by Gary McMahon
Even now, neither of us is clear of the exact details of what happened inside that house. We both saw different things, and for once I suspect that I was the one who failed to see it clearly.
Sarah claims that they were biblical demons, exactly like a description in the King James Bible, Revelation 9 – but from her upbringing her mind is accustomed to Christian imagery and it would naturally shape the sight into something that she could recognise. I have no idea what I saw, but to me they resembled more closely the artist Francis Bacon's Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion – austere anthropomorphic creatures writhing in a state of tired agony. They were not ghosts, they were something else. The Pilgrim and his brothers: the Architects of Serendipity. They were something else entirely.
What I think happened is that the Pilgrim's brothers would not let him contrive to take whatever it is they called my design. Either they were too afraid or simply not ready to reach out towards a thing they had called untouchable.
At the time I felt as if the design I supposedly possess provided at least some of the energy required to halt the Pilgrim's desperate end game. But in all honesty my final line of defence was naught but a bluff – I'm not sure if it was my disbelief that rendered the Pilgrim powerless or if his belief in my rejection of his reality simply caused him to unravel. Whatever the case, he became the architect of his own downfall.
Or maybe not…
I still cannot understand the true nature and motivations of that grinning trickster demon, and perhaps I never will. Perhaps it is better that way.
Often the things we don't know are the very things that save us. Sometimes ignorance can amount to a kind of salvation.
I don't know if I'll ever see the Pilgrim again, but for the first time in my life a kind of spiritual weight has been lifted. I am no longer afraid; he does not frighten me. The Pilgrim, it seems, is more afraid of me than I ever was of him.
I spent so long under the Pilgrim's gaze that I believed it was normal to endure such intense spiritual scrutiny, and now that he is no longer watching me I feel a sense of freedom that is utterly terrifying in its absence of surveillance.
Part of me misses being the subject of so much attention. The rest of me, the sensible part, is intensely grateful for each and every day that I remain free.
It will take time to get used to this freedom.
It will also take time to grow accustomed to being a father.
Sarah is my daughter, of that fact I have no doubt. She is mine, my flesh and blood. We both know it, by a means that it is beyond our ability to understand. Call it supernatural; call it what you will. It is the bond between father and daughter.
It has been six weeks since the events at Emerson Doherty's old house. The For Sale sign went up a week ago, and there has already been some interest in the property. We have priced it low, as I'm sure can be understood, in order to make a quick sale.
The doctors have told me that Sarah will never walk again. Her lower spine was shattered in the fall; the damage is so extensive that surgery is not an option.
She is crippled, but she is alive. She lives. That is enough for us both.
I have spent so long grieving for my dead family, and hoping that I might see their ghosts, that the very notion of "family" has become something I no longer understand. It is something else that I will be required to learn again.
I have a lot to learn. All over again.
In a few days I can bring Sarah home. I've opened up the old place, the house I bought with Rebecca and Ally, and aired out the empty rooms. I shall wheel her home in the chair, and once I've made some money I will modify the house to suit her needs. Entrance ramps, a stair lift, so many other things that I will have to research and then have installed. Sarah can choose the new décor in every room and I will carry out the work. I have no real style to speak of, and the place will benefit greatly from a woman's touch.
But we have time. We have all the time in this world and the next, as long as the clock of the universe keeps ticking.
Sarah gets glimpses now; she sees things. She calls it her twitch. I am not yet sure how much she has become aware of, but it is her birthright. She got her mother's looks and my… my what? Did she inherit a version of my design, or perhaps just a small piece of it?
I can't be sure. Nothing is certain. Even reality cannot be trusted. Sarah's origin – despite what the Pilgrim told me – is the biggest mystery of all.
All those years ago, when we first slept together, why didn't Ellen tell me that she was pregnant? If she had an abortion, as Emerson's grim angel told me, then why can I find no official record of the procedure?
The Pilgrim, like the devil that lives within us all, on that dusty lower landing of the human soul, is a liar. But couched within a network of lies there is always the shadow of truth. The only truth I care about is that I have a daughter – one that is alive, who I can touch and protect. Little else matters to me.
I will always miss my family, but now I have a new family to share in that grief. I wish Sarah could have known her half-sister, and my wife. I wish we could all be together, if only for a short time…
But I know that will never happen.
Life doesn't work that way.
DI Tebbit is still in a coma. Through all this, he has somehow kept on going, his failing system refusing to give up the fight and go gentle into the night – be it good, bad or otherwise. He is in no state to clean up my mess – not this time – but there are other sympathetic officers who have been willing to help. They have no choice; they are all tainted by Emerson Doherty's madness.
