Silent Voices

TWENTY YEARS AGO, BEFORE THE MONSTERS WERE REAL

MARTY SITS IN his room, listening to music. The volume is set low so that his father won’t hear what he calls ‘that stupid crap’ and come in with his fists swinging. The tape is a recording of a Simple Minds album. Marty can’t remember who gave him the cassette, but he likes the tunes… there’s something about them that suggests the kind of freedom he yearns for but will probably never achieve.

Marty gets off the bed and walks to the window. He looks out over the estate, watching the slow movement of clouds above the Needle and the way the stars seem so far away, yet at the same time close enough that if he reaches out he could grab one. It’s a feeling that echoes the way he feels inside: that weird distance that isn’t really a distance, not a physical one. He struggles with the notion, and then puts it out of his mind.

He checks himself out in the mirror on the wardrobe door. He is wearing a pair of stretch Geordie Jeans and a thin woollen sweater. It was his birthday outfit, and already he is outgrowing the garments. He pulls a bodybuilder pose, bending his arms and tensing his biceps. Even at ten years old, he is aware of the changes taking place in his body. His father has not been as quick with his fists lately; he watches Marty with a new kind of awareness, especially when he is wearing just a T-shirt or wandering around in his skivvies.

Before long, Marty thinks he’ll be strong enough to take on his old man. He has already begun to condition his body, like the fighters in the martial arts magazines he buys with his pocket money and smuggles into the house. But he has gone further than those guys; he causes himself real pain, genuine damage. He has a sharp penknife he uses to cut the flesh of his forearms, and he holds his fingers against the flame of a lit match.

It’s not so much that his father hits him, but more about the way the bastard treats Marty’s mother. He knows that his father beats her at least once every two weeks — sometimes more often, if he’s been drinking a lot. He rarely leaves marks, but there was that time last summer when they had to tell everyone that his mother had fallen down the stairs. She had two black eyes and her top lip was split and swollen. The skin around her jaw was red and tender to the touch.

If his father does that again, he thinks that he might kill him. He could use the penknife. It would be hard work, because the blade is so small, but it’s sharp, and Marty has taught himself how to use it.

Outside, someone lets off a firework. Marty turns back to the window, drawn by the sound, and he watches the brief flaring of red and blue lights in the sky. The lights splutter and die as they fall back to the ground. Their flight is over before it has even begun.

“I hate you,” he whispers, not even knowing if he means his father, the estate where he feels so trapped, or even himself. Sometimes he even despises his mother for being so weak, for not running away from the man who so casually and regularly abuses her.

He thinks about the silly tree house he and his friends are building. The Three Amigos — the name was Simon’s idea, after some film he read about in a magazine, a comedy about rubbish cowboys that’s supposed to be coming out next year. Marty isn’t really into funny films, but Simon said that Steve Martin is in this one, and Marty laughed himself ill at the one the American made about the mad brain surgeon, even though he only understood something like half of the jokes. He remembers they watched it on video one Sunday afternoon at Simon’s place, when his parents were out at the pub. Simon likes movies; he knows an older kid who works on the local video van and gets him all the latest ones pirated for free.

Marty is more of a reader than a watcher. He loves his books. His father, of course, hates books. He thinks that only poofs read. So Marty keeps all of his novels and short story collections stashed away at the back of the cupboard, covered by some old blankets his mother was going to throw out. He loves fantasy — The Hobbit is his favourite, but he’s managed to get most of the way through The Fellowship of the Ring and he’s proud that he understands a lot of what’s going on. Some of it’s a bit tricky, and a lot of the words are new to him, but he’s plodding on as best he can, making use of his dictionary if he gets really stuck on anything.

He likes Strider. He wants to be Strider, even though he knows that it’s just a book and none of it is real. But inside his head, it’s all real: in there, where nobody else can see him, he fights orcs and dragons and kicks the crap out of his dad on a regular basis.

He opens the wardrobe and takes out a light jacket, just in case it gets cold outside later on, during their all-night vigil. He doesn’t really believe that anyone — bigger kids or roaming adults — is going to wreck what they’ve built, but that isn’t the point, not really. The reason they’re all meeting up when their parents have gone to bed is because they need to be with each other. There’s a connection between the boys that goes deeper than friendship. They are like brothers, linked by blood. Their parents don’t give a damn, so they each give a damn about the other. Together, as part of the gang, they are strong. No one can hurt them.

He sits back down on the bed and waits for his parents to stumble up to bed. They won’t be late tonight because they’ve been drinking all day. His mother uses vodka to block out the pain and pointlessness of her life, and his father chugs down gallons of beer because he wants to drown what he is.

