Gross Domestic Product: 8

Chapter Eight.

It took the taxi almost half an hour to get through the West-End and up through the north of the city out into Milngavie. Some roadworks at the switchback had left the entire end of the town in one long traffic jam, according to the driver anyway. Pete was not impressed, not one bit. By the time he stepped out he’d stumped up twelve quid and his skin felt like it needed massaged by a crazed acupuncturist. The cold hurt was becoming too real for him to bear but he knew he’d just have to tough it out. He’d con Baird, or failing that, rob the place, get that stupid lamp and then he could relax, shoot up and have a nice long gouch. After that he’d go to Allerdyce and before long have another five grand in his pocket. That would give him nearly ten grand, enough to solve his problems. Enough to propel him out of Glasgow’s moribund gravitational pull once and for all. He just needed to keep it together for another hour or two.

The house he stood outside looked to Pete like a mansion in comparison to the hovels he’d spent most of his life in; a few decades of one rat infested condemned slum after another, occasionally punctuated by stints inside police cells and prisons.

That would all be behind him, all he had to do was walk up to the door, lay down the story and get the lamp. He had it all figured out.

Pushing by the wrought iron gate he walked up the gravel driveway noticing the car parked outside the garage. RTB1 the registration said, he was at the right place. He took a couple of seconds to pull himself together the best he could and walked up to the front door, which to his surprise was half open. “Hullo?” he called.

No response led him over the threshold and into the house. The hallway was like a museum, no, more like the antique shop he’d come from. Wood panels everywhere, ornate vases, old paintings. He wondered how much all this stuff was worth. “Anyone home?” he said, raising his voice.

There was a smell. Subtle but horrid, one that told him he should just turn right round and get out of there, but he was too curious, far too curious. Somewhere in his brain he knew exactly what it was and part of him was excited, part of him knew he could ransack the entire house. He followed the vile scent into the room on the left and immediately regretted it. There was blood everywhere. If he could have, Pete would have vomited.

Someone had done a right number on the poor old sod, it was as if someone had taken a sharp propeller to his chest. His belly was entirely missing, a black, hollow hole. His organs were strewn around the room, spattered across the carpet and furniture, chunks stuck to the expensive flock wallpaper. They stank and looked like lumps of withered brown shit. Baird was missing his eyes, one socket still had a gleaming handle of a piece of cutlery jutting out and that was enough for Pete. He held his breath as if he was swimming under water, looking for treasure as he quickly scanned the room for the lamp. It wasn’t there. He belted out of the door to check the rest of the house, though he suspected it was already gone.

He stood back in the hallway gasping for breath, holding onto the edge of the bannister. It was a solid piece of wood with a large ornate curve at the end, beautifully polished. As he stood staring at it, he began to wonder just who the hell would butcher an old ponce like Baird and a sinking feeling came over him. Had his story to the antique dealer been true? Was he somehow confused, had he, during one of his wasted hours caught wind of Bryce’s intent? He felt like he was going to faint but shook it off, there was no way that was the case, he was just freaked out.

Wandering into the room on the right he found a kitchen, immaculate, almost empty, some drawers were open, nothing else. He pulled the door shut and headed up the stairs. At the top there were three doors, one facing him which was clearly a toilet, since Baird had put an ornate antique brass sign with “lavatorium” carved in black cursive.

To the left of the stairs, the door was wide open. Pete could see the body of a young man, a boy really, strapped to one of the edges of the bedstead by a belt that was round his neck. He’d something in his mouth and there were bottles of poppers lying around the floor at his feet. “Aw fur fuck sake...” he sighed to himself.

This was not his best day. Sure he might have some serious cash, but Bri had died, and now that he intended to get a lot more, here were two other stiffs. It was like God was a sick fucker just having a laugh at his expense. This hardly surprised him given the life he had led, God had always been a sick fucker to him, it was why he spent so much time out of his mind on heroin. As he thought that he felt the itch in his veins, that weird ache in his gums; best get the job done. He walked over to the room and immediately spotted the ugly lamp over by the dresser. It was burning a bright ice white light. “Ya fuckin’ dancer!” he exclaimed.

