by Gary McMahon
Just as they reached the security cabin, Brendan heard the sound of a car engine as it cut out and tyres simultaneously coming to a halt on the gravel beyond the hoardings. He stopped, patted his companion on the arm, and left him there as he approached the front gate to the compound. Who was this so late at night? Drug dealers, using the place for their transactions? He stood at the gate and peered through the railings. There was a black 4x4 parked a few yards away where it had driven off the edge of Grove Street to stop just outside the pool of street light, and someone sat behind the wheel staring at the tower block. All he could see was the dark outline of a man or a slim, mannish woman: short hair, square chin, sunken patches where eyes should be.
Brendan turned on his torch and pointed it at the vehicle, trying to illuminate the person inside. The figure moved quickly, as if panicked, and the engine started up again. The tyres spun on the gravel, and the vehicle reversed at speed, heading towards the southern edge of Grove Crescent.
Some terrors, he thought again for no apparent reason, can never be beaten.
CHAPTER FOUR
“WHAT HAPPENED TO you?” Brendan was making tea. The camping kettle had boiled on the small portable gas-powered hob, and he’d poured it into two large mugs along with some long-life milk and teabags. He stirred the cups, waiting for the milky water to turn dark, and then he scooped out the bags and dumped them into the plastic carrier bag he used to collect his rubbish.
His guest sat at the small table in silence, staring at the wall.
“I know you, don’t I? I’ve seen you before.” Brendan picked up the mugs and carried them to the table. He placed one in front of the bandaged man and sat down in the plastic chair opposite. The furniture in the security cabin wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was practical.
The man didn’t move. He just sat there. The bandages were wrapped tightly around his head and there were slits left for his eyes, nose and mouth. What little skin was visible looked raw and shiny, like badly healed scar tissue.
Scars.
That was it. Brendan suddenly knew who this was sitting in his cabin.
“You’re Banjo, aren’t you?”
The man twitched slightly at the sound of his name. He tilted his head sideways and glanced at Brendan, as if he’d suddenly realised that he was not alone.
“You’re the junkie... sorry, the bloke who escaped from the fire at that gym on Grove Street. I read about it in the papers. That loan shark Monty Bright and his mate died. You were seen in the area before the fire started, and everybody said you must have started it.”
Banjo’s eyes were shining. He looked like he might be crying.
“Did you? Was it you that started the fire?” Brendan remembered the news reports of Banjo scratching off his own face in the street, and his subsequent disappearance from hospital. Because of an eyewitness stating that Banjo was back in the Grove on the night of the fire, it was assumed that he’d been the one who burned down the gym, and that he had run from the scene when the sirens started.
Banjo turned his head away, glancing at the far wall. He couldn’t make eye contact; there was something he didn’t want to communicate.
“It’s okay, man. Let’s just get some hot tea down you. And a sandwich. Do you like ham and cheese?” He stood and crossed the room, retrieving his lunchbox from the bench near the window. He took out a small cling-filmed package, unpeeled the wrapping, and handed Banjo a sandwich. “There you go. Here – have them both.” He took out the second sandwich and handed it to his guest.
Banjo grabbed the food and began to stuff it into his mouth, without any consideration for manners. Brendan wondered when the guy had last eaten. It looked like it must have been days ago. “Here,” he said. “Have it all. There’s an apple in there, and a chocolate bar. Take it.”
Banjo took the lunchbox, glanced into it, and smiled at Brendan. His mouth, beneath the dressings, was twisted, but Brendan got the gist. He knew he was being thanked.
He watched Banjo eat, trying to discern the extent of his wounds through the bandages. He thought again of the news reports at the time – statements about a local drug addict trying to tear off his own face with his bare hands. Apparently he’d had some kind of seizure, and suffered brain damage as a result. When he walked out of the hospital, the police had issued an announcement that he wasn’t dangerous, but the public should be wary of approaching him. His mind had snapped.
