Dark Terrors 5: The Gollancz Book of Horror

JOEL LANE The Bootleg Heart

My first love was a girl I never actually met. In the autumn of 1984, I came to Birmingham to study psychology at the university. It was the first time I’d lived away from home. My parents were as concerned about my choice of subject as they were about my falling into bad company. They made me promise to attend the university chapel regularly, and to continue my Bible studies as an antidote to Freud’s denial of original sin. My first accommodation was a bedsit in a converted house on Gillott Road, close to the city reservoir.

After the uniform greyness and silence of Walsall, living in Edgbaston was something of a revelation. There were half-dressed prostitutes shivering in the streets after midnight, and ugly kerb-crawlers in still uglier cars. Lanky Rastas marched to the slow beat of their ghetto-blasters. The same beat was louder in the crowded pubs where packets of weed changed hands for crumpled tenners, beyond what I could afford. Gaunt-looking hotels lurked on street corners, like spivs in old suits. There were teenagers everywhere: boys in tracksuits, their hair cut in wedges or spikes; girls in budgie jackets and white skirts, their hair knotted in or braided out. Bitter kids with nowhere to go, trying out models of adult life.

University was another world again: towering red-brick buildings, crowded lecture theatres, a storm of voices. The girls wore jeans or striped leggings, and cheap ethnic jewellery. I was slow to make friends, especially with the opposite sex. The habits of obsessive studying and solitude hung on even when I’d consciously rejected them. I spent the first term arguing furiously with my lecturers — but only in my head. The psychology course was obsessed with behaviourism and psycho-metrics. In retrospect, I suppose that was the mood of the time. The liberal humanism my parents had felt so threatened by didn’t get a look-in here. They force-fed me Skinner and Eysenck, while asserting that R.D. Laing was ‘discredited’. And if I wanted to hear about Freud, I had to go to the English Department.

One Friday night just before halfterm, I was lying in bed listening to the traffic in the street outside. My room was on the second floor. The water-pipes groaned softly through the walls. Then I heard something else. A different groaning, quick and breathless. Was someone in pain? Then I heard the creak of bedsprings, a rhythm that kept pace with the cries. At once, I felt a tension building in my prick. I’d never heard these sounds in real life before. If my parents made love, they did it in silence. I suspected they didn’t do it at all.

Of course, I’d heard sounds like this in films. But this wasn’t acting. They weren’t performing for a camera. They were alone together, and they had no idea that I was listening just a few feet below them. I hardly dared to breathe. The cries became sharper, more frequent. Her voice rose to a taut, helpless scream, then died away again, then built up a second time. Finally, she gave a low laugh of relief and happiness. The darkness around me prickled with stars. I rubbed the semen into my belly.

The next morning, I lay in bed for hours and listened. Eventually, I heard the door to the attic room close and feet rattle on the stairs. That night, I went to bed early, hoping to catch them at it. But I didn’t hear them again until the next weekend. In between, I saw the new tenant of the attic room: a dark-haired lad I recognised from university. He was probably a year or two older than me. But I didn’t see her. In my mind she was short, with dark hair and a feminine build. She had a dazzling smile, but her eyes were serious. Whenever I saw a girl in lectures or the library who resembled my mental picture in any way, I couldn’t help asking myself: Is that her?

It happened twice the next weekend. The sounds on Saturday morning, just before dawn, were almost violent: deep, choked cries, driven out of her in a steady rhythm. It was an old house with high ceilings; I was surprised that I could hear so much. There was no traffic outside. The cries echoed around me all day, on the bus, in the library. Late on Sunday night, they had a protracted session. She came four times. I came twice, staining a crumpled handkerchief. Rather oddly, I couldn’t hear them talking at any time. I was sure that the different patterns of cries meant different positions, or even different acts.

My other great obsession at that time was music. The small cassette player and box of tapes I’d brought from home seemed hopelessly dull and provincial now. Other students had turned me on to a world of dark passions and unknown pleasures: Lou Reed, Joy Division, Nick Cave. And Bob Dylan in his drug phase. My friend Alan, an English student, had taped Blonde on Blonde for me; I played it endlessly, listening for clues to the link between sex and religious enlightenment. One song in particular, ‘Visions of Johanna’, seemed to explain and justify my obsession with the girl upstairs. I saw something Jungian in the contrast between the real girl in Dylan’s arms and the mysterious one in his visions.

