by Gary McMahon
I kissed the top of her head. Her hair was damp and kinky. "So why does she listen to it?"
"Because she has no choice. She's terrified. I've never seen her so afraid. I've been with her for several years now, since she took me from the massage parlour downstairs. She took me in, taught me things, and made me into a whole person. Before I met her, I was servicing fat old men with sweaty bodies and hard hands. It made me glad that I couldn't see them."
I said nothing. It was not my place to interrupt, or to judge.
"So it hurts me to see her like this: on the verge of death and terrified. She's wanted to die for a long time, just to be with her family. I was the only thing that kept her going, but now even that isn't enough. And this new voice – this fabrication – it lies to her. It's deceitful."
"How do you know? Maybe it's telling the truth. How can you even know?"
She shifted position again, this time bending her neck so that she could pretend to look up at me, into my face. Her eyes were not grey but black: it looked like they'd been scooped out and replaced with darkness. "Because she told me. She told me that it lies. But she's too afraid to ignore it, because it told her that unless she does what it wants she'll never see her family again." She blinked, but the dark patches remained. They saw right through me. She was blind but she could see me as I really was: alone and helpless in the dark, the cold and endless dark…
I could understand completely Immaculee's fears. The only thing that had kept me going for many years was the hope that I would see my family again, if not in this life, as ghosts, then in the next one, in the next reality. The thought that someone, or some dreadful thing, could take that sense of hope away from me and use it as a threat made me freeze inside.
I couldn't blame Immaculee Karuhmbi for passing on a message that she knew might be some kind of trap. In her place, and confronted by the same fears, I would have done exactly that.
Traci slept in my arms, her small body quivering occasionally, as if in the grip of bad dreams. Sleepless, unable to even doze for a second or two, I stared into the darkness of the room, watching the shadows of the dead as they drifted in and out, passing to and fro, and wondering what was in store for me.
I glanced down at the girl, at her skin and the bones beneath, and knew that I couldn't trust her.
I could trust no one.
I lived in a world of lies and half-truths, of pretence and fakery. Nothing was solid; everything shifted all the time, quaking, breaking, and reforming before my eyes. Even reality could not be trusted.
FIFTEEN
They watched the house. Their patience was infinite. They had no need to rush things, to force a confrontation when one was not required. They simply watched and They waited. They had all the time in the world – this world and all the others They had not yet seen but knew of.
All the time. Everywhere.
Their influence was felt in every world imaginable, and in some that could not be imagined even by the most insane of men.
When They had left the pub earlier, the young man had not reappeared. They had waited a long time, but to no avail. He had moved out of Their reach. So They followed the other man – the one who had escorted Them from the pub and spoken to Them outside on the street. He interested Them. His design was threadbare, a frail and dying thing, but it held traces of… something. There was a hint of the lost one, a whisper of his passing just about visible within its folds and niches. The man had been touched by someone who had been touched by the one They sought. Their severed companion, Their long lost brother.
They had followed the man through identical streets of dull, squat buildings, and then when he had boarded a bus They had lost him for a little while. They walked the streets, sniffing out his design. It was difficult, because there was not much there, but in the end They picked up his scent. They walked and They walked, and finally They came to this street.
And now They were waiting, watching, keeping Their eyes on his house. It was a small, narrow terraced house in a forgotten area of town. Not an old house, with history between its walls, but one made of new materials – it was perhaps twenty or thirty years old. They did not even know the name of the place where the house stood, but there was nothing here except a sense of despair. A deprived area; a place bereft of dreams. There was not much evidence of Their designs here, only fragments.
This puzzled Them for a moment. They had never before questioned the nature of Their designs, or even wondered about Their purpose as They tweaked the fortunes of these beings. They simply created the seeds, the beginnings of potentially great things, and then let them slip away and drift towards wherever they might land. There was an element of Fate in what They did, although They did not deal in Fate. They dealt in chance, serendipity. Coincidence.
They were, for all intents and purposes, the Architects of Serendipity.
They had been called many names across the centuries, and hailed as both demons and angels. The ancients had called Them evil, but more enlightened civilisations had prayed to Them, even built temples in Their honour. Their image was buried deep within the hidden tombs of the Pharaohs; They were mentioned in the Bible, but in Their true form. The Book of Revelations had Them caricatured as Satan's servants, but that was just another made-up story, a fiction that had utilised the notion of Them rather than the reality.
Religions tended to do things like this; make fiction of the facts, and create monsters to be feared.
They were far more complex than any mortal ideology could fathom. They were beyond religion, inaccessible by faith. They were the Architects, and this name above all others fitted Them well.
