the siren call of the doomed

THE SIREN CALL OF THE DOOMED

My name is Jimmy Kerr. I am a brand new writer from the rugged shores of the Scottish West Coast, it's cold here, it's grey and it rains all the time but that's not why we're miserable, at least not directly. We seem to have a genetic propensity for misery and antipathy towards our neighbours. It's true, Something happened when the Scots left Ireland in the huff all those decades ago to find somewhere wetter and it got hardwired into our genome, something to do with fighting, something to do with dourness and deep deep suspicion.

Anyway, that aside, I am healthy, 31 years of age, single and I started writing about six months ago. So far I am unpublished

This story is called The Siren Call of The Doomed

It happened in 1995, winter, when I was just about to turn 21.

Up until this point I had really tried to avoid confrontation in all its forms and I was with almost one hundred per cent success, apart from that time in high school when Mingus King was railroaded into stealing my football season ticket.

It was a harsh time in the mid-nineties and for about two years all manner of things had been festering in the hearts of everyone. National Politics was in a weird limbo, still waiting for the end of Thatcherism under The Grey Man, Kurt Cobain had killed himself, The Stone Roses had brought out a cruelly disappointing second album and by the age of twenty I was already the sole guardian of my younger brother, with our forebears lost somewhere in a drunken haze deemed by the Social Services to be unfit for parenthood.

It was against this background that I found myself, completely by accident in the middle of a kind of vendetta situation with a bunch of guys that hung about the shops in Mossblown, an ex mining village just outside Ayr. For a whole two years, events surrounding this nonesense unfolded and with hindsight it's easy to see how scary madness should have been spotted looming like a giant moon meteor. It should have been obvious that it was just a matter if time before something was going to be obliterated, perhaps even everything.

It was all connected to one person - Tommy Pender.

Pender was and still is as far as I know a one man wrecking ball, a Tasmanian Devil of madness hell bent on spreading epidemics of criminal insanity wherever he goes. Right from the start it was clear that he was possesed by something. We would be walking around the town centre and out of the blue he would utter this bat-like screech as he knocked off some passing elderly ladies hat or we would be sitting in the scheme and all of a sudden he would start pinging the local hard-men that stood on the street corners of Lochside, one of the more lively housing schemes with a small piece of copper and a catapult made of an elastic band, laughing and whooping as he ran away down the street not in the least bothered that the resulting beating would only now be days away.

Almost every time I saw Pender back then, he was hiding, running away from some big lumbering fat guy who was chasing him down for a previous infraction and I dreaded the day that the big lumbering fat guy would see him coming into my house and come running up the street like something out of The Goonies, break the door down with his bare fists, smash both Pender and me to a pulp while yelling at the top of his dingo voice "Hey you guys!". I dreaded these things, but I still put up with him for the same reasons that I still went to Somerset to watch Ayr United, because there is something powerful about the lure of the bottom, the magnetic pull, the siren call of The Doomed...or something, but whatever it is, it's strong.

too strong for me

The madness really started one afternoon back in 1993 when I stumbled into a scrap Pender was having with a Mossblown kid called Johnny McGaffney in Ayr's Carrick Street. It was all bullshit, something from way back in high school and nothing to do with me at all, so I let it go, forgot all about it and chalked it up as another Penderism.

About six months later however, I was reminded of the incident in a sharp and uncomfortable manner when Pender and me went to visit a couple of birds in a house up in Mossblown. I was about eighteen/nineteen at the time and the girl I was meant to firing into with was only fifteen, and to top it all she was supposed to be seeing my brother, who was unnoficially staying with me by this point. So it was all a bit iffy to begin with and I was particularly paranoid about parents busting in at any moment. We managed to relax though with a fourpack of cheap beer and an eighth of an ounce of hash and got something of a cool party mood going with some of my excellently crafted Dylan and Doors cassette mixes. (even if the slightly younger trio of philistines didn't fully appreciate them.)

Gradually I felt myself slip into full on frisk mode and I was ready for smooching.

BANG!

