by Gary McMahon
I dropped him at the outskirts of Wishwell, refusing his offer of a tip and bidding him goodnight. He smiled at me, shook my hand and wished my family well. I watched him as he darted across the road, ducking into a narrow alley lined with battered green wheelybins behind a low block of flats. Tom Waits croaked near-tunelessly from the radio, and I reached down to let off the handbrake.
Long shadows detached themselves from some ragged bushes that overhung the mouth of the alley, slow-moving but purposeful: three stooped figures, nothing more than dense silhouettes, drifted into the alley, following the man who’d just left my car.
There was something not quite right about the figures, and my internal alarm bell started ringing. They moved clumsily, without natural rhythm, and their limbs looked too slack, as if lacking any proper working joints. I opened the car door, set my foot on the kerb. Listened. But there was only silence, underlain by the dry rustling of dead leaves and empty crisp packets in the gutters, and the usual distant estate sounds of bass-heavy dance music, crying kids, shouting spouses.
I waited for roughly thirty seconds, and when nothing happened I closed the door and drove off into the night towards a promise of warmth and safety that could only be realised when at last I curled into my sleeping wife’s soft and welcoming back.
****
It was only when I saw the television news two days later that I realised I’d been expecting the report. A local asylum seeker, Jalal al-hakim, from Iraq, had gone missing. He had last been seen leaving the city centre offices he cleaned as part of a five-man crew at one-thirty a.m. on Saturday morning. Police were treating his disappearance as suspicious; Mister al-hakim had only been in England for eight months, after fleeing persecution and torture in his own country. He was an outgoing, friendly family man, liked by both his workmates and his employers, and had no known enemies.
Al-hakim’s face flashed up at me from the screen. It was a recent photograph, probably taken by his wife, in which he played with his two young daughters. He was laughing; he looked happy. But still a shadow seemed to loom over his small frame, shading his features.
My insides churned as if I had an ulcer, and my skin prickled as if stung by nettles. I had been the last person to see this man before he’d vanished; I was a potential witness. So I rang the police without finishing my morning coffee and told them what little I knew, agreeing to go down to the station to make a statement later that morning. But still my conscience wasn’t clear: I had driven away after watching those shambling figures follow him down the alley. I felt ashamed, cowardly in an almost abstract kind of way- and desperate to make amends.
I left the house without telling Tanya about what had happened. She couldn’t help but notice my reticence, along with the fact that I was more withdrawn than usual, and stared a silent question at me as I kissed Jude goodbye. I shook my head, smiled sadly. She brushed her dry lips against my forehead, blew hot stale morning-breathe against my hairline, winked at me as I drew away and opened the front door.
I went to the police station in my lunch hour, not expecting much and receiving even less than that. It was fruitless. I informed a disinterested uniformed officer of what had happened that night, and about the shadowy figures I’d seen slinking into the alley; then I left, feeling utterly disillusioned. Nobody cared about these people, not the public, the police, or the politicians. All they were was an election tool, a way of faking interest in the community. Local councillors would bleat on about asylum seekers and their attendant problems all day long, but when it came to caring- actually doing something- they suddenly clammed up and found some more pressing business. It seemed that nobody wanted to get their hands dirty.
There was more graffiti visible on the flyover abutment behind the High Street on my way back to the depot:
Get shot of immigrint shit!
Charming. And these people thought they were so much better than everyone else? They couldn’t even spell in their own language, while the people they despised so much could speak it if not better then certainly more politely than these restless natives.
By the time I got back to the depot Claire was on a break. She was pouring herself a coffee as I walked in, and made me one with an air of faked irritation so I didn’t feel like I was getting special treatment. We sat at the chipped Formica table in the cramped office at the rear of the tiny building, and I told her about my visit to the police station.
