Silent Voices

by Gary McMahon

  Further along the counter from where Simon was perched, an older man sat staring at his hands as they made knots on the countertop. He looked like he was puzzling over an intense riddle. He kept frowning, shaking his head, and then frowning again.

  These places at night, Simon knew from experience, attracted only the lost and the lonely. Long after all the normal travellers – the families and the truckers and the salespeople – had got wherever it was they were headed, these troubled souls remained on the open road, and they were drawn here like moths to a guttering flame.

  The woman brought out his baguette. It looked surprisingly good.

  On the counter, his phone began to vibrate. Simon picked it up and looked at the screen. It was another text from Natasha. She was either out late with her modelling clan or sitting up unable to sleep and thinking about him. He supposed that Mike was right; he was in an enviable position. He was a rich man and had a Russian underwear model pestering him to settle down and make their relationship more stable. If he detached himself from his life, and examined it all like an outsider, it seemed perfect. But in reality, nothing had ever been perfect for him. Since his youth, Simon had felt dogged by something. Whatever good things happened, he was always expecting the other shoe to drop, or waiting for the hammer to fall... he only ever acknowledged the dark cloud to every silver lining. It was as if he were tainted by darkness, and where other people saw the connections in human relationships, all he ever saw were the cracks.

  He switched off the phone and considered throwing it in the bin, severing all ties. He wasn’t sure why this urge came upon him, but he felt that it might be something to do with the surroundings and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that he was going home.

  Not for the first time, Simon admitted to himself that he was more comfortable in places like this diner, among people like these, than he was in his penthouse flat sharing space with his girlfriend. All his life he’d felt cast adrift, untethered, as if the normal rules of society did not concern him. He only ever felt at ease when he was in transition, between destinations; he only ever sought companionship from those who would not hang around for long. The single constant in his life was that there were no constants; he held to no routine and followed his whims as if they were sent to guide him.

  He ate half of his sandwich, paid the bill, and got up from his seat, ready once again to answer the call of the road. Lights flared in the distance, and he couldn’t tell if they were approaching or moving away. As he drove the car past the diner’s windows, the woman behind the counter stared at him. She lifted a hand, as if to wave, and then looked at the hand as it hung in the air, unmoving. Her expression was troubled; she didn’t know why she had begun the gesture. By the time she worked out what to do with her hand, Simon was leaving the diner behind him to rejoin the dark stretch of dual carriageway.

  The rest of the journey unfurled just as smoothly. Before long, Simon found himself driving past the familiar landscape of Birtley and Low Eighton before Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North statue reared majestically into view.

  Simon felt a vague tugging sensation inside his chest as he watched the statue rise above him, as if the hill upon which it stood were slowly lifting away from the earth. The Angel was a massive, imposing structure, twenty metres tall and fifty across the wings. The blank face of the statue gazed impassively, overseeing the region like some cold, emotionless deity.

  Simon pulled over into a lay-by and parked the car facing the hill. He switched off the engine and stared through the windscreen, feeling strangely attracted to the controversial structure. He remembered the uproar when it was first conceived; how a lot of people had spoken out about the faux rusted effect on the metal figure, and complained at the waste of the million pounds it had cost to create and erect. But now, all these years later, the figure had become an icon, an emblem of the northeast. Simon had always thought the Angel an unsettling sight. Its straight, razor-edge wings, the rigid stance, and the suggestion of the figure looking on in disdain... it was as creepy as it was compelling. He wasn’t sure if he loved the thing or loathed it.

  “So I guess this means I’m home,” he whispered, staring at the Angel. The dark sky offered a dramatic backdrop, and the thin clouds and the distant stars seemed to retreat from the figure, afraid to get too close. As Simon watched, he was overcome by the sensation that the hulking figure was just about to move, that it was going to turn its massive rusty head and gaze down at him, judging him unworthy of entry into the land where he had been born, the place where his forefathers had set down their roots and carved out a life for themselves. He became convinced that the two-hundred-tonne metal figure was poised to shift, tilt, and then perhaps tear its feet from the concrete foundations in order to chase him, crush him, and finally send him back into the bosom of the earth from which he had sprung...

  He shook his head, smiling. “Jesus. I must be going mad.” He gripped the steering wheel, clenching his fingers around it. He left the car, not bothering to lock it, and entered the site of the statue. He climbed the hill, feeling drowsy yet energised, as if the air up here were fresher and cleaner than that on the road.

  When he drew level with the elevated feet of the Angel, he reached down and touched the rough metal. He expected to feel something – anything: a shudder along his spine, an itching at the back of his neck – but nothing happened. He remained unmoved. The feelings he’d experienced back at the car, whatever they meant, had deserted him, and all they left behind was a curious emptiness.

  “You don’t want me, do you? I’ve come home, and you don’t even care.”

  The Angel did not respond.

  Simon sat down between its feet and stared at the sky. There was no light yet visible at the edge of the horizon, and for a moment he felt that he might never see daylight again, that he was trapped inside some endless night, populated by lonely waitresses and heavy metal sculptures. Then, sighing, he got to his feet and walked back down the hill to the car, feeling as if the giant figure had slowly twisted at the waist to watch him depart. He paused, stood still, suddenly too afraid to turn back and take a look. Then, allowing the feeling to pour through him and out the other side, he finally glanced behind him. The Angel had not moved.

