Pretty Little Dead Things

by Gary McMahon

  I stood and stared, knowing that I would follow. I always did, in the hope that I could help. It was what I did, what I was supposed to do.

  Spinks entered the bathroom and seemed to vanish from sight, as if the small, rather cramped room had suddenly become infinite. I followed him inside, certain that I had little choice in the matter. Whichever way I tried to turn, I knew that the bathroom door would be waiting for me, and it would not close until I used it.

  The room was immense. The usual bathroom fittings of bath, shower rail, sink and toilet had been erased, and the only familiar item to remain was a mirror of tarnished glass. My bare feet skimmed across something soft, like a powder – or perhaps ash. The weird sketchy light flickered as I approached the mirror, and once I was standing an arm's length from it, the murky glass began to clear. Byron Spinks stood inside the mirror. He was a reflection of nothing, a copy of the man who would never physically stand anywhere again, certainly not in the same form he had occupied since birth.

  "Why have you come to me, Byron? What is it you want me to see?"

  This close, and now that the darkness had lifted, I could clearly see his wounds. There was a slash across his chest, dried blood smeared above and below it. His throat had been gouged, but the wide rent was dry. One of his eyes was gone, and in its place there was a ragged black hole.

  "What is it?" I kept my nerve; I always do, somehow.

  Over his shoulder an image began to form out of the greyness. A vast open area, like a field, but burned, razed, leaving only the charred stumps of trees and bushes and blackened grass. Far in the distance, shimmering gently, was a hill, and upon that hill was a burning tree. The shape writhing in the flames had once been human, but now it was merely an approximation of the human form. And before it was human it had been something else. The geometry of that former self was struggling to be born again in the blistered mass that danced at the heart of the pale fire.

  Fear threatened to overwhelm me, but I sucked it up, chewed and swallowed. This was my job; it was what I did. I had to see it through.

  Spinks held out his arm in an expansive gesture, as if he were offering me this sight as a gift. To the left of the hill something staggered into view. At first I could not tell what it was, but despite the spastic movement it didn't seem like an animal.

  Then, gradually, the thing hove into frame.

  It had four hideously long scrawny legs, like those belonging to a giant chicken, and perched atop those ugly clawed limbs was a crude hut with no doors or windows. There was, however, a single stunted chimney sticking up from the pitched roof, and from it poured a ribbon of black smoke that coiled and entwined with that of the fiery tree.

  I recalled my visit to Elmer Lord, and that he had mentioned the Slavic spirit of Baba Yaga. I knew that the spirit was said to have lived in a similar chicken-legged house with no doors or windows, and that she entered by the chimney. But I also knew that these old myths and folktales were simply created by mankind to codify the things that we cannot understand: comforting visual touchstones meant to hide the multitude of possible truths, yet which lie in wait like spiky borders to the pathways of a terrible maze.

  Every witch and warlock and monster is just a mask for something worse. Behind all the stories, under all the great archetypes, hide the things which we all fail to see or believe in – the tumultuous landscapes our consensus renders unreal. But everywhere there is a great and languid darkness, and beneath that there is yet another darkness, and on and on with no real end. Layers of reality, levels of existence, and the only thing standing between what we know and what we cannot know is our unquestioning belief in the world we choose to see around us.

  The absurd little hut tottered on its oversized chicken legs, the whole surreal construct unstable and ready to fall. It stumbled forward onto one knee, then the other, and the heavy upper part crashed to the ground, shattering into separate pieces – pieces that became smoke and drifted over towards the flaming tree, which remained as solid as ever, an image that even I could not disbelieve. Even when all the other false images were stripped away and destroyed, this one remained in view, burning forever.

  Forever burning. Blazing. An eternal and unquenchable fire.

  "Who is she?" The question didn't really matter. She could be anything those who believed in her wanted her to be.

  Byron Spinks slowly shook his head, lowered his arm, and coughed up a single black plume of ash. A matching one trailed from his shattered eye socket. Then the mirror went dark and I was standing in an ordinary hotel bathroom, my bare feet cold on the tiled floor, looking at nothing but my own naked reflection in the mirror above the sink.

  There was ash on my face and in my hair; smudges of ash lay across my shoulders like a terrible shawl.

  Two words were scrawled backwards in ash across the tarnished glass of the mirror.

  I didn't need to look at them to know what they said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  When I woke up, Ellen wasn't in bed next to me and the television was on. The set was tuned to a local news programme, and inevitably they were screening footage of the Royale's press conference and Shawna's tearful breakdown before the cameras. The camera cut away before Mr Shiloh made his well-timed entrance, but as I leaned forward across the mattress and peered at the screen I just about caught a glimpse of what looked like the sleeve of his black suit moving in from stage right.

