by Gary McMahon
“Where the hell are you…?” She peered under the desk, along the work benches, on the floor by the sink, but the rucksack wasn’t there. She’d jogged into work this morning and forgotten to leave her gear out to air. She remembered bunching up her lycra leggings and T-shirt and shoving them into the bag, with the intention of taking them back out later, when she got the chance.
“Christ, my fucking memory!” Frustrated, she stalked around the office, trying to locate the bag. Because of the distraction, it took her a little time to realise that there was something different about the room.
She stopped and stared at the gurney. It was empty.
“No way,” she said, turning to inspect the rest of the room. There were too many dark corners. She wished she’d switched on the main lights, but now she was clear across the other side of the room, far away from the switch. Reaching the lights would involve walking across the floor, in full view of whatever was hiding in there with her.
“Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing here.”
Her words were answered by a short, sharp tapping sound, like the tip of a broomstick hitting the tiled floor.
“Fuck.”
The sound came again, and this time she could make out where it was coming from. Behind her.
Slowly, she turned around. The lamp seemed to dim, but she knew it was just her mind creating the effect. There was nothing wrong with the lamp; the bulb was new, she’d changed it herself a couple of weeks ago. Fear was causing the illusion of increased dimness. It wasn’t real.
This time the tapping sound went on for a couple of seconds — tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap — and she was reminded of the sound Long John Silver’s wooden leg had made on the ship’s deck in an audio version of Treasure Island she’d listened to as a kid. She used to love that tape. It was scary and exciting at the same time. But this situation, right now, was simply scary.
“Who’s there?” The answer was another rapid succession of tapping sounds on the floor.
Wanda began to back away. She held out her hands in front of her, warding off whatever might come tap-tapping out of the shadows. The sound followed her, advancing towards her across the room, and soon she began to make out the form of her pursuer.
The scarecrow was hopping along on the tip of its wooden stake, moving in short, quick jerking motions. Its upper body twitched forward with each separate hopping motion, the hat wobbling but not falling from the wooden head. The black and white photo of little Connie Millstone was stuck firmly back in place, her drawn-on eyes staring out from the flattened sheet.
Wanda continued to move away from the scarecrow, raising her hands, opening her fingers, trying to ward off what was becoming increasingly inevitable. Where was her bag? Her phone was in there… she glanced over at the desk, where the landline was located. Too far away; she’d never make it, even if she ran. She might reach the phone, but there wouldn’t be enough time to actually make a call and get someone down here to help.
She looked back at the advancing figure. It was cloaked in shadow, as if the light from the lamp was insufficient to burn away the clinging darkness. It had brought that darkness with it from wherever it had come from.
She started looking for a weapon — anything with which she could defend herself. She grabbed a Bunsen burner, and then threw it to the floor. Her grasping hand caught hold of a rack of test tubes and she threw them at the hopping nightmare, but it just flung out its arm and batted them away. The sound of breaking glass was tiny, inconsequential. She was too deep inside the building for anyone to hear. It was pointless even screaming.
The door was miles away, on the other side of the room, with the light switch on the wall nearby. She’d been moving in the wrong direction. The scarecrow knew exactly what it was doing, herding her into a corner like a trapped rat. When she felt the work bench pressing against the small of her back, she almost fell to the floor in defeat. This was it: there was nowhere left to run. She had come up against the wall at the other side of her life, and now it was all over.
She thought again of Katherine’s face, and she smiled. Then she thought about how she’d never get the chance to tell Craig Royle how she felt about him. But that was probably a good thing. He wanted to get back with his wife. The last thing he needed was another complication, some lonely woman claiming that she was in love with him.
But she was, wasn’t she? She hadn’t been in love with Katherine — that had been a combination of lust and availability. Or was that all love really was, anyway?
She’d never know.
It was too late. It was all too late to matter…
The scarecrow’s wooden support scraped on the tiled floor, making a squeaking noise that broke up the horrible tap-tap-tapping.
