by Gary McMahon
Without giving too much thought to what he was doing, Erik reached for the knife, wiped it on the plastic sheet, rested the blade against the palm of his left hand, and slashed lightly. He stared at the cut, wondering how it had got there. He’d felt nothing. He was empty, nothing but a puppet, a plaything for monsters.
Monty stopped struggling. His intelligent eyes widened.
Erik pressed the wound to Monty’s mouth and let him drink.
He realised then that he would be required to kill a third human being. The act itself held no terror for him, but the motivation behind the deed was horrific. He watched as Monty lapped at his hand, and when he pulled away the meal, Monty tried to lift his head towards the dripping blood. His mouth opened and closed like that of a baby bird. He had no teeth. The gums were purple and swollen. The suckered limbs along his sides writhed, a sordid octopus-like motion.
Erik got up and grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen, which he wrapped around his hand to staunch the blood flow. The cut wasn’t deep; it would heal quickly.
When he returned to the lounge, Monty was face down on the plastic sheet. His arms and legs, the tentacles and other appendages, were flailing, making rustling sounds against the sheet. He was licking up the spilled drops of blood and laughing, gurgling, expressing undiluted pleasure.
Erik knelt down and turned Monty over onto his back. The mouths on his chest were open and stained red. He stared at Monty’s face. It looked fuller, the cheeks fatter than before. The skin looked less pale, as if his natural colour was returning. He was smiling.
“Okay,” said Erik. “I get it now.”
His head felt as if it were filled with foam; something was burrowing inside.
Monty cocked his head to one side. “Erik?” The voice sounded stronger, less childlike, and more recognisable as that of the real Monty Bright. Awareness dawned in his eyes.
“Yes, Monty, it’s Erik.”
“I need more.” His eyes flickered shut. He was exhausted. The act of feeding had worn him out.
Erik closed his eyes for a second, and then picked up Monty and returned him to the cat box. “I know you do,” he said, as he closed the lid. “And I know exactly where to get it.”
He went upstairs to his office and sat at his desk. He stared at the screen saver on his computer — a black and white photo of Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank squaring up in the ring. He’d sparred with Benn before the man was famous. Erik had once knocked him flat out in the first round. It was a good memory, one that helped get him through some tough times when he began to doubt his own strength. Times like now, like this.
He picked up the phone and dialled a number, waited for the call to be answered. It didn’t take long. Whatever he’d felt inside his head was fainter now, but it was still there, waiting.
“Erik.”
“I need to see you, Hacky.” He stared at the picture of the two proud fighters in the ring, doing exactly what was required to get the job done. No messing around. “Come out to the old country house tonight, at eight o’clock. You know the place. Don’t tell any fucker where you’re going or who you’re seeing. If you do, and I find out, you won’t get paid. You will get hurt, though.”
“Paid?”
“Yeah. I have an important job for you. We’re talking big money, son. More than you’ve ever seen before.” He raised his eyes to the wall, examined the framed painting of a young Cassius Clay. “Consider this a test. If you do well, I’ll push you up the ranks, and give you a proper role in my organisation.”
“You can trust me, Erik. Always.”
“I know I can, marra. That’s why I called you, and not one of the others.” He knew from experience that Hacky would keep his mouth shut. The kid was too afraid to disobey a direct order, and he liked money too much to even risk the chance of losing out. These scumbag estate kids were all the same: they’d do anything for cash, sell their own mother to climb up the criminal ladder and catch a glimpse of the big bucks.
“Meet me at the Barn. I’ll be waiting inside for you.”
“Is it… is it about the monster? That thing we found?”
“Sort of, marra. I’ll tell you what you need to know tonight. Until then, lay low and don’t speak to anyone. Make excuses; tell your mates you’re ill and won’t be seeing them for a few days. Give your girlfriend the elbow. Whatever. Just make yourself available to me, and only me. We have a job to do.”