  “Of course not,” he whispered, trying and failing to smile. He hurried the rest of the way to the car, and once he was inside he locked the doors before starting the engine.

  He’d be home soon. In half an hour he’d reach Morpeth. From there it was less than twenty minutes to the Concrete Grove, where God knew what was waiting for him.

  The Angel receded in his rear-view mirror as he drove further north. It did not move, nor did it register his departure. It was just a hunk of metal parts. A grim angel of broken promises standing at the border of a land whose dreams had always been dark and restless.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BRENDAN WAS DOING the hourly rounds. His lower back ached from sitting in his chair and he was feeling sorry for himself because of the way Jane had been acting earlier that evening, but the work had to be done. The work always had to be done.

  He walked one more circuit of the Needle, feeling the rash across his shoulders bristle as he stepped into the tower block’s night-time shadow, and then turned back towards the squat, modular grey shell of the Portakabin that served as the on-site security station. The stars looked impossibly tiny in the black night sky, and the moon hung there like a polished silver coin left underwater: vague, almost ghostly.

  Brendan heard a sound behind him, coming from the tower block. He turned, waving his torch at waist level so that the beam skittered across the base of the structure. Nothing moved. He saw rampant weeds hugging the concrete, debris and litter on the uneven ground, and a lot of building material that had been dumped over the years when previous refurbishment or development projects had been abandoned.

  The sound came again. This time it was louder, and he thought that he might be able to pinpoint its source. One of the ground fl
oor windows – the ones with steel security shutters over them. Several of the shutters had been replaced when the site was shored up and the perimeter fence erected, but others had been randomly removed. He wasn’t sure why; it seemed a silly thing to do, especially in this rough and rundown area, where putting up a barrier was tantamount to an invitation to break and enter for the local street kids.

  “Hello?” He felt stupid saying it, but what else could he have called?

  There was no reply.

  Brendan walked slowly towards the Needle, his torch beam slicing through the darkness to illuminate parts of the whole: a sealed door, a barred window, a cracked wall, a plastic bin leaning against a pile of bricks.

  “This is private property. I’m legally obliged to remove you from the premises.” More empty words. He wished that he had a dog with him, but the security firm wouldn’t pay for him to do the dog-handling training, even though he’d asked them countless times. When he’d asked for a partner to accompany him on the night shift, his boss had just laughed and told him to “man up” and “grow a pair.”

  They were real investors in people, Nightjar Security Services...

  Hearing nothing but the late-night urban lullaby of barking dogs, distant voices and revving engines, Brendan moved closer to the side of the building. He flashed his torch across the wall, looking for an aperture by which someone might have gained entrance to the place. The graffiti was illuminated briefly: swear words and sex words and obscure gang tags sprayed in blood-red paint. None of the security shutters had been interfered with; everything seemed secure. He walked along the wall, then turned and advanced along the side of the Needle. He did another complete circuit before finally coming to a halt beside the main doors.

  Brendan stepped forward and tried the handle. He wasn’t expecting the door to open, so when it did he simply stood there, staring at his hand as it pulled the door wide.

  “Shit,” he muttered, wondering if he had forgotten to lock it.

  Now that he’d discovered the way in, he knew that he couldn’t walk away without inspecting the interior of the building. He didn’t like it in there. Apart from the fact that it was a spooky old building, and he was alone here at night, there was the part of his past that he never liked to think about. The time when he and two of his friends had come here, and everything since had turned sour.

  Everything.

  Sometimes he felt that whatever had happened to them that night had stained his life, each day that followed becoming steadily darker as a direct result of them coming here, to the Needle. And the end point, the final blackness, lay just up ahead, at the end of his days, waiting for him like an open mouth.

  Brendan’s throat was dry. He tried to swallow but it was difficult.

  There came another sound from deep inside the building: a short, sharp impact, like something being thrown against the wall.

  “Shit.” He said it louder this time, but the curse brought with it little bravado. Brendan was scared, and there was no way of ignoring that fear. So instead he embraced it, tried to take strength from his terror. For a second he could even pretend that it was working.

  Brendan had been inside the Needle many times since the childhood experience that even now he struggled to remember; he had fought long and hard to conquer his fear of the place, and had finally arrived at a state of compromise. He was physically able to enter the tower block, but he would never feel truly at ease within its walls: his psyche began to tremble whenever he walked there, and he knew the footsteps he heard echoing around him as he did so were not necessarily his own.

  Brendan pushed through the main doors, feeling as if he were taking a step backwards through time, drawing close to an event that he could never quite grasp and claim as his own. A soft breeze stroked his cheek; dust drifted in the dimness; tiny sounds seemed to move towards him from all sides.

  “If you don’t get the hell out of here, I’m calling the police. There’s a fast response time. They’ll be here before you can even get past me to the door.” He tried to sound brave, to make his words seem fierce, but all he felt was small and lonely, like a little boy trying to act like a TV tough guy. He didn’t even have his two-way radio; he’d left it back in the security cabin.

