by Gary McMahon
He turned back towards the hill, and right at its top there was now a small figure. The figure stood motionless, with its arms outstretched in the same pose as the Angel. He watched for a few minutes, but still the figure did not move.
“Who are you?” He knew that whoever it was would not hear the question. He was too far away, the light breeze was blowing in the wrong direction, and the air was thick and turgid. “Tell me who you are.”
The figure remained motionless. The sky darkened, turning the figure into a silhouette, or a black template carved out of the world, showing only darkness beyond.
Simon began walking towards the figure on the hill. He had no idea why he felt compelled to approach it, but something was calling him. His body responded to an impulse that was too subtle to explain, like the currents of the sea or the phases of the moon. He stepped onto the shattered footpath and dodged the worst of the damage. The stones were blackened, as if they’d been burned. He struggled to keep his footing; the path seemed to tilt and sway, but not in any way that his eye could discern.
He looked up, away from his shoes, and this time the figure had moved. It was standing in the same position, with arms outstretched like aeroplane wings, but it was now facing him. There was another difference, too: the figure was wearing a mask, with a long beak for a nose, and had about doubled in size. Simon knew that he should be running, to get away from the figure, but his legs refused to obey the command sent from his brain.
So instead he climbed the shattered footpath, up the hill, towards the beaked figure that stood so still and so silent in the darkness. He knew who it was; he had seen the figure before, in waking life as well as in dreams. It was Captain Clickety, the one who had taken their boyhood, the creature the three boys had followed to the Needle from Beacon Green twenty years ago. He was here; he had come back. But why had he returned, and for whom was he waiting up on the hill?
Simon felt only minimal danger. He suspected that Clickety had not come for him, but the one he wanted was linked to him. Was it one of the others – Brendan or Marty – and if so, why one of them and not him? There was a sudden pang of resentment then, of shameful envy, and he struggled to explain it. Like a knife in his gut, the feeling sliced him neatly and painlessly.
If there was horror to be had, why could he not be the one to experience it? After all this time, since running away and trying to build a life for himself, there was still a gap at his core, and that gap was the absence of horror. He knew that now; finally he could admit it, if only to himself.
The figure did not grow nearer as he approached it. “Come back,” he whispered, tasting the night: it was cold and coppery, like blood but with an underlying bitterness.
When he reached the summit of the hill the figure was gone. Its mask lay on the ground at his feet, staring upwards: an invitation. Simon bent over and picked up the mask. It felt smooth, soft, like silk, and there was little weight to it. He lifted it towards his face, turned it around, and stared into the back of the mask. Looking through the eyes of Captain Clickety, he surveyed the land. Vast acres of the earth lay scorched before him, trees had been felled and hacked into pieces, and the earth itself was churned and broken. This was the monster’s dream: it was how he saw the world in which Simon and his friends lived. Incapable of seeing beauty, it substituted a veneer of destruction.
Simon threw the mask away. He could not wear it, and he certainly did not want to view the landscape through its eyeholes for much longer. He could not bear the dreams of the damned. Because he knew that the thing which called itself Clickety was indeed damned – and that damnation had touched them all, twenty years ago. It touched them still, reaching across the years and travelling the blighted inner landscapes they held deep inside them. Damnation was a road he had built within himself, a route he did not want to take.
He became aware of a vibration, as if the ground beneath his feet were beginning to tremble. Slowly, he got down on the ground and placed his ear to the earth. Yes... there it was... a slow, rhythmic rumble, like vast machinery working somewhere deep beneath the planet’s crust. He recalled the Morlock machines from The Time Machine – a story he’d loved as a boy. Was he hearing them now, the shambling Morlocks and their infernal machines?
No, that was fiction. He could not retreat into stories, not any more. He needed to confront reality, no matter what the cost.
The vibrations grew stronger and Simon stood, afraid of what they might represent. Was something tunnelling through the earth, heading for the surface right under his feet, on the spot where the Angel of the North had once stood – and should still be standing, casting its protective wingspan across the region?
