With a lurch, the truck edged two wheels onto the superstrade, answering a volley of horn blares with a bazooka blast of its own. Perched there, eight feet off the ground, chained in the car in the tow truck bed, Kellen had a perfect view of the blue Mercedes coupe as it swerved onto the shoulder directly behind the yellow car. He saw the driver climb out of the blue car, wearing a black poncho that made no sense in the heat.
Stepping away from his own door, this new arrival simply watched as the reedy guy pointed a command and the troll dragged a little boy, bound in rusty wire, kicking and hurling his gagged head from side to side, out of the back seat of the yellow car. All too clearly, Kellen saw the boy’s face. So distinctly American he could practically picture it on a milk carton already. Wheat-blond hair, freckles like crayon dots all over his cheeks, Yankees cap still somehow wedged over his ears.
Except it would never wind up on a milk carton, Kellen realized, grabbing at the useless steering wheel. When he’d called home to tell his father about the murders, his father had snorted and said, “Thus proving there are ungrateful malcontents in Italy just like here.” No one else they’d called had even heard the news. This boy would simply evaporate into the new American history, like the dead soldiers lined up in their coffins in that smuggled photograph from the second Gulf War.
Shuddering himself now, still holding the wheel, Kellen wondered where the boy’s face would appear in its Italian newspaper photo. Drowned in a fountain atop the Spanish Steps? Wedged into one of the slits in the underground walls of Nero’s Crptoporticus? Strewn amid the refuse and scraps of fast-food wrappers and discarded homeless-person shoes along the banks of the Tiber?
Just as the truck rumbled forward, plowing a space for itself in the traffic, the guy in the poncho closed the door of his Mercedes on his new passenger, and both the troll and the reedy boy looked up and caught Kellen’s eyes.
The troll waved. The reedy boy smiled.
ADAM L. G. NEVILL
Where Angels Come In
ADAM L. G. NEVILL LIVES IN LONDON, England. He is the author of Banquet for the Damned from PS Publishing – an original novel of the occult and supernatural, and homage to M. R. James and the great age of the British weird tale.
His recent anthology appearances include Gathering the Bones, Poe’s Progeny, Bernie Hermann’s Manic Sextet and Cinema Macabre.
His recent anthology appearances include Gathering the Bones, Poe’s Progeny, Bernie Hermann’s Manic Sextet and Cinema Macabre.
“Knowing of my admiration for the stories of M. R. James, Gary Fry of Gray Friar Press invited me to submit a short story to his anthology Poe’s Progeny. Not a pastiche, nor imitation, but something original that captured the spirit of the master. It was a challenge that I relished.
“As the spectres of M. R. James haunted my own childhood with a ‘pleasing terror’ (to this day little has frightened me more than ‘Wailing Well’) I decided to write a story incorporating not dissimilar spectres from that ghastly well, but told directly from a child’s point of view. Something James never did.
“I also wanted to strip the style down to a childlike simplicity – minus Jamesian scholars and erudition – while still maintaining his suggestive and restrained approach when handling the supernatural element. Curiously, I realised that young narrators are far more receptive to, and accepting of, the uncanny, and their psychic terror is probably greater than that of an adult character.
“For fans of James, see if you can spot the three references to his stories in the sculpture garden. And I can only hope the master would approve of my tribute. Thus far, nothing has visited to inform me otherwise (touch wood).”
ONE SIDE OF MY BODY IS FULL OF TOOTH-ACHE. Right in the middle of the bones. While the skin and muscles have a chilly pins-and-needles tingle that won’t ever turn back into the warmth of a healthy arm and leg. Which is why Nanna Alice is here; sitting on the chair at the foot of my bed, her crumpled face in shadow. But the milky light that comes through the net curtains finds a sparkle in her quick eyes and gleams on the yellowish grin that hasn’t changed since my mother let her into the house, made her a cup of tea and showed her into my room. Nanna Alice smells like the inside of overflow pipes at the back of the council houses.
