Swally

Thanks for the pint.

So, you asked me how it was I ended up a drunk. You know the Black Lamb pub? No? Well, just outside Bishopbriggs, off the Straughan Road, near the roundabout with that weird iron sculpture of a crow, the one the papers said was scaring kids and causing drivers to crash into each other, is Lambie Drive. Lambie Drive is known for two things, Hector Wishart the smack dealer and the Black Lamb pub.

Wishart is a dodgy prick not worth wasting the energy to type about, so as you can probably guess, this is about the Black Lamb. Indirectly, really, if anything this is about Gregor McLeish an old pal of mine who was originally from Dormanside Road over in Pollok. He was a tim, like myself, went to Lourdes I think, father worked in Howdens, died in an industrial accident. His mother got a nice fat cheque for that and they moved out from the south-side when Greg was about 17.

I met Gregor through Gordon Harper, who was, in those days, still a dangerous and unpredictable individual. He was still working with Mental Dunkie, that's how far back we're talking, I mean Dunkie's been out of the game now nearly twenty years, Christ it was a long time ago. Don't get me wrong, Gregor wasn't like Harper or Dunkie or any of those other thugs, that world was just somewhere where he could put his talents to use. I know how he felt. I was doing the accounts for Old Mickey Dean who ran the drugs and pimps around the north east of the city, he paid me but I never considered myself part of any gangland underworld. I just liked smack a bit too much to be any use to any accountancy firm.

Gregor was different, I mean, he wasn't an accountant or a smackhead. He was just smart, almost like some kind of superhero smart. Nowadays they would have said he was on the spectrum or something, but he wasn't someone who had any problems in social situations or that, he was just really perceptive. Now despite what you might think there are plenty of clever people in the criminal realm, plenty. That's not to discount the slew of dangerous bams who have a kind of natural animal cunning which is breathtaking to witness, what I mean is that it's not a bunch of low-life morons with no hope. Those guys are mostly all prisoners or prisoners in waiting, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, Gregor, as I said, was a smart guy and he and I met at some party Alan McGee was having for the new Primal Scream album. Harper was supplying Charlie for the thing and sent Gregor along. I was there because one of my pals ran the venue for Mickey Dean. It was a good night. I bumped into Gregor in the toilet, I can't remember what he said but it made me laugh. We had a conversation against the sinks and it was then I bought him a pint. The first of very many. We became mates after that, went to the football, got pished, went to concerts, got pished, went to the pub, got pished. We were young lads, you do that sort of thing when you're young. It was a while before I got to find out a bit more about Greg and while I was surprised by it, it made sense, as I said earlier, he was a smart guy.

In short, Gregor was a Wizard. Now I know you're thinking Harry Potter, waving his wee wand around like a fairy going “suckmydickus” or whatever shite is in those kids books but it wasn't like that, not at all. In fact perhaps Wizard is unfair, but what other word to use? Magician? That's cunts with top hats and rabbits and shit. Occultist, perhaps, aye, Occultist. Gregor was an Occulist. Seriously.

See, according to Gregor, there was a hidden world which intersected with ours. The people, or things, that lived in this hidden world were contactable and had powers beyond science. He'd spent years studying up on all of it and claimed to have had a few supernatural experiences. Like, once he told me he had sacrificed a chicken (he drugged the beast into oblivion before cutting it up) in order to try and contact some demon. If anyone else had told me that I would have considered them either dangerous unstable or talking shit. From Gregor it sounded like he was recounting doing his garden.

To be honest I could not make head nor tail of what he talked about most of the time but he was a funny guy, could have a room laughing in no time at all. He was a good drinking buddy, that was it, we weren't really friends but once or twice a month we'd meet up have a good blether and get pissed.

We fell out of contact as young lads do. We'd occasionally bump into each other at the Arches or the Tunnel but I'd gotten hitched to my girlfriend and we moved out to Milngavie so it became less and less frequent that I saw Gregor. This was a bit of a blessing really, his drinking got out of control and from what I heard he'd changed. This was in the late nineties and I all but forgot he existed until about three weeks ago.

I was coming out of Buchanan Street station when I was assaulted by one fucked up mess of a beggar. He was like some wild, old testament prophet, with a big filthy beard and long hair. He stank of piss and stale fag-smoke and his finger-tips were so stained with nicotine it looked like he'd been cleaning his arse with them.

I shoved the fucker back and he slammed into the glass covering, his head smacked it with an awful dunt. I was shitting myself for a second that I'd used too much force and killed the tramp. Luckily he picked himself back up and began muttering some abuse at me. He stopped screwed his eyes up and stared. We recognised each other at exactly the same time. Gregor was a total heap, it was embarrassing. He instantly asked me if I would give him money for a pint. I did one better and told him to come along with me. We walked up West George Street towards one of the wee quiet pubs near the high street, Mullins or something, I can't recall. I wanted to know how he got himself into this state and he was desperate for a drink so he came quite happily.

I obviously asked what had happened to him and over the next few hours he told me a story I could not believe, not then. He explained he'd been played, duped, tricked and swindled by some woman called Leannan. Sometimes he made it sound like she was a prossy and at other times it was like she was some member of the royal family. He said she was one of the Sisters that ran the city.