The man left the house after nightfall. He was wearing a long coat and carried a small sports bag over his shoulder. His design fluttered like a trapped bird, eager for escape. That was something else They had noticed: sometimes the designs were eager for release, and they struggled against their captive forms.
It was something else for Them to think about: more information to process.
The man walked along the street, and They followed him from the shadows. They kept well behind him, and made Their footsteps silent. Nobody else moved along the quiet street. The houses were all locked up tight against the darkness, doors barred, windows sealed. This was a neighbourhood where people were afraid to leave their secure little castles at night: a place where human evil dwelled.
The man turned the corner, jogging across the road and onto a patch of waste ground. They followed. He resumed a walking pace, pushing headphones into his ears and hunching his shoulders against the chill. They felt no cold; despite using a human body for transport, They had no real human feelings. This thing – this child – was a vessel, and nothing more. They had taken the abandoned corpse and raised it, squeezing inside, inhabiting the cold meat and shifting around in the soft, sticky innards.
Even the lost one, who was much more comfortable in these regions, was forced to travel this way. He had used the same body for quite some time, but had been known to exchange his mode of transport when it grew old or decrepit or simply ran out of juice. That was when They could almost see him, when he emerged for a moment, like a thing from a pupa, to swap skins.
They had left him to his games for decades, but now it was time for him to return to Them, to come home. His designs were out of control. He had begun to return to his work after it was done, like a dog sniffing its own vomit, and meddle in a way that was forbidden. The Architects served no master, but there were certain rules They had to follow. For even the Lords of Chaos must follow rules…
The lost one had broken those rules. He coveted something he was not allowed to have. He wanted to become something more than his station allowed – he sought to be godlike. He had been planting the seeds of this transformation for some time, hitching a ride on fanatics and cultists, utilising the ancient energy of long-banished witches and warlocks and bad spirits. None of it had worked – he had been thwarted so many times, mostly by his own ambition.
But now things were different. Now he had discovered a potential new source of energy – or had he in fact created it?
There was a man. A man who might possess something unique, a power that could crack open the shells of realities, allowing them to bleed. And if the layers between realities filled with the blood of time and space, there would be nothing left to hold on to.
Even the Lords of Chaos must follow rules.
And the only rule that mattered was that everything must remain fluid; reality was whatever it was shaped to be. But all realities must remain separate; if they came together, stalled and collided and cracked open, they would cease to exist. Belief must be single-minded, and if an alternative source of belief appeared, the old model would then become useless.
This was what They understood: there was no guiding force, no single being who oversaw some grand cosmic project. All there was, all there could ever be, were the realities shaped by those who lived within them. If belief was suspended, and reality was forgotten, even for a second, it would all fail like a row of candles in a storm.
They followed the man for several miles, watching him closely. Not once did he notice Their silent pursuit; nor did he pause to glance over his shoulder. He was oblivious to Their presence, even though he had already touched Them.
Soon he came to an area that was even worse than the one he had left behind. The buildings were dirty, their walls covered with spray-painted obscenities. Youths stood on street corners, or lounged in dark parks, drinking from bottles or smoking their primitive drugs.
They passed among this disenfranchised populace, noting the scant presence of Their designs. But whatever evidence there was of Their work, it was shabby and flyblown; minor tatters hanging from forgotten husks of humanity like flesh stripped from a kill.
The man approached a shop: Newsome's Electrics. The windows were protected by blocky security shutters and the door was barred by a sturdy steel grille. The man knocked, rang the bell, and waited.
"Who is it?" The voice was crackly, barely audible, and came from a speaker by the door.
"It's me. It's Don."
There was no reply, but a buzzer sounded and a mechanism clanked loudly in the door frame. Don pushed the door open, finally glancing back – if only to check that nobody noticed as he went inside.
They chose that moment to step out from the shadows.
Don paused. He looked confused for a moment, as if something did not quite fit into the scene he was viewing, but then he smiled. His teeth were stained. His gums pulled back from his incisors. There was something of the animal about this man, and They knew that They had done the right thing in following him.
"Fuck me, it's you. From earlier today. I am right, aren't I?"
They nodded. Their head was heavy. Something shifted awkwardly inside the skull.
"Come here. Come on, out of the cold. My friend lives here – the one I told you about. Sammy. He'll see you alright. Sammy will sort you out." Again, he smiled. It was hungry, filled with avarice They could easily understand.
They moved forward. They nodded Their heavy head.
"Don't say much, do you? Cat got your tongue?"
They grinned. It felt wrong. Their teeth were loose, the dead gums losing hold on the enamel.
"Doesn't matter. In fact, it's better if you don't talk. Nobody will listen to you, anyway." Don laughed. His whole body shook. He was large, muscular even, but he had a big gut. He must lift a lot of weights, to enhance his strength, but he was not a fit man.
