Gary McMahon - Silent Voices

He stared up at the tower block, feeling a strange sense of black-tinted nostalgia. The last time they’d all been here together, something monstrous had occurred. None of them could recall the details, but the act had spread a rancid shadow across the rest of their lives. It seemed melodramatic to think in those terms, but it was true. No other language could do the thought justice: there was nothing subtle about what had happened to them here, and he only wished that he could remember what it had been.

Or did he?

That was the big question, wasn’t it? Did he really want to know what had gone on inside those tall concrete walls? Was he so eager to find out what had been done to them, when the sturdy upright panels had been so readily shunted aside to reveal a dark grove of trees and whatever waited beyond them, its intentions darker still?

Even now, standing before the building, he was unable to answer his own questions.

The sides of the tower looked black in the odd afternoon light, as if they were covered in oil. The blackness had a metallic sheen, and it shimmered. The illusion did not last; it was gone in moments, but it was long enough for Marty to realise whatever they had come to confront knew they were here. His stomach lurched; the thing within him shifted slowly, deliberately, chafing up against his internal organs and rattling like a prisoner at the bars of his ribcage. He was convinced that he felt a tiny hand-foot clutching his liver, and his chest took another knock from the wrong side… the inside.

He clutched at his side, gritting his teeth against the pain.

Whatever Doc said, he was convinced that he was carrying around inside him some kind of cartoon demon, a hand-drawn phantom from his childhood, a monster that had leapt from the pages of a book he should never have been allowed to read.

“So,” said Simon. “Are we going to do this? Now, in broad daylight?”

Brendan nodded, quiet again.

“If this was a horror film, we’d wait till after dark before coming snooping around in a derelict tower block.”

Brendan giggled, but it didn’t sound quite right, like a pressure valve, a release of pent-up tension.

“Fuck it,” said Marty, tensing his body, trying to ignore the tenant inside his gut. “What have we got to lose?”

“Everything,” said Brendan. Now he was deadly serious; there was no hint of humour in his voice.

“Nothing,” said Simon, moving forward and fumbling with his keys as he approached the gate in the hoardings. “Nothing at all.” He waited a moment, looking up at the sky. Then he glanced back down at the ground, as if establishing his position in the universe. “This isn’t exactly going as I’d planned,” he said. “Not at all, if I’m honest.”

Marty tried not to sigh. He was growing impatient, but he didn’t want to let the others see. “How do you mean?”

Brendan placed his hands on the gate, as if trying to divine something of the atmosphere on the other side simply by touching it.

“Well,” said Simon, “I thought we’d have a few drinks, catch up on each other’s lives, and then slowly work our way up to this point.”

“Why waste time?” said Marty. “Now that we’re back together, it doesn’t feel like any time has passed. We agree on this, don’t we?”

Simon nodded. Brendan said nothing; just kept his silent vigil by the gate.

Marty rubbed his left cheek with his right hand. He felt the stubble rasping against his fingers. “It’s as if our lives got stuck in a groove when we were ten, and nothing really moved on. Yes, you have your wealth and businesses, and Brendan has his family, but despite these things, we were frozen inside. Our hearts stopped beating; the blood was stilled in our veins. I know I’m not exactly explaining this very well, but…”

“Yeah.” Simon closed his eyes. “Frozen… that’s a good way of putting it. We moved on, lived our lives, but everything inside us was frozen in place. Speaking for myself, it’s held me back in every relationship I ever had, made it so that I can barely relate to anyone in my life.”

“So why the fuck do we even need to mess about, to dance around this moment? Let’s just do it. We’re here now, anyway, so we’re all agreed. This is it; the time’s come to defrost.”

Even as he spoke, Marty felt his insides stirring as whatever monster he now carried within him responded to his words. He gritted his teeth, trying not to scream, and waited it out. Soon the movement died down, and eventually stopped. He thought this must be what it was like to be pregnant: to feel the existence of another inside the fragile envelope of your body.

“So we’re all agreed, then? We’re doing this now. Right now.” Brendan had turned around to face them. He looked ill. His eyes were bright and feverish.

Simon stepped forward, brandishing the keys. He unlocked the gate with a steady hand and stepped aside to let the others through. When they were all on the other side of the barrier, he locked the gate behind him. Marty felt that there was something final about the action. He was unable to shake the feeling that all of them might not be coming back out, and those who did make it would be changed in more ways than he could imagine.

The last time they’d all been here together, time itself had behaved strangely: they thought they’d been inside the Needle for only a short time, but when finally they emerged from its shadow an entire weekend had passed. He wished he’d taken the time to tell someone where he was going today, but then he remembered that he had no one to tell. His friends from the fight game were merely acquaintances, and the only other significant person in his life was Melanie, but he’d already cut his ties with her. He could never tell his grandmother; she would worry too much, even about something she did not understand.

There was nobody. He was truly alone. It was a sad indictment of his life that the only two people who cared where he was right now were here with him, and he had not spoken to either of them in twenty years before this day.

“So this is what it all comes down to,” said Brendan, suddenly, breaking into Marty’s thoughts as if he were attempting to echo them and add his own spin. “These last few days of tracking Marty down. It all comes down to this: three strangers standing outside an old, empty building.”

“No,” said Simon. “Not the last few days, the last twenty years. This is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for, but didn’t even realise. This is where we face down our fears.”

“You’re right,” said Marty. “Both of you. All we are is three strangers who were once, for a brief moment in another lifetime, friends. It’s taken us two decades to get back here, and we’ve had our own little adventures along the way. I’ve spent my time fighting. You, Simon, have spent yours in another kind of battle — but still fighting yourself, I’d guess, just the same as me. And Brendan. What about you?” He nodded towards Brendan, who was standing stiffly, as if awaiting some kind of verdict. “In many ways you were the best of us. You at least managed to have some kind of real life, and you’ve brought children into the world. You’re the part of us that worked; the part that matters. Simon and me, we represent all the other stuff: the shit that went bad.”

There was nothing else to say, nothing to add. The three of them stood there, renewing old bonds, waiting for some kind of energy to throb through their veins and pull them closer together.

Marty felt stronger than he ever had before in his life. But he also felt a weakness within him, a fracture that had always been there and that might yet prove to be his undoing. His hidden passenger — the fairytale nightmare hitching a ride in his belly — was reaching out, seeking that fissure, with the aim of making it wider and letting out whatever darkness it found there.