“Jesus,” he muttered, watching as Banjo bit the apple in half with a single lunge of his jaws. He ate the lot: even the core. “You must be starving.”
He made another two cups of tea and sat back down, smiling. “You’re safe here. It’s okay; I won’t call the police. You’re not doing any harm, or causing any damage. I know that.” Brendan knew he was a soft touch; his wife, Jane, never missed an opportunity to tell him this. But better to be soft than hard as stone, like a lot of the other people he knew around here. If he could help someone out, he would. It was in his nature. He was, he supposed, a caring sort of person.
“So, what are we going to do with you, then? I mean, I can’t keep you here – in the hut. I’d get fired.”
Banjo was still eating. There was apple juice on his chin.
“Fucking hell, mate. You’re like a child. You should really be somewhere that people can help you.” Brendan felt such a wave of pity and compassion that he thought he might get up and hug the man. But he got himself under control and simply sat and stared, wishing that he could do something practical. When he was a kid, he’d been the most selfish little shit imaginable, but as an adult, he felt such empathy for those who suffered. He supposed it was something to do with that time when he and his friends had been taken. That’s what everybody had said: they’d been snatched. But the truth was that none of them could remember; all they knew was that they’d been building a tree house one Friday evening, and then they’d come staggering out of the Needle the following Monday morning, scratched and bloody and aching.
He didn’t like to think too hard about that time, but he knew that it was impossible to erase it completely from his mind. That weekend was part of him; it was a piece of his personal history. Sometimes, in the early hours, when he couldn’t sleep and Jane lay snoring beside him, he’d try to grab hold of the images inside his head. Something about a white mask with a beak, screams, shadows... and trees. Of all the things that came to him in the night, this image of huge oak trees was the strangest.
Massive oaks, all set out in a rough circle, with Brendan and his two best friends in the world sitting in the centre of that circle. Screaming.
But that was all he could hang on to before the images faded. However hard he tried, focusing intently on the pictures in his head, they still faded away. Perhaps it was for the best. The doctors had told his parents at the time that the boys had been ‘interfered with’, that someone had torn their anuses and mauled their genitalia. They’d been sexually abused. And none of them could remember a thing about it.
Brendan, Simon and Marty: not one single reliable memory between them. Brendan retained nothing but fuzzy mental pictures... soft-focus images from a dimly recalled film.
Banjo suddenly got to his feet, pushing away from the table and sending the chair scraping across the floor. The noise disturbed Brendan, pulling him from his thoughts. He glanced over at the bandaged man, and tried to smile in a reassuring way. “It’s okay, mate. Nobody can hurt you here.”
Banjo’s eyes blinked rapidly. He turned his head briskly from left to right, as if searching for something.
That was when Brendan heard the noise. It was a faint clicking, like someone shuffling a deck of cards or flicking the pages of a new glossy book. It sounded like it was coming from just outside the window. Brendan got up and crossed the room, all of a sudden afraid of the sound. It connected somehow with his vague memories of that night twenty years ago. The mind pictures stirred, like embers raked into a pit, and the clicking noise set them flaring up again into weak flames.
<
br /> He’d heard the noise, or one very much like it, before. Back then; during that lost weekend.
“Clickety...” The word came out of his mouth before he was even aware of speaking it out loud. He stopped, turned, and looked at Banjo. The other man was backing away, moving towards the door. His hands were raised in front of him in a protective gesture, as if he thought Brendan might attack him.
“No,” said Brendan. “It’s okay. Just a noise. Out there, in the dark. It’s probably something blowing in the wind... a bit of sheet metal or something.”
Banjo shook his bandaged head. He’d reached the door now, and his back was pressed against it. Giving one final, vigorous shake of the head, he spun around, opened the door, and ran outside. The door swung slowly closed, and Brendan watched the slim, shattered figure of the junkie as he pelted towards the Needle.
The clicking sound had stopped. Outside, there was no wind. The night was calm.
