A few minutes before, he’d placed a saucer of pure white liquid, still warm from the microwave, in front of its rag-box cradle. It had turned its single glass eye upon him as though he were torturing it. It had vented a moan of bleak destitution that punctured his chest.
Milk was not to be its nourishment.
Crying without tears, he’d left the shed and stood in the fertile surroundings staring through the newly-forming fruits and vegetables. Pods, gourds, edible flowers, seed heads, nourishing green stalks. All had grown up from the ash and dust of the earth. All had taken strength and vitality from dead or decaying matter, from things that had once lived.
The answer had to be here somewhere. He’d never known a problem that couldn’t be worked out by spending time in the garden. His eyes focussed on the runner beans he’d planted a month earlier. Some of their flowers had already formed and dropped away leaving the tiny precursors to the long flat seed carriers that he would eat. The ones he did not cook or freeze would ripen and dry and he would keep the speckled purple beans inside them to plant the following year. Generations of runner beans had come and gone right here in his garden.
Miniature kidneys; that was what the beans reminded him of.
Below ground, potatoes were forming in clumps under flowering tops. In the miniature glasshouse, tomatoes were appearing in tiny green rows on the vine. They grew from a special compost that he’d devised over the years. Dead things fed the living. That was the natural way. And flowers, fruits and seeds were the organs by which those living things reproduced and flourished.
The thing in the shed was not living in the strictest sense. It had been born amid the slime and ordure of human waste. It had come from dead, discarded things and it had crawled away from its birthplace in its attempt to survive. Clearly, whatever it needed wasn’t in the landfill. The dead feed the living. That was the law. But it was an old law now. This creature was something new; nature’s new vision. A break from evolution. Something that would perhaps save the world from self-destruction if it had the chance to survive. He knew it was important. It was beyond important. The creature was the key to a fresh nature in the world, a new living logic that would reverse the destructive appetites of humanity.
Only one new logic made sense in this case: a reversal of the old natural laws. The creature’s survival depended on it.
For a moment he smiled in understanding but it faded with the implications of what he had to do. He wanted to think of himself as the midwife of the new nature but he’d been too late for that, merely witnessing the birth from a distance. But if the creature survived, he might be remembered as the nursemaid of the new nature. Perhaps even its governess and teacher. He was half surprised to find he wanted the responsibility.
The guilt was something he would have to learn to live with.
Explaining what had happened had been impossible. They knew there was no way anyone would believe the truth but coming up with an alternative story had been almost as difficult. As Ray drove and Jenny held her mutilated foot against the dashboard they’d had a surreal conversation. Blood and effluent had smeared the moulded plastic.
‘You slammed a garage door on it.’
‘I’m not strong enough to do this to myself.’
‘All right. I slammed a garage door on it.’
Jenny, who had shown surprising stoicism since the ‘accident’ started to cry. Ray pressed a little harder on the accelerator hoping to pass the van in front of them. Traffic appeared in the opposite lane and he had to ease off. All the time they spent between here and the hospital meant more time for Jenny’s wound to be exposed to the filth of the thing he’d killed.
‘We dropped a manhole cover on it. Those things are heavy.’
‘What the fuck were we doing carrying a manhole cover?’
‘Uh . . . we were . . . going into the sewer to retrieve some keys. That will explain the, uh . . . you know, the smell and everything.’
Jenny had stared across at him then and Ray had felt a real rift open up between them for the first time. Or perhaps it was just the first time he’d admitted it to himself. When it came to handling things together, handling life, nothing worked. Stoned, they were fine. They were company for each other. Adequate company. He didn’t know why it suddenly hurt to see it that way. She looked sick of him. Sick of everything.
‘A dog bit me, Ray. It bit my toe right off. We were by the river and there was a lot of rubbish strewn around. That’s what we’ll say.’
Ray had shrugged. Fine. It was her toe. It would be her story. As suddenly as the jab of emotional hurt had come, it vanished. He couldn’t wait to get the odour of blood and shit out of his car.
Now, two hours later, he dropped Jenny off at her place. She was dosed up with painkillers and he’d bought her a half bottle of brandy for the shock. She didn’t ask him in and he was glad. He held the door open for her and she thumped inelegantly past him on her borrowed hospital crutches. She still smelled terrible because there was sewage all over her jeans and jacket but the doctors had told her not to get her foot wet. Still, he hoped she’d have a bath.
‘Want me to come in and make you a cup of tea or something?’ he asked, feeling obliged to make some kind of gesture.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. She collapsed onto her untidy couch, unscrewed the cap off the brandy and took a couple of large sips. ‘Don’t you worry about me.’
She managed an ugly, forced smile and all Ray wanted to do was leave.
The doctor who stitched her foot up hadn’t believed their dog story. They stood by it, though. Even when he pointed out it was unlikely a canine bite would look like this. He’d given her a tetanus shot and a week’s course of antibiotics. He never even mentioned rabies. The doctor wasn’t much older than they were and looked exhausted. Maybe that was why he hadn’t involved the police. Either way, they were both relieved to get away from Shreve A&E without having to answer any more questions.
