by Gary McMahon
I heard the beanbag rustle as he adjusted his position. "This modern lot are nothing compared to the old-school members – they're just problem kids looking for something to hold on to, and the myths and folklore that's grown up around the gang ensures that they are always operating at full strength – there's basically a frigging waiting list to get in. These days it's more like muggings and drug drops than satanic orgies, amigo, but they're still a dangerous crowd."
The room was growing dim; the sun must be going down outside. I had not even realised how late it was. "What happened to Torrent? How come he's been expunged from the records?"
Elmer was now standing behind me. I could smell his whisky breath. "There are a few stories, but the one that crops up most often is that he had a sister, a child his mother had given birth to before she died under suspicious circumstances back in mother Russia, where they originally came from – they were part of some kind of exiled political group who came to England for asylum. After he managed to escape, Torrent sent for this infant sister. He got her out, and he raised her as his own child.
Nobody knows the name of this girl, the sister, but I've heard corroborating stories from two independent sources that she was killed and Torrent left the area. Because of his bad rep, he was kind of erased from local history. His actions were considered an embarrassment by even the criminal classes, so everyone played ball and he wasn't even spoken of in the worst kinds of pubs and ale houses."
I turned. Elmer was right in front of me. "Killed? How?"
"Another Russian immigrant with mental problems thought she was entering his dreams, and he abducted her. He took her out to a hill somewhere, lashed her with ropes into the branches of a tree, and set fire to it. He burned what he thought of as the witch – Baba Yaga, he said, was her real name, and he swore that she was evil, an ancient Slavic bad spirit in human form."
I almost fell down; my legs began to ache, my ankle bones crumbling to dust.
Burned. In a tree. Burned, probably to ash.
Burned.
"Usher, are you okay, amigo? It's an upsetting story, yes, but I'm sure you've heard worse." He grabbed my shoulders and gently pushed me across the room, to the tattoo chair. I rubbed my cheeks, my chin, scratched at my throat. "What is it?" Elmer's face had darkened; I was touched by this show of genuine concern.
"Something you said… it just hit a spot, you know. Pushed a button." I tried to smile but it didn't work. I probably looked like I was grimacing.
Russia. Witch. Tree. Ash. It was alike some twisted children's rhyme, the words spinning through my head on a repeating loop: Russia-witch-tree-ash. Russia-witch-tree-ash. Russia-witch-tree-ash.
Elmer walked around the chair and stood before me, his tattoos glowing in the dim light and his small eyes looking tired but not quite empty. Not quite MT.
"There's one more thing," I said, arching my back and shuffling in the chair. "Have you ever heard of a man called Shiloh? He calls himself Mr Shiloh."
Elmer shook his head. I knew he was telling the truth; that he had never heard the name before. I could see it in his face, in his eyes, and in the way he had answered without pause. Here was something that even Elmer Lord possessed no knowledge of; a person whose identity the best scavenger of information I knew could not even help me with. I felt cold. The fact that Elmer didn't know who Mr Shiloh was seemed somehow more unnerving than the story of Mathew Torrent and his terrible gang of abductors.
"Who is he, amigo?" said Elmer. "Who is this Mr Shiloh?"
I thought of the mandala Elmer had been creating when I arrived. The shark at its centre, with a grin not unlike the one I had faced over a small café table not long ago.
I got to my feet, only a little unsteadily, and placed a hand on my friend's arm. "I truly don't know, but I have a feeling that he wants me to find out… and he's enjoying the mystery."
NINETEEN
Elmer saw me to the door and down the stairs into the grubby little hallway. We didn't speak until we had reached the main door to the street, and even then all we managed was a couple of goodbyes and a see-you-later. Elmer watched me as I walked down the street, heading back towards the bottom of Eastgate. I didn't turn around to acknowledge his gaze.
The sky had darkened a few shades and clouds had moved in to provide a lid to the world. Traffic was slow-moving. I passed the aftermath of an accident involving a moped and a white van. Two men sat on the kerb, one of them with his head in his hands and the other walking in slow circles, sucking on a cigarette.
I reached the Crowne Plaza Hotel, where Ellen was staying, and stood staring at the building's hideously modern façade. There were a million reasons why I shouldn't go in there and only one why I should – yet that single pro outweighed all the cons as easily as one evil deed measured against ten good ones in the fabled scales of justice.
And when the memories came, I was unable to stop them.
Ellen drives the rented van because I am still unable to get behind the wheel of any vehicle without either weeping uncontrollably or throwing up: a strictly Pavlovian response which embarrasses me more than anything else about this whole situation. I have not driven since the accident, and have no plans to start again any time soon. I watch the side of her face as she negotiates the insane road system, heading somewhere called Marsh Farm on the outskirts of Luton. We already know that it is an unpleasant area with a bad reputation, known for a high percentage of street crime and problem families, but we have made the decision to travel there. I have made the decision after a long conversation with Ellen in my rented caravan where she told me that if I didn't do this she would walk out of my life forever.
