by Gary McMahon
“Maybe I should come in after all, just for a little while. We can’t talk about this out here. And afterward…afterward, you’ll get to kick me out.”
I stepped to the side and watched as she walked past me, kneading her hands together. She went inside and I followed her, thinking bad thoughts, feeling dark emotions.
“Can I sit down?”
I shut the door behind me. “Of course you can. Can I get you anything—a drink, something to eat?”
She shook her head. In the bright lights of the kitchen, the damage to her face looked even worse. Bruises were starting to form under her right eye. There was a small cut above her eyebrow. Her forehead was scratched—he’d used his fingernails.
I sat down opposite her at the table, rested my hands on the tabletop, and waited.
“This is going to sound…fuck, I don’t even know how it’ll sound. I’ll just say it. I’ll tell you, and then you can decide what you think.”
I waited. This was her moment; she was the major player in this scene. I was just an extra.
“My name—my real name—isn’t Carole. It’s Colleen. My real name is Colleen Moffat.”
At first I failed to register the connection, but she waited for the information to sink in.
“What are you telling me? I’m not quite sure that I understand…why did you change your name? What—” Then, suddenly, it clicked. “Katherine Moffat? You were related to her?” My fingers twitched on the table. I wasn’t even aware of moving them.
“She was my sister.”
“Hang on a minute…your sister killed those children? She lived in the house next door to mine, and she did all those things?”
Carole nodded. Carole…I couldn’t bring myself to think of her as Colleen.
“That’s right. It was my sister.” She paused, licked her lips, and then continued. “We were adopted by different sets of parents when we were babies. Nobody knows what happened to our real parents; we were dumped in a doctor’s waiting room when we were kids, with name tags pinned to our clothes. Katherine was two years old, and I was still a baby.
“We were sent to an orphanage, but we didn’t stay there for long. I was taken first—by a lovely young couple who couldn’t have kids of their own. Katherine was adopted a month later by an abusive couple. I only found all of this out a few years ago, and we met only once. We didn’t get on. Even then, I could sense that she wasn’t right—something was wrong with her.”
I could barely believe what I was hearing. It was too much; everything was rushing in on me much too fast. I felt attacked from all sides.
“Why are you telling me this?”
She reached up a hand and touched her face. Her eyes shone unkindly beneath the harsh kitchen lights. “The man who did this to me—the ex-boyfriend I told you about. He’s Benjamin Kyle, my sister’s lover. He’s back in town, and he’s trying to start up something. I’m not sure what, but he’s been messing around, visiting the old places he and Katherine used to hang out, reliving old memories.”
“Do the police know? They ought to be told.”
Carole laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “He’s been squatting in the house next door.” She tilted her head in the direction of the Moffat place. “He’s been sleeping rough, living under the same roof where…where she killed those kids. He thinks he can speak to them, the Radiant Children. He tells me he’s been asking for their forgiveness.”
I stood and walked across to the window, stared out through the gaps in the blinds. The house over there was in darkness; there was nobody home, had been nobody home for a long time. I spun around to face Carole. “Are you fucking serious?”
She nodded. She looked down, at her hands, unable to maintain eye contact.
“We have to tell the police. If he’s been poking around in there, they need to know. The guy sounds unhinged…talking to ghosts, beating you up. Come on, Carole. This is crazy.” I thought about Pru’s bruises the last time I’d seen her, and wondered if they’d been caused by the same man.
Finally Carole glanced upward. Her eyes were huge, moist, and empty. “He says he wants to fill the house with the sound of children screaming. He said that…those were his exact words.”
I crossed the room and went round to the other side of the table, where I grabbed her by the shoulder. She winced; I felt bad, but I held on anyway, tightening my grip. “The police. We need to call them.”
She writhed in my grip, turning around, her face tilting upward. “Please,” she said. “Don’t call the police. Not yet. He knows I’ve come here. He’ll be gone when they get there, anyway. Just…just get the hell out of here, Adam. Pack up your stuff and leave. And, please, please, don’t let your daughter come here again.”
