Beyond Here Lies Nothing (The Concrete Grove Trilogy) (14 page)

“Well?”

“You do it,” said Beggy. “I can’t go back in there... I’ve seen enough.” He was pleading, not ordering, and Hacky nodded.

“You’re more afraid of whatever’s in there than you are of me?” Erik took a couple of steps forward, interested now. He was standing close to Beggy. The kid nodded, but didn’t raise his head. The footpath was obviously fascinating; he was inspecting it like it was the most interesting thing he’d seen so far that day. The acne scars on his throat were livid, bright red welts. They looked painful, like aggravated wounds.

“Okay, I’ll show you.” Hacky moved reluctantly into the shadow of the garage, his slim body swallowed by darkness. The other two young men stepped to the side, away from the open door.

“Don’t go anywhere,” said Erik. He walked forward, stooping at the waist to get under the garage door, and looked around.

There wasn’t much in there. In fact, it looked like someone had recently moved a lot of stuff out. Streaked dust marks decorated the internal surfaces; cobwebs had been disturbed in the corners. The oil-stained floor was scuffed in places, as if heavy objects had been pushed or pulled across it. Erik seemed to recall that Beggy’s father was some kind of low-level fence, so he probably used this place to store stolen goods that he couldn’t keep inside the house for some reason: furniture, plasma screen televisions still in their cardboard boxes, perhaps even a few large car parts that were too heavy to shift on his own.

A stack of rolled up carpet off-cuts had been pushed up against the wall on the left hand side. The right hand wall was clear, but someone had set up a small camping table, upon which there was a red and black tartan plastic flask and a set of pornographic playing cards. Erik walked over and looked down at the cards. They were vintage 1970s, showing scenes of blank-eyed women copulating with drugged farm animals. Nice.

He looked up and watched Hacky. The kid was staring at a large rectangular object covered by a dark, stained tarpaulin sheet. He was fidgeting; he shuffled his feet, picked at his fingernails, bit his bottom lip.

“Is that it?” Erik indicated the sheet.

“Yeah. It’s under there... under that cover thing.” He licked his lips. His eyes were wide. The gloom inside the garage had made his pupils dilate, unless he was strung out on drugs, despite what he’d said earlier.

“Take the fucking thing off, then. Show me what you’ve got.”

A strange kind of tension had entered the garage with them. Erik knew that he should be losing his temper by now. The kid was stringing this out, making a fucking meal of the situation. But there was an atmosphere between these concrete walls that made him cautious. There wasn’t any actual danger here – of course there wasn’t, not for him anyway. No, not danger: something else, a sense of... weirdness. Something here was not entirely right. That was the only way he could think to explain what he felt.

Then he realised what it was: he felt like he was being watched. He was experiencing that sensation of eyes upon you when you walk across a room; the sense that someone is peering at you but you can’t see them, not yet. A painting’s eyes following you across a gallery floor; or the heat of a person’s gaze burning a hole in the middle of your back from across a room.

Watched.

He was being watched.

Hacky bent over and tugged at the end of the tarpaulin sheet. He did it half-heartedly at first, as if he really didn’t want the sheet to come off, but then he used both hands and pulled hard, shuffling backwards as he did so. The sheet slid away, dropping to the floor. Beneath it was a large glass tank with a heavy lid, the kind of container that was used for keeping tropical fish, or exotic lizards.

“What’s the story with that tank, then?” Erik didn’t move.

Hacky stepped further away, not taking his eyes from the tank. “Years ago, when I was little, I used to keep snakes in there. I had a couple of pythons. Dad got hold of them from some mate. The police came and took them away. They weren’t legal, like...” He kept staring at the tank. “Dangerous, they reckoned...”

Erik paused for a moment, unwilling to move closer to the tank, and what might be lurking inside it. The shadows kept its contents hidden; all he could see was a large dark glass receptacle, with something bulky nestling behind the glass. It could have been discarded clothing; it might have been a dead animal. A cat or a dog.

