by Gary McMahon
“I’m coming in,” he whispered. The birds gave no response. They didn’t move.
Carefully, he made his way across the foyer, watching where he placed his feet in case he stood on one of the small birds. He thought about that old Hitchcock film: the final scene, with Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren making their way through a crowd of similarly silent and watchful avian antagonists. It was eerie. There was a sense of calm, but beneath that there was the suggestion of frantic movement, almost panic.
He moved slowly towards the stairwell and out of the foyer. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and took a moment to catch his breath. He’d not been breathing that entire time as he crossed the foyer, walking among the hummingbirds. His mouth was dry; his throat ached.
After a short while, he continued up the staircase, holding on to the handrail as he climbed. The steps were filthy; the stairwell smelled of old piss mingled with the coppery hint of blood. He didn’t want to be here but he was unable to turn around and leave. He had to follow wherever the story — his story, now — led him. There was no other option.
The flat was on the top floor. He remembered, even though he had no memories of ever having been there. He climbed slowly, reluctantly, but with a sense of purpose. It didn’t take him long to get there, but during the short climb it seemed that the seasons had changed; the world had turned, everything had altered subtly. When he stood on the top floor, bathed in sweat, it was as if he’d stepped into another place, perhaps a country whose borders messily intersected his own version of reality.
“I’m here. I’m home.”
The building was silent. The rooms were empty. There was nobody else here, just him… him and the birds.
Every door but one on the top floor was shut. The only one that was open belonged to the flat where the haunting had taken place. Again, he knew this instinctively, as if there was hidden knowledge stored inside him and only his emotions could read it. He listened for sounds of movement, but none came. He truly was alone here, inside his own lost past. There was no one else to help him, to hold his hand. His brother and sister were dead and he had no idea what might have happened to his real parents.
He was alone, and that made him happy.
He stepped softly across the landing, towards the open door. There was no light in there; it was pitch-dark, like the entrance to a cave. Sunlight lay across the walls and the floor out here, on the landing, but inside the room was only darkness. It was fitting somehow; he would not have expected anything else.
He stopped immediately outside the door, his breath coming in short, sharp jags. Sweat poured down over his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, but still his vision began to blur.
“Home.”
He took a step forward, and then another, and entered the place where it had all started.
Darkness swallowed him. Then it receded, and he finally saw what had happened all those years ago. The final chapter of his story — which was also the prologue — unfurled before his eyes.
There’s a couple on the living room floor, dressed in long black robes with nothing underneath. They have strange symbols painted on their hands and faces. They’ve turned the television into some kind of altar: a black piece of cloth is draped over the set, covering the screen, and there’s a dead chicken or hen or rooster with its throat cut so deeply that its head hangs at an angle. Its feathers are black.
No blood.
No knife.
Just the dead fowl.
The man and the woman are singing or chanting. They’ve clearly rehearsed the words many times, and their faces betray not a hint of emotion. There is no music, just their voices, and neither of them can hold a tune.
At the woman’s side, wrapped up in blankets, there is a small baby. The baby is silent; it does not cry. Its eyes are only half open; its mouth is twisted into an odd shape, the lips limp. The baby might be drugged.
The man nods as he chants. Tears begin to well up from his eyes and then spill down his cheeks. The woman reaches out clumsily and grabs his hand. The man shakes his head, vigorously; it is the woman’s turn to nod.
The woman lets go of the man’s hand, turns her body, and picks up the tiny baby.
They both continue to chant. The man’s voice is quiet but the woman’s is loud, as if she has something to prove.
Then, abruptly, the chant changes, one word, repeated over and over again: Loculus.
The woman holds up the baby by its throat. The blankets drop to the floor. The baby remains still, its sedated form motionless as they woman closes her eyes and starts to squeeze.
The man looks down, at the floor. Behind him, something stirs. Darkness rushes in, like a thick fog, coiling at floor level and then rising, forming a tube, before it takes on the shape of a man. A white-beaked face leans forward, eager.
The man opens his eyes. He reaches out and grabs the baby. The woman does not resist. It is over, just like that: the moment has gone. The spell is broken.
The beaked figure fades to blackness, flapping its arms and thrashing its head from side to side. Then, after a few seconds of this violent activity, it is gone.
The man and the woman stare at each other, reaching some kind of unspoken agreement. They reach out and hold hands, the baby clasped between them.
The sacrifice has failed. They could not go through with it. They could not kill the baby, even to save the other children.
Marc’s parents — his real parents, who loved him after all — have backed out of whatever deal they had made.
That is the reason for the subsequent haunting. That is why Captain Clickety tried to get to the twins. Because the life he was offered, the one he would have accepted without pain or pity, was revoked. The one he’d been told about all that time ago when he’d first encountered the village of Groven: the Witness.
So instead he went after all the others — the Pollack twins and all the rest: the ones he took and the ones that got away. The Pollack twins, the three boys he lured inside the Needle, the Gone Away Girls… but none of them was ever the right one. Because that one escaped, he was snatched away.
