by Gary McMahon
I passed a series of doorways on the first floor landing, giving them not much more than a cursory glance. I'd been to places like this before, in my former role as a paid guide to the departed. Once, a few years ago, I'd helped rid a Bradford massage parlour of a particularly nasty spirit – an unknown murder victim who claimed to be an early study of the Yorkshire Ripper, when he was still not much more than an inchoate serial killer.
I climbed the stairs to the upper level, noticing that the décor improved as I made my way up through the building. The second floor landing was blocked off by yet another door, with another grille set into the wall. I reached out and pressed the button. This was clearly the door to which the old bastard downstairs had referred: the wooden surface was decorated in attention-grabbing African designs, probably hand-painted by whoever took up residence on the second floor. Some of the motifs were gorgeous and some were scary and brutal.
"Yes." It was the same voice – odd, sexless, yet good-humoured.
"It's Thomas Usher again. I'm inside."
A buzzer sounded; the door mechanism clicked and the door popped open an inch. I pushed the door wide and passed through, then shut it quietly behind me. The air was fresh and breezy; there must have been a window open somewhere. I could smell freshly cut flowers.
"This way, please." Now that I could hear the voice firsthand, I realised that it belonged to a young woman or girl. She stepped out of an open doorway to my left, and smiled. She was young – not much more than a teenager – and breathtakingly pretty. Coffee-coloured skin, remarkably pale eyes, bright white teeth. Her long, plaited hair was partially covered by a brightly-coloured scarf and she was wearing what looked like some kind of tribal dress. It was all earthen colours and swirling patterns. Beautiful.
"Hello." I smiled. It felt good to smile. Natural. I realised that I hadn't smiled like that in a long time.
"Hello, Mr Usher." She stepped forward and held out a thin brown hand. I took it, and almost kissed it before realising that all she was expecting was a polite handshake. The girl's beauty had knocked me for six.
"Miss Immaculee has been expecting you. They told her you were coming." Her teeth were so very white, like shards of bone, and her strange eyes were… hypnotic. "Please come this way."
"Who told her I was coming? I don't understand?" I was now speaking to the girl's back as she led me through the doorway and into a large, dim room. She was walking barefoot, and for some reason that seemed incredibly erotic.
"Why, the voices of course. Always the voices."
The walls of the room were hung with thin drapes, and each one depicted some kind of African scene. They were marvellous examples of tribal art, and I wondered if they were simply there for show or held some kind of mystical association.
"Hello, Mr Usher." The voice which beckoned me deeper into the room was low and husky. I expected to see an aging male blues singer and not a middle-aged psychic woman.
The young girl left my side, walked to the door, and exited the room. She closed the door silently behind her; it seemed like a practiced move. The darkness quivered; the low lights trembled.
"Step closer, Mr Usher. I'd like to see you."
The woman sat in a high-backed chair at a highly polished table. She too had her hair wrapped up in a scarf, and several black tendrils hung down over her shoulders. Her eyes were large and deep and almost black. Her lips were full. Her cheeks were narrow, showing off her delicate bone structure. Her skin glowed. She had no arms.
"Come. Sit by me." She twitched her head to invite me to her table.
She had no arms.
I didn't want to stare, but what else could I do? She was wearing a white open-necked blouse with the arms pinned back and had an elaborate necklace at her throat. Her breasts were large and her shoulders were broad. And she had no arms.
I sat down at the table, facing her across its shiny surface. There was a glass set in front of the woman, with a long straw sticking out above the rim. She bent her head and took a sip. The drink had no aroma that I could detect; I thought it might be vodka. "Can I get you anything, Mr Usher?" I liked the way she said my name. Her eyes widened; she drank me in like the vodka, plucking me from my seat and examining what she found, rolling me around on her tongue.
"No. Thank you. I'm fine."
"What brought you here, if you don't mind me asking? Did someone give you my name, or was it a dream?" Her direct manner was alarming in some ways yet comforting in others. At least I didn't have to play games with this woman.
"What shall I call you?"
"My name: Immaculee."
"OK… Immaculee. It's rather beautiful, you know."
"Yes, I do know. I have been told that many times." She smiled. Then she took another sip of her drink.
I decided to get to the point: "Somebody spoke to me on the telephone and told me to seek you out. I have no idea who this person was – or even if it was a person. Do you understand what I mean by that?"
She nodded once. Her eyes caught the light. They shone like dark stones brought up from the depths of a vast black lake.
"I was told to come here but I don't know why. I'm being as honest with you as I know how. Can you help me? Do you even know what I'm talking about?" I leaned forward and into the edge of the table, pressing my elbows against the wood.
"I lost my arms in 1994, Mr Usher. Do you recall, by any chance, the Rwandan Genocide? I was – I am – a Tutsi. My village was attacked by Hutus armed with knives and machetes. They did not think us worthy of wasting bullets." She paused; I waited. A clock ticked loudly somewhere in the room. I hadn't noticed it until now. "They hacked to death my husband and daughter, right in front of me. They raped my daughter first, as I watched. Then they chopped her to pieces."
