by Gary McMahon
If you could bring back the dead you could do anything, even use the undead puppets at your command to cleanse your town, your country, and whip up even more crude bigotry and warped nationalism along the way. Dress them up in England shirts and tracksuit bottoms, and send them out to feast on the foreign invaders, to consume before we are consumed.
When I finally started the engine a watercolour dawn was smearing itself across the steel-grey sky. Curtains were opening in windows on the estate- early risers getting ready to face the new day. As I drove back to my family, to my own imperfect little world, I knew that I wouldn’t ever fully understand what I’d seen. But what exactly had I seen? Even now, eighteen months later, I cannot be fully sure. But I’m certain that it’s still out there, in some form or another, perhaps biding its time in some foetid basement darkness, growing angry and hungry and waiting to be unleashed.
It was only when I arrived home that I realised they – whoever they are – had known about me all along. They must have been monitoring me, waiting to see how much I would learn. Someone must have tipped them off about my interest in the disappearance of al-hakim. Perhaps it was Claire, consuming before she herself was consumed by whatever the fuck stalks in darkness. I just don’t know. I’m not sure of anything anymore; I don’t even know what is real and what exists only in my mind.
The front door was ajar, and as I walked into the hallway my heart stopped beating. I felt dead; as dead as those things that must have come lurching through the twilight towards everything that I held dear.
Tanya was lying face down on the stairs, her left arm stretched out before her as if she’d been reaching towards something upstairs. The nursery. The back of her head was red and matted, the ivory bone of her skull showing through in patches. I didn’t turn her over; didn’t want to see the expression on her face. I looked up, towards the upstairs landing. The bathroom door had been kicked in; it hung from its hinges like a bomb had gone through it. I felt my body move, taking each stair as if it were a mile high. I knew what I would find when I walked into the nursery, and I wanted to delay the sight as long as I could; forever, if that was possible.
Tears streaked my face, but my throat was too constricted to release any sound. I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to see, but still I had to ascend and acknowledge what had happened. As I stepped onto the landing carpet, I imagined Tanya moving behind me, raising her head and opening her mouth to reveal a gaping darkness at the centre of her. Lifting herself to her feet and shambling up after me.
But that didn’t happen; not yet. Hopefully, it never will.
By the time the police found me cradling Jude’s cold, cold body in my warm hands, the tears had finally stopped. The world spun around me like some mad, gaudy carousel, and I could sense things hiding in the shadows of the world. I looked up at the uniformed officers, and had a vague recollection of summoning them with the mobile phone that now lay on the floor under Jude’s crib. I looked at my daughter’s pale face, smiled at her and wished her pleasant dreams and prayed to God that her sleep would last forever.
I told the police officers about the house in Wishwell – of course I did; but it was no use. They didn’t see what I had. The apocalypse in the cellar was still there; although nothing else remained but the images in my mind. Their colleagues had probably been there first, hastily shepherding those unbreathing things into the back of a van and relocating them to somewhere else in the depths of the estate.
I didn’t do it: I didn’t kill all of those people. But nobody will believe me, not the police, the psychologists, or the friends that have deserted me since my arrest. I miss my family, my babies. They would have believed me.
And somewhere out there – in the shithole squalor of a broken-down housing estate – it’s still happening. I read the newspapers with interest, specifically the stories of attacks on foreigners. Last week, an Asian child went missing. The week before that, it was a Serbian mother of three. It’s started again.
It’s getting dark outside, and nights are the worst. That’s when I hear uneven shuffling footsteps in the corridor outside my cell, and hear my name whispered, as if by the wind.
FAMILY FISHING
When I was twelve years old my parents went through a rocky patch in their relationship. There were fights, silences, total communication breakdown. So they decided it best that I stay with my Grandad one weekend late in the summer, to give them the space to sort things out between them; to mend the cracks that had suddenly opened up in the formerly smooth wall of their marriage.
I had no firm evidence, but somehow felt that I might be the cause of much of this strife. I was self-aware enough to realise that my behaviour was at the very least erratic – and possibly even bordering on the antisocial. I was afraid of becoming what used to be called a “problem child” but these days is merely an average teenager.
Dad dropped me off at Grandad’s place late that Friday afternoon, his long face stern and pale and twitching under the skin as if a swarm of butterflies was flapping around inside his balding head.
“Be good, Dan,” he said to me before driving away in the big old red Renault. He kissed me lightly on the cheek before climbing quickly into the car, and didn’t once look back as the dusty distance swallowed him.
Grandad stood in the doorway of his big old crumbling detached house; he and dad hadn’t even spoken. Just nodded silently to each other, as if passing and receiving some mysterious unspoken message.
“Come on, boy. Let’s get you settled,” he said in his deep, grating voice that sounded like he washed out his mouth with a cheese grater. Then he stood to one side and pushed open the door with a gnarled oak hand.
I glanced back along the unmade road that led to the distant motorway, and eventually to home, and then reluctantly went inside.
