Angel Blood Read online

  I'm sure he's getting worse. Chicken Angel doesn't agree. She thinks he's OK, same as always. I say it's taking him longer to get dressed in the morning. I say he's using his squirter more and more. And he's having to wear pee pads. I say words are getting harder for him and he doesn't use big ones so much. Chicken Angel shakes her head. She thinks I'm imagining it. But she doesn't like hurt and fitting and things going wrong. She cried and cried about the little monkey.

  If Mrs Murdoe was right about cosy cosy keeping us alive then maybe I should give some to Cough Cough. Make him good again. Put my arms around him. We could all help. Chicken Angel and Lights Out.

  Cough Cough is wheezing quietly. He must be asleep.

  2

  From his wall, Moose watches over us – when he's awake. Moose is a friend of Lights Out. She babbles to him sometimes. It drives the nurses mad. That's why she gets more dozies than the rest of us. Sometimes she touches them and the nurses don't like that. And they don't like her morsing and they don't like her talking to strange animals. All this gets them mad and they shout at her and then she rolls into a huddle and they use trank to straighten her out. Lights Out is probably more chemicalized than the rest of us. When we were littles she was Mrs Murdoe's special because she was like a doll. Lights Out got a lot of cosy cosy because she was like a doll. But like Cough Cough says, she's not a baby nor a little any more and that means cosy cosy is now a MEDICATION in short supply.

  Moose is a wise animal says Lights Out, like all animals. If you stand on your bed after light-out and look over the partition you can just see Moose in the dim blue of the nightlight. He is huge and dangerous and mad and it looks like he's just burst through the wall and got his head stuck. Of course, because he's burst the wall, all the night pours through the hole he's made and that's why Lights Out calls night Moose-time. Night-time in the Outside, Moose-time in the Bin. And we all agree with Lights Out because it's very hard for someone without eyes, and anyway if we didn't she'd fit out and do a Pippi on us.

  Underneath Moose is the Big Chair. When we were littles two of us could sit in it. It's not so big now so it's one at a time. We take it in turns. When it's my turn I talk to Moose. Next time I'm going to tell him about Tin Lid, how she tranked Lolo. One day I'll say, I'm really going to mouth mouth her. But I know what Moose will say to that. He'll shake his head. Not a wise thing to do he'll say. One day something's going to happen in here he'll say. What? I'll say. But he won't tell. So I'll talk to Jack the Cat.

  Jack's the best story we have. We often hear him whistling outside. That's his sign, his way of telling us he's there and waiting. Jack's as quick as rain, he can get in anywhere. But he's mischief. That's why we like him, because he upsets things and no one can catch him. Imagine Tin Lid trying to trank him with a hypo. He'd run her dizzy. And wouldn't that be a laughing. If Jack were one of us he'd be tranked all the time because he'd be so out of line. He'd be a full-time chemicalized cat. He's the one who ties Chicken Angel's hair in knots while she sleeps. He pees in our beds and we get the blame. He nudges Cough Cough's elbow at tuck-in times and makes him puke his cornflakes. Cough Cough says he's a squeal in the bum and it's only because we encourage him that he behaves like a daftie.

  But none of us want Jack to go. He's our secret. He's invisible to Tin Lid and Doctor Dearly. Only we can see him and hear him. And they could never catch him. One day says Jack, you're all going to be free. When Chicken Angel told us what Jack said about being free we all smiled. But when I thought about it afterwards I wasn't smiling so much. It's all right for Jack but he hasn't got funny skin and bad pulmonaries and wings and no eyes.

  *

  Moose doesn't like me talking to Jack. Well, it serves him right for not telling me about the thing that's going to happen in here one day.

  3

  ‘You awake, X-Ray?’

  It's Cough Cough. He wants some water.

  ‘Press the call button,’ I say.

  ‘Tin Lid's on tonight,’ he says. ‘She'll just give me a tab. I don't want more dozie. Dozie makes me sick after.’

  It does too. That's why Cough Cough lies low during the day, keeps quiet like the tender antelope lying in the bush hidden from the leopard.

  Suddenly he is coughing like a barking dog.

  ‘I'll get you some,’ I say.