“Okay. That’s easy. Am I going away, then?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes you are. Just for a little while. I’ll see you at eight, marra.” An idea occurred to him. “Bring a bag packed for a few nights. You won’t need much where you’re going; just the basic essentials.” It wasn’t a great plan, but it might fool people into thinking Hacky had gone on a journey.
He hung up the phone, feeling nothing. Nothing at all.
Back downstairs. Monty was sleeping inside the cat box. His eyes were closed, his chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Erik felt the same stirring inside his skull. Monty was doing something to him — or rather, the proximity to Monty was making something happen. It was like being in the presence of an electrical current. His skin tingled. His mind flexed, like a muscle that hadn’t been used for a long time.
Calmly, he sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and watched Monty sleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN VINCE ROSE unlocked and then opened the old, unpainted door to the first attic room, Marc expected to hear at least the whine of a rusty hinge, or the sound of boards shifting underfoot. But there was nothing; the door opened smoothly and without a sound.
“So you’ve never been up here before, I take it?” Rose spoke without turning around. He reached out and flicked a light switch. The room brightened. Marc wouldn’t call it light, not exactly: that would be too kind a description for the weak, watery illumination. The room beyond the threshold simply became less dark.
“No,” he said, following the old man inside. “To be honest, I didn’t even know these rooms existed.”
“Behold,” said Rose. “My brother’s library…”
The room was small but it seemed much more spacious because there was little furniture inside. Just a small tub chair pushed up against a bookcase. The walls were lined with books. Marc could not see an inch of wallpaper because there were so many ceiling-high bookshelves fitted along the walls, and volumes of differing sizes took up every inch of them. There were also books and dusty old box files lined up on the floor, along the skirting boards.
“Wow… this is quite a collection.” He walked around the room, examining the spines. There were books on religion and philosophy, aviation, birds and wildlife. Shakespeare rubbed shoulders with Orwell and Stephen King. Biographies were stacked next to fiction. There was no recognisable order — no apparent system — to any of it. The majority of the volumes seemed to focus on Fortean subjects — real life ghosts and hauntings, sightings of monsters in lakes, murders, abductions, disappearances, UFOs, cryptos and tulpas. “He was really into this stuff, wasn’t he?”
“So it seems.” Rose went to the roof-mounted Velux window and opened the tilted venetian blind, allowing a little natural light into the musty room. “He was always interested in strange stuff, and I remember he started collecting books on these subjects when he was a child. I didn’t realise he’d kept it up.”
Marc’s eyes roved over magazine collections: The Fortean Times, The Unexplained, I Want to Believe, National Geographic, The New Scientist… full sets, probably worth a small fortune on eBay.
One entire shelf differed from the rest in the fact that it was dedicated to a single subject. Marc had heard the name Roanoake before, but couldn’t quite remember where or when. He selected a book at random from that particular shelf — The Roanoake Colony: An American Mystery. He flicked through the pages, skimming a few lines here and there, not taking much of it in until something snagged in his memory.
“Ah, yes…” He remembered it now: an infamous case. He’d read
an article about it, seen a documentary on TV. A bunch of 16th Century English settlers had vanished mysteriously from an island off the coast of North Carolina. Carved into the trunk of a nearby tree, not far from the deserted camp, was the word Croatoan. There were a lot of theories on why the one-hundred and eighteen people had apparently fallen off the edge of the world, leaving behind only this vague, slightly creepy message — local Indians, cannibalism, alien abduction — and the books on this shelf seemed to examine each and every one of them in great detail.
At the end of the row of books, tucked away slightly because it was so slender a volume, Marc spotted something potentially interesting. A school exercise book with a tattered blue cover, its edges dog-eared. He replaced the book he was looking at and selected this other one, sliding it out of its place on the shelf.
On the cover was handwritten the title Croatoan and Loculus: a Study in Vanishment.
“What is it?” Rose drew close, peering at the book in Marc’s hands.