As soon as They got close enough, he grabbed Their arm, His grip was tight; he did not want to let go. "Come on. Come up. Let's go and meet Sammy." Hunger flared more intensely behind his eyes.
They allowed Themselves to be manhandled through the doorway and along a short, narrow hallway. It was dark, the walls were damp and peeling and the stairs ahead were steep.
"Up here. That's where Sammy is. His flat is above the shop." The stairs also led down, into a basement area, but there was a closed door at the bottom. The door was heavy-duty, a specialist item; it looked thick, as if the room beyond might be soundproofed.
They knew what went on behind that door.
It was Sammy's "Chicken Hut": the place where he kept his chickens, and took his paying customers to have their fun. Sex was an alien concept to Them. They did not understand it beyond the need to procreate, to continue the species. Sex as pleasure, as a way of venting human emotions, was not something They could fathom.
The idea of sex as an outlet for anger and self-loathing was even less clear. They did not understand that at all. Perhaps it was something They could learn, and then incorporate into Their future designs. Anything that might improve Their designs was to be welcomed, embraced. All information could be utilised. It was all part of the raw material.
"Come on, now. Don't be shy." Don pushed Them in the small of the back. "Jesus, that head of yours looks bad. Did somebody mug you, were you attacked?"
They raised a hand to Their head and explored the wounds. There were two of them, small holes bored right into the skull, almost to the surface of the brain, which had then been cauterised by a hot iron. They had not been present when the damage occurred; They had entered this body after the fact, when it was already cold and inert and lonely, lying on the floor in an abandoned warehouse near a derelict multi-storey car park. They remembered it now: the small dead body hidden away under a tarpaulin, and the ease with which They had been able to slip inside. It was yet another connection to the lost one, but one They did not understand.
The wounds were dry, but there was crisp blood caked in Their hair. It was amazing that no one had noticed before, and They had been allowed to move through the city freely. But They had the impression that these beings – these human beings – did not care enough for each other to intervene in such matters.
That was why Their designs flourished so well. Why the designs grew and grew, virtually unmolested, becoming like party costumes on the backs of these odd, loveless creatures.
It was… interesting.
Such knowledge could only improve Their work.
"That's right, keep on climbing. Nearly there."
They stepped onto a landing and waited, allowing Don to overtake Them and push open yet another door. Light spilled out; rock music was playing at a low volume. A fat man with his dark hair pulled back into a greasy ponytail was sitting on a bicycle before a long table weighing white powder on a set of kitchen scales.
"Don, how the fuck are you?" He spotted Them a second later, this man, and his attitude changed. He became almost loveable, reaching down into himself to produce a demeanour that was clearly meant to inspire trust. "And who's your little friend?" He had uninspired tattoos on his forearms – a bulldog wearing a Union Jack vest, a swallow, a flag upon which was etched the word LOVE. His eyes were small and squinted. His belly was big and soft, and his design was enormous.
His design.
It was immense.
The biggest They had yet seen.
It enveloped him, like intricate wings, plummeting into his flesh and back out the other side, hanging above him in a glass-like nimbus, curling and coiling, decorating the room with its splendour.
They smiled at this man. At this Sammy. They smiled at him and They saw that Their work was good.
"What's your name, little man?" His smile was a pit without end, a depthless void in his face.
"He doesn't speak. I think he might be a mute." Don glanced down at Them, and he was smiling too.
"Oh, bravo. Nice one, Don." Sammy stood, pushing the bicycle back and away from the table. It had the word "Chopper" stencilled along the main bar on its frame.
They laughed. It was the first time They had made a sound since entering this body, and it shocked Them to hear it filtered through Their new lips.
"Funny little fucker, aren't you?" Sammy was now standing before them, his fleshy arms outstretched. He was smiling, smiling… always smiling. That hole in his face seemed to
suck in the light, neutralising it. His design glimmered. It was bigger than him, bigger than all of them. It filled the room.
"Would you like something to eat, son?"
They nodded. They did not feel hunger, but it was the right thing to do in the circumstances. Sammy would expect Them to be hungry. They were entranced by Their own handiwork, and momentarily all thoughts of the lost one, and Their mission to find him, left Their mind.
"Cheese on toast suit you? I haven't much in, but I'll rustle you up a few slices."
They followed Sammy deeper into the room. Don closed the door behind Them. Locked it.
Beneath the floor, down the stairwell, and in the basement, They sensed the presence of others. Battered young boys, all of them kept locked up tight in that basement room. The chickens; the cash cows; the poor abused souls Sammy Newsome had acquired from the streets, with the help of his good friend Don.
