The Inside Out Man Read online

  My hole was close to two metres deep. When my spade hit stone, I wiped my forehead and decided it was enough. The hole was as deep as it needed to be. I lifted the sack of dead dog, carried it to the edge of the hole, and threw it in. It landed with a dumb thud, the sound of a dead thing. Then I grabbed the shovel.

  As the soil rose and the sack vanished from view, I buried the day. It seemed to work. I felt the events of the morning slowly un-happen to me. It made me think—right there on that spot—of Leonard’s slain horses, the ones in his war story, and how time worked the same way as my spade: every year, one mound of dirt piled on another, until nobody could safely say anything had occurred at all.

  I finished up and patted the soil down with the back of the spade. I took the spade back to the shed, then went to have a closer look at the car, which I’d parked in the garage. The dull metal of a dent. A damaged bit of bumper. Dark patches of fur on the seat, making my stomach flip. These creative touches of mine were complemented by a long smear of coagulated blood. Grabbing some cleaning products, I frantically wiped at the blood and piss on the carpet, then moved on to the upholstery, even polishing the handles and the windows.

  Pointless.

  That once-beloved car was now not a car at all. It had devolved to something else: from an Aston Martin to a dog-eating Death Machine. Like some ghastly mechanical processor that turns live cows into hamburgers. I tossed the sponge in the bucket and left the doors open to let the interior dry out. Then I switched off the lights (leaving all the other cars alone in the dark with their murderous companion), found my way back to the front door, and locked it.

  The hot shower I took wasn’t very helpful in getting rid of all the dirt. Most stubborn of all was the blood under my fingernails. I tried to scrape it out but achieved nothing; somehow, the red had got really deep inside.

  After the shower, I changed into fresh clothes and went downstairs to heat up Leonard’s dinner, which had been dished up earlier that day: creamy chicken pasta speckled with green flecks of herbs. I took the meal to his door and fed it through the flap. The bowl disappeared, and a plate was pushed towards me, with the breakfast cutlery all rinsed and clean.

  You’ve had quite a day, haven’t you?

  For a moment or two, I squatted in silence before the hatch. I was about to respond, when I remembered I wasn’t supposed to say a thing in reply.

  Leonard continued: I could smell you passing by earlier, before your shower, chief. Funny, hmm? I could actually smell you. I’m not sure I’d have been able to before, you know? In the outside world, there’s no way of keeping up with every new smell that comes your way. But in here—I could hear him inhale—well, you grow so accustomed to the smell of the place that every subtle new whiff, it just … well, it explodes in your nostrils. I could really smell it, you know? All the shit you’ve been getting up to out there. The sourness, the sweat. Then he snickered. But hey, whatever it was, was it fun?

  I moved back, still squatting, and froze, not daring even to breathe.

  Leonard chortled. Good, good, he sighed. No response. No answer. No matter what I say, right? No matter what I say—for a full year. You’re worth every cent, Bent. He gave a loud guffaw. Every cent I spent, Bent. Cent. Bent.

  He played with his little rhyme, paused, and then went on: You know something? I remember the day I bought my first sports car. It was a limited-edition gun-metal-grey Lamborghini Diablo …

  I shuddered. Did he know about the Aston? Highly unlikely. Even if his room had a window, it wouldn’t be facing the front of the house. But I was getting ahead of myself—this was simple coincidence. I tuned in to his voice again.

  Beautiful car. I remember seeing it in the showroom, immaculate. Gleaming. Glorious. And now, looking back, that was still my favourite moment with it, the moment just before buying it. Because as soon as I signed the papers and it was mine, truthfully, it scared the shit out of me. I idolised that machine. I wouldn’t let anything come near it. I wiped off every smudge, lived in a state of ridiculous despair, knowing with every passing moment my magnificent machine was deteriorating in some microscopic way. Rust already growing on its underside somewhere. I knew I’d never be able to maintain its perfection, and this bugged me no end.

  There was a long pause, and I shifted in my squatting position.