“I’m not sure. But it looks like your brother was working on something here — writing a book of his own, maybe, or at least an essay. Maybe he wanted to be published in one of those magazines he seemed to like so much.”
He began to leaf through the exercise book. Written neatly on the pages was what appeared to be a series of rough notes, fractured jottings probably penned in great haste judging by the state of the handwriting. The text was unfinished; first draft material. This was clearly something Harry Rose had been planning to develop further but his demise had brought his plans to an abrupt end.
Marc read out a section at random:
“Carved into another tree nearby — an oak tree, which isn’t indigenous to that area — was the word ‘Loculus’. None of the books mention this. It has been expunged from history. Why?”
He turned the pages and read some more:
“The ruby-throated hummingbird is a native of North Carolina. Why have these birds been seen in the Grove throughout history, particularly around the area where the Needle was built? Did they come through from Roanoake?”
He looked up from the page. The room darkened incrementally and when he glanced up at the roof and out of the tiny window, he saw that dark clouds were massing, like harbingers of a storm.
He cleared his throat and read some more:
“The name Terryn Mowbray was recorded on the shipping manifest (but oddly not on the actual passenger list — was he classed as luggage? Stored in a coffin, perhaps, like Stoker’s Dracula on the Demeter?), but this information can be found nowhere in any written account of the case.”
He flicked through the text on the remaining pages. At the back of the book, a photocopied page had been stapled to the inside cover. He opened it and stared at the image. It was a child’s pencil drawing. The lines were ragged, uneven, and the shading didn’t stay inside the lines. The sketch matched the other one in his possession: it showed a man wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a long black cape, holding a short, pointed stick. His face was white, with large black goggle-like eyeglasses perched above an oversized beak. It was a familiar image, of course — a medieval plague doctor. But the familiarity made it no less disturbing, especially as it had seemingly been sketched by a young child.
captain clikcety, said the words beneath the sketch, drawed by Jack Pollack aged 6
“Why the hell didn’t he ever tell me about this?” He closed the book again and held on to it, not wanting to put it down but afraid to touch the volume for too long in case something infected him. It was a crazy thought, but nevertheless it caught hold inside his mind, barbed and dangerous. This information was unclean, it was tainted. Exposure to it might cause him damage.
“What is it?” Rose placed a hand on his arm. “You look… shaken.”
“Whatever Harry was working on here, it has something to do with the case I was researching. The Northumberland Poltergeist. The Pollack twins. The ghost they called Captain Clickety. Even the Hummingbirds. These were all part of my own notes… Harry was keeping this stuff from me, deliberately it seems. For some reason, he was holding it back.”
“I see. Maybe he was planning to tell you, but didn’t get the chance?”
Marc licked his lips. “Or maybe there was something he didn’t want me to find out…” He sighed. “But you’re probably right. There’s no reason he would have kept this information from me. He was a great help — why would he do that and then keep something this important back? It doesn’t make sense.”
“None of this makes sense, son. I’m starting to believe that my brother had mental health problems — far bigger ones than I ever imagined. I mean, does any of this strike you as abnormal? I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the man’s interests, but all this… well, it’s slightly over the top, don’t you think?”
Marc turned to face Rose. The man’s face was pale in the gathering gloom. His eyes were moist, as if he were about to cry. Was he looking for denial or affirmation? “I suppose so, yes. It does come across as a bit obsessive.”
“Just wait till you see what’s in the room next door. That’s the kicker.” Rose turned and walked out of the room. He stood on the other side of the small landing and used another key to unlock the door opposite. “If you thought the library was weird, just wait until you get a load of this.” He pushed open the door, switched on the light, and went inside.
Standing in the doorway of the library, Marc once again began to have the intense feeling that somebody was standing behind him. He knew that it was impossible, that he was alone inside the room, but the sensation of someone standing there silently in the corner grew and grew, becoming something that he could not ignore. He thought that it might be Harry, either urging him on or warning him not to pursue this any further.
