by Gary McMahon
The scalpel blade flashed, catching gleams of light from the streetlamp outside her window. She did not scream; she would not give him the pleasure of hearing her pain. She had learned not to scream a while ago. It ensured that the ordeal was short. He carried it out like a duty, as if it were a job of work. By now each tiny cut was perfunctory, as if there was no passion behind the act. It had gone on for so long that it had almost become a chore.
Then, the beast once more quietened, he left the room. The door clicked shut. The sound of the lock echoed in the cavernous dark.
She waited… waited… and then came the muted screaming. Then she took the cotton wool balls and antiseptic lotion out of her drawer and began to dab at the cuts.
When she woke, mere moments had passed. She checked the clock on the wall, and it told her that she had simply been drowsing. The water suddenly felt dirty, contaminated. Her father did that: he blighted whatever he touched. Even now, after his death, he was able to cast a shadow and cause a stench.
The bastard was dead, but he would not rest.
He was dead, but he was watching.
Watching over the people he owned.
EIGHT
It was gloomy when They stepped off the bus. The air was wet and heavy and the sky trembled as if machines thrummed behind the heavy grey clouds, generating the weather. Drizzle fell like insincere kisses; it was light, almost waxy, and promised nothing but more of the same. They stood at the side of the road and watched as the bus pulled away, an unstable outline in the murk. They could not remember boarding the vehicle – Their consciousness had emerged at some point during the journey and the first thing They had been aware of was the sight of a city approaching.
Cities. They loved cities, despite never before being able to enter one. These places were Their playgrounds and Their workplaces. Wherever people massed, and the energy of mortal men and women was strongest, Their designs flourished.
A city, then….
Oh, yes; They loved it here.
Traffic was heavy. The rain and the scant daylight conspired to fill the road network with harried drivers. Couriers hurried here and there: in small white vans, on bicycles and mopeds. Workers emerged from tall buildings to consume brief lunches before tunnelling back into the communal hive.
The evidence of their designs was everywhere. They smiled. They were happy. To see the designs in action was such a gift; They rarely got to examine the results of Their work at such close quarters. Moments like this one were to be savoured.
They walked slowly from the spot on the pavement, enjoying the feel of two spindly limbs skimming above the surface. They clenched Their hands into fists and then relaxed. Over and over: a succession of empty threats on the end of two skinny white arms.
They caught sight of Their body in the mirror of a shopping quadrant window – a lovingly restored Victorian arcade. The body was small, almost invisible within the greater mass of flesh and movement. It was clad in scruffy rags. Torn jeans covered the legs. A thin shirt encased the fragile torso. The face was partially hidden by long, lank hair.
They scanned Their memories for the particular design – if any – allotted to this form, but found nothing. Perhaps it was free of Their interference. Not everyone was lucky enough to be a subject, a framework, for the perfection of Their duty. Some people spent their entire lives without being blessed by a design.
A tall man in a smart suit brushed against Them as he passed by in a hurry. A design trailed from him like webbing. The complex nature of its construction was a joy to behold, and They paused to admire Their handiwork.
Such complex patterns; a veritable labyrinthine structure clung to the man. There were so many placements, such a vast array of conceptual pathways in evidence, They wished They could simply follow him and observe as the design evolved.
So that's what They did: They stalked the man from across the street, enjoying the way that several older versions of the design fell away like skeins of dead flesh then drifted on an unseen breeze, floated up into the air, and dissipated in the upper levels of the atmosphere. Even once they had been installed, the designs kept growing and mutating, becoming things which adapted to the person who carried them.
The discarded raw material might find its way back and be recycled for another design; some of it might even attach itself to a design already in action, snagging on an outcropping and changing an existing shape and process in the beautifully organic way They had only ever witnessed in Their imaginations.
The man jumped into a taxi outside a large, contemporary public house. His face crumpled, and then reformed. The design was changing him, re-contextualising his basic role in the human race, simply because of the matter which had drifted away. No one else could see this, of course. No one but Them.
They watched him for as long as They could; until he was no longer visible. The air moved around him, making room for his ever-changing design.
They knew:
when he got home he would find the key he had misplaced a week ago and as he bent over to retrieve it he would concuss himself by catching the edge of an occasional table with the side of his head and in the hospital he would be treated by a nurse he had dated in his school days and they would later conduct an affair and he would leave his wife and then a year from today a year exactly from this moment a year and not more not less the nurse would bend over to pick up that same key in the lounge of their rented flat and be killed instantly as her temple connected with the edge of a small occasional table the same table he brought with him from the house his wife would keep in the divorce
Such was the beauty and simplicity and sheer mathematical impossibility of the design. His design. The one They had created for him, and which was changing with every second he remained alive.