Benson's disappearance has been useful for the police – Sarah showed her superiors the evidence she'd found in the cellars under Emerson's house, and since then his guilt in the old, unheard of killings has been suppressed. Tebbit's superior officers examined the photographs in silence and listened to the tape recordings as the murderer précised his own crimes between songs.
The pay-off we demanded for our silence regarding the matter was that they don't go looking for Benson. He was a killer, an embarrassment to the force, and they are more than happy to pretend that he is just another missing person. They know he's dead; of course they do. But they play the game and they follow the rules, thankful that there are still some pieces left to move around the board…
So many missing people; even those we can see or feel or touch. Sometimes those missing are closer to us than we might like to think.
If my dying friend, DI Donald Tebbit, ever comes out of his coma I will tell him everything we have experienced, but I don't expect that to happen. It is almost his time to go, to become one of the missing himself.
The watchful ghost of his wife never strays from his side. She is there for him, no matter what. Just like Sarah and I will be there for each other, now that we have finally found the remains of our family.
It is enough, for now. In fact, it is more than enough: it's everything we have.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Not too many people to mention this time around, as I kept my head down and went at it like a battering ram. A great debt of gratitude is due, though, to Mark West for being such a great and insightful (and honest!) test reader of this material. I know he found a certain scene hard to take, and I apologise for putting him through the emotional wringer. I'd also like to pay my dues to the great Ramsey Campbell, whose work continues to inspire and astound me. As usual, Gary Fry and John Probert supplied some welcome chuckles along the way (and believe me, with a novel this dark, laughs are hard to come by). Finally, and by no means any less worthy of my humble thanks, I have to say that none of this would have been possible without my amazing wife Emily, and our weird and wonderful son, Charlie.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary McMahon's short fiction has appeared in numerous acclaimed magazines and anthologies in the UK and US and has been reprinted in yearly "Best of" collections.
He is the multiple-award-nominated author of the novellas Rough Cut and All Your Go
ds Are Dead, the collections Dirty Prayers and How to Make Monsters and Pieces of Midnight, and the novels Pretty Little Dead Things, Rain Dog, Hungry Hearts and The Concrete Grove.
He has been nominated for seven different British Fantasy Awards as both author and editor.
www.garymcmahon.com
Extras...
LATE RUNNERS
This short story – written in August 2005 – is the first ever story to feature Thomas Usher. It first appeared in The First Humdrumming Book of Horror in September 2007.
It was a long drive to Upper Chinley, particularly at the speed I travel, but my old Volvo managed the journey without giving me too much cause for concern. It voiced the odd groan or stutter when forced to climb one of the many steep inclines we encountered along the way, but for the most part, it soldiered on admirably. I don't like cars as a rule, but this one suited me more than most – although none of them suit me too well.
The village was your quintessential northern English picture postcard scene: shambling cobbled lanes, leaning terraces built of rugged yellowish Yorkshire stone, old people sitting as idle as fading memories in teashop windows, eating Eccles cakes and drinking tea from patterned china cups.
The weather was typically English too: a light smattering of rain falling from a sky the colour of scrubbed slate.
As I passed along the main high street, enquiring eyes intently watched my progress. I was a stranger here, and as such, my business was suspect. It's always this way in small, close knit communities, especially these days, when even your closest neighbour cannot be trusted.
One quickly grows used to mistrust in my line of work.
School Cottage was located a mile outside of town, and could only be accessed by use of a meandering unmade road that snaked through the edges of a pretty, bluebell-spattered woodland. Trees bent their heads to brush against the roof of my car and animals capered out of sight, rustling loudly through the damp colourless undergrowth. The Volvo's chunky tyres settled into deep runnels worn by the to-ing and fro-ing of other vehicles, and my progress was slow but steady. I would get there in the end; I always did.
Soon the cottage came into view, and I saw the lone figure of a woman standing behind the low front garden gate. As I drew closer, details became clearer, but upon initial inspection she looked as grey as the sky above her; tired, washed out. Like a ghost.
"Mr Usher!" called the woman, waving and limping as she opened the gate and came to meet me as I climbed out of the car. "Hello."
Up close, I could see that she was very old, but her eyes shone with an incongruous youth and vitality. Something here at School Cottage agreed with her, and I feared that if whatever it was ever left she might decline in its absence.
"Ah, Mrs Croft. So pleased to meet you."
She led me inside, and as I followed her, I noticed the heavy bandage on her left leg. She'd told me of her fall when I'd spoken to her on the phone earlier that week; that during one of the manifestations she'd been knocked off her feet and had bruised a bone.
Once inside the neat little house, over hot tea and buttered crumpets at the comfortable kitchen table, Mrs Croft began to tell me her tale.
