Nightmares, p.11
Nightmares, page 11
19 Note to self: Why am I here? Wasn’t there some other, slightly less insane, place I could have gotten a summer job in? I knew Eden; a sweet girl, if easily influenced, overly fascinated by/ with psychic phenomena and those Freihoeven members who claimed to work with/produce them. Emma Slaughter looked at me in the halls once as I passed by, and I dreamed about it for a week—still felt her watching me, wherever I went. Is this relevant? Is recording stuff like this science? (S. Horse-Kicker, March 2/06)*
*“A valid question, Sylvester. Thanks for your input.” (Dr. Abbott, ibid.)
20 “That sounds like my office. Investigate? I have vague recollection of anonymous notes sent to me last year, shortly before Emma’s death…” (Dr. Abbott, ibid.)
21 Possibly ectoplasm, a substance occasionally exuded during séances, made up of various dead material from the medium’s body.
22 To this last bit of commentary, Dr. Abbott asks that a partial transcript of his most recent interview with Freihoeven psychic control-group member Carraclough Devize—held March 4/06, during which he showed her what are now tentatively called the Slaughter/Madach/ Marozzi photos—be appended to this report:
Devize: (After 120-second pause) Oh, no. Christ, that’s sad.
Abbott: What is, Carra?
Devize: That. Don’t you…no, of course you don’t. There, in that corner, warping the uppermost stains. See? You’ll have to strain a bit
Abbott: Is that…an orb?
Devize: That’s Emma, Doc. Face-on, finally. God, so sad.
Abbott: (After 72-second pause) I’m afraid I’m still not—
Devize: (Cuts him off) I know. But there she is, right there. Just about to take shape.
Abbott: Not fly-the-lights?
Devize: Emma had fly-the-lights, like mice or roaches, except mice and roaches don’t usually…anyway. But Madach, and that poor little spoon-bender wannabe Barbie of his? By the end, what they had—was Emma.
Born in Wolverhampton and bred in Manchester, Simon Bestwick now lives on the Wirral with a long-suffering wife, the author Cate Gardner. He is the author of the novels Tide of Souls, The Faceless, and Hell’s Ditch, along with four collections of short stories and a chapbook, Angels of the Silences. He’s been a fast-food operative, an insurance salesman, and a call-center worker, all of which were horrible.
When not writing, he goes for walks, watches movies, listens to music, and does all he can to avoid having to get a proper job again. Two new novels, Devil’s Highway and The Feast of All Souls, will be out later this year.
Hushabye
Simon Bestwick
March started late that year, as if waiting for a cue it had missed. The conversion back to BST was scheduled for late in the month; the days stayed short, the nights dark, long, and cold. When snow fell it lay for days in a brittle crust, and every other morning all stone was patterned with frost.
I was looking unsuccessfully for paying work that didn’t drive me crazy after a fortnight, and still living out of cardboard boxes in my friend Alan’s spare room. Although he’d said I could stay as long as I needed when I moved in, it’d been six months now and his patience had started to fray, all our little habits scraping at one another’s nerves.
So I took to going for long walks around the area. I like walking, even in the cold night on treacherous pavements.
I went down Bolton Road to the roundabout where it met Langworthy Road, then walked down Langworthy ’til I was opposite the abandoned shell of the Mecca bingo hall; I was on the corner of Brindleheath Road, which ran under a bridge, past the edge of the industrial estate and a couple of vacant lots and up onto the A6 next to Pendleton Church and near a Chinese takeaway. I decided to get some chow mein before heading back home.
As I came out from under the bridge, I heard a child call out, “No.”
That was followed by a noise somewhere between a gasp and a cry, then silence. My skin prickled; I ran up the road.
I saw them vanishing into the bushes at the edge of one of the vacant lots; a small girl, tiny in a red coat, and a figure that looked like a shadow walking at first, ’til I realised it was dressed in black, only the white of its face visible. Then they were gone into the dark. They hadn’t seen me.
I pelted up the road and crashed through the bushes, shouting. They were white in the gloom, or at least the girl’s body and the man’s face were. Something silver, brighter than breath, glimmering like motes of powdered glass, was pouring from the girl’s opened mouth and into his. The man looked up. His face was long, pale; a thin blade of nose, one thick eyebrow a line across the top. The eyes looked black too.
I kicked out at him, but he was already rolling away. He scrambled up and ran, vanishing into the shadows. I stood there, gasping for air; I couldn’t see him and on the uneven ground all I’d do was break an ankle. And there was the girl to think about.
He’d worked fast; she lay with her clothes scattered about her, staring up at the night stars. For a moment I thought she was dead, but then I saw her breath. I took off my jacket and covered her; she flinched from my touch as if stung, whimpering like a hurt animal and curling up on her side. I couldn’t tell if it was the cold or the hate that made my fingers so clumsy as I dug out my mobile and dialled 112.
The first assault on a local child had happened in Higher Broughton just before Christmas, in Albert Park. A six-year-old boy almost dead with hypothermia, his torn clothes scattered around him. There’d been more over the following months, the same pattern: police offering nothing but pleas for vigilance and information, the victims unwilling or unable to provide any leads.