Despite the vast amount of time I was spending in my gloomy bedsit, it took me weeks to realise that damp was spreading through from above. One morning, quite by chance, I looked up to see where a spider on the wall had come from and saw a ring of yellow mushrooms around the hall light. More fungus, pale and wrinkled, was growing in a corner of the ceiling. I knocked it all down with a broom. By the time the landlord came for the rent, it had grown back. He was a middle-aged Brummie with wary eyes. When he saw the fungus, he gave a dry chuckle. ‘That Trevor’s got a cracked pipe under his sink,’ he said. ‘I’ve had it fixed, except apparently not. I’ll go up and have a look a bit later.’ In my next essay, I wrote: Cyril Burt’s influence on Eysenck reflects the latter’s reliance on scientific method, except apparently not. My supervisor commented: What this subject requires is hard facts, not sarcasm.

One night, I dreamt that trapped cries of ecstasy were turning to water between the floors, staining my ceiling with the shape of a naked woman. I woke and turned on the light, but couldn’t make out anything from the scattered bruises of damp and the cracks in the woodchip wallpaper. As I was about to drift back into sleep, I heard a faint stirring and a dull moan, then a long shuddering wail. I curled into a foetal position as my crotch spasmed uncontrollably, impregnating the dark shape of my dream. In the morning, my supervision partner asked me: ‘Are you okay, Matthew? The bags under your eyes, they wouldn’t let you through Customs.’ I said I had a lot of emotional baggage.

Although the tenement houses around Edgbaston Reservoir were packed with students, they tended not to use the local pubs. The student union had a subsidised bar and a less threatening vibe. Or a group might stock up on cheap sherry and extra-strength white cider at one of the local off-licences before going back to somebody’s room. With our heavy coats and bottles of cheap booze, we looked more like sad old men than the hard-faced, overdressed youngsters who crowded the pubs.

One Friday in early December, I completed an essay on ‘How Reliable is Eyewitness Testimony?’ just in time to hand it in to my supervisor before he left his office. I’d been up most of the night before writing it. I went home, ate a bag of grease-sodden chips and fell asleep. When I woke up, it was nine o’clock. I’d made no plans to see anyone. Feeling disorientated, I pulled on a clean shirt and went out. Highlights of rain glittered in the bare trees. The rusting gates of Edgbaston Reservoir were a cage around darkness. At the foot of the cross made by Gillott Road and Rotton Park Road, there was a low-key pub called the Duck where I occasionally saw people I knew. The rain broke in waves against the curtained windows as I stepped inside, blinking at the smoke.

Two men were playing pool with a studied intensity that broadcast their lack of skill. A middle-aged couple were snogging in a corner, under a blackboard with no message. There was no one here under forty. Still, I bought a pint of Tennant’s Bitter and shook the rain off my coat. Then I saw a face at the back, almost in shadow, that looked familiar. I leaned over: it was Trevor, my neighbour. He was blasted. There were two empty bottles of Diamond White on his small table. Maybe I’ll get to see her. My mouth went dry at the thought. But nobody joined him. His face was blank, hanging over the bottles like a mask on a stick. He didn’t see me, though his eyes were open. He was drinking alone.

I went over to his table. ‘Hi. I’m Matthew. I’m in the room under yours.’ His dull eyes searched for my face. ‘Mind if I join you?’ He shrugged. ‘D’you want another drink?’ He pointed to the empty bottle and said, ‘Cheers.’ I bought two more bottles of Diamond White, one each. The combination, together with my lack of sleep, made me dizzy. We talked about work. He was a medical student, hoping to become a pathologist. I told him I’d decided to go into human resources. Psychology was doing my head in.

Trevor woke up a little as he gulped the white cider, wincing at its antiseptic taste. His eyes refocused every few seconds. His voice seemed to come from a kind of disembodied cavity, somewhere behind him. ‘Dissecting rooms… drugs… pointless… no soul to it.’ I remember he gripped my hand at one point and slurred: ‘When you’ve cut out the heart and injected it with adrenalin, what happens to love?’ I had no answer to that. I wanted to ask him about his girlfriend, but was afraid of betraying my obsession. No matter how drunk he was, I couldn’t have asked him what I wanted to know.

At last orders, he got a round in. There seemed no hurry about drinking up. The games of pool continued. The pub was full now: women with perms set like dog turds, men whose beer-slicked mouths shone as they talked. The Gents’ stank of chlorine. When I came back, my neighbour was slumped against the long seat. He looked like an empty coat. I shook him awake; he seized his bottle and drained it. As we were leaving the pub, he stumbled and fell over a bar-stool. Luckily, he didn’t hit anyone. The barman snapped: ‘Get the fuck out of here.’ I helped Trevor to his feet and guided him hastily to the door.

Outside, it was still raining. A streetlamp flickered, projecting shapeless faces onto the wall of a closed-down cinema. Young women stalked up and down Gillott Road in shiny black coats, tracked by car headlights. Stains of blood and vomit dissolved slowly in the rain, like a modernist kind of pavement art. Trevor groaned as I helped him along the road, weaving and staggering dangerously close to the kerb — not that many of the cars were moving fast enough to do any damage. He held out a shaking hand, watched it fill with rain, then clapped it to his mouth.