I let go of her shoulder and stepped backward. My elbow made contact with the edge of the workbench but I barely even felt the pain. “She’s here now. Her mother—Holly—she had an overdose. She’s in the hospital, in a coma. Jess is staying with me now. She’s been here all evening.” I looked up, at the ceiling, and pictured her asleep in her bed. Then I remembered the cat, leaking those awful seeds all over the floor, his belly split open, with his mouth wide open and frozen into a horrible half-snarl.
Carole stood up, pushing the chair back across the floor. “I have to go,” she said, moving past me, toward the door. “I have to get out of here…”
By the time I moved, she was at the front gate; when I got there, she was already at the corner. I stood in the middle of the road and watched her go.
That was when I remembered where I’d first heard about this house being available to rent. It was Carole. She had brought it to my attention in a subtle way. I had a vague mental image of her handing me a newspaper property listing with this address circled in red.
* * *
The older I get, and the supposedly wiser I become, the more I come to realize that the people we love are a major part of what helps keep the darkness of the world at bay. There are dark movements everywhere; they are all around us. Some of them are huge and ugly, but others are subtle and elegant. We either succumb to the seductive pull of their currents or we build a fortress against them. Those we love are the bricks of that fortress; the love itself is the mortar that seals the joints.
When I went back inside the house, I knew immediately that something was wrong. My fortress had been breached.
The ambience inside the house felt different; it felt wrong. Something had been disturbed.
I shut the door and walked quickly into the lounge. Just as I entered the room, I saw a small form disappear around the edge of the door frame.
“Jess?” Even then, I knew it wasn’t her. The way the figure had moved, the motion it created—the ripples in the air—was not that of my daughter. I hurried over and peered around the door and into the hallway beyond. The figure was gone, but I knew it had been there. I had not been mistaken.
There was a small child in the house, and it wasn’t my daughter. It wasn’t anyone I knew.
I started up the stairs, grabbing the handrail and pushing myself forward. No more messing around: I needed to check on Jess, to make sure she was still sleeping. Part of me knew that something was wrong; even then, I was bracing myself, physically and emotionally.
When I got to her room, I paused and held on to the door handle. Something inside me was holding back, too afraid to enter. I closed my eyes, pictured her small, pretty face, and opened the door.
She wasn’t sleeping. The bed was empty. She wasn’t there.
As I stood there, taking in this vital piece of information, my stomach lurched, flipped, and then felt like it was falling out of my abdomen onto the floor. I forced my legs forward, carrying me to the bed. I felt around on top of the crumpled duvet, just to make sure. To reassure myself that she hadn’t just shrunk and was hidden in a fold. It was crazy. I kept batting at the bedclothes, expecting to find her, to discover that I’d made a mistake and she was there after all, sleeping peacefully.
But s
he wasn’t. She was gone.
I glanced at the window. The curtains were still closed. They were unmoving. Nobody had opened the window. I got down on my hands and knees and checked under the bed, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the wardrobe, either, or inside the dressing table drawers (which I insisted upon opening, just to be sure).
It took me minutes to search the entire house. I looked everywhere: in cupboards, under cabinets, in the bath, even in the fridge. I was searching in places where she could never be, spaces that were much too small to hold her.
Then I went downstairs to the cellar.
There was nowhere else to look, and it was obvious that she wasn’t down there, but I walked around and around the small, uncluttered space, hoping to find her there, hiding from me.
On my fifth or sixth circuit I found the cardboard box. It was in the middle of the underground room, in a spot I’d already walked over many times before. I kicked the box over and what was inside fell out onto the concrete floor. It was a single faded photograph; a photo of Jess, walking away from this house. On either side of her were vague shapes, glowing faintly. If I allowed myself, I could believe that those shapes represented children. And that they weren’t glowing, not exactly: they were radiant.
