by Gary McMahon
He bent over and picked up the cat by the loose flesh at the back of its neck. He slammed it into the large farmhouse sink, stunning the thing as its head smacked against the edge of the draining board.
He twisted the cat’s neck, snapping the bones. It was a humane death.
He lifted the cat’s body level with his face and stared into its flat, dead eyes. He felt nothing. His heart rate had not even increased.
He slid out a butcher knife from the wooden knife block on the worktop next to the cooker and returned to the living room. He set down the knife and the corpse and then went back to the kitchen, looking for a suitably large stainless steel bowl. When he found one, he carried it through and set it down on the floor. After a moment’s pause, he went through into the hall and opened the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs, where he kept assorted odds and ends. He raked through the contents and found a box full of old folded plastic sheets, which he’d used to cover his furniture the last time he painted the living room walls. He selected one of the sheets and took it through into the living room, where he laid it out on the floor.
He picked up the corpse and the knife. Kneeling, he held the dead cat over the stainless steel bowl and drew the blade across its soft, furry throat. He held the corpse upside down over the bowl and watched the blood at first pour, and then slow down to a drip, as it filled the receptacle. It took a long time, because the heart wasn’t pumping.
When he had enough blood he carried the bowl over to the coffee table.
“How the fuck do I do this?”
He took the bowl back to the sheet and then returned to the cat box. Gritting his teeth, he picked up Monty Bright and carried him over to the bowl. His skin was thick, like rubber, yet it was also strangely smooth. It felt like a diving suit.
“Blood, blood, blood...”
“Don’t worry. It’s coming.” He cradled Monty like a baby and managed to manoeuvre him so that his face was near the blood in the bowl. He kept a tight grip on the squirming little body and pushed the face down towards the thick red fluid.
Monty lapped at the blood, his thick tongue making a wet sound as it flicked in and out of the liquid.
“That’s good... that’s better.”
Then Monty began to struggle. He was lifting his head away from the blood and making an odd wailing sound, exactly like a testy baby refusing its food.
“What the fuck’s wrong? It’s blood...”
“Blood, blood, blood...”
Erik set down Monty on the plastic sheet. His chin was thick with cat blood, and he was spitting out whatever meagre amount he’d managed to take into his mouth.
Erik realised his mistake instantly. “It’s the wrong kind of blood, isn’t it?”
Without giving too much thought to what he was doing, Erik reached for the knife, wiped it on the plastic sheet, rested the blade against the palm of his left hand, and slashed lightly. He stared at the cut, wondering how it had got there. He’d felt nothing. He was empty, nothing but a puppet, a plaything for monsters.
Monty stopped struggling. His intelligent eyes widened.
Erik pressed the wound to Monty’s mouth and let him drink.
He realised then that he would be required to kill a third human being. The act itself held no terror for him, but the motivation behind the deed was horrific. He watched as Monty lapped at his hand, and when he pulled away the meal, Monty tried to lift his head towards the dripping blood. His mouth opened and closed like that of a baby bird. He had no teeth. The gums were purple and swollen. The suckered limbs along his sides writhed, a sordid octopus-like motion.
Erik got up and grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen, which he wrapped around his hand to staunch the blood flow. The cut wasn’t deep; it would heal quickly.
When he returned to the lounge, Monty was face down on the plastic sheet. His arms and legs, the tentacles and other appendages, were flailing, making rustling sounds against the sheet. He was licking up the spilled drops of blood and laughing, gurgling, expressing undiluted pleasure.
Erik knelt down and turned Monty over onto his back. The mouths on his chest were open and stained red. He stared at Monty’s face. It looked fuller, the cheeks fatter than before. The skin looked less pale, as if his natural colour was returning. He was smiling.
“Okay,” said Erik. “I get it now.”
His head felt as if it were filled with foam; something was burrowing inside.
Monty cocked his head to one side. “Erik?” The voice sounded stronger, less childlike, and more recognisable as that of the real Monty Bright. Awareness dawned in his eyes.
“Yes, Monty, it’s Erik.”
“I need more.” His eyes flickered shut. He was exhausted. The act of feeding had worn him out.
Erik closed his eyes for a second, and then picked up Monty and returned him to the cat box. “I know you do,” he said, as he closed the lid. “And I know exactly where to get it.”
He went upstairs to his office and sat at his desk. He stared at the screen saver on his computer – a black and white photo of Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank squaring up in the ring. He’d sparred with Benn before the man was famous. Erik had once knocked him flat out in the first round. It was a good memory, one that helped get him through some tough times when he began to doubt his own strength. Times like now, like this.
He picked up the phone and dialled a number, waited for the call to be answered. It didn’t take long. Whatever he’d felt inside his head was fainter now, but it was still there, waiting.
“Erik.”
“I need to see you, Hacky.” He stared at the picture of the two proud fighters in the ring, doing exactly what was required to get the job done. No messing around. “Come out to the old country house tonight, at eight o’clock. You know the place. Don’t tell any fucker where you’re going or who you’re seeing. If you do, and I find out, you won’t get paid. You will get hurt, though.”
“Paid?”
