by Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, S. G. Browne, Michael Marshall Smith
I never saw them anywhere that was busy, just these places – quiet places, lonely places: a motorway embankment late at night, the window of an unpopulated tower block, the far end of an empty alley. These ghosts, these beings, they skulked in all the forgotten corners, the unthought-of crevices, the unloved parts of our environment where dreams never touched and humanity simply passed between the gaps.
I had a notion that they were the ghosts of the living; sad spectres of those unable to communicate their pain, appearing in these lonely and loveless spots to scream silently into the dark, left behind to lament their own unheard grief.
It made a grim sort of sense that people like me needed an outlet for all the things that were never said, all the emotions not vocalised, every single tender moment held inside instead of being offered, like a gift, to the one who needed it most. I imagined my own stoic ghost standing in a darkened room, clinging to the side of a derelict building, or perhaps crouching in some forgotten corner of a closed-down factory floor.
But the realisation had come too late; the damage was already done. I remembered Polly's apparition, how it had appeared to me in that late night alleyway, like a premonition of her death. Is that what they were, ghosts of the future? Images of the dead manifesting even before these people died, like a faulty piece of film briefly jumping forward a scene before returning again to the correct timeline?
In that case, had I effectively been warned of Polly's death before it actually happened? And in my selfish cloud of uncommunicative pain, had I then ignored that warning? I tried to recall my feelings when I'd first seen her in the alley – how I'd felt, what I'd thought. I came up blank; my memory refused to play the game.
Before I could pursue this line of thought any further, she stepped out of a shadowy doorway, moving without moving, simply looming forward in the gloom.
It was Polly, and her mouth was a circular black patch obscuring the bottom half of her face. The flesh around the ugly cavity was puckered and creased, as if twisted out of true. The lips were thin, stretched out of shape, and there were no gums, no teeth... just that unnatural coal-gleaming blackness at the core of the inverted funnel of her mouth.
She stood like a statue, a work of art, and all I could do was go to her.
The doorway at her back, the one she'd appeared from, showed a short, dark hallway with a series of uneven steps at the end which led down to some hidden lower level. A presence that was either vast or composed of several smaller elements receded along the hallway, shifting at speed as it flowed down the canted steps.
As I approached Polly her features remained unclear. The closer I got, the more I appreciated that I was in the presence of an unworldly being. Was she actually some strange angel, a manifestation of God's anger at his children? But no, I didn't believe in God. Heaven was a place in childhood picture books; there was only hell, and that hell was located deep within the human heart.
Yet still I stood before her like a worshipper beholding all that he has ever placed his belief in. Her face was blurred, as if covered by a thin sheet of gauze. That awful eel-like mouth didn't even twitch.
Then, surprisingly, she moved her arm, raising it slowly, the motion almost mechanical. I imagined clockwork cogs and motors working to provide the impetus behind this unnatural automation. She was like an exhibit in a museum, a pristine example of some ancient form of engineering dedicated to mimicking the human form.
The arm stopped moving when it reached waist level. I stared down at her fist, awed by the faint illumination given off by her white skin. The tips of her fingers were smooth and round; she had no fingernails.
The fist slowly opened, fingers arcing upwards like the petals of a mysterious and exotic plant. One by one they opened to reveal her smooth palm, unlined and beautiful, like the skin of a baby's belly. I held my breath as her hand straightened out, becoming flat.
Curled in a loose spiral on her palm, like a sleeping snake, was a clump of meat, torn and ragged at one end. There was blood, but it looked black in the dim light. I reached out and picked up the tongue, holding it up to my face. I glanced at her mouth – peering into the depths of it, able to see right into the silent darkness that dwelled at her core, and had always been there, clotted and compressed: a total absence of communication.
Disgusted, I dropped the tongue, watching it unfurl as it fell though the air and landed at my feet, lost in the rubble and the brick dust and the shredded paper that covered the path. When I looked up again, Polly was diminishing along the dark hallway, already taking the stairs. Her body dropped slowly, floating downward through the musty air rather than physically descending the stone steps.
I followed. What else could I do?
Moving along the hallway, I headed for the top of those stairs. It was quiet in there: the silence was like a sheet, a soft, vast covering spread over the interior. I thought of furniture covered by dust sheets in an empty house, of deep snow drifts settling in a thick blanket over cars and post boxes, and of white sheets draped over the resting dead.
The stairs led down into a series of concrete chambers, passages that led off into other rooms, most of them unoccupied but some containing the suggestion of figures bunched together in small unmoving formations. There were other things moving in the darkness, shifting in packs through the gloom. They could have been animals, but from what little of them that I could see they didn't resemble any species of creature I had ever studied at school.
I followed my unresponsive guide through the darkness. There were no lights down here, but the walls themselves emitted a sleazy luminescence, like a bright fungal decay. It was like being deep underwater: all sound was smothered, my ears rang with the pressure of being down so deep, travelling so far.