I didn't know what to do, what to say, so I just listened.
"Do you know what it is to lose someone, Mr Usher? Do you know how that feels? I think you do."
I nodded. "I know a little, yes, I've lost people, too."
"I thought you must have – that's why the voices chose me to deliver the message. Because we are joined in a way, by our loss."
I was afraid to interrupt her, so I just sat there in the gloom and waited for her to finish.
"Those men – those Hutu murderers – they raped me amid the remains of my loved ones. Then they urinated on me. Finally, they cut off my arms and left me to bleed. They thought I would die there, surrounded by pieces of my family. I remember their laughter as they walked away, drinking beer and boasting of how I'd enjoyed it."
The clock had stopped; all the clocks had stopped. I could hear the screams of the murdered and feel the tears of the innocent. My skin burned; fires raged around me. My tattoos danced. There was a ringing in my ears that could only be a distant scream.
"But I didn't die. Oh, no; I survived. They took my family and they cut off my arms, but what I got in return was the voices. They come back to me – my loved ones. They come back and they tell me things, but only when I am asleep. Only in my dreams…"
I felt like screaming. This woman had been through so much. It wasn't fair, wasn't right. Why must she continue to suffer?
"I sleep a lot. Young Traci tends to me. She gives me gin and vodka to ease my nerves and cooks me wonderful meals I rarely eat."
I realised that the glow I had noticed earlier on her skin was the radiance of death. It was not far away now; she was preparing and praying for it to arrive quickly. Her intense bright-burning presence, the torn and ragged voice. Was it cancer? In her throat?
"Two nights ago another voice entered my dreams. One I had not heard before. It was… mechanical, somehow. Like a windup toy. It told me to pass on an address." She leaned forward, her motion smooth and silent and horrific. I hated myself for being afraid, but I was. I was terrified.
"She said you must go to the river. There is a place, a warehouse: number 3, Dock Side. I don't know where exactly, but it is in London." She gasped for breath, but when I reached out to he
r across the table she pulled away, baring her teeth. "Not to touch. You mustn't touch – no one ever touches me again." Then, as if nothing had occurred, she smiled. It was a sweet smile, almost ethereal in its delicateness.
"Was there anything else, or was it just the address?" I blinked rapidly, feeling tears that would not come. My eyes were dry, but they were aching. I wished that I was able to cry, just this once.
"Yes. There was another thing – something important. She told me to repeat it word for word." The psychic bent forward at the waist, sipped her drink.
"Yes, Immaculee? What was it?"
She straightened in her chair, and I experienced the full force of her savage dignity, her refusal to break. Here was a proud woman, a strong woman, who had refused to give up. Yes, she was damaged and she drank too much, but she was alive – she was present. She was not a ghost. Not yet.
"Tell me. Please."
"The voice said: 'Stay away from her. Even if she finds you, stay away. You cannot help. She is lost to you, even though you think you have found her.'" She slumped in her chair, as if by speaking the words she had exhausted herself. "That is all." She looked down at the table. I stared at the small mounds of her stumps under the shirt; they were like absurd misplaced breasts.
I stood up, feeling nauseous, and backed away from the table. Fumbling in my pocket I produced a few notes and threw them onto the tabletop. "Thanks," I mumbled. I could barely even speak.
"No charge," she said, without looking up. The room seemed darker now, as if a veil had been drawn across the window.
I turned and I hurried out of the room, leaving the money were it had fallen. The young girl, Traci, was sitting cross-legged on the landing, a dented stainless steel bowl held between her bare knees, and skinning some kind of root vegetable with a small knife. She was humming a strange tune as she worked, and when she looked up at me I finally realised that she was blind.
ELEVEN
It had been a while since Sarah had seen her mother, and the woman looked older than ever. It was upsetting that she seemed to have aged so much in such a relatively short period of time – it wasn't exactly years, just a few months since her last visit – and Sarah felt herself stumble as she walked through the door and into the quiet sun room.
"I'll wait here," said Benson, hanging back in the doorway. "Call me when you're ready for me to come through." He smiled; his scars crinkled.
She looked down at the floor. Her running shoes were dirty. One of the laces had come undone. "Yeah. Thanks." Looking back up, she turned her gaze towards her mother. For a moment, she thought that someone was standing behind the seated woman, but when she blinked the image faded.
Sarah took a breath and walked towards the large bay window, where her mother was sitting in a wicker chair staring out at the beautiful but rain-swept garden at the rear of the home. Slivers of hazy sunlight somehow managed to make their way through the wet glass, forming a bright pool around her mother's feet. Her legs, beneath heavy stockings, looked swollen. Specks of dust hung in the air, painted by the light.
"Mum?" She approached the chair and placed a hand on her mother's shoulder. "It's me, Mum. It's Sarah."
