Anything Can Be Dangerous (30 page)

I follow her gaze and wish I
hadn’t.

I see the shape, the thing in yet
another of these round cages. It’s smoking, charred almost black,
but here and there are patches of pink. A tuft or two of singed
hair at the top of what must have been its head. Its eyeballs have
melted, the liquid running down its cheeks, viscous and thick;
flesh pulled taut over teeth that gleam so brightly they could have
been used in a toothpaste commercial. This hunk of burnt flesh I’m
looking at is––
was
––a person.
That makes the stench even more pungent; just that bit more
sickening.

I notice the screaming has stopped. It
must have been coming from inside that cage as the flames did their
worst before petering out.

It feels like I’m watching the body
for hours, but it can’t be more than a minute.

Then, without any warning, the burnt
figure lurches forward. No screams this time––its vocal chords are
jelly––but its body rattles against the bars of the cage, which
swings, suspended above the ground (as we all are).

Flesh, and what’s left of the person’s
clothes, have stuck to the bottom of the cage, coming away from its
body like molten plastic and revealing more raw pinkness. It makes
only one last-ditch attempt for freedom before collapsing, never to
move again.

This time I really do throw up, seeing
stars again as the blindfold slips back over my eye.
Too late, I’ve seen it now… I can’t ever
forget.

When I pass out I barely notice the
transition––darkness replaced by darkness, black with
black.

But I still see that body, hanging. A
scorched mess that had once been human.

The ghosts of its screams following me
back now into the void.

Interlude:

Twenty Years Ago

This happened to me when I was ten;
still holding on to childhood for grim death, in no particular
hurry to be an adult.

I grew up on a council estate away
from the city––farms and fields within walking distance. The houses
were all uniform grey, there was a small park that the older kids
wrecked periodically, and the council failed to keep any of the
streets tidy. Old women gossiped over fences while young girls left
school and became baby-making machines so they could live off
benefits for the next twenty or thirty years.

Mum and Dad were still together back
then. She worked part-time in a bookies and he worked on the
busses. At family gatherings I’d sometimes hear my Uncle Jim
telling people Mum could have done so much better than Dad. “With
her looks, she could have had her pick.”

He was right about my Mum, though. She
was beautiful in a kind of film star way, all blonde hair and curls
like Marilyn Monroe or Jean Harlow, and even at that age she’d lost
none of the glamour. Sure, Dad was boring, but I like to think she
ended up with him because he was a kind man with a kind face. In
the end she did ‘do better’ as my Uncle would have called it,
running off with owner of the bookies. She ended up with money, but
was as miserable as sin. And, we suspected, the guy beat her. While
my Dad wallowed in a tiny flat, getting drunk until his liver just
gave up the ghost. But that’s another story, and long after this
one.

I first saw The Monster one Bank
Holiday. Dad was working overtime, but Mum had the day off. I was
an only child, so had to amuse myself a lot of the time. That day I
was getting under my mother’s feet while she was trying to watch
some musical on TV.

“
Christopher Edward
Warwick, do you have to make such a row!” she finally bawled. I
couldn’t really blame her: I’d turned the whole house into a
spaceship and was busy piloting it into the deeper reaches of the
Galaxy, battling one-eyed aliens with veiny skins.

She sent me out to play with the other
kids, but that wasn’t really my thing. I ended up wandering off to
explore what the locals called ‘The Cut’––I never understood why,
because it didn’t look like anyone had cut the grass down there in
centuries. Maybe it was because a pitiful excuse for a canal ran
the length of it like a wound. Here I could pretend that I was in
the jungle where giant snakes and lions lived, and down by the
water there were man-eating crocodiles (in actual fact you were
more likely to find used condoms and fag ends).

I didn’t go down there very often, not
many kids did, but on that day I wandered further than I meant
to––up a winding path to a small iron bridge crossing the canal.
There I played Pooh sticks, something I hadn’t done since I was six
or seven, dropping twigs in the water on one side of the bridge to
see which would come out first on the other side. Not much of a
game, but the snakes and lions appeared to be hiding that
day.

There were only a handful twigs lying
around, so when these were gone I went into the undergrowth to find
more. I hadn’t gone that far in when I found the den. It was
covered up with foliage; quite well hidden beneath the trees, a
hollowed out bit of green with earth for the floor and the remains
of a fire. It was empty. I figured it must have been the older kids
that had made it, looking for a private place to hang
out.

At that age caution always fell a
close second to curiosity, so I dropped the twigs and went inside.
There was a strange smell, a toilet smell. I was about to leave
when I spotted something towards the back, pages
scattered.

And a glimpse of something that, until
today, had been forbidden.

I crept further in, certain that the
older kids had been here because they’d left behind an Aladdin’s
Cave of porn. The magazines were screwed up, the pages creased––yet
the pictures of half naked women posing for the camera were a
revelation. At that age girls in my class were just pests, there to
torment, but this was different. These weren’t girls, they
were
women
, and they were
showing me parts of their bodies willingly, opening up as easily as
I was opening the pages.

I began to feel stirrings, a pleasant
sensation as I ogled the photos. Then something fell out of one of
the magazines. A piece of paper with handwritten scribblings all
over it. I bent and picked it up, but could barely make out the
spider scrawl. All except one phrase, written time and time again:
‘They watch, and they wait.’

