by Gary McMahon
“I love you,” he said, his voice trembling with emotions that were so new to him they didn’t even have a name.
“I know.” She hung up the phone.
Royle returned the handset to its home on the sill and once again stared out of the window. The empty play park opposite looked different, as if subtle changes had occurred. The swings rocked slowly, the roundabout turned as if it had been pushed gently by an invisible hand; the climbing frame seemed as if it were tensed for movement, like a large spider waiting to pounce.
Five years ago, on this day, a seven year-old girl called Connie Millstone had disappeared from that park. Royle was in charge of the case – his first high-profile assignment after he’d been promoted to Detective. There was a big fuss made in the press at the time, articles in the red-top papers about predatory paedophiles, low-rent journalists calling for citizens to unite against a perceived societal threat. It had been absurd; a witch-hunt.
Despite the case having never been solved, Royle had been praised by his superiors for the way he’d handled the media-created outrage.
But little Connie Millstone was only the first of what soon became a spate of disappearances. The press began to call them The Gone-Away Girls.
Over the next year, three other kids went missing, all young girls. The disappearances were linked by a similar M.O. and the demographic of the victims. The only child to be linked directly to the Grove estate was a girl called Tessa Hansen; the rest had lived outside the area.
These were all children aged between seven and ten. Each one went missing from a supposed safe place (if anywhere in the Concrete Grove could be called that). A playground, a supermarket car park, the Far Grove skateboarding park, and in Tessa Hansen’s case a corner sweetshop on Far Grove Way – a street which formed part of the unofficial boundary between the estate and the district of Far Grove. There were never any witnesses, and no reports of anyone suspicious hanging around. The kids just... went away.
Connie Millstone, aged seven.
Alice Jacobs, aged eight.
Fiona Warren, aged nine.
Tessa Hansen, aged ten.
They were all in the same approximate age group. Each of them had fair blonde hair, a slight build, and was said by relatives to have a certain dreamy aspect to their personality and a loner’s ability to enjoy their own company. There was a link between them, but Royle had never discovered what it was. Other than the superficial similarities in their appearance and the fact that they each lived within a two or three mile radius of the Concrete Grove, there didn’t seem to be anything that connected the girls. They didn’t even know each other; they all went to different schools and moved in separate social circles. The fact that each subsequent girl was a year older than the last might be relevant – some kind of pattern – but he couldn’t see how or why. It was simply another part of the puzzle whose meaning eluded him.
It was maddening.
Like Simon Ridley’s smile, those disappearances still haunted Royle, and with this being the five-year anniversary of the first incident he was unable to rid his mind of the memories. He saw the places where those children had been, the holes they’d left in the fabric of existence, wherever he looked. Child-shaped gaps in the world. The Gone-Away Girls didn’t seem to be coming back, and every drink he took was a reminder that he’d failed them, failed their families, failed everyone, including himself.
Peering out into the darkness, he spotted something in the playground. There was something perched on the bottom of the slide. From this distance, it looked like it might be a bundle of clothing someone had dumped there, or a particularly small vagrant sleeping on the slide. He stood, leaning closer to the window, and tried to make out further details.
The bundle was about two-feet long. It could be a child, lying there on the end of the slide. Was it happening again, or could this be one of those missing children returning?
No, that was impossible. They’d be teenagers by now, if they were even still alive.
He blinked and then refocused his vision, hoping that the image would be gone. But it wasn’t. There was somebody on the slide.
Somebody.
Some body.
A body.
He moved quickly across the room, grabbing his coat, and was out the door, down the stairs, and in the street before he realised that he had not brought along his mobile phone. He’d left it by the chair after reading Vanessa’s text. There was no way to contact the station if this was in fact a dead body, or if he got into any kind of trouble investigating the scene. He could have run back up to the flat and grabbed the phone, but he experienced a sense of urgency that would not let him turn back.
He ran across the road, stepped over the short fence that surrounded the playground, and moved towards the slide. As he watched, the bundle began to move. It twitched several times, rolled over, and slipped off the edge of the slide, out of view. He felt the Crawl upon him – on his skin, like beetles.
Royle slowed his pace. The situation was so strange, so unlike anything that he could think of, that he was suddenly too afraid to move. So he stood there in the centre of the playground, wishing that he’d paused to pick up the phone.
The air was cold. The night was quiet. He couldn’t even hear a distant siren or an alarm. Not even the noise from a car or motorcycle. He stared at the slide, but the bundle was still out of sight. It had fallen to the side furthest away from him, and the darkness prevented him from seeing underneath the slide.
Slowly, he moved forward, ready to run or defend himself if something were to occur.
When he reached the slide there was no sign of the bundle – or the body, as he’d first imagined it was – so he made a quick inspection of the area. There was nothing on the ground nearby. The breeze had dropped so there was no movement from the swings or the roundabout.