But now he’d come back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ROYLE PARKED IN the next street and made his way on foot to Abby Hansen’s house. He’d already been briefed on the two-way radio, so he knew what was going on. Erik Best — a man he’d met and spoken with on several occasions — had gone crazy with a handgun and there was a full-on armed siege taking place in the Concrete Grove.
As he approached the property, flashing his ID at uniformed officers as he made his way through the police cordon, he saw members of the Armed Response Unit getting into position. A man with a high-powered rifle was visible on the roof of the house opposite; the rest of the team was dotted about at various points close to the house, their weapons trained on the front door and windows. There’d be at least a couple of officers at the back of the house, doing the same thing. It was all locked down tight; Erik Best was going nowhere apart from down.
Detective Superintendent Sillitoe himself came walking over when he saw Royle, raising a hand in greeting. The tall, thin man looked anxious. He never had been good with television crews, and there were a lot of cameras on the scene today.
“Sir,” he said, nodding.
“Glad you could make it, Royle. We have a… well, a situation here.”
“I’ve been briefed, sir. I know what’s going on.”
Sillitoe glanced towards the house and then back again, his eyes narrow and focused. “You know this man, Best?”
“I do, sir. I’ve dealt with him on a few occasions. He’s a local gangster — did time for GBH and assault, but we could never pin anything else on him. It’s a known fact that he runs bare-knuckle boxing bouts but not from anywhere around here. We think he has links to the drug fraternity, but again there’s no hard evidence. He’s Teflon, sir. The bastard always manages to stay out of our sights.”
“Okay, anything e
lse?”
Royle paused, tried to remain calm. “The Gone Away Girls, sir.”
Sillitoe tensed, seeming to grow in height. “What about them, Royle. Don’t start all that shit again, please. Not here, not now.” His eyes opened wider, flashed.
“No, sir, you don’t understand. The last girl taken, before it all stopped… it was Best’s daughter, Tessa Hansen.”
“And the mother’s in there with him…”
“So I believe, sir.”
“Fuck. That’s all we need, to revisit another old mess.” He paused, looked again at the house. When he turned back to Royle, his features had softened. “Can I rely on you, Royle?”
“You know you can, sir.”
Sillitoe smiled. “Good… that’s good. Let’s try to keep any mention of the Gone Away — of that case — to ourselves.” His lips curled, as if he’d tasted something unpleasant. “The press are all over this to begin with. Armed sieges, hostage situations… flavour of the fucking month, especially after that Moat business last year over in Rothbury. The bastards can’t seem to get enough of this ‘mad gunman’ shit.”
“Yes, sir. I know.” He stared at Sillitoe’s face, trying to read the man’s thoughts. But that was impossible; nobody could read Detective Superintendent Sillitoe. That was what made him so good at police force politics, why he’d risen so far and so quickly through the ranks, despite being such a piss-poor detective.
Royle was about to add something more when he heard the gunshot.
The sound was followed by a commotion: bystanders hit the deck, police officers ran around trying to look as if they had some kind of control over the situation, members of the Armed Response Unit hunched over their weapons, awaiting the order to fire at will.
Sillitoe moved quickly behind the nearest vehicle, protecting himself. Royle moved away, taking the opportunity to give his superior officer the slip. He’d been told to come here, he was meant to be on site, right in the middle of the action. He didn’t need any distractions. He just wanted to get to the heart of the matter and rip it out, still beating if necessary.
“Royle!” The voice came from an upper storey window.
He stopped walking, turned, and looked up at the front of the house. He could see a figure partially obscured by a bedroom curtain.
Looking around, he saw an officer cowering nearby with a bullhorn in his hand. He jogged over there and grabbed it, hitting the switch and causing a whine of feedback. He put the apparatus to hips lips, took a breath, and spoke:
"Best? Yes, it’s me, DS Royle. You remember me, don’t you?”
A pause… nobody on the street dared to speak.
“Yeah, I know you. I’ll speak to you… only you.” Another pause; the man was thinking things through, examining his options. “Get up here now, or I’ll kill the woman and the kid.”
Royle stopped himself from responding immediately. This didn’t make sense.
“The kid?” His voice echoed. “Let me get this straight. There’s a child up there with you, Best?”
“Yeah, a fucking kid… or so it wants us to believe. Come up now or they’re both dead. I’m not fucking around. The time for all that’s gone. This is serious. This is where it all ends, Royle.”
Royle did not wait for confirmation from his superior officer, nor did he look at anyone as he stalked across the street and pushed open the gate. He walked up to the door, waited, and listened. He heard someone coming down the stairs, heavy-footed, and moving along the hallway. He couldn’t make out details through the stippled glass panel in the door, but it didn’t look like Erik Best.
There was the rattle of a bolt in its slot. The door opened an inch; the security chain tautened, made a faintly musical noise. A woman’s battered face peered through the gap.
“Miss Hansen?”
She nodded.
“Miss Hansen… Abby, are you okay?”
The more he saw of her face the more worried he became. She was cut and bruised, with what looked to be a broken nose and a shattered cheekbone. Both of her eyes were swollen almost shut.
