Pretty Little Dead Things

by Gary McMahon

  Instantly and blissfully unaware, as if he had only been gone for a few moments, the man from behind the counter arrived with my meal. The pizza was large and flat, with a nicely browned crust, but the stuff on top – the melted cheese, bright red tomato sauce, mussels and prawns and squid – looked like something dredged up dead and decaying from the ocean floor.

  …drink my blood, eat of my flesh…

  I paid my bill and left, surging out into a day that now felt tainted. There was no sign of the Pilgrim – the being that I now suspected might be my self-appointed nemesis. Things seemed to have returned to what we like to call normality, and the streets were filled with people who, whatever they did to delay the moment, would die some day soon.

  Every face I saw hid the shape of a skull, and every skull was a shell encasing nothing but empty air.

  EIGHTEEN

  There is an old Biblical proverb that states "in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king". I've never agreed with that way of thinking. To me, the experience of being the only one able to see that which everyone else around you cannot, even if you are only capable of half-glimpses, is terrifying.

  It's my life; it's how it feels to be me.

  In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is always on the verge of losing his mind, because the things he sees and the company he keeps are almost unbearable…

  The early evening rush hour was starting in earnest, so I stayed away from the main drag, wondering why I hadn't simply gone home after the prison visit. Deep down, I knew the answer to that question: Ellen was in the city, and for some reason I wanted to stick close to her location. There was no real threat to speak of – no one had attacked her, or even mentioned her name – but still I felt that I should remain close at hand in case any trouble started.

  There was also another reason, and it had taken me longer than it should have to even consider it as an option. It had been a long time since I last called in to see Elmer Lord, and a visit was long overdue.

  If anyone could give me more information on Spinks's tattoo, it was Elmer. The man was an expert tattooist, a part-time mystic and practitioner of holistic and other alternative remedies. He had even been known to climb into the ring for the occasional boxing bout. Elmer held a degree in psychology that he had never told anyone about but me, and I was certain that he possessed other qualifications he had mentioned to nobody. A true renaissance man, Elmer had been inking me for as long as I could remember – he had designed and drawn all of my tattoos, and knew the intimate story behind each one.

  Elmer had also given me my very first tattoos, the ones that I could now hardly bear to look at. I had gone to him in shame and told him what I had done, then described what I wanted to mark the occasion, and rather than judge me he simply got out his needles and his ink and he began to tattoo me. During that first session, he revealed to me the power that can be summoned by and held within certain designs placed upon the human body – and when I asked him to design something to protect me, he nodded, then got out his pad and began to sketch.

  Elmer's new studio – Lord of Ink – was located down near the Playhouse, so I about-faced and began to make my way down to the bottom of the hill, moving in a direction roughly parallel to the busy Headrow. The back streets were much quieter, and the people I saw there were in less of a hurry to get wherever it was they were going. Indeed, some of them were clearly going nowhere at all, just milling about in search of something, but even they probably couldn't tell you what that thing was. Killing time; winding away the hours until something happened to change their lives.

  The Playhouse was a construction site, the building webbed with scaffold and with men performing spidery movements across the heights. I stood and watched them for a while, a strange wistful feeling enveloping me. Someone on the roof – a dumpy man in a yellow hardhat – paused in his work to wave at me, and I nodded before moving on and crossing the road at a set of traffic lights. I passed a Japanese restaurant where I'd once been hired to investigate a haunting and a joke shop with wizened green faces strung like a row of grim spectators in the dusty front window.

  Lord of Ink was a few yards along a dead-end street. The shop's simple black-and-red-lettered awning shivered in the breeze. I paused in front of the place, examining the colourful tattoo flashes and photographs of Elmer's work that were on show in the neat window display, then I reached out and rang the bell. Elmer didn't run an open house: he worked by appointment only, and was so in-demand that even then you had to come armed with a personal recommendation from a previous customer. He did not do scrolls with the word "mum" at their centre, football badges or cartoon British Bulldogs with spiked collars. The work he chose to create was considered an art form, and he charged accordingly. Elmer had inked rock stars and gangsters, celebrities and lowlifes. Often he turned away potential customers purely because he felt that they had not yet earned their ink.

  The intercom crackled. "Yeah?"

  "Elmer, it's me, Thomas Usher. Do you have time for a chat?"

  There was a long pause before the speaker crackled again, the voice breaking up but still discernable. "Usher? Good God, amigo, I thought you were dead. Come on in – I'm finishing up with a customer, but you can wait a few minutes, yes?"

  The buzzer sounded and the inner locking system made a sound like gunshots. I pushed open the door and entered a short narrow hallway, the walls hung with yet more framed photographs which constituted examples of Elmer's more esoteric work. The stuff in the window was for show to the general public: as good as it was, it was bread-and-butter work of a kind he no longer did. This stuff – the real skin art – was spectacular. There were photographs of elaborate back-pieces that were actually prayers made flesh, lifelike portraits meant to act as living tributes to those who had passed over, and countless protective diagrams adorning arms, legs, and even shaved heads (the wearer would then grow his or her hair back to cover the charm, so that its presence was kept secret). A lot of these were based on Southeast Asian and Oriental originals, but Elmer had worked his own particular brand of magic to personalise each one so that it fit the wearer's needs and circumstances.