My grandparents had lived in that isolated house all their married lives, and even after grandma died of cancer when I was still in nappies Grandad refused to sell it. Even though the place was far too big for him, with too many empty rooms, he wanted to remain there until he died. Until that day came, he haunted the house like a ghost, pacing through the rooms and hallways and reliving old memories.
The house was located five miles outside of a small North Yorkshire village called Fell, and the closest neighbour was about a mile away. The surrounding countryside was beautiful, but bleak. Grandad had always cherished that desolate aspect: it was in his nature.
I followed the slightly stooping but still substantial figure of the old fellow along the gloomy hall and into the cluttered living room. The walls were hung with dark oil paintings – spooky landscapes and dour, staring portraits – and little piles of ancient paperback books lined the blistered skirting. Grandad didn’t own a TV; there was a radio in the kitchen, but that was his only concession to modern communications. The old man preferred to read.
“I’ve made up a bed for you in the small room,” he said, glaring at me as if I was an unwelcome guest. “Other than that, you have the run of the house until suppertime.” Then he left the room, and short a while later I heard the muted gabbling of the radio and the clattering of pots and plates.
The small room. The term was actually something a contradiction: every room in the place was huge, the one I’d been allocated was simply the least spacious.
I tiptoed back out into the hall, those unfriendly portraits watching my back intently as I tried hard not to make a sound to disturb them.
The stairs loomed above me, shadows dancing across the thin treads like small questing creatures. Directly above, on the wide landing, stood the upstairs bathroom; a place so damp and mildewed that even granddad no longer used it. The main bathroom was downstairs, adjoining the kitchen, where he was singing quietly to himself and preparing some hand-me-down family recipe too rich for the limited tastes of a developing pubescent boy.
A thin, bulb-headed hat stand that stood by the door was a bulky figure bowing towards me as I began to climb the stairs, and those caperin
g shadows scattered beneath the soles of my descending feet. Darkness hung heavy, like a vapour, and I attempted to shrug off the cloying atmosphere of gloom.
The stairs creaked loudly under my thin feet, and when I grabbed the ancient timber handrail it wobbled dangerously. I couldn’t imagine Grandad coming down here in the night and the darkness to take a pee; it was unbelievable that he hadn’t fallen to his death on this decrepit staircase.
I turned right at the top, heading towards the small room. My plan was to inspect my bedchamber, and then nose about in the other rooms on that floor. Like my father, Grandad was a hoarder, and there were always treasures to be found tucked away in the corners of this house: armless shop window mannequins, battalions of lead soldiers, rusty bicycle frames, arcane gardening tools and instruments for mending clothes and shoes…the place hadn’t been cleaned out for decades, and even then I knew that some of those heirlooms might be worth a small fortune if sold as antiques.
The small room lay at the far end of the landing, to the right of the small stained glass window that never seemed to let in any light from the front aspect of the building. I approached softly, aware of the sound of old boards, and opened the door. Grandad had done a good job; the room was actually quite light due to a large table lamp that was positioned next to the bed, and it looked like he’d changed the tatty old bedding for a modern quilt.
Closing the door behind me, I unpacked my rucksack and laid out my clothes for the morning. I’d been told to bring along a pair of old jeans, a warm sweater, and some Wellington boots, as we were going fishing early Saturday afternoon. I’d never known that Grandad was a fisherman, but it didn’t surprise me. He seemed to have tried his hand at most things during his long and eventful life.
The same books that dominated the rest of the house were also present in the room: stacked on wall-mounted shelves, piled against the pitted walls, and stuffed into the top of the wardrobe. I was something of a voracious reader myself, but the titles of the books that I inspected put me off ever attempting to read any. There were volumes of esoteric medical, anthropological and natural history encyclopaedias; heavy books of quotations; masses and masses of poetry. My horizons stretched as far as the odd Stephen King or James Herbert novel, and even most of what I read within those giddy pages was too adult for me to fully understand.
I left the small room and poked my head around the door of the other first floor bedrooms. The most interesting thing that I could find was what I recognised to be a battered ouija board, most of the letters that were printed upon its creased cardboard surface faded to indistinct and wholly indecipherable markings.
“Supper’s ready!”
Grandad’s voice boomed up the dark stairwell, and filled the empty spaces of the house. Twitching in shock, I left the room that I was in and ran down the stairs, the smell of something hot and spicy assailing my nostrils.
The stew we shared was too plentiful, and its ingredients far too stodgy for that late an hour, so I went to bed with a heavy stomach and a sense of being too full to sleep. But I did sleep, and it was dreamless for the most part, but accompanied by the fear that my parents wouldn’t be able to settle their differences, and I’d be consigned to stay here forever; or at least until I was grown up and able to leave of my own free will.
I have a faint memory of Grandad entering my room in the darkness, and placing a cool hand on my brow. I think that I may have been tossing and turning in my sleep, fighting imaginary demons, and the words that he spoke came to me through a miasma of conflicting emotions.
“Get some rest, boy. We’re going fishing the morrow.”
And then he was gone, and the shadows were closing in.
