by Gary McMahon
"I will. I'll take you to the Pilgrim." Trevor was practically begging for mercy. He would have told this weird boy anything to be spared. Despite the boy's slight build and tender years, he had about him an aura of raw power. Jagged energy bristled in the air, like the electricity gathering before a storm.
"What the fuck's going on?" Sammy Newsome – poor, dumb Sammy Newsome, the terrible mother hen – had returned to the Roost. "Fuckin hell!"
The boy turned around in a single swift motion, as if he barely needed to flex a muscle. He moved like water, or like air. Instantly.
Sammy was standing by the desk with the monitors. His mouth was open and his hair was hanging loose from his ponytail. His wobbly cheeks were pink. His eyes were wide. His friend Don stood slightly behind him, holding a baseball bat and breathing heavily.
"Run," said Trevor, but nobody heard. It was too late for running anyway.
"Get back in your cell." Sammy was grinning but he looked unsure. This wasn't mean to happen: the boys never disobeyed him.
Don stepped out from behind Sammy's bulk. He hefted the bat. "Do as he says."
The small boy lifted his hand. It moved perhaps three or four inches, nothing more.
Don stopped dead in his tracks. The right side of his face bowed inward, as if some massive pressure had struck him there. One eye popped from the socket and hung down his cheek. He opened his lips but before he had the chance to scream his mouth caved in, the teeth shattering in a fine spray of powdered porcelain that clouded before his wide, disbelieving eyes.
Sammy, noticing what was happening to his friend, began to scream. The boys in the cells joined in, a deafening chorus of horror.
The pale boy, still standing in the same spot, twitched his hand again. This time the movement was more pronounced, as if he were swatting at an annoying fly.
Don's head imploded instantly. One second it was still recognisably a head, if a little battered, the next it was a fist of crushed flesh and bone bobbling on his tattooed neck. His body slumped to the floor, his legs kicking meaninglessly against the stone.
"Noooooo…." Sammy tried to run. It was the last thing he ever did of his own volition.
Trevor wanted to look away, he really did, but he was unable to turn his head or close his eyes. He had to watch: there was no choice now but to see how this all played out.
Sammy's legs went first, his trouser legs seeming to knot and tremble as the flesh beneath tore from the bone. He fell forward, onto his face, and then turned onto his back as he bucked in agony. He was still screaming. His elbows shattered and his forearms went jack-knifing across the room. Then his ankles and kneecaps did the same. One foot remained where it was, detached from the limb; the other one shot off and hit the wall with an audible wet thump.
Trevor realised that he was screaming too. He had joined in the song.
Sammy's body was changing shape as his bones jinked and popped out of joint. It looked like he was being kicked by unseen feet; his flesh dented and rippled. His face had become concave. Trevor was reminded of an old WWI photograph he'd once seen in a magazine, of a man who'd taken a shell full in the face. The front of his head had vaporised, leaving behind a sort of bowl of healed flesh.
Sammy's Newsome's face had done the same, as if a huge boulder had been dropped from a great height and mashed his features into an awful half-moon.
There was no blood yet, just evidence of massive trauma. The man's large body was taking so much abuse that his skin began to tear. At first the wounds were dry, but then his insides started to leak out, and a pool of thick red fluid pooled around him. His flailing body transformed the bloodstain into the shape of wings, like a child making a snow angel on the ground after a heavy snowfall.
He had stopped making a noise. His mouth was fused shut, the lips pummelled so hard that there was no longer an orifice to scream through.
Trevor vomited down the front of his gold jacket, but he barely even noticed. The first thing he was aware of was the smell, but that was soon covered up by the stench of Sammy Newsome voiding his bowels on the cold basement floor.
The rest of it didn't go on too long. Soon there was nothing but a mound of compressed flesh and bone on the floor, next to a headless corpse. Trevor watched as all of these human remains slowly curled up, like slugs coated with salt, and before long all that remained was a series of dark stains on the grey floor of the tawdry basement room.
The boys were no longer screaming. They all cowered in their cells, too afraid to even move in case they drew attention to themselves.
"What did you do?" Trevor could barely believe he was asking the question. He didn't want to know. He didn't care, just as long as it didn't happen to him.
The boy turned to face him. His face was smooth, pale, and he wasn't even perspiring after all that mental exertion. Because it had indeed been a mental force he'd set upon the two men, rather than anything of physical origin.
Trevor licked his lips.
"We unravelled their designs," said the boy, as if it meant something to Trevor. As if he knew what the fuck they were even talking about. "We've never done it before, but the result was rather spectacular. Don't you think?"
Trevor nodded. What else could he do?
"Now." The boy seemed to float towards him. "Take Us to the lost one. Show Us this Pilgrim. We can see by your design that he has influenced you greatly. And he is still manipulating you."