  I reached the end of the hallway and climbed the wooden staircase. A single bulb lit the way, and it was festooned in dusty cobwebs. At the top of the stairs was a door, which I knew would be unlocked. I turned the handle and walked into the infamous Elmer Lord's parlour of pain.

  "Usher. Good to see you, my man. Grab a chair and I'll be with you in about ten minutes. Just need to do the finishing touches on this outline." Elmer was straddling a man who sat facing backwards in an old leather chair, his bare back covered in intricate black lines.

  "Thanks, Elmer. Sorry to burst in on you like this."

  The tattooist did not look up from his work. "Anyone but you, amigo, and I'd send 'em away. You're welcome here any time."

  I sat in silence while Elmer finished up, not wanting to distract him. I knew how important the inking procedure was – how it could be a form of spiritualism in and of itself, especially in Elmer's place. Glancing around, I admired the work on the walls. Again, there were countless framed photos and flashes, each one depicting a unique and unusual piece of ink.

  The tattoo studio itself was spotless. Despite the bland frontage and the shabby hallway beyond, Elmer kept his workspace in pristine condition. Various spells and purification rites were carried out on a monthly basis, and an elderly Thai woman took care of the accumulation of more earthly dirt once every couple of days.

  "Won't be long now. Almost there."

  The dark-skinned man in the chair was thin but wiry; he had the body of a lightweight boxer or martial artist. His silken hair was long, worn in a ponytail, and his arms were branded with what looked to me like some form of tribal scarification. He had his eyes closed and his lips moved as he quietly recited something – a prayer or the name of a loved one. He didn't even know that I was there; such was the depth of his meditative state.

  Elmer was outlini
ng a huge and intricate mandala on the man's broad back: a complex concentric diagram with a heavily stylised shark at its centre. He glanced up and caught me looking at the piece.

  "It's his spiritual self, the form of his unconscious. Inside, under the skin, this man is pure shark…" Then, leaning back and raising the tattoo gun away from his customer, Elmer slapped the man on the base of the spine. "All done, amigo. You can come back in three weeks and I'll begin the colouring."

  The man stood and turned before a full-length mirror. When he smiled, I caught sight of gold teeth in his mouth. "Thanks, Elmer. That's good. I'll see you next time."

  Elmer gave the thumbs up and watched in silence as the man put on his shirt, a look of sadness blurring his face as his work was covered up. "See you, amigo. And remember to recite that verse – every night until you come back."

  The man nodded, gave a strange half bow, and then left without saying anything more.

  "There goes the next world kickboxing champion, Usher. Remember his face. He's going to be a big star – trophies, movies, the whole damn lot. I guarantee it." He smiled, quickly and slyly, and then hopped to his feet to embrace me. Slapping me on the back, he shook his head and laughed. "God, it's good to see you, amigo. I really did think something had happened to you."

  I smiled, turning away and sitting back down. "I had a rough time, saw some stuff I didn't want to. Some people died. I thought I could stop doing what I do, but recently that's been proved wrong."

  Elmer sat opposite me on a large beanbag. "You can never turn away from who or what you are, amigo. That thing you do – the power you have – it defines you. You are what you do and you do what you must."

  Elmer was a small man, with long, thin limbs and a squat, slightly rounded torso – I often thought that he resembled a little spider, and had told him so on many occasions. He always found that funny, and one day surprised me by showing me a new tattoo of a black widow on his elbow. Last time we'd met, Elmer's hair had been short and dyed a shade of blonde that was almost white. Today he had a shaven head, which showed off the tattoos at the rear of his skull and a nasty scar that he always joked was the result of a teenage experiment in trepanning. At least I had always hoped that it was a joke. With Elmer, it was often impossible to tell.

  We talked for a time about mutual acquaintances and shared experiences, as old friends do, and Elmer cracked open a nice bottle of Laphroaig whisky from his store at the back of the studio. The whisky was a welcome treat, and as the warmth bled down my throat and into my stomach, settling me after my strange meeting in the Italian café, I finally began to relax.

  "I must tell you the reason I'm here, Elmer."

  He reached over and poured me another two fingers of whisky. "There's always a reason with you, amigo. Never a social call." He grinned, and I knew that there was not a hint of harshness in his words. Elmer Lord and I were both men for whom social visits do not come easily; there is never a time when we are able to ignore what bubbles beneath the surface of things, darkening our time in this life.

  "I have to show you something." I reached into my pocket and pulled out the mobile phone, then fumbled to retrieve the photograph I'd taken in Armley Prison. Finally it appeared on the tiny screen, and I handed the phone to Elmer, who rose into a shallow squat to accept it. "Have you ever seen this tattoo before – or one like it?"

