Pretty Little Dead Things (30 page)

  Behind the Pilgrim, towering in the dark distance, I could make out a shape. It was that damned house on fowl's legs, but this time it was different. It was now constructed of concrete, and as it tottered on the spot I saw that it also possessed doors and windows, all of them boarded with heavy security shutters. It was a derelict witch's house: the blasted place at the end of every modern-day fairytale, but one that no author had ever been brave enough to write of.

The blasted heart of the estate: the core of all this urban despair.

  And behind even this, another sight: a hill, a tree, with pale flames clutching at the sky, and something twisting within the grasp of those flames, as if dancing in triumph. I could see clearly now that the blazing shape had once been a child, a small girl – perhaps even Mathew Torrent's infant sister. But before that, it had been something else, another form entirely. The young girl had merely been a potential vessel – perhaps the first – meant to carry this thing into the world: an unwitting carrier for a dark parasite whose appetite for horror was infinite.

  There are things beyond this world and beneath it, energies that have no formal shape and which experience unnameable hungers, and often they catch sight of us, and we pique their interest. There is no hate, no antagonism: theirs is not a human scrutiny. They simply notice us and drift towards us. But if they are to enter, a door of some kind needs to be opened, a way prepared, and a good way of doing this is by the application of ritual – the content of these rites and incantations matters not, because they are only a means to an end. They are metaphor, a way of creating a mood. A level of belief is all that is required.

  Belief is the key to it all.

  There is no good or evil. No God. No Satan. Everything is real and it is also unreal: all is simply a matter of consensual belief. We fabricate our myths and our legends – our own pathetic little metaphors – simply to hide the face of that which we cannot comprehend. And sometimes, sometimes, that face is the same as our own.

  But occasionally a door is opened, a rift occurs, a layer of reality is breached, deliberately. A way is opened to allow these forces inside.

  Then, and only then, is it possible for some
thing
to pass through.

  "Is this really what it's all about? Your sister was meant to be a host for something you wanted to bring through? Then, after she was killed, you had to start all over again?"

  He laughed, but it was not a human sound at all. It was more like the whining of a small machine, an engine gearing up for mayhem. "That's only part of it. The other part – the main part – is creased up on the ground before me, writhing like an ant."

  "What have I got to do with any of this? I know nothing about these things. You brought me into this, when you announced yourself at Baz Singh's nightclub." Again I struggled to stand, and this time I got as far as a low crouch, with my hands placed flat on the ground to support me.

  If I could keep him talking, appeal to his colossal sense of hubris, there was a chance that I could gather enough strength to fight back.

  "Oh, that silly little man. He thought that sodomising his own daughter was the height of perversion, and that if he gave her to us as a form of sacrifice he could even bargain his way into some kind of forbidden knowledge. Such a petty little atrocity: one that even amused me – for a little while. We used the girl, of course. She was one of those who prepared the way, providing a little death to tease the palette. Oh, such pretty, pretty little dead things, hanging there, all in a row – all in a row on your upstairs landing."

  The Pilgrim stalked towards me, his hands increasing in size as they opened like hideous flowers.

  "But alas, alas – it all becomes so dull in the end. All of it. I have walked between the lines of realities for so many centuries, and nothing ever interests me for long. I have served many and lorded over millions more. I am the Pilgrim, and this, dear friend, is just another step along the way, yet another stopping point on my great pilgrimage through the realities."

  The derelict tower at his back swayed, the concrete creaking, rubble falling from somewhere within its bulky mass. Then, slowly, the Pilgrim set off towards the other side of the patch of waste ground, where he ducked through a rent in the opposite fence to the one where Ellen and I had entered. He didn't stoop to go under the post – he simply folded, passing through the gap in an instant.

  He had grown bored of me, like a child torturing an insect, and now he was done.

  His face peered back through the jagged gap; his voice hovered in the darkness: "I was there all along. Watching and waiting. I was there when it happened – when your family died. And I was there when you did it."