“Yeah. I have an important job for you. We’re talking big money, son. More than you’ve ever seen before.” He raised his eyes to the wall, examined the framed painting of a young Cassius Clay. “Consider this a test. If you do well, I’ll push you up the ranks, and give you a proper role in my organisation.”
“You can trust me, Erik. Always.”
“I know I can, marra. That’s why I called you, and not one of the others.” He knew from experience that Hacky would keep his mouth shut. The kid was too afraid to disobey a direct order, and he liked money too much to even risk the chance of losing out. These scumbag estate kids were all the same: they’d do anything for cash, sell their own mother to climb up the criminal ladder and catch a glimpse of the big bucks.
“Meet me at the Barn. I’ll be waiting inside for you.”
“Is it... is it about the monster? That thing we found?”
“Sort of, marra. I’ll tell you what you need to know tonight. Until then, lay low and don’t speak to anyone. Make excuses; tell your mates you’re ill and won’t be seeing them for a few days. Give your girlfriend the elbow. Whatever. Just make yourself available to me, and only me. We have a job to do.”
“Okay. That’s easy. Am I going away, then?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes you are. Just for a little while. I’ll see you at eight, marra.” An idea occurred to him. “Bring a bag packed for a few nights. You won’t need much where you’re going; just the basic essentials.” It wasn’t a great plan, but it might fool people into thinking Hacky had gone on a journey.
He hung up the phone, feeling nothing. Nothing at all.
Back downstairs. Monty was sleeping inside the cat box. His eyes were closed, his chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Erik felt the same stirring inside his skull. Monty was doing something to him – or rather, the proximity to Monty was making something happen. It was like being in the presence of an electrical current. His skin tingled. His mind flexed, like a muscle that hadn’t been used for a long time.
Calmly, he sat do
wn on the floor, cross-legged, and watched Monty sleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN VINCE ROSE unlocked and then opened the old, unpainted door to the first attic room, Marc expected to hear at least the whine of a rusty hinge, or the sound of boards shifting underfoot. But there was nothing; the door opened smoothly and without a sound.
“So you’ve never been up here before, I take it?” Rose spoke without turning around. He reached out and flicked a light switch. The room brightened. Marc wouldn’t call it light, not exactly: that would be too kind a description for the weak, watery illumination. The room beyond the threshold simply became less dark.
“No,” he said, following the old man inside. “To be honest, I didn’t even know these rooms existed.”
“Behold,” said Rose. “My brother’s library...”
The room was small but it seemed much more spacious because there was little furniture inside. Just a small tub chair pushed up against a bookcase. The walls were lined with books. Marc could not see an inch of wallpaper because there were so many ceiling-high bookshelves fitted along the walls, and volumes of differing sizes took up every inch of them. There were also books and dusty old box files lined up on the floor, along the skirting boards.
“Wow... this is quite a collection.” He walked around the room, examining the spines. There were books on religion and philosophy, aviation, birds and wildlife. Shakespeare rubbed shoulders with Orwell and Stephen King. Biographies were stacked next to fiction. There was no recognisable order – no apparent system – to any of it. The majority of the volumes seemed to focus on Fortean subjects – real life ghosts and hauntings, sightings of monsters in lakes, murders, abductions, disappearances, UFOs, cryptos and tulpas. “He was really into this stuff, wasn’t he?”
“So it seems.” Rose went to the roof-mounted Velux window and opened the tilted venetian blind, allowing a little natural light into the musty room. “He was always interested in strange stuff, and I remember he started collecting books on these subjects when he was a child. I didn’t realise he’d kept it up.”
Marc’s eyes roved over magazine collections: The Fortean Times, The Unexplained, I Want to Believe, National Geographic, The New Scientist... full sets, probably worth a small fortune on eBay.
One entire shelf differed from the rest in the fact that it was dedicated to a single subject. Marc had heard the name Roanoake before, but couldn’t quite remember where or when. He selected a book at random from that particular shelf – The Roanoake Colony: An American Mystery. He flicked through the pages, skimming a few lines here and there, not taking much of it in until something snagged in his memory.
“Ah, yes...” He remembered it now: an infamous case. He’d read an article about it, seen a documentary on TV. A bunch of 16th Century English settlers had vanished mysteriously from an island off the coast of North Carolina. Carved into the trunk of a nearby tree, not far from the deserted camp, was the word Croatoan. There were a lot of theories on why the one-hundred and eighteen people had apparently fallen off the edge of the world, leaving behind only this vague, slightly creepy message – local Indians, cannibalism, alien abduction – and the books on this shelf seemed to examine each and every one of them in great detail.
At the end of the row of books, tucked away slightly because it was so slender a volume, Marc spotted something potentially interesting. A school exercise book with a tattered blue cover, its edges dog-eared. He replaced the book he was looking at and selected this other one, sliding it out of its place on the shelf.
On the cover was handwritten the title Croatoan and Loculus: a Study in Vanishment.
“What is it?” Rose drew close, peering at the book in Marc’s hands.
“I’m not sure. But it looks like your brother was working on something here – writing a book of his own, maybe, or at least an essay. Maybe he wanted to be published in one of those magazines he seemed to like so much.”
