Dead Bad Things

by Gary McMahon

  The hand clenched into a fist. Knucklebones popped through the pallid flesh. They were sharp, white, more like teeth than bones. The fist began to writhe against the glass, smearing it with strange clear ichors – the thing's blood?

  Did ghosts bleed? Did they weep real tears?

  "What are you?"

  Slowly, by inches, a pale orb appeared through the thick mist, like a weird vessel breaking the surface of a still, grey sea. It was spherical, or perhaps oval. It took several seconds for Trevor to realise that what he was seeing was the top of a head pushing through the grizzled gloom. A large bald head.

  Once it cleared the veil of grey, he began to make out the cuts and slashes in the skin, the small hollows in the skull. It was the top of a head: the pate of some strange being heaving into view, and then pressing oddly against the glass.

  The skull was soft; it flattened as it was forced against the glass.

  Thankfully, the head did not twist and enable the being to look up, into the room. It remained in the same position, pushed up tight against the glass.

  Another fist rose and slammed silently into the glass. The figure was certainly humanoid, even if it was a shell, a disguise (and just what had prompted that thought?).

  A shell. Yes, that was it… Trevor realised that he was looking at a husk, a man-shaped suit containing something else. The tattered flesh, the bloodless pallor. The malleable bones. It all added up to a costume.

  The head was now moving across the glass, the bones pressed flat. It looked like some kind of dance, a manoeuvre choreographed from the movements seen in bad dreams, and Trevor was fascinated and repulsed in equal measures. How could bones be this soft? How could those fists make no sound against the other side of the mirror?

  "Tell me who you are?"

  The drumming. He had been so distracted by this vision that he had forgotten all about the drumming sound. It had increased in volume, threatening to spill from his head and out into the room. It was the soundtrack of the strange creature, the song of its arrival. The beat of its birth. The thing was dancing in rhythm, moving to the beat, and Trevor was drawn to its perverse motion.

  Then, like sweets being snatched from the clutching hands of a child, the figure pulled back from the glass. The fog closed in, filling the space where it had been. The drumming stopped.

  "Come back to me!" Trevor fell to his knees and placed his own forehead against the glass. It was cold, like ice. His own skull felt soft, as if it might cave in with the pressure.

  "Please come back."

  For a moment – a fleeting moment that felt like a snippet of dream – he was sure that he heard laughter. But then it was gone, not even an echo remaining. Not even a vibration left in the air. Gone. Gone.

  Gone.

  THIRTEEN

  Sarah had found the telephone number in her father's old notebook, the one he had not stashed away but kept in plain view, in a drawer with his old warrant card. It was his police-issue book, where he recorded the names and dates and essential information of people who might help him. He called it his Snitch Book. Back when Sarah had lived here, in the family home, he had shown her the battered cover of the book often, telling her that good, reliable informants were as important to a policeman's job as deductive reasoning.

  A good snitch or informant, he had said, could solve a crime for you. If you knew what to ask, and how to ask it.

  Like everything else in police life, her father had claimed that it was an art form. Everything was an art form according to him: the questioning of suspects, the breaking-in of doors, even the quiet words spoken in a silent lounge or back room to inform a loved one of their father/lover/brother's death.

  It was all art, or so he claimed. Art of the highest order. Like a fucking Van Gogh.

  Sarah glanced at the blinds, seeing darkness at the window through the gaps. It was late enough that she should be tired, but too early to try and force sleep. Benson had wanted to stay with her after they had visited her mother, but she had convinced him to leave. His attention had been cloying, and she wanted some space in which to think, to process what had happened in the rest home. He'd been crestfallen when he walked out of the door, but she didn't care. Let him have his little huffs and sulks; she had more important things on her mind. She had business to take care of.

  Sarah was aware of the fact that – just like her father – she was in danger of becoming obsessed, but she had never been able to turn her back on a mystery. It was a defining characteristic, and one which had got her into a lot of trouble throughout her life. When she was a kid, she earned the reputation as a pest, someone who would never let a thing lie. She had unearthed a lot of secrets, and it had always cost her friends. This niggling skill of hers was part of the reason why she was so alone.

  She turned the notebook over in her hands, feeling the dried sweat and the threat of violence held between the bindings. There were many names written down in there, and an equal amount of numbers, but only one of her father's informants had been respected enough to also be called a friend. His name was Erik Fontana. That was not his real name, of course – it was a stage name. Fontana was a club singer. He had played the circuit for years, making friends, forging contacts, being Johnny-onthe-spot whenever something nefarious went down, or was planned or gossiped about.

  She picked up the phone and dialled. The number could have been for anything – a house, a flat, a squat, a nightclub – so she just let it ring out, hoping that it was still current. Finally someone picked up at the other end.

  "Yeah." A female voice. Low, throaty, gruff.

