chapter FOURTEEN
ERIK SAT ON a dining chair and stared at the cat box. He’d found it in the lock-up garage and used it to transport the... the what? That was the big question, wasn’t it? Just what the hell did he have in there anyway? What the f*ck kind of creature had those kids found and brought to him?
When Hacky had gone outside and left Erik alone in front of the glass reptile tank, he’d taken a while to summon his courage. Erik was a brave man, sometimes insanely courageous when forced into a tight situation. He feared nobody. There had been times in his long and eventful life when he’d stood and fought opponents twice his size, or had a go when he’d been outnumbered and backed into a corner. He never ran; never turned his back on a fight. It simply wasn’t in his nature to back down and walk away. But in that lock-up garage, crouching there in the shadows and staring into the glass tank, he’d never felt so much like running.
Erik was miles outside of his comfort zone on this one; his fighting distance had narrowed to almost nothing. He had no frame of reference whatsoever for the thing that had been waiting inside that tank. It was alien, from outside his realm of knowledge. He had no idea how he should even react to its existence.
There was a sound from the cat box; a low, trembling exhalation. He tried to tell himself that it was an animal noise – a mewling or a snuffling, something like that. But it wasn’t. He knew it wasn’t. The sound was... well, it was much too human to be labelled in such a way. The sound, he admitted to himself, was a voice.
“Hungry.”
It had been saying the same thing since he’d brought it back here, over and over again.
“Hungry.”
Erik stood and walked across the room. He waited at the low coffee table upon which he’d placed the battered cat box. Something moved again inside. He heard the sound of tiny nails – fingernails – scratching against the plastic walls of the box.
“Monty?” Even as he said the name of his friend, he had trouble connecting it to the thing in the cat box. He didn’t want to admit this, even to himself, but he knew what was inside that box. “Is it you, mate?” This couldn’t be real; none of it was happening.
But it was happening. He was here, enduring it. This was not a dream. It was reality – or at least what passed for it in these uncertain days.
He waited to hear the same response he’d been getting for the past half an hour.
“Hungry.”
He dipped into a low crouch, his hamstrings complaining as he lowered himself towards the floor. He peered at the slats in the box, glimpsing slow movement between them.
“F*cking hell, Monty...”
He reached out and flipped open the cat box. The lid was on top, so he had to come up out of his crouch to look inside.
The thing... Monty... Monty Bright... that’s what it was, who it was: it was his old sparring partner.
It was lying on its back looking up at the ceiling; the smooth skin of its small, shiny face caught the light. He remembered Monty as a big man, a hard man. He’d taken all kinds of shit to pump up his muscles, and worked out manically at his own gym, lifting weights and doing a lot of heavy bag work. He’d been short but huge; his wide build had been that of a battler.
Now he was small and vulnerable, like a baby, a damaged – or deformed – infant.
Monty’s face was more or less the same as he remembered. It was recognisable, at least, and that was something he could hang on to. Same eyes; same blunt nose; same round head with the hair shaved off. The eyes, in fact, were identical to the way they always had been: clear and intelligent, the eyes of a thinker rather than a brawler.
The rest of Monty was unrecognisable.
The fire at Monty’s gym had been bad, and everyone assumed that the owner had died in the blaze. But surely fire couldn’t do this to a person? Fire blackened and burned; it charred and cooked the meat on the bones. It didn’t... it didn’t shrivel a victim down to a tiny, mutated replica of themselves.
The thing’s body looked as if it had been compressed somehow, crushed and shortened and reduced by the application of phenomenal pressure. Erik remembered how, as a child, he’d put plastic crisp packets in the oven and within minutes of enduring the intense heat, they’d come out shrunk to a fraction of their original size. The same thing had happened to his old friend: the man’s physique had more or less kept its natural proportions, but they’d been reduced by something like a factor of twenty.
Certain physical changes had also occurred.
The naked little body, a solid chunk of muscle, had grown several additional appendages. Monty had developed extra limbs, but ones that didn’t look human. There were what Erik could only describe as tentacles sticking out of his sides, sprouting from the area directly under the armpits and forming a row down the sides of his ribcage. A clawed hand had erupted from his navel, and even as Erik watched it grasped weakly, clutching at the air, the knuckles popping and cracking. There were two toothless mouths in place of nipples; blinking eyes were clustered across his stomach below the ribcage.
This was Monty represented as a monster. He’d become what so many people had thought he was anyway: ugly, monstrous, a vision from a nightmare. The vile thoughts he’d kept locked up inside, the deeds he’d committed, had all manifested upon his flesh, chewing it up, destroying it and remoulding it into another shape entirely. Monty had become the sum of his evils, he had transformed into a manifestation of his deeds.
“Hungry.”
Erik looked at Monty Bright’s small, pink babyish face. The mouth was open. A small, dark tongue darted between the lips, licked the top one, and then was sucked back inside. The lips smacked together, making a repellent sound.
“What... what can I get you? What the hell do you eat?”
What happened to you? What made you like this?
Maybe if he fed Monty, and built up his strength, Monty would tell him what had happened to make him transform into such a strange being. Perhaps he’d start saying something other than that one damned word.
