Black Static Horror Magazine #3

by TTA Press Authors

  My mother came to wake me in the morning, and found me sleeping sideways in the bed, my head half-way off the mattress, my fingers curled over the edge. My hair was tangled and knotted; she thought I must have had a restless night.

  * * * *

  After that, I didn't see Sarah again for years. Sometimes I caught myself planning to tell her something, or ask her something, and there was always a sensation like falling when I remembered I could not speak to her, or even see her. When the divorce was finally done, I moved away with my mother to my grandparents’ house.

  I thought the pit would come for me that day, but it didn't. The journey, by train, was a long one, and evening had closed over the sky before it was done. My mother read a magazine by the harsh, fly-specked light of the carriage. I sat in my seat, thinking of the pit, waiting for it to arrive. I glanced around, over the arm of the chair, in case the pit had opened in the aisle. I knew it did not matter that the train was in motion. The pit could still appear; and though there was a great gap between the train's carriage and the rails on the ground below, the pit would still be of dark stone, all the way down. But it did not appear. Twice a woman dragged a trolley past, loaded with white-bread sandwiches and crisps and chocolates and small cans of drink. If the pit had opened, she would have fallen into it. Other passengers also went past, to the train's toilets, or on mysterious errands of their own. I knew that the pit would not appear for everyone. It would be looking for me. If it could not open on the train, then it would appear when the journey was over, when I was lying in my new bed.

  Very well. I would be ready for it. I closed my eyes, determined to rest while I could.

  I slept, then, and knew nothing more until the next day, when the light of morning rubbed its fat, warm fingers on my eyes. The pit had not appeared; or if it had, I had been too exhausted to wake for it. I sat up, taking in a stranger's room and bed, meant for someone else, for an adult: a wardrobe too tall for me, a flowery quilt, a pomander on the highly-lacquered bedside cabinet. I felt refreshed, calm, comfortable, somewhat listless, much as I remembered being when convalescing from a fever. I had beaten the pit, perhaps, outrun it, hidden myself from it, despite what Sarah had said; or perhaps it was only hiding, and would return when I least expected it, when I had let down my guard.

  Yet it did not return that night, nor the next, nor on any of the nights that followed. Summer had arrived. The school term had not, in fact, finished, but had little more than two weeks left to run, and so my mother decided to allow me a long break, to start school again in the Autumn. When it rained I explored my grandparents’ house, or read my books, and the books in the house, and the books I had brought back from Saturday trips to the library. When it was fine I explored the long garden, the flowerbeds near the house, the vegetable plots further away. The back gate opened on to an overgrown lane; from there, I could climb a fence to the disused railway line, and from there run on into the woods. When I knew every inch of the garden I explored the woods, and the long, narrow lanes. In the gloom under the trees I wondered if the pit could appear to me, even in daylight: it was dark enough, and no one else was about. But the pit did not come.

  To my surprise, after a time I wanted to see the pit again. I had no friends here, and the pit, though it was my enemy, my adversary, was still in a way the nearest thing I had to a friend. I knew, now, why it did not come: despite my solitude, despite losing my father and despite being wrenched from my home, I was strangely content. The pit would only come in response to a certain frame of mind—only half-remembered now—when a darkness settled over my vision and a coldness over my skin, when the world itself seemed to grow hard corners and sharp edges, when my thoughts roiled in my head, keeping me awake or scraping at my dreams.

  I knew I should not wish those sensations back, but I knew, too, why I missed them. Though it was harsher and more bitter, the world seemed more real at those times. The contentment I felt now, all contentment I would ever feel, was a thin accretion, a crust over the mouth of the pit like a film of ice over the black water of a lake. It was an illusion. I knew I should prefer the illusion to the reality, but something in me wanted it shattered.

  On a warm afternoon at summer's end I borrowed a small shovel from my grandfather's shed and began to dig in an unused corner of the garden, wondering whether the pit would open up beneath my hands, the earth fall away into nothingness, the howling begin, sucking the air from the world. I turned over dry soil, sending woodlice scurrying away, then darker soil laden with worms, but there was no sign of the pit.

