s handiwork.
After seeing Billy off to school, Tina made Geoff a cup of
coffee and took it up to him.
“Come on sleepyhead,” she said as she pulled the bedroom
curtains open. “Time to get up.”
Geoff and Tina went down to one of the shops selling posters
and bought a few for Billy’s bedroom walls. The boy was into “Star Wars” and
the “Lord of the Rings”, so Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Bilbo Baggins and the
Golum soon graced Billy’s walls. Geoff had noticed the mark on the wall was
slightly larger today, but hastily covered it up with a map of Middle Earth in
case Tina wanted the paper stripped off again.
Billy had been ‘over the moon’ with his newly decorated
bedroom and as he snuggled under his duvet with Yoda printed on it, he gazed up
at his new posters.
“They are so cool. Thank you Mum and Dad and I promise to
keep my bedroom tidy.”
As Geoff closed his son’s bedroom door he leant over and
kissed Tina. “Well, it looks like we did something right.”
The following week passed as weeks do with Geoff looking for
work. When he had ‘left’ the Army he didn’t have a trade to fall back on and
after registering at the Jobs Centre was put forward for various jobs. Although
he carried them all out with equal alacrity and verve, Geoff always seemed to
be the ‘last one in, first one out’ and was often in receipt of unemployment
benefit. Tina insisted that he have a couple of pints a week down at the Red
Lion. Often he picked up odd jobs and ended up digging a piece of ground or
painting someone’s front door. It gave him pocket money and filled his time
gainfully.
One evening he arrived home dirty and tired from helping to
empty a house after the death of the occupant. One of his mates, Jackie Fuller
had hired a van and for him and Geoff it was ‘cash in hand’ supplied by
grateful relatives.
As he opened the kitchen door he heard Billy’s voice coming
from inside.
“It scares me Mum. The poster is moving. I promise you, I’m
not lying!”
There was a pregnant silence as Geoff stepped into the
kitchen. Tina was standing at the cooker stirring soup in a pot and Billy was
looking decidedly scared.
“What’s up Billy?” asked Geoff. “Someone bullying you at
school?”
“Oh Geoff, he says that one of his posters is moving on the
wall of his bedroom. It must be a draught,” said Tina with a small laugh.
“Come on,” said Geoff to his son. “Let’s go and see.”
Father and son climbed the stair and entered Billy’s
bedroom.
“Now, which one is moving?” asked Geoff.
Billy pointed at the map of Middle Earth. “I noticed it a
couple of nights ago, but thought that it was my imagination.”
Geoff looked closely at the poster but could see no
movement. He opened and shut the bedroom door and window without any effect.
“I think you are imagining things, son,” said Geoff. “Now go
downstairs and have your tea.”
When the boy had left Geoff carefully pulled the poster off
the wall. It had been attached with Blutack and came away quite cleanly
revealing a much increased mark on the wall. Geoff looked at the enlarged black
mark and tried to imagine what it reminded him of. Oh well, he thought
eventually, I suppose I will have to strip it back tomorrow. It must be damp or
something.
That night Geoff returned to war torn Bagdad
and to the corner of the street where the little boy had been killed. The woman
stood as she had in all his previous visions of her, with the little corpse in
her arms. Once again she screamed at him and he felt horrified at what he had
done. It seemed as if his feet were in glue which stopped him moving away from
the verbal barrage. His eyes fell to the little blood stained engine and he
felt tears running down his cheeks.
The screaming continued unabated and Geoff felt bombarded by
it. All of a sudden he realised he was back in his bedroom, but still hearing
the screaming.
“It’s Billy!” shouted Tina. “Whatever is wrong….?”
Geoff threw open Billy’s bedroom door and was aghast at what
confronted him.
The entire wall that had displayed the mark was gone and
through it Geoff could see a dark sky with jewel like stars. A howling gale was
sucking everything out of the room and Billy was clinging to his cupboard door
as his bed and toys vanished out of the dark maw of the hole. Geoff could hear
the voice of the Iraqi woman as she cursed him.
“Yo English devil! Yo will pay dearly for this murder! Katar
will avenge my son! He will come for you!”
Geoff could see that his son was about to be swallowed by
this avenging entity and knew that the boy was innocent of any crime. Quickly
snatching up a carpet knife which had been left after the decorating, Geoff
slashed at his wrists releasing gouts of blood into the hurricane.
“No Katar!” he screamed, as the blood flowed freely from
him. “My son is not who you want. Take me, I am the guilty one!”
The tempest picked Geoff up and carried him out into the
dark night where the stars shone down like menacing eyes. He was carried this
way and that and pummelled as the storm took its revenge.
“Forgive me,” he whimpered. “Forgive me.”
He was back leading his Army buddies towards that fateful
corner in that benighted place in Iraq . Why was life making him go
through this again, he thought to himself.
Had he not suffered enough? Was it never to end?
Then he was back, this was purgatory and his punishment, to
repeat this for eternity.
“Black!” shouted Danton suddenly. “The corner……incoming!”
Feeling like a puppet Geoff swung his rifle around, but
unlike the previous times, did not fire a shot, but watched as a little boy
appeared from round the corner and toddled off across the street towing a
little engine. Halfway across the street the boy stopped and looking in Geoff’s
direction, smiled and gave him a wave before hurrying off up the street.
The scene dissolved about Geoff and darkness descended on
him like a cloak.
“When will he wake up?” a voice asked in Geoff’s night.
“He will wake when he wants to,” said another voice.
Geoff opened his eyes and saw that he was lying in a
hospital bed. Tina and Billy stood by looking very worried.
“What happened?” Geoff croaked.
“Oh Geoff, you collapsed in Billy’s room,” said Tina. “We
thought you were dead. I called an ambulance and on the trip over to the
hospital, the paramedics had to shock your heart to get it beating again. Is
everything OK?”
Geoff stretched out his hands to his wife and son and they
held them tightly.
“Yes,” he said feeling a tear run down his cheek.
“Everything is OK…now.”