Then the thing moved: a slight twitch, like a muscular spasm.

“It’s alive,” he whispered.

A snake?

“We thought it was dead,” said Hacky. “We found it down on Beacon Green, in a little ditch, half-covered by leaves and shit. We were looking for a bag of pot we’d stashed there a few nights ago.” Still he stared at the tank. Whatever was in there coiled lazily, moving a little like one of the pythons the kid had claimed to have owned before they were seized by the authorities.

“What is it?”

A snake...

Finally Hacky looked away from the tank. He turned to face Erik, and his features remained in shadow. His mouth barely moved when he spoke. Darkness writhed across his face like tar. “Honestly, I haven’t a fucking clue.”

Something thumped wetly against the other side of the glass, shifting again inside the tank. There was a moist slithering noise as it adjusted its position.

“Fucking hell,” said Erik, and his feet moved forward as if they weren’t under his control. He wanted to stop them but they refused to obey. He was walking towards the tank, and the living thing that was imprisoned inside.

“Is it one of those snakes of yours?”

Hacky didn’t answer. He’d already gone back outside, too afraid to stay and watch.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I
T WAS LUNCHTIME
and Marc was craving a protein fix. He’d been drinking a lot lately – much more than usual – and seemed to exist with a constant hangover, seeing the world through a thin layer of gauze. He hoped that Vince Rose hadn’t been serious about having a few cans of lager and instead wished for a nice cup of tea. A splash of milk. A spoonful of honey. Lovely.

He parked his car at the kerb and stepped out onto the street outside Harry’s house. Even though the old man was dead, Marc couldn’t help but feel as if he was waiting inside, watching through the net curtains, as he always used to when he had visitors.

Glancing at the grubby nets, he accepted the reality that Harry would no longer be there; his tall, thin form would never again stand in the window, looking out at the street and scowling at passers by.

“Hey, Marc!”

He turned around and saw Vince Rose walking along the street, a blue carrier bag clutched in each hand. He raised the bags to waist level and smiled. “Lunch.”

“Good to see you, Vince.” Marc moved towards the man and grabbed one of the bags – the one that looked heaviest – and stood to the side while Rose walked past him. He fell into step alongside the other man.

“I didn’t get any booze. I hope that’s okay. I’m trying to cut down and... well, if it’s there, it’s a temptation, right?”

Marc nodded. “Thank God for that. I’m thinking about going on a month-long detox because of all the drink I’ve been having lately. It’s getting crazy.”

They reached the front door and Rose set down his bag on the doorstep, took a bunch of keys from his jacket pocket, and opened the door.

“It’s weird coming here when Harry isn’t around.” Marc stared through the open doorway, into the gloomy hall. “I’ve never been inside this house without him inviting me inside. He would always wait in the window, watching, and as soon as I got near the door it would open. He’d say ‘Why don’t you come in for a while?’ and walk back inside, leaving me to follow.”

“He’s still here,” said Rose. “In one way or another. You’ll see.” He stepped inside and walked towards the kitchen, bumping the carrier bag against the wall.

For a moment Marc didn’t want to go inside. It wasn’t the same; it wasn’t right. This was Harry’s house, and Harry needed to be there, to give his usual greeting and put the kettle on. There was a space inside this house, and its shape was that of Harry Rose. The old man had been cut out of the world but his absence was still here, permanent, like a scar in the fabric of existence.

When he stepped over the threshold and into the house, the sunlight seemed to pull back, moving away from him. He felt the temperature drop and the daylight vanished. The lack of Harry Rose was a ghost, a forlorn spectre. In that moment Marc realised that most so-called hauntings were not about what was there, but what was no longer in place. It was not the remains that mattered, but what had been taken away, removed from the living world and placed somewhere else, where nobody could see them.

Ghosts
, he thought,
are simply absences made solid
.
They’re holes in the world, holes that will never be filled again
.