  More sounds emanated from the depths of the building. There was definitely someone else in there, moving around on the ground floor. He tightened his grip on the torch, the only weapon in his possession. It was heavy, rubber-coated, and once, on another job, he’d knocked someone unconscious with a blow to the head. He’d been trained in subduing an opponent, but wasn’t what anyone would call a natural fighter. He knew some basic technique, but that was all. If he came up against a hard man who knew what he was doing, then Brendan would have no chance.

  He peered into the dimness, trying to make out shapes. There was evidence of someone staying here: an armchair, a row of old television sets, all turned to face the wall, several heaps of what looked like clothing, a burst mattress, the remains of a kebab and its wrapper scattered across the floor. The walls, when he flashed the torch beam across them, were covered with graffiti: gang tags and obscure band names, phone numbers that you could call if you wanted a blowjob. The air smelled of hops and old cannabis fumes. The floor was covered with all kinds of loose material, and for a moment he caught a whiff of what smelled like shit.

  He stared at the doorway ahead of him, and it was only after the figure crossed the space from left to right that he realised he’d seen someone.

  Brendan twitched in shock; a delayed reaction, a strange little side-step because his body was unsure how to react. “I’m armed!” He gripped the torch even tighter, hoping that he would not have to use it – or if he did, that he managed to get in the first blow and it was hard enough to count.

  The figure crossed the doorway again, a dark silhouette moving this time from right to left. It moved with a staggering gait, as if whoever it was had been drinking heavily.

  It’s a doper, he thought. He’s stoned and doesn’t know where he is.

  He relaxed slightly, more sure of himself now that he could put a name to his fear. Drug users had been known to break into the Needle to shoot up or smoke crack; kids sometimes came here to fuck; once or twice the most desperate transients had even popped in for a night’s sleep.

  “Show yourself. Come into the main space here, and I’ll escort you off the premises. If you do not comply, I will be forced to call for police back-up and you will be arrested.” He thought that he sounded like some sad old rent-a-cop: a pathetic character in a shitty movie. “This is private property. You are trespassing.”

  The figure stumbled back into view. It was thin, unsteady on its feet, and had now turned to face the doorway.

  “That’s right. Just come through here and we can sort this out the easy way.”

  Brendan flicked his wrist to bring the torch beam around, so that he might highlight the figure. The man stood framed in the doorway, his clothes dirty and ragged, his hands clutching the shattered wooden frame, and his face a white featureless mass hovering above his narrow shoulders.

  “Shit.” Brendan stepped backwards, almost tripping on a pile of something directly behind him. “What the fuck?” The torch beam danced across the walls, striping the figure as it advanced through the doorway and into what used to be the main entrance hall, but was now just a vast space filled with junk.

  The man moved slowly. His arms hung loosely at his sides. His bloated white head was rigid, locked facing forward. He had no eyes. No mouth. Just a tattered white mask, an image from a nightmare...

  ...and then Brendan realised that the man’s face was bandaged. He was limping; he wasn’t drunk or stoned, but injured. He dragged his feet across the filthy floor, twisting his hips awkwardly and moving towards the sound of Brendan’s voice.

  “Are you okay, mate?” Brendan no longer felt threatened. The man was unwell. He had clearly come here to hide his infirmities away from the world. Cursed with his own medical condition,
this was a reaction Brendan could understand – he empathised with the man’s desire to hide, to lock himself away from a mocking world.

  He remembered the names he’d been called at school: Rashback, Beam-Me-Up-Spotty, Dot-to-Dot... and a hundred more, each worse than the last. The skin across his shoulders and the top of his back cried out in sympathy; his pain reached out to this other man’s agonies, like a hand across a chasm.

  The man with the bandaged face made a low, soft sound, somewhere between a cry and a sigh.

  “It’s okay, mate. I won’t hurt you. Come on; let’s get you out of here. I have food and drink back at the cabin.”

  The man reached out a hand and it flailed in the air like a damaged bird.

  Brendan grabbed the hand and tugged, helping the man across the detritus-covered floor. Close up, the bandages were surprisingly clean. They looked fresh, as if they’d been recently applied. Somebody somewhere was looking after this man, and they were making sure he kept his dressings clean. That was something, at least; it meant that he wasn’t completely alone in the world. There was someone to tend to his most basic needs, to treat him like a human being.

  Brendan guided the man towards the door, feeling invisible eyes upon him as he turned his back on the interior of the Needle. He always felt this way, as if the building itself were watching him, waiting for him to slip up. He’d overcome his surface fears, but other terrors ran deeper, caught in the blood and the marrow. Some terrors could never be beaten, no matter how hard you fought against them.

  “Come on, mate,” he said, as they left the building and returned to the relative safety of the night. “I’ll put the kettle on and we can have a little chat. Have you been living here?”

  The man allowed himself to be led but he did not reply. He walked in silence, unable or unwilling to communicate. His hand was limp; the fingers felt boneless. His lumbering steps carried him wherever he was taken, and he acquiesced without as much as a whimper of protest.