He heard a rustling sound behind him, followed by a soft clicking noise. He turned around and looked at the trees bordering the northern edge of the playground, forming a boundary between the area where kids played and the tiny pavilion where old ladies and workers from the office a few streets away liked to eat their packed lunches. The leaves nearest the ground were moving, as if something had just crawled under there.
The Crawl, he thought. It’s the Crawl, and it’s come to get me.
His skin tingled.
He walked over to the spot and waited, trying to hear another sound. There was only silence – a silence so intense that it was almost like a new form of sound. He bent his knees and lowered himself into a squatting position, looking intently into the shadows under the trees. The leaves were no longer moving, but from deeper inside the undergrowth he heard a soft rustling, as of something moving away from him in the direction of the pavilion.
He spotted a fallen branch nearby and picked it up. Shuffling forward, he used the stick to prod at the area where whatever he had seen must have scuttled through and into the bushes. He lifted the hanging leaves and peered into the darkness. Nothing moved. There were no more sounds to indicate that anything might be in there, hiding from him and watching his every move.
The Crawl.
He stood and threw away the branch. Walking backwards, he moved away from the trees but kept watching them, looking for signs of movement. When he was satisfied that there was no longer anything there, he turned and headed back towards the road.
Behind him, something made a single clicking sound. He stopped, didn’t turn around. Waited.
The sound was not repeated.
This time, when he started walking, he had to fight the urge to run. If there was something (why did it have to be a thing, rather than a person, that he imagined back there?), he would not show it that he was afraid.
Because if the Crawl smelled his fear, it might come after him.
CHAPTER FIVE
ABBY LIVED IN a small two-bedroom semi-detached house at the south end of Grove Rise, overlooking the old railway embankment. They walked side by side along the wide footpath b
ut didn’t touch one another. Marc thought that he should at least reach out and hold her hand, but it didn’t feel right. Even their proximity felt awkward, as if there was something wrong with the dynamic.
Abby stumbled on her two-inch heels and then righted herself. “It’s just along here,” she said, slurring only a little. The buttons on her jacket had come undone and it flapped open, displaying the small humps of her breasts beneath the blouse and the excess material at her flat stomach. The top two buttons of the blouse were also undone. Her sternum was prominent, with only a scant covering of pale flesh.
She’s so thin, he thought. Almost emaciated...
Again, he was confused by the strength and source of his own desire.
Curtains and blinds were shut at the windows of most of the houses they passed, but pale light bled around the edges and through the gaps. Marc caught sight of the occasional red eye of a lit cigarette as someone smoked on their doorstep. There was a feeling of mute desolation, a sense that behind this façade there was nothing but a deep, black emptiness. He had no idea what time it was, but it felt late. Too late to turn back, anyway.
When they reached the house, she stopped underneath a streetlight. The sickly light made her look ill. Marc waited to see what she would do, and when she reached for him he twitched in shock. Then, as she leaned in close and opened her mouth, he let himself go with the moment, enjoying the seedy glamour of her overly made-up face closing in on his.
When she kissed him, she did it with such force and urgency that he feared she might leave bruises. It felt as if she were trying to eat his face without breaking the skin. Her thin lips were hard; her large mouth was soft and wet and tasted of wine and soda. When she forced her tongue into his mouth it felt like an invasion, the prelude to a rape. He almost gagged but then he got the reaction under control, stopping it before it went too far. His stomach flipped. The muscles in his thighs tightened.
Abby’s long, firm tongue explored the inside of his mouth and he brought his teeth together softly, nibbling gently.
They came apart slowly. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. His crotch was aching. She reached down and brazenly cupped his balls, and then rubbed her hand across the front of his trousers, pressing her palm so hard against his erection so that it began to throb. “Let’s go inside,” she whispered.
He followed her through the gate and along a narrow concrete path. The lawn on each side of the path was overgrown and filled with weeds. The curtains were open at the large front window. There was a standing lamp switched on inside the lounge, shedding weak light across the carpet. The TV was on and showing scenes from a 1970s action movie: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke; cops and criminals in grey suits with flared trousers running through the grimy streets of downtown San Francisco.
She opened the door and stepped inside, kept going along the hallway. She’d left the door open, so Marc assumed that he was meant to follow her inside. He shut the door behind him and continued towards another door at the end and on the right: the living room. When he went inside, Abby was closing the curtains. She’d taken off her jacket; the thin material of the blouse clung like crepe paper to her slight form. Her arms were painfully thin.
She turned around and smiled. She seemed more relaxed on her own turf, as if she’d also taken off a layer of the armour that had been so apparent in the Unicorn.
“Drink?” She moved gracefully across the room, running a hand across his chest as she passed him on her way to the door. “Or should I try to find a pizza menu, or something?”
“To be honest, I’m not really that hungry anymore.” He took off his coat and threw it onto the sofa.
She smiled. “Beer okay?” She walked out of the room before he had a chance to answer.
Marc sat down on the sofa and watched the muted television. The film had come to a break. Adverts for banks and supermarkets played out before his eyes, not even touching him.
