Some Bruising May Occur

Author

SOME BRUISING MAY OCCUR

Gary McMahon

Copyright 2020 © Gary McMahon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-950305-22-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-950305-23-0 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934199

First printing edition: April 10, 2020

Published by JournalStone Publishing in the United States of America.

Cover Design and Layout: Don Noble/Rooster Republic Press

Interior Layout: Yara Eloff

Edited by Sean Leonard

Proofread by Scarlett R. Algee

JournalStone Publishing

3205 Sassafras Trail

Carbondale, Illinois 62901

JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

JournalStone | www.journalstone.com

Acknowledgments:

This book is dedicated to my wife and son. I love you both more than I can say.

Thanks to the editors who published some of these stories and all the writer friends who have helped me along the way. We currently live in terrible, troubled times, with a lot of us stuck in lockdown due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, and we are being reminded in a very real way that nobody can accomplish anything worthwhile without the help of others.

I’m not at all sure that more horror stories are what the world really needs right now, but I humbly offer these tales as a distraction from the real horrors—I’m afraid they’re all I have. Be safe, be kind, be good to each other.

"These dark things

I give to thee

Shadow-soft fruit

From a midnight tree"

-Anon

Introduction

by Alison Littlewood

What can I say about Gary McMahon? He’s one of the first people I met in the genre, and it’s always a pleasure. We’ve laughed over a pint at Fantasycon and enjoyed a curry and generally put the world to rights, as well as sharing space in several anthologies. I’ve read his work in Black Static and many other fine publications, and enjoyed the Concrete Grove trilogy and Pretty Little Dead Things and admired his gritty vision of what can be achieved in contemporary horror fiction. So it’s a great honour to drop by and introduce this, Gary’s latest collection of short stories.

And very fine stories they are. It includes some of my favourites: ‘My Boy Builds Coffins,’ ‘Unicorn Meat,’ ‘The Hanging Boy,’ and ‘The Night Just Got Darker,’ the author’s touching tribute to the late Joel Lane. It tells of a man who writes in order to make the bleak world bearable, ‘working and reworking just to hold back the darkness’.

And that feels entirely fitting within the world of Gary McMahon. These are not stories about sunshine and flowers; they are most definitely from the author of The Concrete Grove. They are urban, modern, unflinching tales of inner cities and back streets, of waste lands and decaying things. Outside the door are not trees and fields, but rundown housing estates and boarded-up factories and asbestos garages; litter and abandoned furniture and the loss of hope. The settings are ones we can all recognise, so that when the author deftly introduces a savour of the unsettling and the unknown, our sense of unease is deeper for the contrast.

Similarly, here are not monsters, but the people we know—or think we do, so that when the unexpected intrudes, it is all the more disturbing. (‘He looked entirely normal; he was the same as always, her beautiful little boy. He wasn’t a monster. He hadn’t been taken over by some alien force. He was her boy. He built coffins.’)

McMahon’s characters are fully rounded. These are people we feel to have lived, who are bruised by life, whose insights are the result of suffering. (‘I just think that maybe...maybe you have to be damaged in a certain way to be able to see it.’) Some are brutal and brutalised, who don’t quite feel they belong in the lives in which they’ve found themselves; they don’t fit in their own skin. They are battered people, hurt people; they are damaged in a certain way.

As good horror can, these stories imbue the ordinary with a sense of the mythic and the symbolic; they have resonance. Everyday things become terrifying. A door. A wall. A father or a son. Suddenly what is safe isn’t safe any longer, not in the hands of Gary McMahon. He tears away any veils of comfort, leaving only stark reality behind; telling us the truth.

These stories are chilling, yes, but even as you read, they also demand something from you, even if only a pause, a deep breath, time to reflect. They reach deep inside you and grab what they can with their claws. They pass from the messy, frightening world of children to the messy, frightening and equally unknowable world of adulthood, and show us the terrors in each.

And yet there is beauty here too. There is love and kindness and an appreciation of the ineffable mysteries of the world, something other than the bleakness we have made, even if glimpsed only in the midst of its loss. These stories give us a sense of the things we should value and grasp and try to hold onto. Even when mired in the sordid, there is something beyond it: ‘He was rubbing her thigh, his broad fingers gripping her slightly too tightly. The bruises there began to sing. She could hear them, like a chorus of castrati: high, beautiful, the voices of weeping angels.’

To sum up, I will simply say that here is a writer at the height of his skills. I’m happy to know him, and to have had the pleasure of reading much of his fiction. I have always found it excellent, well-deserving of the reputation Gary has built for himself, and I’m glad to report that this collection is no exception.

And so—welcome to the world of Gary McMahon. These stories are constructed simply of words, but beware, for they can nevertheless plunge a knife into your gut. They have power. They will take you by the hand and lead you to places you don’t expect, and when you return, you might just be a little bit changed. This is writing that blisters and burns and scars—and so, Dear Reader, I must warn you: some bruising may occur...