‘Are you really that surprised?’ she asked me in a tone of mock incredulity, that broken glass growl of hers coming from somewhere down near her boots. ‘C’mon, Karl, nobody gives a shit about anybody these days. It’s dog eat dog out there, and if you aren’t a consumer you just get consumed.’ She sipped at the awful coffee, her large bland face forming a grimace around the rim of the mug.
‘I s’ppose you’re right,’ I relented, then blew on my own drink, watching with a faint nausea as the skin that the milk had formed on its surface rippled like an oil slick on a park pond. ‘I was just hoping for more, y’know?’
‘And that’s what I like about you: you’re different. You give a shit. But don’t let it go to your head, because I’ll deny ever saying it if it comes out.’ She smiled one of her rare sunny-day smiles, then went back to the coffee. I felt numb, empty. Ghost-like.
‘Anyway,’ said Claire, disrupting my bleak thoughts and attempting to change the subject. ‘You heard the latest?’
I hadn’t, but knew that I was about to; Claire was the woman to see if you wanted to know what was going on in Scarbridge. She was better than the local news- more up-to-date, and her sources never failed her.
‘Which is what?’ I asked, wondering if I’d soon regret it.
‘Well, it seems that about four months ago half a dozen corpses went missing from the town morgue. Those kids who died from smoke inhalation in that warehouse fire down by the old Dock Road… the silly sods who set it alight while they were trying to rob it? Them. Their bodies. Stolen.’
I glanced up at her, looking for any sign that this was one of her morbid little jokes. Her face was rigid, blank; she was telling the truth.
‘Fuck,’ I said quietly, placing my mug on the scarred tabletop. ‘Some people will steal anything.’
She smiled; a sad, tired expression. ‘It was all hushed up by the authorities, of course. Too embarrassing to let into the public domain. People are finding out though; they always do. Nothing stays buried for very long round here. Someone spoke to someone else after a few too many pints, and the news is breaking out like little fires all round the estates. Just like always.’
Four months ago. Just about the same time that the attacks on immigrants had begun: foreign families being burned out of their low rent council housing, kids spat on at school, a pregnant woman pelted with fruit in the local supermarket, one or two people even going missing, just like al-hakim… there had even been a picket line outside one of the town’s three primary schools, the parents in the area refusing to allow a couple of Turkish children into the building. One of their fathers had been hospitalised when someone had thrown an engineering brick at his head. It was all so wrong… such a fucking mess.
I wondered if the incidents were linked: whether some right wing group was about to implicate the immigrant community in the theft of those boy’s bodies, laying claims to all kinds of voodoo and necrophilia. Breeding even more fear. More violence.
I didn’t want to think about where it all might end.
****
The chill early hours again; midweek in Scarbridge, when all the smart folk are tucked up in their beds, wrapped in sleeping yoga poses around their loved ones. I was returning to the depot from a drop-off in Newcastle- a nice little earner- and decided on impulse to take a detour.
The urge to return to Wishwell came upon me unannounced. Now, with the aid of hindsight, I can put it down to shame, guilt, the need to do something- to do anything. I didn’t know what I would do when I got there, but I did know that I had to go back to the mouth of that a
lley. To inspect the place where I’d dropped off al-hakim for his final truncated journey home.
Winter was closing in like a gloved hand around a warm neck, choking the life out of the world: trees had shed their blossoms long ago, the sky looked brittle as a sheet of glass, and a sharp chill had crept into the air. Yet still I saw young women dressed in nothing more than artfully placed scraps of wispy material and tottering about on four-inch heels, displaying their goose pimples to whoever cared to look. I shook my head in amazement at these people. Once more, I vowed that my child would be raised differently, brought up with intelligence and thought for the future.
Wishwell dominated the skyline to the east, three and a half miles out of town, it’s run down tower blocks blocking out the stars. The four central ragged concrete towers were surrounded by a maze of estate blocks- cramped terraced houses, cheap purpose-built flats: the estate was a riot of contrasting architectural styles, and had been continually added to since the early 1960s. I drove to the perimeter of the estate and parked up by the alley; I turned off the radio and sat in silence behind the wheel, remembering those lumbering loose-limbed figures and their odd disjointed movements. How they’d seemed to detach themselves from the darkness like smoke.
