Pretty Little Dead Things

by Gary McMahon

  Byron Spinks had walked into the mirror in Ellen's hotel room on the night of his death, after he had been killed by another prison inmate who was probably a member of the MT. I had seen him, but I had not followed him. Not then. This time I would. But I would be the one to choose the mode of entrance.

  I stared into the mirror, focusing within me. I reached into my body and dug down deep, pushing aside all the things I used as armour – the secret codes of my pain, the razorwire fences of my psyche. Then, finally, I found it: a small dark box with a shiny clasp. I opened the box and tipped out what was inside: the love I kept all for them, for Rebecca and Ally. I let it out into the light for the first time since Ryan South took them from me – since the Pilgrim, as I now knew him, had used Ryan South as a weapon in a Marsh Farm slum to draw me into his orbit.

  "I'm ready," I whispered. "Mumbo-jumbo."

  The room went dark; the mirror turned black.

  The glass was fogged, as if heavy, dark clouds churned and boiled beneath it. Some of that fog leaked out, spilling into the room, and slowly I reached out to touch it. The fog was actually ash; it turned my fingers black. I pulled away my hand and raised it to my lips, opened my mouth, and stuck the fingers inside, licking them clean and tasting the ash from a fire that never went out. It tasted of loss. Of memory. Of pain.

  Marshalling my terror, I raised my hands, palm out, and pushed… but they came up against the glass, stopping dead. Dead hands. No entry. Puzzled, I stared at the mirror, at the blackness beyond, and glimpsed movement there, the quick flickering motion of an insect scuttling under a rock, or a snake slithering into shadow.

  My hands were still pressed against the glass. They were cold. So cold and hard and dead.

  Cold hands. Dead hands.

  Another set of hands appeared opposite them, the palms locked with my own. These other hands – so white and smooth and like plastic, but ending in smoky darkness at the wrists – flexed and I felt their pressure against my skin and bones. Then, briskly, they clasped me tighter, our fingers locking as if in a child's game.

  Their grip was like iron.

  I tried to step back in panic, but the hands held me there, and then they began to pull. It was too late for regrets. The time had long passed to change the course of events, but fear and doubt and anger collided in my mind to release me. I realised at last that I was not doing this – my own power was not as strong as I'd started to believe.

  This was the Pilgrim's doing. He was dragging me into his realm, just as he'd wanted all along. I had no choice now. I had been tricked and cajoled, and now he had what he wanted.

  He had me right in the palms of his hands.

  I was dragged roughly, violently, into the mirror, afraid of what might be waiting there for me on the other side of the blackened glass, squatting in-between realities and laughing like a jackal.

  Here was where the magic lived, where the Pilgrim walked, where the ghosts drifted.

  Here was where it all ended, one way or another.

  Here was where I finally got to put out the fire.

  TWENTY-NINE

  When the fog cleared I was standing on a street in the Bestwick Estate, or at least a street on an alternative version of the estate. There was no sign of those terrible disembodied hands, or the thing to which they belonged.

  The air smelled of burning: the stench entered my mouth and pushed down my throat, making my insides ache as if they were being squeezed. The buildings around me looked even more rundown than they did on the real estate, if that were at all possible. Windows were mouths lined with jagged glass teeth, doorways were coffin-shaped holes leading into strange black rooms, and weird-looking birds sat along the rooflines, squawking softly.

  It was dark here; it was always dark here. Always dark in the Pilgrim's domain.

  The sky was burned; the roads and footpaths were burned; it was all burned. Ash drifted like dark confetti, riding air currents that I couldn't feel in this stark, still place. I could sense a great lassitude which threatened to overcome me and drag me down to my knees, but I fought against it with all the strength that I possessed. All I wanted to do was lie down in the road and rest, go to sleep, but I held on tightly to the conviction that if I did so I would be trapped here forever, lost between realities and stored like food in the Pilgrim's larder.

  "Mumbo-jumbo," I said again, enjoying the way the words tasted as they filled my mouth. The phrase brought to mind an image of Tebbit, and the plain kind of reality he stood for.

  I walked forward, heading in the direction of the waste ground where Ellen and I had been set upon by those terrible members of the MT. As I walked I sensed movement in some of the buildings. Shapes hovered at shattered windows; disjointed shadows writhed in those coffin doorways. It felt like I was being watched, or scrutinised like a specimen in a lab.

  Far ahead of me I caught sight of a long procession of figures moving along the burned horizon. They were very tall and painfully thin – like skeletons with tissues of pale flesh pulled taught across their bones. Each of the figures was vaguely humanoid in aspect, yet above the neck they all had birds' heads. Large beaks snapped at the sky and tiny black eyes stared unblinkingly ahead. I could make out nothing more of their features, but even this glimpse was enough to inspire the hope that they didn't turn their attention upon me.