I ran back upstairs, checked Jess’s room again. Magic was sitting on her bed. He was alive, licking his paws, cleaning himself. Then he doubled over and started to lick his furred, unscarred belly and his balls. When he saw me, he jumped off the bed, ran toward me and then through my legs. I heard his little paws on the stairs as he escaped.
I sank to my knees, completely unprepared for the strength of the emotional onslaught that overcame me. I clutched at my face, my neck, and then my belly. I clutched the empty space in front of me, wishing that I could somehow grab hold of her hand. I started to dry-heave.
When I threw up, pumpkin seeds moved along my throat and emerged from between my lips. I felt violated.
When it passed, I went downstairs and called the police.
NINETEEN
Stranger
I was back on my knees when the police came, dry-heaving again, but this time into a plastic bucket. I wished that all this would just go away, leave me alone. I’m a strong man. I pride myself on my strength, both physical and mental, but that moment almost broke me: walking into Jess’s room and seeing an empty bed, an empty space that should have been occupied by the person who meant most to me in the world.
It almost shattered me.
I got the impression that I was under suspicion, but once I was questioned—by a DS Thomson—my paranoia receded. They were doing their job, being thorough and professional. With my history of violence and the recent events concerning Holly’s overdose, they had to be careful. I kept telling myself that as I answered question after question, trying to keep my cool.
DS Thomson was a small man, but he was broad and carried himself like someone who could take care of himself in a tight spot. He had massive hands—fists like shovels, as the saying goes. He looked like a bruiser, but he came on like a sensitive soul. He was cautious and thoughtful. I was glad that he was on the case; his solid presence reassured me.
They made me stay inside when they searched the house next door. I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched. They hung around for a few minutes waiting for backup—which arrived quickly and quietly—and used a battering ram on the door to gain entry.
Five or six of them went in through the front door. Another three uniformed officers went around the back. They were in there for quite some time. I’m not sure exactly how long it was, but to me it felt like hours. I didn’t speak to any of the officers prowling around my house. I didn’t speak at all until Adele, my favorite social worker, arrived.
“I’m so sorry…” She stood beside me, watching through the kitchen window. Tonight her hair looked even worse. “We couldn’t have predicted anything like this.”
“I know. We don’t even know it’s him.”
“Benjamin Kyle?”
I nodded.
She shuddered. She actually shuddered, as if the very thought of him sent her into spasms of terror.
“Have the police tracked down William Pace?”
I was drawing a blank. Shock had crippled my brain. “Who?”
“Pace. William Pace. Holly’s boyfriend…”
“Oh, that junkie scumbag. No. They’re still looking for him. It’s my guess he’s gone underground, probably hiding out in some grubby little shooting gallery.”
“Unless…”
“Unless what?” I turned to face her. She didn’t have on any makeup. She was probably settling down for a quiet evening at home when she got the call.
“Unless he came here… It’s entirely feasible that he’s the one who took Jessica. He’s bound to have formed a bond with her. He might even see her as his own child and have formed a psychological connection. And she could have gone with him of her own free will. That’s how you didn’t hear anything. Have you thought of that?” She placed a hand on my arm, squeezed.
No, I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t thought of it at all. But she was right. This theory about Benjamin Kyle was something of a flight of fancy. The occult-obsessed lover of a dead serial killer returns to the scene of their crimes, starts up an abusive relationship with the dead woman’s sister, and then kidnaps my child for some unspecified satanic ritual.
When I thought about it in those terms, it sounded stupid. This was the twenty-first century; that kind of shit didn’t happen. Maybe in the seventies; certainly in the sixties, when all kinds of weird cults sprung up and started getting interested in black magic and weirdness, but not now, not here.
It was all too far-fetched to be true. And yet…and yet, the police were taking it seriously. Serious enough to go charging in there ready to roust whoever the hell they found inside that house of horrors and drag them out into the street.
