The Faceless (8 page)

Best go check on Allen. No. Not
best go
.
Better go
. She’d taken the elocution lessons too, even though she didn’t perform for audiences. She’d just wanted it gone from every part of her – Kempforth, the Dunwich, the bastard North. She tapped on the dressing-room door.

“Who is it?” High and choked with panic.

“Vera.”

“Come in.”

Inside, Allen was staring at his reflection. He wore a light blue suit jacket and trousers, a white roll-neck sweater. A difficult colour to wear, but it gave the right image. Besides, he worked out, ran every day, ate right. Vera made sure of it. A small gold cross at his throat. A thin gold bracelet on his wrist. Black hair with little traces of silvery-grey.

His forehead gleamed. She picked up a powder puff; he flinched away. “Don’t fuss, woman.” A trace of Lancashire in his voice too. Always was, when he was stressed. Stage fright. Christ, if only that was all it was.

“Just making sure you look right.”

“I’m fine, for Christ’s sake. Fussing over me like a bloody mother hen.” His breathing was ragged. She took his hand; he pulled away. She took it again, stroked the back of it with her thumb.

“You’ll be OK.”

“Don’t know how much longer I can do this,” he whispered.

He said it every time, but it always sent a twinge through her.
This
was all they had, why they had the house on the Downs, the Bentley, the Land Rover, the servants –
servants
, for two Dunwich kids like them. Lose it, and what remained?

“You’ll be fine,” she said. And he would. His breathing had slowed and deepened. His forehead was dry now. He was calming.

They had money in bank accounts. A share portfolio. Gold in a safe at home. It could all be lost, this way or that. Starting as low as they had, could she ever be sure of not falling back? Could they ever be high enough for that? Vera closed her eyes, squeezed his hand hard; perhaps for her there could never be enough distance. She was killing him, for money.

“I’ll be right there,” she said. “I’ve got us a table booked later. Or back to the hotel. Whichever you want.”

One day, perhaps, he could stop. Maybe. Before this killed him. When she was sure they were safe. Then they could rest, enjoy the fruits of their labours. The best care for him, to help him heal. Until then, this had to carry on. Nights like this. The fear and the calming. The nightmares and the comfort. Binding him tighter to the killing wheel.

But then, it wasn’t just her binding him there. So many thought him a liar and a fraud. And sometimes – even often – he was. But not always. And that, even more than her, wouldn’t let him rest.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Nah.” Then he grinned. “But what the hell, let’s crack on anyway, eh?”

She laughed softly, and kissed the back of his hand.

I
N THE LIGHTING
box, she watched. A couple of the lighting techies glanced her way, then looked back at the stage below.

“Thank you – all of you – for coming here tonight. I know why you’ve come. Why you all come. You’re looking for answers...”

She tried to relax; her part was done. She handled publicity photos and press releases, tax returns, website updates and investments; this part was Allen’s.

“First,” he said, “there’s no such thing as death. If you’ve come to one of these before you’ll know that. If it’s your first time, that’s what you have to understand. All that happens when we ‘die’ is that we abandon a garment. That’s all our physical bodies are. What we are – what we
truly
are – can never die, only change form. We’re all sparks; sparks of divine light. That’s what we truly are, and death frees us to exist wholly at that level. And that level is the world... of spirit.” He smiled. “When you come down to it, it’s just a change of address.”

Laughter. Vera scanned the audience for potential hecklers: militant atheists or religious maniacs, come to brand Allen a fake or the Devil’s spawn. And the biggest fear, of course – the one who’d come to wound with more than words.

He’s a fucking angel, you bastards. If you knew what he’d suffered, how damaged he still is. You bastards. You want to send us back to that, or never have left it
.
You’re no better than Fitton or Walsh, or the copper, or that fucking priest.

“We can’t see the world of spirit,” Allen said, “but we can’t see infra-red or ultra-violet light. Or radio waves. Are they any less real? Of course not. They just exist on a frequency beyond our normal aural or visual range. My only talent is that I can hear – sometimes
see
– slightly higher, or lower, frequencies than most people. That’s all it is. And because of that, the departed will come to me, at times such as this, because they’re aware of my gift, and know their loved ones are here too, seeking knowledge and reassurance.”

