How to Make Monsters (17 page)

The fat man behind the camera
giggled boyishly; the muscled black man barked a strange, animal laugh. The
gent in the butcher’s tabard took the girl by her hand and led her onwards
towards their cowering prey. She moved sinuously, like a serpent: all loose
joints and rippling muscles beneath her soft and lustreless flesh.

Pierce fell to his knees, too weak
to protest; too broken now to fight for whatever scrap of sick, twisted film
footage his life had become. Their hands were upon him, stripping him bare, and
then he was dragged into that twitching darkness, accompanied by the sound of
many hungry mouths opening, of fluids ejaculating prematurely against the cold
concrete floor.

The next thing he became aware of
was the clamouring attention of scores of tentacle-like appendages, the eager
sucking of sticky disc-like growths, and a pain so sharp and exquisite that it
could almost be called pleasure. He soon succumbed to the grasping darkness,
accepting that whatever was in the way would always be there, blocking his view
of a better place. And the camera caught it all, in extreme close-up.

VI

Sleeve notes from an
illegal bootleg DVD of an underground horror film called Something in the Way,
confiscated in a Soho sex shop November 2005:

A depressed office worker seeks
meaning in his life, and discovers a strange sexual cult operating out of the
decrepit warehouse district. Here he finds either the answer to his deepest
prayers or the realisation of his worst nightmares.

Crudely captured in jerking hand-held
camera techniques, this is an example of guerrilla filmmaking at its most
transgressive, uncompromising, and unsettling.

No official record of this title has
been traced, and cast and credit lists are currently unavailable.

A horrifically mutilated body found
buried and partially burned on a Scarbridge rubbish dump was today identified
as that of Martin Pierce, 38, an Office Manager recently diagnosed as suffering
from severe depression. Police are investigating Mr. Pierce’s death, and a
spokesperson admitted that foul play was suspected.

From The Scarbridge Echo

6
^th
March, 2005.

A STILLNESS IN THE AIR

Darkness. A stillness in
the air. Thunder. Wind.

Grant stood just outside the
automatic doors, waiting for his senses to adjust to his new surroundings. His
ears still felt as if they were stuffed with cotton wool and his left arm was
tingling from where it had gone to sleep resting on the arm of the chair. He’d
flown business class – an extra sweetener from the newspaper who’d bought his
story – and had enjoyed sipping red wine as he travelled from L.A.X. to
Leeds/Bradford airport to begin his new life. The fee for telling his story had
been huge, but he’d argued that it was necessary to finance this fresh start.
Money was no longer a concern.

Thunder rumbled again – or was it
just the sound of jet engines raking the sky as another plane took off? The
wind caressed his legs, wrapping around his shins like a ragged sheet. He
watched the people around him as they moved through the endless set of small
routines that made up their lives. Soon he would be one of them, faceless and
free; but first he needed to find his hotel and get a good night’s sleep.

A short oriental-looking man emerged
from a recessed doorway as Grant climbed into the back of a cab at the taxi
rank near the exit. The man wore a long, grey overcoat and held a compact
digital camera to his face. He snapped off a few shots and then walked away,
head down, feet moving quickly across the smooth paving stones as shadows
skipped away from him.

Just a tourist, thought Grant.
Nothing more.

“The Happy Inn,” he said to the
driver, slamming the door as the cab lurched away from the kerb. Jangly Asian
music played quietly on the car stereo; a disembodied voice crackled
instructions to other drivers on the two-way radio.

“Cold night,” said the driver, his
moist brown eyes blinking in the rearview mirror. He was unshaven; his hair was
thinning on top. His smile was brittle, like something that might break at any
minute.

“Yes. Chilly.”

The man nodded, as if Grant had made
some wise philosophical statement, and then returned his attention to the road.
Had Grant noticed a glimmer of recognition in the man’s narrowing eyes? It
happened all the time, and had been the main reason for his troubles: a simple
case of mistaken identity.

Grant had always had what his mother
had called “one of those faces”. Bland, run-of-the-mill, there was nothing
about his features that particularly stood out; but he was always being
mistaken for someone else, mostly people he did not know, had not even heard
of.

There was, of course, the
oft-recited story of how, when Grant was a child, his mother had rushed into a
store for some cigarettes, leaving him outside in his pram for a matter of
seconds. When she returned, there was an old woman bending over the pram,
talking to baby Grant. The old woman insisted that the child was her grandson,
and demanded to know who Grant’s mother was and what she was doing with the
boy. It was only when the police arrived that the misunderstanding could be
cleared up.

Then there was the time he’d
travelled from New York to Boston on a Greyhound bus, and spent half the
journey talking to a middle-aged man who swore that Grant was his cousin, Jed
from Atlanta. No matter how much Grant assured him otherwise, the man had been
unswerving in his belief that they were family.

So many times he had been mistaken
for others.

Just one of those faces, the kind
easily mistaken for someone else.

Out of habit more than anything
else, he kept a copy of the grainy police photofit in his wallet; and when he
looked at it now, with the advantage of hindsight, he supposed the shape of the
face was the same as his, and the eyes held a certain familiar slant. He had
not noticed the resemblance at the time, but someone had. When armed police had
kicked in his door at three in the morning, the shock causing his mother to
suffer another massive stroke, he’d been caught entirely by surprise.

“Nearly there,” muttered the driver.
This time he did not glance at Grant in the mirror. The music faded out,
replaced by more of the same. The radio crackled.

They had held him for forty-eight
hours in a cramped interrogation room, denying him food or drink, and by the
time the error had been admitted and he was allowed to go, his mother was dead.
When they finally caught Norris Steele, the Florida construction worker who had
killed and mutilated twenty-two women, the focus had finally shifted from Grant
and he was allowed to grieve. The press finally left him alone; his life, now
in tatters, was his own again.