He backed away, moving across the top of the rise, and then lost his footing. He tumbled down, turning and spinning and coming to rest on the footpath at the base of the earthen platform. This, too, had been torn up, perhaps by some kind of construction equipment, or perhaps by the hateful hands of a giant.
He began to move, running away from the now-barren site of the Angel. He ran across the long grass, careful not to lose his footing again, and made for the main road. Still there were no cars in sight; the road was empty for miles... except for those churning black clouds, which had now begun to coalesce, to pull together and form a single vast shape on the horizon.
Simon stared in mute horror – or was it just an echo of horror, a faint tremor of the feelings he had experienced so long ago?
The Angel of the North stormed out from those dark clouds, taking huge footsteps to cover the ground between them. Simon stood and he stared and he watched as its massive steel feet rose and plunged, making great dents in the road, cracking the blacktop, zigzags snaking from the impacts.
It was coming. The Angel was coming, and it was going to kill him, to stomp him, to flatten him into the road surface. Simon had never been so certain of anything in his life.
He turned and ran, heading away from the gigantic effigy, moving south, wishing that he could reach London at a sprint, without pausing for breath. He should never have returned here, to this godforsaken place. It was no longer his home; he was not welcome within its borders.
Glancing over his shoulder, and exposed by the light of the moon, he saw that the Angel had drawn closer. With each terrible step it took, the distance shrank by yards. Those steps were immense, and his were tiny, puny: he could never outrun this nightmare image. However fast he moved, and wherever he went, it would always be gaining on him, covering the ground faster than he ever could.
He was haunted by the north, and by the ghosts he had tried to leave behind.
The sculpture – always artfully rusted – looked as if it had been left unattended for generations, and the material had decayed. The steelwork had turned black in places, and there were human body parts wedged between the lattices of its framework. The spaces between the layers of metal were filled with raw meat; blood dripped down its flanks, its legs, and formed streaks on the dark road surface. Its mighty wings beat the air rigidly, pivoting at the shoulders. It would never fly, this thing, but it might just about manage to hover, or float, at least a few inches off the ground.
The dark Angel was close now. It must be only minutes before it was upon him, bearing down like a mountain, a living, sentient part of the landscape he had tried so hard to abandon...
HE WOKE WITH a scream lodged in his chest. The muscles were working, but no sound would come out. He felt like he was choking... his throat was stuffed with chunks of rancid flesh, like the offal decorating the oxidised exoskeleton of the Angel.
He sat up in bed, his hands clutching the sheets, and tried to breathe. After a short while, he realised that he was not dying; his airwaves had opened up again, and he sucked in air and attempted to shake off the nightmare.
That’s all it was: a nightmare. The worst he had ever experienced.
His head throbbed, and he imagined his brain small and shrivelled, like a walnut, from the alcohol he’d consumed with Brendan. There was no c
lear memory of going to bed, just a hazy recollection of falling backwards onto the mattress and succumbing to blackness. Back in London, he didn’t generally drink the kind of volume he’d knocked back today. It was a different kind of drinking he did back there, less deliberate and much more social. Even when he drank alone, he stuck to wine or spirits, so he wasn’t used to the peculiar, heavy drunkenness brought on by quaffing so many pints of ale.
His phone was on the bedside cabinet. The display showed several unopened text messages. They would all be from Natasha. He knew this without even looking. He had no idea why he was ignoring her, but for some reason he wanted to keep his distance. Was it the idea that she might be polluted by whatever was happening in the Grove, and he wanted to keep her pure and untouched? It sounded plausible, but he had never before placed her on any kind of pedestal. That was one of the reasons she’d liked him so much to begin with: all of her other boyfriends had been in awe of her beauty, treating her like some kind of untouchable princess. Simon treated her like every other woman he’d been involved with – he kept her at arm’s length, not allowing her into his life far enough for her to have an impact when she eventually left him. Because she would leave him, they always did. He made sure of that.
