Pretty Little Dead Things

by Gary McMahon

  There were three photographs attached to the email, unoriginally titled #1, #2 and #3.

  The first showed a young, slim white girl dressed in a smart business suit. She was hanging from what looked like a thin length of plastic-insulated electrical wire. Her throat was cut by the wire down to the vertebrae. A wash of blood decorated the front of her white blouse.

  The second shot was of a young black girl. She was wearing gold lamé hot pants and clear plastic stilettos – stripper shoes. Her hair was styled in a theatrical manner, like a big Seventies afro. Her make-up was equally elaborate, as if it had been applied for a part in a film. There was a long woollen scarf looped around her neck. Her head was tilted at an angle that was all wrong.

  I did not need to look at photograph #3. I knew it was Kareena Singh and I knew I'd already seen the image, but in the flesh. I shut down the laptop, closing the lid on the horror, and finished my drink. It was only then that I registered the sound.

  I held my breath without really being aware of it and glanced around the room. The old leather armchair sat in the same spot it had occupied for years, the coffee table squatted beside it. My bookshelves reached up the walls to caress the ceiling. The sound continued. It was like a gentle thumping noise, as if someone were knocking on a door somewhere far away yet close enough for me to hear. But the rhythm was off, as if they were not concentrating too hard as they knocked. The thuds seemed random, yet still held some kind of elusive beat. Then I realised what it was that was so weird about the sound: the knocks were too far apart, as if the knocker was doing so slowly, leaving a long time between each individual sound.

  I stood and walked softly across the room towards the door, my head cocked, ears pricked and listening to the sound. It did not increase or decrease in volume, nor did the beat change. The gaps between thuds remained regular.

  I opened the door and went out into the hall, where the sound grew slightly louder. I glanced at the stairs, my gaze climbing them but my feet remaining immobile. The sound, I realised, was coming from somewhere on the first floor. It could not be an intruder – who would be foolish enough to break into a house and start rapping on the walls? No matter how hard I tried to tell myself otherwise, I knew that I was hearing sounds made by the dead. Somebody somewhere was trying to contact me, to draw my attention, and the only way they could manage it was through this dull, percussive method.

  I began to climb the stairs.

  The carpet wrinkled against the varnished boards. Grey cobwebs shivered against the walls where they'd gathered at the edge of each riser – I never had been one for housework, and the place was a mess. The sound continued, pulling me towards it, hooking me like a fish on a line. I stared straight ahead, waiting to see something, but the way was clear. No misshapen figures darted across the landing, no pale hands clutched at the edge of the wall.

  The air was musty, unlived in. I rarely came upstairs. My life was focused on the ground floor, where the kitchen, study and two receptions rooms were located. I even used the downstairs bathroom.

  Upstairs there were too many memories: the room baby Ally had claimed as her own, the master bedroom where Rebecca and I had slept and made love. Still, after all these years, I hated going up there.

  Hated it with a passion.

  The volume of the thudding sound increased as I made my way along the landing, passing doors I'd not opened for years. I knew immediately which room the sounds were coming from – it was obvious. The dead, although often vague and gossamer in their manifestations, are rarely subtle in their approach.

  I stood outside the master bedroom and took a breath, feeling dizzy and nauseous. The fear was upon me, but I sucked it all up, crammed it all inside.

  Why do they always have to go for your weak spots, hit you in the places that hurt most? A lot of ghosts are like that – they sniff out your soft, vulnerable parts and close in on them, prodding and poking until something breaks and they can reach deep inside…

  Slowly I reached out and grasped the door handle but couldn't quite bring myself to open the door. The handle was cold in my fist; cold as ice, as if the room beyond contained an expanse of arctic waste. The wood began to groan, warping and flexing, and I knew that I had to push on and enter the room.

  The door opened easily. I was sure that I'd locked it years ago, but it opened without a key. They do that, too, the ghosts. They fuck with your mind, making you doubt your sanity until the world becomes malleable, open to interpretation. They enjoy throwing you off balance.

  I expected the sound to cease as soon as I set foot in the room, but it didn't; it kept on, slightly louder, more intense.

  More immediate.

  Demanding.

  She was hanging from a dark spot on the ceiling, near the window. Her long smooth legs swung like pendulums, one foot repeatedly hitting the timber panelling – the obvious source of that maddening sound. Her image was at least strong enough to interact with her surroundings, yet still obviously not fully anchored in our world. There was a tragic beauty to it, and its raw, untapped power made me shake all over again, as if an electric current had sent a jolt through my bones.

  It was Kareena Singh, of course. I knew it would be. She'd come to me to ask for my help, to force me to remember her and to beg me to keep sifting through the detritus of her life. Her eyes were open, bulging as wide as they had been when I'd found her, and the fat blue tongue was plastered across her chin. She did not speak or even acknowledge me. It was enough that she was here, in my house, making herself known to me.

  "Why can't you all just leave me alone?" My voice cracked as I spoke, the words coming apart in my mouth, like shattered teeth.

