How to Make Monsters (5 page)

Feeling a slight but persistent need
to be underground, I made for the nearest Metro entrance and hobbled down the
stairs. There was a train due in three minutes, so I stood and ignored the
dirty looks and muttered comments until it arrived in a screech of air brakes
through the huge black oval of the tunnel.

If you jump the barrier at the right
station, and keep your eyes open while you ride the trains, you can spend a
couple of hours down there in the cool darkness before some overzealous prick
of a conductor throws you off the system for not having a ticket.

As I made my way along the train,
shambling from carriage to carriage, I saw people glance away if I caught their
gaze. They thought I was begging, and the rationale in such situations is that
if you ignore the annoyance it will go away. It’s an attitude that’s always
amused me, but lately it had begun to provoke only fear and a mute form of
rage.

I saw The Spiker sitting alone in
the carriage nearest the driver. He waved at me as I approached, and I dragged
myself along the greasy handrails to join him.

“You okay, mate?” he asked, nodding
at my leg.

“Aye, fell over that’s all. Still a
bit muggy from last night.”

He let out a baying donkey laugh. “Not
surprised,” he said. “Especially after bedding down with Scary Mary!”

I sighed, realising that I really
should have recognised the woman I’d woken up next to. Scary Mary: a petite
middle-aged Scottish woman who’d been fleeing an abusive husband for the past
eighteen months. Her fits of temper were legendary, and I’d probably upset her
by doing a vanishing act.

“What you up to, then?” I asked,
trying to divert my friend’s attention from last night’s transgression.

“Not much,” he said. “You want one
of these?”

He produced a couple of rigid iced
buns from the folds of his thin coat, leaving a layer of sugar in the lining.
Back in his old life, when he had a job and a mainstream routine, The Spiker
had used to date a girl who worked at Starbucks. She’d kept up the
acquaintance, sneaking him food whenever she could – usually day-old sandwiches
and stale pastries; stuff meant for the waste bin – and he always shared his
haul with me. That’s how we operated: as a loose team, dividing to conquer the
gnawing pangs of hunger.

It was right about then, when I was
sitting munching on a confectionary in the shadow-striped quiet as we journeyed
under the city, that I became aware of faint movement around me in the
carriage. It was as if the other passengers began to twitch when I wasn’t
looking, and whenever I turned to see they stopped moving.

I stared at my hands, counting the
crumbs on my fingers as I chewed the last of the food. And saw it at the edges
of my vision: fast, blurred movement, like something that shifted quicker than
the eye darting only partially into view.

Faces. Hands. Open mouths. The
glimmering shapes of unusually supple bodies as they disturbed the still, stale
air. Each passenger had a sketchy double, a barely-glimpsed twin, and these
others were hanging from them like unruly children, grasping, silently
pleading.

I kept staring at my hands, the big,
scarred knuckles, wondering if I was going insane.

There was one sitting on The Spiker’s
knee, holding his head in its hands and silently screaming into his face. But
he was completely unaware, blind to its presence.

When I looked directly at him, it
was gone.

Then the train pulled squealing into
a station, and I hobbled out onto the crowded platform, pushing my way through
weekend shoppers and dazed tourists. I could hear the Spiker calling my name,
but I ignored him, not wanting to see that thing on him ever again.

I’m not sure how long I kept running
(or limping), only that it didn’t seem to be an escape from what I’d seen. They
were everywhere, those things: holding people’s hands as they strolled beneath
a weak and heartless sun, sitting across from lovers in bars and cafes,
squatting morosely in the back seats of cars. Some of them were quite well
defined, and the same size as the people they were dogging; but others were
small and withered, emaciated effigies that looked like something out of old
WWII photographs taken at Belsen or Auschwitz.

And all of them were vying for the
attention of those they resembled. It seemed to me that all these faint
doppelgangers wanted was some kind of confirmation of their own existence, a
word, a glance, a gesture…

But what where they? Ghosts? If so,
why did they look like mutated versions of the people they were stalking? And
what the hell did they want anyway?

It didn’t take long for me to
construct a plausible theory.

Night fell, and I found myself
walking down by the river. The moon smeared the water with a silverish glaze,
and I could hear little waves breaking on the litter-lined shore. I looked up
at the underside of the High Level Bridge, the rusty steel beams, the weird
tatty pieces of rope that were tied to stanchions like so many unused methods
of suicide. My thoughts wandered through that barren landscape, looking for
clues.

What if they were the ghosts of our selves,
haunting their corporeal vessels? The sides of us that we neglect in the blind
headlong rush into modernity and empty consumerism – the creative side, the
caring side, the untended part of us that isn’t so hard-bitten and jaded.

And what if they are fading as our
society becomes harder, harsher, more insular? As we lose our empathy for
others, our sense of being more than just another rat in the race, what if
these other, softer selves are gradually being reduced to nothing; mere
suggestions of shadows on the wall, hushed noises in the night?

When we see a ghost, we are actually
seeing ourselves, a forgotten part of our humanity left to rot, to grow stale
and listless. That is why phantoms are always so familiar; and instead of
realising the truth, we assume that we have seen the spirits of long-dead
friends and relatives, when in reality we are catching a glimpse of ourselves.
Each of us is haunted, but few of us ever stand still long enough to ask why,
or by whom.

It takes too great a paradigm shift,
far too much of a sideways step outside a lifetime of human conditioning, to
allow us to see the truth.

I went back to High Bridge Street
every weekend for the next month, hoping to catch sight of her getting out of
another taxi outside another expensive clothes shop. Last time I hadn’t been
paying sufficient attention; next time I would make sure.