The back door took an almighty blow from a well aimed scaffolding pole, Mad Pender, like a true numbskull blindly and with his trademark manic grin opened the door and took an unexpected flurry of kicks and punches as a group of about half a dozen angry Mossblown-ers took their revenge for the fight with McGaffney. With a struggle, the four of us, Pender, me and the birds just about managed to squeeze the back door shut and lock it. We all went into the living room, faces ashen, except Pender who was hopping about full of madness, whooping and laughing. Out the front there was about ten guys, all aged between fourteen and seventeen all shouting, swearing. I looked out and met eyes with about three of them and I got a good look at McGaffney for the first time.

The debacle ended slowly as the crowd out front got fed up and eventually dispersed, but I found it hard to forget about it, but I did forget as I had other more important things like my driving test to worry about. To my infinite shock and surprise not to mention the shock and surprise of my instructor I actually passed and I bought myself a little car.

1994 and Pender and I were still seeing the birds, only we still didn't venture into the centre of Mossblown during the day. My girl was pregnant and it was time for a sit-down woth the parents. It had been a long time since the incident and I didn't even notice who was hanging around as I drove up passed the shops to the girls mum's. I slowed as we got to the top of the hill. I didn't think about it as the engine on the old Austin stalled and spluttered as the automatic box struggled to find the right gear and I never considered the danger as the car conked out and began rolling backwards down the gradient, slowing and slowing more as I pulled the handbrake tighter and tighter. I was almost at back at the bottom of the hill, with Pender leaning out the pasenger window laughing when I turned...

..."OH MY GOD!"

I saw about twenty warrior braves from the great Mossblown neotribe come haring towards me, like a scene from Last of the Mohicans. They were about fifty yards away next to the sports centre to our left and FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST if I could not get the car started. I was turning the key and nothing, turning nothing, trying different gears, nothing nothing nothing and all the while they were getting forty, thirty, twenty yards closer.

Panic was setting in and I was involuntarily screaming and frantically turning the key, locking the doors, to terrified to get out of the vehicle. At the last moment I realised that I had to have the stick in neutral before the engine would start and I flicked the lever.
Rrrrimmmm!

and I roared away, much too slowly and in a cloud of black burning oil with the flailing arms of the neotribe just metres behind. I was sweating and shaking when I eventually got to the house. Her parents thought that I was on drugs. After a while, the bird got a council house in Belmont, a real result. I moved in right away and for a while it was all good, me my wee brother, my girl and a wee Jimmy on the way. After the kid was born she insisted on going to her mums every week so that they could see the baby. I hated the idea of going up there. I had to tell her about the boys secretly hoping that she would talk to them for me, after all we were a couple of years older than those guys, she knew all their families ands felt certain that they would listen to reason.

A few weeks later and She hadn't talked to those Mossblown boys on my behalf and I was nervous everytime I went to that place, but she insisted on visiting her parents every week. My heart would go as we approached the village in my new Cavalier and my head would be bowed all the way up the main drag until we got out of the car and then we would run straight into her parents house, locking the door quickly.

About six months went by and I stopped seeing Pender, he was miles away in a different part of town, in a different part of my life, back in Lochside. he had a different girlfriend and was causing all sorts of mayhem with her family. My brother left too, to find his own madness and I lost my drivers licence through something stupid, which meant that I had to walk past the neotribe to get to the girl's mum's house.

They would never say anything when I was with her, but I knew that each time I passed them, I was pushing my luck and I could hear the whispers and feel the eyes on my back as we passed the shops to the bus stop.

It came to a head one night when I was coming home alone with the girl opting to stay at her parent's herself. I walked passed the shops ready to run and I spotted the guy that Pender had been fighting with all that time ago, McGaffney, hanging about the shops with a crowd of about twenty guys and birds, a whole range of ages. I saw him look straight at me as I approached and heard footsteps walk up behind me as I passed.

I felt the taste of acid metal rise to my tongue and I waited for the crack. It came quick and it was all over in seconds. McGaffney had ran up to the side of me and caught me a peach right on the side of the head. I tried to stop myself going down but I couldn't help it. I fell and a hail of kicks followed me to the ground.

Luckily, the neotribe were all getting in each others way with their poorly aimed blows and after the attack was finished I only had a broken nose and a dead leg and ringing in my ears.

I went home, cleaned myself up and nursed my shattered pride.

I was raging about this attack. I had done nothing to these guys and I was determined that I was going to get them bac, despite the fact that I couldn't fight and that I was an out and out coward. It was crazy thinking and I probably would have done nothing If I had ran into one of them alone but when I saw one of the Mossblown boys in Ayr town centre, a guy called Marvin. I was with a couple of my friends and I was instantly filled with bravado, the kind that you get when you're with two other guys and this other guy is by himself.