Morning arrived with the smell of frying bacon. In those days a fried breakfast was still considered part of a healthy diet, and my family had always prided themselves on cooking the best. Huge strips of crispy bacon, delicately prepared scrambled eggs, pork sausages fatter than a baby’s arm, and golden bread that had been fried in the juices.
I dressed in my warm clothes and went downstairs to eat; Grandad was already serving up, and had on a thick roll-neck jumper that made him look a little like a ship’s captain.
“Eat up, boy. You’ll need the energy today.”
I sat at the table in the kitchen, and wondered how I’d get through such a huge portion of food. Then, magically, my plate was clear and I thought that I could perhaps squeeze in another of those sausages before my plate was taken away.
At home I’d be pressured by my mother to clean my teeth, wash my face and neck, brush my hair, but Grandad lived his life by different rules. In Grandad’s house I was an individual –a man or thereabouts - and could be trusted to do my own thing without being constantly prompted.
“You about ready?” he asked, clearing the table.
“Yes. Just about.”
“Good,” he said, his eyes coming to rest upon me. I saw a light in them that might have been love, and then it died as quickly and mysteriously as it had flared into being. A sad smile hung on the old man’s lips, and then he turned away. “Today we make a man of you,” he said. And I didn’t have a clue what he meant.
Later, motoring along uneven country roads in his open-backed truck, Grandad broke the silence and told me something that I didn’t really expect.
“Back when your dad was your age, I took him fishing too. Same place, same kind of overcast weather.”
“Really?” I asked, welcoming any stories of my dad as a boy.
“Aye, it’s sort of a family tradition. Like living in that old house. Y’see, in our family the women always die first, and we men folk stay in that big old house to welcome in the new ones that get born. Tradition, boy: it’s important. When your mam dies, your dad’ll move in there, long after I’ve gone. I expect you’ll do the same, when it’s your time.”
This was the most I’d heard him say since I’d arrived the day before; the most I’d ever heard him say. He had a nice voice - a storyteller’s voice. I liked it when he spoke, even if sometimes the subject matter seemed to go over my head.
We drove for what seemed like hours, granddad piping up with little homilies and pointing out anything of interest we might pass along the way – the pond in which he’d almost drowned as a boy, the clump of trees where he’d smoked his first cigarette, the barn where he’d lost his virginity to some local lass named Molly Malloy. It was a good time, a comfortable journey, and my lumbering and featureless fears from the night before were largely forgotten.
I hadn’t spent much time with Grandad over the years, but he seemed to be warming to me with each passing minute. Treating me almost as an equal. He even offered me a tug off one of his cigars, which made me cough until my eyes ached. He enjoyed that, the old rascal. Probably thought he was teaching me some great lesson of the world.
By late afternoon I was beginning to wonder where this was all leading, and then Grandad finally stopped the truck.
We where at the end of a narrow dirt track that finished in thick foliage. Grandad sat at the wheel and stared into the dense greenery, an unreadable expression crossing his face.
“Where are we?” I asked, afraid of the sudden soundless atmosphere, and the way that the clouds and the trees blocked out the light.
“Almost there,” he answered, still staring through the windscreen.
I sat next to him in silence, not knowing what else to say.
“Come-by, lad. The fishing spot is just up there, through those trees. It’s a bit of a hike, but you seem fit enough to handle it.” And he climbed out of the truck, heading for the back where he’d packed his stuff.
I followed him like a puppy, filled with uncertainty and trepidation.
Grandad had hauled a big empty potato sack from the back of the truck, and was picking up what looked like a short boat hook as he slung the sack over his broad shoulder.
“Where are the fishing rods, Grandad?” I asked. “The nets? The bait?”
He looked at me and lau
ghed, but there was a sort of heavy weariness in the laughter that made me want to run and hide.
“We have all we need right here, boy. This is our kind of fishing, and we don’t require any bait.”
When he tramped off towards the huddling trees I assumed that I was meant to follow; I had to take two steps for his every one, but managed to keep up because of the weight of the gear he was carrying.
We walked for an hour, following vague forest trails and new ones that Grandad cleared with his boat hook. The sun was beginning to set by the time we stopped, and the air was turning sooty, as if somewhere nearby there was a fire. Country darkness comes quickly, and early; and when it arrives it is total. I knew that night wasn’t too far off, even though these were the long summer days. Sometimes the darkness comes of its own accord, disobeying the laws of the season.
It was like that then. The night was descending like a blade across the sky, and already stars were blinking into existence in the clear and distant heavens.
Soon we came to a tall, rubber-insulated gate set in a high, humming electrified fence. Grandad reached into his pocket, took out a slightly rusted key and opened the gate, letting us inside some kind of compound.
“Fishing spot’s through here,” he said, gripping my forearm and guiding me across the steel cattle grid that was set in the ground just inside the gate.
We carried on for several more minutes, ducking under some low bushes whose branches trailed across my face like spider’s legs, and then Grandad suddenly dropped to his knees, pulling me down with him. He placed his big hand over my mouth, and shook his head. I crouched there in the gathering darkness, unable to move.
“Follow me,” he whispered. “And be quiet!” Then he took his hand away, and tapped me on the shoulder.