I don't know why I was unable to let her leave, but the important thing is that I wanted her to stay. She is my friend; she means everything to me. I do not want her to view me as a lost cause, even if that's exactly how I feel.
It is night. The streetlights are primary smears against an urban backdrop of inner-city ruin. We enter a grubby suburb, and soon the only buildings around us are high-rise residential dwellings: the slums of the future, and some that have already become the present-tense definition of that term.
The streets are barren, like a set from a film, apart from a few tired-looking teenagers outside a row of boarded-up shops. They watch us as we pass, their eyes dead, and I feel a sudden surge of adrenaline enter my system. Fight-or-flight: the instinct for self-preservation. It's like being on an animal reserve, or a safari park in deepest Africa, where even though the beasts are enclosed within a compound they are still close enough to the wild state to be considered dangerous.
"We're almost there," says Ellen, keeping her eyes on the road. She looks scared, her face a pale blob in the darkness, and when a cluster of fireworks go off somewhere to our right, on a dark stretch of waste ground behind some houses, she jerks in shock, as if the sound were a series of gunshots.
"It's okay, Ellen. We're safe."
She turns to me and smiles, light from one of the streetlamps stitching the side of her face with shards of white. Her blue eyes are large and, I think, rather beautiful; she looks like a woman I might have fallen in love with had the timing been right when we first fell into bed together.
She looks like someone I might have loved a long time ago.
Ellen parks the car in a space outside a ten-storey block of flats. All the windows on the lower levels are either smashed or boarded up with timber sheeting. We sit there for a few moments, not speaking, just waiting. The night lets out a breath; in the distance, a dog barks incessantly; the chesty sound of a small, ragged engine approaches and then slowly fades away.
"Are you ready?" She places a hand on my thigh.
It is a simple question, but one that I fear I cannot answer. "You tell me." I turn to her, cocking my head to one side in a gesture of bemusement.
"It's enough that you're here, that you're willing to try this. It could be the thing that saves your life."
I rest my hand over hers, squeezing it tightl
y. "It might also be the thing that finally destroys me."
We leave the car and cross the car park, walking over shattered glass, crushed plastic bottles, discarded condoms and flattened cardboard boxes. A young girl is perched on a concrete bollard at the end of the long, thin pathway that leads to the building's main entrance. She is openly smoking a joint, and she stares at us as we pass within touching distance. "You police?" she asks, glaring at me.
I shake my head but do not speak. Ellen grabs my hand and holds on tight. The girl tells us to fuck off and then laughs manically, swinging her legs and slapping the bollard with the soles of her feet.
The foyer smells of old urine and dirty sheets. The elevator is broken so we have to use the stairs. Four flights, past all kinds of rubbish: an old fridge on the first half landing, its door open to reveal black mould shaped like a human face, a child's doll with its legs removed and its eyes gouged out, what at first looks like a dead cat but proves to be a mutilated teddy bear, several dirty syringes. The lights in the stairwell are working, but only just: ascending the stairs is like climbing through the different levels of a strobe effect, and I imagine for a moment that we are entering some kind of weird themed nightclub, a post-modern study in urban squalor.
"Flat Number 411," says Ellen, breaking the uneasy silence. There are no sounds from behind the apartment doors, as if their inhabitants are poised on the other side, listening to us, trying to guess who is coming – friend or foe – from the rhythm of our footsteps on the concrete floor. I cannot rid myself of the image of many people crouching behind those doors, ears pressed to the wooden panels, listening to us as we pass.
Crouching and listening. Licking their lips.
Soon we are standing outside the door to Flat Number 411. I look at the metal numbers fastened to the wooden door, the way they have slid sideways because one of the screws has fallen out. I imagine what kind of man is behind that door – is he a monster, or simply an empty shell who is suffering because of what he has done. I am not sure which option I prefer, but I know that a monster will be easier to hate.
"Ready?" Ellen leans against me, her shoulder brushing the top of my arm.
I nod. My mind is numb; my heart is racing; my blood is thin and fast in my veins.
She reaches out to knock on the door, but I grab her hand to stay the action. "No. I'll do it. It should be me."
I take a long, deep breath, look down and close my eyes. And then I look back up, at the door, at the crooked numbers that should mean so much but actually mean so little. I knock on the door, three times, briskly: a charm. Then we wait.
We wait.
I wait.
It takes ages for someone to answer the door, but eventually it opens, moving slowly on silent hinges to reveal a ribbon of darkness beyond. I stare at that band of black, and bit by bit a face takes shape, shimmering forward like an image from a nightmare. The man is very pale, with gaunt features. He has short hair – the kind that looks like it is falling out because it is so thin and unmanageable. His eyes are coloured such a light blue that they look almost grey, and he has thin, wispy stubble on his chin.
Not a monster, then. Not a monster, but a man; or a monster dressed as a man.
Ellen takes the initiative: "Mr. South? Mr Ryan South?"
The man nods that long death's head, becoming all too human, and suddenly vulnerable. He shuffles backwards, his skinny body retreating a few hesitant steps inside the apartment as he opens the door wide. "Please," he says – mutters, really. "Please, come inside."