To his credit Marvin spotted us a mile off and ran, unscared of the cowardly label he would get from the tribal elders. He ran straight into King Street police station and me and my pals had a good laugh about it.

I felt avenged.

About six months after that, with my little boy Steven running around crazy and the missus burning my brain, I got a call from my sister, who said that she was living in a council house, in Mossblown of all places and she went on about how it was all brilliant and how she was having parties every week and that I should come down for a laugh. I felt sure that the boys that I had run ins with would have long left the boredom of the shops, to start jobs, hang around in pubs and get teenage girls pregnant, just like I had been doing for the previous year, so I went through, only for few days, fed up with the family guy bullshit and desperate for a good time.

It was brilliant, I stayed for a week and we were drinking all the time, parties all the time, I even got myself a home made tattoo, a JK that I still have on my left forearm. Sunday came and we were all half pissed, my sisters boyfriend volunteered me for shop duty, we were in desperate need of more cider.

We left for the shops with not a care in the world. I was with my sisters man, a big ugly bruiser of a guy, so I wasn't too bothered about venturing there, especially with being half full of alcohol machismo. I was convinced that no-one would, but I still breathed a huge sigh of relief when I turned the corner and saw that the street was empty.

I stood in the shop waiting with at the check out whilst my sisters man bought the cider. I was looking outside. Just then I saw a furtive movement as a dark shape moved in and then out of view again.

We had people waiting on us.

I steeled myself as best I could. My sister's man wasn't bothered and only then cared to tell me about a series of run ins that nearly ended in a boxing match, some guy called Marvin. I knew that was it, we were going to be trading blows for sure.

I looked outside from the till register and I could make out three shapes in the darkness.

I zipped up my leather jacket and we stepped out.

When I got outside I instinctively looked both ways, but all I could see was a crowd of guys and girls, all ages, down the hill to my left. I saw nothing the other way and we set off down the road towards the crowd, who seemed strangely disinterested in us. I smiled...

...WHACK!

I felt a Bud bottle bounce right off my head and tumble down the hill. The pain riccoheted right off my eyeballs, down my legs and back up through my spinal column to my brain. I turned to see a snarling young ned screaming at me. There were two others, one was squaring up to my sisters man and just missed him with a headbutt and another had a bottle raised for me. We had our backs to home backing off quickly, not sure what the crowd just about twenty yards away behind us were going to do. We turned and ran passed the crowd sprinting round the corner at the bottom towards my sisters house.

My sister's man had ran ahead of me like a true coward. I was gutted and angry. Rage filled my ears and for a fleeting second I had a mad idea. i could see that it was just the three that were following and I thought "bugger it I'm ending this right now."

I knew that there was a large metal pole outside in the back door and as we approached the house I made my mind up. I was going to get that pole and beat the shit out of a few people. I was fizzing.

My sister's man had disappeared into the house somewhere and I was all set to go round and get the pole, but instead of going round the back door, or even doing the sensible thing and going into the living room and getting some handers, I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the biggest steak knife anyone has ever seen.

I was mad now, mad as hell and I ran out the door eyes bulging and screaming like William Wallace.... ...AAARRRGGGHH!

Except I didn't feel like it was me doing it, I felt like I was floating in space and the guy screaming like a madman was a vision, a mirage of some other life.

I saw the three by a skip to my right. I ran up and dodged a wild swipe of a long pipe and attempted to prod the blade into the attackers ribs, another was backing off and the last motioned towards me, I whipped around ready to plunge the blade into his eyes and before I could do anything he had brought his hand from behind his back and from only two feet away, he launched a roughcast covered brick at my head, hitting me square on the forehead.
For a moment everything went white and the blood iron taste of rancid metal welled as I staggered. I dropped the knife. the three jumped for joy as I began passing out on the ground, blood falling from my head, stumbling trying to stay up. I had even missed my attacker and only cut into his jacket. I stumbled into my sisters and I lay down and waited for an ambulance amongst a housefull of hysterical people.

I woke up in the hospital and the missus was kissing me. I had been out for three days...

...I went home, with the girl, back to Belmont and I haven't seen mad Pender since

...and our relationship finally ended one year later.