They crossed the road, enjoying the sound of car horns and the yelling of drivers who stuck their heads out of side windows to shout abuse. The screech of tyres. The song of the city.
They stood outside the public house – a bright, cheery building with lots of glass along the frontage and huge swinging doors. They once again saw Themselves reflected in the glass, and They tried to smile. But it did not work; the expression was alien to Them, a thing They could not even begin to rationalise in the context of Their designs.
After a short while They crossed the footpath to the door and pushed it open, walked inside. It was warm; music was playing; people drank and laughed and ate salty snacks from shallow bowls at the bar. Hardly anyone noticed Them, so They stepped lightly across the room, looking for something – looking for someone.
They had sensed a familiar tension in the air. It told Them that there was at least one soul present who had been touched, or breathed upon, by the lost one. He had breached the external barriers protecting Their designs, entered it, and then sealed it behind him. He had interfered in a way which had always been forbidden.
He had made himself part of the designs, and by doing so had caused a mess. That was why They were here: to clean up the mess, stitch together the tattered holes in whichever designs the lost one had damaged.
They scanned the room. There were so many auras; They could see them all now. Their vision was improving. Most of the auras They saw were torn and frayed, but the specific one They sought would be slashed and trashed, hanging in frayed tatters from whoever carried it. The designs were visible to Them like the exoskeletons of certain insects; they enveloped the bodies of the subjects, fusing with their auras to create a sort of scaffolding for the energy held within.
Then, at last, They saw it. Several of the separate links of the small design were coming apart at the seams; some of them had broken away and dissolved, leaving behind only seared stumps. This person had been touched only briefly by the one they had come to find, and possibly several times removed, but still he had been touched. The damage to his design, however minimal, pointed to this fact. He had come into the lost one's orbit, and his design had trembled.
They began to cross the room,
approaching the man. He was young, and he was very drunk. In his hand he held a shot glass; the liquid inside was golden, fiery. He finished it in a single mouthful, and then motioned to the barmaid for more – and that was when They were spotted.
"Get out of here, kid." Another man had approached Them from the side, his hands held out away from his body. "What the hell are you doing in here? You're underage: go back home to mummy."
Laughter. Shouts. An unseen woman singing.
The man grabbed Them by both shoulders and steered Them back the way They had come, towards the door to the street. The crowd parted; people smiled; a large woman with a big shiny face pointed and began to giggle.
Once outside the man knelt before Them, his face creased into a gentle smile. His entire demeanour changed. His design was small and fragile; an incomplete element hung from his back and left to wither. They were sad. "What's up, son? You in trouble? I know someone who might be able to help. I can take you there. He… he takes in young kids like you, gives them a job. You can earn good money."
They knew exactly what he meant, what he wanted. They knew it all. It was part of his pathetic design. As was a possible future outcome, one which might change with the slow flexing of his tired design.
later after his shift he would go to sammy's place and spend some time with one of the chickens sammy kept locked up in the back and there would be blood and tears and that was just how he liked it and then he would wipe himself off and pay sammy to keep his mouth shut before going home to where his fat wife and her drunken sister would brag to him about the men who bought them drinks and the drugs they kept from him and then he would surf the internet for old school photographs and masturbate and get angry because he couldn't come and he'd beat up his wife while she laughed again in his face and then he'd get some drugs of his own and several months later an old ex-chicken from sammy's place many years before would see him later that night and follow him along a dark alley and cut his throat and laugh in his face like his wife and his sister and then the boy would flee vowing never to return to sammy's but weeks later he'd run into this man's wife and her sister and he'd fuck them both and the wife would choke to death as he strangled her because he could no longer get it up with a woman just a man an older man a man who called him chicken and he'd miss the man and the other men just like him and that would be the end of his design
They shook Their head. They could not yet speak – this mouth; it refused to work properly – but They could grunt. They could moan.
"Hey, kid, what's that? What's wrong with your head? You been in an accident?" The man reached out for Them again, his fingers grasping. "Hey, come here. Let me help you." When he pulled his hand away his fingertips were red.
They backed away and left the man there, crouched on the sidewalk and thinking of chicken – his pet name for all the boys he and Sammy recruited from the streets to service their clients in the basement room of Sammy's Hi-Fi shop in Bestwick…
They knew this, because it affected the designs of those who passed by on the street, making them flutter. Serendipity knew no moral boundaries; it was free to all. As long as it was designed for them.
They walked to the corner and waited. The young man They'd spotted inside the pub would have to come out at some point, and when he did They would be sure to follow. They would trail him wherever he went, because eventually he would lead Them to the lost one.
And then Their work here could be completed.