Vera bit her lip, pressed a knuckle to her chin.

Allen closed his eyes; his ragged breathing echoed through the theatre, amplified by the microphone on his lapel. His eyes, Vera knew from past experience, would be rolling under their lids. And then he began to speak.

A
FTER THE SHOW,
the round of autographs and book signings. Requests for private readings went to Vera, who explained the pay rates, checked the diary and made the appointments. It took up time; it was close to eleven when they were done, which was why she’d booked the restaurant for that time.

“Still want to eat?” she asked.

Allen grinned. “Thought you’d never ask. Bloody starving.”

They ate at Savjani’s in Rusholme, on the Curry Mile; it offered both discretion and an upstairs room for privacy. Vera picked over her chicken biryani while Allen shovelled down lamb madras, pilau rice, and two garlic naans.

“Gym for you tomorrow, my lad,” she said.

He laughed, but the charge was already ebbing out of him. By half-twelve he was flagging, eyelids starting to sag. She called a taxi and steered him to it.

The performances often did this to him; euphoric at first, then crashing suddenly into sheer exhaustion. Performances, yes; of course none of it was real, and thank Christ for that. Tonight it had all been an act; a spectacular piece of improvisation, nothing more. Vera had seen the real thing; seen it, and what it did to him. She and only she knew it when she saw it; even Allen didn’t seem to anymore. He believed his own lies. And that couldn’t be healthy either. He needed to get out of this, to retire and rest. Everything pointed to that. And he would. He would. She promised he would, and soon. Just not yet. Not quite yet.

Back at the hotel, she helped him to their twin room. She helped Allen off with shoes and trousers, jacket and shirt, unclipped his watch and bracelet and put them on the bedside table. Allen’s eyes were closed already, but still she took her nightdress into the bathroom to change for bed; they’d known one another all their lives, and shared a home throughout, but still, there was decorum to observe.

S
UDDENLY,
A
LLEN’S WIDE
awake. He blinks. The room is silent. That’s not right. It’s Friday night in Manchester; something should be filtering in from outside, however faint and distant. But he hears nothing. Not even Vera’s snores. He looks: yes, she’s there, in the opposite bed. Asleep and snoring, but he can’t hear her, not now.

The digital clock at his bedside gives the time as zero. The red numbers on its screen don’t blink; it hasn’t reset after a power cut. They’re frozen at zero, not moving at all.

And so he knows. He did already, of course. That thick smothering silence always means the same thing.

The boys are back in town.

A half-smile dies on his lips. It isn’t funny. It’s never funny. Mark and Sam and Johnny aren’t funny. None of it is. None of it was.

Nothing dies. Nothing. And sometimes that’s no comfort to anybody.

They’re waiting, patiently, as they always do, for him to look; for him to see.

This is the price; this is the toll. The Sight’s lifted him out of poverty, given him wealth and comfort. But this is the price.

Allen rolls onto his back, closes his eyes. The covers make no sound. He releases a deep breath that no-one hears. Then he sits up and opens his eyes.

They stand at the foot of the bed, red tear-marks on their pale cheeks. They cried a lot, before they died. All of them.

Sam speaks first. Sam was nine. Wiry and brown-haired, jug-eared, but with that cocky, cheeky look to him. Some of Walsh’s punters had liked that. Sam had been the cunning one; he knew how to please the punters, make them happy. He’d shielded the other kids sometimes, but at others he’d let them get the worst of it, to save himself pain. They didn’t judge him for that. And it hadn’t saved him, anyway, in the end.

Sam’s lips move. There’s no sound, but Allen hears,
feels
it; the words seem to print themselves, in dully burning red, on the fuzzy darkness of the small-hours room:
You abandoned us. You left us to die
.

Allen shakes his head. He’d been a child. A child.

Johnny speaks next. Johnny was the posh lad – a little bookworm in his glasses – and the eldest after Allen, ten years old at his death. He still wears his glasses. The lenses are cracked. He was the quiet one. Tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. Part of the fun for Walsh and his friends was proving to him it was.

Johnny’s lips move.
So were we. And you left us to the Shrike.