  The waterhole is in the opposite corner to the nurse's office – the office where they keep the records and the trank and the hypo and the dozie tabs and the monitors and the TV remote and the camera controls. There's always one nurse on night duty except when they're off sick or having a party, and then they just give us trank so we coma out all night and not wake till late next morning.

  Once in bed we aren't allowed to leave, not till light-on. Doctor Dearly's orders. ‘Always use the call button,’ he says. ‘That's what the nurses are for, to look after you.’

  ‘Watch out for Tin Lid,’ whispers Cough Cough as I slide to the floor. ‘And the cameras.’

  ‘I will.’

  In the Bin here they use cameras to watch us. They say it's for monitoring purposes, it's for our own safety, it's to see how we are progressing, whether we're following our PREDICTED DEVELOPMENTAL pattern. Mrs Murdoe didn't agree with the cameras. ‘You're just kids,’ she said. ‘Snooping's wrong. While you're still here, living and breathing, they should focus on making it as comfortable as possible.’

  Soon after that she went away. Cough Cough suffered the most after because she used to help him with his breathing fizzio. No one does that for him now. Maybe that's why he's in such a bad way.

  Cough Cough said Mrs Murdoe didn't just go, she was sent away. Asked to leave. How did he know this? asked Chicken Angel in tears. Because Tin Lid who took Mrs Murdoe's place had told him he had to start growing up, fizzio himself and not expect mothering any more. She was a nurse, a professional, not one of the Mrs Mummy Murdoe brigade. She didn't believe in cosy cosy.

  I move towards the curtain that runs down the length of the dormie and separates our side from Chicken Angel and Lights Out. The curtain is another Doctor Dearly thing. To keep us away from the girls.

  ‘Time you were separated,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ said Chicken A. ‘Why?’

  This was before we learnt not to ask Doctor Dearly why.

  ‘Because I say so,’ he said.

  We are supposed to shower separately now as well, not like when Mrs Murdoe was here. But I still see Chicken Angel because I let her use my soap spray. She likes it because it's silky because of my skin. Moonskin she calls me sometimes. Angel Wings I say back. I stroke the little fingers on her back, soft and pulpy. And we smile at each other.

  Sometimes after last tuck-in I draw on Chicken Angel's back. Once I did a snake going right up her back, its tail just emerging from her bum parting. The best was a red macaw. She loved that. She wouldn't shower for a week because she didn't want it to fly away.

  We never draw leopard things like Tin Lid and Hyena Men and hypo. We draw monkey things that make us laugh and make the world beautiful.

  Sometimes when the washes get steamed up we draw on the mirrors and watch the pictures disappear. One day we drew lots of elephants because the voice on The Natural World said all the elephants were disappearing and we wanted to watch them go.

  4

  Very, very slowly I open the door to the day-room and peer round. The light in the nurse's office is on but I can see no one through the window.

  I check the cameras. No red lights. They're red-off.

  With my back against the wall I start to edge towards the waterhole.

  Moose's eye glints. ‘Don't do it,’ he says.

  ‘Can't leave CC coughing,’ I say.

  I hold up my hand. The glove is a dull blue colour.

  I start to feel along the wooden panelling behind me.

  Ahead I can see a section caught in the light from the nurse's office. I have to cross it. I could be seen. I get on my hands and knees and start to crawl.

  Then I
hear a faint whirring.

  Camera.

  Cough Cough says they're BEAM ACTIVATED. I must have broken a beam.

  I look up.

  Yes, one is red-on. I can see its lens swinging towards me. I get up, slither along the wall and hide behind the waterhole.

  SLITHER means move like a snake.

  I am shivering. It's my skin. It can't sweat out the fear. It just shakes me, all over. It always happens this way.

  What am I to do? I've got to get Cough Cough his water.

  He could choke.

  The camera has stopped whirring.

  I peer out from behind the waterhole.

  No red-on. Just Moose holding his breath. ‘Might as well go for it,’ he's saying.

  I grab a carton, switch on the tap, listen to the water fizzling.

  Stop.

  Turn.

  Glance across at the nurse's office.

  Staring at me through her window is Tin Lid.

  She raises her hand. She is wearing her white surgical gloves. Between thumb and forefinger I can see the long steel lance of a hypo.

  *

  No!