When we got inside the house, Trevor collapsed in the hallway. His dark hair was clotted together, shapeless. I saw bubbles in the corner of his mouth and was terrified that he’d throw up before we reached his room. He muttered something, and I leant over to catch the words. ‘Love is the only thing that… matters… don’t understand… the only real thing.’ Sure. Right. I wanted to know all about love. I didn’t want to be manhandling another male up the stairs to his bed. However drunk I was, boys weren’t part of the plan. But I didn’t mind holding him. We climbed slowly to the third floor. The dusty 40-watt bulbs stayed lit for half a minute, then died. I had to press every timeswitch we passed. I guided Trevor into the bathroom and looked away while he vomited heavily into the ancient ceramic bath. It sounded like breaking glass.

I had to drag him to his room and find the key in his trouser pocket. The lightbulb flickered, then popped. ‘Got a torch?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Matches… on the fire.’ The hall light went out. Stumbling in the dark, I opened a curtain. The yellow streetlight showed me a large single room with a bed, a Baby Belling cooker and a table. I glimpsed faces watching me from the walls. The gas fire was framed by a real fireplace; the mantelpiece was piled high with cassettes. I found a box of matches and struck one.

Trevor had slumped on the bed, his face like a wet paper lantern. Books, papers and cassettes were scattered over the floor. A dark stereo was surrounded by piles of LPs: Roberta Flack, Dusty Springfield, Janis Joplin. The faces in the walls were floating, about to speak. Before I could focus on them, the match went out. I lit another one. Trevor groaned; but it wasn’t his groans I could hear. The walls of his room were covered with black-and-white photographs of women. Or rather, a woman. She was young, with long fairish hair, a sad mouth, eyes full of light. Most of the shots were face or head and shoulders, but at least one showed her naked above the waist. The match stung my fingers and I had to drop it.

The stark light from outside cast my shadow over the bed. I stood there looking down at Trevor’s still figure, no more than a sketch. Then I said, very quietly: ‘When she moans like that, what’s happening? Are you under her? Behind her? Is your tongue in there? Can you feel it when she comes, or do you only know from the sounds?’ He showed no sign of having heard me. I shook the box of matches: one left. I’d better find him a bowl, in case he threw up again. There was nothing in the sink, but a small cupboard was underneath it. I knelt and lit the match.

The first object I touched inside the cupboard was a tall glass jar. It was filled with something like spider’s web: long pale threads, looped and tangled. I could see a reddish tinge in the coils, a ghost of flame. Next to the jar was a locked wooden box I couldn’t lift. There was nothing on top or behind. I put the jar back and closed the doors. They didn’t fit very well. The match burnt down to my fingertips; I blew it out. As I stood up, dazed, the streetlight glinted from one of the photographs, and I realised what I’d seen in the jar.

It was hair. I stepped carefully round the bed to the doorway. Something plastic cracked under my foot. I closed the door behind me. My room smelt of damp, worse than before. Clearly it was getting in from outside.

Shortly before Christmas, a friend of mine threw a party in Smethwick. It was a shared house, more comfortable than the one I lived in. The front room and living-room were decorated with paper streamers and foil stars. The people were mostly English or music students, dressed in black with spiky hair and black eyeliner. The boys too. The music seemed more appropriate to a funeral than a party — I think one of the songs was called ‘The Funeral Party’, which summed up the mood — but everyone seemed to be having a good time. Cheap wine, cider and lager were ranked in the narrow kitchen. All the coats were in a mound on a bed in the spare room, where couples periodically sneaked off to be alone.

If Trevor was here, I hadn’t seen him. Or his girlfriend, whose image hung like a photographic negative behind my eyes. I drank some strong cider, then some wine, then a mixture of the two. A tall girl dressed as Catwoman, with a black cape and whiskers drawn in eyebrow pencil, smiled at me and asked me to fill her glass. Her name was Susan; she was studying architecture. I made some feeble remark about climbing up tall buildings; she just smiled. We drifted into the front room, where a ring of Goths were sharing a joint and talking about Madonna. ‘She empowers women by deconstructing the feminine,’ one of them said. ‘By hiding behind a succession of identities, she proves that identity itself is a mask.’ Susan and I sat down together, giggling. I stroked the tight black fabric over her arm. Soon our mouths locked together.