  I suppose you’re thinking that was stupid of me. But what can I say? Yes, it was irrational. A kind of compulsion. A sickness. But it took hold. So you know what I did? I walked up to the car, pulled out a key, and scratched the paintwork. I ran that key right across its side. One long scratch along the door. And whoosh! There was this sudden sense of relief. That’s the best way to describe it. Because that’s all I needed, you see. One nick. Just one imperfection. And I was free of it. Now I owned the car instead of it owning me. Isn’t that funny? I had to taint the thing to make it mine. I had to fuck it up to assert myself over it. A car! You know what I mean?

  I swallowed. My throat felt dry.

  Yes, you know, don’t you? he said lightly. You’ve been asserting yourself all day, haven’t you? I could hear him chewing and slurping, and then he said, This pasta is fantastic. So much flavour. Just wonderful.

  Then he was done. The story was over. The corridor once again filled with silence, as if the sound had been sucked from the room. The sound and the oxygen.

  Slowly I stood up, turned on my heels, frowned at my finger-nails, and walked to the bedroom.

  III.

  Knock, knock,

  knock, knock

  32.

  In the middle of the night I woke up with a new memory. A slap of a memory that forced my eyes wide open, and made me sit up in the dark. I knew it wasn’t a regular dream. A dream is like discovering a new species of animal, while a memory is like seeing an extinct one come back to life.

  In this memory, I’m walking on a pavement on a clear sunny day. I don’t know exactly how old I am, about seven, I think. My left arm is raised so high it hurts my shoulder, and someone’s holding my hand. The hand holding my own is big and powerful. Hard and calloused. And as we walk, this big hand connected to my arm, it swings and pulls me. I can’t see the rest of the body though, even if I turn my face upwards. There’s just that strong arm, all the way up, not connected to anyone, and yet somehow I know it belongs to my father.

  We’re stepping off the pavement, crossing the road, but there’s a gap in the memory, a brief intermission. Then it picks up again. We’re in a stranger’s living room. It smells like mothballs and ointment and tomato soup. I’m sitting on an old couch drinking flat Fanta from a plastic cup. I look out the window and see our own house across the road. But all I’m really thinking about is the fact that our neighbour who owns this house—this smelly living room, this old plastic cup—has a monstrously swollen left leg. It’s so puffed up he’s had to cut his pants off at the thigh. There’s no shoe on the left foot, which bulges in places like a cauliflower head.

  I can’t make out his face.

  From the leg up, everything is blurry. His outline keeps changing shape, like flares on the surface of the sun. On a crutch, he hobbles across the room, sits down at a piano. Clears the phlegm from his throat.

  And then he begins to play.

  The song he plays, it’s a song I carry with me through my life, without being aware of it. Always playing in the background of everything I do. But it’s not just a song. It’s a song that shapes me, fuses with my genes, turns me from a dribbling mammal into a bona fide human being, one with ambition and desire and an illusory sense of purpose. I’ve never heard anything like this. I’ve never seen fingers move so fast. Eventually, the man’s voice creeps in, a glorious drawl, a drone, and then he’s singing along. The words to this song, I have them too, in this new memory.

  But not all of them.

  Just a few fragments, a few lines.

  She throws a helluva shindig

  Knows jus’ how to get the drinks in,

  And them all singin’,<
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  Til it sudd’nly sinks in,

  That we ain’t never met her before.

  The meaning of these words is lost on me, but I’m hooked on the sound, the way it merges with the music, dips and soars, sets me spinning.

  She jabs like she knows us,

  Keeps toppin’ glasses,

  And it’s clear to us all,

  She throws a helluva shindig

  For every stranger she meets, see?

  So we ’n she ain’t ever alone.

  Those were the only lyrics I could recall at the time. I didn’t even know the name of the song. But there’s more in this memory, because sitting alongside me is my father—bodiless, headless—and he says to me: Remember, Bentley, some of the most gifted people in this world aren’t necessarily the richest or most famous. Some love playing, but have no interest in the rest of it all. So they might be the best in the world at what they do, but nobody would ever know …

  I hear him, but I can’t help thinking about that leg, that big swollen cauliflower leg the piano man carries around with him, and the phlegm when he coughs, and the fact he lives there by himself. I see my father tapping his foot to the beat. The piano man keeps playing for us, note upon note, layering that sound onto my mind like an ancient piece of cave art, a mystery that’ll be there for millennia.