  I rush across to the dormie, stumble round Cough Cough's bed because going quick is hurting my legs and put the water on his table.

  ‘Thanks,’ he wheezes.

  Then I'm out and hopping and sliding along the curtain to the washes. I know I'm not strong but I'm going to hold out for as long as I can.

  I get into the first cubicle, slam the door and press my back against the metal, feet against the toilet pan, jammed.

  But I can't stop the shivering. And the door hinges are creaking with me.

  Suddenly the light splashes all over and I hear the voice of Tin Lid.

  ‘Come on out, you, G4. Now, immediately.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘Out. Or I get Security.’

  Security! The Hyena Men! They're worse than trank. They hold you down after you fit. That's why we call them Hyena Men because they hold you down while trank tears you apart like the hyenas do in The Natural World. Once they broke Chicken Angel's arm.

  You can get terrible fits and the jumps if they over-dozie you. It's the chemicals says Cough Cough. And the ELECTRICKS in the brain. That's when the jumps are worst. They have to coma you then with double trank, real hard shot.

  Suddenly Tin Lid charges the door and I'm thrown hard against the cistern. She forces her way in, gets a hold on my neck and forces my face against the wall. The tiles freeze over my cheek.

  I shake and shake.

  ‘No. No. Please, no, no.’

  It's too late.

  She's ripped my bottoms down and jammed in the hypo.

  I scream and scream. The needle's gone right through me. I drive my heart wild. The poison surges through me pulsed by my own panic.

  I grovel for air, claw the wall.

  Someone else is screaming.

  It's not me.

  I'm falling. I'm dissolving.

  I'm out of here.

  Tranked.

  Coma-ed.

  CHAPTER 4

  Coddy, Nail and Kenno

  1

  Breakfast.

  Nail stood by the table looking down on the empty cans and crumpled newspaper yellowed and stiff with last night's chip grease.

  If it was his kitchen he'd hose the lot down, get rid of the stink of fags and the odour of flat beer. One thing you could say for his mum back home, at least she opened windows first thing. Liked to start fresh.

  Not Coddy. Not his cousin Coddy, sad case Coddy.

  Nail began dropping the cans into a bin beside the sink.

  Kenno was the same. Just like his dad, a lardy waster.

  Slugged in his pit all morning, except on market day when Coddy kicked him out early to help on the stall.

  Nail stopped. Upstairs someone was coughing and spitting.

  Coddy was up.

  He cleared the table, got out the cereal, bowls, a couple of spoons and two milk cartons. He sniffed. One smelt sour. He put this carton and a packet of fags next to Coddy's place. The fresh one he emptied into his own bowl.

  Then he waited.

  Thing was, he needed money. More than that, he needed space. More than that, he needed to get away. Get back home maybe, to London. Except trips cost money and weeks back his mum had bin-linered him, bought him a one-way ticket and told him to take a holiday with cousin Coddy and his son Kenno in Garvie Town, Scotland. Miles away. Why? So she could take off with some Cuban bruiser name of Costa who called her mia bambino and bought her brassy earrings big enough to noose a poodle and who wore necklaces the size of anchor chains.

  Well, now he needed to do some binning himself. Bin Coddy because his house smelt of oil and rust and stale smoke. Get rid of Kenno because he spent hours in Coddy's lock-up lifting old tyres, trying to beef up his lardy biceps till he stank of rubber tyre and armpit. Bin Scotland because it was rain and old biddies and kilty nerds and wee thisie and wee thatie and Scottie footie and boring, boring, boring.

  Yeah, bin Coddy and Kenno for good. If he wanted chimps for family he'd have hired a tea party. When he arrived he told them his dad was in the army. Truth was he had no idea. Could have been an astronaut whizzing round the planet and he couldn't say for certain it wasn't fibbing true.

  So, stuff them both.

  Maybe he could lift some booty from one of Coddy's lockups and sell it on the streets. He'd done bootleg DVDs and made a mint back home but you needed a crowd of punters for that and Garvie Town just wasn't big on punters. Garvie Town was a squeezie pimple on the bum of Scotland.

  Coddy barged in, spat in the sink, put a fag in his mouth, lit up, blew a lungful and left without a word.