Now Ray looked at Jenny and thought about how this might be a story he’d tell his mates or his next girlfriend. One day, perhaps but not yet. For now, still not understanding what had happened and the shock of her mutilation would keep the event a secret.
‘You sure you’ll be alright?’ He asked.
She took another sip of brandy and nodded without looking up.
‘I’ll see you then,’ he said.
‘Yeah. See ya.’
He shut the door and walked slowly back to the car. Next stop was the pub. College would have to survive without him for a day or two. Ray had some forgetting to do. After a couple of pints in the snug of The Barge had released some of the weird tension that had built up inside him, he couldn’t help a grim smile and a stifled giggle which drew a glance from Doug, the landlord: they hadn’t found her toe.
10
Mavis Ahern kept an eye on her street and as much of Meadowlands as she could see. Not a neighbourhood watch so much as a Christian vigil. This was the tiny corner of God’s no-longer-so-green Earth where she was His sentinel. There were misdeeds to be seen most days if she watched carefully enough and long enough. The binoculars were essential to her task, as was the swivelling piano stool which allowed her gaze to sweep smoothly between the windows and pathways of Bluebell Way.
She saw cars keyed by children too young to be out after six o’clock. She saw drunken youths urinating against the swings in the corner of the playing field visible from her bathroom. From there she could also observe the space behind the pavilion and lavatories where old and young alike believed they could not be seen. She had views into the bedrooms of several houses on the street and also into some of the lounges and hallways. From her own bedroom she could see plenty of back gardens too. What others considered private, she considered her business; God’s business.
Wickedness flourished in Bluebell Way.
But nothing s
o far had topped the goings on in one particular house, the house opposite her own in which she believed she had a friend and at least one fellow Christian. Now she knew how wrong she had been. Not that she’d ever liked the husband and his flash car nor his secret smoking habit, observed on a couple of mornings when she’d followed him down to Shreve Country Park. She didn’t much like the dogs either, but in the lady of the house she saw a wayward, vulnerable, potentially salvageable Christian girl who just needed a little bit of herding in the right direction.
Now, though, Mavis merely saw herself as incredibly naïve and, despite the dubious education her watchfulness had bestowed upon her, completely unprepared for the depths of iniquity that lay beneath the suburban veneer of middle class life in her town.
She’d watched the boy on his paper round for months and, as plain as his presence was, he’d always been invisible to her. Then, one morning, the door had opened just as he pushed his paper through the letterbox. She’d seen a glimpse of Tamsin Doherty in her white dressing gown, hands clasped around a cup of black coffee. There was an exchange on the doorstep she couldn’t hear, both the boy and the woman motionless as the words passed between them. Somehow, Mavis knew what would happen even though she could barely believe such a thing possible. But she must have been able to imagine the outcome otherwise how could she have had this premonition?
She often wondered what the words were that had been spoken by the woman and the boy that morning. What on Earth could they have been? How did two such ill-matched people begin these things? Along with the vague foreknowledge of the sin to come, Mavis also knew she would never understand the answers to her questions even if she found them. The relationship was from the realms of some deranged fantasy, dreamed up by the kind of minds she would never penetrate.
She found it hard not to hate Kevin Doherty, despite the fact the woman’s sin was greater - in anyone’s eyes. Even the boy seemed wiser than his years. He ought to have known better. Boys were such filthy creatures and they had no hope of growing into anything other than vile men with wills honed for domination and a desire for badness in all things.
She would somehow have to put it all straight. What was the point in watching for the Lord if you didn’t labour for Him too? This would not be evangelism. It would be the saving of three otherwise lost, damned souls. She would bring them back from the cusp of ruination.
***
Mason tested his theory first to be sure.
There was something sacred in the act for him. He was the first one whose life the creature would gain from. He wasn’t scared of the knife or of making the cut but his stomach leapt and fluttered as he knelt in front of the weakening newborn and put the blade of a small penknife to a vein on the inside of his elbow. It must have been a kind of excitement.
The air in the shed smelled of excrement and decay but he ignored this, likening the task to changing a child’s nappy: it was the natural function of a carer or guardian. The creature knew what Mason was about do and its mewlings changed from pathetic whines to expectant, urgent growls. It squirmed amid its rags in anticipation. Leaning down so the drops from his arm would run into the clean saucer, he punctured his skin with the tip of the knife. Quick and sure he split the vein.
The clinical way he did it prevented the incision from hurting much. Dark blood trickled down from the cut and dribbled off the tip of his elbow. It pattered warmly into the white saucer. He flexed his biceps tight to squeeze more from the neat wound until the saucer was close to overflowing. The cries of the creature were insistent. He laid the knife down and placed the saucer on the floor beside the rag box. The creature leaned out and a crumpled plastic straw appeared from its Styrofoam flap of a mouth. The straw darkened as the creature drew Mason’s living fluid in. The creature swelled.
A midnight light expanded behind its glass eye.
