A foghorn’s drone engulfed the town, perforating the equilibrium with its mournful bleat.
The pained moans circulated through cold pub toilets, beyond the mildewed frames of obscured glass. They travelled up backlanes and around corners of terraced streets while the chimes of the town hall clock spoke hourly, disturbing winter sleep with four-second contemplations of self doubt.
In the past year alone, seven men have died by suicide and been forgotten within the week. During the same period, four dogs have went missing and the inquests continue. When a man disappears, the first thing you’re asked is if everything was okay. Were they showing signs of depression or having suicidal thoughts? The reality is that a body will be found by a dog walker, contorted into the rocks. It’s a reality not worth thinking of, but one I think of nonetheless.
When Edna Thomas was asked about her son she defended him.
I told her not to leave him, but she didn’t listen. The police were sympathetic. This doesn’t happen to families like ours, she’d said, before handing over a photo of David as a young man.
The police shared the photo on Facebook, along with a request for any information leading to David’s whereabouts. Hundreds left their condolences in the comments. Some weighed in on the more structural reasons behind male suicide and were told to show more respect. Others questioned whether condolences were even necessary, given the fact David wasn’t yet dead. One comment likened David to a parasite and included a link to the Wikipedia page for the horsehair worm:
Whenever I think of David, I think of the horsehair worm. A parasite known to occupy the bodies of crickets. I think of the time he bought those derelict pubs and turned them into housing for single mothers. The extortionate rent he charged and how he evicted them when they couldn’t pay. That said, I know a lot of yous respect David, how couldn’t ye, the amount of times he’s in the paper. But to me he’s a parasite. A cancer that corrupts crickets and exposes itself to rats and birds with the Trojan charm of a cherished memory. And for what?
The majority of the replies reiterated their sympathies for David and their hopes that he’d be found. We all make mistakes, one said. Aye, I’ve never forcibly evicted four single mothers though have a, I should’ve said. One woman, by the name of Marjorie Dawson, whose profile photo was a West Highland Terrier offering solidarity with Ukraine, said: ‘Worked at Wright’s Biscuit Factory 1948-53. My husband was Walter Dawson. A draughtsman at Brigham’s Dock.’
In the early days, most of the worries about social media were angled towards the damage it was doing to young and impressionable minds. What we failed to consider was how easy it’d become a breeding ground for hate on Facebook groups discussing the history of the town. Daint get is wrong, I like to contribute the odd polaroid as much as the next man, and there’s plenty of goodns, but you’ll see no bigotry from me. Instead, I look to landmarks pictured in 1972 and remember what they were before the nostalgia took hold. Who were the people inside the sepia and how did they treat their kids? Did they get depressive after a drink?
Whether it’s a picture of a mine, the beach or a prominent street, the comments are where you’ll find the true insight. The misguided beliefs of the borough. Always the same names, the ones defending David who spout the shite. The cropped headshots from family parties in 2004 advocating for National Service or the women who’ve spent ten year trying to lose a stone radicalised into hating muslims because of a picture of their friend looking nice in Lanzarote.
The other day someone posted a picture of a seagull within a cliff and I recognised it as the one where me mate called it a day. In the comments, a family man was being outed for abusing his wife.
Me mate died there, I should’ve said.
He would’ve laughed at that, me trying to summon the grief in his honour.
Aye, let’s not forget the mental health of the adulterer, I should’ve said. It’s been a hard year for him too. A man replied with a link to a video of Roy Chubby Brown.
Why am I better than the lot of you? I should’ve said.
When I’m not looking at pictures of the town, I spend me days walking the dog. A beautiful Doberman called Tommy. We walk along a pebble beach and onto a coastal park overlooking the sea. Surrounding the park are curry houses and homes belonging to the town’s Bangladeshi community. On winter nights, the smell of curry wafts through the streets, so prominent you can define where the English homes end and the Bengali ones begin. Tommy likes the park and so do I. It reminds me of the comfort of youth, the adrenaline rush of being chased by leash-free dogs.