  I knew that the Pilgrim was in control here. It was clear that he was able to shape the reality of this place between realities. Everything I might see would be a reflection of his darkling dreams.

  I kept on moving, trying to focus on the road ahead. From behind me there came the sound of doors slamming open and shut, like hungry mouths, and when I turned to look the coffin-shaped entryways were darker, deeper than before, and within the wooden frames I could see fine outlines etched into that darkness, like engravings. The outlines moved, struggling to be born from those upright coffins filled with night, and I forced myself to look away before my concentration was lost.

  I passed the odd sight of a huge cracked egg at the side of the road. It was at least large enough to hold a human being. More hairline cracks appeared in the surface of the dirty white shell as I passed by. A black and yellow claw-like appendage struggled from one of them, tearing at the shell and breaking away chunks that fell to the ground to shatter into yet smaller pieces, which then skittered across the charred paving stones.

  Before moving on, I glimpsed a pulsing caul-like sheet through one of the cracks in the egg, with what might have been eyes staring through the folds in its pulpy mass. Something called out, but not in any language that I could understand.

  Then they appeared.

  They.

  The MT.

  They skulked out from their hiding places behind the grubby, tumbledown buildings and followed me from each side of the road, stalking me like predators following wounded prey. They didn't attack, simply flanked me and matched my strides as I walked.

  They were the drones, the workers, the part-time hangmen, but I was here to meet with whoever or whatever was in charge.

  Animals walked with them – odd, mishmash creatures made up from differing origins: an alligator with the legs of human children, spiders the size of puppy dogs, with white faces containing a single gelid eye, bats that walked on their wings, dragging behind them silver-razored tails.

  The figures paid these familiars little attention, but they turned their sightless gaze upon me. Ash dropped from their black hoods and dissipated in the heavy air. Their hands grasped emptily at their sides, straining, as if they were being reined in by a greater force. I knew that they were acting as chaperones, forcing me along a certain route, but it was the route I wanted to take anyway.

  There had never been any other way to take. This was the culmination of a choice made long ago.

  I spotted the ruined fence and made for the broken barrier, increasing my speed. I was almost running by the time I reached it, and I crawled through the smashed panel on my hands and knees. On the other side I
came upon the old bonfire, which I now realised could only ever have been a funeral pyre. Among the twisted timbers and molten plastic, scorched human flesh had been moulded and fused together to form a nightmarish amalgamation of figures who all screamed silently for release.

  I peered at the mess of blasted tissue, picking out a hand, a leg, a pair of breasts, a face… and two eyes flicked open in an incinerated face, peering at me from a mask of ancient agony. The sound of blackened matter ripping apart filled my ears as the figure opened its mouth. I leaned in, urging it to speak, but all that emerged from its lips was a thin, black plume of ash…

  I lurched away, heading for the far side of the waste ground, where the other broken-down fence would provide a way out. I ducked beneath the leaning timber frame and rolled onto the rubble at the other side. I was breathing heavily, but not from exertion – the altitude here was like that encountered halfway up a mountain, and it held the air like fluid in my lungs.

  The place I had come to see loomed above me, tottering on its tawdry chicken legs. This time the legs were real – massive, scaly and knobbly as old tree branches, they shuffled in the debris that littered the ground, grasping for purchase. Perched atop those terrible limbs was a scorched concrete building with no doors or windows but a single smoking chimney jutting from the pointed roof. The juxtaposition of oversized fowl's legs supporting this grimy modern structure was horrific in a way that eclipsed everything else.

  It was beyond the surreal; way beyond terror.

  I moved around the building, expecting it to turn and track my route. But it remained in place, shifting its weight equally between the four feet, yellowed talons clutching at the earth. The structure looked like it might topple over at any second, but it also looked as if it had stood there for centuries, perhaps occasionally moving a few feet from the exact spot where it now stood, but always returning to nest in its own weird footprints.

  As I reached the back of the awkward building, I saw that a truncated set of concrete steps hung down from the rear wall. They dangled there in the air, unsupported; the lower steps had crumbled away and rusty steel reinforcement rods stuck out like old, reddened bones. But if I leapt up and reached out, I could grab onto the last tread and pull myself up.

  I crept closer to the back wall, bent my knees, and jumped. Missing the stairs by inches with my grasping fingers, I tried again, and this time I managed to get hold of one of those crusty steel rods. I hauled myself up, feeling the strain in every muscle. The chicken legs scuttled; the building moved gently from side to side, adjusting to counteract my weight. Then, at last, I was up there, my chest resting on the steps, and I gratefully dragged my entire body onto the crumbling ledge.

  Breathing heavily, I crawled up the half stairway and pressed my body against the small door at their summit. There was no handle, but I knew that I could open it. All I had to do was knock on the door.

  After all, I was expected.