Wanda was only aware that she was crying because she felt the moisture on her cheeks. She wiped it away with one hand, puzzled. She’d never been a particularly emotional woman, so it seemed odd that she should weep at the prospect of her own demise.
She reached behind her, trying to find something on the work bench that might help. A sharp blade sliced her fingers, and she closed them around the scalpel. She brought round her arm and brandished the tiny blade, almost driven to laughter because of how pathetic it looked in the face of the hopping figure.
The scarecrow halted a foot in front of her. It was immobile, as if it had never moved at all. The photograph rippled. But there was no breeze, no wind to cause the fluttering motion.
Wanda looked back at the blade, and then at her wrist. No, that would be too slow. And she didn’t have the will power to cut her own throat.
“Come and get me, then, fucker.” She waved the scalpel slowly in the air, tracing a pattern that she hoped would act as a magic charm. “Come on.” She was whispering now. Nobody could hear anyway, so why waste her breath on loud threats or screams? Better to saveit for the fight to come.
The scarecrow began to silently shake, as if it were rapidly shrugging its shoulders. It took a second for Wanda to realise that the damned thing was laughing at her.
Diary: Four
there monks down the stairs like in that filum i saw. they singin. hear them now wen I rite this. like prayering on a sunday school. i want my mummy and daddy. daisy like a flower not hear. she gon somewr els an I don now were. want sing to stop. scared. don wan go down the stairs. mite get me. mite kill me. clickey comin now. i hear him comin. clickety-clickety-click. mummy. mummy. daddy. i scared mummy. but mummy sing aswel. i can hear her sings louder than the rest of the sings. my i scared mummy.
mummy i scared of mummy.
of mummy and daddy.
— From the diary of Jack Pollack, April 1974
PART FOUR
Growth
“Armed sieges, hostage situations… flavour of the fucking month.”
— Detective Superintendent Sillitoe
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ERIK SAT IN his car outside Abby’s place and watched the sun as it started to rise. Faint, blood-red smears stained the grey wash, transforming it into a thing of savage beauty. He raised his hands and scrubbed at his face, trying to clear his head.
On the back seat, Monty Bright was silent, wrapped up in his blankets like a new-born baby. And wasn’t that an apt description? He’d been born anew into this world, passing through from some other place — a place he’d been searching for his entire life and had finally found. But the place had rejected him; it had sent him back here, where he no longer belonged.
Erik had watched that smug little writer bastard leave Abby’s place while it was still dark. Maybe he should have done something then, but he’d been unable to move, as if his rage had immobilised him. In the past, he would have got out, smacked the guy, and then dragged him into the car and taken him somewhere to teach him a lesson. But now he felt different. He couldn’t act; his limbs were tired, his brain refused to work in the same way. So he’d stayed here and watched the house, waiting for things to become clear.
Like the sky above him,
he was caught up in the process of transformation. The only problem was, he couldn’t be certain regarding what he had been or what he was about to become.
No, he would let someone else sort out the bastard who was fucking his Abby. He wouldn’t get his own hands dirty on a secondary character in the tragic story of his life, not this time. There were more important tasks to deal with. He took out his phone and dialled the number of a kid whose particular skill set he’d used before, and who’d been primed to expect a call. This kid ran a tight little crew who knew how to swing baseball bats and exactly what to do with them when they did. It would cost him a couple of hundred quid, but the job would get done properly. There would be no mistakes. The pathway to Abby would be clear.
He made the call, feeling nothing at all: no doubt, no shame, and no sense of wrongdoing. When he hung up the phone he felt lighter, as if he’d shed several layers of skin.
After a short pause, he put away his phone, reached down under the passenger seat, and took out the plastic Tesco carrier bag he’d stashed there. He placed the bag on the seat between his knees and carefully opened the package. He took out the gun. It was a small-calibre handgun, something he’d confiscated from a drug-dealing chav a couple of months ago. Instead of disposing of the weapon, he’d kept it. At the time, he hadn’t known why he’d done so. Now he realised that he’d been hurtling towards this moment for a long time.