An hour or so later, after several drinks and a furtive grope in the upstairs hallway, I asked her if she’d like to come home with me. ‘Okay,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a couple of miles,’ I said. ‘Are you happy to walk?’ She nodded. Outside, frost glittered in the black roadway. There was a cemetery on the corner: grey headstones like books without covers. A dog barked at us from behind railings, but I couldn’t see it. Lights shone in the basements of factories where night shifts were starting. It was cold; Susan and I held hands, pretending to be a couple rather than two strangers who’d drunk too much. The city was like a black-and-white film set. I kept seeing faces from the party, melting into shadows or each other. At the bottom of Gillott Road, a truck was being loaded from a curtained building. The wooden crates reminded me of the box in Trevor’s room. I could smell the sea.

Back in my room, I apologised for the chaos of books and clothes. ‘It’s fine,’ Susan said. ‘But it’s cold in here.’ I lit the gas fire and turned off the electric light. We undressed each other slowly and stretched out on the bed. Then I heard the floor creak overhead. At once, I froze. I couldn’t help myself. But there was nothing. Susan ran her fingers through my hair. ‘Are you okay?’ she said. I closed my eyes and thought of the bed upstairs, the couple tangled together. As I penetrated her, Susan breathed softly against my face. I thought of the glass-covered photographs. The first time she moved against me, I came hard. Lying beside her, I kissed and rubbed her until she whispered ‘Yes, yes,’ and my fingers were wet.

Then I curled up with my head on the pillow, listening. I could hear her slow breathing. I could smell perfume and sweat on her neck. Eventually, I knew she was asleep. I strained to hear, but there was still nothing. So this was what it was all about, except apparently not.

At the start of the next term, Trevor and the unknown girl seemed to be making a go of it. I heard them almost every night, and the loss of sleep was more than compensated by the relief. But somehow, I knew this level of intensity was bound to lead to a break-up. It did, but not in the way I was expecting.

My brother’s wedding was the start of it. I had to go home for the weekend, only a fortnight into the term. Throughout the ceremony and the long, drunken reception, I kept replaying the cries I’d heard in the early hours of the previous day. Trevor! Oh — oh, God! Trevor! It was the first time I’d heard her call his name. Guilt about remembering that in church brought me down all through the evening and the dark, rainy morning that followed. The bus journey back to North Birmingham took a long time, and her voice became clearer with every mile. When I got back to Gillott Road, I sat in the dark and listened to a bootleg tape of Dylan’s ‘Albert Hall’ concert from 1966: the slow, haunting journey through ‘Visions of Johanna’ leaving the audience baffled; the sneering venom of ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ provoking audience fury and a cry of ‘Judas!’ Then Dylan’s enraged ‘I don’t believe you! You’re a liar!’ and the raging, desperate finale of ’Like a Rolling Stone’.

At last I slept, dreaming something about Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet with her hair. The dream ended with a creak of bedsprings from overhead. With the first muffled gasp, I was wide awake. Her cries marked the accelerating rhythm of their bodies. She came fast, then began to approach a second climax. It sounded almost the same as on Thursday morning. Trevor! Oh — oh, God! Trevor!

No, not almost the same. It was exactly the same. Note for note, it was a perfect copy.

Thursday, Sunday. Was there a pattern I didn’t normally get? Because I’d missed two nights, I’d heard the same tape twice running. Otherwise, I might never have noticed. But even now, with the truth in my veins like ice, my hand was still pumping hard. Semen dripped onto my belly, and the voice upstairs laughed. I knew I couldn’t go back to his room.

You probably know the rest, if you saw the papers that Easter. The police interviewed all the tenants of the house. I didn’t have much to tell them. Before it came out in the press, my landlord told me what the police had found. Apparently they’d been trying to trace the girl since November. They’d interviewed Trevor at the Medical Centre; he’d claimed not to recognise her bus pass photo. Some other bit of evidence — maybe someone who’d seen them together — had made them visit him in the house, where they’d seen the photographs.

Then they’d found the jar. And the wooden box. I can still remember my landlord’s expression, as if he’d felt a sardine come to life in his mouth. A mixture of disgust and awe. ‘The police say they found a locked wooden box full of bones. Including a skull. And all the teeth. Can you believe it? Taken apart, like bits of a jigsaw puzzle.’ Exactly like bits of a jigsaw puzzle.

The main thing the newspapers picked up on was that he refused to confess or to defend himself. At his trial, they could hardly get a word out of him. I think he ended up in a prison psychiatric unit. What became of his collection of tapes, I have no idea. Maybe I’ll visit him one day and ask. What’s kept me away is a mixture of fear and jealousy.

I never saw her. Maybe I never truly heard her voice. I hold her in my sleep, feeling her silent terror shake into the core of my hollow flesh. Joanna, her name was. Joanna. And I’m jealous that he had her first. But even more, I’m afraid that if I reach out to him, he’ll take her away.