Before the Victorians discovered horticulture, the land was ballast hills. Today, it’s home to bowls clubs attended by men on blood thinners. The ideologies of history are visible in its layout. Three-floor guest houses line the perimeter. Entry or exit is no longer determined by gates. The railings melted down long ago to make guns and planes. But the stubs remain, so grandas can tell grandkids about the hardships of the past.
There were plans to renovate the park with a playground themed around the town’s maritime past but so far little has changed. The council does its best. Press-ganging the labour of a few young offenders to relandscape and preen, but I prefer it overgrown. I’m always put out when they do that, having got used to the density. Tommy too. The trees give us space to think. Now I see everything for what it isn’t.
*
The beams of the South Pier lighthouse coalesce through the trees as we push on towards a grassy verge overlooking the sea. Waves bombard the Groyne. Runners test their stamina on the steps. Men and women have been coming here centuries to gaze towards a priory once home to Benedictine Monks, while only a few decades-worth have contemplated heartbreak as the James Knotts flats stare back. Sometimes you’d see fishwives holding the shipping gazette before realising you hadn’t and it was all a fabrication of the Tyne’s retreat. The changing landscape forced sessions of introspection. Drawing you in with its ebbs and flows and drowning you with emotional stasis. The type to paralyse you for six long months with its regressions and retreats until the seasons change and progress is shelved for what you thought was happiness.
An interruption you could’ve done without.
I count meself lucky. Me disposition allows is to laugh at how the landscape colours me illusions of life and me place within it. How I use them to interpret faulted interactions and what it felt like when he jumped into nothing. At his funeral, people emphasised the importance of talking without considering that he already had. He spoke about it all the time, I should’ve said. I just didn’t know how to help.
Now I wrap up warm with the intention of walking miles but can only manage two, preferring to acknowledge the route from a position of comfort. And me life changes on the back of these interpretations, leaving is to wonder if it’s ever really me who holds the cards.
Tommy pulls on his lead which means it’s time for home.
Two minutes, I say. Straining to confirm a howl from within the trees. It sounds like a man with bronchitis impersonating a dog, but I dismiss it, and we head home. The wind whispers in ways to suggest Christmas is near. Snow begins to fall and doesn’t stop for much of the night. Eight inches relaxing on conversation beneath ginger street lamps. At home I posted a picture of the view. A winter sunset with wind farms on the horizon. A woman replied saying the turbines were an eyesore and that her son was an engineer. Do you want a medal, I should’ve said. Would you prefer smoke and chimneys? Does that meet your idea of tradition? I’m entitled to my opinion, she would’ve said. Aye, not when you look like someone’s dug up a skeleton and gave it a perm, I should’ve said. I considered mentioning how the wind farms would help with the cost of living but me wife was calling me to bed. She was worried about the damp and how our son was depressed. I didn’t have the answers, other than to say we’d be alright.
A few people commented on the post to ask if anyone else had heard the howls. One reply, left by a man named Mick Cooper, referred to a half-dog, half-man hybrid known as the dog man. It only comes out at night, he said. It trudges through the rain with its crippled gait and bronchial wheeze. The type of thing you only ever notice through detachment on lonesome nighttime walks. Y’ever seen it? I should’ve said.
The belief was nourishing enough.
Later that night, Edna appeared on the local news to thank the public for their support. She seemed to appreciate the community she’d cultivated while David’s name was prepared as a statistic. Whenever she was on the telly, David’s ex-wife would post in response, usually to clarify her reasons for leaving him. What type of person marries a man like him, I should’ve said. Yena, the flack people get, but evict four families and there’s plenty room for concession.
Tommy barked at the screen.
We can only hope he’s back for Christmas, Edna said optimistically. You could’ve read it as denial. A refusal to find solace in any preferred method of totality maybe. But it wasn’t that.