Marty is untroubled by these insights; he has them all the time. He’s a bright boy — much more intelligent than the teachers at school are willing to believe, and probably as well-read as anyone five years older than him. But it isn’t wise to put his brains on display, so he keeps them covered by an illusion show of brute force and disinterest. He plays the game, makes sure he never gets above average marks for his schoolwork, while all the time he is reading ahead, and filling his notebooks at home with the work he does on his own.

Marty knows that this won’t get him anywhere. He is trapped here, in the Grove, just like his parents and their parents before them, but there is no reason why his mind cannot be allowed to roam free, exploring the boundaries of the world written down in books.

Before long he hears his parents climbing the stairs. His mother is giggling and his father is whispering too loudly. They’re talking about sex — or, more specifically, his father is telling his mother that tonight he’s going to ‘take her up the shitter and make her squeal’. Marty feels like crying. He barely knows these people, and has nothing in common with them apart from that they all share a house together. He’s a prisoner, like the Count of Monte Cristo. He is trapped here, in this hell, and outside the window is yet another, much larger hell. All he can see for miles and miles is variations on the same theme. Somewhere out there, the devil is waiting, and by reading and learning he is keeping him at bay.

His parents’ bedroom door shuts softly, and then he hears the clicking of the lock as they shut themselves in for the night. He closes his eyes, trying to stem the flow of tears, and then opens them again. They feel wet, prickly. He grits his teeth and grinds them together, then bites the side of his cheek. The pain takes it all away, pushing it to the side. Pain is good; it always does that.

Marty waits another few minutes, until the sounds begin. At first it’s like the grunting of pigs, and then, once the headboard starts slamming against the wall, it sounds like two animals fighting. There’s a thin line between sex and violence in his parents’ bed, and Marty knows more about the sexual act than any other ten-year-old he has ever met. He knows far too much; he knows it all. Once, when he was small, his father made Marty watch them at it. They were drunk — his mother objected at first, but a sharp punch to the kidneys put an end to that — and Marty was forced to stand there at the foot of the bed while his father pounded into his mother, smiling all the time. Smiling and grunting and repeating the words, “This is what it’s like. This is what’s it’s like.” At the time, Marty had no idea what those words meant, but now he realises that his old man was talking about the whole world. This, he was saying, is how the world works. Like it or not, it’s the most basic truth of all: some fuck, some get fucked.

Too much truth for a ten-year-old, but Marty is thankful for the information. It will make it easier to hit his dad when the time comes, to put the man on the ground and stamp on his hideous grinning face.

He stands and crosses the room, opens the window. The night air is warm, but there is the hint of a breeze, and he smiles as he feels it move against his cheek. Like fingers, reaching out to caress his skin in a way that his mother never did, not once in all the years since his birth. Marty knows. He remembers. She has never shown him a moment of physical affection… which is why he hates the fact that he loves her.

He throws one leg over the windowsill and stares out into the darkness. Sodium light stains the sky, the streets, the parked cars and the walls and roofs of the houses. Marty changes position, twists around, and carries out a hang-and-drop. He bends his knees when he lands on the ground below the window, absorbing the impact. He saw that in an army film. Kelly’s Heroes. Von Ryan’s Express. One of those great old movies Simon told him to watch on TV.

The downstairs lights are out and the curtains are drawn. He keeps low, almost crouching, as he runs across the short width of lawn and hops over the garden wall, hitting the footpath with silent feet and running fast, running quiet, until he reaches the end of the street. Once there, he pauses for breath, watching the neighbourhood. A dog is barking; it never shuts up, even during the day. The sound of a police helicopter grows louder and then, after a few seconds, fades as the chopper moves away from him over the estate.

Up at the Arcade, a burglar alarm wails. Either someone has broken in to one of the shops or a circuit breaker has tripped the alarm; it happens three or four times a week, always at least once over the weekend. Burglar alarms, car alarms… it seems like there’s always one going off somewhere on the estate, signalling to the uncaring residents of the Grove that something has happened. But no one ever comes, not one person turns the alarms off. They will, he thinks, go on forever, marking the passage of time until everyone alive now is dead. And even then they’ll continue, wailing into an uncertain future.

Marty walks, now. There’s no need to run, and moving quickly through the Concrete Grove at this hour would only lead to suspicion of wrongdoing. If that police chopper came back, they’d follow him from above; a patrolling police car might start to chase him. He knows that any self-respecting policeman would stop a ten-year-old out walking alone this late at night anyway, but at least this way he doesn’t look like he’s up to no good.

But nobody accosts him as he makes his way towards the north end of the estate, cutting through onto Grove Crescent and circling the Needle. He watches the massive tower block as he walks the curve, never taking his eyes off the building. He doesn’t trust it; never has. To Marty, the Needle has always possessed a personality, a mind of its own. It watches the estate, looking into the lives of the people who live here… it’s a silly thought, a stupid kid’s fantasy, but at the same time he cannot rid himself of the illusion that the building is watching over them all.

