Taking his last slug of vodka, Scott concentrated on the bottle, how it captured the streetlights, the orange flares sparkling against the curved glass. He focussed as the drink corroded his throat. He was on the verge of vomiting. But not with everyone watching. Especially Ann-Marie. No fucking way. And not tonight.
He shut his eyes, squeezed the lids until his vision sparkled; as if this might keep his throat clammed. Holding himself that way he felt nausea subside. The alcohol left a tingling sensation down his spine, his legs. He imagined the stuff flowing through him like a magic potion. He would need it. The fear evaporated. He snapped his eyes open, exaggerated a satisfied sigh. Winking at Ann-Marie he glanced around the gang: Daz, JJ, Jase, Bri, Duncs, and the other lassies, Stacy, Cisca. He tossed the bottle down the embankment. It shattered across the railway sleepers.
‘Steady’, warned Daz. ‘You’ll be heading down there the now. Nearly time to catch your train, bud. Coal for Cockenzie. Forty plus wagons’.
Daz, their gang leader, was short and stocky. He talked a lot; smiled a lot. His cheeky grin seemed permanently lodged. But this was misleading. His temper could ignite like a firework. He relished violence. And when he was poised to punch anyone that unnerving smile stayed there. Currently he was suspended from Portobello High for launching a chair at a French student. Tonight his hood was tugged over his features so only the smirk was exposed. He’d spent most of that week pilfering PlayStation games. Eleven at the last count. But tonight he was supervising a different game altogether. Much more life-threatening than eradicating all humans with his thumbs.
‘It’s alright, Scotty’, chirped Ann-Marie. ‘Once the first yin’s passed it’ll be a fucking dawdle’.
Scott breathed deeply. ‘Well. What the fuck are we waiting for?’
Daz led the way, easing himself through the fence. Rainfall transformed the embankment into a grassy ski slope. He slithered most of the way on his backside. They all followed, whooping as they hurtled downwards. Daz made it to the railway line first. He crunched over gravel until he was directly below the bridge. He counted aloud until he’d paced fourteen sleepers. Flicking his lighter he confirmed his position.
‘Up here, Scott’, he hissed in the darkness. ‘Here’s your grave’.
Everyone scuffed towards his flickering beacon, gathering round. Daz crouched, playing the little flame over the ground. Scott gazed at what was captured by this light. The shale had been excavated, as if by huge rats. Daz lowered his fist towards the burrow. As the flame jerked around Scott’s heart hammered. The vodka haze was creating two visions of this hollow beneath the wooden sleepers.
‘The grave’, announced Daz. ‘Try it for size, Scott’.
‘Fuck’, he replied. But Ann-Marie had come up behind, resting her chin on his shoulder. Her perfume was potent. It stirred the butterflies in his guts. He realised he had to get on with it. There was no alternative. So he snatched a breath. He squirmed under the sleeper, curling his knees. He stared up at them all. Daz knelt right down, pushing down on Scott’s elbows, shoulders; checking all of his body was below the level of the track. Scott closed his eyes. He heard keys jangle as Daz straightened up. He’d been round at Daz’s that afternoon, had watched him jerk those keys into his front door. Scott imagined his way in again. Into the hallway, the black wallpapered bedroom. The walls were aerosoled with red and silver slogans. Daz’s Mum didn’t mind. Darren and his friends were expressing themselves, she said. Even if that was scrawling Marilyn Manson lyrics and spraying huge pentangles.
‘Right. This man is in his grave’, Daz said, leaden with drama, as if this ceremony meant anything. Did it fuck. It was lunacy. But Scott had backed myself into a corner. Literally.
‘See you when you’ve been made, Scotty’, remarked Jase, puffing at a spliff. Jase lived three doors down from Scott. Jase knelt down and fed him the roach. Scott inhaled greedily. Jase had gone through this on Saturday night. Now it was Scott. They did it by birthdays. You had to do this before your fifteenth. Then you were a full member of the Mogs. It stood for mental Ostrogoths, as in eastern Goths. Again, Daz’s choice. A fucked-up combination of Ancient Roman history and The Sopranos. Once in, you were a Mog for life. Or death. Scott shuddered. He was shivering now but grateful for the enveloping shadows. His muscles were rigid. He had to keep remaining still. He thought of the recent History class, about Pompeii and Vesuvius. Some of the victims had been covered in lava, making perfect casts of their death throes. There’d been a photo of what looked like a clay man curled in the position Scott was now adopting. Scott kept rigid as that Roman.