They took the girl to Hope Hospital and me down to the police station on the Crescent. I was interviewed for two hours by a pair of detectives. Poole, the Detective Sergeant, was the hardest to handle, spending the first hour treating me as a suspect. In the end, the Detective Constable, Hardiman, put a hand on his arm and led him outside. They left me with a paused tape and a stony-faced policewoman; I heard raised voices through the breezeblock wall.
Hardiman took it from there. He was young, earnest and sympathetic. Poole stayed silent, looking at the scarred desktop, light gleaming on his bald crown. He had a drinker’s lined, ruddy face. Hardiman’s was smooth and pale as fibreglass. I told him everything I’d seen, except whatever it was I’d seen passing from the girl’s mouth to her attacker’s. I didn’t want dismissing as a nutter.
“You’ll have to excuse DS Poole,” Hardiman said later, as we watched the Identi-Kit picture take shape. “He’s got a kid of his own that age. Takes it personally.”
“It’s OK,” I told him, meaning it. Normally I’m pretty scathing about heavy-handed policing, but having seen what had been done to the girl I’d’ve quite happily held Poole’s coat for him while he threw the offender down the stairs several times. As long as it was the right man.
“It’s not,” said Hardiman. “My missus wants us to have kids, but…” He gestured at the picture to indicate all it represented. “You shouldn’t have to think of this when you’re thinking of starting a family.”
“I know.”
“You’re sure this is him?”
I looked at the finished picture and nodded slowly. Hardiman rubbed his eyes and pushed his fingers through his sandy hair. “OK,” he said. “Come on. I’ll drive you home. And I want to thank you. This is the first clue we’ve had of any kind.” He must’ve been tired, to let that one slip out.
They had my details, of course, but I didn’t hear any more from them for over a fortnight. In the interim, I received bad news of a different kind: a friend of mine called Terry Browning died.
He’d choked on his own puke, sat in his armchair by the window with an empty bottle of Lone Piper beside him on the floor. It happened in his flat on Langworthy Road, a scant hundred yards from where I’d heard the little girl cry out. The funeral was at St. John’s Church, in the Height, about a week later.
He’d been a priest, but had left the church with a deep loss of faith the previous year; maybe they thought it was catching, as the only dog-collar in sight was the one who read the service, which didn’t mean anything to me or Terry’s brother, the only other mourner, and probably wouldn’t’ve to Terry any longer. I wasn’t even sure if it meant much to the priest, but it was hard to tell. The bitter wind tore his graveside oration to shreds, like grey confetti.
Rob Browning and I went for a pint down at the Crescent afterwards, more to chase out the chill than anything else. We hardly said a dozen words to each other. He was smart and suited and had a southern accent; I knew he and Terry hadn’t been close. He stayed for one drink and then left; I ordered a double Jameson’s and raised the glass to the memory of a friend whose death I still felt a certain guilt for.
“Mind if I join you?”
I looked up to see DC Hardiman standing over me with a Britvic orange in his hand.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“Didn’t make CID on my good looks.”
I laughed. “Didn’t think so.”
He flipped me the bird and sat. “Sorry about your mate.”
“Thanks. Looks like we’re the only ones who are.”
We sat in silence; I waited for him to probe about Terry but he didn’t. In the end it was me who started fishing. “How’s the investigation going?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing?”
“Oh no. Something. But…there’s complications.”
“How d’you mean?”
He didn’t answer at first. “I looked you up on HOLMES. Quite the colourful character.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“You say what you think and kick up a stink when you reckon you have to.”
“Fair assessment,” I had to admit.
“And you don’t believe in keeping your trap shut or leaving things alone when not doing so would piss off certain people.”
“People in high places, sort of thing?”
He nodded.
“Guilty, I suppose.” I took a swallow of whisky. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
He studied his glass, turning it this way and that like a faceted gem. “The evidence I’ve got…it’s taking me somewhere where shutting my trap and leaving things alone is pretty much what the doctor ordered.”
Everything seemed to go very still. “I’m feeling on my own on this one in a big way,” he said, almost to himself, then looked up. “Even Poole’s not sure, and I thought he wanted that bastard more than anyone.”
“Close to his pension.”
“Yeah. I just thought…you’d understand where I’m at right now.”
“I do.” I studied my own drink for a minute, then looked up. “What are you going to do?”
Hardiman put his glass down on the table. “The little girl you found. Ellie Chatham, her name is. I visited her yesterday. To see if she remembered anything, or…I don’t know. She’s like an old woman. Five years old and she’s like an old woman. Shuffles from place to place and just sits there. Breathing, staring. Waiting. I don’t know what for. Death, maybe. Like something’s just gone out of her.”
I thought of the silver glittering I’d seen passing from her mouth to the attacker’s. “Yeah.”
“And the psychiatrist reports on the others…Christ, I don’t think one of those kids’ll ever be the same again. It’s different for all of them, but…night terrors, rages…there’s one, the boy they found in Albert Park, he flies into a rage every time he sees anybody black or Asian. Don’t know why, there’s no indication anyone non-white was involved. The opposite is how it looks, thanks to you. It’s like he’s full of hate and rage, but it’s not going where it should, it’s going at someone else, a scapegoat. Fuck knows why.”
