Pretty Little Dead Things (35 page)

  It was beyond the surreal; way beyond terror.

  I moved around the building, expecting it to turn and track my route. But it remained in place, shifting its weight equally between the four feet, yellowed talons clutching at the earth. The structure looked like it might topple over at any second, but it also looked as if it had stood there for centuries, perhaps occasionally moving a few feet from the exact spot where it now stood, but always returning to nest in its own weird footprints.

  As I reached the back of the awkward building, I saw that a truncated set of concrete steps hung down from the rear wall. They dangled there in the air, unsupported; the lower steps had crumbled away and rusty steel reinforcement rods stuck out like old, reddened bones. But if I leapt up and reached out, I could grab onto the last tread and pull myself up.

  I crept closer to the back wall, bent my knees, and jumped. Missing the stairs by inches with my grasping fingers, I tried again, and this time I managed to get hold of one of those crusty steel rods. I hauled myself up, feeling the strain in every muscle. The chicken legs scuttled; the building moved gently from side to side, adjusting to counteract my weight. Then, at last, I was up there, my chest resting on the steps, and I gratefully dragged my entire body onto the crumbling ledge.

  Breathing heavily, I crawled up the half stairway and pressed my body against the small door at their summit. There was no handle, but I knew that I could open it. All I had to do was knock on the door.

  After all, I was expected.

  I made a fist and brought it down onto the heavy steel door. I knocked once, but the sound was multiplied tenfold, as if I were hammering repeatedly on the door to gain entry. Slowly, soundlessly, the door eased open. I glanced over my shoulder, to see the hooded members of the MT standing below me, looking up at me as I clung to the open door. I took out the gun and pointed it at them, not picking out any single figure but just aiming indiscriminately into the bunch.

  They rocked on their heels, swaying gently. And then I was shocked to see them step away backwards, their arms and legs bending the wrong way at the knee and elbow joints. They moved slowly and deliberately, a procession in reverse, and I watched as they blended into the darkness that had now crept in to frame the demolition site like a Saturn-ring of soot.

  I pushed through the doorway, swallowing down my fear, and entered a long, dark corridor. I was not surprised to hear the door snicker shut behind me, but what did make me uneasy was the sickly illumination that bled into the space, blooming against the walls and floor. There were no openings along the lengthy corridor, but a sort of sullen swamp light emanated from the stone walls (stone, not concrete; for this was more like the entrance to a cave).

  I was terrified, but I bit down on the fear. I had to do this, had to keep moving into the heart of someone else's darkness, if I was to stand any chance of saving the child.

   "I'm here, Pilgrim. I'm coming." My voice sounded flat, dead, but he knew that I was here so there was no point in trying to disguise my approach. I took the gun from my pocket and held it tightly in my right hand, suspecting that it would be a poor defence against the being I had come here to confront, yet still taking comfort from its cold, hard weight in my fist.

  "I'm here."

  I walked forward, moving reluctantly along the featureless corridor. The floor, walls and ceiling were identical and before long I had lost all sense of direction as well as spatial awareness: I could have been walking on the ceiling for all it mattered, and the sensation provoked within me a kind of light nausea. My head began to ache and bile rose into the back of my throat, but I swallowed it down, telling myself that I needed to remain calm and in control.

  Always in control, even here, where all control was an illusion.

  I was the only hope Penny Royale had left, and that should be motivation enough to keep me on track. I had allowed my own child to die, so the least that I could do was save this one, whatever it cost me. But it was not redemption that I sought, more a sense that I could do something to push back the encroaching tide of darkness that I felt groping towards me.

  The structure was much bigger inside that it was out, but the idea of the Pilgrim being able to manipulate space in such a way didn't alarm me. I knew that he was capable of so much more, particularly here, in his own environment. He was a product of the things that slip through the gaps, the wasted ideas and abandoned dreams of the living. His ability to mould those things into this strange between-place was no great surprise considering everything else that I had learned.