Running right into the room, he scooped it up, ignoring the body and belted out of the room, down the stairs and out the house. No thoughts of going back in and ransacking the place crossed his mind. As he stood out on the street he tucked the lamp into his jacket and strutted away. He needed to get out of Milngavie, he stood out like a hard-on in a swimming pool. If someone clocked him he’d immediately be a suspect in whatever shambles from which he’d just fled. The problem was he had no single idea where he was in relation to anywhere else in the city. Luckily that time in the morning meant the place was pretty quiet.

The road was leafy, the big gardens tree-filled and the street stretched on into the distance without much change. Posh houses, expensive cars, no buses or rubbish on the streets. Nothing he recognised. He turned round and looked down the other end of the road, saw it ended at an intersection were there were shops and a large number of cars going down what looked like a larger, main road. It seemed like a good bet and so he headed towards it.

As he did he noticed a bus fly by and realised he was on the right track, he quickened his pace coming out onto a street with a large building that looked like some kind of community hall and a train station. That would do the trick.

He purchased a ticket back into Glasgow Central, walked onto the platform, lit a cigarette and collapsed onto a bench to wait for the train. He didn’t have to wait long, it pulled into the station before he was finished his smoke. He threw the rest of it into the track and stumbled onto the train.

The train took off and quickly sped towards town, leaving the station and outside as a coloured smear. As he sat there he found it a struggle, he was aching all over, he really needed fixed. He tried to take his mind off if by thinking about the lamp, the money but his mind kept focussing on the bodies, not just the ones in Baird’s house, but Brian too, three corpses in one morning. His mind leapt from there to Brian’s story he’d told him in the pub. Three stiffs in the house he robbed when he found the lamp. He was determined to get shot of it as quickly as possible.

He wandered through Glasgow Central with a cold sweat sticking to his dirty shirt. He left in a daze, the need coming on strong. He decided on a taxi back to the squat but recalled that Brian was lying dead in there. Instead he struggled through town towards MacLellans Hotel, a grubby dive close to the red light district. Thirty quid a night. He stumped up enough for three nights, grabbed the keys from the disinterested receptionist, a spotty girl who looked like she’d been forced by the DHSS to take the job. He took the rickety elevator up to the third floor and exited into a grubby cream corridor with a blue carpet that looked damp and seemed to be sporing mildew. He found the numbered room, unlocked the door, went in and slammed it shut.

He placed the lamp on the dresser next to the tea-making facilities, which he plucked the teaspoon from. Seconds later he was skinning up a joint and once lit, pulled all his works out in order, placed them on the bedside cabinet and began to prepare a hit.

He put the joint out, dug in and released the cord around his arm and five, four, three, two, one, blast off. The warm icy bliss spread through is body, dissolving his sensory apparatus until everything was the familiar, comforting, empty, oblivion. What was unfamiliar was the burning light. It radiated through his condition like a strangely shaped star in the blackness. He was only half aware that something was happening, a shape behind the light, a figure, a shape almost human. The voice came. “Pete. Pete listen it’s me.”

It was Brian’s voice, his brother Mike’s voice, his dad’s voice, it was the voice of all those he knew were dead. “Listen, you need to watch out for Buer.”

“Brewer?” Pete laughed, slurred, asked.

“It is evidenced as a march through history, the rotifer wheel tracks of genocide and war. It dances and raves in the charnel aftermath, Buer. Remember, Buer.”

Pete just giggled, he was in no state to remember anything. The voices the light and the shapes faded along with what was left of his awareness.

A few miles down the road, Gordon Skinner was not giggling, far from it, but he was aware, very aware, that the was something wrong with the semi-detached he stood outside. It was the address Figgis had given him, definitely. He checked the paper to make sure but it wasn’t really necessary. A post war semi-detached, the pebbledash painted over with cream paint, the sills painted light blue and a wretched aura, thick and black, like a cancerous ink-stain seeping out into the etheric atmosphere. Most people might not be able to see it, but he guessed there wasn’t many who passed by that didn’t sense it somehow. There was a grubby brown condensation on the inside of the windows. Something bad had taken up residence there. Glasgow was a city full of bad somethings, there were places, like Keller Row or the Black Lamb pub or Laithewaite Hall, that were like festering scars, old infections of evil, hotspots for unearthly depravity that leaked out and affected the community. This was worse. It was fresh, that was certain but with such a condensed pressure of iniquity that it nearly took Skinner’s breath away. He hadn’t experienced anything like this.

