“Can’t I stop now?” He fell to his knees, cradling the gun like a baby.
This was the longest the voice had spoken, and it made the inside of Erik’s head itch. It felt like there were insects in there, crawling around on the surface of his brain. He sensed the black hole at the centre of things flexing, opening up like a cosmic vagina to either ejaculate energy or suck it deep inside. He was no longer sure of which event would occur. But whatever happened, it would be a form of birth… of creation.
A phrase came to him, unbidden:
Where had he come across those words? Was it something he’d read, or something that had been said to him, long ago, like an old nursery rhyme whose meaning has been forgotten? The words resonated, vibrating along the channels of his being, turning to glass and shattering at his core.
He stood, holding on tightly to the gun. That’s what this was all about: creation. Not destruction. That would be too obvious, too easy. The true test of a man was his power to create, not his willingness to destroy.
Erik looked at the pathetic remnant of his friend and he made a decision.
“I don’t know what’s happening here, but it all has to end.”
“No.”
He raised the gun, trying not to think about anything beyond the moment. All he had was his instincts. Let other men puzzle over what happened here after it was done. He would simply act as his gut told him.
He pointed the gun at Monty; the small, twisted shape began to writhe on the carpet, its appendages flailing, grasping at nothing but empty air. The bond was broken — he could no longer influence Erik’s actions. Because Erik wouldn’t let it happen. In the depths of this darkness, he had finally found himself… and he knew exactly what was required of him.
“Yes.” He pulled the trigger.
Monty’s tiny upturned face disintegrated into a cloud of red powder. The body bucked and writhed, the limbs and tentacles clenching, clutching, and then going limp. The small, compressed body began to change, flesh becoming fluid, changing into a succession of faces that screamed silently as everything withered, becoming as dust.
Erik knew that these were the faces of every person Monty Bright had ever trapped when he was still in business as a loan shark; they were his debtors, the people he had controlled and finally absorbed, making them a part of his monstrous whole. They were free now; their debts were finally paid. Their recession of the spirit was over.
He walked across the room and peeked through the gap in the curtains. Nothing had changed; they were all still waiting for him out there, wanting him to come out. They were demanding blood, and they would not rest until they had it. His blood, primarily, but the blood of a hostage would suffice. It would give them a good story for the evening news.
He turned away and went back upstairs. Abby was sitting against the radiator, shivering. She’d managed to scrape away most of the tape, releasing her hands. She rubbed silently at her reddened wrists.
“We’re trapped,” he said.
She looked up at him, into his eyes. Her face was battered; dried blood was smeared across her cheeks; the area around her left eye was swollen. “You did this… you trapped us.”
“I know. I had no choice. I’m weak… a weak man. All my life I’ve pretended to be strong, but I’m not. Never was. My father used to beat me and masturbate over my shaking body. My mother would sit in the chair, drinking brown ale, and laugh about it. My brothers were all maniacs, and I followed them down that path. Nobody here gets out alive. This place — all the places just like it — is toxic, a waste dump for humanity. All of our dreams, our hopes, are rotted away. This is the end of the line and none of us asked to be here…” He faded, unsure of what he was trying to say. “This is all there is. Beyond here… there’s nothing. Even the place Monty wanted to get back to, it’s just shit: another world of shit that exists inside this one.”
“Let me go, Erik. Finish untying me, and I’ll take our daughter downstairs. We’ll get you some help. I’ll tell the police that you lost your mind for a little while, but you’re better now. You’ll get therapy. They’ll mend you. We can be together again.”
He sank to his knees and placed the gun between his thighs. “I wish I could believe you. That would be nice. But you’re lying, I know you are. I can smell the lies on your breath.” He shook his head. “You don’t understand. We’re all monsters. None of us chose this route, we didn’t do it deliberately, but the world turned on us and changed us into beasts. Nobody out there gives a flying fuck about any of us. They demonise us in the news and in TV shows. They call us names and give us hoods to wear. And we accept the role they force upon us — we adapt and we take it on, sucking it all down, because we don’t have anything else. All we have is their disdain, their hatred, and we fucking lap it up like beaten dogs.”
His breath was coming in short little hitches, like that of an asthmatic. He could barely speak, so he stopped talking. He bowed his head and looked at his hands. They were cupping the gun, feeling its dread weight. The barrel of the gun was a tiny, endless black hole, sucking him down: a reflection of the black hole around which they all orbited.
“What are you going to do now?” She shifted against the radiator, loosening the tape around her ankles.
Erik remained silent. There was nothing left to say.
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 fucking 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.”
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.