The guys scuffed up the embankment. They’d sit a few metres away and watch. They’d laugh and joke but mostly sit with bated breath as the train rumbled in the distance, eventually thundering past, right over this sleeper, this ‘grave’; carriage after carriage of clanking metal wheels shaking the ground. Scott would shriek into the darkness as time froze; as Jase had done.
His fingers were clenched. His heart pummelled his rib cage. His head was swimming with the alcohol. What if he was sick the moment the train surged overhead? What if he began choking? Paranoia increased his heart-rate. He was trembling all over. Muscles twitched. He fought to suppress this. Was the whole of himself still submerged in this ridiculous fucking pit? Pit? It was scarcely centimetres deep. When Daz had flashed his lighter Scott had spied worms writhing down there. He could sense their minute slithering against the point where his jacket had ridden from his jeans. Then he could feel a vibration. Almost imperceptible, but there. He felt himself wilt. His hands looked white: he was so weak he imagined he was becoming a ghost. Alarm ricoched through his taught frame. He wanted to raise his head above the parapet and confirm it was still far away. This thing. It was no longer a train. In his demented imagination it had become a huge dragon from childhood nightmares. It was seeking him out. It would crush him the way he stamped on ants in the playground, the way he turned those scurrying, purposeful creatures into tiny stains.
He wriggled further into the dank earth. The rumbling was growing. He tried guessing how long it would take the vast freight train to snake around the curve by Craigentinny, on into Portobello, past all the houses where sensible people were curled up on settees cursing Crimewatch, watching footage of hoodies like them. Suddenly he hated this subculture. Just because he liked a certain type of music he’d corralled himself into this group. Mogs. Goths. Moshers. He’d never felt so out of sync with his so-called mates.
He was Scott. He hated the Dad who’d fucked off years before and who’d passed it on but he loved his name. It was one of the few things he cared passionately about. He began listing these. His Mum. His kid sister Becca. Ann-Marie. Scotland. His mind conjured William Wallace taunting his executioners. That injected a spark of resolve. But that was History, again. It wasn’t now. And right now he was fucking terrified. He dry-retched. Attempting to keep his head straight he wrenched a neck muscle. Agony lanced through him. His stomach churned. The dragon was drawing closer. The rails over his head rattled. His guts exploded. He coughed vodka into this grave he’d willingly crawled into. It drenched his t-shirt, invaded his nostrils. He shrieked into the night. He was sure he could hear the others cackling at him. The dragon was surely only seconds away. He gaped upwards, into the stars. There was Orion. The thought of all that tonnage blotting this out was too much. He clawed his fingers at the sleeper. It quivered furiously to his touch. He hauled his head up. He stared down the track. Jerking his head the other way he saw the engine. It was close enough that he had to blink against its headlights. Maybe a hundred metres? Heaving himself up he heard Ann-Marie scream his name. Straining like a weightlifter he dragged himself upwards. When he threw himself free of the rails his left trainer caught. He tried dragging his leg free. More screams came from his audience. Frantically he tugged at the laces, loosening them. His eyes were riveted to the looming train. At the moment it rushed by, his foot squirmed free. His trainer was shredded. Panting furiously he lay face down on the gravel. He’d no idea how long he waited there. Next thing he knew he was staring at various feet.
‘Christ’, said Daz. ‘You fucked up, Cairns’. Then the trainers all scuffed away, abandoning him.
* * *
Scott limped the streets in his shoe and sock. He alternated between frantic sobbing and fury. His erratic thoughts continually drilled down to two truths: Daz and his gang initiations were fucking ridiculous; Ann-Marie would not fall into the hands of one of those other fuckwits.
He found himself back in his cul-de-sac. But he didn’t feel like going in yet. Somehow tonight had been such a spectacular failure he felt the need to redeem himself. He hadn’t expected to be exposed as a coward. JJ, or Bri, those clowns who copied each other so much they were virtually clones. Those twin pricks maybe; not him.
