Part of the myth of Monty Bright was stored here. The stories people told on the streets, the facts they twisted to become legend, had all started here, as fragments of Monty’s self-built reality.
“In here,” he said, pulling up short at yet another ordinary door. The paint had peeled. The wooden surface was pocked with small abrasions. “This is where I keep them.” His focus had drifted again, like it sometimes did when he spoke about the knowledge he had learned and the things he had written in his worn copy of Extreme Boot Camp Workout. Monty’s voice sounded like it was coming from miles away.
Boater was on the verge of turning around and making his way back above ground, where he could breathe some fresh, clean air, or at least the air that passed for clean and fresh in the Grove.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” said Monty, with a rehearsed air. Indeed, Boater had heard him use the phrase many times, usually in the moments before someone was beaten or cut or raped. Sometimes it even preceded a killing blow.
Monty unlocked the door, pushed it open, and blackness pulsed in the room beyond. Boater followed his boss inside, wishing that he had walked away after all. He didn’t like the feeling he got when he crossed over the threshold. It felt like someone had died in there.
“This is what I wanted to show you.” Monty reached out a hand and flicked a light switch. Dim light spilled down the walls and crept across the floor, failing to fill the far corners but illuminating the very centre of the space like a spotlight on a shabby stage. “I wanted you to meet my secret council.”
Boater looked down at the floor and saw a bunch of old television sets. Most of the screens were cracked; some of them were partially shattered. Each set was of a type that was now rarely sold. There were no flat screens here; no HD-ready plasma models. Just a lot of old, busted television sets like the one his mother used to have in the parlour when he was growing up.
“Monty…” But he didn’t know what to say. This was too weird. None of it made any sense.
“This is where I get my information. Can you see them in there? They tell me things: the bad stuff that’s going to happen unless I do something to prevent it.” Monty was down on his knees in front of the first row of televisions. He was reaching out a hand and brushing the screen with his fingertips, as if he were cleaning the surface of dust. “They help me. They advise me what to do.”
The screens were all dark. These television sets had not worked in years, maybe decades. Even Boater could see that. There was no doubt in his mind that nobody had watched anything on these things since the days when there were only three terrestrial channels available through a roof-mounted aerial or antenna.
“These are the lords of all I survey. They see everything. Their eyes are all around the Grove. They travel to different places, to people’s homes, through the airwaves and they spy on my debtors. Then they bring back snippets of news, like little carrier pigeons.” There was an element of awe in Monty’s voice, but also one of love.
“I see,” said Boater. “That’s… good. It’s handy, isn’t it?” He backed up slowly, making sure that he was close to the door. Just in case Monty flipped. He gripped the neck of the bottle tighter.
Monty turned his head. He was still down on his knees in the dirt, as if praying before the host of broken television sets. “You don’t, do you? You don’t see them.” He smiled, and for a moment Boater thought that he saw cold, flat TV light play across his features.
“No,” said Boater, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see a fucking thing. There’s nobody there, on those screens. The TV sets can’t talk to you.” He held out his hands, a placatory gesture. “They aren’t even plugged in.”
“Not on the screens, Francis. In the screens. They’re inside there, like baby birds waiting inside their eggs. They hatch out sometimes, but only to feed. They take back the sights that television has given us, and when it happens they leave behind a blank slate. People are nothing without their borrowed visuals, their hand-me-down ideas. When they’re removed from the great glass tit they become empty very fucking quickly…” He turned back to the televisions, as if they’d all come on together to show him the different channels they could receive.
Boater was locked in place. He couldn’t move. So he just stood there, and he watched.
“That’s what happened to that stupid druggie thief, Banjo. They stripped him clean, taking back the visions and washing his brain as clean and smooth as a baby’s arse.”
Boater remembered the guy, that junkie. They’d brought him down here and beaten him, and then Monty had told them to leave him alone with the fucker. That was the last Boater knew of him until he saw a report on the local news, stating that the junkie had been found walking the streets trying to rip his own face off. If he remembered correctly, Lana Fraser and some bloke had seen it happen.
“That rotten little bastard got what he deserved. He got wiped clean, retuned to an empty channel.”
The longer Boater stared at the TV screens the more he thought that he could see something behind them, coiling in the darkness. It looked like snakes made of smoke, or limbs of mist. A writhing mass comprised of long, twisting shapes was packed in behind the broken glass, and they were slowly becoming clearer, gaining resolution. Then, as though a visor had been lifted from before his eyes, he caught sight of huge, twitching, insect-like legs, folded over and stuffed tightly into the spaces behind the screens. “I think I see something,” he said, taking a few steps forward, into the room. “They’re in there, aren’t they? They’re really in there.”
“Yes, they are.” Monty stood and walked to Boater’s side. He laid a hand on his forearm. “They told me to take the girl.”
Boater glanced at him. “What girl?” But he knew; of course he did. He’d been keeping an eye on her for almost a fortnight now, since Monty had asked him to swing by her school a couple of times a week, and perhaps follow her home every now and then. If she had ever seen him, all she would have noticed was a fat man in a car parked by the Arcade, or some burly bastard standing outside the Dropped Penny pub waiting for someone.
“First they told me to watch her, and I put you on the job. Now they’ve said that I need to take her. That Fraser woman, she’s going to try to kill me. She’ll come back here very soon, and perhaps she won’t be alone. I need an insurance policy, a little leverage, some collateral on the remainder of her loan.” He gripped Boater’s arm. His fingers felt like steel rods. “Get the girl for me, Francis. Get that cunt’s daughter and put her somewhere safe.” His eyes were manic, filled with an energy whose intensity was terrifying.
Boater’s head felt like it was expanding, and a strange droning noise filled his ears. He watched Monty’s lips move but he could barely hear what was being said.
“Get her and hide her until I tell you it’s safe to bring her back out into the open.”
Even though his hearing was impaired by the keening sound inside his head, Boater understood completely what he was being ordered to do. The only problem was he didn’t know if he could go through with it.
“But first,” said Monty, smiling again. “You can help me carry these fucking televisions upstairs.”
LATER, AS HE sat in his car outside the gym, Boater stared at his tired reflection in the rear-view mirror. He looked different; his features had altered subtly, as if he were trying to physically become someone else. But then the light from passing headlights briefly illuminated the interior of the car and he was once again the same old Francis Boater, with his bloated face and his small eyes. But for a moment there, in the shadows, he had almost been able to convince himself that he was a different person entirely.