Trevor didn't know what to say. "OK. I'll take you there. Just… please, don't do that to me. Don't kill me."
"We have no interest in killing you." The boy tilted his head. For the first time Trevor realised that the boy wasn't breathing – he had not once taken a breath. "We did this to save you, so that you could help Us."
It was the first time that Trevor could say someone had saved his life, but it was not a feeling he enjoyed. In fact, it felt more like violation than salvation.
TWENTY-SIX
Eddie Knowles was scared. He wasn't quite sure what he'd done, telling Emerson's daughter that she was adopted, but it felt like something had been set in motion, that huge wheels were beginning to turn somewhere behind the scenes of their lives.
He was standing outside his flat in Bestwick, smoking a rollup. Tanya didn't let him smoke indoors so he was banished out here whenever he had the urge. He didn't mind – it kept the flat free of the smell of smoke.
There were a lot of things Tanya didn't like him to do, but these days he was glad of her guiding hand. He was getting too old, and he was out of shape. The life he had led was catching up on him, like a slavering hound at his heels.
"Fuck," he said, blowing out hot smoke. "Fuck this shit."
A dog began to bark somewhere out in the night. A plane flew overhead, leaving a smeared white contrail in the dark sky. He wished he was up there, flying to somewhere exotic, rather than stuck down in the mud with the rest of the losers.
Depression bit him. He had struggled against black moods for decades, and usually came out on top. But lately he felt close to defeat, like a boxer on the ropes.
The dog stopped barking. The plane had moved on, leaving a gap in the heavens. Drizzle hung in the air, making him feel oppressed.
Eddie finished his ciggie and mashed the butt against the wall, watching the tiny sparks fly and batter against the brickwork. He thought about Sarah Doherty, and the things she was discovering. She didn't know the half of it; all he had told her were the things he could no longer live with. There was more – so much more – but that was all between him and his maker.
Eddie recalled past nights like this one, cold, wet, dark and endless, when he'd cruised with Emerson Doherty, picking up whores and torturing them in derelict buildings. He'd had some fun back then – they both had. But all fun must one day come to an end, and there was always a price to pay. Always. You could never dodge what you owed, or who you owed it to.
Emerson had paid his price when his heart failed, giving him an undignified death. Eddie was still waiti
ng to pay his dues.
He walked a little way along the street, enjoying the cold, damp air against his skin. He suffered with the heat and Tanya always kept the flat too warm. Often he would find himself walking about at night, trying to cool down. Maybe it was the fires of hell he could feel, those eternal flames heating him from a distance, preparing him for the time when he would be called to walk right into them.
A car alarm was droning a few streets away, filling the night with noise. A police helicopter passed over the tops of the houses near the Precinct, shining down a light onto the grubby streets below.
It was a few moments before Eddie realised that he was being followed.
He stopped and glanced behind him, but there was nobody there. When he faced forward again there was a figure waiting up ahead, on the street corner.
"So here it is," he whispered. "At last it's time to pay the piper." He knew that he could have turned and fled, perhaps even escaping into the flat to live another day. But the figure would always be there, biding its time, waiting for payment.
Eddie walked on, heading towards his destiny. It had been a long life, and he had reaped many rewards from the deeds he had carried out. He knew that he could never be called a good man – that was far beyond him now – but in recent years he had tried his best to make amends for at least some of the terrible things he had done. It was not enough, of course: it was never enough. But it was better than nothing.
He remembered with a guilty fondness the screaming of the prostitutes he and Emerson had played with, and the weeping of the junkies they had tied up so that Emerson could practice his technique. It had been Eddie who found the trepanning device, when he had broken into an antique shop in Blackpool. He was going to throw it away (because who the hell would buy such an item?), but Emerson had stopped him, snatching the thing right from his hand.
The awful device had spoken to Emerson, just like the angel he later claimed to have met – it had called and Emerson had answered.
Eddie had always known about the kids, and sometimes that hurt him more than anything. He should have done something to stop the brutal murders, but by then Emerson had too much dirt on him, and if he was honest with himself he had always been too scared to turn against his old friend.
So he had ignored it. The fact that none of the bodies had been found and he didn't have to read about what Emerson was doing made it easier to forget what he had helped to begin. But that didn't mean he never dreamed about them, or he didn't see their poor trepanned skulls and feel the sticky blood on his hands – a regular Lady Macbeth of the sink estates, that's what he was: no matter how hard he scrubbed, the fucking stains would never come out.
The tall figure stepped out into the centre of the footpath, moving directly into his path. There was nobody else around. The streets were quiet now; even the car alarm had quit its racket. It was just a short lull before the next storm.