He scuffed around the block. Sixteen times. He stopped by the detached house at the end of the street, sheltering by the unkempt hedge. Here he made a oneskinner. He peered through the foliage. This house belonged to neighbour known to everyone as Dizzy Lizzy. His real name was Lizdins. He was in his Eighties and lived like a hermit. Scott’s Mum had told him Mr Lizdins had moved to Scotland from Russia after the war. Scott had childhood memories of this furtive old man chasing them from playing football when that hedge had been low enough for the ball to soar over. Even a decade ago he’d seemed ancient.
There’d been another time people with cameras had clustered around this house. Scott had stood on tip-toes to peek from his bedroom curtains. There had even been a film crew and spotlights and a man his Mum had got excited about because she recognised him from Scotland Today. Scott had asked his Mum why Mr Lizdins was so popular; he knew he punctured footballs with a hunting knife.
Scott exhaled the blow, gazed through the hedge. The lawn was knee high. There could be scores of burst footballs in there. Weeds clawed up the cracked walls, obscuring the ground floor windows. Occasionally he’d seen a light winking. Not tonight. Not for weeks. An ASDA van delivered around a dozen bags of bottles and tins once a month. But the nights had been light the last time that van had parked outside.
Then it came to Scott. He realised what he had to do. Break in. It would be so easy. No alarm. Old people were deaf. And they accumulated things. Decades converted their junk into antiques. He’d seen the TV shows explaining how everyone was sitting on fortunes in their attics they knew nothing about. If there were any surviving Russian trinkets they’d surely be worth a fortune. Scott had heard classical music blaring from the house before. There must be radios; a Hi-Fi. Anything he could wangle from a pawn shop would be worth it. Something to show the others. The railway debacle would be forgotten if he handed around cash. Plus he’d add an edge to his bravado. He’d film everything.
The hedge was no barrier. It was brittle as the man who’d long abandoned pruning it. He crept in, skulking across the overgrown garden, biting his lips when he blundered into clumps of nettles. Large thistles whiplashed across his hood. But he made it to the building. He was aware of his heart again. He paused at the door. He tried twisting the knob. People were sometimes that stupid; especially if they were old enough to go on about the days when no-one needed to bolt themselves in. It was stiff with rust.
Stepping back he noticed a gap between one of the upper-floor windows and the sill. He gripped the drainage pipe and heaved himself up. After a painstaking quarter of an hour he reached his target. Clutching the sill he squirmed over. A pang of regret shot through. What the fuck was he playing at? But that glimmer of rationality was swamped by alcohol-fuelled euphoria. He eased beneath the gap, landing on a musty carpet. His nostrils were enveloped by damp, mould, refuge. He stumbled across the room. Everything was too dark to film. He’d wait until he’d loaded up with booty, then he’d unlock the front door before going back upstairs to wake Dizzy Lizzy. He’d throw the light on, film the old man receiving an unexpected alarm call from a hoodie. He’d think the Reaper himself had called. That footage would get them all laughing. He could already hear Ann-Marie’s infectious cackle.
There was a vague shape: a bed. When his eyes grew accustomed to the dark he discovered it was empty. He went onto the landing. The stench struck him. It reminded him of years ago. One time he’d been exploring in Holyrood Park and come across a dead fox, riddled with maggots. He listened. A remorseless tap. He was drawn to the source of the overpowering stench. Wrecked though he was, he suspected what was at its source. The thought churned his stomach. Padding downstairs he entered the living room. He fumbled for the switch. The scene was bathed in blinding light. Blinking, he gazed around. It was like his Grannie’s living room. Old-fashioned décor; aTV, newspapers, books, family photos. Except when he glared closer he realised it was nothing like his Grannie’s. It was spectacularly untidy. There were papers strewn all over the floor: newspapers, junk mail, pamphlets. Pacing to the mantelpiece he was drawn to an intricately designed lager stein. There was a coat of arms bearing a lion and a dragon, and a flag: maroon with a white centre stripe. Above the crest the motto said: ‘Sveiki’ and below: ‘Latvijas Republika’.