“Clickety,” said Brendan again, but he had no idea what it meant. “Clickety.”
He walked over to the door, pulled it tight to the frame, and locked himself inside the cabin. He would not make another circuit of the site tonight, and he certainly wouldn’t be going anywhere near that damned tower block. Something had spooked him, and it was more than the noise, more than the word he’d uttered three times now. Perhaps it was the same unimaginable thing that had scared his guest enough to run back inside the ruined walls of the Needle, that somehow made him feel safe there?
Perhaps it was something they should all be afraid of; the whole estate, and everyone who lived here. Maybe it was a sign that something was coming. Something from the past: something that had always been there, biding its time and waiting for the right moment to return to finish what was started twenty years ago, when three boys had lost a slice of their lives and emerged at the other side bloodied, abused, and bearing much more than physical scars.
Brendan looked down at his feet and saw the large acorn on the floor. It was at the side of the door, as if Banjo had dropped it as he ran out of the cabin. The acorn was turned over onto its side, and roughly three inches long by an inch broad. The seed shell was turning brown but the acorn had not yet fully matured; it was still set firmly in its cupule.
Bending down to pick it up, he noticed some kind of markings on the acorn. When he examined it closely, he saw that there seemed to be two letters cut into the meat of the seed: B.C.
He felt dizzy, so straightened up, still clutching the acorn.
His name: Brendan Cole. Somebody – perhaps Banjo, perhaps someone else – had etched his initials into the acorn. The work was clumsy, childlike, but there was no doubt that the scratches were meant to stand for his name.
He pocketed the acorn, turned back towards the window and looked out into the darkness. His reflection stared back at him from the black glass. He looked thin, pale; a ghost of himself. The thought unsettled him even more, so he turned away. He was clenching his fist around the acorn inside his pocket. For some reason this disturbed him, so he took his hand out of his pocket and stared at his fingers. They were fine. Had he really expected them to be tainted in some way?
Brendan sat back down at the table and drank the rest of his tea. It was cold now, but he barely even cared. The rash on his back was burning. It felt like someone had laid a hot iron between his shoulder blades and pressed down on the handle, applying as much pressure as they could.
He couldn’t wait to get home and take off his shirt, have Jane apply a soothing balm to his pustules and cysts, and then go to bed and chase sleep so that he might put this strange night behind him.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SUN WAS shining when Simon woke up late the following morning. Pale fingers of daylight reached for him through the window, clutching through the space between the curtains he’d neglected to close when he arrived at the flat last night.
He was sprawled face-down on top of the bed sheets, with his legs dangling off the side of the bed and his hands and forearms jammed under the pillows. His neck ached. His mouth tasted stale and salty, as if from the residue of bad takeaway food. He pushed himself off the mattress and stood before the full-length mirror, struggling to open his eyes. He had not slept long; after driving back from the Needle he remembered drinking a large whisky and then stumbling to bed.
He scratched his head and cupped his balls. Then, yawning, he headed towards the bedroom door, and went through into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth – twice, to remove that terrible taste – and sat down on the toilet. The seat was too small. He’d owned the flat for almost ten years, a bolt hole he’d never used until now, but had felt like a lodger as soon as he stepped inside. This was not his home. These unknown rooms did not readily accept his shape within their walls; the flat seemed to fight against his presence.
He flushed the toilet and took a long shower, trying to wash away the layers of exhaustion. Last night he’d driven right up to the hoarding that surrounded the Needle, parked the car, and stared at the portion of the old tower block that was visible above the timber boards. He knew the place well, but mostly from his dreams. He hadn’t set foot inside there for two decades – not since he and his friends had emerged from the building into early morning sunlight, blinking and stumbling as they walked hand-in-hand away from the centre of the estate.
The blood had stopped flowing, the scars had healed, but the damage done to their minds had sent shockwaves into their future – a future that had too quickly become the present. Even now, all these years later, he was afraid of cramped spaces and hated the way early evening shadows moved lazily in a dim room. The sound of rustling – bushes, leaves, even papers disturbed by a breeze through an open window – brought him out in gooseflesh.