Pace…William Pace. It sounded more plausible. That the fucked-up mess of a man would come here, looking for my daughter—perhaps coming in search of a life that he’d been given a glimpse of and then had cruelly taken away from him when Holly slipped into a coma. What if the overdose had been accidental rather than by design? What if he’d genuinely made an error, got his measurements wrong and given her too much?
Surely this was more believable than demon-raising in a suburban house where kids had once been murdered?
As I watched, the police teams came out of the house. They walked slowly, heads down. They were empty-handed. They’d found nobody inside; Kyle was no longer on the premises, even if he’d been there in the first place.
DS Thomson came back inside. He stood in the doorway, his arms wide, hands open. “I’m sorry. There was nobody in there. We found an old sleeping bag, a few old clothes, some kiddie porn—a bunch of faded photos, taken a long time ago. There was nothing else. The place doesn’t look like it’s been lived in for ages. What made you think she’d be in there?”
“I didn’t. If I did, I would’ve gone in myself to get her.”
“Okay…then why did you think Benjamin Kyle had been in there?”
I walked to the dining table and sat down, staring at my hands. Adele stayed where she was, near the door. Thomson sat down opposite me.
“I had a visitor this evening, a friend. She told me that Kyle had moved back to the area. That he was living over there for a while.” I looked up, into his eyes. “He has moved back here, hasn’t he? You can confirm that, at least.”
Thomson sighed. “All we know is that Benjamin Kyle went off our radar a couple of months ago. He walked out of his job, left his flat, and walked away from the new life we’d set up for him. Nobody’s seen him since.”
I clenched my hands on the table, making fists. The knuckles turned white.
“Is there anyone else? Any enemies you might have?”
I shook my head. “There’s only that idiot Pace, Holly’s ex. Have you found him yet?”
“No. We’re still looking. We
’ve sent a couple of men round to your wife’s—sorry, your ex-wife’s place, and there’s nobody there. They called in when we were inside that house. We didn’t expect there to be anyone, but…well. No stone unturned, and all that.” He shrugged. “You need to help us out here. Tell us anything and everything. No matter what it is, however small a piece of information, it could prove vital in our finding your daughter. Just tell us…tell us whatever you think you know, and whatever you think you don’t know. Tell us everything.”
So I did.
He listened in silence, a trained observer. He didn’t ask any questions as I spoke, just sat there, resting his hands on the table. He didn’t even take any notes. I told him about Pru’s nighttime visits and the fact that I hadn’t seen her for a while, and I told him about the book her father had written. I told him about Carole and our relationship, and the night when I saw a man she now claimed was Benjamin Kyle intimidating her in her own flat.
It didn’t take long. I’d thought it might sound more complicated than it actually was, like a heavily plotted mystery novel. But it didn’t sound complicated at all; it sounded rather banal. I left out the stranger elements, of course—the books with the blank pages, the spectral children I’d glimpsed (or not glimpsed), and the dead girl Jess had spoken of. I even left out the stuff about Magic the cat. I didn’t want him to think I was crazy.
Thomson called over a uniformed officer from the other room and told him to start tracking down Prudence Shingley. The officer nodded and left quickly.
“I don’t even know where to start with all this.” He ran a hand through his hair. It was so thin I could see the scalp. He would probably go bald in a couple of years.
“I know…it sounds insane, doesn’t it?” I stood, feeling energy buzzing through me. I wanted to run five miles or to fight someone bigger and stronger than me. I needed action; I needed to burn off what was rising inside me. “But none of this is finding my daughter. Either that junkie Pace has her, or she’s been taken by Kyle. One of them has her. She isn’t out there alone.” I raised my hand and then slammed it down hard on the tabletop. The sound was like a gunshot. I did it again, but this time it hurt the side of my hand. When I looked down, I saw that I’d cracked the thin, cheap wood. I turned away, walked to the open door, closed my eyes, and wished for rain—anything to cleanse me, to wash off the shit that was clinging to me through all of this.