He walks along Grove Street, turns left on Grove Crescent, and then heads down Grove Alley. The streetlights are weak. The darkness seems syrupy, as if it is capable of smothering the light. Something moves behind him. He stops, slowly turns, and catches sight of a small, stumpy shape running across the head of the short alley running between two large back gardens.

Marty feels fear nipping at the back of his neck, like his father’s hands clutching him. He reaches up and around and rubs at the skin there, trying to dispel the sensation. The shape moves again, crossing back the way it came. It is low to the ground, perhaps a foot and a half in height, and as wide as a beach ball. But, no, that isn’t quite correct… it can’t be a ball, because it isn’t round. Whatever this thing might be, it is oval, egg-shaped.

And he thinks he knows what it is.

Marty stands and stares as the shape peeks out from behind the wall. Now, even in the poor light, he can see that it has hands, but they are bigger than they should be on such a small body. The fingers are long and pointed, with nails that look like claws. Those fingers grip the edge of the wall as if they are slowly dragging the body around into his eye line.

“Who’s there?” His voice sounds tiny in all that night. It’s a stupid question to ask, anyway. If someone is stalking him, they’re hardly going to announce their name.

“Leave me alone.” Another stupid thing to say. “Who are you?” He can’t stop now: the idiotic words are coming thick and fast and unstoppable. Something twitches at the back of his mind: a memory, an image, something unpleasant from his childhood. He remembers that his father once bought him a book of fairy tales and nursery rhymes, but they were not the same as the ones he’d read in school. Marty thinks he might have been five or six, and that year the old man made a sudden and unexpected effort. He pretended to be interested in his boy, and would read to him at bedtime. This book — he can’t even recall the title — was the worst of all. Rumpelstiltskin killed all the babies, the princess with the glass slipper started cutting the flesh off her foot to make it fit, and Little Jack Horner stuffed himself so full of pie that he exploded in his corner… but the most memorable one, the story that Marty stills dreams of, even now, was Humpty Dumpty.

The strange egg-shaped creature was drawn to look like a monster. Leathery hide, large, slanted eyes, no arms, and horrible stumpy legs with hands on the end of them instead of feet. He sat on his high wall and drank beer from a brown bottle, laughing and throwing stones with his hand-feet at everyone who walked past below. Then, one day, when he was too drunk to keep his balance, he fell off the wall and shattered, like an egg. Weird stuff oozed out of the cracks in his hide: ugly little critters that were more mouth and eyes than anything else, borne on a tide of filthy slime.

Marty has been terrified of the story ever since his father first read it, grinning and putting on a horrible deep voice.

He remembers the king’s men on their horses arriving to try and put Humpty Dumpty back together, but Humpty didn’t want their help. He lashed out at the men, killed some of the horses, and the little monsters that had come out of his shell nipped and bit at the soldiers’ ankles. Finally, one brave soldier used the butt of his rifle to batter Humpty Dumpty to death… but next day, as a procession of the townsfolk went by his wall, the creature was back up there, with the cracks in his hide held together by metal clamps, throwing stones at those who had come to celebrate his destruction.

Where on earth had the book come from? He knows now that it clearly had not been written for children, and was probably meant to be funny… to the young Marty Rivers, lying shivering in his bed and listening to the sounds of his parents as they abused each other, the image of Humpty Dumpty could not have been less amusing. The creature from the book came to represent the thing that he was most afraid of — the fears he could never, ever name.

And here it is again, that improbable Humpty Dumpty monster, following him through the dark streets of the estate.

He turns and runs, heading for Beacon Green, where he knows his friends must already be waiting for him. He hears behind him the rapid slap of misshapen hand-feet on the concrete paving stones, and knows that if he turns to look over his shoulder he’ll see the egg-shaped creature bounding along behind him, gaining with every step.

There is a short passageway between the chip shop and the off-licence on Grove Terrace, and Marty throws himself at its entrance. He runs faster, heading for the low metal barrier at the end of the passage, and when he gets there he hits it hard and high and scurries over the top, ripping the knee of his jeans and scraping the skin there deep enough to draw blood. He does not look back as he runs across the long grass, heading towards the row of trees bounding the Green. Then, once he is inside the clammy darkness, he darts west and makes his way towards the clearing where they’ve constructed the platform of their tree house.

When he sees his friends, he smiles and pretends that nothing has happened. It takes him a while before he can even bring himself to look behind him, along the pathway upon which he stumbled, but when he does so he sees no sign of an egg-shaped shadow, or even a misplaced rustle of greenery.

Friendship has banished the monster. It always does. Because friendship is the best — and only — weapon they have.