During the high-profile trial, Grant
received a letter from an expensive law firm with an offer to settle out of
court for the “inconvenience” caused by his wrongful arrest and subsequent
detention. It was a lot of money but Grant’s ambulance-chasing lawyer had urged
him to hold out for more. Eighteen months later he was a millionaire.

He’d always wanted to visit
Yorkshire, the birthplace of his grandfather, so here he was, ready to set up
home and blend into the greater mass of humanity and lose himself in glorious
anonymity.

Drizzle glazed the windows and when
he looked out of the car the darkness seemed to writhe like a mass of blackened
muscle. Dour streets of identical back-to-back houses passed by in a blur; the
occasional pale face peeked out from a curtained window. Grant’s mother had
never seen this part of the world, but had always wanted to come to her
father’s homeland. Grant carried her memory with him, hoping that it might
somehow help her see the places she had longed for near the end of her days.

“The Happy Inn,” said the driver as
he pulled into a sudden left turning, rear tyres skidding on the gravel. The
hotel was brightly lit and a group of figures stood outside on the steps
smoking and chatting in the rain.

Grant paid the fare and jogged
across the forecourt, dodging puddles and holding his small suitcase above his
head to keep himself dry. He ignored the faint stirrings on either side of him,
in the waist-high conifers flanking the path, and climbed the steps to enter
the building. One of the smokers who stood there stared hard at him, an elusive
expression flickering across her face; then she looked abruptly away, her eyes
once again dull and disinterested.

The hotel lobby was slightly shabby
and in need of a coat of paint. Pot plants wilted in the corners and by the
entrance to the bar there stood a dilapidated antique coat rack.

“How long will you be staying?”
asked the petite receptionist when he checked in. The question filled him with
a sudden sense of terror: his mind went blank and all he could think of was all
that he’d left behind.

The receptionist’s smile faltered;
her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“Possibly as long as two weeks.
Until I can get settled in the area.”

The girl repositioned her smile and
filled in the necessary paperwork.

Upstairs in his room, Grant unpacked
his few belongings. The rest of his stuff would be shipped out from L.A. as
soon as the house was ready. He had not even seen the property selected for him
by the newspaper, only photographs. It was a four-bedroom detached house in a
semi rural setting. The kind of place he’d always dreamed of but never expected
to be able to afford.

Wind rattled the windows. Rain
splattered the glass. When he turned around, Grant thought he saw a thin figure
ducking down beneath the plastic sill. He blinked slowly, squeezing his eyes
hard. When he opened them again he felt better but still not fully back to
normal. It would take time for him to retake possession of his own mind;
everything felt out of reach, as if he were separated from himself by a thin
sheet of unbreakable glass.

He put away his clothes and lay on
the bed, on top of the covers. Pushing off his shoes, he flexed his toes. The
ceiling above the bed was chipped and stained. Paintwork peeled like old scabs.
Beneath the bright exterior, the hotel was slowly falling apart.

Grant stood and went into the
bathroom, turning on the shower. He undressed in the tiny cubicle, listening to
the hot water as it spluttered to life. Steam filled the room, erasing his
reflection in the mirror. Before it vanished completely, he experienced a surge
of almost heartbreaking loss.

He stayed in the shower for over
thirty minutes, scrubbing his flesh raw under the hot jet. No matter how much
pressure he applied, or how much soap he used, he never felt clean. The stain
of all those deaths was upon him, even though he had nothing to do with the
crimes. Murder crept up on him, hovering around every corner, loitering at each
junction in the road. Rooms filled with dread piled above him, tottering on
their feeble foundations.

When he stepped out of the shower
his skin was bright red, almost burned. He wiped clean a patch of mirror with
the palm of his hand and stared at his face in the glass. He no longer
recognised what he saw; the murderer had stolen his features and made them into
something monstrous.

Steam churned in the air, as if
grasping hands were fighting at its core.

“Leave me alone.” The sound of his
own voice shocked him, and when he looked into his eyes in the mirror they were
empty.

He dressed in silence, after hanging
his coat over the mirror on the bedroom wall. He combed his hair as best he
could and left the room, heading downstairs for dinner.

Grant made plans as he ate his bland
pasta dish. Once he had the keys to the house he would buy new furniture and
try to assert what remained of his character and make the place his own. It
would be difficult, it would take time; but time was all he had.

The staff floated around the room
like surly phantoms, filling wine glasses and coffee cups, taking away plates,
bringing in the next course. Grant studied them, watching their repetitive
movements. Now that the furore had died down, he could be normal again, just
like these people. No one here, in this ancient country, knew his name: his was
just another ordinary face passing momentarily through their lives.

Once he’d sold his story and the
newspaper ran the feature, he could no longer appear in public back in L.A.
Everyone recognised him, and the only thing worse than the constant recognition
was the look of pity he saw in people’s eyes. Occasionally, that look would be
one of fear. Despite the real killer being caught, and even though Grant’s name
had been cleared unconditionally by the courts, women still looked at him as if
he was a monster.

Here, in Yorkshire, he would never
have to suffer that look again. He might even find someone, and learn to love
in a way that had been denied him back home.

Someone dropped a plate in the
kitchen. The sound of breaking china was sharp, invasive. When he looked
towards the kitchen door, he glimpsed furtive movement outside a nearby window,
like a scribble in the dark night air. Surely the newspaper had not sent a
journalist to tail him and file a follow-up story? It was part of the deal his
lawyer had brokered that he should be left alone for the rest of his life.