by Gary McMahon
He went over to the bed and went down on his knees. The carpet was thick and soft; the bed linen was expensive. He reached beneath the bed and pulled out his suitcase, then stood and placed the case on the bed, opened it and stared at what was inside. The acorn had appeared a few weeks ago. He’d woken up still wearing his clothes, feeling hung-over and strung out way past his limit. He remembered that it had still been dark, probably the early hours of a Sunday morning. He put his hand in his jacket pocket to check if he had any money left, more out of habit than anything else, and his fingers had closed around a small, hard object.
The acorn. The acorn with his initials scratched into its surface.
He had no idea where it had come from; anyone could have slipped it into his pocket. He’d been all over the night before: working on a pub door in Jesmond, then to a house party in the Concrete Grove, and finally he’d staggered back here with some woman whose name he didn’t even know. Glancing over at the other side of the bed, her memory was still there. The skin of Melanie’s’ bare shoulder glowed in the darkness. Her arms were thin and pale.
But now Melanie was gone and the acorn remained. It was a fair trade, he thought.
He didn’t know what the acorn represented, or why his initials had been scratched into the flesh, but something inside him told him that it meant more than he was ready to confront. It had something to do with what had happened to him and his friends twenty years ago – of course it did. Marty wasn’t stupid. He’d taken the tests; could even join MENSA if he wanted. But Marty had never been much of a joiner.
The acorn was from one of those trees, the oaks that had appeared inside the Needle... at least that’s how it happened in his dreams, the ones he’d suffered back then and the ones that were still with him now, clinging to the inside of his skull like dirt. The trees that shouldn’t have been there, but were there anyway, surrounding them like sentinels. Marty, and Brendan, and Simon: the Three Amigos.
He smiled. He had not thought of that name in years.
Was that what the acorn was meant to tell him? That the Three Amigos would ride again?
He closed the lid of the suitcase and slid it back under the bed, then straightened and glanced out of the bedroom window. The blinds were open; the river gleamed like a road of razorblades beyond the pane. A bird, tiny and fragile, hovered on the other side of the glass. Marty went over to the window and stared at it. It was a hummingbird.
There had been hummingbirds then, too: twenty years ago, darting above them, in the trees. Impossible creatures, they were not meant to be here in the cold, desolate north-east of England.
The hummingbird flew directly at the glass, colliding with the transparent surface. Then the bird backed up and tried again. Like an oversized bluebottle fly, it made several clumsy attempts to fly through the window, but each time its tiny body simply slammed into the glass, too light and insubstantial to break through.
Marty watched in slow-dawning horror. He didn’t understand why he was so afraid, but the sight of the hummingbird slamming into the glass made him feel sick with anxiety. It was a sight that should not be real; an image from a dream that had invaded the waking world.
After a short while, the hummingbird gave up the fight. Its wings blurred as it flew slowly backwards, away from the window, an illusion of stillness hiding frantic activity. The bird kept moving that way, facing him, looking him in the eye, until it was swallowed by blackness. To Marty, it seemed like it had simply vanished into the enveloping night air.
He ran from the room, into the bathroom, bent over the toilet and threw up. Again and again, until there was nothing left in his stomach, and then he kept on retching and dry-heaving, until finally he slumped sideways onto the cool, tiled floor. His stomach ached; the pain was cyclic, wave upon small wave of cramps.
Marty realised that his fist was closed around something. He forced it open, as if the fingers belonged to someone else and were reluctant to budge. There, at the centre of his palm, was the acorn. He had not put it back in the suitcase. For some reason that was beyond him for the moment, he’d kept it with him, unwilling – or perhaps unable – to put it away.
He closed his eyes, closed his fist, and waited for the cramps to pass.
Once the pain had subsided, he was thirsty. He set down the acorn beside the sink and filled one glass after another with cold water straight from the tap, using it to wash out his mouth and his insides. Soon he felt a lot better. He was thankful for that. Tonight’s work needed a clear head and a fit body. If he was to beat his opponent, he needed to remain focused, and his reactions would have to be perfect.
He stared at himself in the mirror. His long, lean face was mean; the skinhead haircut accentuated the look. His grandmother always said that he looked like the kind of man she should be afraid of, and then she’d throw her frail arms around him and beg for reassurance that he was okay, that he was living a decent life.
He lied to her every single time. He couldn’t bear to tell her the truth – he was unable to admit to her that he was a bastard, just like his father. That he hurt people for fun and for money. He fought to find catharsis. Each punch he threw, and every kick that made contact with a stomach or a thigh or the side of a head, made him feel better about himself. These acts of violence allowed him to forget his own failings, if only for the length of time it took for his opponent to recover and retaliate.
He smiled in the mirror, but his face felt rigid.
He head-butted the mirror, hard, and cracked the glass without shattering it. When he pulled back his head, there was a tiny cut along the front of his brow, just beneath the hairline. A speck of blood glistened under the harsh bathroom light. He lifted a hand and used his finger to smear the blood across his forehead. Marty was unbreakable: even sharp glass did him no lasting damage. He gritted his teeth and raged silently at his own reflection, and at the face of his father crouched behind those tensed features.