***
The studio was more like a warehouse. Aggie arrived at seven in the morning, running from Stepney Green tube station. Most of the others were already there - not a great start. A gruff ogre of a woman had prodded her along a corridor muttering in Czech or Polish.
She and six other girls - some of them younger than she was, she was fairly certain - had prepared for the shoot in what she thought must once have been a cold storage room. The thick vertical strips of plastic still formed the ‘door’ between the dressing room and the large bare space where the photographers and sets were. The work happened at a frenetic pace, the photographers working to some kind of deadline she didn’t understand. The pressure was constant. Everyone was impatient and rude and she couldn’t risk admitting to a lack of experience. There seemed to be a lack of staff too. One make-up girl ran between the seven of them. A barely coherent boy about her age gestured to outfits hanging in flimsy dry cleaning wrappers on a chrome clothes rail. She was so cold her nipples stood permanently erect and she had a sense the photographers quietly enjoyed her discomfort. She’d expected all the staff to be Italian or French but instead they had names like Grigor and Dobry and Janek.
She tried to think of it as bohemian but really it was sleazy. No denying it.
It was only her second week in London and already she felt like she’d been there two months. The smell of the city was in her skin now, didn’t come off no matter how hard she scrubbed. She was at the bottom of the pile and there was a long way to climb over the sharp hip-bones and elbows of thousands of other models. Every one of them would do what they could to thwart her. The dressing room atmosphere was not one of camaraderie and understanding, it was chilly and toxic. Most of the girls didn’t even speak to her. Aggie was horrified to realise she was getting used to it.
By eleven the shoot was over. Aggie checked her tiny diary for the address and time of the next shoot. There was no way she was going to make it on schedule. She hadn’t eaten breakfast and there was no opportunity to grab a snack. Running from the warehouse, and thanking God she’d worn flat shoes, she skittered down into the underground and caught a District line train to East Putney. She studied her A to Z as she travelled and ran to the next address arriving in a sweat.
The location was utterly different from any she’d seen so far. She rang the bell of what appeared to be the top floor flat of a very smart-looking Victorian town house. No one replied but she heard a buzzer and pushed the door open. Inside was a lift shaft running up the centre of the stairs. She was too frightened to go inside in case she got stuck. Once again she found herself running.
She arrived outside the top floor front door out of breath and knocked.
No one came immediately and she was about to knock again when a woman opened the door. She was small and dark-haired with a languid voice and manner.
‘Welcome, cherie,’ she said and moved out of the way.
At last, a French accent and a decent venue.
Aggie stepped past her into a private London paradise. The flat was lined with paintings and free-standing sculptures. Tropical plants and flowers sprouted from lavish pots wherever there was a space. From a room she couldn’t see, a dreamy kind of music she didn’t recognise wafted out.
‘God, this is lovely,’ she said and then regretted it. Learning to hide her ignorance was one of the hardest lessons the city had to offer.
The woman shrugged, smiled a little and gestured for Aggie to move deeper into the collision of art and jungle.
‘The door to the left, cherie.’
When Aggie reached the door the woman was suddenly right behind her.
‘What would you like to drink?’
‘God, I’d love a cup of tea. Milk and two sugars.’
The petite woman tilted her head, her brow wrinkling slightly. Then she laughed.
‘You’re a vodka girl,’ she said. ‘I can always tell.’
Before Aggie could protest, she’d receded away down the overgrown corridor. Not knowing what else to do, Aggi
e turned the handle and pushed open the door. She didn’t understand what she saw.
The room was painted black. A darkroom, she thought, at first. Then, by the light of the bare bulb in the centre of the ceiling, she saw the wooden rack lining the wall to her left, the chains and cuffs hanging from it. A chair with a high back, like some kind of Gothic throne, occupied the centre of the space. From its arms and legs hung thick leather thongs and buckled straps. On the wall to her right hung rows of paraphernalia. Some of them she recognised - whips and restraints and masks among them. Other items tested her imagination. It was as the purpose of some of the objects began to make sense that she felt a bulky presence behind her.
She turned.
A man stood in the corridor. His physical intimacy forced her inside the room. The French woman followed them in and closed the door behind her.
‘I don’t do this kind of . . . work.’ She didn’t know what else to say.
‘No one officially does this kind of work,’ said the man. He was squat and muscular with a flattened face. His accent was almost aristocratic. It silenced her for a few more seconds.
‘No,’ she said eventually, looking from one impassive face to the other, ‘I don’t ever do this kind of work.’
The man stepped past her into the room. He leaned on the chair back. The woman handed Aggie a nearly full high-ball - vodka, ice, lemon. She held it but did not drink. The woman took her place beside the man. Aggie glanced towards the door and the man shrugged.
‘You’re not under any obligation,’ he said. ‘Leave if you want.’
Aggie’s heartbeat swelled in her neck. Her chest hammered. She was sure they could hear it.
Sooner or later this was going to come up. All I have to do is turn around and walk away.
She didn’t move. Her own stubbornness frightened her. Why didn’t she just leave? she wondered. She wanted more. Something was telling her she wasn’t in danger. All she was doing was walking the wild side.
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