"Hello, Eddie." The voice was different but the figure had the same build, the familiar height and width, and up close there was no mistaking the floor-length black robe and the white hood. Emerson had loved to wear that costume; he had claimed that it made him feel like a priest. The world, he had always claimed, was his church, and the blood of the children who would become evil if they were allowed to grow up was also the blood of the angel. A sacrament, an offering: blood flowing to blood.
"You're dead." It was a statement rather than a question.
"I suppose so," said the figure, stepping forward now and raising its hands. One of them held a large hunting knife.
"A ghost."
The figure laughed, and it sounded more alive than anything Eddie could have imagined. "Yes, Eddie, I'm a ghost. And I've come to haunt you."
"Just make it quick." Eddie closed his eyes. He screwed them shut but still he felt the sharp blow to his throat when it came, and he knew that he deserved to experience every ounce of the pain that would follow.
Blood flowing to blood…
The pain: he embraced it like an old friend, and it welcomed him in the same way.
The pain, the warm rush of blood down the front of his shirt, the ground rushing up to meet him…
He felt it all, keeping his eyes shut tight.
And the last thing he heard was that eerily human laughter as it followed him down towards the fiery furnace of his death.
PART FOUR
ENDGAME
TWENTY-SEVEN
The sun struggled to illuminate that cold, bright morning, but despite the dawning of a new day Sarah knew that the darkness was winning the fight. Yesterday's rain had cleared the air; the sky was wide and high and smudged with skeins of white vapour. Sarah looked up at the webby clouds and wished that she had never started any of this. If she had refused Emerson's house when it was left to her after his death, or had put it on the market sight unseen, she might have prevented the horror that was slowly unfurling like great black wings to engulf her world.
She wasn't quite sure why she'd come to the hospital. Last night she had decided that DI Tebbit – her old mentor, her one true friend – was the only person she could talk to about what may or may not be happening, but now she wasn't so sure. He was in a coma anyway, so would be unable to hear her. But the visit was more about vocalising her fears than it was about anyone actually listening to what she had to say.
Not for the first time that morning she thought about turning around and going home.
Earlier she'd considered ringing Benson to give her a lift, but the memory of their last meeting – his strange confession and the weird way he'd been acting – made her want to keep him at even more of a distance than usual, so instead she had used a black cab from a firm she trusted.
Benson.
Had he really been trying to get close to her just because of Emerson, or was his interest more ambiguous? And what of his claims regarding seeing the old man's ghost?
Nothing was simple any more; it was all angles and edges, like she was walking along a narrow alley lined with knives.
And there was another thing that she was trying not to think about. Her twitch, the inherent intuition that had served her so well, was telling her that there was more – and possibly less – to Benson than she could ever imagine. His motives might be unclear, but she was now certain about one thing: she never wanted to see him again.
"Mornin', love." An old man was smoking outside the main entrance to the LGI. He was standing with his back to the wall, staring at the busy road and the concrete expanse of Millennium Square beyond. His face was creased; his eyes were tiny slits above the folded leather of his cheeks.
"Morning." She made to walk past him but he turned towards her, flicking his cigarette across the paved footpath. She nodded, smiled, and changed her course to dodge him.
"They're after me, constable." The man's voice was dry, throaty. "They want to keep me in here."
Sarah raised a hand and backed away. "Listen, sir, I'm here on official police business so unless you have something important to say please step out of the way."
The old man smiled. He had very few teeth left in his head. "I came in here to visit a mate. He has cancer. Not long left. But they say they want to keep me in. Do some tests." His hands were shaking.
"Then I suggest you take their advice." As Sarah hurried past him, she caught the whiff of alcohol on his breath. The man was just another piss-head wasting his time until he reached the grave and had suddenly realised that now there was no time left to do anything worthwhile.
Sarah walked through the reception area and headed for the lift. Tebbit was in a private room on the fourth floor. The Cancer Care Unit. Even the words sent fear shooting through her body, making her short of breath.
She pushed the button and waited for the lift. When it arrived two porters wheeled out a couple of old ladies in wheelchairs and pushed them towards the entrance. The ladies chattered like geese, saying nothing of interest but talking a lot. One of the porters exchanged a glance with Sarah, rolling his
eyes upwards and shrugging: You know what it's like.
Sarah smiled and entered the lift, then pushed the button for the fourth floor. The lift doors closed, and Sarah was filled with a sudden and intense fear. For some reason she no longer wanted to see DI Tebbit. He was, in fact, the last person on Earth she wanted to face.
For a brief moment, she hated him for making her feel so scared.
The feeling passed, but Sarah was left with a sense of confusion. Why had she been afraid of the man who had always spent so much time and energy on making sure that she took the right path?
Before she could make sense of things, the lift came to a halt and the doors slid open. She stepped out, into a quiet corridor, and turned right. She knew the way. She had been here before, when Tebbit was still conscious and capable of receiving family and friends. They had even organised a group trip from the station.