  He was not a man, he was not a beast. He was something in-between.

  I knew that the Pilgrim had been there with me when I confronted Ryan South, the man driving the car that had killed my family. I wondered about other times after that when he may have come to me, and if he had in fact been stalking me since childhood, walking along at my side like a dirty little angel. He had intimated as much during our frightening conversations, but to trust him would be to trust a serpent. I had to make up my own mind and assess whatever came at me. My own sense of reality was vital now; it might be the only weapon I had against such a being as this self-styled Pilgrim.

  I had to believe in myself.

  The corridor suddenly opened out into a large circular chamber with a high vaulted cathedral-style ceiling. I stared upward, straining my neck, but was unable to see the pinnacle of the ceiling above me. It seemed to stretch on for miles, and my vision ran out at a layer of dusty darkness in which strange winged shapes glided, swooping and darting like bats. There were ledges dotted here and there in the stone walls, and as I watched an occasional figure would step out and approach the edge of one of these balconies, as if peering down at me. None of the figures was human. Some of them could barely be called figures at all: just dim outlines and shifting clumps of darkness.

  I realised that I was inside some kind of viewing gallery, not unlike the ones Victorian surgeons had used to demonstrate complicated operations before the eyes of fascinated students and members of the paying public. Had the Pilgrim called these others here to see me? Was this all part of whatever elaborate game he still seemed to be playing?

  I lowered my gaze, not wanting to watch the watchers for much longer. Before me, an aperture had opened up in the previously solid stone wall. I moved towards it, still gripping the gun, but before I could enter the Pilgrim himself stepped forward, in all his plastic glory.

  "Greetings," he said. His voice was almost welcoming. "I've been waiting here for you. I've been waiting a very long time." Again there was the intimation of so much more than his words could convey. As always, he was playing with me, teasing me with snippets of the truth that became lies by association.

  "What is this place?" I stood firm before him, betraying no fear yet feeling plenty.

  "This," he said, looking around, "is my home. Or one of them." He smiled and it was like the expression a shark makes before it bites off your leg.

  I felt my rage building, but bit down on it.

  "Where's the child? Where's Penny Royale?" My hand tightened on the gun.

  "This way," he said, giving in far too easily for my liking. I had expected at least a continuation of his riddle-like monologue, but instead he simply turned and walked away, expecting me to follow. His naked body seemed to ripple in the darkness, as if the skin were attempting to leap from his torso.

  I glanced around, and then up, before following the Pilgrim through the opening. His stride was long and graceful, like that of a trained dancer. He was brimming with confidence, and knew that I was almost powerless here, in this place. His place.

  He stopped before a set of steel doors. I waited. Finally he turned, his face glistening slug-like in the foetid darkness. "I hope you are prepared for what you are about to see." He seemed to grow and swell, taking up far too much room in the increasingly claustrophobic space.

  "And what's that?" I stared him down, sensing his pleasure at this whole situation. "What's this all about, Pilgrim? Is it all just part of some endless game that you play? Are you just having fun?" I sounded unafraid but I was terrified.

  He sneered, and then laughed. The sound was awful, like the gurgling drains of hell. "Oh, yes. I am indeed having so much fun. But there is a serious side to all this. The stage was set by those pretty dead things, all hanging like party favours and charging the atmosphere like leaking batteries, and now at last we have a vessel fit to contain the multitudes that will follow. Penny is such a lucky little girl. She will know pleasures that others cannot even bear to imagine."

  "If you're so powerful, why can't you just open the door all by yourself and let it in – the darkness?" I was beginning to sense the limits of his power, and I doubted that he liked the fact I was constantly shifting my position within our dynamic.

  "Even places like this have certain… rules. There is no such thing as true chaos; you above all people should be able to understand that. Chaos is just another name for order."

  Something was nagging at me; an idea that had brushed up against me several times now, but was only just coalescing into something that I could put into words. "You're lying, aren't you? You're not some adventurer who cruises the realties for fun. You're trapped here, only able to flit into existence occasionally, when you are allowed… or if you are called. If you were even half as powerful as you claim, none of this would be necessary. None of it."