And so he did:
“Blood.”
Of course: there it was. Because monsters didn’t eat tinned tuna, or fish and chips, did they? They didn’t sit down to a nice plate of mince and tatties. They drank blood, like ghouls or vampires.
Erik paused for a moment to appreciate the fact that he was taking all of this in his stride. He should be raving; his mind should have snapped. But he’d seen enough strange things in the Grove during his lifetime to realise that what he saw, what he felt, what he experienced with his normal, everyday senses, was not everything. There were other sights, other experiences, that lay hidden; and sometimes, when the time was right, they popped up into the light and made themselves visible. These things lived inside the black hole, and sometimes they managed to climb out.
This was one of those times.
“Blood,” said Monty again.
“Yeah... yeah, I know. It would be, wouldn’t it?”
Erik had killed two men in his life. The first time had been in the service of his country, when he slit an enemy soldier’s throat during a night-time assault on Goose Green, during the Falklands conflict. He had not been a young man, even then: he was older and wiser than most of his fellow soldiers by several years. It was near the end of his time in the armed forces, and he always thought of it as his final battle.
He’d loved the sound of the knife sliding through meat, hitting the more solid matter of the larynx, followed by the scraping sound as the metal clipped the edge of the hyoid bone. The soft spurt of blood, like a wordless whisper; the gentle sigh of a last breath escaping through the slit he’d made in the man’s body. Silence... beautiful, blissful silence.
The second time had been during an organised fight in a warehouse in Gateshead, when a drug dealer had been trying to muscle in on Erik’s turf. Erik had never liked drugs, but he did like to control how much came into and out of the area. He allowed people like Monty Bright to buy and sell. He didn’t allow no-mark arseholes from across the water to come here and set up their own supply chains.
So he’d seen to it that the chav – who went by the name of Clancy Beevers – got to hear about a challenge. They’d met at three o’clock in the morning, shirtless, no weapons: old school. Erik had beaten the other man to death in less than five minutes. They’d chopped up the body and fed it to pigs owned by a man who’d always claimed to be Erik’s second cousin, despite a lack of familial evidence. This man had proved useful on many occasions, so Erik never disputed the claims to kinship. He’d felt an almost erotic charge as he watched three sturdy porkers fighting over the remains of the man’s head.
So, yes, he’d killed before. He’d killed before, and if he was honest, he’d have to say he liked it.
But surely that was something he should only do if everything else failed? Once a man got into the habit of killing, little else would fill the gap that appeared inside him. He’d seen it happen before, with soldiers mostly, but also a couple of times in civilian life. Murder carved holes in the soul, and the only thing that would close them – although temporarily – was more murder.
He shook his head, closed his eyes. His thoughts felt strange, as if they were being massaged, guided. They were his thoughts, of course, but they were much more intense than they should be.
His head swam. His brain twitched. Or that’s how it felt: like the grey matter was flinching away from something, a stark reality that he couldn’t face.
He walked into the kitchen and found the cat sitting near the back door, washing its paws. Its name was Cecil. He’d never liked the cat, and had inherited the thing from an ex-girlfriend who had stolen it from one of her old boyfriends as part of some oddball revenge plot. The animal had hung around when the woman left. Erik fed it and didn’t mind that it slept somewhere around the house, but he never gave it any attention. It was as if he’d been keeping the animal for a situation like this one.
He bent over and picked up the cat by the loose flesh at the back of its neck. He slammed it into the large farmhouse sink, stunning the thing as its head smacked against the edge of the draining board.
He twisted the cat’s neck, snapping the bones. It was a humane death.
He lifted the cat’s body level with his face and stared into its flat, dead eyes. He felt nothing. His heart rate had not even increased.
He slid out a butcher knife from the wooden knife block on the worktop next to the cooker and returned to the living room. He set down the knife and the corpse and then went back to the kitchen, looking for a suitably large stainless steel bowl. When he found one, he carried it through and set it down on the floor. After a moment’s pause, he went through into the hall and opened the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs, where he kept assorted odds and ends. He raked through the contents and found a box full of old folded plastic sheets, which he’d used to cover his furniture the last time he painted the living room walls. He selected one of the sheets and took it through into the living room, where he laid it out on the floor.
He picked up the corpse and the knife. Kneeling, he held the dead cat over the stainless steel bowl and drew the blade across its soft, furry throat. He held the corpse upside down over the bowl and watched the blood at first pour, and then slow down to a drip, as it filled the receptacle. It took a long time, because the heart wasn’t pumping.
When he had enough blood he carried the bowl over to the coffee table.
“How the f*ck do I do this?”
He took the bowl back to the sheet and then returned to the cat box. Gritting his teeth, he picked up Monty Bright and carried him over to the bowl. His skin was thick, like rubber, yet it was also strangely smooth. It felt like a diving suit.
“Blood, blood, blood...”
“Don’t worry. It’s coming.” He cradled Monty like a baby and managed to manoeuvre him so that his face was near the blood in the bowl. He kept a tight grip on the squirming little body and pushed the face down towards the thick red fluid.