Alison Littlewood

My Boy Builds Coffins

I

Susan found the first one when she was tidying his room.

Chris was at school, and she’d been sprucing up the house before popping off to collect him after the afternoon session. The ground floor was done; the lounge was spick and span (as her mother had loved to say) and the kitchen was so clean it belonged in a show home. The downstairs bathroom was clean enough for a royal inspection. The en-suite would do, she supposed, and her and Dan’s bedroom was the best it could be, considering they both liked to dump their dirty clothes all over the floor and the furniture.

Now it was time to tackle Chris’s room, which was about as messy as any eight-year-old could hope to achieve.

She pushed open the door, holding her breath, and walked into the chaos. His blow-up punch bag had been moved into the centre of the room and left there. The floor was littered with books, magazines, Top Trumps playing cards, rogue counters from board games, art supplies, and—oddly—old cardboard toilet roll holders.

Jesus, Chris... She tiptoed across the room to the window, trying not to step on anything that might break. When she got there, she pushed open the window to let in some fresh air. The room smelled stale, as if it hadn’t been lived in for months.

Okay, she murmured. Let’s get this shit sorted.

First she tackled the floor. Patiently, she picked up everything and put it away where it belonged—or at least where she thought it belonged, or where it looked like it belonged. After twenty minutes the room was already looking much better. At least she could move around without fear of treading on something.

Next she tidied up the top of his desk—where she found old DVDs without cases, more playing cards, flakes of dried modelling clay, small stones from the garden, bits and pieces of magic tricks, and other sundry boy-items.

The desk was almost clear, and she was looking for a drawer into which she could squeeze yet more art supplies, when she found the coffin.

It was in the bottom drawer, where at one time Chris had kept his football shirts—one a year, from birth, because his dad supported Manchester United.

She stood silently and stared into the drawer. It was empty but for the coffin.

It was made out of what looked to be a fine-grade timber—pale, with a neat wood-grained pattern. The wood was unpainted and untreated; it was bare, nude, but smooth, as if it had been sanded. Attached to the lid of the coffin was a small brass plate with the word Daddy engraved across it in a neat, delicate script.

For a moment Susan felt as if someone else had entered the room behind her. She resisted the urge to turn and look, but she felt a presence there. She knew it was nonsense, there was no one there, but all the same she sensed it. Standing right behind her, perhaps even peering over her shoulder. At the coffin.

She moved to her knees and looked closer. The coffin was small. It was probably the right size to hold an Action Man doll (It isn’t a doll, Chris always protested, it’s an action figure!) and she wondered if that was indeed what the casket contained.

Carefully, she reached into the drawer and placed her hands on the sides of the coffin. She lifted it out of the drawer, stood, and carried it over to the bed. She put it down and thought about what she was going to do.

Then, on impulse that wasn’t really an impulse because she’d been planning it all along, she reached down and lifted the lid off the coffin.

Inside was a thin layer of dirt. She ran her fingers through the dirt, feeling its gritty reality. It felt soft and slightly damp, like soil from the garden.

What the hell is this?

Part of her tensed in anticipation of a reply from that unseen figure: the one that wasn’t there, oh no, not really there at all. Because she was all alone in her son’s room, wasn’t she?

II

She broached the subject over dinner that evening.

Chris was tucking into his chicken, gravy smeared across his lips and his cheeks: the boy couldn’t eat anything without wearing it. Dan was reading a computer printout at the table as he nibbled at his own meal, taking small, delicate bites. She was so sick of asking him not to read at the table that she’d stopped saying it over a month ago.

Chris.

The boy looked up from his meal. He smiled. Yes, Mummy? His teeth were covered in gravy, too.

I tidied your room today.

Sorry, Mummy. I meant to do it, but I forgot.

She sighed. Yes, I know...just like you forget everything, except sweets and comics and DVDs.

He grinned. Can I watch a DVD tonight?

No, said Dan, putting down his printout. It’s a school night. That’s a weekend treat.

Chris began to pout. He picked at his chicken with his fork. The tines scraped against the plate, making Susan wince. He’d stopped having the tantrums over a month ago, but there was always the risk that he’d go off on one again.

Listen, Chris...about your room.

Yeah. He didn’t look up—he was sulking.

I found something. In a drawer.

Dan glanced at her, raising his eyebrows in a question. She shook her head: she would deal with this.

Mummy found something...a little bit strange.

Chris looked up from his food. He was frowning. What was it?

Let me show you. She stood and pushed her chair away from the table. She crossed the room and took the coffin out of the cupboard, where she’d put it for safekeeping. She carried it back to the table, cleared the condiments out of the way, and set it down in front of her family. It felt ritualistic, like the beginning of some obscure rite. She pushed the thought away. It wasn’t helpful.

This is what I found.

Dan stared at the coffin. His face wasn’t sure what expression to form. Chris smiled at her.

Do you know what this is, Chris?

Dan glanced at his son, remaining silent for now.