  I gave up searching for the pit, and waiting for it, and hoping it would return. In time, I almost forgot that the pit had ever come for me, and when I did remember it, the memory did not seem real.

  * * * *

  Of course, it came back. How could it be otherwise?

  I thought I glimpsed it on Christmas Eve, in my grandparents’ house, when I crept down, as I had always done, for a last look at the tree before I slept, I thought I saw it again; I imagined a red and gold bauble with two implings astride, falling from the green branches and shattering against the pit's stony palate. Then the pit was gone, and I told myself it had been nothing more than a shadow on the ground.

  Of course the glimpse had nothing to do with the fact that at Christmas, I remembered how much I missed my father. Nothing at all.

  I wondered if I should tell anyone. I decided against it.

  Again, years passed with no sign of the pit; but as I grew into my teens the glimpses came more frequently. On the body of a massive oak in the woods when, separated from my friends, I sought somewhere to rest my drunken head. Beneath the skin of a lake as I rowed, one dark afternoon, with a girlfriend, and had convinced myself that all was over between us. Each time I told myself I had not seen the pit, only a hollow in the tree (it had not stirred the leaves) or the shadow of a piece of driftwood in the lake (it had not stirred the water).

  All the same, I began to take measures to keep the pit at bay. I tried to learn the things that might summon it, and to avoid them. I grew careful about what drugs I took, and in what doses; and equally careful about whom I loved.

  Perhaps, I thought, the pit had never been real, had always been part of my imagining. Perhaps it had been a way of describing, to myself, something I lacked the words to describe. Although if that were so, why had Sarah seen it too? Another thought crept up, unwanted, behind the first: even if the pit were not real, not physically real, it might still be able to devour me.

  When I moved to London, to a rented room on the city's edge, the pit began to appear more frequently. I saw it reflected in the great glass windows of shop-fronts, and turned, quickly, to see nothing, no gaping hole in the air behind my shoulder, only a passer-by disconcerted by my sudden movement. I wondered if the pit was, in some way, my reflection.

  I learned a new set of triggers, things to avoid, more subtle than the joints and tabs and adolescent heartaches of a few years before. I began to avoid manholes, and workmen digging the road. I once fled, breathless and gape-eyed, from the underground, having discovered that the sound of those subterranean trains in their tunnels matched almost exactly the voice of the pit. Overeating could be another trigger, bringing glimpses of the pit-mouth into my dreams. Lack of sleep. Cigarette smoke, which made me sleep badly at night, prising away my sleep. And more abstract things: anything of a bright yellow colour; certain timbres of voice and cadences of speech; certain textures.

  I thought myself content. I worked, and spent my hours of freedom as well as I could. I could not understand, then, why the glimpses seemed to be returning more and more often. At least, I reassured myself, they were only glimpses. As long as I kept to my prophylactic routine, avoiding anything that could summon the pit, I would be safe.

  But it could open anywhere, at any time. That was the bitterest lesson.

  Blown by the wind, the remains of a magazine crossed the night sky, illuminated now by a streetlamp, now by the blue neon sign of a bar. Its
pages crackled, rustled, chuckled, snapped taut in a sudden gust. It crossed the road, and appeared to be about to sail on, past the soft glow of the hotel and into the shadow of the tower blocks beyond. Instead it turned, moving against the wind, and ducked into a filthy alleyway.

  I watched it go. The alley's black mouth was stained about the lips with piss and beer, a necklace of broken glass at its throat. I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of my trench coat, and crossed the road to see where the magazine had gone.

  I found it fluttering in the air above the wasteland of a building site. The alley was bounded by a pub and a seedy gymnasium; but the body of the gym was gone, pulled down, leaving only its dingy façade on the main road. A gap-toothed fence encircled what was left. As I watched, the tattered magazine lost its battle to stay aloft, and fell. I heard it fall; but I did not hear it hit the ground. My suspicions aroused, I put my head and hands to the fence, and peered through.

