by Gary McMahon
I looked at my chest, the muscles in my neck aching as I peered downward. My entire upper torso felt pinned to the bed but I managed to gain a line of vision along my trunk.
Words of ash were scrawled across my ribcage, a blackened message – or a grim reminder – from somewhere far beyond: memento mori.
I struggled off my back and onto my feet, heart racing and muscles pumping like balloons filling with air. My feet got caught in the duvet and I tripped, hitting the floor heavily and rolling. Breathing out of control, I got back up on my feet and leaned against the bedside cabinet. The red numbers on the radio alarm clock were going haywire, spinning through their sequence so fast that they were creating nonsense figures. The figures began to look like words, so I looked away, down at my chest. The blackened scrawl was no longer there.
Overcome by a feeling of immutable dread, I sat on the bed and waited for the atmosphere to rebalance. I breathed slowly, silently counting to one hundred, and eventually felt calm enough to carry on.
I dressed in a black suit and went through to the study, where I sat at the computer and waited for it to boot up. When I was able, I accessed my email account and checked for messages. Nothing but junk. Closing the programme, I once again opened the photos DI Tebbit had sent me and stared at each one in turn.
The names ran through my head:
Sarah Dowdy.
Candice Wallace.
Kareena Singh.
Three pretty little things – pretty little dead things – hung like party favours on my upper floor. The dream now felt like a message. Or an order.
The girls in the photographs looked completely different, yet they were also the same: all victims. There was a cast to the eye, a subtle shadow that could only be seen if you looked close enough and knew exactly what you were searching for.
I studied their faces, the angles of their limbs, the soft curves of their bodies, but nothing stood out against the background of misery and early extinction. There had to be something, a common factor other than their shared role as dead girls in someone's twisted movie-in-the-mind. This was more than some maniac going around killing girls. There was something other, something of the beyond about the whole shoddy affair. I just needed to find the link, the connection between three young girls and the realm of spirits. Three young girls and the presence who had invaded my room to leave a message I didn't even want to think about.
I reached out and picked up the phone, dialled the familiar number. It rang seven times before he answered, and his voice sounded harried, stretched to its limits.
"Tebbit," I said without preamble. "It's me. I need to ask you a question."
"What is it, Thomas. I'm worn out, need a drink. Do you have anything for me?"
His usual dismissive manner was absent. The desperation he must have felt was palpable, like the undeniable presence of another being sitting at his side as he spoke.
"These other girls: Dowdy and Wallace. Was there anything peculiar about the bodies, other than the fact that they were found hanged, of course?"
"What do you mean, Thomas? This whole fucking thing is peculiar. I don't know what you want me to say."
A bird hooted outside my window. Slow shades of an early darkness crept through the glass and across the floor. I licked my lips; they were bone dry. "Were there any messages on the bodies… cut or burned into the flesh?"
"Jesus, Thomas, don't you think I'd tell you if there was anything like that? I'm not stupid. I know the kind of thing you'd be looking for and something like that would stand out right away."
The bird hooted again, but this time it didn't sound like a bird at all – more like someone impersonating a bird.
"I'm sorry, Tebbit, I didn't mean to imply that you were in some way unobservant. It's just that you might have been told not to inform anyone of certain particulars. Okay, I'll try another tack here. Was there anything about the bodies that struck you personally – maybe right at the back of your mind – as being weird or unusual? Anything at all – no matter how inconsequential it might seem."
The line hummed, as if distant winds were blowing and I had suddenly been connected to their dim wailing. I listened but it made me want to hang up the phone. The sound was awful, like the ceaseless weeping of a distant crowd of mourners.
"Okay, I mentioned this to my superior officer and he looked at me as if I'd lost my mind, but there was something… something odd…"
"Tell me about it. It might be important."
He took a breath before continuing – I actually heard him suck in the air, hold it, and then let it out again, slowly. Slowly. "Ash. Sarah Dowdy had a small amount of ash in her pockets. Candice Wallace had ash on her teeth, as if she'd tried to swallow it. Nobody else noticed, but Kareena Singh was found next to a small pile of ashes, as if a tiny fire had been lit and then put out."
I thought again of the message I'd seen on my chest.
"Ash," said DI Tebbit, in a hoarse whisper, before ending the call.
I sat with the telephone receiver in my hand, listening once again to that unearthly wailing and wishing that it would stop, wishing that it would leave me in peace. But I knew that it never would.
EIGHT
I finished dressing in a hurry and went outside to wait for the taxi. The unnatural darkness had lifted and it was actually a pleasant evening. The rain had let up, the sun hung low in the sky, spreading the remnants of its warmth, and the sky itself was a pastel painting brought to life. Birds sang their final chorus before dark and as I listened I detected a shrill sense of panic in their warbling tune. In my experience, no matter how beautiful the world might seem at any given moment, there is always darkness waiting to encroach, a dusky invader forever poised to break through and cause havoc. Just like that terrible wailing over the telephone wires, it is always close enough to reach out and touch you.