“Least you still got one ’alf,” she says. She has a metal brace on her thin leg. The foot at the end of the calliper is inside a baby’s shoe. Even though it’s rude, I can’t stop staring. Her normal leg is fat. “They took me leg and one arm.” Using her normal fingers, she picks the dead hand from a pocket in her cardigan and plops it on to her lap. Small and grey, it reminds me of a doll’s hand. I don’t look for long.
She leans forward in her chair so I can smell the tea on her breath. “Show me where you was touched, luv.”
I unbutton my pyjama top and roll on to my good side. Podgy fingertips press around the shrivelled skin at the top of my arm, but she doesn’t touch the see-through parts where the fingertips and thumb once held me. Her eyes go big and her lips pull back to show gums more black than purple. Against her thigh, the doll hand shakes. She coughs, sits back in her chair. Cradles the tiny hand and rubs it with living fingers. When I cover my shoulder, she watches that part of me without blinking. Seems disappointed to see it covered so soon. Wets her lips. “Tell us what ’appened, luv.”
Propping myself up in the pillows, I peer out the window and swallow the big lump in my throat. Dizzy and a bit sickish, I don’t want to remember what happened. Not ever.
Across the street inside the spiky metal fence built around the park, I can see the usual circle of mothers. Huddled into their coats and sitting on benches beside pushchairs, or holding the leads of tugging dogs, they watch the children play. Upon the climbing frames and on the wet grass, the kids race about and shriek and laugh and fall and cry. Wrapped up in scarves and padded coats, they swarm among hungry pigeons and seagulls; thousands of small white and grey shapes, pecking around the little stamping feet. Sometimes the birds panic and rise in curving squadrons, trying to get their plump bodies into the air with flap-cracky wings. And the children are blind with their own fear and excitement in brief tornadoes of dusty feathers, red feet, cruel beaks and startled eyes. But they are safe here – the children and the birds – closely watched by tense mothers and kept inside the stockade of iron railings: the only place outdoors the children are allowed to play since I came back, alone.
A lot of things go missing in our town: cats, dogs, children. And they never come back. Except for me and Nanna Alice. We came home, or at least half of us did.
Lying in my sick bed, pale in the face and weak in the heart, I drink medicines, read books and watch the children play from my bedroom window. Sometimes I sleep. But only when I have to. Because when I sink away from the safety of home and a watching parent, I go back to the white house on the hill.
For the Nanna Alice, the time she went inside the big white place as a little girl, is a special occasion; like she’s grateful. Our dad calls her a “silly old fool” and doesn’t want her in our house. He doesn’t know she’s here today. But when a child vanishes, or someone dies, lots of the mothers ask the Nanna to visit them. “She can see things and feel things the rest of us don’t,” my mom says. Like the two police ladies, and the mothers of the two girls who went missing last winter, and Pickering’s parents, my mom just wants to know what happened to me.
At least when I’m awake, I can read, watch television, and listen to my mom and sisters downstairs. But in dreams I have no choice: I go back to the white house on the hill, where old things with skipping feet circle me, then rush in close to show their faces.
“Tell us, luv. Tell us about the ’ouse,” Nanna Alice says. Can’t think why she’s smiling like that. No adult likes to talk about the beautiful, tall house on the hill. Even our dads who come home from the industry, smelling of plastic and beer, look uncomfortable if their kids say they can hear the ladies crying again: above their heads, but deep inside their ears at the same
time, calling from the distance, from the hill, from inside us. Our parents can’t hear it anymore, but they remember the sound from when they were small. It’s like people are trapped and calling out for help. And when no one comes, they get real angry. “Foxes,” the parents tell us, but don’t look you in the eye when they say it.
For a long time after what people call “my accident” I was unconscious in the hospital. After I woke up, I was so weak I stayed there for another three months. Gradually, one half of my body got stronger and I was allowed home. That’s when the questions began. Not just about my injuries, but about my mate Pickering, who they never found. And now crazy Nanna Alice wants to know every single thing I can remember and all of the dreams too. Only I never know what is real and what came out of the coma with me.