In the garden a blackbird uttered its staccato alarm call. He recoiled. Spinning from his grasp, the stein shattered against the edge of the gas fire. His heart leapt. He listened for signs of life. Eventually he turned towards the kitchen door, the cloying odour worsening with each step. Summoning his resolve he shouldered the door. Its hinge squealed. He pawed at the wall. Part of him didn’t want to find the switch.
The kitchen was flooded with light. There were cupboards, unwashed plates, a vast box-shaped radio. Nothing worth stealing. But none of that mattered. What mattered was the figure seated at the table. The old man was poised beside what amounted to his last supper. He must have eaten, placed his cutlery to one side, plucked the bread knife from the chicken carcass, then carved his wrists. There were gaping tears along either arm, and oily puddles trickling down his thin legs to congeal on the linoleum.
Scott added to the delightful scene awaiting the police by vomiting over the emaciated cadaver. He struggled to catch his breath and staggered over to the sink. Then he lurched into the toilet. His guts gargled. He heaved his jeans down and released hot, liquefied shit. There was no toilet roll. He snatched a towel and wiped himself. The overwhelming sense of his earlier defeat was crushed beneath this latest twist. He twisted the flush; five, six times. It was fucked. He sat back down. Burying his face in his palms he visualised Ann-Marie.
More than anything else was the sense he’d failed her; he would have to win her back. Again his stoned perception served up a remedy. She would respond to some big gesture. Something even more immense than cowering under fucking trains. He recalled an incident when a similar gang of teenage Goths had broken into a crypt in Greyfriars churchyard. They’d severed a skull from a corpse, using it as a football. The head had belonged to someone the paper referred to as ‘Bloody McKenzie’, some 17th century magistrate who’d sentenced religious freedom fighters to mass execution. That was the fucking business. The thought of kicking that skull around filled him with excitement.
He went back to the kitchen. Delving into his jeans he produced his mobile, flicking onto ‘film’ mode. He swept the room, then zoomed in on the corpse. He approached it, centring the lens against the eyeless stare. He grasped at the skull. His fingers slid through the rotten cheek to latch onto the jawbone. His grip tightened. He waited, ensuring the camera was still capturing the scene. Then he tugged. There was a snap; the head came away from the spine. He clutched this towards himself, triumphantly. He flipped the mobile round to film himself with his trophy.
‘Alas, poor Dizzy Lizzy’, he said, sniggering. Then he filmed the short journey to the toilet. He zoomed into the disgusting brown soup languishing in the pan.
‘Here’s one he must’ve done earlier’, he said, not wishing to implicate himself when Ann-Marie got to watch this. He relished his power to make the others squeamish. He was elated at the thought of so much potential mischief available at the touch of his fingers in this tiny piece of plastic. He thrust the head into the stinking water. The splash flecked the lens. He wiped it down his tee-shirt.
There was a noise outside. He sprinted to the curtains, peering outside as the old man must’ve done on hundreds of occasions. There were blue flashing lights. Torches flickering. Perhaps the Longmuirs over the street had spied someone clambering through the window. His plan would only achieve the desired effect if secrecy was maintained. Otherwise he’d simply be labelled a sick pervert.
He made for the back door. Piles of litter hampered his escape. As he kicked his way through his phone inadvertently took a photo. The flash left him blinking against brilliant amoebas. His thumb worked at the dial. This footage would be fucking mental. He filmed the flashing lights outside; someone barging into the door. He forwarded the movie clip to Daz’s phone, cursing the elastic seconds before ‘Message Sent’ appeared. Then he ducked. There was a policeman at the back door, too. He was trapped. The front door crashed open. Throwing himself down he crawled on all fours, into the lounge. He wriggled inside a cupboard. He waited. This was even more claustrophobic than the railway sleeper. He listened to the policemen searching, their great boots stomping over floorboards, slithering over paper. A voice raised. Someone had discovered the kitchen’s delights. The moment of maximum distraction had arrived. He sidled out the cupboard, and into the hall.
‘Hey, Colin. Come and check the toilet. Fucking unbelievable. Kids. What’re they into these days? Devil worship?’
Scott paced into the corridor, hood tugged right down. He waited, then padded along to the front door. He crawled outside. He squirmed through the undergrowth until he was at the hedge. When he’d made it home he crept up the stairs. He’d shat himself. He’d realised that a while ago. He tugged his clothes off in the bathroom. The mobile clattered to the ground. When he snatched it up it was dripping with shit. It slithered from his grasp and plopped into the toilet. He watched it sink beyond the U-bend.
