Dead Bad Things

by Gary McMahon

  "Yes," she said, refusing to elaborate further. "Sit down. I haven't finished."

  Benson collapsed into the armchair opposite the sofa, rubbing at his eyes with the palms of his hands. He looked like he was about to cry.

  "The old bastard got religion. He claimed to have been visited by an angel who gave him the ability to see the future crimes of certain children."

  "What?" Benson shook his head. "This is fucking crazy. Can you hear yourself, what you're saying? It's nonsense."

  "I know," said Sarah. "I know it is, but it's what he believed."

  Benson was breathing heavily. He sounded ill. "And what did he do with this… with this knowledge? Did your snitch tell you that?"

  Sarah shook her head. "No. No, he didn't. But I found something down in the cellar – some evidence that made everything click into place." She paused then, wondering if she'd gone too far and said too much. How well did she really know Benson after all? Enough to offload this onto him, or was she clutching at something that wasn't really there?

  "I'm still listening." He sat back, composed now, getting used to the madness of what he was being told.

  "I found a box down there, among his personal stuff. Inside was a bit of human skull with holes drilled in it." She paused; there was no sound from Benson. "And a device that looks like a drill but was clearly used to make those holes." She paused there, lowering her head. "Sounds familiar, doesn't it?" She looked at her hands and waited for him to speak.

  Benson shifted in the chair. He coughed once. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say here. This is some weird shit, it really is. I assume you know what it would mean if you went public with the information? What it would do to his reputation and to the force in general?"

  Sarah nodded. "That's why I'm telling you. I can't carry this alone. I need some help." She looked up, at his mouth, his eyes, his twitching scars. The face that suddenly looked like it belonged to a stranger. "I might be going mad here, but I'm starting to think that his ghost has come back to kill more kids."

  There was tension between them, strung out like a fine wire. Sarah felt it stretch, stretch, and then it threatened to break. She didn't know what to believe; this stuff sounded as crazy to her as it obviously did to him.

  "OK, now it's my turn." Benson's voice sounded different from only seconds before. He was calm now; he had it all under control. "I've wanted to tell you this for a long time but thought it might interfere with what we have. I didn't want to spoil things."

  Sarah kept her gaze steady. She began to prepare for bad news, tensing her body against imaginary blows.

  "I'll come right out with this: I knew your father. I knew Emerson." The words hung in the air, unmoving.

  "What are you saying here, Benson? What the fuck are you telling me?" She clenched her fists. Her entire body was rigid.

  "I never told you exactly what happened when I got these scars." He raised a hand and brushed his fingers against his right cheek. "I used to run with a few lads. These days it would be called a gang but back then we were just a group, a bunch of bad lads with too much time on our hands. One night, when we were stoned, we nicked a car. I was driving. We went for a joyride, out on the moors, and then when we got bored we drove back into town. I dropped off the others and kept the car – thought I'd get another hour's worth of fun out of the thing before dumping it. I crashed into a parked van in Chapeltown. Your dad was out on patrol and found me. My face was slashed. I was bleeding badly."

  Sarah wanted to hit him. She felt like smashing in his skull with a blunt object. He had been lying to her all along.

  "He saw something in me – some good, or maybe something similar to what was inside him. So he took me to hospital and told them that I'd been run over and the driver of the car had left the scene. They stitched me up and sent me on my way, but your dad – Emerson – took me home. Then he took an interest." He paused, reached over for his drink and sipped it.

  "What does that mean, 'took an interest'?" Sarah could barely believe what she was hearing.

  "He… well, he guided me, I suppose. It was down to him that I finished school and got some grades, then took my A-Levels. He convinced me to apply to the force and spoke up for me at the police entrance interview, and gave me a personal reference. He was retired by then, of course, but his name opened a lot of fucking doors. You of all people should know that."

  Sarah bristled; she resented the implication. "Fuck off. I did this all on my own. I deliberately chose a route where I'd have minimal contact with his old flunkies."

  Benson chuckled softly. It was a frightening sound. "Come on, Sarah. Even if they didn't say it to your face, they all gave you a little helping hand somewhere along the line because of who your father was. Even your good mate, Tebbit, but he did it to get back at Emerson rather than help him out."

  She stood up in a rush; it was a sudden and involuntary reaction. Once she was on her feet she didn't really know why, or what she had meant to do. "He wasn't even my fucking father. He found me. He adopted me."

  Benson looked stunned. Sarah was pleased by his reaction. "No… who told you that?" His mouth was gaping.

  "The man I talked to, Emerson's old pal. He told me all of it. The old bastard brought me home one night and they adopted me in secret. I'm not Emerson Doherty's daughter. And thank fuck for that."

  Benson went to her, his arms opening. He rested his hands on her waist, leaning in close. "It looks like we both have a lot of secrets, then. Maybe this is the breakthrough we've been waiting for. What do you think?" His words were empty, bereft of genuine meaning.