  And then, my seven-year-old self, he takes that experience, and he pushes it down—way, way down—out of sight, and hearing, and mind.

  Until the night, decades later, when I awoke in another man’s bed, in another man’s mansion, and it all came back to me as I sweated and stared out the window at the big blue face of the moon.

  33.

  The sky was grey. Rain fell like shards of glass, clattering and clanking on the roof tiles. Inside, the sound rumbled through the bleach-white lobby, along the winding balustrade of the staircase, to the steel-and-marble kitchen and the carpeted halls, filling each and every musty room in the house.

  Even the locked ones, I’m sure.

  My first few weeks in the mansion had been the hardest—or the easiest. It’s difficult to say. Terrible things happened later, things I’ll never forget, but in the beginning, what seemed worse than anything was the overwhelming and persistent dullness of it all.

  I made meals. I cleaned my clothes. I pottered and slouched and napped. I failed to read any book beyond a few opening pages, and only ever sank half the balls I set up on the pool table. Nothing motivated me, and the prospect of making it through the year seemed increasingly and maddeningly undoable.

  It was three nights since I’d woken from the dream/memory of my father and the mystery pianist, and this, I’d decided, would be my puzzle project. In time, more details surfaced, like images materialising through a dirty window that was slowly being cleaned. A faded yellow lampshade. A newspaper cutting in a frame on the wall. Tufts of white fur clinging to the carpet.

  But no additional details emerged regarding the pianist or my father—two blurs in an ever-sharpening image of the living room—and all I had of the song was a scrap of the lyrics and the ghost of a tune.

  Earlier that rainy day, I’d sat at the piano and tried to recreate the tune from memory. After an hour or two of mindless tinkering, arriving at nothing, I gave up. After taking a shower, I got dressed, went to the bar, lit the fire, and poured myself a drink.

  Outside, the thunder bellowed.

  Downing the last of my drink, I went back to the bar, where I popped in a few more ice cubes, free-poured a shot or three of Johnnie Blue, and topped it off with a slug of ale. I swivelled my glass, clinked the ice—a ritualistic start to my very own booze-lit ceremony—and took a long sip. My eyes peered over the rim, through the misted-up window pane—

  There was someone out there, in the rain.

  I wiped the window with my hand. A lone figure. I was projecting him, I told myself, cutting and pasting shadows and rain. But I knew that wasn’t true; there was a man in a coat and hat standing between two trees. Motionless. Head tilted upwards, staring back at me from a distance.

  At first I thought it was either Carl or the groundsman, but no; he wasn’t either of them. He was thinner and taller, and with good posture. I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell he was younger, somehow. The rain kept coming, beating down on him, spilling over the rim of his black hat and drenching his big coat.

  Then he moved. Raised an arm as high as his shoulder and waved his hand. A slow open-palmed side-to-side, like a wind-up toy, just for me. Misjudging the distance as I put my glass down on the counter, I sent it to the floor with a crash. Splinters of crystal shot off in all directions.

  I looked out the window again.

  Gone.

  The rain had crushed the flower beds. The drooping willows swayed like drugged-up hula girls. My eyes searched far to the left, far to the right, scrutinising every hedge and tattered tree, peering along the muddied road, all the way to the high wall that encircled the vast private property.

  Greyness. Wetness.

  Nothing. No one.

  The second-hand of the wall clock behind me went on and on and on, an endless succession of tiny thuds. From where I was standing at the window, I could hear it go round and round, until the end of the world, until the sun burnt out and every one of us was dust, and every conceivable question was cannibalised by its answer, and every mystery was written off like a bad debt.

