Gary McMahon - Beyond Here Lies Nothing

He drove through the estate with these dark thoughts on his mind. Part of him hoped that Hacky was taking the piss; he had the urge to commit violence, and that useless kid would do as target practice. He guided the car along the grubby streets, along Grove Road and onto Grove Street, where Monty Bright’s old gym was situated. He’d acquired the building and was having it fitted out; it would be a gym again, and this time his name would be above the door… as long as Hacky’s brother got on with the job, of course, the work-shy little bastard.

He parked at the kerb and got out, walking quickly to the front door. He opened the door and stepped inside. Three young men stood at the bottom of the new timber stairs, huddled around the bottom step. Hacky looked up and smiled. He raised a hand and walked over.

“So, I’m here.”

“I’m sorry to make you come all the way here, Mr Best. Really. But there was no other way… this has got to be seen. You wouldn’t believe it otherwise.”

The other two boys nodded, looked away, staring at the fire-damaged walls. They were guilty; all of them, guilty of so many petty crimes that it would be difficult to pin a single one on them. He could see the badness dripping off them like sweat. He was covered with it, too, but he was clever enough to construct a barrier. The black hole wouldn’t suck him in. He would never allow it to get a good enough grip on his soul. These fuckers were already halfway inside; it was consuming them like space debris.

“What the fuck is it, Hacky?” He stepped forward, grabbed the kid’s upper arm with one big hand, and knocked his baseball cap from his head with the other. The cap was old, faded, and had a decal featuring Scooby Doo smoking a spliff. “I’m really not in the fucking mood for any of your bullshit.”

“Please.” Hacky cowered; he actually stepped back and hunkered down a few inches, as if he were a dog trying to subjugate itself before an alpha. He bent down and picked up his cap. “Honest, we have summat to show you.”

The other two nodded. They wouldn’t hold Erik’s gaze. They were too afraid even to speak.

“Show me.” He let go, pushed the kid away. “Show me before I change my mind and knock you out just to release some tension.”

“It’s at Beggy’s place.” Hacky motioned towards one of the other young men — a tall, thin streak of piss with acne scars all over his long neck and thin throat.

“Yeah,” said the one called Beggy. “I didn’t know what to do with it, so I put it in my old man’s lock-up. It’s on Grove Drive. One of them old garages past the Corner… you know?” He looked down, inspecting his oversized trainers. He blinked too much; it was making Erik angry, grating at his nerves.

“So take me there. Go outside and get in the car. Now.”

He watched them troop slowly out through the door and then glanced up the stairs, at the partially repaired upper floor. The walls were bare, some of them still stained by smoke. He locked the door on his way out. “Give me your keys,” he said to Hacky. “I don’t want you letting yourself in there ever again, not unless I’m around. Oh, and when you see your brother, tell him to get back here and finish the job.”

The kid handed over the keys without looking at Erik’s face. He nodded.

Erik unlocked the car. “Get in the back — all three of you. I don’t want any of you fuckers in the front with me. And try not to dribble on the upholstery.” He watched them squeeze carefully onto the back seat, three unwise monkeys, and got in the front, then started the car. It took them less than three minutes to get to Grove Drive. The garages stood in a row opposite the waste ground beyond the primary school. Seven squat, graffiti-covered buildings, none of them ever used to park a car. They were all utilised for storage instead, and the police turned a blind eye to whatever was kept inside, and to whoever rented them. Nobody cared about this place, as long as there was no serious trouble. Things ticked over in the Grove; crimes were done; people got paid; the status quo was maintained.

The black hole kept on sucking, hungry for more.

“Which one?”

Beggy spoke, but quietly. “The third one from the left.”

“Get the fuck out and show me.”

They all climbed out of the car. Erik waited until they were walking towards the garages, and then he got out, too. He locked the doors and followed them across the footpath and onto the tired grass verge, wondering what the fuck could be so important that Hacky would disturb him and ask him to come here. He’d known all along that it must be something major; the kid was too afraid to fuck with him over trivialities.

Beggy bent over and unlocked the up-and-over garage door. He opened it and the three of them stepped back in the same movement, as if they were afraid of what was in there. They stood and waited for Erik to move.

“You going to tell me what I’m here to see, or do I have to guess?”

Beggy shook his head. Hacky coughed; a harsh dry sound. The nameless third member of the group looked away, trying to pretend that he wasn’t here. He hadn’t spoken a word so far and didn’t look like he was going to change that habit any time soon.

“Well?”

“You do it,” said Beggy. “I can’t go back in there… I’ve seen enough.” He was pleading, not ordering, and Hacky nodded.

“You’re more afraid of whatever’s in there than you are of me?” Erik took a couple of steps forward, interested now. He was standing close to Beggy. The kid nodded, but didn’t raise his head. The footpath was obviously fascinating; he was inspecting it like it was the most interesting thing he’d seen so far that day. The acne scars on his throat were livid, bright red welts. They looked painful, like aggravated wounds.

“Okay, I’ll show you.” Hacky moved reluctantly into the shadow of the garage, his slim body swallowed by darkness. The other two young men stepped to the side, away from the open door.

“Don’t go anywhere,” said Erik. He walked forward, stooping at the waist to get under the garage door, and looked around.

There wasn’t much in there. In fact, it looked like someone had recently moved a lot of stuff out. Streaked dust marks decorated the internal surfaces; cobwebs had been disturbed in the corners. The oil-stained floor was scuffed in places, as if heavy objects had been pushed or pulled across it. Erik seemed to recall that Beggy’s father was some kind of low-level fence, so he probably used this place to store stolen goods that he couldn’t keep inside the house for some reason: furniture, plasma screen televisions still in their cardboard boxes, perhaps even a few large car parts that were too heavy to shift on his own.

A stack of rolled up carpet off-cuts had been pushed up against the wall on the left hand side. The right hand wall was clear, but someone had set up a small camping table, upon which there was a red and black tartan plastic flask and a set of pornographic playing cards. Erik walked over and looked down at the cards. They were vintage 1970s, showing scenes of blank-eyed women copulating with drugged farm animals. Nice.

He looked up and watched Hacky. The kid was staring at a large rectangular object covered by a dark, stained tarpaulin sheet. He was fidgeting; he shuffled his feet, picked at his fingernails, bit his bottom lip.

“Is that it?” Erik indicated the sheet.

“Yeah. It’s under there… under that cover thing.” He licked his lips. His eyes were wide. The gloom inside the garage had made his pupils dilate, unless he was strung out on drugs, despite what he’d said earlier.

“Take the fucking thing off, then. Show me what you’ve got.”

A strange kind of tension had entered the garage with them. Erik knew that he should be losing his temper by now. The kid was stringing this out, making a fucking meal of the situation. But there was an atmosphere between these concrete walls that made him cautious. There wasn’t any actual danger here — of course there wasn’t, not for him anyway. No, not danger: something else, a sense of… weirdness. Something here was not entirely right. That was the only way he could think to explain what he felt.