Dead Bad Things (20 page)

  The mirror was right where he'd left it. Of course it was; it was unable to move, and the figure trapped inside could not yet impact upon the world this side of the glass. The mirror's surface was dark; it looked fluid, as if it were composed of water. It rippled as he watched. Shapes passed beneath it – a hand, an arm, a bald head? It looked like a figure was swimming, darting and coiling beneath dark waters.

  "Just a moment," said Trevor, opening one of the large wardrobes at one end of the room. His old stage outfits were stored in plastic. He selected his favourite – a pastel green number – and slipped the suit jacket over his shirt. It felt good, like a comeback.

  "That's nice. It suits you." Derek was sitting on the bed. He had one leg crossed over the other and his hands were flat against the mattress.

  "Thank you, friend," said Trevor, feeling like the show was about to begin.

  The room had darkened further, as if a great shadow were falling. Trevor looked up, at the light fitting, and then back at Derek. "Is your sister's name…" It came to him in a flash, and a slender presence stepped forward, away from the wall. "Is it Suzie?"

  Derek stared in disbelief. He nodded slowly, incapable of words.

  "Suzie… she's here, aren't you, friend?"

  The washed-out suggestion of a female figure drifted across the room, towards the bed. She stood beside Derek, arms hanging by her sides, and waited. She was dark – almost black. Smoke curled from between her lips. "Did she die in a fire?"

  "Oh, God. Oh… Yes. Yes, she did." Tears shone in Derek's eyes. He looked like a different person, someone Trevor had not yet met. "Yes. My Auntie Jean's place. An ember popped in the grate, and burnt the place down while everyone was asleep." He began to sob. His shoulders shook. He clenched his fists on the bed.

  At Derek's side, the mirror was black, like oil. Something moved erratically in the darkness.

  "Suzie, friend. Can you hear me? Can you give me a message for your brother?"

  The figure bent at the waist, as if leaning in for a smoky kiss. She raised her hands, and tried to clasp Derek's head. She seemed annoyed, as if she were trying to hurt him. Or warn him.

  The surface of the mirror boiled; something was raging within.

  The female figure straightened at the waist, her head turning to face the mirror. Then she began to back off, to move away, her hands in the air and her mouth gaping in a silent scream.

  "It's OK, friend. Just take your time." Trevor stared at the figure.

  Derek, noting the source of the psychic's interest, turned around on the bed to face the empty spot in the room where his sister now stood. "Suzie? It's me, Suzie. It's Little Delly… your baby brother."

  The mirror bowed inward, as if under great pressure. The glass had become elastic; it bent and stretched, sucking the air towards its concave centre. The bedclothes began to shift on the bed, the loose covers drawn towards the mirror. Derek, oblivious, was pulled along with them.

  "That's right, friend." Trevor was no longer speaking to the ghost of Derek's sister. He was communicating with the man in the mirror.

  Derek, finally understanding that all was not well, started to whine. "What's going on? What is this? Is it Suzie?" He was pulled backwards, towards the mirror. Even as he fought back – too late; much too late – the mirror sucked him in, hungry for whatever he could give.

  "Just relax," said Trevor, smiling. "Let it all happen."

  By now Derek was trapped within the energy whose source was the mirror – or whatever hid behind it. His skin trembled, vibrating on the bone, and as Trevor watched the boy's face began to bubble and lift from his skull, as if long, fat fingers were burrowing under his flesh to sever the connection from bone.

  Derek tried to scream, but when he opened his mouth his head was spun around and his lips were tugged free, like a sock being pulled from a foot. It happened that quickly: both lips, mostly undamaged, simply left his face and vanished into the big black mirror. His teeth were bared like bone; his new smile was hideous.

  Trevor wanted to look away, he really did, but he was unable. The sight was hypnotic. The same drumbeat he'd heard before was sounding in his head, threatening to break his skull.