  That's a definite then said Nail to himself. He had to get some serious fivers. And move on. Before he did some serious damage to himself like getting a job at Budgens packing pet shelves with birdseed.

  He breathed deeply. And nearly gagged. He was swallowing last night's nicotine cod and phlegmy peas and Coddy's morning dog breath.

  2

  Once Coddy had gone Nail padded upstairs. First he went into the bathroom. From the window ledge he lifted Coddy's can of shaving foam.

  Kenno lay on his back, mouth open, snoring.

  Nail watched him for a moment, the fat boy arms, the doughy breast meat. Then he leant over the bed, lifted the can, inserted the nozzle between Kenno's lips, gently pressed the button and squirted a long slow shot of foam into his mouth till it filled and the white came squeezing out and down his cheeks and chin.

  Nail stopped and withdrew the nozzle.

  And waited.

  *

  Suddenly Kenno spluttered, heaved, belched foam all over, and sank back on his pillow snoring once more.

  Nail couldn't believe it. He ran back to the bathroom, got a tube of toothpaste. Rolled it up till an explosive bulge grew at the top, jammed it in Kenno and squeezed.

  And squeezed.

  Kenno started dribbling stripy red stuff and then with a heave and a great gulping swallowed the lot, turned over and didn't lift an eyelid.

  Nail stared in amazement.

  What he really needed now was a fire extinguisher.

  No need.

  Because –

  ten minutes later Kenno was down and shovelling up cereal like gravel in a cement mixer.

  He jabbed a spoon at the bin of lager cans. ‘That stuff was rough,’ he said. ‘I've a mouth like a badger's bum this morning.’

  Nail snorted.

  Kenno started reading the cereal packet. ‘I need two more tokens and we get free tickets to the safari park,’ he spluttered without looking up.

  Nail sat back watching his cousin gobble. The idiot was eating a packet a day. So he could see lions.

  ‘What's the point?’ said Nail. ‘The park is the other side of Scotland.’

  ‘But it's free tickets, Nail. Free.’

  Nail eyed him. That pusie between his eyes was so big it didn't need squeezin
g. It needed milking.

  ‘Course it's not free. You pay every time you buy one of those boxes.’

  Kenno smiled. ‘That's where you're wrong, Nail. You see, we don't pay. Coddy's got this special supplier. Know what I mean?’

  Nail groaned. Bootleg Cocopops. He grabbed the packet. Checked the best-before date. ‘It's twelve months old, you prat. Stuff's probably off, gone mouldy. It's full of bacteria, micro-organisms eating yer insides. They're probably eating away at this very moment. Munch, munch, munch.’

  Kenno swallowed.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I had a packet once a mouse had got into. Droppings looked same as the rest of the stuff.’

  Kenno gulped.

  ‘Only they tasted better.’

  Kenno stood up. ‘I need the bog,’ he said.

  Nail got the toast.

  Eventually Kenno showed again.

  He'd changed his clothes. Now he was wearing his Rangers top, combat shorts in camouflage green, black socks and trainers.

  ‘We going out today, Nail?’

  ‘Not with you looking Oxfam. Where did yer get that stuff, car boutique?’ Nail laughed.

  ‘Just cos you come from poncy London,’ said Kenno. ‘This’ – he pointed to the blue top – ‘is from Glasgie.’

  ‘And that makes it OK?’ Nail laughed again. ‘If we're going to do some lifting we don't need a sore thumb footie fan in cut-off combats on the job.’

  ‘Lifting?’ said Kenno uneasily. He'd seen what Nail could do. Seen him lift a car from outside the police station itself, tailspin the roundabout opposite the baths and park on a tulip bed in Jubilee Gardens.

  Nail nodded. ‘We need – I need – money. Girls cost cash. Time I had a mobile. My mum's dying for a call.’

  ‘What you mean? You never ring her,’ said Kenno.

  ‘And you never ring yours, Kenneth. And she only lives down the road.’

  ‘Yes. I'm always talking to her.’

  ‘Only cos she rings you, yer nerd.’

  ‘And don't call me that.’

  ‘Nerd?’

  ‘Kenneth. Sounds like I'm in the Scouts or something.’ He stood up. ‘Jimmyjesus I feel sick.’