  The bathroom door opened before I had the chance to find the remote control and change the channel. Ellen stood there with her head wrapped in a towel, smiling at me. "Morning," she said, moving towards the foot of the bed. She glanced sideways, drawn by the television, and caught sight of a straight-faced newsreader sitting before an enlarged background shot of her cousin taken directly from the press conference footage. "Oh," she said, letting the towel unwind from her damp hair. "Oh."

  "I was going to turn that off. Thought it might upset you." I sat up in bed, rubbing the back of my head and wondering if I'd bumped it against the headboard during the night. I'd had a pain there ever since Byron Spinks had shown me those weird visions in the mirror.

  "No, it isn't that. Not really. It's just…" She dropped her gaze and pulled the other towel – the one encasing her wonderful firm body – tighter.

  "What?"

  She moved to the side of the bed and looked down at me. "I was going to tell you this last night, but with everything that happened… you know, between us… well, it sort of slipped my mind in all the excitement." She bit her lower lip and shrugged her bare shoulders. It was a strangely childish and unguarded gesture, and made her look even more beautiful.

  I smiled. "Go on." Shifting across the mattress, I made room for her, and she sat down, pushing her legs together. I reached out and stroked her arm. The skin was still wet, and warm to the touch.

  "Shawna didn't believe you when you told her that Penny was still alive."

  "Probably… I said she was probably still alive."

  She cleared her throat. "I know. Probably. But she didn't believe you, anyway. She got a phone call from a man – a medium – who claims that he has a message from Penny, and he wants to pass it on. It's almost as if she wants the child to be dead – as if she can cope better with the thought of her death rather than someone holding her against her will."

  I closed my eyes and tried not to yell. If there is one thing I hate in this world, it's fake mediums: tawdry pier-end showmen making a few quid off the back of the deceased and exploiting the pain of the loved ones they leave behind. "Who is it? What's this man's name?"

  "I remember his name because it's so cheesy, obviously a stage name. He calls himself Trevor Dove. Do you know him?" She shuffled closer to me on the bed, caressing my leg with her wet hand. I stared at the back of her hand, at the tiny water droplets – seeing whole universes expand and explode within them – and wondered where all this would end.

  I didn't know Trevor Dove (and that most certainly was not his real name; he had changed it to reflect
the supposed spirituality of his act) personally, but I had heard of him from other sources. He had a television show on one of the minor satellite channels and toured with a travelling medium set-up, moving up and down the country performing for money. His act was as cheesy as it came, and his appearance matched the tacky showbiz elements of his routine. He usually wore pale blue suits and his hair was bleached blonde to make him look younger. He worked out at a gym, sported a tangerine-orange solarium tan, and – if one Sunday newspaper was to be believed – he slept with many of the grieving young wives and mothers that he counselled in his hotel room after the shows. And also with some of the distraught fathers and brothers.

  "When is your cousin seeing this man? Or is he coming to her home?"

  Ellen cast me a sideways glance, her lower lip rising slowly to cover the upper. "I'm afraid she's going to him. She's been invited along to one of his stage shows, today in fact."

  I wanted the bed to swallow me up. "Where and at what time?"

  "Three o'clock, at some second-string place behind the Alhambra theatre in Bradford. It's a matinee." She leaned back against the headboard; it creaked like old bones. "There'll be an audience of pensioners and desperate housewives, all there to see him speak to the dead while they hope that he doesn't pick on them."

  "Great," I said, mostly to myself. "This is just great."

  While Ellen continued to get ready in the bathroom, I picked up the phone and dialled the number for Millgarth police station. After being bounced around a few different departments I finally got through to Tebbit, who was in a mellower mood than when I'd last seen him, immediately after the prison visit.

  "How are you, Thomas?"

  "Not good. I have something I need to ask you."

  "That's strange," said Tebbit, "because there's something I need to tell you."

  I waited, and when it became clear that he was waiting for me to ask my question first, I ploughed on. "It's about Byron Spinks. I think I already know the answer, but… is he by any chance dead?"

  I sensed Tebbit draw back from the phone – there was a sudden flat sound, as if air had rushed into the space between the side of his head and the earpiece. "Jesus, Usher, that's what I wanted to tell you. He died last night. There was some kind of commotion, a fight with another inmate, and he was stabbed to death in his cell."

  Things were getting weird again – as if things were ever anything but weird in my life. "What happened? Tell me what you know."

  Tebbit sighed; I could hear his distaste at the accrued years of crime and terror as it flowed between his lips like bile. "It happened about an hour before lock-up. As you know, Spinks has been spending most of his time alone in his cell, but after your visit he seemed to come out of his shell a bit. He still didn't talk to anyone, just walked around the block, like he was biding time for something. Then, when he returned to his cell, someone followed him. There was no prior trouble between these two men. They barely even knew each other as far as anyone can tell. But the other man was armed with a weapon made from a sharpened spoon and he followed Spinks in there and started slashing."