He wondered how his friends had managed for all this time, living in the shadow of that building, and the darkness it generated. How had they survived the rest of their lives after the puzzling, nightmarish thing that may or may not have happened to them all?
Simon had built fragile barriers of wealth and success; his business deals and property developments formed a vulnerable defence against the blackness that he sensed radiating from this place like ripples on a pond. He had escaped, leaving the Grove when he was only sixteen; this distance alone had prevented the ripples from reaching him. But his friends had stayed behind, like ancient guardians or gatekeepers: holders of the flame. What coping mechanisms had they erected to protect themselves from the lack of memories, the lacuna in their recollections from that long-lost childhood weekend?
Once he was dressed, Simon made a cup of instant coffee. Black. There was no milk in the fridge; he’d forgotten to take some from his fridge back in London or pick some up at a service station last night, on his way here, even though he’d remembered to bring the whisky. He would need to go to the local supermarket for supplies, later, once he’d come to terms with being back here, right at the heart of his broken past.
After the coffee, he ate some stale biscuits he found in his briefcase, and then left the flat and checked the rental car hadn’t been broken into. The doors were secure; nobody had tampered with them. The alarm had not sounded during the night, but still, it paid to be sure.
Simon left the car where it was, parked at the kerb in a narrow lay-by, and walked west along Grove Road, tracing the perimeter of the circular streets at the core of the estate. Even this place, he noted, looked okay when the sun was shining. The sky was clear; the glare was powerful enough that he put on his shades, and the clouds were high and thin and wispy. Yet still, beneath the scene, he was aware of the darkness twitching.
Passing the north end of the old Grove End Primary School, he glanced through the railings. He’d gone to that school, had spent his infant years playing and dreaming inside its gates. He could not remember what he’d learned there, other than how to survive, but suspected that the lessons had served him well.
Last night, after he’d made his abortive drive-by of the Needle, Simon had attempted to explor
e the area around it and reacquaint himself with the streets he’d once known. But after years away from the estate, the Grove made him nervous. The sounds of revving motorcycle engines from the direction of Beacon Green, the loud voices carried on the night-time breeze, the barking of dogs, the intermittent wail of a car or a house alarm from one of the streets adjacent to the Arcade – these had all set his nerves on edge. So, instead, he’d retreated inside the flat and locked the door, watching the estate through the windows as he slowly unpacked the few clothes and belongings he’d brought along with him.
Now, during daylight hours, the threat was a lot less apparent. Yet still, as he walked the streets, Simon felt like a stranger, an interloper. He’d been away too long to consider himself a native, and he knew that if he tried to pass himself off as one they’d smell it on him like shit on the soles of their shoes. The people who lived in the Grove were insular; they had their own defences. There were good folks here, people simply trying to get on with their lives, but also a high proportion of scroungers and criminals. The trick was to recognise which was which and make sure you moved in the right circles.
So he walked with his shoulders hunched, and kept glancing over his shoulder. He didn’t want any trouble. Not here, not now. He’d paid his dues to this damned estate years ago, and he refused to allow it to take anything more from him than it had already stolen...
Brendan Cole lived in a small three-bedroom, semi-detached council house overlooking the Embankment. They were all the same, these properties: identical dwellings built for identikit families. Even the gardens looked similar, with their overgrown lawns, wild borders, and children’s bikes and scooters and trampolines littering the space like the detritus from a rowdy street party.
Simon crossed the road and stood in the bus stop adjacent to Seer Park, an old patch of ground that had once boasted new swings, a slide and a roundabout, but now had become a dumping ground for empty beer cans and fast food wrappers. The remains of the swings – a buckled, rusty tubular steel frame – looked more like a hangman’s gibbet than a plaything. He leaned against the clear PVC panel, squinting through the marker-pen mural of ancient graffiti, and watched the house.