Gary McMahon - Silent Voices

Marty walks, now. There’s no need to run, and moving quickly through the Concrete Grove at this hour would only lead to suspicion of wrongdoing. If that police chopper came back, they’d follow him from above; a patrolling police car might start to chase him. He knows that any self-respecting policeman would stop a ten-year-old out walking alone this late at night anyway, but at least this way he doesn’t look like he’s up to no good.

But nobody accosts him as he makes his way towards the north end of the estate, cutting through onto Grove Crescent and circling the Needle. He watches the massive tower block as he walks the curve, never taking his eyes off the building. He doesn’t trust it; never has. To Marty, the Needle has always possessed a personality, a mind of its own. It watches the estate, looking into the lives of the people who live here… it’s a silly thought, a stupid kid’s fantasy, but at the same time he cannot rid himself of the illusion that the building is watching over them all.

He walks along Grove Street, turns left on Grove Crescent, and then heads down Grove Alley. The streetlights are weak. The darkness seems syrupy, as if it is capable of smothering the light. Something moves behind him. He stops, slowly turns, and catches sight of a small, stumpy shape running across the head of the short alley running between two large back gardens.

Marty feels fear nipping at the back of his neck, like his father’s hands clutching him. He reaches up and around and rubs at the skin there, trying to dispel the sensation. The shape moves again, crossing back the way it came. It is low to the ground, perhaps a foot and a half in height, and as wide as a beach ball. But, no, that isn’t quite correct… it can’t be a ball, because it isn’t round. Whatever this thing might be, it is oval, egg-shaped.

And he thinks he knows what it is.

Marty stands and stares as the shape peeks out from behind the wall. Now, even in the poor light, he can see that it has hands, but they are bigger than they should be on such a small body. The fingers are long and pointed, with nails that look like claws. Those fingers grip the edge of the wall as if they are slowly dragging the body around into his eye line.

“Who’s there?” His voice sounds tiny in all that night. It’s a stupid question to ask, anyway. If someone is stalking him, they’re hardly going to announce their name.

“Leave me alone.” Another stupid thing to say. “Who are you?” He can’t stop now: the idiotic words are coming thick and fast and unstoppable. Something twitches at the back of his mind: a memory, an image, something unpleasant from his childhood. He remembers that his father once bought him a book of fairy tales and nursery rhymes, but they were not the same as the ones he’d read in school. Marty thinks he might have been five or six, and that year the old man made a sudden and unexpected effort. He pretended to be interested in his boy, and would read to him at bedtime. This book — he can’t even recall the title — was the worst of all. Rumpelstiltskin killed all the babies, the princess with the glass slipper started cutting the flesh off her foot to make it fit, and Little Jack Horner stuffed himself so full of pie that he exploded in his corner… but the most memorable one, the story that Marty stills dreams of, even now, was Humpty Dumpty.

The strange egg-shaped creature was drawn to look like a monster. Leathery hide, large, slanted eyes, no arms, and horrible stumpy legs with hands on the end of them instead of feet. He sat on his high wall and drank beer from a brown bottle, laughing and throwing stones with his hand-feet at everyone who walked past below. Then, one day, when he was too drunk to keep his balance, he fell off the wall and shattered, like an egg. Weird stuff oozed out of the cracks in his hide: ugly little critters that were more mouth and eyes than anything else, borne on a tide of filthy slime.

Marty has been terrified of the story ever since his father first read it, grinning and putting on a horrible deep voice.

He remembers the king’s men on their horses arriving to try and put Humpty Dumpty back together, but Humpty didn’t want their help. He lashed out at the men, killed some of the horses, and the little monsters that had come out of his shell nipped and bit at the soldiers’ ankles. Finally, one brave soldier used the butt of his rifle to batter Humpty Dumpty to death… but next day, as a procession of the townsfolk went by his wall, the creature was back up there, with the cracks in his hide held together by metal clamps, throwing stones at those who had come to celebrate his destruction.

Where on earth had the book come from? He knows now that it clearly had not been written for children, and was probably meant to be funny… to the young Marty Rivers, lying shivering in his bed and listening to the sounds of his parents as they abused each other, the image of Humpty Dumpty could not have been less amusing. The creature from the book came to represent the thing that he was most afraid of — the fears he could never, ever name.

And here it is again, that improbable Humpty Dumpty monster, following him through the dark streets of the estate.

He turns and runs, heading for Beacon Green, where he knows his friends must already be waiting for him. He hears behind him the rapid slap of misshapen hand-feet on the concrete paving stones, and knows that if he turns to look over his shoulder he’ll see the egg-shaped creature bounding along behind him, gaining with every step.

There is a short passageway between the chip shop and the off-licence on Grove Terrace, and Marty throws himself at its entrance. He runs faster, heading for the low metal barrier at the end of the passage, and when he gets there he hits it hard and high and scurries over the top, ripping the knee of his jeans and scraping the skin there deep enough to draw blood. He does not look back as he runs across the long grass, heading towards the row of trees bounding the Green. Then, once he is inside the clammy darkness, he darts west and makes his way towards the clearing where they’ve constructed the platform of their tree house.

When he sees his friends, he smiles and pretends that nothing has happened. It takes him a while before he can even bring himself to look behind him, along the pathway upon which he stumbled, but when he does so he sees no sign of an egg-shaped shadow, or even a misplaced rustle of greenery.

Friendship has banished the monster. It always does. Because friendship is the best — and only — weapon they have.

BRENDAN WOKE UP feeling as if he hadn’t even been asleep. The blackout curtains — God bless Jane for buying them when he’d first started working nights — were still shut tight across the windows, barring all light, but his damned body clock knew that it was morning and had decided that it didn’t want to shut down for any longer. He couldn’t remember finishing his shift this morning, and regretted going in half-drunk. If he’d been sober, perhaps he would have taken the phone call from his boss in a more dignified manner.

Jane shifted in bed beside him, stretching out across the mattress and making a small whining sound.

“You awake?”

She didn’t reply, but she threw one arm across his chest and bent her knees so they pressed up hard against his left thigh. She was sleeping naked again. She got hot while she slept, and even if she wore a nightdress to bed she would often take it off during the night. Her skin was soft and smooth, and her hair tickled the side of his face. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Brendan had always loved the way his wife smelled, especially after a night in bed.