Finally she came back, this time
with a friend - some other bored middle-class hausfrau looking to spend her
partner’s hard-earned crust on a late-night shopping trip. When she stepped out
onto the rain-shined pavement, I turned quickly away, employing peripheral
vision.

And there it was, sitting on her shoulders
like a grim little monkey: a heavily creased, semi-transparent entity, beating
her about the head and the back of the neck and trying desperately to gain her
attention. Its face was small, dried-up and wrinkled like a raisin, its hands
twisted into tough claws. It was a part of her that was now lost forever, a
single shard of her psyche screaming into the void that was slowly swallowing
it up.

And my ex wife couldn’t see it at
all.

I walked away into drizzle and
near-darkness, catching sight of my reflection in a wet shop window. I watched
myself watching myself, taking note of every detail, each tiny flaw in the sum
of my parts. The picture that stared back at me seemed to intensify briefly,
gaining substance for a moment. Then the traffic noise and the toneless chatter
of those around me pulled me back into the land of the not-quite living. The
reflection was simply that: an inverted image of a dirty man on a wet street.

****

There is hope left for
some, the one’s whose ghosts are reasonably intact, and who are aware enough to
nurture the essence of what it is to be truly alive. But for those whose
humanity is already frail, battered and etiolated, there is no hope left at
all.

PUMPKIN NIGHT

“Men fear death as children fear to
go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales,
so is the other.”

Sir Francis Bacon, “Of Death”

Essays (1625)

The pumpkin, faceless and
eyeless, yet nonetheless intimidating, glared up at Baxter as he sat down
opposite with the knife.

He had cleared a space on the
kitchen table earlier in the day, putting away the old photographs, train
tickets, and receipts from restaurants they had dined at over the years. Katy
had kept these items in a large cigar box under their bed, and he had always
mocked her for the unlikely sentimentality of the act. But now that she was
dead, he silently thanked her for having such forethought.

He fingered the creased, leathery
surface of the big pumpkin, imagining how it might look when he was done. Every
Halloween Katy had insisted upon the ritual, something begun in her family when
she was a little girl. A carved pumpkin, the task undertaken by the man of the
house; the seeds and pithy insides scooped out into a bowl and used for soup
the next day. Katy had always loved Halloween, but not in a pathetic Goth-girl
kind of way. She always said that it was the only time of the year she felt
part of something, and rather than ghosts and goblins she felt the presence of
human wrongdoing near at hand.

He placed the knife on the table,
felt empty tears welling behind his eyes.

Rain spat at the windows, thunder
rumbled overhead. The weather had taken a turn for the worse only yesterday, as
if gearing up for a night of spooks. Outside, someone screamed. Laughter. The
sound of light footsteps running past his garden gate but not stopping, never
stopping here.

The festivities had already started.
If he was not careful, Baxter would miss all the fun.

The first cut was the deepest,
shearing off the top of the pumpkin to reveal the substantial material at its
core. He sliced around the inner perimeter, levering loose the bulk of the
meat. With great care and dedication, he managed to transfer it to the glass
bowl. Juices spilled onto the tablecloth, and Baxter was careful not to think
about fresh blood dripping onto creased school uniforms.

Fifteen minutes later he had the
hollowed-out pumpkin before him, waiting for a face. He recalled her features
perfectly, his memory having never failed to retain the finer details of her
scrunched-up nose, the freckles across her forehead, the way her mouth tilted
to one side when she smiled. Such a pretty face, one that fooled everyone; and
hiding behind it were such unconventional desires.

Hesitantly, he began to cut.

The eyeholes came first, allowing
her to see as he carried out the rest of the work. Then there was the mouth, a
long, graceful gouge at the base of the skull. She smiled. He blinked, taken by
surprise. In his dreams, it had never been so easy.

Hands working like those of an
Italian Master, he finished the sculpture. The rain intensified, threatening to
break the glass of the large kitchen window. More children capered by in the
night, their catcalls and yells of “Trick or treat!” like music to his ears.

The pumpkin did not speak. It was
simply a vegetable with wounds for a face. But it smiled, and it waited, a
noble and intimidating presence inhabiting it.

“I love you,” said Baxter, standing
and leaning towards the pumpkin. He caressed it with steady hands, his fingers
finding the furrows and crinkles that felt nothing like Katy’s smooth, smooth
face. But it would do, this copy, this effigy. It would serve a purpose far
greater than himself.

Picking up the pumpkin, he carried
it to the door. Undid the locks. Opened it to let in the night. Voices carried
on the busy air, promising a night of carnival, and the sky lowered to meet him
as he walked outside and placed Katy’s pumpkin on the porch handrail, the low
flat roof protecting it from the rain.

He returned inside for the candle.
When he placed it inside the carved head, his hands at last began to shake.
Lighting the wick was difficult, but he persevered. He had no choice. Her hold
on him, even now, was too strong to deny. For years he had covered up her
crimes, until he had fallen in line with her and joined in the games she played
with the lost children, the ones who nobody ever missed.

Before long, he loved it as much as
she did, and his old way of life had become nothing but a rumour of normality.

The candle flame flickered, teased
by the wind, but the rain could not reach it. Baxter watched in awe as it
flared, licking out of the eyeholes to lightly singe the side of the face. The
pumpkin smiled again, and then its mouth twisted into a parody of laughter.

Still, there were no sounds, but he
was almost glad of that. To hear Katy’s voice emerging from the pumpkin might
be too much. Reality had warped enough for now; anything more might push him
over the edge into the waiting abyss.

The pumpkin swivelled on its base to
stare at him, the combination of lambent candlelight and darkness lending it an
obscene expression, as if it were filled with hatred. Or lust.