NINE
The sky was dull grey, the colour of sorrow, as they left for the Stoneville residential home. Benson took the wheel while Sarah sat in the passenger seat staring out of the window at the drizzle, which seemed to form fuzzy grey clots in the air. She was trying not to think too hard about where they were going, just clearing her mind and allowing the greyness to saturate her perceptions. She hoped that it might even drown her thoughts.
"How long has she been in this Stoneville place?" Benson stared straight ahead as he spoke. She glanced at the side of his face, at the scars, and wished again that she could bring herself to love him. "Before your dad died, wasn't it?"
"Yes. She's been in the home for over ten years. He drove her there, with his unreasonable behaviour. But she would never have left him. She wouldn't jump, so her pushed her." She looked back out of the window and saw a small girl standing at the side of the road. They were travelling through a grotty suburb to the south-east of Leeds – a cluster of grimy housing estates bordering the M621 – and heading towards the motorway. The girl stared at the car, a strange smile on her pale face. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, with battered running shoes on her feet. No socks. Her long, tatty hair was soaking wet.
Sarah smiled back at the girl, wondering what she was doing out there in the cold and the wet. The girl raised a tiny hand and waggled her fingers, and then she ran along the street and vanished around a corner into a gloomy looking alleyway.
"I'm starting to realise just how badly my father treated her," Sarah turned back to Benson. He was frowning. "I found some photographs…" But she could say no more, not yet. She did not want to describe to Benson what she had seen in the photographs.
"What kind of photos?" He turned his head. His eyes were shining; his teeth were pressed together beneath the thin covering of his lips. She saw a momentary flash of his skull, like an image of death superimposed over his scarred features.
"Oh, nothing. Just some of his old shit, that's all. Nothing important, anyway." Lies, all lies. Why was she unable to tell him about her suspicions, her fears? Why could she not just tell the truth?
They remained silent for a while, listening to the thrum of the wheels on the wet tarmac as they briefly joined the M1 motorway, gaining speed. Traffic was light: there were a few trucks clogging the slow lane, with bored drivers leaning across oversized steering wheels. Benson stayed in the middle lane – something she hated – and undertook the cars to his right.
"How do you pay for the home? I mean, it must be expensive to keep her there, in such a good place. How do you fund it?"
Sarah closed her eyes and tried to focus. Her vision was swimming. She felt queasy. "My father was well insured, and his police pension helps. There's also, well, the slush fund."
Benson flicked the indicator with his middle finger and moved the car over into the slow lane in preparation to leave the motorway at the A650 Wakefield exit. "The slush fund? What's that, then?"
"He was a heavy gambler, and he used to win a lot of the time. I'm sure you've heard the rumours. He used to treat gambling like another job, a secondary career, and any money he made went into what he always called the slush fund. There was a lot of cash in there by the time he died. More than I had ever thought possible."
For a moment she thought that Benson had not heard her, then she realised that he was ignoring what she had said, probably because he was unsure how to react to the information.
"Where exactly is this place? I'm not sure where I'm heading." He slowed down the car and his hands flexed on the steering wheel. Sarah was unsure if he was tactfully changing the subject or simply distracted by the unfamiliar geography.
"Just head for Pinderfields Hospital and I'll tell you when to turn."
"So you're loaded, then? A little rich girl?" He smiled, the scars making tiny white replicas of the forced expression across his rough cheeks. "Does that make me some kind of gold digger?"
"Turn right, then keep going and you'll see the sign for Stoneville."
They fell again into an uneasy silence. She thought that Benson might assume he'd offended her, but couldn't bring herself to care. She craved a drink – more of that whisky from earlier in the day. Her throat itched and her stomach was churning. She was beginning to sober up. Maybe they could go for a pub lunch after they'd seen her mother. And Benson could pick up the tab, just because she knew she could make him.
Before long the Stoneville residential home came into view, rising above the road as if it were reaching out towards her, drawing
her into its skewed orbit. Sarah swallowed but her throat was dry; she coughed, attempting to produce at least some moisture, but failed. Her teeth ached. She felt utterly forlorn – yes that was the word. There was no other that could do justice to her feelings at this precise moment in time.
Forlorn. For some reason the word held a strange resonance, as if it were a place on the map and not an emotion.
"You look pale. Are you OK?" Benson reached out a big hand and grasped her leg, squeezing lightly to reassure her. It hurt, just a little, but he left his hand where it was, just above her knee. Sarah fought back the urge to scream. She didn't want this, not any of it: her pain was her own, and she would suffer it alone, just as she had always done. It was not something to be shared, like a fucking takeaway pizza.
"I'm fine," she said, tersely. "Don't worry about it. Just drive."