Square concrete planters filled with dry, sandy soil were arranged against the walls along the narrow passageways, each one containing a strange grey plant whose leaves resembled human tongues. I saw a hand nailed to a wall beside a bricked-up opening, its fingers pulled so far apart that the skin between was torn. Elsewhere there was a primitive wooden frame festooned with severed heads shorn of their hair – like a bizarre hat rack. Their eyelids were held open with pins; each dead face possessed a cold, endless stare.
These sights didn't disturb or disgust me; they interested me in the same way that a startling art exhibit might draw me into its orbit. This was humanity reduced to gaudy decoration. Whatever landlords oversaw this place, and wherever they were from, they admired the form but failed to recognise the spirit that was held within.
Carefully skinned faces had been stretched over delicate wire frameworks; disembodied feet stood patiently in mismatched pairs outside closed doors; bulky, bloodless torsos were scattered on the floors of dim rooms like abstract throw-cushions.
I felt like I'd wandered into the middle of some grand experiment; this entire place had the controlled atmosphere of a laboratory, where students of some bleak science toiled in darkness to perfect an obscure series of clinical tests.
We came to a frameless doorway. Polly (could I still even call her by that name?) stepped inside, eaten up by the hungry dark. I paused at the threshold, realising that this was the last time I would ever have a choice, any kind of choice, about anything...
I stepped into the room, feeling darkness close over me like the sea.
A group of figures stood in the middle of the room, positioned well away from the clammy walls where other, less recognisable shapes clung like oversized limpets on the sides of great flat rocks. The figures were grouped in a loose circle and blocking my view of whatever lay at their centre.
I walked towards the group, feeling nothing – all my senses were dulled, as if someone had surgically removed my nervous system and sent me back out into the world with no way of experiencing it as a human being. I was a robot, an empty shell. Nothing could touch me.
&n
bsp; Beyond the figures was a rectangle of black: a sealed doorway. A broken electric sign hung above the lintel, its cover broken and rubber-insulated wires dangling like exposed veins:
No Exit.
I gritted my teeth, still only capable of feeling a vague echo of emotion, as if I were not really there but watching events unfold through a secret two-way mirror.
Then, slowly, the group parted, sliding away to reveal what they had been clustered around. Something dropped from the ceiling to my left, hanging down in thick syrupy loops to pool in a corner and take on another shape. There was the suggestion of long, thin limbs, crystalline eyes and multiple gaping mouths.
The individual the group had been gathered around was small, dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a warm winter coat. His hair had been neatly combed – I remember that more than anything. It is always the small things, the tiny, barely negligible details, which cause the most pain.
"Danny?" I dropped heavily to my knees on the filthy floor.
He didn't move. His thin arms hung limply at his sides, the hands clenched into tiny fists, the knuckles whitening from the strength of his grip. His mouth formed a perfect letter "O", but it was black as coal, and glistened with the bleak, pearlescent glimmer of fossil fuel.
"Little Man..."
I wept for all the words I'd never spoken, all the opportunities for genuine connection that I'd wasted; I mourned those moments now passed, the ignored days and forgotten nights. Rain on stones; a river running to a forgotten sea.
I cried for us all – for Polly, Danny and me – and I promised myself that I would see my son one last time, and tell him that I loved him before he was taken away for good, and before my own useless mouth formed a circular black hole and my tongue became an offering, a limp token of my inability to say all the things I should have said but never did, never could, and now never would....
"My son..."
Kneeling there in that small, cramped room, I thought of all the words that had become ghosts in all the wasted years of my dismal, wasted life.
Then, lowering my heavy head and closing my tired, tired eyes, I finally accepted the fact that I had nothing more to say.
«-ô-»
My Name Is Natasha Putkin
By Gary McMahon
My name is Natasha Putkin. I must remember that. Names are what define us. They tell us who we are and where we are from. Sometimes they even tell us what must be done. I am twenty-one years old and was born in a small farming town in Siberia. All that seems like a lifetime ago – like it happened to another person, someone who looked like me and felt like me but was not me. If I remember my name I can just about hold onto the link between me and that girl. It is dark and warm in here. I never get cold, not like I used to back home. It is always warm here, in this place. Warm. And safe. He came into the room earlier, walking around with big loud, staggering steps and snuffling in the corners, probably looking for something. I think he was drunk. He sat on the bed and started to sing – an old ballad about fishermen lost at sea. The mattress springs whined above me like a broken guitar. The tune went on for a long time. I think I nodded off for a while – the sound of his snoring was horrible, a long drawn-out snorting – and when I regained my senses he was leaving. He did not disturb me, not this time. Perhaps he thinks I have not been punished enough, and he will leave me in here until I have learned my lesson. He is fat and ugly, smelly like an old farm animal. He has a wife. Her name is Hilda. I think she likes me – at least she puts up with my presence in her house, letting me take care of things around the place. And him, of course – she is more than happy to let me take care of him, cleaning up after him and tending to his demands. It means that she does not have to suffer his attentions, his hot, wet mouth and the things he whispers in your ear when he is on top of you, squirming and squealing like a bleeding hog…
I am not sure how long I have been in the box this time. Sometimes he lets me out after a few hours, sometimes I am locked inside for days. The longest time – after I last asked to use the telephone to ring my parents – he left me in here for over a week. I had no food, no water. I was weak and only half conscious when he finally let me out, and when he did Hilda nursed me back to health. When I was back on my feet again the telephone had been taken out. Sometimes, when I am cleaning the house, I stare out of the windows at the aching blue sky and the quivering trees. I am afraid of so much space; miles and miles of unfamiliar streets and homes, all waiting beyond the thin sheet of glass. If I reach out, touch the glass, I can almost feel the chaos out there shivering through my fingertips like the vibrations through a stereo speaker. They have no children, and whenever I ask Hilda if she ever wanted to start a family her eyes go flat and dull, like old pennies at the bottom of a well. She is much older than him and I suspect that she is well past the age of breeding. Her skin is wrinkled, like my mother's, and her small hands shake all the time that she is sober – which is not often. He brings her drink every day, the bottles wrapped in rustling brown paper. I used to live and work on the family farm. We raised pigs for slaughter. I killed my first pig when I was ten years old. I had no brothers, so was expected to work like a boy. At first I did not like the blood, but soon realised that it was essential, a necessary thing so that we might survive.