Then, softly at first, he heard a steady, repetitive clicking sound. The sound grew in volume, but remained at a level that ensured no one outside the room could have heard it. The clicking remained at an even tone, droning on and on. Then, like a Geiger counter picking up levels of radiation in the air, it began to wax and wane, creating a hideous song.
Air trapped in the radiator? Old water pipes under the floorboards, making a racket?
The clicking decreased in volume and by the time he was facing the part of the room where it was coming from, it had ceased. The corner was empty. There was nobody there, watching him. Yet he felt as if there was yet another figure hiding just out of sight, perhaps drawn into a fold of darkness.
Marc backed out of the room, taking the exercise book with him. When he finally shut the door, he struggled to let go of the handle. He wanted to keep his hand there, gripping it tightly, effectively trapping whatever was inside that room for as long as he could. Like the fabled little boy with his finger stuck in the dyke, he was holding back the flood — but this was not a flood of water, it was a surging wave of darkness and desolation, the terrible precursor to an ocean of nightmare that would drown all who stood in its path.
“Are you coming?”
He turned his head at Rose’s voice, which was coming from beyond the other open door. He pulled free his hand, backing away from the library, and allowed his body to turn around, too. He was beginning to feel hemmed in. Claustrophobia had never been something that had bothered Marc, but right now he felt trapped.
He stepped into the other room. The window blind was closed but Rose had turned on a small table lamp that was positioned on the floor in the far corner. It cast dim light across the room, creating a creepy atmosphere that wasn’t helped by what was waiting at the centre of the room.
On a large plinth or table, and taking up most of the room, there was a scale model of the Concrete Grove estate. Marc stood and stared at it, hardly able to believe what he saw. He remembered a boyhood friend whose father had been obsessed with model railways. The man had created a system of tracks and fields, and even a small village, in the basement of their house. As a boy, Marc had been fascinated by the sight; as he grew older, he began to think it was al
l a bit sad and obsessive.
This reminded him of that guy and his model railway. A similar level of detail was displayed here, but possibly to an even greater degree of ambition. He recalled Harry’s milk-bottle-top replica of the Needle. Had it been a practice model, a warm-up or a template he’d completed before tackling the real thing?
He moved towards the model, unsure of what to do in the presence of such a thing.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
He glanced at Rose, nodded. “Yes… and it’s a bit scary, too. He must’ve spent hours in here, working away at this thing. It’s too lifelike… know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do. It’s creepy. Nothing like this should exist. It’s… It’s unhealthy.”
Marc leaned across the table and reached out towards the replica of the Needle, the ugly tower block that stood at the centre of the estate. This one was not constructed from foil bottle tops.
“I think it’s made out of cement, or maybe even proper concrete. He must’ve cast it himself, mixing the materials, constructing a little mould…”
Marc’s hand had paused in mid air. He moved it forward, brushing his fingertips against the side of the tower. It was hard and rough, unpleasant to the touch.
Rose sounded troubled. “Cardboard I could understand. Even balsa wood. Perhaps some MDF off-cuts from a DIY store. But cement? That’s going a bit too far.”
Marc remained silent as he inspected the model. He didn’t know what to say.
The estate was designed to form a series of concentric circles, each street wrapping around the one before. The plan view, looked at in this way, was weird. It looked like a magic circle, or a form of pentagram. Marc knew this was nonsense, but his gut instinct suggested otherwise. Why build the estate in such a specific layout? What was the purpose behind the circular pattern?
There was no furniture in the room; no shelves on the walls; no carpet on the floor. Just bare plaster and varnished boards. The model took centre stage. It was the reason this room existed. Nobody but Harry Rose had ever been in here until it had been discovered by his brother — Marc could sense it. The man had worked on his model every night, adding and subtracting tiny elements, making repairs and replicating alterations carried out in the real world by builders or council workmen. It was an ongoing project; his life’s work. He must not have told anyone about the model. It was his secret. He had kept it all for himself.