Glancing down at the acorn, he began to feel dizzy, drunk on his own anger.
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall...”
He tasted the promise of battle on his tongue, like an electrical charge.
Tonight, he would make another man pay for his own sins, and for his father’s sins before him. This night, just like many other nights, Marty Rivers would draw someone else’s blood in his quest to understand what it meant to be a man.
“...Humpty fucking Dumpty had a great fall.”
CHAPTER TEN
BANJO WAS LOST in the Needle. It happened to him all the time, especially lately. He would start wandering, going slowly from room to room, floor to floor, and eventually find himself standing in an area he did not recognise: a small, cramped hallway, or a large room with only one door and no windows. It was strange, like a prolonged dream. Sometimes he would sit down and wait to see if the interior would change again, this time with him watching. It never did, though; it never altered in front of his eyes, only when he wasn’t looking.
He remembered the fire. The burning gym and the horrible men who’d died in the flames. He had no idea how he had managed to get there from the hospital, or why most of the skin of his face had been removed. When he slept, he dreamed of creatures emerging from the broken screens of old televisions, and voices in his head that told him to hurt himself.
His mind had been empty for so very long. Then, gradually, it began to fill with thoughts and images; vague recollections of a life that may or may not have been his. Drugs and parties and a nagging hunger. A few women, a few men: a lot of empty relationships. Then there was a room, a chair to which he’d been bound. And a bullish man who had been kind to him, and then led him into great harm...
There was not much else until he woke up in hospital, and then another blank spot which ended in him being in a room filled with flames. Following this there was the Needle.
And then, of course, there was the girl. The girl and the chores she’d asked him to carry out – the deliveries he’d made to three men on her behalf.
T
he pretty, pretty girl, with her pretty, pretty wings. She’d told him her name once, but he couldn’t remember it right now. He forgot a lot of information this way, as if his thoughts were leaking out through holes in his head, like water from a colander.
He walked along a short hallway with an exposed concrete floor, his arms held out at his sides and his fingers scratching the walls. It was dark in here; the windows were covered with security shutters.
There was an open door at the end of the hallway, and he could not fight the urge to enter whatever room lay beyond. He knew that it might lead him into trouble, and that he would probably regret following the impulse, but he was too weak to turn around and walk away.
Something moved behind him. It sounded like a mouse or a rat scurrying across the floor. He pretended that he had not heard the sound, preferring instead to focus on the doorway up ahead. Now that he was closer, he saw that there was soft green light spilling from the rectangular frame. The door was open. He smelled burning.
Burning.
But no, it was not the same as before: this fire would not hurt him.
He studied the open doorway. On the other side, positioned along the far wall, was a row of televisions. Their screens had been removed and fires had been set in the guts of the appliances. The flames were bright green. A small pyre burned inside the shell of every set.
Unable to turn away, Banjo stepped into the room. He closed the door behind him, yet he had no reason to block his escape route. He was puzzled by his own actions; his hand seemed to move of its own accord.
Banjo moved to the centre of the room. The walls were bare: no paper, no plaster, and no paint. Just squares of bare concrete. Shadows clustered at the corners of the room, at floor and ceiling level. The fires shed little illumination, despite the healthy green flames. The weak, swampy light spilled across the floor for a foot or two, and then diminished, expired, as if eaten up by those shadows. The flames did not destroy, they simply burned. They burned perpetually.
Banjo sat down in the middle of the floor. The concrete was cold, even through the seat of his jeans. He reached out his hands, opened them, and tried to gain warmth from the flames. He felt nothing. Banjo moved closer, shuffling forward on his backside, but still he felt no heat. The fires were cold.
Something shifted up above him, at the apex of wall and ceiling, and when he looked up he saw a long vine or a creeper curling back like a tongue withdrawing into its mouth.
The ceiling was growing a thin layer of vegetation. He felt so close to that other place – the one the girl had told him about – that he could almost breathe its air. The cold green fires crackled and popped; the air moved with a draught; the vines moved like snakes across the ceiling.
Banjo felt as if he was standing on the border, just about to take a step across but somehow barred from doing so. It was over there; he could see the rim of a new horizon. But he was not allowed into those territories.
A shape drew itself together from the shadows and the vegetation, forming a long, narrow ovoid. It made no sound as it slowly detached itself from the ceiling, hanging down on trailing vines, to drop onto the floor to his right. The shape was upright; it resolved into a figure.
The girl.
“Hello, Banjo,” she said, stepping out of the shadows. She was wearing the skin of an animal and her long black hair was knotted with leaves and twigs. Her bare legs were thin, the bones of her knees as prominent as her elbows. Her face was pale, narrow. She looked hungry.
Banjo smiled. She meant him no harm, this child of that other place.
“Thank you for your help.” She took a few steps towards him and then stopped. She opened one hand and a tiny hummingbird flew out of her fist, circled his head, did a lap of the room, and then flew into the shadows from which she had emerged. “It’s almost set now. Not long to go. All the pieces are in place, and we just need to wait for them to move closer together.” She smiled. Her teeth were stained dark from the leaves and berries she ate in order to survive.