  I made a fist and brought it down onto the heavy steel door. I knocked once, but the sound was multiplied tenfold, as if I were hammering repeatedly on the door to gain entry. Slowly, soundlessly, the door eased open. I glanced over my shoulder, to see the hooded members of the MT standing below me, looking up at me as I clung to the open door. I took out the gun and pointed it at them, not picking out any single figure but just aiming indiscriminately into the bunch.

  They rocked on their heels, swaying gently. And then I was shocked to see them step away backwards, their arms and legs bending the wrong way at the knee and elbow joints. They moved slowly and deliberately, a procession in reverse, and I watched as they blended into the darkness that had now crept in to frame the demolition site like a Saturn-ring of soot.

  I pushed through the doorway, swallowing down my fear, and entered a long, dark corridor. I was not surprised to hear the door snicker shut behind me, but what did make me uneasy was the sickly illumination that bled into the space, blooming against the walls and floor. There were no openings along the lengthy corridor, but a sort of sullen swamp light emanated from the stone walls (stone, not concrete; for this was more like the entrance to a cave).

  I was terrified, but I bit down on the fear. I had to do this, had to keep moving into the heart of someone else's darkness, if I was to stand any chance of saving the child.

  "I'm here, Pilgrim. I'm coming." My voice sounded flat, dead, but he knew that I was here so there was no point in trying to disguise my approach. I took the gun from my pocket and held it tightly in my right hand, suspecting that it would be a poor defence against the being I had come here to confront, yet still taking comfort from its cold, hard weight in my fist.

  "I'm here."

  I walked forward, moving reluctantly along the featureless corridor. The floor, walls and ceiling were identical and before long I had lost all sense of direction as well as spatial awareness: I could have been walking on the ceiling for all it mattered, and the sensation provoked within me a kind of light nausea. My head began to ache and bile rose into the back of my throat, but I swallowed it down, telling myself that I needed to remain calm and in control.

  Always in control, even here, where all control was an illusion.

  I was the only hope Penny Royale had left, and that should be motivation enough to keep me on track. I had allowed my own child to die, so the least that I could do was save this one, whatever it cost me. But it was not redemption that I sought, more a sense that I could do something to push back the encroaching tide of darkness that I felt groping towards me.

  The structure was much bigger inside that it was out, but the idea of the Pilgrim being able to manipulate space in such a way didn't alarm me. I knew that he was capable of so much more, particularly here, in his own environment. He was a product of the things that slip through the gaps, the wasted ideas and abandoned dreams of the living. His ability to mould those things into this strange between-place was no great surprise considering everything else that I had learned.

  He was not a man, he was not a beast. He was something in-between.

  I knew that the Pilgrim had been there with me when I confronted Ryan South, the man driving the car that had killed my family. I wondered about other times after that when he may have come to me, and if he had in fact been stalking me since childhood, walking along at my side like a dirty little angel. He had intimated as much during our frightening conversations, but to trust him would be to trust a serpent. I had to make up my own mind and assess whatever came at me. My own sense of reality was vital now; it might be the only weapon I had against such a being as this self-styled Pilgrim.

  I had to believe in myself.

  The corridor suddenly opened out into a large circular chamber with a high vaulted cathedral-style ceiling. I stared upward, straining my neck, but was unable to see the pinnacle of the ceiling above me. It seemed to stretch on for miles, and my vision ran out at a layer of dusty darkness in which strange winged shapes glided, swooping and darting like bats. There were ledges dotted here and there in the stone walls, and as I watched an occasional figure would step out and approach the edge of one of these balconies, as if peering down at me. None of the figures was human. Some of them could barely be called figures at all: just dim outlines and shifting clumps of darkness.

  I realised that I was inside some kind of viewing gallery, not unlike the ones Victorian surgeons had used to demonstrate complicated operations before the eyes of fascinated students and members of the paying public. Had the Pilgrim called these others here to see me? Was this all part of whatever elaborate game he still seemed to be playing?

  I lowered my gaze, not wanting to watch the watchers for much longer. Before me, an aperture had opened up in the previously solid stone wall. I moved towards it, still gripping the gun, but before I could enter the Pilgrim himself stepped forward, in all his plastic glory.

  "Greetings," he said. His voice was almost welcoming. "I've been waiting here for you. I've been waiting a very long time." Again there was the intimation of so
much more than his words could convey. As always, he was playing with me, teasing me with snippets of the truth that became lies by association.

  "What is this place?" I stood firm before him, betraying no fear yet feeling plenty.

  "This," he said, looking around, "is my home. Or one of them." He smiled and it was like the expression a shark makes before it bites off your leg.

  I felt my rage building, but bit down on it.

  "Where's the child? Where's Penny Royale?" My hand tightened on the gun.

  "This way," he said, giving in far too easily for my liking. I had expected at least a continuation of his riddle-like monologue, but instead he simply turned and walked away, expecting me to follow. His naked body seemed to ripple in the darkness, as if the skin were attempting to leap from his torso.