*
On Christmas morning I took Tommy to stretch his legs. Further than usual as was tradition, so I’d have enough time to get in the club and see the lads. The snow was deep, crunching beneath his paws. Young kids were out on bikes, some chucking snowballs. You’ve never considered suicide have ye son, I asked Tommy.
He tilted his head the way dogs do.
Me friend jumped once, I said.
When we got to the park I thought of Mick Cooper and again heard the barks – as if imagined, lingering within the solitude of an empty wind block. Tommy pulled back as I walked towards the trees. Suit yourself, I said, dropping his lead in the snow. These days, you could hear a scream two streets away and not think twice, but the barks only drew me closer. Lungfuls of catarrh pulsed within me ears, drowning shivers of some unknown dejection that clung to me larynx.
Then the regretful snap of a branch.
We acknowledged each other at a distance, static beneath the foghorn’s doppler.
I could’ve hit it with a stone.
It turned and staggered through the trees, its musculature deteriorated like a deformed orphan in a Romanian hospice and I remembered it was Christmas.
I followed it through the bushes, past wildflowers and earthworm havens. The increased density of the woodland eliminated the sun. The peripheral flush of a winter tide swam through the trees. I called for Tommy but he never came. Eventually, I arrived at a clearing where a sodden mattress rested on sodden leaves below a half-collapsed sheet of tarpaulin. I stood there transfixed, watching it convulse. The pungent, offal tang of rotten flesh and disinfectant made me wretch.
I was close enough to see its origins. The body of a man stitched into the skin of a dog, the pelts sewn together with adhesives and zip ties like a fur trapper’s coat. A patchwork quilt of greyhound and labrador. The man’s head was forced into the hollowed skull of a Great Dane, still flecked with the meat of its cheeks and snout. His face was contorted within, his toes black, his legs blue, nullified into pointless driftwood stabbing towards his core. His penis was small like a child’s, damp and shrivelled into his muddy scrotum. Hernias protruded from his abdomen.
I placed my hand against his chest to ease the convulsions, but when I touched him the skin gave way like custard to reveal a feral, maggot’s hiss. A myiasis infection similar to what I’d seen in rabbits. The man writhed in pain, as if scared by his own constitution. Then he looked past me and seemed to relax, staring through the gap between me legs. I turned and seen Tommy, then turned back to the man who stared at him.
What the fuck you doing? I asked.
Just leave is, the man pleaded.
Nah, what’s happened to ye? It’s not right this.
Redemption, he wheezed. I seek redemption.
What ye talking about?
The man mumbled something incomprehensible.
Speak properly man. You’re gana die if you don’t help is. Ya feet are black.
I told him to stay put while I fetched some blankets from the van and rang an ambulance.
Tommy, daint let him run off.
Back at the van I picked up the bungee cords I’d normally use to secure me wood, as well as a few dust sheets and a standup trolley. When I got back he was upright and covered in vomit, Tommy growling over him.
Please, he sobbed. Please help is.
I am man, get on this trolley.
Where you taking is?
To the hospital man.
The man struggled to his feet as I draped him in a dust sheet and secured him to the trolley. This only seemed to panic him.
Nah actually, please. Just leave is here, he said.
Looka, you’re gan to hospital. I’m not having it on me conscience.
I done me best to wrangle the trolley out the clearing but the wheels kept getting stuck in the mud. He started to cry. Deep pathetic sobs as reality found him. I opened the doors and manoeuvred him into the van.
Do ye want a coffee? I said. It might settle ye nerves.
Can a phone me wife, he sobbed. This wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for her.
In a minute aye. Just get some warmth in ye.
The man said nothing.
What’s the matter with ye? Is it depression or summit?
What makes you think it’s that?
Well have ye seen yeself?
The man said nothing.
Did you kill them dogs?
Nah, I found them?
You found them did ye? What’s ye name, anyway?
That’s none of your business.
Looka, don’t play stupid cunts with me or I’ll walk you off the fucking pier.
It’s David.
David Thomas? Ye fucka. I never recognised ye with that dog’s head on ye.