For years, we talked about going up there. All the kids do. Pickering, Ritchie and me wanted to be the bravest boys in our school. We wanted to break in there and come out with treasure to use as proof that we’d been inside, and not just looked in through the gate like all the others we knew.
Some people say the house and its grounds was once a place where old, rich people lived after they retired from owning the industry, the land, the laws, our houses, our town, us. Others say it was built on an old well and the ground is contaminated. A teacher told us it used to be a hospital and is still full of germs. Our dad said it was an asylum for lunatics that closed down over a hundred years ago and has stayed empty ever since because it’s falling to pieces and is too expensive to repair. That’s why kids should never go there: you could be crushed by bricks or fall through a floor. Nanna Alice says it’s a place “where angels come in”. But we all know it’s the place where the missing things are. Every street in the miles of our town has lost a pet or knows a family who’s lost a child. And every time the police search the big house, they find nothing. No one remembers the big gate being open.
So on a Friday morning when all the kids in our area were walking to school, me, Ritchie and Pickering sneaked off, the other way. Through the allotments, where me and Pickering were once caught smashing deck chairs and bean poles; through the woods full of broken glass and dog shit; over the canal bridge; across the potato fields with our heads down so the farmer wouldn’t see us; and over the railway tracks until we couldn’t even see the roofs of the last houses in our town. Talking about the hidden treasure, we stopped by the old ice-cream van with four flat tyres, to throw rocks and stare at the faded menu on the little counter, our mouths watering as we made selections that would never be served. On the other side of the woods that surround the estate, we could see the chimneys of the big, white mansion above the trees.
Although Pickering had been walking out front the whole time telling us he wasn’t scared of security guards or watch dogs, or even ghosts – “cus you can just put your hand froo ’em” – when we reached the bottom of the wooded hill, no one said anything or even looked at each other. Part of me always believed we would turn back at the black gate, because the fun part was telling stories about the house and planning the expedition and imagining terrible things. Going inside was different because lots of the missing kids had talked about the house before they disappeared. And some of the young men who broke in there for a laugh always came away a bit funny in the head, but our dad said that was because of drugs.
Even the trees around the estate were different, like they were too still and silent and the air between them real cold. But we still went up through the trees and found the high brick wall that surrounds the grounds. There was barbed wire and broken glass set into concrete on top of it. We followed the wall until we reached the black iron gate. Seeing the PRIVATE PROPERTY: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED sign made shivers go up my neck and under my hair. The gate is higher than a house with a curved top made from iron spikes, set between two pillars with big stone balls on top.
“I heard them balls roll off and kill trespassers,” Ritchie said. I’d heard the same thing, but when Ritchie said that I just knew he wasn’t going in with us.
We wrapped our hands around the cold black bars of the gate and peered through at the long flagstone path that goes up the hill, between avenues of trees and old statues hidden by branches and weeds. All the uncut grass of the lawns was as high as my waist and the old flower beds were wild with colour. At the summit was the tall, white house with big windows. Sunlight glinted off the glass. Above all the chimneys, the sky was blue. “Princesses lived there,” Pickering whispered.
“Can you see anyone?” Ritchie asked. He was shivering with excitement and had to take a pee. He tried to rush it over some nettles – we were fighting a war against nettles and wasps that summer – but got half of it down his legs.
“It’s empty,” Pickering whispered. “ ’Cept for ’idden treasure. Darren’s brother got this owl inside a big glass. I seen it. Looks like it’s still alive. At night, it moves its ’ead.”
Ritchie and I looked at each other; everyone knows the stories about the animals or birds inside the glass that people find up there. There’s one about a lamb with no fur, inside a tank of green water that someone’s uncle found when he was a boy. It still blinks its little black eyes. And someone said they found skeletons of children all dressed up in old clothes, holding hands.
All rubbish; because I know what’s really inside there. Pickering had seen nothing, but if we challenged him he’d start yelling, “Have so! Have so!” and me and Ritchie weren’t happy with anything but whispering near the gate.