Hours seem to pass as he sits there without any answer. In the morning, in the light, he’ll tell himself over and over how he lives to put what happened right, to atone for his failure, until he believes it. But no donations to the NSPCC, to Save The Children will save him from the times like this, when the years fall away and he’s one of them again; four boys, naked, bound and gagged in a cold, reeking cellar while the Shrike circles round them in the darkness, whispering.

This is how they were, before. There’s that much mercy, at least. He’s seen them as they looked after death – hours, weeks or months later. But tonight, he knows, looking from face to bleak, solemn face, there are worse things than them to see.

Mark speaks last of all. Mark was the littlest, at eight years old. Fair hair, large blue eyes. They’d all tried to shield him, when they could. Of all of them, he’d been most like Allen himself – no defences, none of Sam’s cunning or Johnny’s ability to wish himself away; everything exposed, an open wound walking, but younger. A delight to the likes of Fitton. Walsh. The masked copper. Father Joe. Always popular, Mark; always in demand.

Mark’s lips move.
We have something to show you
, he says, and turns his back. They all do. Facing the far wall, where the shadows have thickened and Allen sees only formless black.

As one, the boys swivel back to face him. Allen saw a picture once: ice mummies, dead Inuit whose bodies had freeze-dried in the Arctic cold. A child, face framed in a fur-lined hood, a fringe of inky hair. Lips shrunk back from the teeth. Skin the colour and texture of wood. And no eyes; just holes. Their shape remained
–
the eyelids hadn’t decayed – but the eyes themselves were just apertures of black.

The boys’ faces are like that now. Ancient, dried, eyeless. The black holes pin him, hold him. The shrunken lips move, and Allen knows what they’ll say. His bowels and bladder feel ready to fail, because he knows. He’s always known they’d say it one day; now it’s here he’s almost relieved.

It’s time, Alan
, says Mark. Not Allen, Alan. The name he was given; the one they all knew him by.

The reckoning
, says Johnny
.

The atonement
, says Mark.

And then, together:
We call you home.

The blackness spreads, drowning the filtered streetlight seeping through the hotel room curtains. The three boys sink away into it, as if into black, deep water. But out of the dark swim other shapes, closing on the bed. The blackness now covers the whole far wall, and it spreads across the carpet like a tide. Vera sleeps on, silent, as it flows up over the foot of her bed and then the covers, her feet and her legs; the other walls, the ceiling. Flanking him and hanging overhead, surrounding him.

The dark flows over Allen’s feet. It’s almost total; nothing can be seen in it unless it wants to. And something does. Many somethings. Some are at the foot of the bed; others approach on either side of him. He can’t see them properly yet; just enough to know he doesn’t want to. But in a moment, he will.

Allen tries to scream. He really tries. But there is only silence.

R
ATS SQUEALING;
V
ERA
woke flailing at them. Horrible things. Teeth, claws, disease-ridden – she was awake. Rats. Oh Christ she was back in Shackleton Street. No no no. Not that. Please. Everything else had been a dream. No no no. The squealing. The rats. But this wasn’t Shackleton Street, this was their room at the Midland.

Not rats. Allen. She hit the light. He twisted to and fro in his bed. His arms and legs were stiff, unmoving. A spasm. His head whipped side to side, the neck tendons thin steel rods. He was trying to scream, but his jaw was clenched, so instead he made the rat-sound.

Vera threw the covers back. Her heart wasn’t hammering so much now. She knew what this was. She’d done this a hundred, a thousand times. Once it’d seemed a price worth paying. Now, though – would she still be doing it at sixty, or older? She knelt by the bed.

She switched his bedside light on. Sometimes that’d wake him, but not tonight. Still screaming, or trying to. She grabbed his shoulders, flinching – he lashed out sometimes if you did that. She’d had to hide bruises on a couple of occasions. Last thing he needed, stories like that. Appearances were all.

Allen stopped thrashing; now he shuddered instead. Shaking. His skin was hot and slick with sweat.

“Allen. Allen.
Allen!
”

His eyes rolled under the lids. The clenched scream became a whimper.

“Allen. Sweetheart.” She stroked his cheek, his forehead. Kissed his forehead, his cheek. A faint moan. “Allen. It’s me. I’m here. It’s OK.”