The taxi pulled up at the bottom of the drive and the driver hit his horn. I nodded, and he raised a hand in response. I hurried down to the car and climbed into the back seat – I never sit in the front; it usually dissuades them from making small talk if you sit behind.
The taxi moved off with a jerk, rejoining the road and climbing the hill away from my old house. I glanced back, out of the rear window, and admired the rugged detached stone property. It had been our dream house when Rebecca and I had first moved in with our infant daughter, but now it held only shimmering nightmares. As usual, I wished that I had the strength to put the place on the market, but as it receded into the distance I admitted that I never would. It was home, and that meant a lot.
Home. I barely even knew what the word meant anymore.
The taxi headed towards the airport, and then down through Yeadon. Pleasant green spaces became small clusters of houses became a series of short high streets boasting pine furniture outlets, fish and chip shops and tatty looking public houses advertising "Fine Food & Ale."
Before long we were travelling down Stanningley Road, past a cluster of Indian restaurants and fast food venues where men stood outside and glared at the passing traffic. The driver was taking a long route to boost his fare, but I didn't care enough to complain. Along a narrow alley, a man pushed a small wheelbarrow; behind him, two dogs fought beside an overflowing rubbish bin. People smoked outside pubs, crowding around the doorways in a way that surely deterred passing trade. Sullen faces peered through the fading light, their eyes containing only suspicion.
By the time we reached the Armley Ridgeway I was ready to get out and walk. Only the depressing sight of a sex shop hoarding kept me inside the car. A feeling of claustrophobia pressed against me, pinning my body to the seat, and the driver kept flicking glances at me in the rearview mirror. I finally jumped out of the vehicle at the roundabout near the Travel Inn, stuffing money into the driver's fist and not waiting for any change as the lights cycled to green and the traffic began to move forward around me. I made the opposite kerb safely, yet I felt dogged by a strange sense of muted terror.
It took a whi
le to cross the adjacent road; traffic was heavy this close to Leeds centre and nobody seemed prepared to let me step out without sounding their horn. At the next green light I lurched off the kerb, slamming into the side of a Mazda and almost falling bodily onto the dusty bonnet of a black Ford Focus.
Once in the centre proper, I began to feel calmer. My mood lifted as the last dying rays of sunlight caressed my cheek, and as I drew closer to the Crowne Plaza Hotel, I almost felt normal again – whatever the hell normal is.
I slipped into the pub opposite the hotel and ordered a single malt, downing it swiftly before the barmaid had even returned with my change. "Another?" she said, grinning. I shook my head and pushed for the door, nerves almost forcing me to change my mind. What was I doing here? Surely this was the wrong thing to do. Ellen and I were history. Whatever we had once shared should not be resurrected. Then I remembered that she wanted to ask me something – a favour of some kind – and I eagerly accepted the justification to keep our dinner date.
I saw her as I entered the rotating glass doors. She was standing in the foyer next to a cheap potted plant, a few steps away from a circular sofa occupied by four or five women in skirts so short I could see the meat of their thighs as they crossed and uncrossed their legs. Ellen waved as I made my way across the open space towards her, the other hand going up to push her hair behind one ear.
She looked good, as if the years had never passed. She had cut her hair short and lost some weight – rather than curvaceous, she now looked tanned and athletic, as if she worked out a lot. She was wearing a simple black dress with a thin, long-sleeved cardigan over the top. It was attractive but not overtly sexy, and I wondered how long she had agonised over which outfit to choose.
The women on the sofa were speaking in what sounded like Russian or Polish – an eastern European language I could not quite place but had heard recently in the little room above Baz Singh's club. One of the women laughed and the sound was so shrill that it hurt my ears. One of her companions slapped her thigh.
"Thomas." Ellen's voice held the slight tinge of an American accent, which was to be expected as she'd spent so long in that country. It made her sound like a different person, someone I didn't really know. The nerves increased, and I lost my footing on the carpeted floor, almost stumbling into her.
"Hello, Ellen. It's nice to see you." I held out a hand, then pulled it back and leaned in for a quick embrace. She kissed my cheek. Her lips felt like silk; her skin smelled of lemon.
"You too, Thomas. You look good – if a little on the skinny side." She smiled: a flash of pure-white dentist-cleaned teeth in her smooth, brown face. I wondered if she used Botox. Her cheeks were taut yet strangely puffy. Then I realised that she had been crying.
"I've lost some weight recently. Stress: the best diet in the world." She linked my arm and dragged me towards the bar, her feet gliding across the floor as if she were dancing.
The bar area was empty, so Ellen grabbed a table while I ordered the drinks. She was drinking white wine and soda, while I stuck with the whisky. I moved back across the room, hanging onto the drinks, and lowered myself into the chair opposite.
