Authors: Tim Weaver
Drayton
studied the picture. 'Yeah, that's him.'
It
was Daniel Markham.
Pine
Terrace was a narrow, forgotten row of houses that looked like its best days
weren't just behind it, but had never arrived in the first place. Each home had
the same uniform white-bricked garden wall, but the actual houses were painted
a mish-mash of clashing colours, like a work of modern art gone wrong: reds,
creams, peaches, greens, all visible even under subdued street light and
lashing rain. Halfway down, stained with soot and ash, was number twenty-nine.
Drayton had been right about its appearance: its concrete path had turned to
rubble; its door was blistered and warped; glass was scattered across what lawn
there was left; and someone had spray-painted the walls. Council notices
warning against entering, once stuck to the front door, had peeled away over
time.
Healy
pulled up a little way down the street. I got out, turning the collar up on my
jacket, and studied the road. If Markham was asking Drayton to drop the box off
on the front steps, then he was confident enough about getting to the package
before any passers-by took an interest. That meant that when Drayton — or the
people who worked for him - turned up at the house, Markham had to be watching.
I looked across the street to the houses opposite. They were buildings without
life. The whole road had a depressed air about it, a lack of internal light. It
was obvious why Markham had chosen this street.
'What
a shitheap,' Healy said as he passed me, studying the dark front window of the
house. In his hands was a torch he'd got from the back of the car. He made his
way up the driveway, the concrete beneath his feet crumbling, and looked in
through a hole in the glass. A few seconds later, he flicked the torch on and
directed it inside. In the cone of light, I could see blackened walls, a
fireplace and — at the back - patio doors.
'You
know how long this has been unoccupied?' He shone the torch at the council
notice on the front door, then directed the light back into the living room.
'Three years. No wonder it smells like someone shat themselves to death in
there. Half the tramps in London have probably used it as a bed and breakfast.'
I
followed Healy, checking the houses opposite. The windows across the street
would be the obvious place to watch the delivery being made: high position,
clear view, good cover. If he used either of the places that flanked number
twenty-nine, he'd have to be more careful, but he'd have an even better view of
the drop-off. Neither seemed likely, though: in the one to the right, through a
pair of net curtains, I could see an old couple sitting in front of their TV;
in the house on the left, children's toys were on the windowsill and behind the
closed curtains a light was on.
Healy
looked at me. 'Better hold your breath.'
Along
the edge of the door frame the council had once run luminous yellow tape in an
attempt to keep people out. He tore some of it away, stepped back from the door
and kicked it open. It juddered and shifted, then swung back into the darkness.
The
hallway was small and narrow, and as black as the outside of the house. As we
stood and looked in, rain swept in from behind us. It ran down the blistered,
seared walls and formed puddles in the glass that lay, sparkling in the
torchlight, at the entrance.
The
smell hit us about three feet inside. The thick stench of fire. The stink of
urine, sweat, alcohol and vomit. Healy shone a torch into the living room. Two
men were lying on the floor under blankets, one facing us, one facing away.
They were both drunk. He whistled at them. The one facing us opened his eyes;
the other didn't even move. He looked vaguely in our direction, unable to
focus, then his pupils rolled back in his head. A second later, he was still
again.
There
were patches of carpet on the floor beneath them, but mostly it was exposed
floorboards and - in some places - black holes where the fire had eaten its way
through. Beyond the men, tucked away on the other side of the room, was the
staircase. The steps were destroyed, and more council tape had been placed
across the entrance to them. Close to the staircase was a fireplace, and beyond
that was the kitchen.
Both
men on the floor stirred, one mumbling, one making a sound like he was
suffering his last, dying breath. Between them were a succession of empty cans
and bottles. One of them had wet himself.
'Bloody
hell,' Healy said quietly. 'It's like St Patrick's Day in here.'
We
moved back across the living room. Healy headed straight for exit, but I
stopped to look up the stairs. I could see some of the landing: walls were
burned through and full of cracks, and holes came right the way through the
ceiling into the living room.
The
torch swung back in my direction. 'You coming or what?'
I
ignored Healy and moved towards the fireplace.
'Give
me the light,' I said.
He
held out the torch. I glanced at him, not moving, waiting for him to bring it
to me. Finally, he shook his head and moved across the glass shards and broken
wood, to the fireplace. He slapped it into my hand.
'You
after a new fire?'
I
ignored him for a second time and used the torch to light it up. It was a
standard gas fire: fake lumps of coal sitting in a tray, inside a once-smart
silver surround. It wasn't plumb to the wall. A half-inch gap ran all the way
around, and when I directed the light in behind, it looked like it was just an
empty space. No fire interior. No wall cavity. No insulation. Just space.
'Give
me a hand,' I said, and Healy went to the other side of the fire. We both fed
our fingers into the gap and pulled the silver surround away from the wall. It
stuck at first, making a dull scratching noise as we dragged it. Then it popped
free, the coal tray coming with it.
I
picked up the torch again.
There
was a hole in the wall about three feet high and four feet long. I shone the
light into it. Through the hole, the bricks, insulation and wall cavity had all
been knocked through.