“Let’s just watch and see what happens. We can go in another day,” Ritchie couldn’t help himself saying.
“You’re chickening out,” Pickering said, kicking at Ritchie’s legs. “I’ll tell everyone Ritchie pissed his pants.”
Ritchie’s face went white, his bottom lip quivered. Like me, he was imagining crowds of swooping kids shouting, “Piss pot. Piss pot.” Once the crowds find a coward, they’ll hunt him every day until he’s pushed out to the edges of the playground where the failures stand and watch. Every kid in town knows this place takes away brothers, sisters, cats and dogs, but when we hear the cries from the hill, it’s our duty to force one another out here. It’s a part of our town and always has been. Pickering is one of the toughest kids in school; he had to go.
“I’m going in first,” Pick said, standing back and sizing up the gate. “Watch where I put my hands and feet.” And it didn’t take him long to get over. There was a little wobble at the top when he swung a leg between two spikes, but not long after he was standing on the other side, grinning at us. To me, it now looked like there was a little ladder built into the gate – where the metal vines and thorns curved between the long poles, you could see the pattern of steps for small hands and feet. I’d heard that little girls always found a secret wooden door in the brick wall that no one else can find when they look for it. But that might just be another story.
If I didn’t go over and the raid was a success, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being a piss pot and wishing I’d gone with Pick. We could be heroes together. And I was full of the same crazy feeling that makes me climb oak trees to the very top branches, stare up at the sky and let go with my hands for a few seconds knowing that if I fall I will die.
When I climbed away from whispering Ritchie on the ground, the squeaks and groans of the gate were so loud I was sure I could be heard all the way up the hill and inside the house. When I got to the top and was getting ready to swing a leg over, Pick said, “Don’t cut your balls off.” But I couldn’t smile, or even breathe. My arms and legs started to shake. It was much higher up there than it looked from the ground. With one leg over, between the spikes, panic came up my throat. If one hand slipped off the worn metal I imagined my whole weight forcing the spike through my thigh, and how I would hang there, dripping. Then I looked up toward the house and I felt there was a face behind every window, watching me.
Many of the stories about the white place on the hill suddenly filled my head: how you only see th
e red eyes of the thing that drains your blood; how it’s kiddy-fiddlers that hide in there and torture captives for days before burying them alive, which is why no one ever finds the missing children; and some say the thing that makes the crying noise might look like a beautiful lady when you first see her, but she soon changes once she’s holding you.
“Hurry up. It’s easy,” Pick said from way down below. Ever so slowly, I lifted my second leg over, then lowered myself down the other side. He was right; it wasn’t a hard climb at all; kids could do it.
I stood in hot sunshine on the other side of the gate, smiling. The light was brighter over there too; glinting off all the white stone and glass up on the hill. And the air seemed weird – real thick and warm. When I looked back through the gate, the world around Ritchie – who stood alone biting his bottom lip – looked grey and dull like it was November or something. Around us, the overgrown grass was so glossy it hurt your eyes to look at it. Reds, yellows, purples, oranges and lemons of the flowers flowed inside my head and I could taste hot summer in my mouth. Around the trees, statues and flagstone path, the air was a bit wavy and my skin felt so good and warm I shivered. Closed my eyes. “Beautiful,” I said; a word I wouldn’t usually use around Pick. “This is where I want to live,” he said, his eyes and face one big smile. Then we both started to laugh. We hugged each other, which we’d never done before. Anything I ever worried about seemed silly now. I felt taller. Could go anywhere, do anything I liked. I know Pick felt the same.
Protected by the overhanging tree branches and long grasses, we kept to the side of the path and began walking up the hill. But after a while, I started to feel a bit nervous as we got closer to the top. The house looked bigger than I thought it was down by the gate. Even though we could see no one and hear nothing, I also felt like I’d walked into this big, crowded, but silent place where lots of eyes were watching me. Following me.
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