"Thanks. I need this," she said, grabbing her glass and swallowing a mouthful of drink. "God, when I said you looked thin I meant it. What have you been up to?"
I considered lying to her, but she knew what I did for a living so any level of dishonesty would only have insulted her. "I had a very bad experience about a year ago, and it left me in a bit of a state. I lost weight, lost focus, and I'm only just getting back on track."
Ellen's hand strayed across the damp tabletop, as if of its own volition. By the time she realised what the hand was doing, it had already grasped my arm. "Really? Was it that bad? Are you okay now? I mean, really? Are you okay?" her eyes widened, and within them I saw a strange light that I had not witnessed for a very long time. The luminescence caused by someone who cares, a person with whom I had a strong connection – a person that was still alive.
I nodded my head. "Yes. Yes, I think so. It was bad for a while, but I think I'm back on track now. I… I haven't been using my ability." I had never been comfortable with that word, but what else could I call it? "I've been moving in what you might call mortal circles for quite some time now, but it's isn't that simple."
"What do you mean?" Her mouth was a hollow circle; her eyes glowed.
"The dead always want me back." I smiled, finished my drink.
"Jesus, Thomas, you always were such a fun date." A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, uncertain yet wanting to come out into the open. I laughed lightly, giving it permission to come forth, and Ellen took her hand away from my arm and grinned.
Despite my levity, I felt anything but at ease. Although I had intimated that something major had happened, I knew that I would never actually tell Ellen about the events that had shaken me so much that I had tried to block out the dead. In truth, there wasn't that much to tell. It involved an old, supposedly lost piece of film, a late night meeting between government representatives, the scientific community, and a woman who had attended in the name of the church. None of them had survived that night; I was the only one left alive. Nothing tangible had actually occurred, but madness and death had been the result of us viewing that film. Everyone but me had seen something on the screen: the living, the dead, or the exalted; the end of the world and the beginning of something else. All I had witnessed was a blank space, an empty screen, despite being there only because I'd thought I might just catch a glimpse of my wife and daughter in the footage. All that remained was an acute sense of disappointment and the feeling that I had inadvertently opened myself up to something, some darkness at the edge of the world.
"So," I said, pulling my thoughts away from the memory of that night. "How have you been? Things still going well with the job?"
Ellen placed her glass on a paper beer mat and scratched her nose. "Yes, it's great. I've been working with trainee astronauts, of all people. Getting them in shape, testing their bodies for the effects of anti-gravity and other imposed forces. It's interesting work. Despite having very little funding these days, the space programme is still developing new technologies."
"Ah," I said. "It's a long way from a grotty little GP's surgery in Horsforth."
We continued with this kind of small talk, saying too much while not really saying much of anything at all. You know how it is when you meet up with an old lover; the air between you is swimming with things you cannot name and the words you speak, however banal they may at first seem, are always loaded with an additional emotional weight, a resonance that even casual onlookers are able to observe.
Since our initial exchange, I could sense that Ellen was deliberately keeping the conversation away from my ability and the way I made my money. She had never been able to fully comprehend the extent of what I could do, and even though she had been instrumental in my acceptance of my own unique view of the world, I still did not know if she fully believed what I was capable of.
Despite her intimate knowledge, Ellen barely knew anything at all.
"How about you take me to that Italian place you mentioned? I could murder a nice big bowl of pasta." She stood, picking up her handbag from the table.
"I'm sure that's not a term they use in the States. You can take the girl out of Yorkshire…"
"Oh, shut up, you twat," she said, sticking out her tongue.
When we left the hotel the women from the circular sofa were still there, but one of them was leading a fat man in an expensive suit towards the stairs. The man's hand strayed to her buttocks, his fingers splayed across the tight material of her short skirt. I wondered, briefly, if the women knew Baz Singh.
We crossed the road at the lights and I led her down a side street. Bins overflowed with fast food waste, a small black cat hissed at us from a high concrete step before a closed metal door, and something skittered in the shadows of a recessed parking space cordoned off by a stout padlocked chain.
"Lovely Leeds," said Ellen, leaning into me as we stepped onto the main street.
"Nothing like California, eh? With all those gangland driveby shootings, plastic TV stars and steroid-chomping muscle men in tight little DayGlo shorts."
A group of young men crossed the road and lurched into our path, jostling me as we brushed shoulders with them. They laughed as I stumbled off the kerb, and one of them stared at me as if he wanted to hit me. I smelled booze in the air and broke eye contact. The dead I can deal with, but as far as the living are concerned I have never been what anyone might call a tough guy.
"Assholes," muttered Ellen, tightening her grip on my arm.
The restaurant was called La Tosca, and was situated in the basement of an old building that had once been some kind of financial institution but now served as business units for small companies and one-man-band financial advisors. We ducked beneath the awning, glancing up at a sky that threatened rain but didn't quite seem up to the challenge, and entered the darkened space.