Beyond Here Lies Nothing - By Gary McMahon Page 0,31

silhouette, and then the harsh light of the world outside the house seeps gradually back into the room. She stops speaking. She becomes still. Her eyes – although already open – snap into focus as if she is opening them for the first time.

SHE LOOKED DOWN, at the candles, and then threw down onto the floor the pyjamas she was clutching. The carpet was wet with blood and piss and ejaculate. The room smelled like a hospital toilet. She started to cry, silently but deeply. Her entire body shook with grief as it remembered giving birth to her child, her Tessa.

Once she managed to stop the tears, Abby reached out and snuffed out each of the candles with her forefinger and thumb, like a vicar putting out the votive candles in a church after prayer.

She put the candles and the matches back inside the plastic bag, gathered up the rest of her things, and left the room. She didn’t bother getting dressed. She went back downstairs and put the stuff away, then filled a plastic bucket with hot water from the tap, squirted washing up liquid into the water and stirred it with her hand. She returned upstairs, to Tessa’s room, knelt down once again, and scrubbed the carpet clean. She did not weep again. When she was finished, she rinsed out the bucket in the upstairs bathroom and left it on the floor. She took a long, hot shower to clean her body and dried herself with the oldest, toughest towel she could find in the airing cupboard. Like a hair shirt, it punished her, making her skin turn red.

She returned to her room, to her bed, and sat there, staring at the wall.

She was unsure what had just happened, but something inside her felt broken. It was a familiar feeling, one that had kept her connected to her emotions for such a long time; she remembered experiencing a sensation just like it when she lost her virginity at the age of fifteen to a family friend, and then again, when she pushed out Tessa into the world.

She picked up her cigarettes off the bedside table and lit one, drawing deeply from the smoke. She opened a drawer and took out the small whisky bottle she kept there; it was half full. She drank the whisky straight from the bottle and smoked the cigarette down to a stub.

Only when the whisky bottle was empty did she allow herself to lie back down on the bed, on top of the cheap duvet.

She thought about the guy she brought home last night and ran her hands slowly along her thighs, feeling strangely aroused. He had touched her there, too, but he did not touch her inside. Nobody could, not now. Not ever again. Other forces were at work inside her womb. She was sure of it. The desire passed, like a cloud crossing the sun.

She closed her eyes and thought about a grove of ancient oak trees, a high, cold moon, and the sound of approaching footsteps in the undergrowth. In the darkness behind her eyes, she saw a small, skinny arm with four claw-like fingers, and wondered if it was real or just a dream she’d once experienced.

She reached up and felt the small nick below her right eye. It had stopped bleeding but it was still sore. The slight pain was a comfort; it meant that all the things she struggled to remember might just be real after all.

Daisy like a flower got bad sleep. we hear noises in teh nite. bad nioses. bashing on walls. laffing. crying. I don’t now what happnin anymore. she cried lots and I hugged her. mummy and daddy didn come. clickety sound under my bed and I want it to stop. bird face man stand besides my bed. in the walls an under the floor. he there. he evawhere. captain clickety he evawhere. he even in places we hide. under the bed and in the cubod. I seen him. he see me. he smilez with his birdy mask. I write in this dairy cos I donno what else to do. words mite make him go away.

– From the diary of Jack Pollack, April 1974

PART TWO

The Crawl

“Always ask for me.”

– DS Craig Royle

CHAPTER TEN

ROYLE WAS MAKING a coffee when the call came in.

His office at the Far Grove police station was small and cramped, filled with loose files and notebooks, but the one thing he could not do without was a decent coffee machine.