  Kareena Singh did not reply. They never do. Not once have I been spoken to directly; all communication with the dead is elusive, peripheral.

  She just swayed on the rope, with that one bare foot bumping against the wall, arms held stiffly at her sides. Her body looked solid, yet it was slightly less than substantial: in the light from the external lamps that bled through the window, I could glimpse her diaphanous quality. As she swayed, her body turning slightly to the side, I saw the outline of the window through her torso, the angle of the wall through her arm. She was there but not there – a representation, a message. A pointer.

  I turned and left the room, closing the door gently behind me, so as not to disturb the girl. The thumping sounds finally stopped. My heart almost did the same.

  The other two girls were out on the landing, suspended from the ceiling. The black girl in the stripper outfit turned in slow circles, and the other girl was immobile, hanging straight down like a suspended statue, her toes pointing downward, as if straining to touch the floor.

  I went downstairs and looked again at the three crime scene photographs Tebbit had so thoughtfully sent me. Then I picked up the phone, my hands gripping it so tightly that I wondered what would break first, plastic or bone.

  FOUR

  "What are their names?" My voice sounded strange, I didn't even recognise it. There was an anger held between the words that I had not been aware of for months. I felt like spitting – spitting right into that bastard's face.

  "Usher. I was hoping you'd call." Tebbit's tone was low and even, betraying nothing of his own emotional state.

  "The names, man. Just tell me the names."

  "Sarah Dowdy and Candice Wallace. Dowdy was an art student at Leeds University, did well with her coursework, and was by all accounts a popular lass. Wallace was a stripper. She worked at the Blue Viper. Kareena Singh's father owns the Blue Viper – but I'm sure you already know that, considering he's currently paying your bills."

  I refused to take the bait. "I'll keep my eyes and ears open, Tebbit – that's all I can promise. Nothing more."

  "And your other senses? What about those?"

  I smiled, despite the grim situation. My anger receded. "Yes, those too. I'll be as receptive as I possibly can and let you know if anything occurs to me." I did not tell him about the gho
sts. He didn't need to know about them, not just yet. Whatever message they had come to deliver, it was directed at me. Always at me.

  "Thanks, Usher. I was hoping you'd say that."

  I hung up the phone, pressed it down hard against the desk. I felt like leaning all my weight down on it until the case shattered, but pulled away at the last minute, regaining control of my emotions. I opened my laptop and hit the start button, then waited for the machine to come out of sleep mode. I accessed a search engine and typed in the name Sarah Dowdy. The results from several news sites told me what I already knew, along with some additional personal information that I didn't. Art student. Quiet, popular girl; she kept herself to herself. Struggling to pay the bills, she'd become involved with a few shady characters and been drawn into selling pornography on the University campus. She didn't appear in any of the movies, but pushed copies of them to all her male friends.

  Candice Wallace, as Tebbit had already informed me, had worked as a stripper and waitress at the Blue Viper. She was twenty years old, unqualified, and had a sick mother in a nursing home up in Newcastle upon Tyne. Nothing was mentioned about porn films, but she was linked to the others because she did casual work in a strand of the same industry.

  All roads led to the Blue Viper, and indirectly to Baz Singh.

  On the surface, it all made sense, but I'd learned enough not to trust what immediately presents itself and wait for the other options to appear. Dig deep enough and you always find those other options – usually too many of them, and the one you least expect to be the truth usually turns out to be exactly what you are looking for.

  My head was aching and my eyes felt gritty, so I closed the laptop lid and poured myself another whisky. The drink felt fine in my throat; a purgative. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the burn, trying to clear my mind and concentrate on kickstarting my buried instincts. I was all too aware of the visitors upstairs, but hiding behind them was something else – a vague and shadowy presence that refused to reveal itself for now. I knew it would step out into the open when it was ready, so chose to let it be for the time being, trusting in my experience.

  The dead do not like to be rushed. They have their own timetables and dance to their own beat.

  I went through into the lounge and turned on the television, simply to distract myself from the problem at hand. Things rarely resolve themselves if you're too focused on them: the answers to life's conundrums usually arrive when you are looking the other way. Wasn't it John Lennon who said that life is what happens when you are making other plans?

  I should have asked him about that when I met him, nineteen years after he was killed.

  I found a twenty-four hour news channel and settled down on the sofa, kicking off my shoes and rubbing the soles of my feet against the thick carpet. I rolled off my socks with my toes, impressed at my own dexterity, and then splayed out the toes, stretching them as far apart as they would go.

  A news report was playing about a missing nine year-old girl on an infamous Leeds council estate called Bestwick (the same estate through which I'd trailed Kareena Singh and Byron Spinks the night before). It was feared by the authorities that the youngster had been snatched by a disgruntled neighbour, a gang of feral kids, or – everyone's favourite bogeyman – a predatory paedophile. The usual suspects, then: media monsters of the month.