Yes. It’s a box. The boy reached out for the coffin, but she moved it across the table and out of his way, as if it might infect him or something.

Where did you get it, darling? She was trying to keep things light, but a strange mood had begun to descend upon the dining table. It felt as if a shadow had entered the room, dimming the lights, and the temperature had dropped by a few degrees. Well, Chris? Where did you get this...box? Where did it come from?

I made it, Mummy. I made it for Daddy. He turned to face Dan, his small face beaming, his eyes large and expectant, as if he’d done something miraculous and was due a large reward. Some sweets, perhaps. Or a new DVD.

I... Dan looked from her to the boy, and then back again. Thank you, he said, absurdly. Then he looked at Susan again, searching for help. Did you make it at school?

No. Here. At home. Chris’s smile dropped. His small face seemed to crumple inwards. He was clearly making a concerted effort not to lose his temper, despite the odd situation, and Susan loved him for it.

"Well, who taught you how to make it? I mean, someone must have helped you."

The boy shook his head, refusing to say anything more.

Well?

He shook his head again.

Susan intervened before things became more fractious: Okay, you pop off and get your jim-jams on, and after you’ve done your teeth, I’ll read to you for a while before you go to sleep.

Dan walked away, obviously troubled. Chris dragged his feet as he slowly left the room.

III

So what the hell’s going on here? Dan was pacing the floor and drinking whisky. He looked harried. His hair was a mess from where he’d been running his fingers through it—like he always did when he was stressed. His face was pale and his shirt was hanging out of the waistband of his trousers. I mean, this isn’t...normal. It isn’t normal behaviour, is it?

Just calm down a minute. Let’s think this through.

That’s easy for you to say, he said, his shoulders slumping. "He didn’t build you a coffin."

He’s eight years old, Dan. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He probably saw it in a magazine or something. Or on the telly. I bet he thought he was doing something nice for you.

Dan laughed: a single barking sound. Fucking hell, Susan. He only ever called her that when he was anxious; usually it was Sue. Maybe we should call someone. A doctor...or a psychiatrist. Get him seen to again. Maybe this is to do with the old trouble.

Don’t be silly. You’re overreacting. We don’t need anyone. He’s over all that anger business. This is...different. Something we can cope with ourselves.

Dan did not seem convinced. You saw the craftsmanship on that thing. Look at it. He strode across the room and picked up the coffin. His mouth twisted into an unconscious grimace, as if he were touching something rotten. "Look at it. The perfectly mitred joints, the smooth finish...this is beautiful work. The way he said that word, he gave it the opposite effect to what it really meant. An eight-year-old kid can’t do this kind of work..." He sat down in the armchair, looking tired and defeated. He still held the coffin, but loosely. He didn’t seem to want to let it go.

I don’t pretend to understand this either, honey, but I think we need to tread carefully...just in case it triggers an episode or something.

He was rubbing the side of the coffin with his thumb. It’s got dirt inside...grave dirt.

Don’t be silly.

"Grave dirt, he said again, as if repetition might diminish the power of the words. My grave..."

It’s soil from the garden. She got up and walked over to him, snatched away the coffin. She moved over to the fireplace and put the coffin down on the mantelpiece, next to last year’s school photo: Chris smiled at her from inside the frame, his hair neatly combed, his shirt collars sticking out from the neck of his grey school sweater, his cheeks shining from the heat of the photographer’s lights. He looked like a typical small boy, but underneath it all he’d been a mess of conflicting emotions, a child governed by an inexplicable rage.

Okay, said Dan, behind her. So we tread softly. He sounded more relaxed, less wound up.

She turned around. He was still seated, and pouring another large shot of whisky into the glass. Could I have one of those? She held out her own glass, but made no move to approach him. I could really use it. She smiled.

He nodded.

She walked over, but instead of waiting for him to pour, she knelt down before him and ran her hands across his thighs. It’ll be okay. He’s just a kid. He had no idea of the effect something like this might have.

But the workmanship... Dan’s face was pleading. It made him look years younger, almost like a child himself.

I know...it’s weird, I’ll admit that. But that’s all it is—weird and unusual. There’s nothing to worry about. I promise. We’ll deal with it, as a family. No more pills and doctors.

IV

A few days later she found the second coffin.

This one had been left on her bed. It was a Saturday and Dan was out playing five-a-side football, making cross-field runs and dirty tackles just to relax. She was hanging up some clothes, and when she turned around from the wardrobe to face the room, the coffin was there, on her pillow. The brass plate on this one read Mummy.

It hadn’t been there when she entered the room. She was sure. She would have noticed.

Chris?

There was no reply. The house was quiet. Outside, she could hear traffic on the nearby main road, some kids shouting on another street, and the sound of someone mowing their lawn. They were real noises, the sounds that connected you to reality. There was nothing to fear here, in this friendly little neighbourhood.

Are you there, baby?

She heard a shuffling sound in the hall. For a moment, she was afraid to cross the room and look through the doorway. Some unreasonable fear held her there, afraid of