Gary McMahon - Silent Voices

At the top of the stairs she turned and walked along the landing. The bathroom door was open. She could see the mirror through the gap; it was greyed-out, steamy with condensation. Had she taken a bath earlier? She must have done, but could not remember anything about it. Perhaps she’d bathed the twins — or maybe just Isobel, while Harry rested.

“Jesus,” she whispered. “I’m losing the plot.”

Written in the condensation was a nonsense word: Loculus . What was that, the name of a cartoon character or a TV show? Maybe Harry had been up and about…

Jane stopped outside the twins’ room and waited. She didn’t know what it was she was waiting for, but the pause felt right. It seemed like the thing to do. She pressed the palms of both of her hands against the door, and then leaned in close, pushing the side of her face against the wood. She listened, but could hear nothing. Of course she couldn’t. Harry was asleep. Isobel was at school, and then later she was going to a hastily arranged sleepover at a friend’s house on Far Grove Way.

The twins used to share a room when they were very young. She’d tried to separate them when they got older, and it had caused an uproar, with stamping feet and infant tantrums. She’d relented, but eventually they’d have to be separated again, and she knew that it would cause more trouble. They hated being apart, even when they were asleep. All the things you hear about twins had proved to be true.

Not for the first time she wondered about the origin of the twins; how Brendan had almost been a twin, so the genetic makeup was there, in his DNA, that someone on his side of the family could produce a multiple birth. But wasn’t it meant to skip a generation? She supposed it had, in a way, because Brendan’s twin had died in utero , not even given the chance to form into a proper foetus. It had been just the size of a thumbnail, probably even smaller. No eyes, no nose, no features of any kind. A floating being, without even a soul…

But Jane didn’t believe in the soul. She was an atheist. The lure of religion had not drawn her to its flame, not in the way that it had her mother. Jane’s mum had seen God as a way out of an abusive marriage; Jane had seen God as a convenient crutch for the weak to lean on. Where had God been when her father had beaten her, trying so hard not to touch her in the same way that he’d touched her sister? Where was the Holy Ghost when she’d lain awake at night, listening to his footsteps as he roamed the house, drinking and muttering and talking himself out of raping his own daughter? Some might say that it was God who had kept him away from her, but Jane preferred to think that it was the threat of going back to prison; he’d served three years for sexual assault when he was in his early twenties, and the experience had scarred him enough that he could not ever face another visit.

She pushed open the bedroom door and stepped inside. The curtains were closed, but dim light penetrated the cheap material. The room looked as if it were filled with dust; the air shuddered as she moved through the space. Harry was a motionless mound in his red plastic Lightning McQueen bed with the Ben 10 quilt pulled over his head. His toys were dotted around his side of the room, on shelves and cupboard tops, and scattered across the floor. Isobel’s side was much tidier; she had inherited her mother’s eye for neatness and formality.

Harry didn’t seem to be moving at all. She was worried that he’d stopped breathing. She knew that she was being silly, that the doctors had given him a clean bill of health, but still… when you were a parent, it paid to be just a little bit paranoid.

Slowly she crossed the room and stood at the side of the bed. She reached down and pulled back the quilt, revealing the sweaty top of Harry’s head. His hair was soaking. She tugged the quilt down past the back of his knees (he was sleeping on his belly, as always). Still Harry did not move.

“Hey, kidda. You okay?”

He did not even stir.

Jane’s heart felt as if it were gradually climbing her chest, inch by inch, making its way towards her throat. She swallowed; her throat ached. She heard a strange humming sound, but it was only inside her head.

“Harry?” Her voice was croaky.

She reached down and nudged his shoulder, just a little, barely hard enough to move his little body. Then she did it again — harder this time, applying more pressure, easily enough to wake him.

Harry was still.

“Harry… baby… wake up for Mummy.”

She dropped down onto her knees at the side of the bed. Her hands ran over his back, feeling beneath his armpits to see if he had a temperature. His skin was cold; too cold. Not icy, not quite, but cold enough to be of concern. She rolled him over, onto his back.

“Harry!”

His face was pale. His lips were a light shade of blue. His eyelids did not flutter; the muscles in his face were loose, relaxed. She shook him, hard, trying to wake him. “Harry! Time to get up!” Her voice had become shrill, the tone rising as the panic set in. She fought hard to keep herself under control, to keep calm, but she recalled the hummingbird that had erupted from his throat, and the convulsions on the bedroom floor. Nobody seemed to want to talk about the hummingbird, at the hospital. They ignored it in the hope that it would go away, much like the bird itself had flown out of the room. The convulsions, though, fascinated them. They’d loved the fucking convulsions: they were normal, regular symptoms that could be studied and explained away. They were nothing at all like the insane image of a tiny American bird being expelled from a little boy’s throat.

She picked up her son and ran for the door, cradling his head in the same way she’d done when he was a baby. She hurried downstairs — not too fast, just in case she fell and broke both of their necks — and made her way to the phone. She called an ambulance first, quietly amazed at how calmly she was able to handle the conversation.

She hung up the phone and pressed her fingers against Harry’s neck. There was a pulse; it was strong, regular. He wasn’t dead. That was good. It was something she could hang on to, a rope to cling to in the darkness, which was rising slowly from the floor like a thick mist to consume her.

Then she called Brendan, to tell him what was happening — even though she didn’t have a fucking clue what was happening. She needed him here, with her, not on some stupid wild goose chase with a couple of blokes who had never really been his friends, not since childhood, and perhaps not even then, because they’d all been too young and far too selfish to know what friendship really meant.

She punched his number into the phone and listened to the ringtone, holding her boy against her breathless chest and wondering if she still had the strength to speak.

It was only when she got the recorded message, saying that his phone could not be reached, that she began to cry.

AS THEY APPROACHED the Needle, Marty couldn’t help but think of a scene from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western about three criminals in search of Civil War treasure. The familiar theme tune filled his head; voices chanted, the warbling score sent a thrill — somewhere between delight and dread — through the channels of his body.

The Three Amigos were back in town, and this time they wouldn’t go down without a fight.

“What’s so funny?” Brendan stared at him, his brow creased and his eyebrows slanted.

“Nothing,” said Marty. “Just a daft thought, that’s all.”

What the hell am I doing here? he thought. How did they get me to agree to this? Two strangers in a bar, reminding me of old times I’d rather forget.