I frowned, then checked more of the
magazines. I hadn’t gotten very far when I heard the snapping of
twigs I’d left in the entranceway. I spun and saw my monster. It
was big, hairy, and its skin was almost black. It wore an old
trenchcoat that strained tight at the shoulders. When it opened its
mouth to speak I saw rotting teeth inside. Drool spilled onto its
beard as it gargled, “Did
they
send you?”

I shook with terror. My erection
shrank away and I dropped the magazine, a couple more of the
handwritten sheets slipping out onto the floor. His wide, staring
eyes followed them down. He covered the distance between us easily,
grabbing hold of my arm––so hard I thought it might break. He
towered above me. “They did, didn’t they, boy.” It wasn’t a
question. His fetid breath almost caused me to pass out.

I shook my head, unable to get any
words out.

“
Yes. They’ve sent a little
spy.”

“
P-P-Please don’t hurt me,”
I spluttered.

He yanked my arm. “I’m not going
back!” he shouted. “You hear me…
Never
.”

I nodded. He seemed pleased that he’d
got through to me. Then he drew me in so close I could see the
insects living in his beard. “You go back, you tell them that,
boy,” he growled.

He let me go. I gaped, but suddenly my
natural survival instinct kicked in and I ran out of there. I
plunged through the undergrowth, catching my head on the branch of
a low-hanging tree. I fell, hard. Shaking my head, then casting a
glance over my shoulder, I got up and began running
again.

I felt the wetness at my temple, but
didn’t stop. I ran up that path, never looking back in case the
‘monster’ had decided to give chase.

I’m not going back…
Never…

When I got home my mother said, “For
God’s sake, Chris, whatever have you been doing?” She took me into
the kitchen, washed the cut on my head, then put some antiseptic on
it. When she asked me again what I’d done, whether it had happened
playing, all I could do was stare, opening and closing my
mouth.

“
Christopher Edward
Warwick,” she said a final time, “you tell me what happened, right
now.”

“
M-Monster… c-canal…” was
all I could say.

“
You and that blasted
imagination of yours,” she said. “Go to your room!”

When the truth emerged a day or so
later, she felt pretty bad. I heard that some of the older boys had
stumbled upon my monster and gave him a good kicking before telling
their parents, who then called the police. He’d gone by the time
they got there, but it was all around the estate about what had
happened: that some pervo nutter had been living rough down by the
bridge.

Mum hugged me when she when found out.
She never said anything, but she knew. Knew the monster had been
real.

I know better now––he wasn’t really a
monster at all. Just someone who knew the truth, and it had sent
him insane.

‘
They watch and wait’ he
had written.

They watch and wait.

Two

When I wake again, the blindfold is
gone.

I open my eyes and look around. The
bars are still there in front of me, I’m still shackled by the
hands and feet, but the bonds are looser, my hands apart. I can
move a little, maneuver myself up into a sitting position. I don’t
ache as much now, either. I wonder how much time has passed
since––

Then I remember. The person burnt
alive. It’s gone now, the cage empty, the body taken away while I
was unconscious.

“
Welcome back,” says the
man who’d told me to be quiet, hanging in his own cage like a
canary. He’s wearing what look like sweatpants and a top, the kind
of thing you’d find people dressed in at a country health
spa.

“
We thought you were out
for the count,” adds the woman who’d also spoken to me before.
She’s perhaps in her late twenties, with a slender frame––or what I
can see of it beneath the smock she’s wearing. Her dirty-blonde
hair is matted with sweat; looks like it hasn’t been washed in a
couple of weeks. “How do you feel?”

“
How… how do I
feel?
” I snap, a mixture of confusion
and anger.

The man throws me a vicious look.
“Christ, can’t you keep it down? I told you before.”

“
I’ll keep it down when
somebody tells me what the fuck’s going on,” I yell at him,
returning his glare with one of my own. I pull at the chains,
testing their length.

“
If you do that, they’ll
just make them tighter,” the woman warns.

“
Who will? And who did
that…” Words fail me so I simply point across at the empty space
where the charred body had once been.

“
You ask far too many
questions.” This comes from another speaker, his voice richer,
deeper. I turn and see yet another of the cages behind. In it an
olive-skinned man sits crossed-legged, dressed like the first guy:
in loose clothing. A prisoner’s outfit.

“
What’s that supposed to
mean? Who the fuck are you?”

“
That’s two more,” he
says.

I make to get up, about to grip the
bars of the cage.

“
I wouldn’t, if I were
you,” the olive-skinned man tells me.

“
Well you’re not m––” Too
late I see the wire curled around the bars, and no sooner have I
touched the metal than I feel the electric shock. It ripples
through my body, not strong enough to put me out again, but enough
to blister my hands. “Shit!”

Is that what happened to
the person in the cage in front?
I wonder.
Did someone just leave the current on––running
along the bottom as well––long enough to set fire to the poor sod
inside?

“
I did warn you,” says the
man, his dark brown, almost black, eyes fixed on me.

As I rub at my palms I take in the
room: rectangular, the walls smooth. There’s a red tinge to the
lights, giving the space the look of a photographic dark room.
Nothing to give away a location. Just a single door.

“
Where am I?”

“
Another question,” comes
the reply from my neighbor.

“
What do you expect, Kavi?”
says the woman. “He’s bound to be a little disorientated at first.
We all were.”

“
And do we know any more
now than we did then?” asks the man she named. Nobody rushes to
answer.

Instead the woman introduces herself
to me. “I’m Jane,” she says, touching her chest, then thumbs over
at the other man. “That’s Phil.”

“
Philip Hall,” he announces
proudly, like it means something.

I shrug. “Chris. Chris
Warwick.”