  Sarah pushed him away, taking two steps backwards. Her thigh bumped against the fireplace. "I think that you're a lying cunt, that's what I think. And I think you should leave. Now."

  But Benson wasn't looking at Sarah. His eyes were fixed on the wall behind her, somewhere in the corner of the room. Slowly, hesitantly, Sarah turned her upper body so that she could follow his gaze.

  A familiar figure was sitting against the wall, his legs bent as if he were occupying an invisible chair, his hands resting flat on his thighs. The long black robe fell all the way to the floor, the plain hem covering his feet. The thin white hood fluttered slightly in a breeze that Sarah could not feel.

  She turned back to face Benson. He was still staring at the figure. "You can see it, too?"

  He nodded.

  "All along? Right from the start?"

  He nodded again, his features slack. There was a look in his eyes, something that resembled awe.

  "You've seen him all along and you kept coming here, right to the centre of all this. You were coming to see him, weren't you?"

  Benson's eyes were shining. They were no longer flat and dead; they were practically bursting with life. "Yes," he whispered. "I've been coming to see him, to pay my respects."

  Sarah began to move backwards at an angle, away from Benson and from the figure resting against the wall. She kept her eyes on Benson's face, but he barely even registered that she was there. He was staring at the figure like a love-struck suitor and his entire body was as limp as a bundle of sticks.

  Sarah knew exactly what she was doing. She'd always known about the gun. It was all wrapped up in Emerson's mystique, and had always been a major part of the reason that she and her mother had been so afraid to cross him. He had never threatened them with the gun, nor had he handled it in front of them. The idea of the weapon had always been enough to keep them in check, and it had crossed neither of their minds to pick the thing up and use it against him. His grasp had been too strong; the mental bonds too tight. And he hadn't told them were the bullets were kept anyway.

  He would never be that stupid.

  Sarah calmly opened the top drawer of a tall varnished unit that stood near the fireplace. She took out the small handgun and aimed it at Benson. Still he did not react. She spread her legs and assumed a professional firing stance, bending her arms slightly at the elbows, just like they'd been taught in training.
r />   Benson blinked.

  "Get the fuck out of my house." Sarah's voice was cold; her words tasted of steel and they made her tongue tingle. She fought the urge to turn around. She was pretty sure that the figure had vanished but the urge to check was almost unbearable.

  Benson blinked again, like a man slowly coming out of a trance. He turned his attention to Sarah, and to the gun. "What are you doing?"

  "If you don't leave now I'll shoot you. I'll shoot you in the head and tell them you tried to rape me." She took a single step towards him. "I'm not fucking around."

  Benson tensed for a moment, as if he was considering rushing her, but then he relaxed again and held out his hands, the palms facing forward. "OK, OK. I'm leaving. I'll call you later, when you've had a chance to calm down."

  "Don't bother. Just go. Don't come back. Don't ever come back."

  Benson walked backwards and she followed him, using the threat of the handgun to force him out into the hall and to the front door. He fumbled behind his back and opened the door, then stumbled out onto the front steps, almost falling down them. "We really should talk about this some more."

  Sarah shook her head. She forced a smile. "Piss off, Benson, you scar-faced prick." Then, moving purposefully, she slammed the door in his face and slid the bolt into the frame.

  She gripped the handle of the gun, wishing that she had some bullets. If Benson had called her bluff, he would probably have overpowered her in less than a minute. She fell against the wall and slumped to her knees, dry-heaving, tears burning her eyes.

  Then, when she had herself under control, she walked around the house and checked that all the doors and windows were locked. When she looked out at the street from an upper window, she saw Benson standing on the corner watching the house. He stayed there for an hour, not moving as much as a few feet from the same spot, and then he walked away when finally it started to rain.

  When Sarah went to bed she was unable to sleep. She kept the gun under her pillow, just in case. Even though it was unloaded, its presence made her feel safe. She was desperate for help but there was nobody she could turn to, not one person in the world she could trust – apart from DI Tebbit, who was currently lying comatose in a hospital bed at Leeds General Infirmary.

  There was no one else. He was the only one. The only person she could go to.

  It seemed like the ultimate irony that the only man who could help her was so close to death that he was barely even present in the world. He was as much a phantom as the man who had falsely brought her up as his daughter; just another phantom in the vast ghost-house of her life.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Trevor was crying. He tried to hide it from the boy – the boy who wasn't Michael, but who was trying so very hard to be him. He closed his eyes and whispered his brother's name: a chant, a litany, a prayer meant to summon his essence.

  "Michael, Michael, oh, Michael…"

  But the incantation wasn't working. The boy's body was different; it was bonier, less supple than Michael's had ever been. The meat was too loose on his bones and his skin smelled like vanilla. Michael had never smelled of vanilla. He had stunk of terror, and Trevor was finally acknowledging the fact that Michael's terror was the thing that had aroused him more than anything. Not his unquestioning love, despite what his older brother did to him, or his silent acquiescence. No, it was his fear, always his fear.