  Images of a weeping mother, a blank-faced father and countless hard-featured friends and family flashed up onto the screen. They were an ugly lot, dour and pale and apparently clueless, but I felt for them. Losing a child is the worst horror of all. Nothing else even comes close. Not even the loss of a spouse. I could testify to that better than most; my own history was stained by loss.

  Feeling depressed, I turned off the television and walked over to the stereo. I put on some Mahler, just for the hell of it, and lost myself in the music for a while. I crossed the room in a trance, almost asleep on my feet, the exploited ghosts of hanged girls dancing provocatively above me, my own ghosts skulking in the background, as they always did. Watching and waiting, but never stepping forward to ease the pain in my heart.

  I went through into the other room, where I lay on the bed and dreamed that I was

  …lying in the master bedroom, stretched out on the bed I'd once shared with Rebecca. The room is clean and tidy, the furniture scrubbed, the carpet unstained. The walls look freshly painted but I cannot smell a thing – that's how I know I am dreaming: because my senses are all messed up.

  It is dark outside; the window looks bigger than it should, the separate panes now forming one single glass sheet. There are no curtains. No stars in the sky beyond.

  I look down at myself, examining the length of my body, and see that I am naked. My body is thin and my skin looks strangely colourless, lacking in vitality. My ribs show through the flesh of my sides and my kneecaps jut out like tennis balls.

  I climb from the bed, expecting every movement to set off a series of aches and pains. But I feel nothing, not the motion of my limbs, the kiss of the cotton sheets against my skin, or even the gentle impact of my feet upon the floor.

  The bodies of vermin lie along the skirting boards, lined up like little victims. Each of them has been killed by the twisting of the neck: the fur at their throat is knotted and torn, their heads facing the wrong way. Their tiny limbs are hairless, claws clenched. I suppose that they must be rats, but they resemble no rodent I have ever seen. Their backward-facing features are monstrous, with huge gaping mouths, elongated teeth, eyes dull and glassy as a child's toy marbles.

  For some reason I am drawn to the window, so I step across the room and approach the pane. The sky outside has turned black, like ink spilled across the heavens: I can see its cloudy progress as it stains the view. The geography outside is all wrong. Where there should be a low wooden fence bordering my property, with a road and scrubby fields beyond and a small area of woodland in the distance, there is instead a vast expanse of blackened ground – earth which has been razed by fire. This scorched topography rises gradually towards a hill, and at the top of the hill sits the charred remains of a single tree. I guess that it is an oak; it must have been a wonderful sight in its prime, but now it is merely a spelk, a sooty splinter.

  The branches of the tree are bare and black; thin appendages clutch blindly at the darkening sky. As the darkness spreads, threatening to steal my vision, I see that there is something held suspended within the spindly branches – or rather, something dangling from them.

  A dark, squat bundle, something which resembles rags but I know is something more, hangs limply from the burned limbs of the tree. At one time it must surely have looked more like a human being, but now it is like sticks wrapped in untreated leather. I can make out no features; can barely even locate the skull, so when it begins to twitch I initially blame a breeze that is not actually present.

  The bundle slumps downward, falling clumsily through the thickest of the denuded branches. Then it gets caught on a stubby limb and halts its agonising descent. What looks like a ragged arm falls from the main body and dangles freely, its motion sickening and somehow unnatural as the darkness turns the sky to onyx.

  The last thing I see before I can see no more is the suggestion of a raised head – at least I assume it must be a head, for surely no other part of the human anatomy, however mutilated, could swivel at such a hideous angle…

  Then the tree ignites in a flash of yellow-white flame, and the vision is gone.

  FIVE

  I woke with a scream stuck in my throat but thankfully it did not budge. My lips were sealed with congealed spit and the lower part of my face was numb, as if a cold breeze had been blowing all the time I slept. I sat up and blinked back tears, wondering where they'd come from and why I was so ashamed of them. The dream was thick in my mind, like a mental mud, and I could not rid myself of the terrible image of something dark stirring in that skeletal tree, turning its blaze-blasted face towards me.

  I sat up on the bed and rubbed my eyes. They we
re gritty, aching. Blinking back the sudden moisture, I wondered where the imagery in the dream had come from. Was it an attempt by some restless spirit to contact me or simply the result of my own stressed-out mind approaching a breaking point? There were no answers forthcoming, so I stood and walked to the kitchen, craving strong coffee and something to eat.

  It was still dark outside. I'd fallen asleep early, slept all night, and woken an hour or so before dawn. I liked this time of day best of all, when everyone else was still in their beds, the spirits were mostly restful, and the planet seemed to move slower than at any other time. It was almost as if I could see the workings of the world.

  I filled the kettle with water from the tap and set it to boil. My hands looked old, worn; the knuckles were swollen and the skin on the backs of them was dry. I held up my hands and examined them, feeling ancient, like a man well past his best. But I had been that way for a long time now – indeed, because of the loss of my family I had never been allowed to enjoy any kind of so-called prime. The best of me had been sliced away like meat from the bone, taking with it any promise of future good times. A loss of such great magnitude destroys people in ways they don't even recognise until much later, and by that time the damage is too old to repair.