“Here,” she said, opening a can of bitter and sitting down beside him. “It’s cold but I don’t know what it tastes like – I never drink bitter.”
He barely paused to wonder why she had cans of the stuff in her fridge.
He sipped the bitter and felt her place a hand on his thigh. When he looked over at her she was sitting staring at him, a strange, unreadable expression on her face. She seemed to be looking inward, staring at something that lived inside her. That was the only way he could think of to describe how she looked.
He put down the can on the floor and leaned in towards her, knowing that it was what was expected of him. He kissed the side of her neck and she moaned softly. He pulled away, feeling as if he was doing something wrong. Nothing felt right. He was simply going through the motions and feeling nothing of any substance.
He looked around at the living room. There were a couple of cheap prints on the wall, framed landscapes of places he didn’t recognise. On the mantelpiece above the electric fire was a small plastic model of the Angel of the North. Shoes were scattered on the floor in one corner. On a small occasional table to one side of the television there were photographs of a little girl. These were all held inside pretty little silver frames. One of the photographs was of the girl in school uniform. Another showed her smiling on a desolate beach. There were at least seven or eight of these images: it was like a small shrine.
“My daughter,” she said, noticing his interest. “That’s our Tessa.”
“She’s a beautiful girl,” he said.
“She was. She was very beautiful... my little Princess.”
Marc knew what was coming. He should have known that the woman’s damage must have come from something like this, but he’d been too drunk and aroused to stop and think about what he was doing, who he was really with.
“She went missing five years ago. She was only ten years old.”
He looked again at the photos. Placed among them were other items: a few crude, childish examples of arts and crafts. Perhaps they’d been created by the girl when she was at school or attending a day nursery. There was a fired clay saucer, a primitive pottery figure, and two small macramé animals. This was the art of loss, bespeaking all manner of private grief.
“Should I go?”
She shook her head but remained silent. The television flickered like a faulty god from across the tawdry room.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. Her eyelids fluttered in the gloom. She slid across the sofa so that their thighs were touching. This time the contact was electric; he imagined sparks flaring between them, forming an arc of white light. She leaned in close. He felt the soft warmth of her breath against his cheek. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, and this time when she kissed him it was less hungry, more relaxed and intimate. This time it felt like she knew exactly who she was kissing.
He embraced her, running his hands across her back, feeling her bra strap through the thin blouse. She was breathing heavily. He felt constrained, wanted to get out of his clothes and feel her naked skin against him. He moved his right hand, bringing it around to the front and slipping it between them. He cupped her left breast. She took a sharp breath and smiled into his kiss.
They were upstairs before he’d even registered that they’d moved off the sofa. They picked at each other’s clothing, pulling away garments like hunters skinning an animal. That’s how it felt: primal, necessary. An act born out of need rather than want.
Her body was so thin that she was made up of angles. Her elbow bones were sharp points in the dark and her kneecaps stood out from the skin. Her breasts were small, with large nipples and dark areolae. He bent forward and kissed them, one at a time, teasing the nipples erect. She tugged his trousers down to his knees and he backed away from her to take them off and throw them across the room. She slipped off her knickers and displayed the darkness between her thighs. He knelt like a supplicant, moved his head forward, and began to lap at her crotch, feeling her open up for him. She reached down and pushed the back of his head. He tensed his
tongue, jabbed the tip into her clitoris.
She moaned something under her breath but he couldn’t make out the words.
The sex was both hard and soft, it was desperate and yet it was also strangely rhythmic. They felt their way towards separate climaxes, and then, after a short and silent period of rest, they made love again. This time it was slower, more relaxed, and although lacking the same urgency it was no less intense.
Afterwards, Abby fell asleep in his arms, her head resting against his chest. It was uncomfortable but he didn’t want to move in case he woke her. After several minutes she shifted, turned her back to him, and curled up with her spine bent, the bones prodding her skin. He reached down and touched her flesh. She was hot to the touch.
He was sober now, and unable to sleep. The sex had invigorated him, washing the tiredness from his system. He stared at the ceiling, and then at the walls. In this room, too, there were several photographs of Tessa. She was a pretty girl with a wide smile. She looked a lot like her mother, with a similar long face and thin lips. She had the same ice-blue eyes.
The walls were covered with a type of wallpaper that had been in fashion half a decade ago. The ceiling was plastered with ridged white swirls of Artex. The furniture in the room – the double bed, a built-in wardrobe, a dressing table and chair – looked inexpensive, mass-produced.
Gently, he slid out of bed and went to look for his trousers. He found them near the door and put them on. He didn’t bother looking for his shirt. The heating must be on; it was warm inside the house.
He glanced back at the bed but Abby hadn’t moved. The skin of her back was white in the darkness, like dead flesh. He could make out the individual bones of her vertebral column through the papery flesh. Her shoulders were so narrow that she could have been a child lying there on the mattress, sleeping uneasily in her parents’ bed.