  Something flickered across his face; an expression that could not be described in human terms but might just be a hint of weakness. It was like the tip of a serpent's tail flicking in darkness: sharp, fast, barely even there at all.

  "I once had the thought that you might be some kind of priest, and that's not too far from the truth, is it? You are bound here, and your only possible way out is by arranging for something else to pass through, so that you can latch onto its back and ride it. You're like an insect, scuttling around behind the skirting boards of reality, stuck there feeding on crumbs and scraps, waiting to be let out."

  The mask slipped, just for a second, and as his hairless face drooped I saw behind it a vast and infinite emptiness: a void that hungered for substance, but was cursed never to attain that which it coveted so intensely.

  "This way," he said, and opened the steel doors.

  I entered a large room that looked not unlike an average lounge in a normal home. Cheap furniture was arranged around the room, and pictures hung on the walls. There was a gas fire, a faux surround with a mantelpiece, and windows that looked out onto nothing, just an empty expanse devoid of feature and character. The room looked familiar, and it took me a while to realise that I had been inside here before. It was the Royale's living room.

  They were all there, inside the room: Shawna and her husband Terry Royale, Baz Singh, in his expensive suit and shoes, Mr Shiloh, his mask now firmly back in place and his Pilgrim identity cast aside like a costume. They were standing in a circle, and at their centre was a cheap Formica dining table. On the table was a girl, lying on her back. A girl called Penny Royale.

  She had been stripped down to her underwear, and the bruises on her body stood out livid against the light surface upon which she lay prostate, one arm dangling limply over the edge and the other clasped across her flat little chest as if in some final desperate act of self-protection. Her eyes were wide open, staring beyond us all, and her nose and teeth were broken. Blood had dribbled between her lips and onto her chin. Her left cheek was swollen, the bones beneath shattered, and there were finger marks on the pale skin of her throat.

  Her mother stood over her. Her mother stood over her with something shining in her hand. Her mother looked at me as if I was the one committing some kind of atrocity. With something shining. In her hand.

  Her mother.

  Her mother looked at me and snarled.

  Shining in her hand.

  As my gaze travelled along Penny's poor little abused body, I saw that her stomach had been hacked open and the skin of her ribcage was peeled back like the flesh of an orange. Blood was beginning to congeal against her pale skin, and her innards hung out of the wound like clumps of red rope.

  It was then that I finally looked at the knives: small, sharp blades in all of their hands, which they had been using to skin her.

  Her mother, holding a knife.

  Her father, holding a knife.

  The benefactor of her finders-fund, holding a knife.

  All shining in their hands.

  Baz Singh had blood on his suit. Shawna Royale had blood matted in her badly-dyed hair. Terry Royale was crying, but the blood on his face destroyed any vestige of sympathy before the notion had even entered my head.

  Blood; her blood. Penny's blood. They were all lathered in it.

  Blood. Blood. Blood.

  "I see you found my little gift," said Singh, nodding at the gun. His face was loose and hung as lifeless as an empty sack. His voice sounded like stones rattling in a box. I stared into his eyes, but the man I had dealt with was no longer in there. Instead there was a gap in the shape of a person – a gap clothed in skin. "I left it there for you. Thought… you… might be able to use it."

  I realised then that Baz Singh was begging me for death. He wanted me to kill him, but at that moment the concept of mercy was the furthest thing from my mind.

  Mercy was for those who deserved it.

  I looked back at the corpse – the partially flensed corpse of poor, poor Penny Royale. She lay there like a slab of meat, a plaything for animals, and my heart groped towards her across that dreadful killing room. I could smell the flat, coppery odour of her blood, even see fine red particles still misting like a light red rain in the air. Seconds earlier, this grubby little coven of would-be witches had been hard at work, looking for the doorway that had been created inside her, and ignoring the precious young life as it bled from her body…