He began to leaf through the exercise book. Written neatly on the pages was what appeared to be a series of rough notes, fractured jottings probably penned in great haste judging by the state of the handwriting. The text was unfinished; first draft material. This was clearly something Harry Rose had been planning to develop further but his demise had brought his plans to an abrupt end.
Marc read out a section at random:
“Carved into another tree nearby – an oak tree, which isn’t indigenous to that area – was the word ‘Loculus’. None of the books mention this. It has been expunged from history. Why?”
He turned the pages and read some more:
“The ruby-throated hummingbird is a native of North Carolina. Why have these birds been seen in the Grove throughout history, particularly around the area where the Needle was built? Did they come through from Roanoake?”
He looked up from the page. The room darkened incrementally and when he glanced up at the roof and out of the tiny window, he saw that dark clouds were massing, like harbingers of a storm.
He cleared his throat and read some more:
“The name Terryn Mowbray was recorded on the shipping manifest (but oddly not on the actual passenger list – was he classed as luggage? Stored in a coffin, perhaps, like Stoker’s Dracula on the Demeter?), but this information can be found nowhere in any written account of the case.”
He flicked through the text on the remaining pages. At the back of the book, a photocopied page had been stapled to the inside cover. He opened it and stared at the image. It was a child’s pencil drawing. The lines were ragged, uneven, and the shading didn’t stay inside the lines. The sketch matched the other one in his possession: it showed a man wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a long black cape, holding a short, pointed stick. His face was white, with large black goggle-like eyeglasses perched above an oversized beak. It was a familiar image, of course – a medieval plague doctor. But the familiarity made it no less disturbing, especially as it had seemingly been sketched by a young child.
captain clikcety, said the words beneath the sketch, drawed by Jack Pollack aged 6
“Why the hell didn’t he ever tell me about this?” He closed the book again and held on to it, not wanting to put it down but afraid to touch the volume for too long in case something infected him. It was a crazy thought, but nevertheless it caught hold inside his mind, barbed and dangerous. This information was unclean, it was tainted. Exposure to it might cause him damage.
“What is it?” Rose placed a hand on his arm. “You look... shaken.”
“Whatever Harry was working on here, it has something to do with the case I was researching. The Northumberland Poltergeist. The Pollack twins. The ghost they called Captain Clickety. Even the Hummingbirds. These were all part of my own notes... Harry was keeping this stuff from me, deliberately it seems. For some reason, he was holding it back.”
“I see. Maybe he was planning to tell you, but didn’t get the chance?”
Marc licked his lips. “Or maybe there was something he didn’t want me to find out...” He sighed. “But you’re probably right. There’s no reason he would have kept this information from me. He was a great help – why would he do that and then keep something this important back? It doesn’t make sense.”
“None of this makes sense, son. I’m starting to believe that my brother had mental health problems – far bigger ones than I ever imagined. I mean, does any of this strike you as abnormal? I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the man’s interests, but all this... well, it’s slightly over the top, don’t you think?”
Marc turned to face Rose. The man’s face was pale in the gathering gloom. His eyes were moist, as if he were about to cry. Was he looking for denial or affirmation? “I suppose so, yes. It does come across as a bit obsessive.”
“Just wait till you see what’s in the room next door. That’s the kicker.” Rose turned and walked out of the room. He stood on the other side of the small landing and used another key to unlock the door opposite. “If you thought the library was weird,
just wait until you get a load of this.” He pushed open the door, switched on the light, and went inside.
Standing in the doorway of the library, Marc once again began to have the intense feeling that somebody was standing behind him. He knew that it was impossible, that he was alone inside the room, but the sensation of someone standing there silently in the corner grew and grew, becoming something that he could not ignore. He thought that it might be Harry, either urging him on or warning him not to pursue this any further.
Then, softly at first, he heard a steady, repetitive clicking sound. The sound grew in volume, but remained at a level that ensured no one outside the room could have heard it. The clicking remained at an even tone, droning on and on. Then, like a Geiger counter picking up levels of radiation in the air, it began to wax and wane, creating a hideous song.
Air trapped in the radiator? Old water pipes under the floorboards, making a racket?
The clicking decreased in volume and by the time he was facing the part of the room where it was coming from, it had ceased. The corner was empty. There was nobody there, watching him. Yet he felt as if there was yet another figure hiding just out of sight, perhaps drawn into a fold of darkness.
Marc backed out of the room, taking the exercise book with him. When he finally shut the door, he struggled to let go of the handle. He wanted to keep his hand there, gripping it tightly, effectively trapping whatever was inside that room for as long as he could. Like the fabled little boy with his finger stuck in the dyke, he was holding back the flood – but this was not a flood of water, it was a surging wave of darkness and desolation, the terrible precursor to an ocean of nightmare that would drown all who stood in its path.
“Are you coming?”
He turned his head at Rose’s voice, which was coming from beyond the other open door. He pulled free his hand, backing away from the library, and allowed his body to turn around, too. He was beginning to feel hemmed in. Claustrophobia had never been something that had bothered Marc, but right now he felt trapped.