  I closed my eyes, wishing that I could block my ears just as easily.

  "I was there. I was inside him."

  I didn't want to think, not about this. Not now.

  "I helped you do it. I did it for you."

  Not yet.

  The tree beyond the chicken-footed tower blazed momentarily brighter, its cold fire chilling the sky like ice, and then, like a lamp being dimmed, it went out, taking the image of the Pilgrim's awful, white-staring face with it…

  That was when I heard the screaming.

  Unable to decide which way to turn, I simply dragged myself to my feet and tottered over to the nearest possible point of support – a small, half-demolished wall. I leaned against the bricks to catch my breath, and once again someone screamed. It sounded like a woman, and it was coming from behind me, back in the opposite direction to that in which Ellen and I had run.

  I stared at the other fence, noticing that the tower and the tree were gone, and then I turned around to follow the sound of the screams.

  
Ellen.

  Limping, yet aware that I was not badly injured, I crossed the car park and headed back towards Shawna Royale's flat. There was a small crowed gathered outside, spilling across the path, and I could hear music. It was almost as if a party had been broken up, and no one had thought to turn off the stereo when they all rushed outside to see why someone was yelling.

  I brushed past teenagers who smelled of cannabis, a middleaged woman in her nightdress, and two young men holding hands with the same girl. Reeling along the footpath, I saw it before I even registered what it was, and when the realisation hit me I was too shocked to do anything other than keep on going, keep limping towards the thing that swayed in the still night air.

  
Ellen.

  They had not even cut her down. Nobody had thought to lend her some dignity, some final vestige of humanity, as she hung there, bruised and limp and dead. So very dead.

  
Ellen.

  Her body was suspended from a short length of rope that had been attached by a bolt to the lintel across the double doorway to the block of flats. Her feet made tiny circles in the air a few scant inches above the ground. Her neck had been unnaturally lengthened, as if whoever had done this had then dangled from her legs, pulling her down with their body weight in order to snap her spine.

  
Ellen.

  Blood on her face. Eyes wedged open, with one bulging out to rest like a peeled boiled egg upon her sunken blue cheek. Lips blue-black. Skin slack and bloodless. She smelled of shit and urine. I would never hear her voice again; never feel her touch; smell her breath. Kiss her body – her twisted, broken body.

  
Ellen.

  I fell.

  
Ellen.

  I fell down.
  Ellen.
  I fell down on my knees.
  Ellen.

  I fell down on my knees and began to scream her name.

Millgarth police station. Again. But this time I was not in one of the main offices, or even a quiet side room. No, the room I was in was located deep within a part of the station I had never seen before but always suspected existed. Most official buildings have their secret places; the hidey-holes where hushed conversations and clandestine meetings are held. Millgarth police station was no different in this respect: it too had its underbelly, and I had been swallowed by it.

  Swallowed alive… but only barely.

  After I collapsed before Ellen's strung corpse, someone had finally decided to make a 999 call and summon the emergency services. I'm still not sure who arrived at the scene first, police or ambulance, but one of them put in a call to Millgarth and tipped off Tebbit – the right thing to do, of course, considering he was in charge of the case.

  When he arrived Tebbit dragged me to my feet and bundled me into the back of a patrol car. Then he had driven us here, to the station, and we had descended underground, to the basement level, inside an old lift with clanking cage-like doors.

  "I'm lost here, Usher. Really lost. This whole thing has gone completely out of control." He was pacing the floor, clenching and unclenching his fists, and his face was dark and troubled. He kept pausing to rub or scratch the side of his head, but it never lasted for longer than a few seconds.

  
Scratch-scratch.

  "What the hell is going on?"

  
Scratch-scratch.

  I looked up from the desk, from the names brutally etched into its wooden surface. I could barely see anything beyond the veil of grief, and although I realised that I probably owed Tebbit some kind of explanation, I felt unable to form the right words.