He nudged the door shut with his shoulder, using his foot to make sure that it fitted properly into the frame. When the lock clicked, he followed Rose down the hallway and into the small kitchen, where the other man was putting away the shopping.

“I got ham and cheese. Is that okay? Some nice bread: fresh stuff, from the bakers.”

“That sounds great,” said Marc. He put the carrier bag on the table and sat down in one of the dining chairs. He blinked, trying not to draw attention to the fact that his eyes were moist. Not quite real tears, but almost... he missed his friend. He wished that Harry were still here, bustling around in the tiny kitchen, moaning – as he usually did – about some real or imagined slight.

“How do you take your tea?”

Marc shifted in the chair, turning to face his host. “White, one sugar, thanks. I usually take it with honey, but Harry used to laugh at that and call me a snob.”

“Aye,” said Rose, shaking his head. “The old bastard had some funny ideas about stuff like that. For years, he called me a traitor to my class simply because I attended university and went to work in insurance. He never let me live that down... never failed to twist the knife, either.”

The kettle made a popping sound, signalling that the water had boiled. Steam filled the air between the two men, making it seem like a fog had crept into the room.

Rose didn’t move. He stood there, veiled by steam, staring at nothing.

“Erm... the kettle’s boiled.” Marc made to rise, but when his host snapped back into the moment, lurching towards the kettle, he pretended that he’d simply been shifting his position on the seat.

“Sorry. I was miles away, there. Thinking about that stupid old fart.” He looked down, at the surface of the work bench. “I miss him. Even though we hadn’t spoken for years, I bloody miss him.” He poured boiling water into the cups and waited for the teabags to brew. After a few seconds of silence, he fished out the used teabags with a teaspoon and flicked them both into the sink.

Marc said nothing. He didn’t want to intrude upon the man’s thoughts.

Rose added the milk and sugar to the mugs, and then handed one to Marc. “Cheers.”

Marc raised his mug. “
Salute
.” It had been Harry’s favoured toast; he even said it when he was drinking a glass of water.

Marc took a long drink. The tea was hot and sweet; strongly flavoured. “That’s a nice bastard brew,” he said, out of habit. He always used to say the same phrase to Harry; over time it became a kind of running joke. Their relationship had rested on things like that: quirks and mannerisms, phrases and peculiarities. Harry had been an awkward man, and sometimes he refused to discuss a subject in a direct manner. He liked to talk around things, to make Marc work for the information. Sometimes he could be morose and even uncommunicative, but he always asked Marc to come back and see him. He was lonely. He liked the company of another human being. Marc hoped that the old bastard hadn’t been too lonely when he died.

“I miss him, too,” said Marc. “He was a one-off: a true original.”

They drank their teas and waited for the atmosphere to level out. Something had come into the room, perhaps it had followed him in from outside. It skulked around in the corners, watching them with envy. After a short while, it left them alone, and Marc was able to adjust to the house without Harry Rose. At first he’d wanted to leave; now he wanted to see why he’d been invited here.

“You hungry?” Rose began to open the bread.

“Yeah. A bit.” Marc stood, crossed to the sink, and rinsed out his cup with cold water from the tap before placing it in the sink.

“Let’s eat first, and then I’ll tell you what I found.”

Marc turned around, rested the small of his back against the edge of the sink. “Okay, that sounds good. I never like to solve a mystery on an empty stomach.”

Rose laughed. “Oh, there’s no mystery. Not really. It’s just some stuff... Harry stuff.”

“Yeah...
Harry stuff
.”

Marc knew exactly what was meant by that remark. One of Harry’s habits had been that he often brought home random objects, bits and pieces of junk, old files and paperwork, books without covers, broken toys. Sometimes he fixed the toys and gave them away to charity shops. More often than not, he made something different out of them, perhaps combining the remains of two or three items to construct a third. Marc remembered the time he’d made a scale replica of the Needle out of old-fashioned foil milk bottle tops. He still had no idea where Harry had found the bottle tops, but one day when he’d come to visit, there’d been a cloth sack filled with them on top of the cooker.