#39 Tunnel No. 1

 I started writing this in January after having a strange dream which was partly a memory from a recent holiday, and partly a weird mixture of things I’ve been researching lately. I’ve tried to coalesce these ideas here in a kind of magic realist monster story. Hope you enjoy!

Image: Ponttovuori tunnel by Tiia Monto: Wikipedia Commons.

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Victor stood on the dark river bank and watched the small motions of the water. It would have been generous to call them waves, he thought. It made him sad just looking at the lapping futility of those tiny ripples touching his shoes. Something about being cooped up in that place, hour after hour in the dim light with the smell of stagnant water all around him made him feel scooped out; hollowed like a shucked oyster. Faces of co-workers blurred in and out of his field of vision, blobs on the periphery, flitting in between trees. They ceased to be individual people, and became like darting shadows, or memories. The sounds of the boats creaking into their moorings, of chatter, and of the last passengers disembarking onto the bank had now died away to almost nothing. Victor had finished his final sweep of area and was simply waiting to be sent home. A headache was clustering behind his eyes. It had started as he began extinguishing the torches. Now he could see their flames every time he blinked, and he could smell the paraffin on his clothes.

Over on the other bank, Tim was flirting with someone. Victor knew who it was without having to look up. She gave muted responses Victor could barely hear. He should have asked her out years ago, but there was never a good time. The music was cut off abruptly. The main spotlights extinguished with a finality, a resounding click which echoed around the cavern. A kind of strained calm descended like a heavy curtain falling. Feelings on top of feelings layered up at the back of Victor’s mind like a scrap heap. He tossed them into some hidden part of himself as if they held nothing of value. He worried that they were worse than useless, that they were slowly but surely poisoning him; rotting carcases poisoning a stream. It was the end of a long day, and he had worked too hard. He had been staring too long into the water.

On the other side of what passed for a sand bar coated in a chattering of palm trees, he saw Rose looking at him. She was pulling an empty boat back in to shore, securing it with a thick rope to the jetty. Her black hair glinted liquorice in the almost moonlight. Her arms with their fine hairs were strong. She had a sweet face. Victor wanted to love her more than anything else in the whole world, but he never had the energy. Words just fell out his mouth like accidents. It wasn’t that he was too nervous, or didn’t have the courage. He was incapable. Someone had cut all the wires inside so he no longer worked properly.

“Hey bud,” he felt a hand slap his shoulder.

“You alright?” Joseph’s hand was wet. Victor felt it soak through the back of his polo shirt.

“Fine, fine.”

Joseph shifted a little. “Almost done for the night, but there’s a boat got stuck back in Tunnel One.”

“You want me to go get it?”

Joseph’s face fell down into a sloppy sort of smile, like someone had pulled away a beam somewhere.

“Oh, would you? That would be great, my shoulder’s getting a little, you know,” he made a show of rolling the shoulder round in the joint, rubbing it with a long pale hand. Joseph probably had a date tonight.

“Sure, go on home.”

Tunnel One was a quite a walk away. You could follow the route the designated path led you along, winding up and through several cold, stone corridors lined by torches. With these now extinguished, and only the guide lights to walk by, it was easy to miss the right turning. Besides, it would be quicker to stay on the bank and just stumble across the scenery. You weren’t supposed to, strictly, but everyone did it. Rose called to Victor as he hopped his way along the sand towards the first of the tunnels, but Victor only waved at her. Her downturned eyes had a haunted look as she watched him pass out of reach. She might wait for him to be finished with this last task so that they could walk to the carpark together, she might, or she might not. Maybe this time she would just give up.

When you really love someone, truly, you will do everything you can to keep from hurting them. It’s as simple as a reflex. Victor had observed it. Had felt it for himself. You could want to hurt them in an instant, but the minute you see what that hurt might mean, you pull back. You can’t really do it. Victor knew that, and so it was easier to be with girls who didn’t think twice about hurting him. That way, he didn’t owe them anything. He appreciated rather than enjoyed the machinations of the girls who wanted the things they could achieve through him. It made him feel needed in a way he could easily dispose of. Victor just couldn’t take Rose pining for him gently all the way over there on the bank like that for no good reason at all except that she loved him. It felt like that kind of investment in him, as a man, was something beyond him. It was more than he had been brought up to expect.

Tunnel Four was short enough. It had a thin lip on either side that allowed you to slink along with your back to the wall. Victor had gotten pretty good at moving that way, he was light on his feet. The truth was that he liked to explore the cavern sometimes. He liked being alone in the dark, it was only sometimes that he felt that ache in his stomach and the feeling that he was choking. It was the people, mostly, not the river, or the darkness, or the artificial palms. People had expectations, and he liked it when he could fulfil them. When he couldn’t, he choked.

Victor passed out into his favourite part of the ride. It was the main scene, where the huge model pirate ship loomed out at you from the third tunnel with the sound of cracking cannons and the sulphurous smoke billowing automatically from her sides. The ship was silent now, all her lights extinguished, but the smoke still lingered to give the air a sickly sweet smell. The waters here were rippling still, though no boats troubled them. The tourists were long gone. It gave Victor pause. He stood at the entrance to Tunnel Three and watched the little waves reverberating outwards. His walkie talkie buzzed at his hip. It was Maurice in the command tower.

“Anyone in there still?” the voice crackled.

Victor pulled the walkie talkie up, and pressed the button with a quick flick of his thumb.