This moment; this place: Loculus…
The voice that spoke the word in his head belonged to Monty. Since he’d killed Hacky, the bond between them had strengthened, and they could communicate clearly like this: snatches of dialogue, words and phrases rolling around in his head.
We can go back there, together. Once you’ve tidied up your business.
He nodded, stroked the gun. The metal was cold. The plastic handle felt brittle, as if it might break under pressure. He was only going to scare her, and this would do the trick. For once, he’d wring some true emotion out of the hard-nosed bitch…
Erik got out of the car, stuffed the gun down the belt of his jeans, and walked across the road to Abby’s house. He was smiling. The sun was still rising. There was nobody out on the street but him. The world felt like it belonged only to Erik, and he could do whatever he wanted without risk of being seen.
He still had a key to the house. Abby didn’t know, but he’d taken a copy before returning the original to her when they’d split up. He didn’t use it often, just a few times a year, to sneak in and rummage around in her underwear drawer while she was out, or to lie on her unmade bed and masturbate. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but it helped to ease his pain.
Glancing around to check that he couldn’t be seen, he took out the key and unlocked the door. He stepped inside the house and shut the door behind him, feeling light-headed. His limbs were floppy but his core was solid, as if a thread of steel rope ran through his centre. His blood ran hot and cold. He didn’t know if he was about to laugh or cry, or even scream.
Slowly, he climbed the stairs and stood outside Abby’s bedroom door. The floorboards groaned quietly under his weight. He could hear a faint chanting noise, but was unsure in which room it originated. He pushed open the bedroom door and looked inside. As usual, the bed was unmade; the sheets were in a state that could only be caused by two people fucking. He wanted to close his eyes but he didn’t. Instead he walked into the room, approached the bed, and sat down. He ran his hands over the mattress. It was still warm. He bent over and smelled the sheets. The aroma of sex filled his nostrils: stale perfume, sweat and semen.
He stood and left the room. He followed the landing to what had once been Tessa’s room. The chanting was coming from behind the closed door. There was a sing-song quality to the chanting, like a nursery rhyme.
“Tessa, Tessa, Tessa… bless her, bless her, bless her… come back to me.”
The voice belonged to Abby. He would have recognised it anywhere.
He reached out and placed the palm of his hand against the door. It was trembling. But, no: his hand was trembling, not the door. He was afraid, but he could not identify the source of that fear.
Erik grabbed the handle, turned it, and opened the door.
Abby was naked and kneeling before a large pile of what he realised must be Tessa’s things — clothes, drawings, toys, photographs: all piled up into a conical mass, like a stunted tower of mourning.
“Abby… what is this? What are you doing?”
Loculus, said a voice in his head. He thought of Monty on the back seat of the car, and wondered if he should have brought him inside.
Abby ignored him. She acted as if he wasn’t there. She was rocking backwards and forwards, as if she’d lost her mind. Her skin was streaked with dirty sweat, there was mud and leaves in her hair. Her face was smeared with dirt, like primitive camouflage paint.
She continued to chant the rhyme:
“Tessa, Tessa, Tessa… bless her, bless her, bless her… come back to me.”
Erik walked over and grabbed her arm. She was limp, like a sack of flesh without bones. “Abby!” He pulled hard on her arm, turning her around. Her eyes were rolled up into her head: all he could see was the whites. He raised his free hand and slapped her across the face.
She didn’t respond.
He slapped her again, leaving a red mark on her cheek, and then tugged her, dragging her limp body across the carpet towards the door. Still she chanted; she hadn’t even paused for breath. She just kept saying those same words, over and over, a prayer to whatever dark urban gods she thought might be listening.
Erik felt power flood through him. It wasn’t rage, nor was it hatred. This was a purer force, and it came from somewhere outside his body. Like an alien sun shining down on him, the energy warmed his body, cleansing him like a balm.