The woman did not stir. She just kept looking out of the window, at the short, yellowish grass and the sagging flowerbeds. Once spring came, those beds would be so pretty, and bursting with colour. Right now they were resting, the plants and flowers waiting to be brought back to life by the turning of the seasons.
The sun room was bright and airy, despite the weather. The windows were all closed, to keep out the chill and protect old bones, but the weak sunlight seemed to gather there, focusing on the bright little area. A frail old man sat in an armchair by the wall, his eyes glued to a television set. He was watching a news programme – reports of a tornado in Texas – with the sound turned down. On his lap was balanced a newspaper, its pages open to the sports section. He was drooling. His eyes were unfocused.
"Mum? Can you hear me, Mum?"
The woman stirred in her seat, her head twitching slightly to one side, as if she were straining to hear. Perhaps she heard her name being called as if from a great distance – the immeasurable distance between sanity and dementia.
Sarah pulled up another chair and sat down, her knees pressed together and her bottom perched on the front edge of the seat, as if she were poised for a quick getaway. And wasn't that exactly right? Wherever she was, whoever she found herself with, the thought of escape was never far from her mind. He had made her this way: her father, the bastard. He had trained her for constant flight.
She reached down and opened her handbag, taking out the cardboard folder with the photographs inside. She'd selected just a few from the collection, and found it difficult to look at them again so soon. But she had to. If she wanted to know the story behind them, she had to push through the mental wall and confront these uncomfortable truths.
"Mum. Look at me, Mum." She made her voice hard, and stared at her mother's tired face. A nerve twitched in the woman's cheek. Her eyes were moist, as if from the constant threat of tears.
"Look. At. Me." It felt wrong to be so stern – like speaking harshly to a child – but what else could she do?
Slowly, her mother turned to face her. One side of her mother's mouth was twisted downwards, as if she'd suffered a mild stroke. Her lips were wet. "Sarah…" Her voice was a low, drawn-out sigh.
"Yes, Mum. It's me. It's your Sarah."
Recognition flared in her eyes. She tried to smile – she clearly did – but it was more like a silent snarl. "Hello, Sadie-baby."
Her mother had not called her by that pet name for many years. She had forgotten how good it sounded, how full of love. Sarah took a deep breath and clenched her fist. Then, realising that she was crushing the photographs, she released the pressure. She blew out air through her nose. "I need to ask you something, Mum. It's important. Can you stay with me for a minute, just while I show you something?
"Of course I can. I'm not busy." Sarah's mother's eyes were dead; there was hardly anything of her personality remaining behind them. Just a spiky darkness, like a black pit lined with pointed black teeth. If Sarah did not take care, that darkness might just turn and bite her.
"Look at these, Mum. Tell me about them." Carefully, she took out the photographs and laid them in a row on the table before her mother, smoothing out the creases with her hands. There were five photographs in all, and each one showed a different stage of some kind of sex game. Sarah watched her mother closely as she placed the photos in a line, and it pained her to see the woman flinch at the sight of each one, as if from a blow.
"What's the story with these? Come on, Mum. He's dead now – you can tell me. I know you protected me when I was a girl. You don't need to do that anymore."
Her mother's eyes – large, moist and rheumy – flickered upwards, staring into Sarah's face. There was a silent plea there, a request that she pursue this line of enquiry no further. But she could not hold back. She was, after all, her father's daughter, and despite his many flaws the man had been a fine and instinctive detective.
"Sadie-baby…"
"Don't fucking call me that. Tell me. What about this one?" She held up one of the photographs: it depicted her mother being sodomised by a naked man in a leather gimp mask while she fellated another whose face was covered in what looked like a floral patterned tea towel tied in a knot at the back of his head.
Her mother sighed, and then spoke. "They made me take part. The photos were so I'd keep quiet… not speak about the other stuff."
Sarah felt her heart break, but it had been broken too many times before to even count. Heartbreak was a feeling with which she was familiar, and often she took a strange form of comfort from the fragile pain in her chest. It felt like a tiny bird pecking at her ribs. "Why, Mum? Why did they need your silence?"
Her mother's head dipped. Tears fell from her red-rimmed eyes and dirtied her gaunt cheeks. "They did things that nobody could know about. They took…
criminals; people they thought might commit even more vicious crimes. They took them and…" She glanced about the room, as if looking for spies. Her hands gripped the arms of the wicker chair and her feet skittered on the smooth floor. "They took them and they did things to them. I don't know what – I never knew that. But I know those things they did were awful." She began to rock in the chair, her eyes flickering closed. Then, oddly, she began to hum a wordless tune, a meaningless doggerel she clearly used for comfort.
"Mum. What else, Mum? Is that it? They kept you quiet so you wouldn't tell?"
But the old woman was long gone. She had retreated back into herself, where the things she had been forced to do could no longer reach her. Inside, she was clean and untouched. Inside, she was pure and bright; she knew nothing of the darkness in which she had been held captive for so many years of her life.
