Sunday 17 October 2010

9.49 p.m.

Wolf shuffled languidly back towards his room in preparation for the night staff’s rounds at 10 p.m. The tired corridor was filled with artificial light and the smell from the hot chocolate trolley, a misleading name, as the tepid drink reduced in temperature every time a patient threw a cup of it in a member of staff’s face.

He rolled a small ball of plasticine around in his fingers, stolen off the Pink Ladies a week earlier, which he fashioned each night into makeshift earplugs. Although nothing could silence the perpetual screaming, these at least made it only a distant horror.

He passed several open doors leading to vacant rooms as their occupiers squeezed every last second of television out of the evening before their enforced curfew came into effect. As he turned the corner into another deserted corridor, he heard whispering from one of the darkened rooms. He gave the doorway a wide berth as he passed, overhearing the muted prayers recited at speed under the speaker’s breath.

‘Detective,’ called the whispered voice before continuing with the remaining lines.

Wolf paused, wondering whether he had imagined it, the medication playing tricks on him again. He peered into the blackness. The door was slightly ajar. The shard of light penetrating the darkness revealed only the hard floor and part of a black torso bent over a bare leg in prayer. Wolf went to move away when the whispering stopped once more.

‘Detective,’ it repeated before beginning a new verse.

Wolf cautiously approached the heavy door and pushed. It swung stiffly on its old hinges with a weary creak. From the relative safety of the doorway, he reached blindly for the light switch that he knew was situated somewhere to the right of the door. The recessed fluorescent strip buzzed to life but had been smeared with either food or dried blood, its brightness reduced to an imitation candlelight that threw dark shadows across the walls. The small space reeked of infection and whatever it was that had burnt onto the plastic casing.

Joel faltered in his prayer to shield his eyes from the polluted light. He was only wearing frayed underwear, leaving the substantial scarring to the rest of his body exposed; however, these were not souvenirs from a past accident or violent attack but self-inflicted mutilations. Crosses of various sizes littered the dark canvas, many scars aged white with time, others still red-raw and inflamed.

The rest of the small room matched its guest: a Bible lay haemorrhaging pages on the yellow-stained bed, individual verses torn crudely from their gospels and glued with saliva to every available surface, overlapping where God’s message overwhelmed the room’s insufficient size.

As if emerging from a trance, Joel slowly looked up at Wolf and smiled.

‘Detective,’ he said softly before gesturing around the room. ‘I wanted to show you this.’

‘I wish you hadn’t,’ replied Wolf, his own voice barely louder than a whisper, as he tried to cover his nose in the politest way possible.

‘I been thinking a lot about you … about your situation. I can help you,’ said Joel. He ran his hand across his disfigured chest. ‘And this – this is what’s gonna save you.’

‘Self-harm?’

‘God.’

Wolf suspected that the self-harm route might have produced more tangible results.

‘Save me from what, Joel?’ he asked wearily.

Joel burst out laughing. Wolf had had enough and turned to leave.

‘Three years back, my little sister was killed – murdered. Drugs debt,’ said Joel. ‘Owed some pretty bad people a hundred and fifty quid – so they cut her face off.’

Wolf turned back to look at Joel.

‘I-I mean, I ain’t gotta tell you. You know. You know what I wanted to do to them. Woulda made it real slow. Woulda made them feel it.’ Joel stared into space as he pictured enacting his revenge with a cruel smirk. ‘I tooled up. Went looking. But these ain’t the kinda people you get close to. I felt helpless. Know what I’m saying?’

Wolf nodded.

‘Desperate times, right? So, I took the only option I had left, the only way to make things right. I made a trade.’

‘A trade?’ asked Wolf, transfixed by the story.

‘My soul for theirs.’

‘Your soul?’

Wolf glanced around at the Bible that surrounded them and sighed. He felt foolish for indulging his fanatical host for as long as he had. He could hear a member of staff struggling to escort someone back to their room out in the corridor.

‘Goodnight Joel,’ he said.

‘Week later, I find a bin bag waitin’ on my doorstep, just a regular black bin bag. There was so much blood. I mean, it was on my hands, my clothes …’

‘What was in the bag?’

Joel did not hear the question. He could see it staining his hands once more, could smell the metallic blood. He started muttering under his breath and crawled across the room towards his few worldly possessions. He ripped another page from his decimated Bible and scrawled across it in crayon.

Wolf realised that, this time, he was not reciting a prayer but a number. He cautiously took the page from Joel’s outstretched arm.

‘It’s a phone number,’ said Wolf.

‘He’s coming for me, Detective.’

‘Whose number is this?’

‘“This is the second death, the lake of fire,”’ quoted Joel, reading the relevant verse off the back wall.

‘Joel, whose number—’

‘Eternal damnation. Who wouldn’t be afraid?’ A tear rolled down his cheek. He took a moment to compose himself and then met Wolf’s eye. ‘But you know what?’ He looked up at the creased page that Wolf held in his hands and smiled sadly:

‘It was worth it.’

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