Silent Voices (36 page)

Harry was fine. The boy was sleeping soundly, oblivious to the concern he’d caused.

But she couldn’t stop checking on him; she’d been up there three times in the past hour and was, even now, turning to climb the stairs again. She grabbed the handrail and began to ascend, her mind floating ahead of her.
He’s okay
, she thought, not knowing if she meant Brendan or their son.
We’re all okay
.

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.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

A
S 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.

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.