chapter TWENTY-FOUR
HE SHOULD HAVE come here earlier, right at the start. This was where it all began, at least for the Pollack family. It was where they had lived with their ghost, and where they had finally given in to the pressure it had brought them.
This was where he’d been raised... perhaps even where he’d been born.
He’d tried to get to Abby’s house first, to ask her if she’d come along with him to the Needle. But the road had been blocked: police tape and official vehicles, TV news vans and spectators. There was something going on, and it looked to him as if Abby might be in trouble. It didn’t take a genius to realise that her ex was involved – that f*cking gangster Erik Best. He hoped that Abby got out of it in one piece. The last thing he wanted was to go to her funeral.
He stood outside the main entrance to the tower, looking up at the building. It loomed above the construction hoardings, a battered monument to man’s failures. The sky was dark around its apex, as if storm clouds were concentrated there, drawn to it by strange energies. Small birds hovered outside the upper floor windows, making dark patterns against the charcoal sky.
“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m home.”
Home...
He knew the truth now. He had always known it, deep down inside, where he could never quite reach the information. Marc was the baby that he’d read about in Harry Rose’s notebook. He’d come here looking for a story to write up, and had instead found his own lost plot strands, the loose threads of his existence.
He was the baby; the third Pollack child, the only one to have survived the unknown horrors the family had endured here, inside the Needle.
There were no memories of ever having lived here, just a large blank spot, as if someone had wiped that part of his brain clean. His earliest childhood memories were of the car crash that had killed his parents, and then of Uncle Mike.
He’d left Uncle Mike as soon as he was old enough to look after himself, gone to University to study journalism, blotting out his fractured childhood, fabricating new memories to smother the ones that didn’t exist anyway. He’d been successful, until now. Harry Rose’s notebook had opened up a crack in his mind, allowing images to seep out: a bare room with a crib, an uncarpeted floor, two dirty-faced young children, a man with a beak for a face... and there was nothing more, just the grubby taste of fear at the back of his throat.
“It’s me,” he said, confirming the fact, trying to make it stick. “I’m the baby... I was there, in the flat. I was haunted.” And in many ways, he still was: haunted by the past that he could not remember, and by the screams of the siblings he had never known. Little Jack and Daisy-like-a-flower; the twin sibling who had never lived: he detected a trace memory of fondness for his brother and sister – much in the same way that he loved the characters in all the best books he’d read as a child.
Of his parents, if indeed that’s what they had been, there was no clue.
Then, as the cracks opened slightly wider, he had a glimpse of something else: a man and a woman, dressed in dark robes, kneeling beside a television set draped with a black cloth. Lying on the cloth was what looked like a hen or a chicken, but it was covered in blood. The man and the woman were chanting, rocking back and forth, and the shadows around them looked alive, not like shadows at all...
There was nothing more, just that single snapshot, like an isolated scene from a film.
They tried to give me to Captain Clickety.
The thought was like a knife through his heart. It could not be denied. It came with the image; a nice little package, all wrapped up in despair. He knew it was true – he felt it. His parents had tried to sacrifice him, as part of a deal to protect the twins. But something had gone wrong. Instead of him being taken, and the man and the woman rewarded with whatever it was they sought, the entire deal had fallen through. The ghost had left them... but it had taken with it something vital that he and the twins were unable to live without. Their souls, their life-force... whatever it was that made them who they were.
He didn’t think he’d ever find out what had soured the sacrifice, but none of that mattered now. His book would never be written, because he was a vital component in the plot. There was no way that he could write a story that was still happening, with no real ending in sight. He was a reporter, not a novelist; he dealt in cold, hard facts, not blood-hot fiction.
There was a section of hoarding that had either blown down in a wind or been vandalised. Marc made his way over to the area, keeping an eye out to make sure that he wasn’t seen. He had no idea who might be hanging around out here, but he didn’t want to be disturbed.
The fallen section was easy to climb over. He grabbed hold of a timber upright, hauled himself on top of the fence-like structure, and leapt nimbly over to the other side. As he did so, a strange sensation passed through him: it was like a cold breeze stirring up his insides, creating a chill at the pit of his stomach.
Don’t be so stupid, he thought, brushing down his trousers and walking towards the main entrance.
The double doors were open. He was expected. He paused outside, wondering if this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Who the hell had opened up the place, and why had they done so? Was this some kind of trap, or were there perhaps villains waiting inside, ready to mug him and give him a beating? Perhaps there was nothing at all supernatural about this situation, and he was simply walking into an empty building where a group of drugged-up maniacs would hurt him.
Why had he been so quick to believe that there was more to this situation than reality? He’d never believed in ghosts. He even questioned the motivation behind his quest for the truth about the Northumberland Poltergeist... a quest that, if he was honest, he’d never taken too seriously. For instance, this was the first time he’d been to see the building where it all happened. He’d had no idea about the baby–
(I’m the baby)
–until the spirit of Harry Rose had been forced to stick the notebook in front of his eyes.
He was an idiot; he had no clue what he was doing. He never had done.
But still he pushed wide the doors and stepped inside, crossing over the threshold from one story to another; one reality to the next. His skin seemed to quiver on the bone. His head was filled with the sound of humming.