  As Derek was dragged towards the mirror, his clothes were torn from his body, leaving him naked. His skin bubbled, blistering on the bone. It was as if someone was pumping air into his body, and it was separating the flesh from his skeleton. His mouth worked, still trying to scream, but the mirror had his tongue: the free end was held somewhere inside the mirror while the root was pulled taut at the back of his throat.

  Trevor was awestruck. He had not expected anything like this. Deep down, he knew that his guest was an offering, a sacrifice to whatever dark entity was trapped in the mirror, but he had hoped for a cleaner demise.

  Skin, muscle, tendon, blood… it all went into the mirror. The boy's musculature was exposed for a second, as the skin was peeled away like the rind of an exotic fruit, but then there were only the bones: his skeleton sat, quietly and politely, like an unexpected visitor on the bed. Then, abruptly, it toppled onto its side, the bones rattling like dry sticks.

  Trevor stared at the mirror. The motion had stopped. It was just a mirror again; a simple reflective surface. Except for the fact that it was not reflecting anything of the room in which he stood. Instead, there was a figure, and behind the figure a ruined landscape of broken buildings and charred earth.

  The figure was bald, and he stood wrapped in Derek's skin. He wore this skin-suit casually, as if he were modelling it for a mail order catalogue. He stood with his head bowed low, his arms raised slightly at his sides and his hands open.

  "Who are you?" Trevor stepped forward, closer to the mirror. "Who?"

  The bald head tilted upwards, revealing dark eyes and a wide grin. The face, like the head, was completely hairless: no eyebrows, no lashes, no stubble. Smooth, clean. Pure.

  "Who are you?" he repeated, standing now in front of the mirror – and before the figure, which barely resembled Derek at all. He fought against the urge to kneel.

  The bald head tilted slowly to one side, as if its owner was carefully considering his reply. The grin twitched, forming words:

  "I'm the Pilgrim and I'm here to save you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

The phone call came early, around 5.40am. Sarah was still asleep in the spare room – she hadn't yet been able to face her old room, the one where all the worst memories were kept. Her dreams had been uneasy, restless, as if the confusion making such a mess of her waking life was mutating into phantoms which had seeped in through the holes in her skull – her eyes, her nostrils, even her gaping mouth. Natural holes, rather than ones someone had bored into bone with a primitive hand drill.

  She reached out and tried to find her mobile phone, her eyes refusing to open even a millimetre. She felt the weight of a book against the side of her hand as her fingers pushed it off the night stand, and then she tipped over a glass of water. Finally her hand fell upon the phone, and she grasped it like a weapon, dragging it across the crumpled bed sheets and towards her face.

  "Yeah. Hello." Still she was unable to open her eyes. They were sealed, glued shut during the night. She imagined old copper pennies balanced on dead men's eyelids.

  "It's me. Are you awake?"

  "Benson? What? Where the fuck are you?"

  "I asked you if you were awake. Wide awake." His tone was dour. He sounded angry, as if she'd pissed him of in some way – and she probably had. "I need you awake right now."

  At last she could open her eyes. Light seeped in through the fluttering lids, but not much. The room was dim, musty, and the heavy curtains were drawn tight across the windows. "I'm awake." She sat upright, her senses kicking in. Her copper's instinct told her that something had happened – probably something bad. "Tell me."

  "OK, I don't have much time so listen carefully. I'm at Roundhay Park. In the Arena. An early morning jogger found two bodies. Young boys. Both of them have holes drilled into their skulls, and the wounds have been burned. You need to get here if you want in on this. Do you understand me?"

  Sarah blinked into the shivery darkness. She felt sick and light-headed, as if she had just downed a bottle of strong liquor. The room seemed to shudder, the walls trembling, and it came to her in a flash that she was trapped – they all were: trapped inside a plot they could barely even understand. Stuck in a moment that might just last forever.

  "You hear me, Sarah?"

  She nodded. "Yeah. Thanks. Who tipped you off?"

