Gary McMahon - Silent Voices

“Listen, son.” Hilda shuffled forward again. “Marty’s been seeing a girl. Melanie Sallis. She works part-time in the betting shop on the Arcade: three days a week. He never sees anyone for long — never has, not since poor Sally and that motorbike accident — but as far as I know, they’re still an item. She’s a decent girl, Melanie. Tells me stuff about my grandson. Go and see her today; tell her I sent you. She might be able to help you get in touch with Marty. Christ knows, I’ve done all I can — the little sod barely even calls me these days. Sends me text messages. Can you believe that? Text messages to his old Nan! The cheeky bugger.” Her anger was faked; the tone of her voice suggested only compassion.

“Thank you, Hilda. You’ve been a great help.”

Her smile was gone now. The lines and wrinkles on her face seemed to have deepened, become filled with shadows. Her dentures looked huge. “Just promise me that you won’t go stirring up bad things from the past — things that are best left alone.”

Simon leaned forward. He placed a hand on her knee. “I just want us — all three of us — to be able to move on with our lives. That’s all. I want us healed. I want all that stuff, whatever it is, put away in a box for good. I want… I want us to be friends again, just like we were back then, before everything got so damned dark.”

She placed her hand over his and squeezed. Her bones felt tiny, like a bird’s. He glanced at the budgie; it was immobile, and staring at him through the bars.

Brendan chose that moment to come back into the room. His hairline was damp, as if he’d washed his face; his eyes and cheeks were red, as if he’d been rubbing them. He looked more tired than Simon had seen him since their reunion. He looked… wasted.

“We’d better go. Thanks again.”

“Let yourself out, lads. These old legs of mine are playing up again, and I’d rather not stand, if that’s okay.” She wriggled her feet, as if to demonstrate what she meant.

“Don’t worry, we can find our way out. Bye, Percy.” Simon stood and approached Brendan, ushered him out of the door.

“What the hell was wrong with you in there?” They were standing outside, on the footpath next to the gate to Hilda’s place. “I thought you were going to do all the talking? You left me high and dry. It’s a fucking good job she liked me, or we would’ve got nothing.”

Brendan was leaning against the privet bush next door. He rubbed his cheeks, licked his lips. “Sorry… I just. I didn’t feel well. I have this rash… on my back. It’s been bothering me.”

“Okay, okay.” Slowly, Simon started walking backwards along the street, in the direction of the Arcade. “I’ll see you tonight, for dinner. Just get yourself home and have some rest. We can talk again then. I’ll bring some wine for the table. We can get pissed and go through all this new information.”

Brendan looked up. His cheeks were pale now, but there were thin red lines, like scratch marks, running from just under his eyes to a point level with his mouth. “Where are you going?” The marks faded to white as Simon watched.

Simon turned around and increased his pace. He glanced over his shoulder but did not alter his stride. “Me? I’m off to put a bet on.”

JANE WAS OUT when Brendan got home. She was always out these days, as if the walls of the house were no longer able to hold her. He staggered through the door and into the hall, feeling giddy, light-headed. His back and shoulders ached. He leaned sideways against the wall, out of breath. His vision was swimming; he waited for it to clear.

He turned and stared at his reflection in the mirror mounted in the hallway. His face was damp with sweat, and his eyes were bloodshot. Behind him, hanging on the wall, he could see a family photograph: him, Jane, the twins. It was like a catalogue shot, deliberately posed to sell him something he didn’t need. As with every family shot in the house, he had the sense that something was missing.

“What’s happening to me?”

After a few seconds he turned away, disgusted with himself. He felt weak, absent, as if he was barely making an impact on the world. The safe existence he’d created over the years was being threatened. Everything was changing.

Carefully, Brendan took off his coat and hung it on the hook at the bottom of the stairs. He grabbed the banister and started to climb, heading up to the first floor. His legs ached; his back was burning. His other hand groped along the wall, feeling the ridges of the cheap wallpaper.

When he reached the top of the stairs he was breathless. He shoved open the bathroom door and turned on the light. Despite the sunshine, the small room never got much natural light. It was always dim in there. He looked again at his reflection in the mirror and did not recognise it from the one downstairs. His features looked different, as if he’d transformed somehow on the journey up to this level. He shook his head, trying to dispel the idiotic thoughts.

Pull yourself together. Get a fucking grip.

Slowly, he peeled off his shirt.

He’d deliberately worn a shirt that was two sizes too big, just to give the acne some breathing space. He wasn’t sure if it had made any difference, but it was all he could think of. Back at the old lady’s place, when he’d got up to use her bathroom, he’d taken off his jacket and seen specks of blood on the shirt collar. Since his strange experience early that morning, when he’d felt pinned to the bed by some angry force, he’d become convinced that the spots on his back had begun to change. He was almost afraid to inspect them and see what they looked like now.

Brendan dropped the shirt on the bathroom floor.

He turned slowly to the side and started picking at the plasters that held the dressing in place. There were small spots of blood on the white cotton gauze. It wasn’t much, but it was there, like a warning. He pulled at the plasters and removed them, wincing as they pulled out tiny hairs, and then lifted the dressing to reveal his lacerated flesh.

Turning around to present his back to the mirror, he strained to look at the reflection of his rear side. Despite the presence of the blood, the pustules looked dry — drier than they had in a while. No fluids glistened on his body; no vile-coloured ichors had been spilled. The acne was more like a patch of damaged skin than individual wounds. It looked as if someone had laid a sheet, or several sheets, of treated rubber over his upper back — like a TV special effect in a hospital soap opera. He flexed the muscles there, testing it. The pain flared briefly and then died.

But then something strange happened.

When he stopped moving, the wounds continued to stir. The damaged skin shuddered, as if from an electric current being passed through it. The skin clenched, like the backs of hands making fists, and as he watched, parts of it rose, like flaps — or like two eyelids.

Beneath each of these thin lids, there was a small, dark eye. For some reason Brendan was not shocked. He knew that he should be — he realised that eyes opening up in a person’s back was not a normal or natural occurrence, and he should be screaming in horror — but instead he experienced a strange overwhelming sense of calm.

The eyelids blinked, fluttering like a cheap whore’s on a neon-soaked boardwalk. The eyes weren’t human, he could see that clearly. They were yellow, rather than white, around the outside, and the pupils were strange… black and horizontal, like rectangular slots at the centre of the iris. They reminded him of something and he struggled to grab hold of an image. Then, suddenly, it came to him. Those weird eyes… they were the eyes of a goat.