“He hurt me… he’s got a gun.” Her voice was dull; she struggled to make the words clear through her beaten face. “He’s halfway up the stairs… if I try to run, he said he’ll shoot me in the back.”
Royle nodded. The decision was made.
“Let me in.”
She shut the door. He heard her pawing at the security chain, trying to release it from its catch. Then the door opened again, wider this time; just enough for him to step inside. She moved to the side, and once he was through the doorway, she slammed the door and replaced the chain, slid the bolt back into place. She was shaking. The unfocused look in her eyes made it seem like she’d just woken up from a long sleep and was still only half awake, still caught up in the wild webbing of dreams.
“This way,” said a voice from further along the hall. “Come here, where I can see you. And keep your hands away from your body.”
“I’m unarmed,” said Royle, moving slowly forward. “I’m not a firearms officer, anyway. I would probably shoot myself in the foot if I started waving a gun around. How about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. I know how to use this thing.”
Royle could not see the bottom few stairs of the main flight. As he drew closer, he saw a pair of feet, then legs, and finally a torso.
“Keep coming,” said Erik Best. He held the gun out, away from his body. The tip of the barrel was angled slightly downwards, but it was pointed vaguely in Royle’s direction. “No quick moves.”
Royle was aware of Abby Hansen standing with her back to the wall. She slid along the hallway cautiously, focusing all of her attention on the man who was standing halfway up the stairs.
“Okay, start climbing. We can talk up here, on the first floor, so we’re well out of the way of your mates out there.”
Royle nodded. “That’s fine, Erik. I’m here for you… all for you. We can talk about whatever you want.” He kept his hands held out, away from his body, the palms turned towards the man with the gun. “I want to find a peaceful conclusion to this. I don’t want to see anyone get hurt — and that means you, too. Let’s see if we can get everyone here out alive, yeah?”
Best shook his head slowly, a grim smile on his face. “We’re all already dead, marra. Don’t you see? This is a hell, and we’re all trapped here, in this hell. Like demons or ghosts… we can’t ever leave again. We’re haunting this place… haunting it…”
He’s insane, thought Royle as he started to climb the stairs. He’s lost his fucking mind. He moved slowly, carefully. He didn’t reach out to grab hold of the banister, preferring instead to keep his hands up at waist level, showing that they were empty. He could hear Abby Hansen mounting the bottom step behind him. Her breathing was heavy. She whimpered quietly, but just the once and for only a second or two.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, keeping his gaze fixed dead ahead and hoping that only she could hear him. “Stay calm.”
“Shut the fuck up and get your copper arse up here.” The gun barrel twitched, pointing directly at him. “She doesn’t need to hear you. She doesn’t need to hear anything.”
“Okay, okay… hold your horses. I’m coming. Like I said, I’m here for you. We can sit and talk, you and I, and see what we can organise.”
Slowly, Best moved backwards up the stairs, taking one riser at a time. He placed his feet carefully as he went, so there was no danger of him stumbling and falling no matter how hard Royle wished for it to happen. The man might, indeed, have lost his mind, but he was aware of his surroundings and seemed intent on having his way.
When he reached the top of the stairs, Royle followed Best along the landing to an open door. Best stood to the side, flicking the gun as if he were chasing off flies. “Get in there.”
Royle nodded. “No problem.” He entered the room. At first it wasn’t clear what he was looking at, and then he realised that there was a pile of what looked like a child’s bel
ongings in the middle of the room, as if they’d been arranged into a heap and then spread out messily. There were clothes and toys, pages from magazines, and even photographs in the pile. He realised then that these things had once belonged to Erik and Abby’s daughter. These were her things; they’d been placed here deliberately.
Then he saw the thing that was standing in the corner.
He stopped, feeling the urge to turn around and run, to just get the hell out of there and not look back, not once, not ever. Just keep on running until he was out of sight and far away from the Crawl.
The figure was small — child-sized. It was dressed in a floppy-brimmed black hat, a long black cloak, and had some kind of weird bird mask covering its face. Placed over the mask where the eyes should have been, incongruous and lending a further surreal touch to the already eerie figure, was a strange-looking pair of black goggles. The figure did not move. It just stood there, with its back to the wall, staring into the room.
Royle had overcome the urge to flee. “Hello,” he said, disappointed at the fear in his voice.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Best, entering behind him. “It doesn’t talk.”
Royle didn’t want to turn around and take his eyes off the figure. If he stopped looking, it might move; and if it moved, he was fucked. He wasn’t sure how he knew this, but it felt right. The last thing that needed to happen here was for that thing to start moving. Or crawling.
Abby Hansen walked past him on the right, moving towards the small figure. She stood near it, but not too close. She didn’t seem to know what to do — should she go to it, or stay out of reach? Her fingers flexed at her sides, her lips trembled, and she swayed on her heels for a moment, as if she were about to fall. Then, after a second or two where things looked fragile, she recovered and straightened her spine, lifting her chin in defiance.