* * *
Scott wandered into Figgate Park, riveted by a glorious sunset behind Arthur’s Seat. He made his way around the pond where Coots and Mallards were squabbling. He heard laughter. Sucking one last draw he flicked his spliff into the reeds.
He approached the Mogs’ rendezvous spot, a bench on the far side. No one would speak to him. JJ had his arm around Ann-Marie’s shoulder. Daz confronted him.
‘Hope you’ve got some good gear on you, Cairns, otherwise you’re in for a well fucking sore face?’
The others sniggered. Scott tugged out a loaded one.
‘Cheers, bud. Sit down. Shift, Jase’.
Scott passed Daz the smoke, flicking a Zippo for him.
‘By the way, Cairns. Been meaning to ask you. That photo you sent?’
‘Photo?’
‘Aye. I sent your photo to my laptop, Scott, then printed it off. Cause at first I thought it looked like quite a cool football punch up. Still can’t make it out. I’ve kept it in my jacket, till you crawled out the woodwork. Cause I’m a nosey cunt. I hate not knowing, like’.
Daz brandished a pixellated photo, printed onto glossy A4.
‘Never mind the fucking photo. I took that by accident. I sent you a movie and all. What did you think of that? Fucking mental, eh? So cool…’
‘What movie?’
‘The fucking movie! I didn’t mean to send you any fucking photo. Must’ve been hitting buttons in a panic. The movie? What about it?!’
‘Movie? Oh. I got a message my memory card was rammed. So I deleted everything over a hundred KB. Must’ve zapped it. What was it, like. This movie? Is it a slap?’
Scott shrugged. He couldn’t be bothered. His mind drifted to the tabloid stories. Not only had Jurijs Lizdins remained undiscovered for many weeks, his sight had been failing. It was possible he’d been a blind man when he’d taken his life. This added to the mystery of his body’s appalling desecration. Mindless teenagers were blamed. A plausible if ethereal scapegoat. The only inaccuracy in all that was the use of the plural. The shocking tale had made the front page of the Evening News, and Scottish TV bulletins for several days, before being superseded by the Middle East’s more impressive head counts.
Scott gazed at Daz’s printout. He recognised the newspaper mounds, sprawling from the front door and down the hallway, into rooms. He recalled snippets of their headlines during his panicked flight: Iraq, Di’s death, Bosnia. Lizdins hadn’t cancelled the newspapers he hadn’t been able to read.
His photo also captured a pile of leaflets. These had been strewn across the floor; jammed through the letterbox, tossed into the hall, then marched all over the house. Scott squinted at one that was now centred by the inadvertent image. He held it closer. As he screwed his eyes the grainy setting became clearer but made even less sense. Here were people lined in a cobbled town square, kneeling down, hands secured behind their backs. Behind them, a bespectacled man was poised, a club raised above his head. Several people lay face down in dark pools. A caption was scrawled in marker pen: ‘YOU, Lizdins, Waffen SS, Riga Pogrom, 1943’.
‘What the fuck does that mean, Cairns? Some foreign language? Where d’you get it?’
‘I didn’t get it anyfuckingwhere. Took it by mistake’.
Daz screwed the photograph into a ball, applied his lighter. The gang were transfixed by the brief inferno, like moths. As Scott held a palm out towards the flames he wasn’t thinking of the heat nipping his fingertips; his mind was already racing towards the next way he could prove himself. But exactly why he had to prove anything was as mysterious as that black and white scene that was now charring, distorting, turning in on itself, the reek of it making everyone draw back.
1. MONTY PYTHONThe first 'grown up' programme I remember being allowed to stay up and
watch as a special treat. I guffawed at the Terry Gilliam cartoons.
The older I got I grew to relish the other bits: the crazy slapstick,
the satire, the irreverence, the jokes that incurred establishment wrath
(and got 'Life of Brian' banned in Ireland until 1987 and Jersey until
2001). 
2. BRITISH PUNK ROCK PHENOMENON, 1976-79
3. BRITISH BIRDS
4. JIMI HENDRIX
5. RAYMOND CARVER