Was there really some extremist neo-fascist group operating out of Wishwell? Some militant offshoot of one of the local right wing political parties, whose aim was to clear the immigrant population out of the district, starting with this grubby, downtrodden estate? The thought terrified me, but made complete sense. There had been an intense paranoia and distrust of the asylum seekers who had been shipped into the area for quite some time now, and such reactionary groups feed off negative emotions like hyenas at a rotting cadaver.
I left the car, making sure I locked it up, and headed towards the black maw of the alley. Straggly bushes, like clasping skeletal fingers, had stretched across the entrance, forming a natural barrier that I was forced to duck beneath. It was dark in there, the solitary streetlamp shedding no light. Had it been sabotaged, or was I just tapping into that vein of paranoia and distrust? I stepped gently along the length of the alley, expecting dark shapes to jump out in front of me, their slack limbs waving at me, blanched hands grabbing for my throat…
But I reached the other end without incident, and found myself in a small square surrounded by shabby box-like cluster homes that had probably been grafted onto the estate in the mid 1970s. I registered movement at the periphery of my vision, and spun around to face whatever had caused it; a dark blur slipped away into another narrow alley, followed by two more. It was them, the same lurching figures I’d seen that night.
I followed, keeping to the edge of the square, hugging the rough outlines of privet bushes and lopsided garden walls. The figures were turning right at the other end of the alley, and I waited until they were out of sight before following any further. My heart beat double-time and my mouth went very dry; I felt afraid yet exhilarated. I was doing something.
I stalked the men through the estate - I could now tell that they were male by the clothing that I glimpsed beneath the muted orange glow cast by the few working sodium lights: hooded sweatshirts, baseball caps, gaudy tracksuits. They shambled through labyrinthine passages and beneath arched stone walkways, never speaking, not even glancing at one another. I treaded oh so softly, but still the crumbling concrete beneath my feet seemed to mock me: shifting like tectonic plates as I walked and crunching loudly in the heavy silence of deep night. The men didn’t hear me; the forces of good seemed to be on my side.
The vast night sky pressed down on me like a huge sheet of black ice, threatening to trap me in the moment until I could be discovered shivering in the pale dawn. Stars blinked out one by one, like heavenly lamps being switched off. The men entered a boxy flat somewhere near the heart of the estate, not far from those glowering grey tower blocks that watched dispassionately from so many broken and boarded windows far above. I hid in a garden in sight of the flat, and waited for inspiration.
Much later I woke without even realising that I’d nodded off. I was cold and my lips were beginning to chap. The estate was in total darkness, and I estimated the time to be well into the ungodly early hours. The sky was still pitch-black, but the stars had turned themselves back on. I let go of the hedge that I’d been cuddling, and climbed over the low garden wall, making no sound and feeling justifiably proud of my stealth. Not once did I stop to ask myself what I was doing; I didn’t even pause to think of what might happen to Tanya and Jude if any foul deed befell me. I was focused, determined to do what was right.
I inched across to the building the men had entered. It was a ground floor flat, with dirty net curtains barely visible through the crudely whitewashed windows. The small front garden was weed-choked and littered with empty beer cans, takeaway wrappers, clots of old food. I spotted a thin strip of flagstone walkway along one side of the building, and followed it round to the back. The rear door stood ajar, hanging from rusty hinges. Obviously security wasn’t a priority here; but, saying that, they were safe on their own ground, surrounded by their own people, so probably felt no need to lock doors and bolt windows.