“This is it,” he whispered. “This is where it all ends.” He tugged the gun out of his belt and clenched his right hand into a fist around the handle. He brought it down, hard, on the top of her head. The sound it made when the base of the grip struck her skull was like a hammer blow. He hit her again, this time with the barrel on the side of the face. He felt her cheekbone crack. Her skin split and blood spattered, splashing the carpet and even the weird tower she’d made at the centre of the room.
He only wanted to scare her…
Erik was blind. He could see nothing beyond the violence.
He hit her again and again, shredding the skin of her face, shattering the bones of her skull, and yet still she continued to chant those words, through mashed, bloodied lips, and even when her broken teeth began to fall from her mouth.
…to scare her into loving him again.
When Erik stopped she was lying on the floor, curled up like a baby. There was blood everywhere. Still she chanted the rhyme, taunting him.
He was breathing heavily, as if he’d just done a tough workout. His gun hand ached, the knuckles were swollen. He raised his face to the ceiling and let out a wordless wail, an animal sound of pain and self-hatred. Then he returned his attention to the room, and what was in it.
Abby continued to mumble from the floor. She’d stopped chanting and was now trying to speak, but he couldn’t make out the words.
“Look what you’ve done,” said Erik. “This is your fault — you did this. I only wanted to scare you. You’ve made me into something that I despise.” He raised the gun and stared into the barrel. It would be so easy to end it all now: one bullet for her, one for him. Maybe that’s what had been coming all along. Neat and tidy: a smooth little suburban death. He pressed the end of the barrel to his cheek, and then moved it across to his temple. After a second, he pointed the gun at Abby, his finger tightening on the trigger.
“Please…” Her voice was weak. She was speaking through a mouthful of blood and shattered teeth. “Don’t kill me…”
“No, I’m not going to kill you. I love you… all I’ve ever done is love you. Can’t you see? Don’t you understand? I’ve loved you ever since I first met y
ou, and when we lost our baby I would have kept on loving you, but you wouldn’t let me. Instead you went with other men and told me about it. You rubbed my nose in it, like a fucking dog that’s puked up on the carpet.”
“Sorry… hurting… everything hurts.” Her voice was unrecognisable.
For a moment he was acutely aware of the selfishness of his actions, the intensity of his feelings, but then he shoved that insight aside, ignoring it. Why the hell shouldn’t he be selfish? There was no one else to look out for him, to protect his interests. Ever since he was a kid, he’d been forced to look after himself. That made a man hard; it toughened him to the point that nothing could penetrate the armour he had worked so hard to put in place.
“You bitch… look what you did. Look what you did to us. We could’ve been happy. We were a family… a proper family…”
He could no longer bear to look at her, so he raised his eyes and stared across her collapsed body.
Behind her, there was movement. Thin silver branches, leafless and grasping, were slowly emerging from between the gaps in the conical mound of Tessa’s belongings. Like long, thin arms, the branches slid out, swaying in the air; gnarled twig-hands reaching for something that wasn’t there.
Erik tightened his grip on the gun. He approached the mound. The branches appeared to sense him and twitched towards him, turning from silver to brown. He raised the gun and took aim. His hand was shaking so he used the other one to steady the gun, just like he’d seen in the movies.
“No…”
Abby, still on the floor, was speaking to him. He turned around.
“Don’t kill it… our baby… our Tessa… she’s come back…” She spat out blood. There were gaps where a couple of teeth had been.
He swivelled and watched the branches. There were now patches of skin on them, like pale pink bark. As he watched, the patches grew, the skin, spreading like a stain to cover the rest of the branches. The branches became thin arms; the spindly twigs at the ends turned into small hands. Pieces of the construction fell away from Abby’s sculpture — jumpers, paintings, a My Little Pony duvet cover — and parts of a body were visible beneath. The sapling child was quickly transforming into flesh and blood, as if the process were speeding up because he was watching it happen. Like a low-rent Pinocchio, the lifeless simulacrum was gaining sentience.