"It began in earnest just over a month ago, but I've been aware of their presence ever since moving in here thirty-odd years ago – a breeze that shouldn't be there, the sound of distant childish laughter, a sense of being watched whenever I hang out the washing or prune the roses."
"But nothing more… substantial?"
"No, Mr Usher. There's always been a feeling of welcome, even playfulness, here at the cottage. It's only recently that I've started to worry."
I sipped my tea and glanced out of the window above the old porcelain kitchen sink. Opposite was the site of the old school building, long demolished by a stray bomb during the air raids of World War Two, but its essence still rooted firmly in the strong, nurturing earth.
"Lately, there's been a different kind of energy about the place – not exactly bad, just different. Excitable. Uncontrollable. It unnerves me, Mr Usher. I'm eighty-six, and I like a peaceful atmosphere. Anything other than that tends to upset me."
I smiled. Took a bite of warm crumpet, the melted butter rolling over my lower lip and onto my chin. "So you've become afraid – is that what you're saying, Mrs Croft?"
She moved to the window, a stray shaft of weak sunlight catching in her hair and highlighting the grey beneath the subtle blue rinse. "No. Not afraid exactly. Simply concerned."
"Please, tell me more. I need to know everything if I'm to help."
"And how exactly can you help, Mr Usher? I've heard that you can commune with the dead. Is that true?"
Commune with the dead. A nice way of putting it. A coy euphemism for what amounts to some very strange business indeed.
"You could say that." I took another mouthful of my by-now tepid tea. "Several years ago I was involved in a serious road accident, and since that day I've had a certain affinity with the spirit world. I don't know why I was chosen; but I do what I can with the glimpses I'm afforded. I try to help."
Mrs Croft seemed content with that, and she smiled in such a way that seemed to signal the emergence of a tacit trust between us.
"It happens every weekday, at twilight. I hear a faint rushing sound, like the approach of many running feet, and then comes the laughter of children. It's concentrated out there, where the old playground used to be, but sometimes the activity spreads." She turned to the window, and pointed outside. The rear garden led on to a flat concrete platform that rested at ground level, a chipped, pockmarked surface that must have been the school playground, where countless young bodies had run and played, hopping and skipping and jumping, beating on the lid of the day.
"Is that where you were when you fell?"
"Yes, I was hanging out some sheets, and behind one of them, outlined against the dying light, I saw a small figure – a child. And then I felt fingers plucking at me, tiny hands trying to get my attention. I fell, but they – or possibly others – raised me up and set me down again on the doorstep. This is the first time I've been touched, physically molested, I suppose you might say… It was thrilling, but also terrifying. I didn't know what to do… so after the local doctor left, I rang you."
"And how did you come by my number?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"A friend of a friend," she said, and poured me another cup of sweet tea. It's always the way. I do not advertise my services, but rarely am I idle.
We waited until twilight, passing the hours with a game of chess. Despite her age, Mrs Croft was a worthy opponent; she'd played to a high standard in her youth. She told me of her husband's exploits during the Great War, of his sad demise from what is now termed post-traumatic stress disorder (back then, it was still called shellshock) upon his return from France. She mourned him still, all these many years later.
She told me that she had kept all of her husband's things, and that her bedroom was like a shrine. She smiled coyly as she said this, and I appreciated that she had been alone in every sense of the word since his death.
We played more chess, and when Mrs Croft beat me a third time, we called it a day. The sky outside began to darken, but when Mrs Croft got up to turn on the lights I asked her to wait. I had my reasons for preferring the gloom, and she was happy to grant my slightly unconventional request.
Soon we heard it: light, carefree laughter, riding the wind like wild birds. It was a good sound, a happy sound, and we both smiled.
I moved slowly to the kitchen window, leaving the lights off and being careful not to draw attention to my presence; I'd learned early that it was always best to remain in the background, to watch from the shadows. Dust swirled at ankle level on the uneven concrete platform, leaves and twigs scattering and the air itself corkscrewing like a series of mini tornadoes. They were coming out to play.
As Mrs Croft stood silently by my side – holding her breath in tense expectancy – I watched the vague, finely sketched figures of child
ren appear in the playground; behind them, the silvered outline of a building shimmered into existence – the old school hall.
Most of the children were dressed in quaint Victorian era clothing, others in nothing but rags. These were children of different eras, from different times, but they played well together, as all good children do.
Girls skipped and hop-scotched, threw tennis balls against an invisible wall; boys play-fought, wrestled, and kicked leather footballs between goalposts formed by the piling up of coats and sweaters. The air was filled with layers of sound; screams and laughter, and singsong childhood chants.
A group of children broke off from the rest, and began to run around Mrs Croft's garden. One of them – a small boy obviously chosen to be "it" – chased the others, laughing and shouting as he tried to tag them one by one.