He got up and crossed to the window, reaching out to pull the curtains slightly apart. He looked out at the street and it was empty; he glanced behind him and the glowing digits on his travel alarm told him that it was after 2 AM, not quite late in the day-to-day life of the estate. But it was nice to see the place at ease for a change, with no gangs of youths or suspiciously parked cars to add to the threat.
Turning back to look out of the window, he saw a small shape darting through the air across the street. It was either a tiny bird or a large insect, and it moved at great speed, whipping out of sight before he could identify exactly what it was. Or perhaps it was simply a shadow, a shade: another slight fold in the fabric of the Concrete Grove...
Simon returned to the bed and sat down. The bare room closed in on him, its walls looming too close and the ceiling lowering by fractions. He closed his eyes, and behind the lids he once again saw the massive, implacable approach of the Angel... chunks of raw meat sliding around at its core, dark blood sheeting across its torso. The Angel threw back its head and roared, but silently. No sound came; its rage was muted.
What had that been about missing the horror, or the lack of horror causing a fault line in his life? Why the hell had he thought that, even in a dream? Real horror was not something he ever wanted to experience again.
He turned at the waist and opened the top drawer in the bedside cabinet – the only furniture in the room, other than the bed and a cheap flat-pack wardrobe. Rummaging around inside, passing over his watch and his wallet and some paperwork, his fingers closed around the acorn. It felt larger, but that could have been a trick of his imagination. He did not retrieve the acorn to find out; he just left his hand in the drawer, fisted around the object.
“Bring me your horror,” he said, the theatrical language making him feel slightly absurd. “Bring it on, Clickety, you fucking bastard. I’ll swallow it all and then come back for more.”
But he was lying. He knew he was lying. Sitting there alone, in a small, spartan room in the town where he’d left his childhood, the lies piled up against the walls, like diseased corpses awaiting a decent burial.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS 2:30 AM and Marty was ready to be let off the leash.
The crowd in the Barn would be small but select, with men in tailored suits or designer sportswear and women in expensive dresses. There was a lot of alcohol floating around, and most of the people in there were either drunk or well on their way. Bodies pressed close, couples fondled each other, and strangers flirted like it was the end of the world and all they wanted was to go out with a bang.
These people loved a bit of sexual tension to go along with their violence.
Marty was sitting in the back of an old Rover, wrapping his hands in protective tape: criss-cross, wrist, palm and knuckle. Even though these bouts were advertised as bare-knuckle fighting, he never fought without some kind of protection. He’d seen too many men break their knuckles, shatter the bones in their fingers, or smash their wrists in so-called ‘pride fights’. Marty wasn’t like them; he was clever. Yes, he was an idiot who fought for money, but he was a clever idiot who made sure he chose bouts where there was at least some kind of rule book.
He smiled, staring at his fists. He flexed the fingers. The wrappings were perfect: nice and tight. Some men had hands like glass, but Marty’s were like steel rods covered in a thick layer of rubber.
“You okay back there, Rivers?” The man in the front passenger seat did not turn around. He just sat and stared through the windscreen. His big bald head sat on a neck as thick as a horse’s thigh, and the expensive leather jacket he wore glistened like a beetle’s back.
“Fine,” said Marty. “Just take me to the fucker, and I’ll put him down. Then we can all go home and count our money.”
The man laughed. “Aye, you’re a funny bastard. Has anyone ever told you that?” At last he turned around, and his small, squinty eyes looked as hard as stones beneath his curiously light eyebrows. His face was wrinkled, but it was difficult to tell how old he was. Even Erik Best’s closest associates didn’t know his true age; it was a well-kept secret, and the fact that he never told anyone betrayed the man’s huge capacity for narcissism.
“Yeah,” said Marty. “They tell me all the time. I’m a regular fucking stand-up comedian, me.”