  The room was tiny, with a single bare bulb hanging from the dirty ceiling. The walls were unpainted plaster and the floor was stained concrete.

  "My DCS wants me to put you in the frame for everything. He thinks you're guilty as all hell." He stopped pacing and turned to face me. He looked on the verge of tears.

  So Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Scanlon thought I had killed Ellen and abducted Penny Royale. How neat and tidy – and wrong. So very, very wrong.

  "Come on, man. Talk to me. Tell me something here, so I can do something positive instead of making you into a fucking straw man." His eyes widened, filled with something I didn't recognise. Could it have been compassion?

  
Scratch-scratch.

  "I didn't do it. Not any of it." My mouth was parched; there was ash in my throat and I couldn't seem to get rid of it.

  "I fucking know that, Usher. Jesus, if I thought for a minute that you were even remotely involved in any of this, I'd kick your arse right into a cell. I brought you down here to hide you, not to interrogate you. I need a reason to put you back out there on the streets, so you can help me find whoever is doing this shit." I had never heard him so angry, yet also so calm and cold and razor sharp. Tebbit knew exactly what he was doing.

  "I'm sorry. I know… I should have known." I pressed my hands into my cheeks, then against the side of my skull. "That man I mentioned to you – the Russian immigrant, Mr Shiloh. Have you found out anything more?" I was operating purely on my energy reserves now, and pushing all thoughts out of my head. If I stopped to think, I would go under and drown in my own grief.

  Tebbit shook his head. He looked very tired. "That's a blind alley, I'm afraid. I contacted Interpol and a bunch of other international agencies, but none of them had anything on the man. That was unusual in itself, so I dug deeper… and got nowhere. He has all the necessary credentials, of course, but he's clean. Too clean. I could find nothing but the most basic official paperwork. That's all. Nothing else."

  I scored the top of the wooden desk with my fingernails, trying to cause myself pain, to bring me back from the edge. "He's not real. He's something I've never seen before. Not a ghost or a lost spirit… something… demonic."

  "I thought you didn't believe in devils and demons."

  
Scratch-scratch.

  Old Scratch? But, no; there was no such thing as the Devil. Not in the way Tebbit meant.

  I looked up at him again, trying to see beyond the surface of things and into the endless void beneath. "Maybe I was wrong."

  "Who else? Who else is involved?"

  I pushed back from the desk, feeling suddenly confined. "Baz Singh is into this up to the collar of his Gucci shirt, but I don't really know how. He's put together some kind of fund to help the Royales, and I've seen him with Mr Shiloh. It's all very vague. I have nothing solid, nothing that you could use to arrest anyone. All I have is feelings and hunches. Things I've seen and felt, but no real evidence. Dead girls and pilgrims. Sighs and whispers. Blood and ash."

  "I need more than that, Usher." He stalked over to the desk and lowered himself so that he was looking directly into my eyes. "Your spiritual mumbo-jumbo isn't going to work with this one."

  I licked my lips, feeling tense and nervous. "Oh, I think that's the only thing that
is
going to work. Mumbo-jumbo, as you call it. It's the only weapon I have." I stood and walked to the wall, smashed my fist into the concrete just to feel the pain. Plaster cracked. The lone light flickered, casting thick shadows into the corners, and I felt poised at the edge of crossing over, hovering between states of reality as if my loss was acting as a bridge.

  "
Mumbo-jumbo,
" I whispered.

  The shadows crept towards me, reaching out like old friends. I was certain that they were smiling, smiling… smiling at me.

  Everything had changed. I was no longer trying to fight the visions that assailed me – no, by now I was opening myself up to them. Let them come, and I'd take them all on. So what if I was a magnet for the darkness at the edge of the world, the gulf that could possibly consume our reality? If that was what it took, then so be it. Let the whole damn thing come pouring towards me, along with whatever shitstorm it contained.