“I’ll lend you one of my books on capitalism sometime,” I said. “Might give you a few pointers.”
He snorted a laugh. “That’ll raise a few eyebrows in the canteen. All these kids, and he’s taken something from them they’ll never get back, that’ll fuck them up forever. And my wife, she still wants us to try for a kid. I just…just want to know any child of mine is gonna be as safe as I can make it, from something like this. But I’m supposed to keep my trap shut and look the other way. Well, fuck that.” He lifted his glass. “Here’s to colourful characters.”
I clinked my glass against it. “Amen.”
Twenty-four hours after he spoke to me, Detective Constable Alec Hardiman’s Ford Mondeo went off the motorway between Manchester and Bradford, on Saddleworth Moor. It was two in the morning, and no one ever knew what he’d been doing out there. His neck was broken in the crash. He left behind a wife, Sheila, but no children, actual or in the womb.
I would’ve gone to the funeral, but had a strong sense I wouldn’t be welcome if I did. I watched it from a distance, saw a thin pale woman in black that I assumed to be Sheila Hardiman, leaning on two other women—mother and sister, at a guess. Other mourners included a grey-faced DS Poole and a lone man in his sixties, bald on top with a salt-and-pepper goatee.
It was this last mourner who turned up on my doorstep the following evening, with a brown paper parcel under his arm. My first thought on seeing him was: Jesus, people still wear tweed?
“Mr. Paul Hearn?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Don Hardiman.” He offered his hand. “Alec’s father.”
“Please come in.”
The parcel sat on the table, between us and our coffee cups. Don Hardiman’s voice was quiet and modulated, very clear; he was a university lecturer. There was a black armband round one sleeve of his jacket.
“Alec came to me the day before he died, and put the package into my keeping, along with your name and address and a request to bring it here. We weren’t particularly close, and I wasn’t the first person anyone would think of coming to for any little…legacies of this kind. Which is why I expect Alec chose me.”
My hand kept twitching towards the package, but I kept stopping it.
“My son wasn’t a paranoid man, Mr. Hearn—”
“Paul.”
He inclined his head. “But he was definitely afraid of something and believed he could no longer trust his colleagues. I believe I have some idea of what’s in there, and I’d presume you do as well.”
I nodded. “I think so.”
“I suspect as well that I wasn’t intended to know anything about this. Alec did love me, in his way, and would want to protect me. But I loved him in my way too. He was my son, and now he’s dead. I’d like to help.”
“Don—”
“Please.”
“Alright.” I nodded. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Timothy was the son of Arthur Wadham, a highly successful businessman known for his generous donations to New Labour’s party funds. He’d inherited his father’s charm and ruthlessness, by all accounts, but neither his looks nor his business acumen. Nearly thirty, he’d launched about half-a-dozen business ventures since returning from the all-expenses-paid-by-Daddy backpacking tour following his graduation from Cambridge.
All expenses paid by Daddy, in fact, seemed to be pretty much a—even the—recurrent theme in Timothy Wadham’s life. All half-a-dozen business ventures had ended in financial disaster, but Wadham senior was always on hand with a blank cheque for the next one. Hard-nosed and void of sentiment he might be, but he clearly—like most parents—had a blind spot where his offspring was concerned. Under any other circumstances, a man who could cock up running a lap-dancing club in Romford would have been filed in the do-not-touch-this-fuckwit-with-a-bargepole category and left there.
Just another rich kid bombing happily through life secure in the knowledge that pater would always be there to bail him out. What money didn’t solve directly, the connections it bought most assuredly would.
I picked up the photograph of Timothy Wadham; the long face and thin sharp nose, the black eyes and the unbroken line of the eyebrow. I showed it to Don Hardiman. Wadham’s address was written on the back.
“Still want to help?” I asked after he’d finished reading. He looked up with a wintry smile.
“I’m not my son’s father for nothing,” he said. “What do you need?”
“What in the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, Paul?”
When my reflection didn’t reply I opened the sock drawer and rummaged around in the back. I found what I was looking for and unwrapped the old T-shirt it was folded in.
I’d taken the Browning automatic off the body of a man called Frankie Hagen in Ordsall the month before. I hadn’t killed him, any more than I’d had any idea what I thought I wanted a gun for. I began to wonder if I now knew.
I unloaded the pistol—there were eight rounds left in the magazine—and looked at myself in the bedroom mirror. I was wearing black, including a wool skully and Thinsulate gloves. I dry-fired the pistol with the gloves on. They didn’t get in the way of the trigger pull; that was all I needed to know.
I took a few more deep breaths, looking at myself in the mirror, and asked myself a new question. Not what are you doing?, but why are you doing it?
For Ellie Chatham, old woman of five, and all the others naked and shivering in the cold, all leeched of parts of themselves whose absence they would never overcome. For Terry Browning, who had seen reality and refused to turn away, even knowing it would destroy him, and for Alec Hardiman, who had done the same. In some way perhaps it would atone for Terry, who could and should have received more from me, even if it had only been sitting up with him for a few nights. Could that have helped? It was too late to ask now.