Monty lapped at the blood, his thick tongue making a wet sound as it flicked in and out of the liquid.
“That’s good... that’s better.”
Then Monty began to struggle. He was lifting his head away from the blood and making an odd wailing sound, exactly like a testy baby refusing its food.
“What the f*ck’s wrong? It’s blood...”
“Blood, blood, blood...”
Erik set down Monty on the plastic sheet. His chin was thick with cat blood, and he was spitting out whatever meagre amount he’d managed to take into his mouth.
Erik realised his mistake instantly. “It’s the wrong kind of blood, isn’t it?”
Without giving too much thought to what he was doing, Erik reached for the knife, wiped it on the plastic sheet, rested the blade against the palm of his left hand, and slashed lightly. He stared at the cut, wondering how it had got there. He’d felt nothing. He was empty, nothing but a puppet, a plaything for monsters.
Monty stopped struggling. His intelligent eyes widened.
Erik pressed the wound to Monty’s mouth and let him drink.
He realised then that he would be required to kill a third human being. The act itself held no terror for him, but the motivation behind the deed was horrific. He watched as Monty lapped at his hand, and when he pulled away the meal, Monty tried to lift his head towards the dripping blood. His mouth opened and closed like that of a baby bird. He had no teeth. The gums were purple and swollen. The suckered limbs along his sides writhed, a sordid octopus-like motion.
Erik got up and grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen, which he wrapped around his hand to staunch the blood flow. The cut wasn’t deep; it would heal quickly.
When he returned to the lounge, Monty was face down on the plastic sheet. His arms and legs, the tentacles and other appendages, were flailing, making rustling sounds against the sheet. He was licking up the spilled drops of blood and laughing, gurgling, expressing undiluted pleasure.
Erik knelt down and turned Monty over onto his back. The mouths on his chest were open and stained red. He stared at Monty’s face. It looked fuller, the cheeks fatter than before. The skin looked less pale, as if his natural colour was returning. He was smiling.
“Okay,” said Erik. “I get it now.”
His head felt as if it were filled with foam; something was burrowing inside.
Monty cocked his head to one side. “Erik?” The voice sounded stronger, less childlike, and more recognisable as that of the real Monty Bright. Awareness dawned in his eyes.
“Yes, Monty, it’s Erik.”
“I need more.” His eyes flickered shut. He was exhausted. The act of feeding had worn him out.
Erik closed his eyes for a second, and then picked up Monty and returned him to the cat box. “I know you do,” he said, as he closed the lid. “And I know exactly where to get it.”
He went upstairs to his office and sat at his desk. He stared at the screen saver on his computer – a black and white photo of Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank squaring up in the ring. He’d sparred with Benn before the man was famous. Erik had once knocked him flat out in the first round. It was a good memory, one that helped get him through some tough times when he began to doubt his own strength. Times like now, like this.
He picked up the phone and dialled a number, waited for the call to be answered. It didn’t take long. Whatever he’d felt inside his head was fainter now, but it was still there, waiting.
“Erik.”
“I need to see you, Hacky.” He stared at the picture of the two proud fighters in the ring, doing exactly what was required to get the job done. No messing around. “Come out to the old country house tonight, at eight o’clock. You know the place. Don’t tell any f*cker where you’re going or who you’re seeing. If you do, and I find out, you won’t get paid. You will get hurt, though.”
“Paid?”
“Yeah. I have an important job for you. We’re talking big money, son. More than you’ve ever seen before.” He raised his eyes to the wall, examined the framed painting of a young Cassius Clay. “Consider this a test. If you do well, I’ll push you up the ranks, and give you a proper role in my organisation.”
“You can trust me, Erik. Always.”
“I know I can, marra. That’s why I called you, and not one of the others.” He knew from experience that Hacky would keep his mouth shut. The kid was too afraid to disobey a direct order, and he liked money too much to even risk the chance of losing out. These scumbag estate kids were all the same: they’d do anything for cash, sell their own mother to climb up the criminal ladder and catch a glimpse of the big bucks.
“Meet me at the Barn. I’ll be waiting inside for you.”
“Is it... is it about the monster? That thing we found?”
“Sort of, marra. I’ll tell you what you need to know tonight. Until then, lay low and don’t speak to anyone. Make excuses; tell your mates you’re ill and won’t be seeing them for a few days. Give your girlfriend the elbow. Whatever. Just make yourself available to me, and only me. We have a job to do.”
“Okay. That’s easy. Am I going away, then?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes you are. Just for a little while. I’ll see you at eight, marra.” An idea occurred to him. “Bring a bag packed for a few nights. You won’t need much where you’re going; just the basic essentials.” It wasn’t a great plan, but it might fool people into thinking Hacky had gone on a journey.
He hung up the phone, feeling nothing. Nothing at all.
Back downstairs. Monty was sleeping inside the cat box. His eyes were closed, his chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Erik felt the same stirring inside his skull. Monty was doing something to him – or rather, the proximity to Monty was making something happen. It was like being in the presence of an electrical current. His skin tingled. His mind flexed, like a muscle that hadn’t been used for a long time.
Calmly, he sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and watched Monty sleep.