Gary McMahon - Beyond Here Lies Nothing

THIS TIME ABBY is aware of sitting up in bed and turning to face the door. The room is dark; the shapes of the furniture are somehow threatening, as if they are poised to pounce. She feels as if she might be in danger, but she isn’t sure what form it will take.

She walks across the room, shedding her nightgown. She is hot; her skin is covered in a thin layer of sweat. She opens the bedroom door and steps out onto the landing. The door to her daughter’s room is already open and light spills out across the carpet. Shadows caper across the walls. Abby is holding her breath. If she lets it out, she might disturb whoever is in there.

She moves slowly towards the room, her arms hanging down by her sides, hands open. Her skin prickles, excitement makes her blood run faster.

She enters the room and there is no one there. The homemade totem, the stack of Tessa’s things, looks larger, taller; its tip is now almost touching the ceiling. She cannot remember adding anything new to the pile. She has not touched it for quite some time, as if some residue of fear has kept her away.

She walks across the room and stands before the conical mound of her daughter’s belongings. Things have been rearranged. The photo of Tessa’s face is no longer there, and toys she does not recognise have been added to the construction.

She kneels down and closes her eyes.

“ Tessa, Tessa, Tessa… bless her, bless her, bless her… come back to me .” She recites the familiar prayer without even thinking about it. She does not hear the words as they pass her lips.

She hears the creaking, rustling sound of the totem shifting. She does not open her eyes. If she sees what is happening, it might break the spell. Something touches her face, brushing softly across her cheek. It feels like a tiny hand, but one that is not fully formed. The fingers are fused together and the skin feels soft and inchoate.

Whatever it is pulls away, making a louder rustling sound this time as it is sucked back into the mass of the totem.

Abby opens her eyes.

She is no longer inside the room, or even in the house.

She is kneeling at the centre of a grove of oak trees. It is dark. The sky is black and starless. There is no moon. The ground is covered with leaves.

Figures are hiding in the undergrowth, standing silently, watching her. The figures are small, slight, like malnourished children.

“Hello…”

The figures do not move. Their eyes sparkle behind a screen of foliage. White teeth are bared in either smiles or snarls. There are three of them, and slowly she begins to realise that they are waiting for her. In unison, they raise their hands above their heads, open their fists, and each of them drops a handful of black leaves onto the ground.

She stands and walks towards a clear spot between two trees, where the overhanging bushes have been forced apart to form an archway. She passes through the archway, feeling leaves brush eagerly against her skin, and makes her way along a narrow, ill-defined pathway. The trees and bushes on either side of her sway, as if dancing. Her bare feet sink into the soft loamy ground.

Before she has time to be afraid, she emerges from the grove and is standing in a clearing. The figures are standing up ahead, at the top of a slight rise. She can see them clearly now, despite the lack of natural light — still there is neither moon nor stars to light her way. There are, as she suspected, three of them, and they are little girls. The girls are wearing tattered clothing — torn coats and dresses, shoes that are falling apart on their small feet. Their bodies are painfully thin, which makes their heads look oversized. They look half starved, as if they have not eaten in months. Abby is put in mind of video footage from African trouble spots: big eyes, dark, sunken cheeks, pot bellies filled with air not sustenance.

As one, the three girls turn away and start to walk down the opposite side of the hill, black leaves falling from their palms to scatter on the earth. Abby follows them, unconcerned at her nakedness, just desperate to make sure that she does not lose sight of the children.

The grass stretches on for as far as she can see, broken here and there by solitary stands of trees, ruined stone buildings, flapping tent-like hides or dwellings inside which small fires burn. Smoke rises from holes in the roofs of these flimsy structures, grey against the black, starless sky.

She can see the dark leafy path they are following, make out small animals running alongside her as she trails the girls. She knows exactly who they are, these three children: they are the Gone Away Girls, all but one; all but her daughter, Tessa.

They’re taking me to see her…

But she has no idea if this is the truth. For all she knows, they could be leading her to certain death, or straight off the edge of a cliff. If they were leading her into the mouth of some hideous monster, she would have no clue until she got there, and stared directly into its fiery eyes.

But at least I’ll know… at least I’ll know what happened to her.

And isn’t that what’s been killing her all along, the lack of knowledge? Long ago, she told herself that knowing Tessa was dead would be at least better than not knowing anything at all. Her life has been on hold, her soul has withered; she is barely even human. The loss stalled her in time, made it so that she ceased to develop as a person. All she was, all she is, is a thing that waits.

She follows the small, thin forms of the three girls, watching their dark backs, terrified that they might bolt or — even worse — simply fade into the darkness, leaving her there alone on the pathway of black leaves. She is walking quickly to keep up but she does not feel out of breath. It is as if she is standing in one place and the landscape itself is moving, rolling past her like a set dressing on castors.

Hills loom out of the darkness up ahead. They form the foothills of a high rock face. There are caves: dark, jagged holes cut into the hillside. The girls pause, look back, wave. Then they bend over and enter one of the caves.

Abby increases her pace. She feels a light chill against the side of her face, and it is pleasant, keeping her cool. When she reaches the cave, she looks up at the sky — wishing that she could see some stars — and then follows them inside.

Darkness swallows her up. She feels like turning back, following the black leaves to the safety of the grove of trees, but realises that she has no choice but to carry on into this uncertain darkness. She hears water dripping down the cave walls; the hard ground is cold and wet underfoot. She can see nothing, only blackness. She holds out her hands, feeling her way deeper inside, and even though she expects to come up against granite walls, she feels nothing… she might be walking a path with a sheer drop on each side.

But that’s okay. She doesn’t fear death, not now. She has not been afraid of dying for a long time. In fact, she’s often flirted with death, taking too many drugs and sleeping with strange men in the hope that they might be killers. But nothing bad ever happened. She has led a charmed life since her daughter went missing, as if the forces of the universe have conspired to keep her alive, as a form of punishment for losing the only person she ever loved, the only human being who ever loved her as much as she never deserved.

Vague light up ahead.

She moves towards it, quickening her pace. Soon the backs of the heads of the girls resolve out of the darkness. She is closer than she thought; only a few feet behind them. She has the feeling that they have deliberately slowed their pace.

Tiny electric bulbs — like fairy lights — hang from wires along the cave walls. The light they shed is meagre, barely illuminating the space, but it is so much better than darkness.