  Elmer stared at the phone. His expression didn't change but I sensed a mood-shift in the air, as if something large and dark had just passed through the room, casting us in its shadow. His eyes narrowed slightly, then, giving away the trepidation that he was trying so hard to hide.

  "Well?" I sipped my drink, attempting to remain relaxed. It was not easy.

  "Where did you take this, amigo?" He closed the phone's lid and passed the contraption back to me, and then slumped back into his beanbag.

  "You probably know about the Indian girl who was found hanged a few days ago?"

  He nodded once.

  "Her boyfriend has been accused of murdering her, and this is his tattoo. I went to see him on remand – he asked for me. Told me that he was innocent and hinted that something unnatural was behind it all, that someone else was pulling the strings." I left it at that: Elmer didn't need to know any more.

  "This," he said, "is a design I know well, amigo. It's the mark of a gang called The MT. They've hung around the Bestwick Estate for years, putting their fingers in every illegal pie they can find."

  "I gathered that from the police, but I thought you might know something more… something that perhaps they don't." Flattery never worked on Elmer, so I didn't go any further along that particular road; I just gently reminded him that I was aware of his vast network of contacts.

  "Okay, amigo, I'll tell you what I know." He stood and stretched his rangy limbs, pouring another drink. He glanced at my glass, saw that it was still half full, and put back down the bottle. "The MT is ostensibly a youth gang, muscle for hire, but they also have dibs on a lot of the organised crime in the area. Prostitution. Loansharking. Drugs. Robbery. You name it; they're involved in it somewhere along the line. The thing is, they began life as something entirely different." He walked to the window and tilted the blinds, looking out onto the street below. None of this sounded anything like the hoody-wearing entities that had chased me through the streets of Leeds.

  "What does that mean, Elmer? Please, anything you have could be useful. There's a young girl gone missing–"

  "Penny Royale," he said. "I heard about it." He turned back to face the room, his eyes filled with a sorrow I'd rarely seen associated with his features. Then I remembered that Elmer's sister had gone missing when they were both very young, and she had never been heard from again. It was part of the jigsaw of his pain; another piece in the puzzle that made up his intriguing personality.

  "Yes. And I think that this gang – this MT – are involved in both of these crimes. I can't be certain, but what is certain anymore? I just feel that they are the crux, the locus, of a lot of bad things."

  Elmer nodded. He sat back down on the beanbag, seemingly more relaxed. "Back in the 1920s there was a man called Mathew Torrent. He was a local cloth merchant, ran a couple of boutiques in Leeds and Bradford. A rich and powerful man in the local community, by all accounts – what few accounts there are, anyway, because his name seems to have been erased from all public records and official documentation."

  I stared at Elmer, wondering where this was going.

  "It seems that Torrent was also something of an occultist. His nickname was the Beastly One, and from what I've heard, amigo, he made Aleister Crowley look like a fat children's entertainer." He raised his head and looked at the ceiling, at the fan which circled there almost silently, above the battered leather tattoo chair. "We're talking much more than a few upper class idiots reciting satanic verses and killing chickens, by the way. The Beastly One operated a few notches up from that: ancient rites, demon-raising, blood orgies and even human sacrifice, from what I've heard."

  The fan whispered, as if increasing in volume: double beats. I could have sworn that it was saying a name. My name: UsherUsher-Usher-Usher…

  "How do you know all this? I've never even heard the name before, and let's face it I mix in a lot of the same circles as you." I wasn't sure if I really wanted to hear any more; and I wanted to hear it all.

  "I've tattooed all kinds of people in my time, amigo. You know that. And I never reveal my sources." Again the brief ghost of a smile. And again. Then it vanished.

  The fan kept on whispering:

  Usher-Usher-Usher-Usher…

  "Go on," I said.

  "According to local legend – which is, after all, quite possibly all this is – Matthew Torrent set up the MT as a sort of pressgang for potential victims to be sacrificed during his meetings. He handpicked some of the foulest characters he could find, put them through some kind of sophisticated training-comebrainwashing rituals, not unlike the secret al-Qaeda terrorist training camps we have now in this
country, and branded them all with his initials. MT: Mathew Torrent." His face went pale, as if he were remembering information that he didn't want to pass on. "They were a nasty bunch, these guys. Very nasty, amigo. They soon latched on to the other meaning of the letters – the fact that it also represented the word 'empty', and began to make sure that's what they were. Empty. Walking voids, bereft of human compassion and driven only by an urge to commit atrocities, each one worse than the last. They would creep about wearing hoods to cover their faces, and in time they even refuted their own identities, becoming a single nameless entity."

  I stood and crossed the room to the window where Elmer had been standing only moments earlier. I reached out to the blinds but didn't open them. This sounded more like a description of the thuggish hoodies I had encountered: nameless, faceless, their features masked by darkness. "And this current incarnation is an offshoot of that vile bunch? Is that it?"