Gary McMahon - Beyond Here Lies Nothing

“Space?” Marc stretched his neck. It was aching. He must have slept in a bad position at Abby’s place. “Space for what?”

Rose walked across the kitchen, approached the table, but did not sit back down. “I think it’s best if I show you.” His jacket was hanging on the back of the chair. He reached into the inside pocket and brought out a folded A4-size manila envelope. “But first let me give you this.”

Marc reached out and took the envelope. His name was written on the front. He recognised Harry’s handwriting.

“I found it in his bedroom, on the bedside cabinet. He must have left it for you to find.” He remained standing, watching Marc as he examined the envelope.

“Thanks,” said Marc. He tore open the envelope and took out what was inside: a photocopied sheet of paper, folded down the middle. He straightened out the sheet of paper and saw that it was a copy of a brief extract from somebody’s diary.

I think somebody hates us. he is in the house all the time but we cant see him. he makes niose when nowbody else is here. he wants to hurt us. we hide under the bed when mummy and daddy are in the pub. he canit see us there. we inibible. inbisevil. he canit see us. but he is there. in the walls and under the floor. he creeps about and peeps threw the gaps to try and see me and daisy flower. I am scared. I can here him now. he goes clikcety clikcety like when I spilt my marbels on the kichen floor. clikcey clikcety clikc.

He read it through twice, understanding dawning upon him long before he’d finished rereading the words. “It’s Jack Pollack… the little boy. It’s the boy who lived in the Needle and was haunted by the Northumberland Poltergeist. He wrote this, didn’t he?”

Rose did not respond. He just stood there, watching.

Marc grabbed the envelope again and peered inside. He’d missed something in his haste: a second sheet of paper, this one an original rather than a photocopy.

He gripped the sheet of paper by the edges with both hands, as if he were afraid it might burn or blow away. Upon it was drawn the crude representation of a figure. It looked like a man, but could also have been a woman. It was difficult to assign a gender because the figure was wearing a long, black cape that smothered its body and a white, beaked mask over its face. In its hand was raised a short, thin stick or wand with a pointed end.

This was obviously a child’s drawing. The lines were jagged, the shading went outside the lines, and the overall effect was that of crudity, juvenile artlessness… and yet, the drawing held an element of horror that Marc found difficult to ignore. The face was coloured with white crayon, the cape shaded in broad, angry strokes of a thick, black pencil.

Underneath this character was written its name, in the same clumsy, misspelled handwriting as he’d read in the diary extract:

captain clikcety

“He never told me he had anything like this.” He looked up, at Rose, and the room pitched to one side, causing him to shudder. He felt like a man on a little boat, yearning for the shore.

“Maybe he didn’t have it then. He might have got hold of this stuff just before he died, and not had time to show it to you.”

“I saw him in hospital several times before he died. We talked about a lot of things — my book included, to keep his mind off his pain. He would’ve said. He would’ve told me. I’m sure of it.”

“Then I don’t know why he didn’t. Come on. Let me show you what else I found.”

Rose waited for Marc to rise and then walked out of the room, to the stairs. He paused at the bottom, resting one hand on the wall-mounted wooden banister, and then began to climb.

Marc followed him up to the first floor, noting the sound of the stairs as they creaked beneath their weight. They walked along the landing to the second stairway at the opposite end — one that had been added after the house was built, when the attic space was converted into habitable rooms.

Rose took out a set of keys and selected one of them. He unlocked the sturdy wooden door that sealed the stairway, and pushed it open. He reached inside and flicked a switch. The light came on up the stairs; a single bulb hanging from the ceiling at the top.

“Up here,” he said, redundantly.

Marc was glad he’d spoken. The atmosphere was starting to feel strange, as if there might be something up there at roof level that he might regret seeing.

He followed Rose up the narrow staircase. The timber creaked even louder than before, and Marc had the weird sensation that there were more people packed into the cramped space than just the two of them. He resisted the urge to turn around and see who was following them — he knew there was nobody there, but his body was trying to convince him otherwise. The back of his neck was prickling; his spine felt warm, as if a hand were rubbing it through his shirt.

At the top of the stairs there was a door on each side of the tiny landing, where the attic was effectively split in two. Both of the doors were closed. The single bare bulb on the ceiling between the doors struggled to illuminate the space, as if something were pushing back the light. Marc kept expecting it to flicker and then go out, but it didn’t. That only ever happened in horror films, and not in real life. Or so he kept telling himself, just to dispel the slow-creeping dread that had followed him up the stairs.

“I’ll show you the library first,” said Rose, his voice seeming too loud in the stairwell.

“The library?” said Marc, just trying to fill the space with his voice.

Rose stepped up onto the small landing area and used another key to unlock the door on the left.

“Security conscious, wasn’t he?”

Rose didn’t reply. He simply nodded once. Then he opened the door and stepped inside.

Marc was reluctant to follow, but he knew he should. In fact, he had little choice in the matter. Despite what his body was telling him, there was nothing to be afraid of here, deep inside the house of his old friend Harry Rose. There was nothing to fear; nothing that could hurt him. And if he was lucky, there might just be something in the attic that would bring his stalled book project back to life.

ROYLE WAS SCARED to go down to the basement. It was an embarrassing admission, even if it was only to himself, but the lower level of the Far Grove police station had always made him afraid. Over ground, he was okay. He felt not a tremor of apprehension regarding the station. But once he was forced to go underneath, the fear kicked in. He was reminded of the Crawl, and how it made him feel.

The main building had been built in the mid nineteen seventies, but it had been constructed over the top of the former police station, which had been a lot older. The contractor had decided to keep the original basement and foundations, using it as a platform on which to mount the new station superstructure. The old basement had been where the cells were. Small rooms with rusted iron bars, each one containing only a tiny sink and with a metal bed frame bolted to the floor. The detainment facilities they used these days were much more modern and comfortable; those old Victorian cells were like something out of Bedlam. Whenever he was down in the basement, Royle imagined the people who’d been caged there. He felt their eyes upon him; he heard their screams ringing in the air. He could almost see them crawling across the floor towards him…

He knew it was just his mind creating an atmosphere that didn’t exist in reality, but this knowledge did nothing to reassure him. Whatever he did, however hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the nagging fear that this place was home to ghosts.

The elevator doors opened and he stood looking out into the main access corridor. He knew that he should just step out and make his way to his destination, but his body refused to obey the simple command.