  There it was, at the centre of the site, not glimpsed this time but in full view before me: the tunnel into the earth, down and down, sucking in the wind and whatever was carried upon it. At its edge, a shard of tile moved, scraping over the dirt, then tilted, teetered, fell in, and was sucked away. At the pit's edge, from where the shard had fallen, a few crumbs of the site floor were loosened, and fell. The pit had grown wider. It could comfortably have swallowed a car. Its howl was louder, too, its voice stronger.

  I pulled away from the fence, breathing hard, my palms cold with sweat. I took a step back, then another. A darkness lay over my vision, a coldness over my skin, and now I realised that the pit was sucking light as well as heat from the world. For the first time, I felt its pull, physically, a stout wind shoving me toward the opening.

  It wanted a trial of strength. Very well. I would show it how strong I was.

  Composing myself, I touched my forelock and nodded to the pit, a mock greeting to an old enemy that still felt almost like a friend. With an effort I wrenched aside a part of the fence, and stepped through, climbing over rubble and rubbish, broken bricks and sections of piping and old newspapers and bottles and cans, until I neared the pit-mouth. There I stopped. Another step would bring me right to the edge.

  What are you? I thought. What do you want?

  The voice of the pit said: I want you.

  Why have you come now? I did nothing to call you.

  I come when I must.

  You come when I am unhappy, or restless. You only come in darkness.

  No. I come when I must. In any place. Whether you are miserable or joyful. In the night, or in the bright of the day. It is you who sees patterns in my coming. You try to impose order. You find reasons why I must have come. None of them are real. I come when I must. That is all.

  I can keep you away, I thought. I can escape you. You will not find me. And I can banish you.

  I had no knife with me. Instead I took my keys from my pocket, and selected a Yale, new and sharp and shiny. I drew its teeth across my wrist. It took three attempts before blood began seeping from the ragged tear that resulted. Leaning forward as far as I dared, I let some of my blood drip into its mouth.

  At once, I felt a calm within me, a pressure released. My vision seemed less sharp, but at the same time somehow clearer. The effect on the pit, too, was immediate. Its howl was not as loud, the force of its breath not as great. I even believed it may have shrunk a little, regurgitating something of the building site's filthy floor back to its original place.

  Then I turned on my heel and, walking against the wind, I left the pit, and the building site, and the alley, behind.

  * * * *

  Despite my bravado I felt fear, now, as I had not felt since the pit first came. I went to my doctor, and for the first time explained about the pit, how I had seen it over the years, how it seemed to have grown in size and power. The doctor sent me to a cognitive therapist; the therapist sent me to a psychiatrist. Describing the pit to each of them, I watched their faces, to see if they held any trace of mockery or contempt. I could see none. Instead there was a look almost of recognition. They had seen the pit themselves, or they had met others who had seen it. They refused to tell me anything, though. They never even referred to the pit directly. They told me I had an episodic depressive disorder, with associated hallucinatory effects. They told me it could probably be treated, with drugs.

  The psychiatrist gave me two sets of pills: one set that was supposed to keep the pit at bay, and another set to counteract the side-effects of the first. There was no guarantee they would work. They might even make things worse. If so, the psychiatrist would try a different drug.

  I was reluctant to take the pills I had been given, but I did as I was told. They made me drowsy, disconnected. I slept deeply, without dreaming, but also without real rest. I felt as if time had stopped, or as if it flowed for the rest of the world, but not for me. I was not living, only existing, like a corporeal ghost.

  I remembered how I had thought that the contentment I had once felt was an illusion, a treacherous layer of sediment over the endless gulf of the pit. The pills added an extra layer, that was all. A further accretion of the illusion. At our next meeting, I told the psychiatrist this, and the psychiatrist told me to continue with the pills for another month, and see whether there was any change. I listened as the psychiatrist spoke, not understanding, or not wanting to. I nodded in what seemed to be the right places. After a time the psychiatrist sent me away.

  I returned home, and lay on my bed, and thought of nothing, and eventually fell asleep.

