How to Make Monsters (2 page)

“Keep going,” he muttered through
lips cold and sticky as ice cream. “Just go.”

He followed the crude, unmade
pathway that rose from the main park area and terminated near the end of Sue’s
street. His feet slipped on loose stones but he did not fall. The undergrowth
rustled as something darted behind a bush, but he tried not to allow the sudden
commotion to divert his attention. The air closed in on him, wrapping chilled
fingers around his arms and shoulders. He shrugged off the cold, thinking
instead of the warmth of Sue’s flesh, the moist cavern of her open mouth.

Slowing now, he spotted a motionless
couple at the head of the path, leaning against the broad metal post which
served as a demarcation point between waste ground and residential street, a
loosely defined line between the two extremes of wildness and urbanity. The
couple were locked in an intimate embrace. They did not move, simply stood
there, mouth-to-mouth, skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart. Their hands clasped each
other’s clothing with a desperation Joel found nauseating.

“Excuse me,” said Joel as he
squeezed by. “I need to call the police.”

There was no response; the couple
were frozen in place, locked in an embrace that even time might not break. The
cold rose from their bodies as a vapour, coiling like pale smoke from an unseen
fire.

Joel ran along the street, heading
for Sue’s house. Once there, this nightmare could end; a sense of reality would
surely slot back into place around him. A group of youths in tracksuits stood
outside one of the few darkened houses on the street, hoodies pulled up to
cover their heads, stark white faces peering out with frozen expressions of
loss and confusion. At their feet, a small dog was frozen to a garden wall,
caught in the act of urinating, one leg extended, the paw adhered to the shiny
brickwork.

The youths turned slowly in Joel’s
direction; their movements were stiff, graceless, and even their eyes were
glazed over with a skein of white frost.

As he ran, Joel became aware of the
slowing movement of the planet beneath him, the grinding down of the heavens
above. Everything was sticking in place, becoming rigid; society’s mechanisms
were seizing up, the whole falling apart: the centre would not hold, not now.
Too many things had changed; too much horror had been let loose by those who
sought only to control the forces they had created. The war in Iraq… the U.S.
credit crunch… the looming oft-promised crash of the property market. All the
world’s systems were failing, freezing; there were cold days and harsh nights
ahead, and Joel no longer felt part of the plan.

Sue wanted to marry him when her
divorce finally came through, but all Joel wanted was to lose himself in the
crowd, to become less than a number on whatever computer hard drive stored the
information – names, dates, and statistics – of the populace. Their
relationship was like a corpse he’d been carrying on his back, dragging it
around for so long that he had grown accustomed to its rotting weight. But now,
in the middle of this current crisis, it was all he had left to cling to.

He threw himself against Sue’s front
door, only noticing the iced-over windows when he paused for breath.

“Let me in!” He hammered on the door
with hands gone numb from the cold. “Please…Sue!”

Staring at the front window, trying
to see inside through the glazed patterns on the glass, he was certain that a
figure stood unmoving at the window, a hand raised to its mouth. Frozen in
place, like a waxwork dummy or a snapshot of how things used to be, were meant
to be, before the big freeze set in.

He turned around and stumbled back
down the path. The kids on the corner were still there, but incapable of even
the most rudimentary movements. One of them went down, falling against the
kerb, short torso shattering into large chunks that lay in the gutter like
discarded meat products from a bankrupt freezer shop.

Joel stopped dead in his tracks,
stunned into immobility.

The man from the slide was standing
near the gate next door, staring in Joel’s direction; the partial face was,
thankfully, obscured by the flapping paper receipts, torn and creased official
forms and bus tickets that served as a cobbled-together mask.

“Follow me.” The voice was like
stones rolling loose in a plastic bowl.

“Follow. Me.”

Joel began to cry but the tears
froze on his cheeks. He stared down at his hands, his small white hands, and
when he tried to open them the fingers snapped, one of them breaking off and
falling to the ground between his feet. There was no pain; all feeling had
gone. The chill had numbed him.

“Follow.” There were other hazy
figures behind this one, others who had chosen to make the transition and be
saved. Sue was lost to him now, along with everything she represented. His old
dreams were frozen, and to wake from them he must do as the figure commanded.

Joel stepped forward on legs growing
stiffer, weaker, and more unresponsive with each passing second, and followed
the man into a chilled, white world where something different – perhaps even
another, better way of living – was preparing to hatch out of the ice.

THROUGH THE CRACKS

There was a crack in the
train window. Emma stared at the fine imperfection, imagining that in a sudden
wind the crack would open and everyone inside the speeding vehicle would be
sucked out and killed on the tracks. Or perhaps when the train thundered
through an underground tunnel, something older than the railways would crawl
inside through the crack; summoned by the flickering electric lights, the smell
of human sweat and the low sound of murmured conversations, it would feast upon
the commuters.

When her mobile phone began to
vibrate, signalling an incoming call, Emma suddenly forgot where and when she
was; her mind had drifted to a time many years ago, when such cracks had
threatened to appear in the substance of reality all because of the insanity of
one man – a man whose name and face she could never forget. 

She had not spoken to Prentiss in
three years, so when his name appeared on the screen on the front of the phone,
accompanied by a shrill version of some forgettable chart hit, Emma’s initial
instinct was to hang up without speaking. But she didn’t; instead she calmly
watched the blocky text flashing on the small rectangular screen, wondering what
he could want, and why she’d left his details in the gadget’s memory anyway.

“Hello,” she finally answered,
holding the handset tight against her ear to minimise the noise of the train as
it hurtled over uneven tracks towards Newcastle. “Hello. Prent, is that you?”

