Gary McMahon - Silent Voices

They had acted together . As a single unit… three separate parts, joining together to form a whole.

That was important to remember.

And that was all. He could recall nothing more. He probably never would. But at least, for now, he had his horror to hold — the sordid excuse for a life that he’d led could be traced back to an actual event, rather than the scattered fragments of shattered memory.

“Look.” Marty was pointing with one hand while he gripped his side with the other. He seemed to be in pain. His face was pale, his mouth twisted into something that came as close to a snarl as Simon had ever seen on a human being.

“It’s come back. It still wants us…” Simon watched as a great shadow roiled in the space beyond the trees, moving away from them like a mobile stain across the land. “Let’s go and give it what it wants.”

Simon led the way out of the grove of ancient oaks and into an open area. The sun hung miles above them, as still as a picture, and the hills rolled away to other patches of woodland, most of them burned and blasted. To the west, across a vale of green and grey, he could see the ruins of some kind of city. Cradled between two hills, in a shallow valley, the blackened buildings waited like a ghost of shelter. “What the hell is this place?”

It was all from his dream: a possible future, where everything was ruined.

Brendan turned in a slow circle, surveying their surroundings. “I don’t know, but we’ve been here before. This land — it knows us. It can sense that we’re here. Can’t you feel it?”

“Yes,” said Marty, still clutching his side. “It feels like we never really left.”

Simon nodded. The truth of his friend’s words dug deep, piercing his heart; and in a way, they never had left this place, not really. All they’d done was peek outside the boundaries of a prison and pretend that their lives were part of another world, a place where people killed each other for money, fucked each other for company, and bobbed and weaved like fighters inside a ring, never stopping, not even pausing for breath before they reached the grave.

Ahead of them, at the base of the slope on top of which they stood, the earth began to heave. Above them, the sky turned dark, as if a huge shadow was passing above them.

Simon looked up, and what he saw there scared him more than anything else he’d seen since returning to the Grove. The sky was filled with hummingbirds. There were millions of them, just hanging there, hovering in the air about a mile above the three men, waiting for something to happen. They stretched out like a patterned sheet, covering the sky for mile upon mile — so far, in fact, that he could barely see the blue edges.

This had happened twenty years ago, too. He was certain.

“What do they want?” Brendan’s voice was tiny; he sounded like a child.

“I think they want to watch us. Or maybe watch o ver us.”

There were no sounds other than those caused by the men.

The air was still.

The birds were silent.

Even that incessant churning of the earth was soundless, like a film clip with the volume set to mute. They all turned to watch the chaos of soil, shifting and turning as if a huge invisible shovel were digging there. Something erupted from the muddy surface, its segmented back breaking through the soft crust and rolling like the body of a withered serpent. Its hide was dark and wet, yet covered with a fine mesh, like old teabags. There were bright yellow boils along the ridge of its spine, and as it lurched upwards and forwards, thrusting itself out of the hole in the earth, Simon thought that he saw what might have been a face amid the mass of waste that had been compressed to form its long, thick neck. Then he realised that it was all neck. Like a snake, or an old-fashioned image of a sea monster, it arched its body and slammed back into the earth, sending showers of mulch flying.

The creature did not move any closer. It kept its distance, toying with them from afar, coy as a lover. Simon had seen this thing before. He knew what it was called, if not what it was.

He had seen it in his dream.

“The Underthing,” he said. “That’s it. That’s the Underthing. This time it’s showing itself.”

He glanced up, at the hummingbird sky, and saw that every tiny beak, every black eye, was turned in their direction. Whatever was happening here, it was larger than their experience. This meeting signalled a stage in the evolution of Loculus, and he was too dim, or too inconsequential, to be given insight into what form it might take.

“This isn’t how I had it planned…” He turned to the others, his eyes moist, his mouth open. “It’s not what I expected.”

A loud clicking sound broke the silence, splitting the air and causing the birds above them to shiver. It was the call of Captain Clickety, the damned and damning song of their childhood nightmares. If the vision of waste and corruption before them was the Underthing, then the avatar, the tentacle they’d named Clickety, was now to make an appearance in the endgame that was unfolding around them.

“He’s coming now. The Plague Doctor. Captain Clickety. He’s here.” Hailey stood beside them, her voice a whisper.

Simon wasn’t sure where she’d come from, but he felt glad that she was here, if only for moral support. Her wings were folded down, plastered to her back like a weird cloak. Her hair was as black as a raven’s wing; her leafy eyes were solemn. “The Underthing won’t come near you… he’s afraid. He can’t touch you, because if he does, he’ll fall apart. So much spiritual pollution can only hold itself together, in one piece, if it isn’t subject to human contact. It’s fragile, like an eggshell; too much pressure and it will break. That’s why it always sends in an avatar to do its dirty work.”

Pressure … the thought filled Simon’s head, as if the space there had been waiting to enclose that one word.

Pressure…

Pushing…

Wasn’t that the one thing he was best at — pushing, applying pressure? He’d done it all his life, to get what he wanted, and now he was faced with a real test of his talent. If he could push this thing, coerce it into doing his bidding, he might be able to save them all. The past would be shut out; the darkness would lift; the hummingbirds would move on and the sky would clear, letting back in the sun.

It was time to push.

BRENDAN COULD FEEL his unnamed brother on his back, like an unwanted passenger. The face that had haunted him from the inside without him even knowing, the familiar features he had never even laid eyes on until yesterday, was speaking to him silently. He could feel the lips moving between his shoulder blades, the frown forming on its brow, the diseased cheeks puffing in and out as they sucked at the air of this place.

He reached behind him and tried to slap at the face through his clothing, but it did no good. He grasped at his back, attempting to still those lips, to stop that unforgiving toothless mouth from moving.

But the face — the terrible face formed of ruined, besmirched flesh — mocked him; it taunted him with one word, repeated over and over again:

Loculus.

He could feel the word forming on the lips of his back, tearing from his own rancid flesh, and almost hear it spoken aloud inside his mind. His brother, his never-lived, never-really-died twin, was chanting the word like a prayer.

“No,” he whispered, “Stop it.” He grabbed a handful of the material of his jacket and pulled; he felt the face laughing. He reached behind and battered at the top of his spine, hurting himself. He beat at the edge of the face, hitting, slapping, and punching.