I feel that if I take one step forward I might tumble into an abyss, but Ellen – dear, dear Ellen – is there to catch me, to steady my body and my nerves. She holds my hand, refusing to let go even when I try to pull away from her. "No," she says, only once. But it is enough to tether me to the moment, and to reshape the reality that was threatening to skitter away from me and transform this meeting into something else entirely – something from a bad dream that never, ever goes away.
Ellen leads me along the hallway, past the grim walls with their outdated coverings and dusty framed pictures, the oldfashioned radiators that the council have not yet replaced, and the stained and peeling skirting boards. The carpet beneath my feet is filthy; little puffs of dust shoot up with every footfall. Cobwebs gather in the corners; dirt streaks the walls and paintwork.
"This way. In the kitchen. It's the only room I keep tidy these days. I'm afraid I can't manage much more." Ryan South moves slowly, like a man in his eighties. I know for a fact that he is twenty-nine, but even his appearance gives the impression that he is an old, withered man whose time left on earth is limited.
We move to the door at the end of the hallway, and on into the kitchen. The room, as promised, is cleaner and brighter. A table has been set for tea, but it looks as if a child has carried out the task. Small cups and saucers like those used by old women in sheltered housing; tiny cakes with fancy sugared icing; a chipped plate stacked with cheap biscuits.
Cheap. It is all so fucking cheap.
In that moment I feel such an exquisite sense of sadness, and an unwanted surge of empathy towards this man. He regrets so much of what he has done, what he has caused, and knows of no way to make things better. So he struggles on, with his chipped plate and his cheap biscuits, and he clings to the hope that someone else might make the situation better for him.
And that someone, no doubt about it, is supposed to be me.
We sit like schoolchildren playing house as South pours the tea. It is dark, stewed, but Ellen thanks him anyway. I remain silent, not yet trusting myself to speak. This wreck, this manchild, is the tawdry reality of what I had built up to be a ferocious demon in my mind. All this time, recovering in hospital, and afterwards, as I climbed nightly inside a bottle, I pretended that he was a huge beast of a man, a snaggle-tooth dinosaur who licked the blood of my family from his lips and laughed as he did so.
But here he sits, this Ryan South, this destroyer of worlds, and the only word that comes to me is: pathetic.
"I… I'm glad you could come." He is speaking to me but looks at Ellen, as if he can't quite bring himself to see my eyes in case the faces of my dead family are reflected there.
Pathetic.
Ellen turns to glance at me, sipping her tea.
"I thought it might help. If I saw you… confronted you." The words hurt like razors being drawn from my throat. One by one, they slice the flesh.
"And am I what you expected? Am I a monster?" It is as if he is reading my mind.
I look at Ellen, then back at South. Ellen is still looking at me, so she doesn't see it, but for a split second I am convinced that when I turn back towards him, Ryan South is sticking out his tongue. I blink, utterly taken by surprise. "No," I say. "No, I don't see a monster before me. I see a ruined man." His tongue was triangular, pointed. I am sure of it. But no, how could that be? It's impossible.
South finishes his tea and pours another. He is weeping now; his cheeks are wet and his eyes are shining. "I haven't been able to leave this flat since it happened. I'm trapped here – imprisoned by my own remorse."
Is it just me, or do his words sound rehearsed, like he's reading aloud from a pre-prepared speech? I cannot quite pinpoint what it is about his voice, but there is a certain inflection, or lack of it, that reminds me of a newsreader or perhaps an actor not quite ready for the main roles but experienced enough to carry off character parts.
"Shall I leave you two alone? To talk?" Ellen begins to stand.
"No." The word comes out louder than I expected, and Ellen is shocked into immobility. She hovers with her backside a few inches above the hard wooden seat, unsure whether to complete the act of rising or to let herself fall back into the chair.
Again, when I look over at South he has an odd expression on his face. It looks like he is gurning: his mouth hangs open, the pointed tip of tongue lolling from between his thin lips, and I swear that he is giggling silently.
Not so pathetic after all.
"Please, Ellen, stay. Stay with us. Look at him."
She looks at me; at South. He is normal again, that sad, flat face churning out waves of despair. What is going on here? Am I experiencing some kind of breakdown? Perhaps the idea of finally meeting the man responsible for the deaths of my wife and child has led to some kind of mental burn out – a blown fuse in the damaged circuitry of my brain.
"I'd just like to say that I'm sorry. So deeply, deeply sorry." His eyes bulge and sparkle, as if he is holding in laughter.
Ellen sees nothing. She nods at me, urging me to respond. As far as she is concerned, there is some righteous healing taking place, and she will not rest until I open myself to its power.
What a heap of shit; what a travesty.
The ceiling light flickers and Ryan South seems to move bonelessly in his chair, his arms slithering across the table. His face is so pale now that it is white – albino. His lips are jet black and his teeth are pieces of coal stuck into his swollen gums. The flickering stops, and once again the man seems exactly as he was when first we entered his apartment: a carefully drawn portrait of sorrow and regret.