Now, there are rumours. That's all I'll say, there are rumours that most of the crime bosses we know and love from their faces being plastered over the Daily Record for decades were and are, with or without their knowledge working for The Sisters. Rumours, nothing more, the sort of bullshit wee guys at street level concoct to make themselves feel like they were working for something bigger than some tadger from Castlemilk or Dennistoun. Yet there was Gregor claiming that he had been fucked over by one of them. I was taking it with a pinch of salt already but then he goes and tells me how she screwed him over.

You see Leannan wasn't too fond of the idea of someone fucking around with human sacrifice in her manor, so to speak. He said that like saying she wasn't fond of liver and my stomach churned. He then explained he ignored that since it was totally hypocritical for her to get so uppity about one dumb slut from Yoker, when she and her kin were quite happy to let the goings on at the Black Lamb proceed unabated.

I did not know what to ask him first but already I felt none of the answers were going to make me sleep better at night. I asked him what he meant by human sacrifice. I wish I had not.

When a Glaswegian starts a sentence with “whit ye've goat tae understaun is” he or she is usually about to try and absolve themselves with some crap excuse. To his credit Gregor wasn't looking to absolve himself, rather give me an idiot's guide to trading with as he put it “the auld yins”.

Their doors to this world had been shut, they'd been bound into the stones and land. The early Christians that chased them away knew all such binding must have a way to be undone, so they thought of the worst thing in the world, something inconceivable to those naive and kindly magicians. To undo the binding of an “auld yin” one had to sacrifice a virgin girl. So Gregor explained. He was trying to do exactly that when Leannan had intervened. On that he was vague and evasive. He was not so evasive about her punishment.

She sent “Ilier” after him he told me, as if I knew who “Ilier” was. Gregor got impatient when I asked and insisted he had already told me, Ilier was one of the Black Lamb mob. I thought this was a new gang so I let him continue. According to Gregor “Ilier” began hunting him. That Gregor would go into hiding and “Ilier” would find him. At that point he began crying. It took him a while to regain what little composure was left. Whatever happened had been seriously traumatic so I was careful when I asked what “Ilier” did to him. Gregor told me that “Ilier” would drain him of his blood and dump him near a hospital, time and time again. I asked him what sort of psycho does that and Gregor replied by telling me that “Ilier” was a vampire.

I began to realise I was humouring a very sick man, someone who needed help not more booze and I decided to cut him off after the pint he was drinking. In that time he said that “Ilier” would always leave him just on the verge of death, it would take him months to recover and then it would start all over again. It only stopped, he explained, when he started getting drunk every night. Somehow the excessive alcohol in his bloodstream was like poison to “Ilier” and his kind and so to protect himself, Gregor became a drunk. I told him what he was saying sounded very hard to believe, but he insisted he was telling the truth and said if I wanted proof, all I had to do was go to the Black Lamb. I slipped him fifty quid and wished him luck. There was no way I was even going to entertain such a stupid story.

That would have been that except Last May, when I got back from holiday, I opened the Evening Times in the taxi home and there's the article. Gregor had been found dead in the car park of the Royal infirmary. They tried to disguise the cause of death but still hinted that he'd had all his blood removed. I should have just dropped it, got on with my life but something was gnawing away at me. So, I went and checked out The Black Lamb.

It was a total fucking dive. Half lit and stinking of something I couldn't put my finger on. The tables were covered in circle stains and most of them and the seats wobbled. Considering it was a dump, it was surprisingly busy, mostly old blokes pissing away their last days while staring at horse-racing by the looks of it. The barmaid was a tubby brunette with big pointy tits and a gut to match. She had a perm and her make up looked like it it was sand blasted on. Still as I drank my third pint I realised she wasn't that bad a looker. The place wasn't better or worse than some of the dives I've been in. I once watched a hammered woman in her early sixties shove in and then expel a pool ball from her vagina in one of those dives. She then followed that with doing the same with the glass eye of one of the punters. Straight up, hardcore drunks do all sorts of weird shit. The place wasn't as bad as some, that's what I'm saying. In fact I found it even more pleasant when half way through the evening the barmaid asked me if I could help her move another barrel from the back. I was happy to assist. As I bent over to lift the barrel both her hands slid down and started fiddling with my cock through my trousers. I playfully asked what she was doing and she said in a voice that came directly from the mines of Hell. “You taste better when you're aroused.”

I turned and saw… well have you ever seen a vampire? Let me tell you something, they're not fucking flouncing dandies with shades and a thing for Goth fashion, that's for fucking sure. The bottom half of her face was filled with mandibles and fangs with this big pink suction tube thing hanging down. It was like some sea creature successfully mated with an insect or something. It was totally fucking minging. Her nose was like a snout and her eyes, Jesus, they were like golf-balls covered in veins, no pupils, nothing. As you can imagine I freaked right out. I managed to belt the thing and when it staggered back I booted it right in the tits and ran like fuck. It was shrieking as I bolted out the door into the pub and suddenly all the old codgers are racing towards me, I pull open the front door and jump outside into the night, perhaps a dozen of the things after me. I swear I ran so fast I broke a world record. They didn't follow me far. They didn't need to.

A few weeks later I woke up in the Queen Elizabeth hospital after being found in the car park, apparently I'd been drained of blood. The police wanted to speak to me but a get well soon card from the regulars at the Black Lamb was warning enough for me to keep my lips buttoned. After that, I started drinking.

If you're still buying, I'll have another.