Banjo nodded. He tilted his head, eager as a hound for his mistress’s affection.
“You remember me, don’t you?”
He nodded again, excited this time. Keen to impress.
“That’s right. It’s me. It’s Hailey.” She covered the next few paces in an instant, and suddenly she stood right before him, reaching down to stroke the side of his bandaged face. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s okay... I won’t hurt you. Not me.”
He realised that he was crying.
“Remember? I’m your friend. We help each other. We help each other hide from him – the other one. You remember him, too, don’t you? The bad one.”
Banjo pulled back, as if from the chill green fires in the television screens. He heard himself whining like a whipped cur.
“That’s right. The other one: the Underthing. It’s because of him you’re the way you are, with your face all torn apart and your mind in pieces. The Underthing did this to you. The television things were his. The Slitten were mine, but they’ve gone now. All used up. We all make our own monsters over here, in the grove and the little place beyond the grove. Some of them are forever; some of them are temporary, not meant to last beyond the moment when they are needed.”
He had no idea what she meant, but her words soothed him. They made him feel whole and happy and loved. He pushed his bandaged cheek into the palm of her hand, wishing that he could fly away, like the hummingbird.
“Here, let me help.” She crouched down in front of him, her white features hovering like a vision in the gloom. Her eyes were dark, nearly all pupil, and her cheekbones were as sharp as blades. “Let me take a look.” She smelled of fresh air and wild flowers and herbs – honeysuckle, jasmine and rosemary. Her sweat was nectar. “The doorway must be clean, unsullied.”
Banjo smiled; he opened himself up to her, yielding to her touch.
The girl began to remove the wrappings from his face. She did so slowly, carefully, smiling all the while. Her hands moved slowly and easily, and he felt no pain. The bandages came apart, peeled away, and fell from his damaged face like shedding skin.
“Oh, you poor, poor baby,” she said, and then she leaned forward and kissed his scarred cheek, keeping her lips there, cooling his maimed flesh.
Banjo was dribbling like a baby. She was his mother, this strange, sombre girl, and she loved him.
“It’s looking better,” she whispered. “Your face. It looks much better than before. Some of the power of the grove has touched you. I’m not sure how, or why, but it’s helped a little.” She removed her hands from his face. “Would you like to see?”
Banjo shrugged. He tilted his head again. Then, trusting the girl, as he always did, he slowly nodded his uncovered head.
The girl stood and walked across the room, then bent down to pick something up. The fires glinted on the reflective surface in her hand, and as she walked back towards him Banjo watched the play of the flames in the glass.
“Let’s see... come on, don’t be shy. Take a good look at yourself. Look at the doorway.”
The girl raised the shard – not a mirror exactly, but a piece of broken glass that served just as well. She pressed it closer to Banjo’s ruined face, and at first he twisted out of the way, trying not to see. But then, as she stroked his head with her free hand, he relented and waited for the looking-glass to show him what he had become.
The fires shimmered in the cloying, shut-in air. The girl said nothing. Banjo held his breath.
Then he stared into the glass.
The flesh had not grown back; his face still looked... exposed. It was raw and naked, like something denuded which should always have remained unseen. The bones were covered by a thin layer of tissue, but it was like paper. It wrinkled and threatened to tear apart when he tried to smile. And yet... madly, he did look better than he’d hoped. The girl had not lied about that. He could still see parts of his jaw through the holes in his sunken cheeks where flesh should have hidden them, bu
t the ragged edges of his wounds were smoothing over, becoming less repellent. His eyelids looked odd, without any flesh to the sides of and beneath the eyes, but at least they made him look halfway human.
He opened his lipless mouth, licked his front teeth – upper and lower rows – and then bared them like a wolf.
“See,” said the girl. “I told you so. You know you can always trust me. I’ll never lie to you, Banjo. We need to be honest with each other, if we stand any chance at all of stopping the Underthing. We need a bond based on trust.”
Banjo stared at the monster in the mirror, and thought that he wasn’t so monstrous after all. Certainly not compared to the one the girl was talking about. Because, compared to the Underthing, he was nothing like a monster... nothing at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SIMON WAS STANDING in the middle of the motorway looking up at the hill upon which he knew the Angel of the North should be standing. Light drizzle coated his skin like sweat, the sky yawned above him like some passageway into a cosmic room, and the sculpture was noticeable only by its absence.
The grass on the hill was long and unkempt, as if nobody had been here for years. A line of scrubbed dirt ran around the base of the rise, with trails springing off on either side of the hill – front and back. The path that led up to the sculpture was cracked and broken; huge portions of tarmac had been scoured away to reveal the uneven base course beneath. Ashen clouds lowered across the scene, unbroken by Gormley’s great northern masterwork. The scene was apocalyptic. The world had somehow ended, or was just about to.
Simon turned around and glanced along the road. It was empty. No traffic moved along its length, but far off, in the distance, dark clouds gathered like harbingers of chaos. He stared into the heaving black mass, but could make out nothing solid. There seemed to be protean shapes moving within the black folds – figures that kept shifting between people and animals – but he could not be sure. Perhaps it was just air currents causing the illusion of form and substance.