On
the other side was the house next door.
I got
down on to my hands and knees and crawled through the space, through plaster
and dust, glass and chunks of brick. Healy followed.
On
the other side, the layout was exactly the same as number twenty-nine. It was
sparsely furnished: a tall lamp across from us, currently on and plugged into a
timer; a worn sofa; a brand-new TV in the corner on a cabinet, with a DVD
player and a very old VCR; VHS tapes underneath that. The kitchen had cutlery
on the worktops and food packets half open. The stairs were uncarpeted.
By
the front windows were two mannequins. Both were naked, though an arm was
missing from one — and something was hanging off its face. It looked like a
sheet of thin plastic, part of it glued to the side of the mannequin's head.
I
stepped closer and touched a finger to the plastic.
But
it wasn't plastic.
It
was latex.
One
side of it was smooth and creamy, almost polished. The other side had more colour
and texture. I pulled it across the face of the mannequin and Healy came around
behind me, looking over my shoulder.
'What
the hell is that?'
I
smoothed it down, over the ridges of the mannequin's head. 'It's a face.'
We
stepped back, children's toys scattered along the windowsill behind us, teddy
bears and plastic animals poking out between the curtains. Everything was here
to create silhouettes. To make people outside think normality existed on the
inside.
But
it didn't.
In
front of us the mannequin looked back, its dead gaze peering through the
eyeholes in the thin latex mask. Small, pursed lips were visible through the
mouth slit. The mask started to slip away again, the glue not strong enough to
hold it any more. But not before both of us had realized who was looking back.
Milton
Sykes.
I
ripped the mask away from the curved plastic dome of the dummy's head. Healy
stood beside me, both of us looking down at the latex approximation of Sykes.
It
was a skilled piece of work. Not perfect by any means - some of the colouring
had run and there was glue and globules of varnish on parts of the skin — but
it was good enough to convince. The mask ran from the top of the forehead to
either ear and down to just below the chin. Whoever made it had ensured that
the forehead was thicker than the rest of the mask to match up with Sykes's
most prominent feature. The depth of the latex at the forehead was almost four
times as thick as it was on the rest of the face. If anyone had managed to get
close enough they might have been able to tell that something was off. But
through the glitchy, staccato black-and-white of the CCTV camera in Tiko's, it
had looked perfectly lifelike.
I
remembered the man at Markham's flat. The weirdness of his face: how his mouth
and eyes had moved, but the rest of him had remained perfectly still.
Now I
could see why.
We
searched the living room. No clay. No sculpting tools. No liquid latex. No
paints. No reference materials or pictures of Sykes. There was nothing to
suggest the mask had been created inside the house. With something as complex
and time-consuming as moulding and styling a latex mask, there would be
evidence. Instead, the house was half empty.
So it must have been brought
here.
Healy
walked across the room and looked up into the darkness of the staircase. He
flicked on the torch, waving it up and down the steps to check they weren't in
the same state of disrepair as the ones next door. Then he tried the light
switches next to him on the wall. None of them did anything. He glanced at me
and nodded that he was going to have a look around upstairs. I nodded back. As
he disappeared into the shadows, just a cone of light as his guide, I headed to
the rear of the house.
Clackclackclack
.
Something
moved in the darkness of the kitchen. Left to right. I side-stepped and leaned
left, trying to get a better view around the counter. But there was nothing
now. No movement. No sound other than Healy moving around upstairs, the
floorboards creaking under his weight.
I
took a step forward.
Clackclackclack
.
Then
there was a faint squeak, like a rusty hinge moving.
I
took out my phone, flipped it open and directed the light from the display into
the space on the other side of the worktop. A rat scurried away, its claws
making a
clack- clackclack
noise on the linoleum. It headed through a
hole between one of the cupboards and the cooker.
As I
went around the worktop I saw a second rat, its fat pink tail visible, the rest
of its body hidden by one of the units. It wasn't squeaking and it definitely
wasn't moving, but there was still a noise. A different one: moist, wet, like
it was chewing on something. To my left I spotted Healy coming down the stairs,
the torch in front of him. He looked at me and shook his head. Nothing
upstairs. Then a fly buzzed past my face. As I went to swat it away I felt
another, dozy and unresponsive. A second later, I could hear more.
They
were everywhere.
And
then my senses opened up: animals, blood — and decay.
I
flipped open my phone again, swinging the blue light around to the space behind
the counter. The rat moved this time, following the path of the other one.
Clackclackclack.
Except
this one left a trail: a series of tiny red marks.
Footprints.
Lying
on the floor, half slumped against the kitchen units, was the body of a man.
His arms were at his sides, palms up, fingers curled into claws. His eyes
stared off into the night, wide and pale, and his clothes, and the lino around
him, were covered in blood. His T-shirt had been torn open about halfway down,
and on the skin of his chest I could see a series of knife wounds, probably
made with a serrated blade: long and thin, thrust in so deep and pulled out so
quickly that flesh, muscle and fat had come with it. His trousers were riding
up either leg, and one sock was on the other side of the kitchen, among blood
spatters that looked like arterial spray.