I pushed open the door, and waited for the squeal of those hinges. It didn’t come; the door swung silently open on a vaporous cloud of dust to reveal a messy galley kitchen that led onto a cluttered hallway with mildewed cardboard boxes stacked against the walls. To the right of this hallway was another door, this one a homemade affair constructed from thick lengths of timber and painted a dull yellow. I rode my luck, expecting this door to be unlocked too. It was, so I opened it.
A steep concrete staircase led down into a fathomless darkness; as I stepped down I briefly questioned my actions then pushed the thought away. I was acting on pure impulse now, shutting off my mind and going with my gut instinct. If I stopped, I would panic: if I panicked, I would bolt – probably drawing attention to my presence in the process. All I needed was one look, a single glimpse into what I knew must be the control room of this sinister organisation. Then I could go to the police armed with proof, and bolstered by the knowledge that I wasn’t imagining some convoluted conspiracy and these people actually existed.
The stairs led into a large basement, and it was blacker than night down there; there was no natural illumination, and I doubted that I would find a light switch even if I were foolish enough to try. So I walked into the gloom, so afraid by now that I couldn’t halt my momentum, like a man running full-tilt down a very steep incline. I was simply a series of actions, with little thought behind them.
Soon I was lost in the dark, unable to even guess at which direction was out. After a while I began to see shapes form out of the darkness: sketchy figures propped against the seeping black walls. There was no sound in there but that of my own ragged breathing, so I knew that the figures were corpses; immediately after this realisation, I became certain that they were the bodies stolen from the morgue. I slowly counted the outlines that sat slumped against the bowing brickwork: there were six of them. Half a dozen.
My feet slipped on the slimy earthen floor as I advanced further into the room, looking for an object to take away with me as solid evidence. Something crunched loudly underfoot, and I pitched sideways in a clumsy fall. As I went down my right hand pushed against, then slid off some vaguely familiar shape on the floor. My fingers poked into moist holes, and I felt teeth rattle against my wedding ring. A face. There was a face on the floor.
I looked down, unable to help myself. Blind eyes stared back at me, an open mouth yawning emptily into the chill air of the room. It was only then that I realised I’d been walking on the dead all along; mutilated bodies lay in a thick carpet of decay on the basement floor, and as my eyes at last became accustomed to the darkness I realised that not one of them was Caucasian. I was lying on a crust of murdered immigrants.
And that was when I saw al-hakim. Or rather what was left of him. The top half of his torso stood upright amid a heap of severed limbs to my immediate left,
his torn face sporting what were obviously teeth marks. Bleached bone showed through like plastic where hungry mouths had scooped out hunks of his wrinkled golden brown cheeks.
I looked again at those six immobile figures that leaned against the wall; at their lurid sports casuals and stained Burberry baseball caps. Something strained at the centre of my mind, a thought that couldn’t quite escape its cage. And then they moved. The bodies. All six of them, twitching and jerking like marionettes as they attempted to get to their feet. But still not breathing, not any of them. They were dead; but they moved. Towards me.
It was only then that I managed to regain control of my senses, and ran blindly across the corpse-layered floor, looking for an exit. The figures reached for me as I fled, loose white fingers groping for my living flesh, but I kicked them away, screaming now and not caring who heard. It was only through blind luck that I stumbled upon the stairs, my flailing hands bashing against the chipped concrete and three fingers breaking against the jagged treads. I climbed them in a blind frenzy, wanting only to get out. To be away from that place and those things…
Nobody accosted me on my way back to the car; it was as if I didn’t matter, they didn’t care what I’d seen because nobody would believe me anyway. I sat behind the wheel for an hour, just waiting and watching the greasy sun struggle up from the eastern rim of the world. If they wanted to silence me, they had only to come for me. As I sat there attempting to set my broken fingers I thought about how easy it would be to steal a few corpses, especially if the authorities were in on it. And I thought about what it might take to raise the resentful dead. To focus all the rage and the bitterness, the hostility and xenophobia that exists at street level to something higher, something darker. Call it urban magic, ghetto voodoo.
