Gary McMahon - Beyond Here Lies Nothing

She approaches the shrine she’s made and kneels down beside it. She places the photograph on the floor, and then begins to arrange the candles around the base of the crude pyramid. Inside the bag where the candles were stored is also a box of kitchen matches. When she’s finished setting out the candles, she lights them one by one with a match. She does not look down, but she doesn’t burn her fingers. Her body knows exactly what to do. This is not the first time she has carried out this homespun ritual, despite the fact that she has no memory of doing so before or afterwards. Like an athlete’s muscle memory, her body stores the information and carries out the task without even bothering her mind.

Once the candles are lighted, she takes hold of the pyjamas and presses them against her face, inhaling the smell of her missing daughter’s dried piss. Still there is no expression on her face.

She puts down the pyjamas and tucks her legs and feet beneath her bottom, drawing in her knees tight in front of her. Slowly, she begins to rock on her knees and calves, back and forth; a small, rhythmic movement. She smells wet grass and hears the rustling of tree branches. Somewhere beyond the grove of ancient oaks, a small figure is waiting. She cannot identify who this person is, but it seems familiar.

More liquid leaks out from between her legs.

She feels the wet grass under her legs. The wind blows against her skin, rising slowly. Branches creak; tiny animals move in the undergrowth. It is dark within the protective circle of the trees. She is outside, naked, but does not feel the cold. The light of the moon keeps her warm, even though it is a cold light, a dead light whose warmth can never reach her. Menstrual blood runs down the inside of her thighs; the animals hiding in the trees smell it and began to whine, like wolves scenting fresh meat. They are hungry. They need to feed.

Abby opens her mouth and begins to chant:

“ Tessa, Tessa, Tessa… bless her, bless her, bless her… come back to me .”

Her voice is dull, flat. There is no sing-song quality to the chant, but still it is a song of sorrow, a short chorus of mourning.

“ Tessa, Tessa, Tessa… bless her, bless her, bless her… come back to me .”

She rocks faster on her knees, hearing footsteps crunching towards her on the fallen leaves. The quality of the air changes subtly; someone is approaching from out of the thickest trees. Somebody is coming. The rich blood she spilled has called whoever it is to the scene.

She chants the rhyme over and over, a litany, a calling.

In front of her, the trees part; in front of her, the makeshift shrine shifts, one of the objects that form it moving slightly to create a small opening.

“ Tessa, Tessa, Tessa… bless her, bless her, bless her… come back to me .”

The cold, dead moon shines down its pale light, making her milky skin shimmer.

Something moves in the opening, emerging from inside the shrine. It is a short, scrawny tree branch — not much more than a sapling. It moves sinuously, curling and twisting as it quests forth, tasting the air of two worlds that have momentarily become one.

Abby keeps chanting. She continues to rock back and forth on her knees. Her bladder fails and urine pools around her legs, soaking along with the blood and other fluids into the weave of the carpet. The smell is sharp, pungent, as it finally reaches her nostrils, like a spilled chemical.

The scrawny sapling reaches out further, towards her face. Like a small arm, its tip spreads out into four spiky wooden fingers and a thumb, and it makes to caress her cheek. Then, quickly, it changes direction and whips briskly against her flesh, making a minuscule nick and drawing a spot of blood below her right eye. Abby does not even wince; she does not pause in her lament.

“ Tessa, Tessa, Tessa… bless her, bless her, bless her… come back to me .”

She rocks and chants, chants and rocks. The two worlds begin to merge more fully, and then to separate before the culmination of these events can take place. The grove of oak trees dims, becoming shadow and 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.