  I recalled the vision from last night: the cuts and gouges, the blood… and the ash he had coughed up before leaving me.

  "A couple of witnesses who arrived after the attack began told us that Spinks didn't seem to be putting up much of a fight. They say he just sat there, on the floor, and let the other man cut him. One of the men said that Spinks was smiling. Another said that he was praying, but in no language he could understand."

  I clenched my teeth and tried to stop the dizzy feeling that was building inside my head. "Anything else, Tebbit? Is there anything you're leaving out?"

  "There were some words, Usher. A weird phrase scrawled on the cell wall."

  I knew what was coming; it was clear as day, obvious as the sunrise. "Was it a message, Tebbit?"

  The room felt vast, like an empty amphitheatre. I hoped that Ellen would stay in the bathroom just a little while longer, so she would not see the panicked state I was in. My hands were shaking. There was sweat on my face.

  "Yes," said Tebbit. "I think so. Remember those words he said to you, just before you left?"

  "Memento mori," I whispered, hearing once again a rush of air inside the earpiece and sensing that someone else, someone other than Tebbit, was listening.

  "The strange thing is," said Tebbit. "The really strange thing…"

  "Was it written in blood?" Again, I already knew the answer but was hoping for something else, something different.

  "No. It was written in ash."

  "Thank you, Tebbit. You've given me the answer I was dreading."

  "What does it mean, Usher. What does it all mean?"

  Written in ash.

  "Memento mori? It's Latin. It means 'remember you shall die'. The world of the arts is littered with examples of this throughout the ages. Medieval Europe was obsessed with the notion. It's a reminder… a reminder of our mortality." I knew what he was asking – that he meant everything, and not just that damned message, but for some reason it was all that I could focus on, so I chose to bore him with sterile facts.

  "Don't bullshit me, Usher. What's going on here? My arse is on the line – I have those fucking hangings and now Penny Royale to deal with. It's too much, and now you seem to be what's linking the two cases." I could hear the rage in his voice, but he was doing a good job of holding it back, strapping it down so that it could not escape and do any damage.

  I closed my eyes. The wind-sound was now inside my head.

  "The two cases are linked. You're correct in that assumption at least. But it isn't me that ties them together. The common denominator here is the MT. That gang, those seemingly invisible thugs. Baz Singh has something to do with it, too, but I'm not yet sure what or how deep his involvement might be. Spinks was the string, I think, that held it all together, and now someone's gone and cut that string, leaving a whole lot of loose ends." Of course I knew more than I was letting on, but my own understanding of this knowledge was limited. I couldn't very well tell him about Mr Shiloh, or the clumsy illusion of the Russian witch spirit that had been torn down and revealed to be just another false front, another sham.

  Everything about this was intangible, tough to pin down, and I couldn't risk sending Tebbit and his officers off track in their investigations. Let them do the official stuff, the legwork, and I would take care of the rest.

  I always had to take care of the rest.

  "What is it you're not telling me, Usher. You promised me full disclosure." His voice was hard as slate, sharp as the blade that had killed Byron Spinks.

  "I don't know. I honestly don't know. There's so much more going on here, and we've only glimpsed the very tip of it. I think it all goes back a long way, but perhaps even farther back than even I can imagine. There are forces at work here that I don't understand. Another reality is converging with our own, and believe me when I tell you it's bad news for everybody."

  That seemed to shock him. He went quiet for a moment, and then I heard the sound of his breathing. "My head hurts, Thomas. I've been getting these headaches…" I thought of the tumour I knew was growing inside his skull, and of the promise I had once made his poor dead wife not to mention it. Right now, that promise was more difficult than ever to keep. "My head hurts so I'm going to go now. Just let me know when you have something… tangible. Something I can move on without my boss sending me to the fucking loony bin."

  With that, Detective Inspector Donald Tebbit hung up the phone and I was left listening to the crackling of dead air on the line. Deep within that pulsing white noise, for the briefest of moments, I could have sworn that I heard someone giggle.

  When Ellen once again emerged from the bathroom I told her that I was going home for a change for clothes and that I would meet her in Bradford later that day, so that we could both attend Trevor Dove's ridiculous public sham of a mass séance, or whatever it was he had planned.

  "Why don't I pick you up and we can go
together?" she said, towelling her hair. She had put on her underwear, and the banal sight of her drying herself off made me feel slightly uncomfortable: I could not shake the conviction that we had once again become too familiar and just like last time, the timing was all off. My previous good feelings about this were fading fast. Now it all seemed like just another bad move in a game that had been lost from the very start.

  But my involvement with Ellen was not a game – it was serious, and I knew that I was messing with her life. With both our lives. I didn't want this to go wrong; I needed it to work out this time.

  It had to work. Because right now it was all I had.

  "Do you know how to get there – to my house?" I knew she'd never been there before, even in the old days, or in the older days before that.