A memory: White snow; cold air; the squealing of the piglets. I stand in the barn, shivering in the early morning chill. My father says: "I know it is not easy, baba, but it is something that must be done." I watch him as he hangs the two big hogs and draws a thin sharp blade across one of the exposed pink throats. Then it is my turn. I drift away, attaining an inner focus to allow me to kill the second pig. I do not see my hand holding the knife, or the animal's dirty death throes. I am somewhere else: deep inside myself. A place I'd rather be. Pigs are not human. It is easy to watch a pig die.
I am thirsty. My lips are dry, the skin is cracked. I flex my hands at my sides to keep the circulation going, but they feel light and clumsy, as if they do not really belong to me. I stretch my muscles, opening my legs until my knees meet the wood on either side. I raise my arms so that my elbows rest on the floor, and press my fists into the wooden lid. It is so dark that I cannot see. I know there are air holes, but they let in no light. He allows me a cushion for my head, but there are no blankets – the heat builds up at night, and with blankets I might suffocate. He does not want me to die. He only wants me to be sorry for what I did. It was wrong of me to ask if I might go for a walk, just to the end of the street and back, like last time. He will allow it again only when he thinks I deserve it, and as long as I do not ask. I must work hard for my privileges, just like I did back on the farm. If I listen hard I can hear the sound of traffic on the road into town. It is a busy route and the house is almost on top of it. No one has noticed that I am here, even on those occasions when he lets me of the house to stretch my legs in the garden. It is a small garden, yet Hilda keeps it nice. There are roses and other pretty flowers, and a high wall shielding us from the road. I could scale that wall if I wanted – he does not watch me when I am out there, he trusts me to come back inside when he calls. I always come back inside. Out there is too much that I do not know, but in here I know every inch, every shadow. Once I walked right up to the wall, stared at the rough stones and the dark mortar squeezed into the gaps. I imagined myself putting one hand over the other and climbing the wall, then dropping down on the other side. But the traffic sounds were too loud – almost defeating. They invaded my ears and filled my head, and I was gripped by a terror that was both larger than me and yet smaller than my narrow box under the single bed. If I did choose to climb the wall and run into the road to wave down a passing car or truck, I know that he would kill my family. I know this because he has told me, many times. He knows where they live, what they look like, and claims to know a man in my home town who, if called upon, will slit my mother and father's throats like the pigs we slaughtered. I hav
e to believe him when he tells me this. I have no choice. I have been here in this house for seven years, since I was fifteen, when he took me off the street and forced me into the back of his car after paying my parents a lot of money (or so he says). I know no other way of life. The time I had before has been erased, like chalk marks on a stone wall. I do, however, have my doubts about what he tells me. He claims to know many people in many countries who are just like him – but this house is old and falling apart. The furniture is moth-eaten, the windows are dirty. There is no money. He never goes far, not even to work. He is idle and slovenly, preferring to let his wife work while he sits in his chair and scratches his crotch, eating, always eating, like a fat pig. I wish I had the courage to question him, but I have lived under these conditions for so long that anything else seems too large and frightening. If I did leave him, where would I go? Who would I run to? According to him, the neighbours would bring me back. He says they all have their own little Natasha's, trapped like me in wooden boxes beneath similar beds in identical gloomy bedrooms.
A memory: The low-ceilinged rooms of my mother and father's house. The smell of old blood in the large kitchen. Pots and pans. My mother's wide forearms. My father's smile – a rare sight, but one that often sustains me. Pork sizzling on the grill, its fatty odour overpowering.
My body tenses whenever I hear footsteps in the hall. Sometimes the door opens and someone takes a few cautious steps inside, then pauses, as if listening for the sound of my breathing. I suspect it is Hilda, checking that I have not suffocated. If I die, she will have to resume her role as his partner, and I know that would be the worst thing in the world as far as she is concerned. With me alive, she is left alone – I keep him distracted so that she can sit and get drunk in another room.
