Ritual

34

10 May

This is a hinterland of horror, a place of unspeakable, unnameable practices. A place where the bodies of missing male children turn up on wasteland near their villages skinned alive, their organs taken from them. A kidney fetches two hundred pounds, a heart four hundred. Your brains or your tackle can make up to four thousand.

'More for a child and more for a white man,' Skinny says. 'Him is more clever, white man. In business him is more successful than us.'

It takes Mossy a long time to accept what he's stumbled into. But slowly, slowly, he maps it out in his head. First, there is this place — it seems like the headquarters of the operation. Mossy has no idea about the exact location. All he can remember is getting out of the car and being led straight through a door, then through another and another. He's got no idea if he's still in Bristol, even. Second, he's worked out there are other people in the city who buy the things Uncle has taken from his victims — people from Africa, says Skinny, who live here and haven't forgotten their homeland beliefs. Third, there are the videos. They are taken by Uncle to record the pain. And this is what Mossy finds most difficult to get out of his head, because Skinny tells him the videos are not for Uncle alone.

Yes, it's true, part of Uncle's tastes are to enjoy seeing pain. But things don't stop there. The videos are a tool, screened as evidence for the customer, proof that the body parts were taken from a live victim because, and this part chills Mossy to the bone, the louder the screams the stronger the medicine…

'The blood we took from you,' Skinny admits one night. 'Him sell a little at a time. Some him's kept. In the fridge.'

'It's fucking disgusting,' Mossy says thickly. 'Fucking disgusting. What do they do with human blood? You fucking vampires.'

'Only keep it. Keep it to protect from the devils.'

'Devils?'

Skinny nods. His eyes are pinkish in the half-light. 'Uncle, he send a devil to scare everyone.' He gets up from the sofa and crouches next to the grating. He pulls through it a carrier-bag that's been sitting there all afternoon — something Mossy's seen but not really registered. Squatting, he unpacks it. Out come a wig, a pair of boots, and something smooth and shiny. Mossy thinks for a moment it's a limb — an arm, or something. But then Skinny holds it up and he sees what it is. It's made of wood: a long, smooth thing with a top carved to resemble someone's knob.

'What the fuck's that for?' he says, hiking himself up on one elbow. 'You're not bringing that thing near me.'

'No, no,' murmurs Skinny, turning it so that the light falls and slants on it. 'Not for that. It is for scare people, make them think it is the devil. Make them buy the blood.'

Mossy licks his lips and looks at the boots, the wig. 'What? Does he have you go out there wearing it? You strap it on and go out and give them a little show, do you? Is that how it works?'

But Skinny's not looking at Mossy. 'No,' he says eventually. 'Not me.'

'Not you. Then who?'

Again Skinny is silent. Mossy thinks he's lost him, because he's got this distant look on his face. When at last he speaks his voice is sad, reflective. 'My brother.'

'Your brother?' Mossy sits up. 'You never said nothing about your brother. What? Is he here too?'

'Look at me.' Skinny raises a hand and waves it vaguely over his body. 'I am small. My brother, him is small, like me, smaller.' He glances at the cage in the wall, and Mossy gets a moment of creepiness, a feeling that something might suddenly put its face to the bars. 'But him,' he whispers, 'him is made bad. Bad here.' He runs his fingers down his face. 'And here.' He holds his hands to his back. 'Him just made bad. Like a baboon.'

Mossy wants to speak but there's a lump in his throat and he can't get the words out. The word 'baboon', said in such a low whisper, has sent shivers up and down his spine. He's thinking of the feeling he gets sometimes that there's someone else in the place, someone who comes and goes in the night. 'So is he here, your brother?' he manages eventually. 'Here? In this place?' He gestures at the cage. 'Is that where he sleeps?'

Skinny nods. He looks at the cage for a while, then he turns to the grille on the window, at the place that is bent up. Not big enough to let an adult through. But someone else. Someone the size of a child, maybe.

Eventually Mossy clears his throat, tries to shake himself back to reality. 'Things are different here, you know. This is England. The rules aren't the same. Not the way they are back home.'

'I know.'

'You need to realize. What you do, the things you've done, people ain't going to like it. Not a bit.'

'I know, I know,' Skinny says, and his voice is so resigned, so tired, it makes Mossy want to cry. 'And I know that after everyt'ing I do here I go'n' to have to run. Run until the world end.'