Nothing. Not even the familiar
whispery hiss of static. Just a long, almost baleful silence on the other end
of the line. Then she heard a sound like glass or crockery breaking; a loud
crunching crackle that made her pull her hand away from the side of her head
and screw up her face in an expression of distaste. Was he toying with her,
testing what reaction he might receive after all this time?

“Hello,” she said, loudly, one more
time, finger hovering over the green hang-up button.

“Em? Emma, it’s me. It’s Prentiss.”
His voice was faint, as if coming to her across a vast distance. Then there was
a surge in volume and she could hear him more clearly. “How are you?”

“Hi, Prent. I’m good. Long time no
hear.” It was typical of him to call her up out of the blue, as if nothing had
happened between them. That complete disregard for the social rituals had been
part of why they’d split up in the first place. That and about a million other
things: half-hidden cracks in his personality that had become all-too apparent
during their time together.

“I’ve been thinking about you.” The
statement sent a faint chill of anticipation along her nerve endings,
culminating between her legs. No matter how weird Prentiss had become, how
strange his behaviour had been, Emma had long ago resigned herself to the fact
that she would always be attracted to him.

“Oh.” The train went under a tunnel;
the connection broke for a few seconds so she could not be completely sure of
what he said next.

“-so I’ve been a bit low lately.
Things have been strange.” What had she missed? It seemed important, but she
didn’t want to ask him to repeat whatever he’d said; her feelings were always
so damn messy when it came to dealing with Prentiss that she was unable to act
in anything approaching a normal, rational manner.

“Can I see you?”

“I live in London now, Prent. I left
the north east eighteen months ago.”

“Really? Well that one took me by
surprise.”

“I’m visiting my sister this
weekend.” She regretted telling him this as soon as the words passed her lips. “I
guess I could meet you somewhere.”

“It’s like fate, isn’t it?”

Emma did not reply.

“I’m having…difficulty leaving the
house. Could you come round? I’m still living in the same place.”

“Yes. Okay. Tomorrow evening.” She
hung up before she could even question her response. The train carried her
towards home, and towards yet another ill thought out meeting with her ex. As
bright winter sunlight battered her with harsh lightning strokes through the
long carriage windows, Emma wondered why, wherever Prentiss was concerned, she
could never bring herself to say no.

She arrived in Central Station just
after midday, and dodged the bustling December crowds to catch a Metro to her
sister’s place out near the airport. Yet another capsule rocketing through
underground caverns; somehow this seemed like a metaphor for a part of her life
she’d tried so very hard to leave behind. The stations flew by in a blur.
Monument. Haymarket. Jesmond (rendered dark with memories of Prentiss). Ilford
Road. Place names rendered meaningless because of her relocation to the Smoke.
A group of youths in regulation white tracksuits got on at South Gosforth, the
only feature distinguishing one from the next being the colour and brand of
their baseball caps. The boys – aged between fourteen and sixteen – lounged
with their feet up on the seats and drank cheap cider from dented cans; Emma
felt relieved to be getting off the train at the next stop.

Nicci’s house was a five minute walk
from the station, past tired looking shop fronts with dusty window displays
consisting of canned and boxed goods Emma hadn’t seen advertised in over ten
years. Steel bars and vandal-proof glass marked the way; the sacred landscape
of her youth was deteriorating a little more each day she stayed away. Certain
parts of the footpaths seemed cracked beyond repair, big gaping fissures
opening up in the grubby concrete paving slabs to reveal the dark grasping
earth beneath.

Emma hurried towards Nicci’s house,
and when she approached the door it was opened without her having to announce
her arrival.

“Em! Welcome home!” Her sister’s
chunky arms went around her, and she was bustled inside and into the warm
environment. Food smells accosted her nostrils; the sound of a radio greeted
her from another room. This was better. This was more like home.

They chatted over coffee and
biscuits, Emma trying not to comment on Nicci’s recent weight gain. It seemed
that her sister’s husband had started a new job, long-distance lorry driving
between the UK and Germany. Ed was away for long stints, but according to Nicci
this made the time he spent at home with her and the kids all the more
worthwhile.

Emma’s nephews, Olly and Jared, were
over at a friend’s house for some pre-teenaged birthday party, and would return
much later, stuffed to idleness with the unhealthy delights of chocolate and
cake. Emma was glad of the time alone with her sister; quiet moments like these
happened all too rarely these days, and their intimacy helped remind her that
she hadn’t just left the bad things behind.

“Mum and dad send their love,” Nicci
said, smiling broadly. “I got an email last night.”

“I’ve been a bit lazy in contacting
them. My computer crashed a few weeks ago, and I seem to have forgotten how to
use the phone…”

Nicci grinned, appreciating that
Emma had never been a strong communicator, and that she’d never approved of
their parents’ emigration, designed so that they could spend their retirement
in the sun. “It’s expensive to call Australia,” she said, reaching out across
the table to brush Emma’s hand in a rare show of solidarity. “I’m sure they
understand.”

The rest of the afternoon passed
quickly, and all too soon the kids arrived back from the party. Olly was unable
to hide his affection for his aunt, and smothered her with rich candy-flavoured
kisses; Jared was more insular, and merely pecked at her offered cheek before
slouching off to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

The travelling had tired Emma more
than she cared to admit, and when she started to doze in front of the television
Nicci ordered her up to bed. “You’re in the spare room, the one next to the
boys’ room. I’ve put fresh sheets on the bed, and there’s a stereo set up in
there in case you want to listen to some music before turning in.”

Emma hugged her sister hard, afraid
that if she let go this moment might shatter like glass. When Nicci broke free,
a look of amused concern on her face, Emma shook her head and trotted silently
upstairs.