The sound faded, as if it were moving away from him, perhaps along a dark, deserted corridor inside a ruined tower block. Briefly he smelled the sap of summer trees, felt a light breeze blowing against his naked torso, and heard distant cries, like twisted birdsong.
He was safe. He wasn’t there, inside the Needle. He was safe and sound and prepared for action, within walls that were concrete, yes, but much newer, and not as haunted as the ones from before — the old, grey concrete walls that still surrounded his soul, cutting it off from daylight. Making it so that he could not see Sally’s candle; would never see it again, even in dreams.
Marty relaxed, letting his hands drop to his sides. He had to coax his fists to open, but they obeyed him. He sat back down on the sofa and picked up the bottle. Took a large swallow.
He felt around on the sofa for the acorn, experiencing a sudden desire for the security it had provided. He could not find it anywhere, not on the surface of the cushions, or down the back or sides of the cushions. He raised his hands to his head and scratched his scalp, rubbing his temples as he moved his hands across his skull. Looking down, wondering if the acorn had in fact dropped onto the floor, he noticed a small lump in his abdomen.
Time slowed down, stopped. The image of the television seemed to freeze, but when he glanced at it the picture began to move again, as if mocking him.
He looked down again, at his body.
His torso.
At the lump. In his belly.
The lump was positioned to the left of his navel, not too far from the knife wound (what had that fume-stinking old sawbones called it, a loin wound?). The lump was large, almost the size of a golf ball but more oval in shape. It stretched the skin around it taut, making it pale and thin-looking.
Marty reached down and patted the area around the lump. There was no pain, not even minor discomfort. It was as if the area had gone numb from some kind of anaesthetic. The kind you might receive before minor surgery, given to you by a heavy-breathing medic in a face mask.
He knew what it was, of course. Marty was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid.
It was the acorn.
Somehow the acorn had got… inside him. It had entered his body.
He looked at the wound. The stitches had come undone. There was no blood; the wound was perfectly dry. To him, in that moment, its inner edges looked like the labia of some mutant vagina; the pink inside was the interior of a woman’s genitals. He had no idea why he was thinking this way, but the image would not shift. He was stuck with it.
Suddenly, as he watched, the acorn began to move. Inching its way along inside his torso, towards his navel, it rolled like a slow-witted dung beetle. Again, there was no pain. He felt nothing, nothing at all. It was as if he had been cut off from all the nerves in his body below the shoulders and above the pelvis: everything between these points was vague, like something that didn’t quite belong to him. It was like dreaming awake, caught in that idle moment between sleeping and waking, when the two states bleed into each other to become something entirely different. It wasn’t unpleasant… not really. He found himself fascinated by the slow-rolling movement beneath his skin, and the way the skin itself stretched like elastic to accommodate the travelling seed.
The acorn stopped moving.
Marty felt bereft. He realised that he’d enjoyed the sight of it shifting across his abdomen. He reached down and flicked it gently, and just the once, to encourage it to move again.
The acorn responded.
It rolled across his stomach, causing his navel to protrude as it passed beneath the recessed pink knot (he was always so oddly proud of being an ��outy’ rather than an ‘inny’), and round towards his opposite flank. The acorn disappeared then, under his body, but he was aware of its presence under the skin of his back. He still could not feel the acorn, but he knew that it was still in motion, as if some previously hidden sense was tracking it around his body.
Marty knew that he should be worried, perhaps even frightened, by what was happening to him, but he could not summon the energy to react in this way. He watched as the acorn completed its slow circuit, passing under the wound — making those labial folds purse and open like a kiss — and then back to its starting point to the left of his navel.
“Wow,” he said, feeling drunk on the experience. “Fucking hell.”
He reached down again and placed the end of his index finger against the conical top of the acorn. Then, without even considering what kind of damage he might be doing to his insides, Marty pressed down on the seed.
The acorn sank into his belly, vanishing into the yielding flesh. The skin popped back to its natural shape, and there was no evidence of the acorn ever having been there, beneath the surface of Marty Rivers, under his demented skin.
He blinked and looked up at the window. The blind was glowing white, like a screen, from the sunlight behind. What was happening to him? He felt like he’d just woken up from a long sleep. Had he been dreaming? Surely what he thought he’d experienced could not be real. It was impossible. A hallucination.
He looked down at his flat belly, and then at the dry wound. Everything looked fine.
But deep down, despite the fact that he did not want to listen, a small, scared voice — his ten-year-old self — was whispering: It wasn’t a dream. You were awake. This is really happening. Clickety-clickety-click.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE OLD WOMAN lived on Grove Terrace, in a house that backed onto Beacon Green. Simon could remember Marty going there for lunch every Sunday — a big roast, with Yorkshire puddings and all the trimmings. His parents would never have made such a meal. In Marty’s house, it was always whatever came out of a can served with bread — French toast on a weekend, as a little treat.
Brendan knocked on the door, rapping three times with his knuckles. There did not seem to be a doorbell, or even a knocker. The front garden was small and neat, with well-tended borders and a lawn that was cropped as short as a football pitch. The house number was painted on the wall to the left of the door in white emulsion.
“I hope she’s home.” Simon glanced at Brendan.
“She said she would be,” said Brendan, fidgeting with the buttons at the neck of his shirt. He looked uncomfortable, as if he were in pain, or perhaps his clothes didn’t quite fit him properly. Whatever the cause of his consternation, it was making him fidget in a way that looked exhausting.
“You okay?”
Brendan stopped fidgeting. “Aye, I’m fine. Why?” He didn’t make eye contact.
Simon sensed something, a kind of reluctance on Brendan’s part to reveal what was wrong with him. “It’s just, well, you seem a little off. You know, like you’re hurting or something. You keep wincing, and you’re pulling at your clothes. The shirt, the jacket.”
Brendan shook his head. “No, mate. It’s nothing. I have a rash, that’s all. Jane started using some new kind of washing powder — it was on sale. I think I’m allergic.” Still he did not meet Simon’s gaze.
“Oh. Right. That explains it.” Simon shrugged, took a step back, and glanced along the road, then back at the front door. “Where is she?”