Gary McMahon - Beyond Here Lies Nothing

He tugged as hard as he could and the figure emerged, popping out like something being born. He thought of Vanessa, and the unborn child they had made together… he felt sick, wasted. His energy dipped dramatically.

He stepped away from the hole, hauling the body out and shoving it aside. It was damp, slimy. Unclean.

He looked at his hands. They were covered in those mulch-like black leaves. He wiped them on his trouser legs. The body stirred. Leaves came away, falling to the floor and making a soft, slippery sound. Royle went down onto his knees and stared at the figure. It was inchoate, not quite complete: a stunted child’s body with an oversized, beaked head. The limbs were thin and wasted; the hands were three-fingered claws. He reached out and grabbed the mask, tearing it away… there was nothing beneath: just a shapeless mush of black leaves and a lot of tiny, fragile bones, as if a flock of birds had died in that mess.

The figure began to shred, parts of it slithering away and liquefying. Royle sat down and watched as it was reduced to a thick, black slime on the carpet. The last thing it did was reach out and hold his hand.

“You didn’t make it,” he said. “You couldn’t get through. We stopped you… somehow they stopped you.”

He stood and turned away, then, as an afterthought more than a calculated act, he turned back and kicked at the remains of the mound at the centre of the room, destroying the structure that Abby Hansen had so painstakingly made in honour of her missing child. There was no longer a hole in the floor. He could see no evidence of the route by which Abby Hansen had travelled… she was gone; her point of access had closed up, like a wound scabbing over. He wondered if she would ever return, if he would ever see her again.

Erik Best’s body lay a few feet away, its ruined face turned away from him. He shook his head. “You stupid bastard…” He walked away, left the room, and went downstairs.

Outside, Royle stood in the street and surveyed the damage. It was chaos out there. Sirens were going off, emergency vehicles were entering the estate from all angles; alarms blared, creating more panic. People were running, standing in groups, or cowering in gardens and doorways. A well-known local drunk was standing in his doorway, waving an empty bottle and ranting about sea cows.

All around, huge, thick-bodied trees had burst through the earth, houses and buildings had tumbled, walls had shattered, exploded out into the street, and cars were overturned and ablaze. Water sluiced across the road, discharging from a burst water main. He spotted a few dead bodies: in the gutters, in gardens, even one slumped over the bonnet of a car.

It would take a long time — perhaps years — to figure out exactly what had happened here, but whatever had occurred, it was over. It was done. Something had tried to come through, and it had failed.

Uniformed officers were running around in a panic; they were not trained to deal with something like this. The news crew was trying to film everything and nothing. The whole place resembled a battlefield immediately after the fighting had ceased, or the site of some terrorist atrocity. He’d missed it all, but in some ways he’d witnessed more than anyone else. He just wished that he understood the things he had seen.

He glanced up at the ever-present shape of the Needle. The sky was clear; the birds had flown. A few of them had gathered around the tip of the tower block, as if they were waiting for something to happen. The outline of the building seemed to tremble for a moment, as if a detonation had occurred inside.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a quick, dark shape scurry across the road, but when he looked directly at it there was nothing there but what seemed like a dusty shadow. Nearby, a scarecrow lay in the gutter, its torso shredded, the stick that had supported it snapped in two. It was crawling slowly along the side of the road, heading towards him. Royle stood with his legs shoulder-width apart, wishing that he had a gun. Everything out here was like a medieval nightmare, an image from a biblical painting of demons and monstrosities, of impossible things.

The scarecrow was close now. He couldn’t move. He felt like kneeling down and waiting for it to take him. His legs began to shake. Tears filled his eyes.

The black shape he’d glimpsed earlier shot across the road and hit the scarecrow, rolling it on the road surface. He couldn’t make out what it was, despite the fact that it was only a few feet away from him. The creature’s form was not solid, as if it were made of thought rather than matter. He thought of dusty rooms, empty larders, and buildings where old people went to die, lining up patiently to see the Reaper…

The scarecrow was torn apart as he watched. Then, as he turned away, he caught sight of the thing that had killed it — the thing was visible only at the edge of his vision, not head-on. It resembled old, ancient, papyrus tatters invested with a form of energy. Then, all too soon, it was gone, vanished into the air like a memory. People ran and screamed. The drunken sea cow man — now sitting on his doorstep — started to laugh hysterically.

Whatever that thing was, it had saved him.

Detective Superintendent Sillitoe ran up to Royle. He was hatless, with a shocked expression on his face. “What happened here?” He looked to Royle for some form of explanation, but it was futile. Nobody knew anything.

“I don’t know,” he said, as his superior officer moved away, running towards a squad car with its roof punched in and short, sharp tree branches poking out through the rips in the bodywork, waving around like monstrous spidery limbs.

Royle turned again to stare at the Needle. It drew his gaze, calling to him. He knew that he should be heading back to the hospital, to be at Vanessa’s side, but there was something else he had to do first. There was unfinished business; the final act of this messy epic.

He started to jog in the direction of the centre of the estate, passing injured people, while others walked around in a daze. He couldn’t stop to help. There was something more important to do. Ambulance men and paramedics tended to the fallen, soothing them, bandaging their wounds, trying to impose a sense of organisation onto the scene.

He heard the noise when he reached the Roundpath, and it grew louder as he approached the hoarding that ran around the Needle. A single soft note, as if hundreds of people were humming under their breath.

The fence around the building was torn and pulled away in places, so he had no difficulty accessing the site. He stood and stared up at the tower, and in that instant he knew that it was about to fall. He could feel it in the trembling ground beneath his feet; insistent tremors that travelled up through his legs and into his belly, making his innards sing. The loud humming noise was meant as a warning.

He looked at the ground, closed his eyes, and prayed that he wasn’t too late — but too late for what? He had no idea. All he knew was that he’d been summoned here. He opened his eyes again and looked at the Needle, challenging it to show him why he’d been called. Thick tree roots were wound around its base. The walls were cracked, and leaves and branches showed through the widening fissures.

The main doors flew open. A figure staggered out, almost falling to the ground. It was Abby Hansen. Black leaves clung to her arms, her legs, and her body. More of them formed a narrow pathway ahead of her, out of the building. Her hair was wet. Behind her, four other figures — these ones much smaller, and dressed in rags — moved in a sombre line, exiting the tower and standing around her, reaching out to help her.

When he started to move towards the group, he realised who the other figures were. He recognised their clothes first — despite being torn and dirty, they were the same outfits they’d been wearing when they disappeared.