The foyer was filled with hummingbirds, but the sound was inside his skull, not out here in the real world. The birds were motionless. There were hundreds of them, hovering silently in the air, perched on windowsills and standing on the floor. They all watched him with their tiny beady eyes. They were like windup toys; there was a strange, innocent beauty to them that both scared him and calmed his nerves.
“I’m coming in,” he whispered. The birds gave no response. They didn’t move.
Carefully, he made his way across the foyer, watching where he placed his feet in case he stood on one of the small birds. He thought about that old Hitchcock film: the final scene, with Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren making their way through a crowd of similarly silent and watchful avian antagonists. It was eerie. There was a sense of calm, but beneath that there was the suggestion of frantic movement, almost panic.
He moved slowly towards the stairwell and out of the foyer. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and took a moment to catch his breath. He’d not been breathing that entire time as he crossed the foyer, walking among the hummingbirds. His mouth was dry; his throat ached.
After a short while, he continued up the staircase, holding on to the handrail as he climbed. The steps were filthy; the stairwell smelled of old piss mingled with the coppery hint of blood. He didn’t want to be here but he was unable to turn around and leave. He had to follow wherever the story – his story, now – led him. There was no other option.
The flat was on the top floor. He remembered, even though he had no memories of ever having been there. He climbed slowly, reluctantly, but with a sense of purpose. It didn’t take him long to get there, but during the short climb it seemed that the seasons had changed; the world had turned, everything had altered subtly. When he stood on the top floor, bathed in sweat, it was as if he’d stepped into another place, perhaps a country whose borders messily intersected his own version of reality.
“I’m here. I’m home.”
The building was silent. The rooms were empty. There was nobody else here, just him... him and the birds.
Every door but one on the top floor was shut. The only one that was open belonged to the flat where the haunting had taken place. Again, he knew this instinctively, as if there was hidden knowledge stored inside him and only his emotions could read it. He listened for sounds of movement, but none came. He truly was alone here, inside his own lost past. There was no one else to help him, to hold his hand. His brother and sister were dead and he had no idea what might have happened to his real parents.
He was alone, and that made him happy.
He stepped softly across the landing, towards the open door. There was no light in there; it was pitch-dark, like the entrance to a cave. Sunlight lay across the walls and the floor out here, on the landing, but inside the room was only darkness. It was fitting somehow; he would not have expected anything else.
He stopped immediately outside the door, his breath coming in short, sharp jags. Sweat poured down over his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, but still his vision began to blur.
“Home.”
He took a step forward, and then another, and entered the place where it had all started.
Darkness swallowed him. Then it receded, and he finally saw what had happened all those years ago. The final chapter of his story – which was also the prologue – unfurled before his eyes.
There’s a couple on the living room floor, dressed in long black robes with nothing underneath. They have strange symbols painted on their hands and faces. They’ve turned the television into some kind of altar: a black piece of cloth is draped over the set, covering the screen, and there’s a dead chicken or hen or rooster with its throat cut so deeply that its head hangs at an angle. Its feathers are black.
No blood.
No knife.
Just the dead fowl.
The man and the woman are singing or chanting. They’ve clearly rehearsed the words many times, and their faces betray not a hint of emotion. There is no music, just their voices, and neither of them can hold a tune.
At the woman’s side, wrapped up in blankets, there is a small baby. The baby is silent; it does not cry. Its eyes are only half open; its mouth is twisted into an odd shape, the lips limp. The baby might be drugged.
The man nods as he chants. Tears begin to well up from his eyes and then spill down his cheeks. The woman reaches out clumsily and grabs his hand. The man shakes his head, vigorously; it is the woman’s turn to nod.
The woman lets go of the man’s hand, turns her body, and picks up the tiny baby.
They both continue to chant. The man’s voice is quiet but the woman’s is loud, as if she has something to prove.
Then, abruptly, the chant changes, one word, repeated over and over again: Loculus.
The woman holds up the baby by its throat. The blankets drop to the floor. The baby remains still, its sedated form motionless as they woman closes her eyes and starts to squeeze.
The man looks down, at the floor. Behind him, something stirs. Darkness rushes in, like a thick fog, coiling at floor level and then rising, forming a tube, before it takes on the shape of a man. A white-beaked face leans forward, eager.
The man opens his eyes. He reaches out and grabs the baby. The woman does not resist. It is over, just like that: the moment has gone. The spell is broken.
The beaked figure fades to blackness, flapping its arms and thrashing its head from side to side. Then, after a few seconds of this violent activity, it is gone.
The man and the woman stare at each other, reaching some kind of unspoken agreement. They reach out and hold hands, the baby clasped between them.
The sacrifice has failed. They could not go through with it. They could not kill the baby, even to save the other children.
Marc’s parents – his real parents, who loved him after all – have backed out of whatever deal they had made.
That is the reason for the subsequent haunting. That is why Captain Clickety tried to get to the twins. Because the life he was offered, the one he would have accepted without pain or pity, was revoked. The one he’d been told about all that time ago when he’d first encountered the village of Groven: the Witness.
So instead he went after all the others – the Pollack twins and all the rest: the ones he took and the ones that got away. The Pollack twins, the three boys he lured inside the Needle, the Gone Away Girls... but none of them was ever the right one. Because that one escaped, he was snatched away.
But now he’d come back.