  In that moment Trevor hated himself more than he had ever thought possible. He hated Michael, too, for being so beautiful and so afraid and so willing to let himself be used. He hated the world. And most of all, he hated Thomas Usher, the man who had finally forced him to face his own grinning demons.

  The boy lay beneath him, loose and unflinching. His arms were positioned straight down by his sides on the bed and his face was turned to the side, away from Trevor. The boy's legs were splayed apart on the mattress, and Trevor was slotted between his skinny thighs. He was turgid; he could not get hard. The ability to perform the act he most desired had deserted him.

  He had lost it all. Michael had taken it with him when he died.

  "I'm sorry, Michael… but I'm not sorry. Not really."

  The boy shivered.

  "You never really loved me. Not the way I loved you."

  The boy whimpered softly, trying to bite back the sound but unable to stop it from issuing between his clenched teeth.

  "I love you and I hate you and I want you and I need you and I never want to want you again…" Trevor felt his sense of reality sliding away, like the rotten flesh from a corpse. Madness began to leak through the cracks in his skull. He had always been aware that insanity lay on the other side of a thin crust of scar tissue, but it was only now that he realised how close it really was. So near that he could almost reach out and touch it.

  Perhaps madness was the answer. If he were insane, the appearance of the Pilgrim in his bedroom mirror might make perfect sense. And what was madness anyway but a different way of seeing things? It was just a small shift in perspective, allowing you to view reality from another angle, like looking into a room through a window you had never noticed before – a canted window with a twisted frame and stained glass. Or a dark mirror containing a beckoning, hairless figure.

  He shifted his weight, pinning the boy down. He tried to make it work, he tried so very hard, but in the end all he could manage was a limp shudder and an empty moan. That was it: all he had.

  Trevor got up off the bed and stared down at the boy. He was only half naked. Trevor pulled up his trousers and kept his eyes on the boy's pale belly. He imagined sinking his fingers into that soft flesh, piercing through the thin layer of tissue, and grasping whatever he found there. Ripping it out and throwing it on the floor, then stamping on it.

  "Useless," he said, not knowing if he meant himself or the boy on the bed. "Fucking pathetic." He kept staring at the boy, wondering what he should do. He was paying for this – a lot of money – so he demanded satisfaction of some kind, any kind. He just wanted to feel better than he did right now.

  "What next?" The voice was soft, a gentle burring sound. It was more like several voices in one, all saying the same thing at exactly the same time.

  Trevor turned around in the small cell and looked through the bars. The boy from the other cell – the one who had been staring at him – was standing there on the other side, his face a blank mask.

  "Who are you?" Trevor shifted closer to the bed. His leg brushed against the boy's dangling arm. Finally, and much too late, he became aroused.

  "Who are We?" The other boy did not move. He kept staring at Trevor through the gaps in the bars. "Who. Are. We."

  "I didn't do anything. I couldn't." Trevor was scared but he didn't know why. This pale, calm, utterly empty boy terrified him. "I couldn't. I'm not able, not anymore."

  "Who is Michael?" The boy pushed his face forward, closer to the bars.

  "Somebody I loved." Trevor realised that he was crying. He raised his left hand to his face and wiped away the tears, rubbing his wet fingertips together. "Somebody I loved more than I could ever love myself." And wasn't that the truth, the real and only truth? Only now, confronted by something slightly unreal, could he admit to himself how he really felt. How he had always felt. About Michael. About himself. His brother had contained all the good, even Trevor's share; and he had wanted to possess that goodness so much that all he could think to do was rape it.

  "Where is the lost one?" The boy took a step forward and the bars of the cell buckled slightly, as if some invisible force were pushing them inward.

  "I… I don't know what you mean." Trevor's hands were shaking.

  "Oh, but you do. It's written all over your design, like a map to a place We have never seen before. You need to show Us how to get there, to him."

  Trevor's legs were shaking. His joints failed and he dropped to his knees, as if worshipping the boy. "Please. I don't know what you're talking about."

  "The lost one," said the boy. And the bars of the cell began to
bend, curving like bows. Then, as Trevor watched, they twisted and sagged and created an opening large enough for the boy to step through.

  "Leave me alone. I haven't done anything." Before the arrival of the Pilgrim, the sight of the bars turning to rubber and the boy approaching him might have destroyed Trevor's sanity. But now, after everything else that he had experienced, he simply accepted what was happening.

  The Pilgrim. Was that it? Did the boy mean the Pilgrim?

  "I know where he is." Trevor shuffled backwards on his knees. The boy on the bed remained motionless, staring at the wall. Perhaps he had retreated inside himself, or had passed out from the shock of the events going on around him.

  "Take Us there." The boy tried to smile. His lips twitched like scraps of meat. His eyes were flat, like old coins. His hair was in disarray and matted with dried blood, and now that he was close Trevor could see that there were small, round wounds in his skull.