  "I'm trying to contact an Erik Fontana. Do you know him?" She waited, her fingers picking idly at the telephone cord. It was coiled like a thin serpent around her wrist. The plastic was cold, alien to the touch.

  "Fuckin' hell, that's an old name. Yeah, I know him. Goes by his real name now, though. Has done for years. It's Eddie. Eddie Knowles." The woman sounded like she smoked forty cigarettes a day. Her throat was ruined.

  "Is he there? Can I speak to Eddie?"

  "Listen, pet, I don't know who you are, but he's my husband. If he's been fucking you, that's all it is. A fuck. So do yourself a favour and do one, yeah?" A sharp intake of breath: she was apparently sucking on a cigarette. The fact that the woman was still on the phone led Sarah to believe that the man she wanted was there, probably listening to one side of the conversation from another room.

  "No, you don't understand. It's nothing like that. Erik… I mean Eddie. He was a friend of my late father's." She licked her lips. She didn't want to offer any more information, not until she knew the man was actually there, on the premises.

  "Who's your dad, then? Is he a booking agent, a club owner? Does Eddie owe him money? Cos if he does, that's just another kind of fucked." She cackled loudly, like a witch. Then she sucked again on her cigarette.

  Sarah sighed. "My father's name was Emerson Doherty. He died almost seven months ago." She inhaled softly, amazed by the sudden surge of emotions which threatened to overpower her. Darkness boiled within her belly, churning up her insides. She felt sick. The world seemed to wobble for an instant. The room swelled, and then shrank back to its proper proportions.

  "Oh. Doherty. You his kid? The girl? I met you once, when you was little. Cute. I… I'd like to say I'm sorry for your loss, but I ain't. Not one bit."

  "Don't worry about it. I'm not sorry either."

  Again, that hideous cackling, like a Shakespearean sorceress: Hubble bubble, toil and trouble. By the pricking of my thumbs… "OK, pet. Eddie's in the back room, having a wee smoke. I'll go get him. He always had time for your old man, although no fucker else did. For what it's worth, you don't sound like him. Not one bit. And you can take that as a compliment."

  "Thanks…" But the woman had already thrown down the phone. Sarah could hear her receding footsteps, stomping away across what sounded like bare floorboards but was more likely to be a cheaply laminated kitchen floor. She strained her ears and made out di
stant voices, laughter, and then different footsteps – these ones much softer – as they moved towards the phone.

  "Yeah. This is Eddie." His voice was less damaged than the woman's yet it still held the grizzle of tobacco and alcohol abuse.

  "My name's Sarah Doherty. I believe you knew my father."

  "Yeah. I knew him. We were friends, him and me, as much as you can be in this game. In this life. We respected each other." There was the hint of a smile in his voice, a sliver of humour that wasn't particularly healthy.

  "I'm ringing… well, I'm not exactly sure why I'm ringing you. I found some photos today. Of my dad. Weird shots of sex parties. I remember you always used to go to the same parties he did, and mixed in the same circles. I was wondering if you could tell me anything about a club or something he might have belonged to."

  "A club? I don't know what you mean, not really. We went along to sex parties back in the day, yeah, there was plenty of that. Sex and gambling and all kinds of naughty stuff." He laughed. It sounded like the gurgling of a blocked drain. "I wouldn't go talking freely about this, except that the old bastard's dead. I suppose nobody cares what he got up to in his private life. Fuck, they all knew about it anyway. Most of his gov'nors was there, too, in them stupid masks. We all had a fine old time." He seemed to revel in telling her this. It was as if he were trying to shock her, to draw out of her some kind of reaction with his words.

  "What about the other stuff you mention. The other fun and games. Did any of that involve vigilante activity?"

  "Fuck me, girl, you aren't backwards in coming forward, are you? How the fuck do I even know who you are. A voice on the phone. A few pretty words down the line. I mean, you could be anyone." He laughed again. It sounded like the promise of an assault.

  "I have money. If you meet me tomorrow I can pay you for the information. I just want to find out about my father." Her mouth was dry. "I want to get to know more about how he spent his time, even if I don't like what I find."

  There followed a lengthy silence, as if Knowles were thinking about something. Sarah heard a clock ticking – not in her house, but on the other end of the line – and something about the sound was hollow, false, like an imitation. She waited.

  "Listen, love. Ask yourself a question. Ask yourself this: 'How much do I want to know? How deep should I get?'" He coughed, spluttered, and then regained his composure. "Your dad was into some pretty heavy stuff. I knew about some of it, but not all of it. We rolled together for a while, were pretty tight in fact, but he started getting too intense. His position on the force gave him access to plenty of privileged information, and made it possible for him to hide a lot of evidence."

  "OK." She shivered; an involuntary reaction. The heating was off. The house was cold. But this physical reaction was not a result of the low temperature, or the inactive radiators. "I want to know. As much as I can."