  * * * *

  And so we come to it. The promise, and the pit.

  A year ago, I found Sarah in London. A summer afternoon, and then a summer's evening, we spent together, slipping comfortably back into our old relationship, as if nothing at all had changed. Even her clothes were of a similar cut to the kind she had always worn, though she wore long, thin gloves, which I had not thought would attract her.

  I remember the exact moment the promise was made. We were down beside the river, face to face across a little wooden table. We had raised our glasses to seal our vow. The ice in her glass chimed, like a bell, and we laughed at the aptness of the sound. Then we sat back in silence, watching the glow and the glitter of the city, the embers of lights on the far bank reflected on the water.

  This was the promise:

  "If one of us wants to die—"

  "Wait. Wait a minute—"

  "If one of us wants to die, they mustn't do it. Not right away. They have to wait. They have to find the other one first."

  I shook my head. “I don't know."

  She put her hand on mine. “It's a safety net. To stop us from falling. I'll be your safety net. You can be mine. We can turn up unexpectedly on each other's doorsteps, or we can call each other, any time. Any time. Even in the smallest hours. Whenever we need each other."

  "And then? What do we do? What do I do when I find you?"

  "Let me change your mind. Let me persuade you, give you every reason I can think of to stay alive. Let me threaten. Let me beg. Let me try and get you back on the poison, if you've stopped taking it. Let me try and get you off it, if you've started. Let me try. Let me in."

  "And if that doesn't work?"

  She took a breath. “Then I'll have to let you go. It's your life, not mine. Do with it as you will. But at least I'll have tried."

  "How long do I have to give you?"

  She thought about it, smiling a tiny smile. “Twelve days?"

  "Three."

  "Ten."

  "A week."

  Her smile disappeared. The game was no longer just a game, though I did not realise it then. “Ten days."

  "All right. Ten days."

  It was easy to talk about it, that night. We were safe at the time, and we both knew it. We were far from danger. We were far from the pit. It seemed an easy promise to make. We made it lightly, raising two glasses of lemonade. Maybe we should have sealed the oath in blood, or at least in some fermented spi
rit.

  "Ten days,” I said again. “Sometimes that's long enough for the feeling to pass on its own. And then when you add the time we'd spend looking for each other, and travelling..."

  She lifted her shoulders. “It's all part of the game."

  "Hide and seek."

  "Of course,” she said.

  Of course. And of course she always won, and of course she always cheated.

  * * * *

  At my next meeting with the psychiatrist, I was more confident, more comfortable. I told him—as I had not told him before—about the trick of the blood. How the pit could be placated, even banished, by an offering. He gave me a sad smile, and I knew at once that he had heard of the trick before, and did not believe in it.

  "Why do you think it works?"

  I shrugged. “I don't know."

  "But I do. Think about this: why should it not be happy with an offering of some other blood—animal blood, perhaps? Even if it has to be your own life essence, why should the pit care whether it's fresh?"

  I shook my head.

  "The answer is simply that it's all a matter of neurochemistry. The pit itself is an illusion, a reification of your emotional state—which is, as we've discussed before, an electrochemical configuration in your brain. The blood offering alters that state."

  I did not believe him, and told him so.

  He bridled. “Believe what you like. I'm telling you the truth. What you do with it is up to you. Look: what happens when you're injured? Your body senses a threat. Even if the injury is self-inflicted, the body prepares itself for escape, or for self-defence, against further injury. The chemical associated with that response is adrenaline."

  "Go on."

  "Adrenaline floods the system. Any pre-existing state is either erased or significantly weakened—immediately. That includes a depressive episode. If it were any other way, your fight or flight response would be useless.

  "That's why the blood has to be fresh, and it has to be yours. To fool your body into initiating the response you want, the adrenaline rush, you need to harm yourself at the time of the depressive episode. Doing it earlier is no good—in fact as your fight or flight response turns stale and sour, it could even trigger an episode. Using animal blood is no good, both because it's old and simply because the animal's nervous system is not your nervous system."