  After seeing the mystery man, I went downstairs and stepped out of the front door, into the rain. There really was no one out there, so I went back upstairs. I grabbed my drink. Why was he there? Had he been sent to keep an eye on me? Leonard hadn’t mentioned a third party. And if the man had been sent to spy, he hadn’t exactly been discreet about it. He’d stood there in plain view, even waved at me. An icy breath passed over my skin as a new possibility struck me: what if it was Leonard I’d seen out there? What if he’d somehow exited his room and climbed down the wall?

  Unlikely, but not impossible for a nut. I went down the corridor, put my ear to Leonard’s door, held my breath, and strained for a sound, anything at all—when I heard the faint clearing of a throat. Leonard was still in his room. Back at the bar, I looked out the window; the rain had slowed to a fine drizzle.

  So, if it hadn’t been Leonard out there, who had it been?

  I’d missed something.

  This house. This man in his room. This plan.

  Leonard’s proposal had been bizarre, certainly, but I’d accepted the premise without question. After all, he’d given such a rousing speech, about how shitty and dull the world was, that I’d also felt the need to shut it all out. What I hadn’t considered, however, was the likelihood he’d held something back. A few key details I’d have done well to know.

  I poured myself another drink and tossed it back. Thoughts stacked one upon the other, crushing those at the bottom, with more piling up: I’d been hired as a glorified house-sitter, a sort of passive observer to Leonard’s grand plan. But what if I wasn’t just the sitter, but the actual subject? How could I be sure I wasn’t being observed? Being studied? Tested? What if all of it, the whole deal, was a game, a way for Leonard and his rich bored pals to exploit a guy like me, someone with no friends or family, allowing them to pull off one shit-stirring prank after another, just to see if I’d break?

  I stopped. Took a breath.

  Just a little paranoid, even I admitted—but was it really impossible? Leonard himself hadn’t been too coy: these pleasure-seeking arseholes—these high rollers and big spenders—they got bored, didn’t they? They needed more. More thrills. New and dangerous games. Hell, I might not even be the first. Maybe Leonard and his cronies met up annually, selected their nobody, trapped him like a rat in a maze, and then placed their bets …

  All that talk about the terrible filter. The pictures in the hallway of faceless men playing poker. The dog licking a hole in the head of a corpse. A drug-fuelled orgy in a house whose previous owner had hanged himself, on land where a hundred horses had had t
heir heads chopped off. And now, a playboy locked in a room for a whole year, to do things differently—swim out, far away from the lonely uninhabitable islands of our lives …

  Jesus.

  I poured another drink, stiffer and taller this time.

  My watch alarm buzzed twice.

  One p.m. Leonard’s lunch.

  34.

  I had another dream.

  It went just as dreams tend to go, both entirely impossible and inarguably real. Also, it felt like something that had already happened, or was about to happen, or maybe both.

  In the dream, I know I’m asleep in the master bedroom of the house, but I’m also outside, hovering above the garden like a cameraman rigged to an invisible high-wire. It’s the middle of the night. The moon is so big and bright that everything is perfectly clear. Everything throws its own shadow.

  The man in the hat and coat, he’s there too.

  He’s got a spade in his hand, and he’s digging. I know the place he’s digging; it’s the spot where I buried the dog. The stranger, he wastes no time, going about his business with a focused, rhythmic stab-lift-toss … stab-lift-toss … stab-lift-toss. The hole grows wider and deeper. In accelerated dream time the man’s able to get to the dog in just a few brief, deliberate moves. My floating eye, it circles over the hole, and I can see the dog in the centre of the deep pit, no longer in the sack, but lying uncovered on its side in the loamy dirt—dead, dead, dead—until it isn’t … and its head twitches, and its front legs move, and it’s getting up clumsily, like a newborn foal. The man drops the spade and steps away from the hole.

  The dog—thin, decayed, broken-boned—scrambles up the slope. It joins the man, standing at his side. The man pats the dog on the head. They turn and walk together, under the bright yellow moon, towards the house, and I know where they’re going. They’re headed to my bedroom, calmly and silently, one hesitant step at a time. The way the dog’s walking, it’s clear its back is broken in several places: it’s like a moth-eaten piano accordion.