  "A sergeant I know – murder squad. He was the first officer on the scene, and knew that we'd found that kid in the dentist chair. He's doing us a favour – doing
me
a favour, actually. Just don't say I never give you anything, eh?" Then he ended the call, leaving her hanging.

  She hated that. It took away her power.

  "Thanks," said Sarah, swinging her legs off the bed and lunging for the wardrobe. "Thanks a lot, you prick." But she was actually pleased that he'd called, of course she was. Sarah was not the kind of police officer who liked to be left out; she wanted to be in on everything, right to the last. She and Benson had found the first dead kid, so it was only right that they maintain an interest in the case as it panned out. She silently thanked Benson's friend for the tip-off, acknowledging the fact that he did not have to let them in on anything and she owed him one, whoever he was.

  She showered quickly, and put on her uniform without even opening the curtains. She knew the clothing well enough to dress in the dark. These clothes were like a second skin – or perhaps they constituted her
real
skin.

  It wasn't far to Roundhay, and she knew all the back roads and rat-runs by heart. There were very few pedestrians around at this hour apart from returning night-shift workers or early commuters on their way to catch the first buses of the day. Those few people Sarah did see all had the same shambling demeanour, whether they were heading home or towards distant offices or factories. She knew how they felt; it was the weight of the world, the early-morning dead load that pressed down on you and didn't go away until later in the day, when everyone else was up and about to take on their share of the invisible burden.

  Sarah was on site before 6.30am. The rain had stopped. It was still dark, of course, but the promise of light hung in the air like a diffuse vapour. She left her car in the parking spaces behind the
Deer in the Park
public house and walked through a gap in the bushes at the rear of the building. Even from here, a hundred or so yards away, she could see uniforms milling about at the top of the rise, most of them staring down into the wide, deep bowl of the Arena and studying whatever was down there.

  At one point, when the huge park was first created, the depression was intended as the location of another lake. Something happened to prevent this, and the indentation was left in place; nobody bothered to fill it in. During the summer months, bands and actors performed there, in the makeshift Arena. It drew the crowds; it entertained the masses.

  Right now Sarah was drawn to another kind of entertainment: the thoroughly modern spectacle of recreational homicide.

  She nodded at a few familiar faces as she descended the side of the incline, her eyes locked dead ahead and her boots scraping on the packed earth. Three police vehicles were parked with their noses pointed towards the dip, their doors open and their lights on. She ignored the stares from other officers and carried on down the hill, spotting Benson where he stood near the centre of the Arena.

  The two bodies had been covered with white sheets. Scenes of Crime Officers were yet to arrive to carry out their technical duties, so nobody was going near the two small mounds. Someone had taped off an area around the corpses, and Benson was standing by the flapping red barrier, looking her way.

  Sarah smiled. He nodded.

  "Thanks for calling," she said as she drew near.

  "It's OK. I figured we should both be here, just in case we spot something that might make a difference later on." He seemed more relaxed than he had on the phone.

  Sarah stared at the sheeted bodies. "How old?"

  "As far as we can make out, they seem to be aged around twelve years old. Just a couple of kids."

  She looked at his scarred face. His eyes were hard, like pieces of granite. He gave nothing away – that's why he was so good at this part of the job. Benson calmly calculated everything, detaching his emotions from whatever was going on around him. He was the master of this kind of thing: it was second nature to him. "Is it the same as before?"

  He turned to her, his mouth twitching. It was almost a smile. "Yeah. Several holes drilled into the skull, and then something like a hot wire pressed into the holes to stem the flow of blood." He turned back to stare at the covered bodies, his hands flexing at his sides.

  They stood there in silence for a few moments, infected by the stillness of the early morning and the hushed awe of the other officers who for some reason seemed unwilling to approach the location of the bodies. Birds began to sing; distant traffic noise filtered through; up on the hill, somebody gave out a short, embarrassed laugh.

  Then, after what seemed like the longest moment Sarah had ever experienced, someone did finally wander over to join them.