I could hear the ambulance a few streets away so jumped out to flag it down. The burlier of the two paramedics sat on David while the other injected him with sedatives and waited for the thrashing to stop. I sat in the front waiting for the police, reassuring Tommy. The van stunk of human excrement and farms. Once I’d given me statement, the police told is it was best to keep quiet. Bear in mind it’s a criminal investigation now and we’d appreciate your cooperation. I nodded then drove home, wondering how I’d explain it all to me wife.
On Boxing Day, Edna appeared on telly to thank the public for finding David and cried while a police woman read a statement. David Thomas is a well-respected figure in the town known for his charity work and entrepreneurial spirit, she said. Although David is currently under the medical care of the hospital, he’s expected to make a full recovery. Mrs Thomas would like to reiterate her thanks and would appreciate her privacy at this time.
When January came, the police charged David with four counts of animal cruelty and scheduled a trial for March. He never did accept his guilt, or the 18-month sentence he received.
Be a good boy and you’ll get my love, Edna once said. So many times until the larvae emerged and moulded its life on the misinterpretations of men it respected, who’d equally misinterpreted themselves.
In the months after, Edna hijacked a support group for mothers who’d lost their sons, claiming that David had been bullied to death. What’s happened with your David’s a completely different thing to ours, one mother had said. Others were less polite.
Your David gives suicide a bad name, he does.
My son’s gone and yours is still here. It’s not right.
Your son was an alcoholic, Edna said.
Aye, it’s his empathy that.
People said they’d knew all along David was a wrongn. One bloke confessed that David had once kidnapped him and locked him in the boot of a Volkswagen Passat. I telt yous all along he was a sadistic bastard, I should’ve said. That man’s ruined Christmas for me.
They’ll make a martyr of him one day.
*
The past year’s took its toll if I’m honest.
But I take comfort knowing there’s plenty who feel this way. All of us depressed together without ever resorting to killing dogs. That said, this abjection can’t have happened by chance. We can’t all be wrong. Me son’s been on a waiting list six months.
We’ve made a habit of going to the driving range instead.
No matter how much you think it’s you that’s sinking son, I tell him, it’s them that keep deepening the pool. He finds it hard talking to me but I don’t know how else to help. I watch him grow and take on the shackles of those before – the lionised monuments of generations past – and try them out for size. I see him acknowledge their faults and make his mistakes. It’s a coin toss how anyone reacts.
Call it luck but it’s not that.
Just keep off the drink and gear, I tell him. It’ll do wonders.
Today’s youth seem to see things clearer. Me own are empathetic to a fault but I’m confident enough that I’ve raised him well. For me, it’s me nostalgia for youth that keeps is going.
A myth I know to be true.
Tommy refuses to go near the park now, but I tell him it’s important to maintain the route. I don’t fancy it much either. There’d be a time I’d come up here to dwell on the ins and outs of life and think about me mate but those days are gone. If anything, I’ve learned the park’s power to generate epiphanies is non-existent. It’s a park with a view. An idol of conjecture utilised by disaster-ridden men who murder dogs and live in their flesh.
Let sleeping dogs lie was the phrase they used when the mothers tried not to grieve too heavily within earshot. Talk of structural inequality all you like, I should’ve said, but it’s of little consolation in the end, when we respect the dead more than we respect the living. At times I think vocational meaning has become a luxury here. Any chance at becoming a purist is sacrificed at birth. But we soldier on, learning the lessons without any progress being made.
It could’ve been your son, they said, but it couldn’t have.
Only a fool interprets a foghorn as a war drum.
It all means little in the end, the moral high ground, when you’re struggling to keep the truth from turning to resentment. Ye just cannit let it turn to hate, I should’ve said. But I’m as faulted as the rest. The tides do change I reckon, as much as it seems like they don’t. Day after day, for all who came before and all who’ll come after.
It will get better.
I should’ve said.
*
Jake Trelease is a writer from South Shields who runs ‘Tales About Nowt’, a show about North East literature on Slacks Radio.
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