Free Silent Voices by Gary McMahon Page A

the unit. Jane never used the space; it was Brendan’s little hidey-hole, where he kept his stash. She pretended that the doors were not there, and ignored the things which lay behind them. It was not her concern; she refused to even acknowledge what he kept there.
    He moved a stack of imported bondage magazines out of the way, and slipped his hand behind a box set of hardcore fetish DVDs imported from Amsterdam. There was a moment of panic when he couldn’t find what he was looking for, but then his questing fingers closed on the acorn. He paused for a moment, unsure. It felt bigger than before, when he’d stashed it here, but that couldn’t be right. Acorns didn’t continue to grow when they’d fallen from the tree. Did they?
    He gripped the seed and pulled it out into the open. He was right; it was bigger. Much bigger... almost twice the size it had been when Banjo had left it for him.
    Brendan closed the door, shutting away his pornography. He promised himself a treat this weekend, when Jane took the twins to her sister’s for tea. That new DVD set had not even been opened; it was still in the cellophane wrapping.
    He stepped down off the wooden box and backed away from the wardrobe doors, towards the bed. When the backs of his knees met the mattress he sat down heavily, acorn held to his chest, eyes closed, mind floating somewhere else. He thought that he heard the wind soughing through treetops, the soft rustle of undergrowth, and the sound of distant singing... and then, from somewhere far away, a clicking sound began to draw closer. It was still a long way off, that sound, but it was approaching steadily, and whatever was making it would be with him soon. The sound both scared him and put him at ease. It was a contradiction, a paradox, and although he wanted nothing more than to see the owner of what he was already thinking of as a strange voice, he also wished that it would turn away and leave him alone.
    Brendan did not know what he wanted, but he was certain that he didn’t want this, whatever the hell it was. But he was sure that the owner of the arrhythmic, clicking voice wanted him... and for a moment he felt sure that that he had encountered it once before, perhaps a long time ago.
    He looked down at his hands, drew them away from his chest. They opened like pale pink flowers, without him having to control them. He stared at the oak bud. Although the acorn had almost doubled in size, the carved initials had remained their original size. The two letters – a B and a C – looked tiny now, but they were still legible on the side of the seed.
    The acorn felt warm and soft, like a small, living animal. It twitched in his hand, pulsing slightly – growing again, even as he watched. Then it was once again still and dead, just a discarded seed from an old tree, a small piece of nature’s detritus.
    But for a moment there, as he’d held the acorn, Brendan had begun to think that it was alive, and it was reaching out to him.
    Or that something was.

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    S IMON HAD BEEN in a lot of pubs that were worse than The Dropped Penny, and had mixed with clientele even rougher around the edges than those currently surrounding him, drinking their pints and their shots and watching the world through rheumy, alcohol-blurred eyes. Back when he’d still lived on the estate, the pub had a reputation as being an old man’s drinking den – the haunt of ancient crones and wizened old blaggers who spent their days winding down towards the grave. It had always been a hotbed of gossip, the place you came to find out who had double-crossed whom, which bloke was sleeping with his neighbour’s wife, what the latest drug of choice might be on the streets of the Grove.
    Brendan had called him thirty minutes ago, asking him where he wanted to meet up. The Dropped Penny had been the natural choice; a hotbed of street-level information, the place seemed tailor-made for this kind of meeting. And what kind was that, he