  "Meet me tomorrow morning, then, at ten thirty. I'll even buy you brunch. Bring two grand and I'll tell you what I know. It ain't much – God knows, he kept his cards close to his chest, that fucker – but it's more than you have." He paused here, but not for long. "You're a copper too, aren't you?"

  Sarah nodded, slowly. There were no secrets, not really. "How did you know?"

  His sudden laughter took her by surprise. She pulled the phone away from her ear, wincing at the volume and intensity of the unpleasant sound. Finally, once it had faded, she returned the receiver to the side of her head and listened. The line crackled, surged, crackled again.

  "Because the apple never falls far from the tree, love. You might think it does, but you'd be wrong. Some things are in the blood. They run deep."

  Her ears were ringing. There was a pressure building inside her skull, a hard, dense shape growing, building, and forming like a tumour. "What do you mean by that?" The pressure grew. It was immense.

  "See you in t' morning, love. Meet me where your dad used to – if you're who you say you are you'll know exactly where I mean. Bring the money, or I'm leaving."

  The money wasn't a problem. Her father had left her well provided for with his slush fund, and she wanted nothing from him. It would be a pleasure to give some of it away. He could have the lot, if that's what he wanted: every fucking penny.

  She held onto the phone for a few moments, her grip tightening on the plastic casing. She tried to hear something behind the white-noise crackle of static, but there was nothing to be heard. Just dead noise. The sound of emptiness. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself that there were voices wailing, trying to be heard, there weren't. She was wrong. She was always, always wrong.

  Sarah crossed to the armchair and collapsed into it, sliding her legs over the padded armrest and sitting sideways. She was back on day shift tomorrow, and would no doubt pay the price for losing so much sleep. The pressure in her head had dimmed, the bones no longer threatening to break apart. She didn't know anything – all she had were a few photographs, some garbled rubbish from her mad mother and a cassette tape. She reached down, into her bag, and took out the tape.

  D.T.

  1984

  It meant nothing to her. Initials. A date. What did it signify? The handwriting was certainly her father's, there was no doubt about that. But what had he been trying to indicate upon the grubby sticker, and what was recorded on the tape?

  She struggled to her feet and went to the coffee table, where she'd placed one of his old tape recorders next to the whisky bottle. Sarah only owned CDs, so she'd been forced to rake around in a cupboard to locate the ageing machine.

  Her father had always loved his music, and had always created mix tapes, consisting of his favourite songs. There was a shelf downstairs, in his cellar office, which contained nothing but similar cassettes with only a year scratched on each sticker to identify the contents: collections of songs from that particular year, with no track listing. After every tenth cassette there was another one, made up of his favourite songs from the previous decade.

  The tapes went back to the 1940s. Obviously, the early ones were retrospective, put together long after the fact, but it was just another indication of her father's obsessive pathology.

  Even music was not safe from his madness.

  She slipped the tape into the machine and pressed play. There was a lengthy gap before the first track began – inexpert, amateurish – and she frowned. He was usually so careful, so exacting, in everything he did. Why the long delay?

  The first track was by Aztec Camera (or so her memory suggested), and Sarah was disappointed to realise that it was a song she actually liked. She hated having anything in common with her father, even something as superficial as a pop tune.

  It took her three or four songs to realise what was wrong with the recording.

  Just as she'd noticed at the beginning of the compilation, the gaps between each track were slightly too long. It didn't sit right, not with what she knew about her father and how he operated. He would never make such a shabby mistake.

  She reached out and turned off the tape. Then she hit the rewind button.

  Darkness bled through the windows; the meagre light from the desk lamp did nothing to hold it at bay. To Sarah the shadows felt like a subtle invasion, as if something unnatural were creeping up on her, waiting for her to acknowledge its presence in the room. But still she made no move to turn on the main lights. She was far too engrossed with the task at hand, and nothing could swerve her from her course. Again, she despised the parallels between herself and her father. They were both single-minded bastards, refusing to stop until the job was done.

  She listened to the odd pause at the start of the tape seven times before she heard the sound. It was small, slight, barely even audible. So she turned up the volume, pushing it up right to its limit. The tape's hiss and crackle almost covered up the sound, but not enough for her to make out that it was a voice.

  A voice she knew.

  Her father's voice.

  "Danny Tate. Nineteen-eighty-four."

&n
bsp; Written on the cassette tape:

  D.T.

  1984

  Of course; now that she'd heard the name and the date, the connection was obvious. This tape, it was some kind of soundtrack and her father was whispering an interstitial message, a cipher meant to be decoded only by himself. Did it relate to a case he'd been working on, another investigation with which he had become obsessed? Had he been on the trail of someone, locked in a hidden war against an unseen nemesis? She could imagine him doing this in his spare time: choosing a criminal to become the focus of his obsession.

  Sarah didn't recognise the whispered name at the beginning of the tape, or the year: they meant nothing to her.