Pretty Little Dead Things (39 page)

  I have been unable to trace the young man whom Brand called Travis, nor have I had much luck in tracking down the security staff who let us into the property. As I have already stated, the identity of the ghostly young woman remains a mystery.

  The film was not recovered from the scene. The builders working on Daleside House claim never to have unearthed such an item, and the developers have threatened to take me to court if I pursue the matter.

  I badly wanted to learn what the others had seen in the film, but now that was obviously out of the question. Had they all shared the same delusion or had each seen their own private version of Satan's features grinning back at them between frames containing a storm of static?

  In the final reckoning, I had seen little – next to nothing. But why had that been the case? Had my unique insight protected me from those killing visions, or had it deserted me once more, this time at a crucial moment when I might have peered behind the workings of the world – this one and so many others – to catch sight of the unutterable? It seems to me now that I will never know the truth.

  The thing that keeps me awake at night, drinking into the small hours and scratching my tattoos, is the fact that I was not warned of the presence of something malevolent that evening. My perceptions failed me; I had no idea what was coming.

  The unswerving confidence I once had in my abilities has reduced to the point that I no longer trust what I see or feel or experience. This realm of the senses has blurred irrecoverably with those other realms beyond – the ones I so foolishly and conceitedly believed that I was beginning to know and even understand.

  In my darker moments, when I feel something spinning so slowly that it could be either the world or a thin, black stylus turning somewhere deep inside my burned-out soul, I think that perhaps it is better this way. For if my recent doubts are proven to be true and I am not in fact here to help or offer guidance, but to
usher in the dark
, that sensation might just be the void opening up inside me.

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Copyright © Gary McMahon 2010

Gary McMahon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-85766-071-8

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