His mind disagreed, shot up an image of Dunnoch Community Centre, thirty years before-hand, dark all around save for the soot billowing pyres, the greasy piles of burning adults, the horrid migraine thrumming from within, the chants of “mammy, mammy.”

He put it out of his mind, even thinking about it was dangerous. It was best he deal with the matter at hand. Whatever it was, it was foreign, no Bogles or Fae or creatures from local folklore, this was different like some kind of boiling pressurised mass. Skinner stretched his fingers out, clicked open the latch of the gate and walked into the front garden. The hair on his arms and legs bristled as he approached the door, his heart raced. There was a taste like battery acid in his mouth. They were all signals screaming caution, inside those concrete and brick walls was some insubstantial but massive threat. He pushed on, walking up the drive to the front door. The shutters were open, revealing a frosted bevelled glass panel with a wooden frame, the letterbox on the bottom. He felt fear, actual fear, as he stood there looking in through the glass, seeing nothing, all the lights were off, no sound. He thought he’d try the handle.

“What are you doing?” a voice said from behind him, startling him. A rough voice, a cheap simulacrum of feminity. Skinner spun around and looked into the face of a sickly pale girl, her eyes almost colourless, just grey irises, stared at him. There was a sour odour coming from her and like the house her head was surrounded by an inky nimbus, a diadem of supernatural smoke.

“Oh, hi!” Skinner started. “You must be Olivia. Good to meet you, I’m friends with your Uncle Barry.”

“I ask again, what are you doing?” The girl said. Neither the voice nor the phrasing were remotely local. Underneath the patchy white make up she’d applied several days before, Skinner could see the cracking sores around her mouth, the small bubbles in her flesh. This was not good, not good at all. What the fuck had Figgis gotten him into? “Aye, Barry just asked me to look in on you, make sure everything was alright, if you get my meaning. He said your mother is worried about you.”

The girl stood motionless, staring at him. He could not read her features, they were blank, the way a dead person’s face is blank, unless they died in agony. She said nothing, just stared in a disconcerting manner. She raised her arms slightly as if displaying herself. “Here I am. I am fine. You may leave.”

At that moment he felt it the best advice he had ever received. There was nothing, absolutely nothing he wanted to do, other than get out of there. Perversely, he grinned and said “I came all this way, and you’ll not even invite me in for a cup of tea?”

He wished he hadn’t. The Olivia-thing growled and pushed her left hand forward, flat palm towards him. It moved so quickly that he was sure it shattered a few ribs as it slapped him through the glass panel, which smashed into long sharp angles slicing up his jacket and a few inches of skin here and there. He landed badly in the hall, the stench that strangled the stale air was intolerable, an overpowering rot. There were dead things in here, dead people. Skinner hoped he was not going to be joining them. He struggled to his feet, gasping as what felt like half a dozen forks stabbed at his lungs. “That wasn’t quite what I meant.” He wheezed.

The creature wearing Olivia’s flesh snarled and stepped in through the ruined window as Skinner backed up towards the stairs. He put his hand out, a symbol of submission as much as a demand she stop. “Listen, I don’t know what the problem is but I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.” He gasped. There was blood in his mouth, he needed to get out of here.

The Olivia-creature stopped and once again stared. She bent down, not taking her eyes off him and with spider-like fingers picked up a large sharp triangle of glass that crackled and tinkled as she raised it. “You have a choice, leave now or die.”

“I’ll leave then.” Skinner said already heading towards the door. She did not try to stop him, just stared as he passed her. Stepping over the remaining shards in the frame he was once again outside.

“Do not return,” whatever was in Olivia said as he stood in the garden. Both the shutters, untouched, folded over and shut, with a slam.

Skinner spat a gobbet of blood onto the lawn. “Well fuck,” he chuckled. At least he could nip through the graveyard, that would take him out near the Southern General. A&E was probably his best bet. Anything to get out of Craigton.