Best turned back to face the windscreen and the Barn beyond, the smile stuck to his face. Marty did not trust this man an inch. Erik Best was an ex-boxer, and a thoroughly old-school monster, who always played with a game face. Nobody knew what he was thinking; not one person could see beyond the façade. And that was the way Best liked it. No one got past his defences; not even women.
“This Polish boy – this Aleksi – he’s a big lad. You sure you can handle him? I have a lot of money riding on you, and my friends have even more, so the last thing we want is for you to go down on your arse, marra.”
Marty grinned. His cheekbones felt solid and unbreakable, like teak. “I’ve seen the tapes. I can handle this kid. He might be big, but he does the same thing every time. He feints with his left just before swinging that big right haymaker. He’s strong, but he’s clumsy and obvious. No proper training. I can take him.”
The bald head nodded once. “Just make sure you fucking do, or you and me will have a little problem. And I doubt either of us wants that, eh, marra?”
Marty waited a beat, just to show that he wasn’t scared (although he should be; Best was a bad bastard from way back, when hard men were genuinely hard). Then, quietly, he said, “No sweat, Erik. I’ll even string it out a bit, just so your friends get their money’s worth.”
Best’s laughter filled the car. It sounded genuine, but Marty knew that you could never be sure with a man like Erik Best.
The silent driver guided the car off the motorway and along the minor roads. They were several miles out of the city, where the countryside began to encroach and cancel out the manmade structures. Not too far away, the Scottish borders demarcated the ancient boundaries between the old tribes of the Britons and the Picts: it was a place of ruined castles and ley lines; of ancient stone cairns, secret underground waterways and the spirits of the marauding dead. The land was steeped in a history that Marty had only ever learned about in school. The real stories – the petty wars and the personal politics and the blood that had drenched the earth – were something of which he knew very little. But still it scared him. He feared these open spaces, seeing glimpses of an ancient world that he could never truly know. Strip away the urban glamour, the cars and the suits and the money, and all you had left was the bare earth... and the old bloodstains that would never truly fade.
The farmhouse loomed on the horizon. It was an old structure, all ancient timber beams and locally
quarried stone, and as far as he knew nobody had lived here for decades. Erik Best ran a lot of his entertainments out of this place: dog fights, sex and drug parties, and of course the bare knuckle bouts upon which he’d built his reputation.
As they drew closer to the old building, Marty saw people milling about on the grass outside the Barn, located several yards away from the main building. The lights were on in the house, but the doors were open and the majority of the select guests had already begun to gather at the place of combat.
“They’re all ready for you, me lad. Let’s not let them down, eh?”
Marty said nothing. He checked the wrappings on his hands and did a few neck-stretching exercises. He was limber this evening, but there was always room for a little more flexibility. The key to this kind of gig, he knew from experience, was a combination of stamina and flexibility. With those two elements in place, you could easily outdo brute strength. If you knew what you were doing.
And Marty knew what he was doing.
They parked the car slightly away from the other vehicles – mostly four-wheel drive yummy-mummy school-run models, but with a couple of Mercs and Beamers parked alongside them. The driver stayed where he was, and Best climbed out, going round to the rear to open the door for his star attraction.
Marty nodded and got out of the car. “Thanks,” he said, scanning the area. He’d been here before, a handful of times, so he already knew the layout. The last time he’d been at the farm, it had been for one of Best’s infamous parties, but the time before that was for a bout in the Barn against a wiry gypsy blessed more with aggression than with ring sense.
“You ready, marra?” Best stood before him; the top of his head came up to Marty’s chest. He was small, but he was deadly. Sometimes people forgot this fact, and they always came off the worse for it.
“Fuck, yes.” Marty clapped his hands together and started to jump up and down on the spot, short, sharp movements meant to get his circulation going, to get his buzz on. The air was warm; the sky was strangely bright for this time of the night. He unzipped his tracksuit top, turned around, and threw it into the car. He was pumped; the muscles in his arms and shoulders felt tight, in a good way. He was primed.