Gary McMahon - Silent Voices

The light flickered through the gaps in the greenery. The shape — the figure, because that’s surely what it was — moved at the periphery of his vision, more slowly this time, as if it wanted to be seen.

“What is that?” Simon moved a couple of paces to his left and raised his hand. The green light dappled his skin. “There’s somebody there.”

Brendan moved, too: he turned and faced the two of them. “It’s a girl,” he said, his face reflecting green. “It’s the girl. It’s Hailey.”

The space in which they stood seemed to surge and swell, as if the revelation had triggered some kind of response. The area grew larger, its boundaries pushed away to allow them more room to manoeuvre. The darkness was forced back where it could not reach them.

The girl’s face manifested in the leaves, becoming clearer as Marty stared. It was as if her features were forming from the vegetation, her eyes and nose, her small, curved mouth, her hair, all coming together organically from the life around her. She was smiling. Her eyes were green, like tiny round leaves.

“Hello again,” said Simon. His hand — still raised — hovered in the air like a bird: a pale, pink hummingbird.

The girl’s smile grew wider.

“It’s been a long time.” Simon sounded relaxed. It seemed that he was taking all this in his stride, simply accepting the weirdness in a way that Marty could only envy. He clutched at his side. His passenger was moving again, straining at the envelope of his skin.

“Hello, boys,” said the girl. Her voice held the traces of a faint buzzing sound. Again, Marty thought about the sound of hummingbird wings — a light rasping quality which was not at all unpleasant. He’d definitely heard that voice before; the same words had come from her mouth twenty years ago, when she’d appeared at their side, holding back the darkness just as she was doing now, but by less sophisticated means.

“What are we supposed to do?” Marty said.

“I’m afraid you’re stuck there.” She smiled again.

“Stuck where? Where exactly are we?” Brendan said.

“Where you are isn’t where I am. I’m here on one side, and you’re on the other. But the place you’re standing is in between. It’s not one place or another. It’s no place, really.” She moved backwards, and only then did Marty realise that the soft buzzing sound was not in her voice: it came from her wings. The girl — Hailey — was hovering in place on oversized hummingbird wings, but they were the same colour and texture as the trees behind her.

“How can we get where you are? We have business over there, you see.” Again Simon’s voice was calm; he must have detached himself from the moment in order to deal with the situation.

“You need a doorway. The last time, you were the doorway — all three of you. Your hurt and your pain, the fact that you all yearned for something more than what you had, something better, allowed you to set foot here.” She was still smiling. It was beautiful. “But that doesn’t work this time. It needs something more.”

“And where is ‘here’?”

She shook her head. “Oh, where I am has many names. I suppose the best way to explain is to tell you a little story.” She moved closer towards them, away from the screen of trees — which, Marty now realised, was thin, only two-dimensional. “Are you all listening?”

Marty nodded. His friends did not speak, so he assumed they’d done the same. They were all hypnotised by this beautiful girl, and her wondrous smile, and her amazing wings…

“Listen,” she said. Then she told them her tale:

“When the first man dreamed, this place was born. It has no name, yet mankind has called it many things. We who dwell here call it Loculus — ‘little place’. There are no other places, not really. There is only here.

“Loculus. The little place.

“This place is a container for dreams, a burial niche for them when they have nowhere else to go. Whenever you have a dream, or an idea, and nothing comes of it, that energy comes here. All energy is neutral in Loculus, and for a long time a sense of balance was achieved. Then human dreams turned sour; as Man evolved, became stronger, his dreams turned grander, and more foolish, and more easily spoiled. A lot of them went sour, like a vat of milk left out in the sun.”

Marty felt a small, empty part of him fill up with this knowledge. He knew that the girl’s story was true.

“Who, or what, is the Underthing?” His mouth was still dry, but he made himself heard. He had to know. “Is it Captain Clickety?”

The girl’s smile was sadder now; it contained a capacity for misery.

“All energy is neutral in Loculus, and for a long time balance was achieved.” Her smile faltered, fell away. “Then human dreams turned bad; as Man evolved, became stronger, his dreams turned sour. Pollution entered this place; all this became tainted.” She hovered backwards, raising her arms. “That’s what the Underthing represents. He is the result of that pollution.

“Loculus is Heaven to some and Hell to others; freedom to one, a prison cell to another. It is nothing and it is everything.

“The Underthing is, in many ways, a prisoner of paradise. He wants to escape to the hell of the world in which you men live — a world I used to know. Loculus is held together by balance, two halves operating as a whole. The Underthing collects twins, clutching them to him in the hope that he can upset the balance — separate the two halves, split the two worlds and sneak in through the gaps. Not many twins are born in the Grove. In here, in Loculus, if there is the possibility of a set being conceived, he smells it through the fabric of the place, and he is drawn to it.”

Twins.

Marty glanced at Brendan, who had clearly come to his own conclusions.

“He wanted me all along… because of the twins. He knew I could have twins. He smelled them on me when I was ten years old…” Brendan was crying. Tears streaked his long, pale face.

Hailey spoke again, through the trees: “Captain Clickety is an avatar. The Underthing cannot leave this place, so he sends out tendrils. Once there was a man who tried to enter Loculus… a plague doctor, a man who hid his lusts behind the mask of medicine. The Underthing uses him occasionally, to walk abroad out there, in the Concrete Grove. Like a tentacle reaching for something shiny, Captain Clickety goes out looking for ways to upset the balance.”

“How do we get over there?” said Simon. “How do we get into this ‘Loculus’? You mentioned that before, when we were kids, we were doorways. What about now?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid that time is gone. This time I have sent you a new doorway. I can’t do anything more. Last time I made myself known to the Underthing, and he’s been aware of my presence ever since. I have no special power. I’m just a mediator — all I can do is show you the way to go.”

At that moment something moved to Marty’s right. He spun around, adopting a defensive stance — guard up, covering his face, feet pointing forward, knees bent — and saw a small, thin man with a white mask over his face walk out of the tree-screen.

“This,” said Hailey, “is Banjo. He is your doorway. It’s why he’s here, what has kept him alive. He has this one job to do before he can be free of his nagging body and escape the demands of the world.”

Banjo stood there, in his stained clothes, his white mask — which Marty now saw was made of bandages — shockingly bright under the strange, diffuse green light.

“Go ahead, Banjo.” Hailey’s voice had adopted a gentle, motherly tone. “You know what to do.”

Banjo reached up and took hold of a loose flap of bandage, and then he proceeded to unwind the wrappings, turning the bandages round and round his head and gathering them in his fist. He kept on going, revealing yet more layers of white, until finally he uncovered what was hidden beneath.