“Can’t see anybody here, Chief. Ride closed half an hour ago.”

He could almost feel Maurice sighing. It made him nervous.

“Ah, forget it. You getting the boat?”

“Yeah, how come you asked?”

“What?” The signal was a little jumpy.

“About there being someone here.”

“Oh,” there was hesitation which might just have been a time lag.

“Oh, well, it’s just our numbers for the last boat were off by one, that’s all.”

“…when you did the transfer?”

“Yeah, switched folks from Boat Two to Boat three. Boat Two got stuck in the tunnel again, but it was the last of the day so we just left it there.”

“Better than being on train tracks eh Chief?”

“Yeah,” Maurice chuckled. He had worked for all the major themeparks at one time or another. Too many animatronics, he used to say. Too much to go wrong. Here they had real sand with real boats, even if the palms were plastic.

“Maybe someone miscounted when they loaded the boat up. It’s late,” Victor’s voice had a shrug in it.

“Yeah, yeah maybe” Maurice seemed to be receding into the static. “But you know, Tunnel One…”

There was a pause.

“Yeah. It’s that Déjà vu feeling again,”

Victor didn’t really know what to say. He aimed for flippant but missed.

Maurice’s voice said something which sounded like “Bermuda Triangle,” but the words became distorted and the walkie talkie cut off.

Victor became acutely aware of where he was. It was as if the immediate silence caused by the cut off signal had pounced on him from all around. The waters rippled and the great ship sat, fat bellied, empty of life, staring at him.

Victor continued on through Tunnel Three and out into Pirate Town. Only the guide lights shone so the parapets and mannequins cast uneven shadows onto the set. Bluebeard’s beady black eyes glimmered under the small spotlights beaming up feebly from the ground. These lights were hidden in plastic shrubbery, covered in coloured gels, so that they bathed the figures in an eerie crimson glow. The pirates’ skin had a waxy look up close. Some had scuff marks, peeling patches you couldn’t see from the boats. Their hair was stiff with dust. Only some had the capability of movement. All looked as if they might have some deeply disturbing level of sentience when you turned your back on them, as if there was something staring out beneath the waxen surface that resented imprisonment. Victor stopped and rubbed his face with his hands. His skin felt creepy. There was a breeze coming from somewhere. He was tired. He pushed on past the inhabitants of Pirate Town and into Tunnel Two.

The Cove had a different kind of light. It shimmered in lilacs and aquamarines and the underwater lighting gave the river a lagoon-like quality. Victor enjoyed being in The Cove like this, without the larger spotlights on it seemed even more magical. It didn’t matter to him that he couldn’t clearly see the rag-tag skeletons or the fake treasure chests with their plastic rubies and tin foil doubloons. Two mermaids’ tails hung down over the peak of a rock, and their scales glittered. Engorged, naked breasts sat on their chests like crème puffs with cherry-red nipples, but the top half of the bodies were cast in heavy shadow. There was only the suggestion of something round and inviting, nothing parents could complain about, if they saw it. And if they saw it – as Maurice always used to say – then they really had to be looking. Victor gazed longingly up at them. They were grotesque and silent. Their bodies had no heads. Victor wondered whether Rose had waited for him after all. Shame crawled over him like insects. He usually enjoyed being in this part of the ride most of all, but today it seemed somehow alien to him, like he was seeing it for the first time.

Tunnel One lay ahead, just a wide gaping mouth. There was no light from within, and no sound except a rhythmic slapping. The boat must be trapped inside, its rudder caught on something on the river bed, its prow jammed in an outcropping of rock. It wasn’t the first time. Tunnel One was a bugbear for the guides, and it was the first tunnel they came to. The traffic jams were a major headache for Maurice, who said he was waiting on the go-ahead from the Operations Manager to close the ride for a few days to get that section patched. It was just everyday stuff. But Tunnel One had this reputation. Sometimes people were miscounted when they were placed in boats. Sometimes you could have sworn there were people who went in and didn’t come out. Lone travellers, always. Never families, never couples, never children. Rose swore blind she knew a man who had vanished in Tunnel One. That was six months ago, and she was still jumpy. Then there was Gloria, who had worked with them for a little while. Tall, always in pigtails, Gloria had a loud laugh and liked to pinch the other guides in the dark just for a joke. One day she forgot to clock out at the end of her shift, and never came back. Last time Rose had seen her she was heading into Tunnel One.

Victor pushed his thoughts away like he was pushing hairs out of his eyes. They did him no good, he told himself. The breeze was starting to annoy him. He thought he could hear rain tapping on the roof of the cavern above and felt a momentary chill sweep through him. This was no time to get the ghoulies. He got to moving. He passed through the entrance to the tunnel and the sound of rain vanished. The tapping of the boat against the cave lip was constant, and gentle, but on the other side to where he was poised. Victor made a calculated hop, which should have been enough to carry him across, but it wasn’t. It was if the air had pushed him, mid step. He had slammed into something which couldn’t have been there. Victor landed on his back in the river with a splash, his mouth filled with the rancid taste of stagnant, chlorinated water. He gasped and pushed towards the boat, treading water until he could find his feet. The waterline came up to his neck. It was dark; Tunnel One had no lights. It was supposed to freak out the passengers while spooky pirate music blared out of the speakers before dropping them into The Cove with a splash. The way the tunnel rose up slightly towards the entrance and curved around meant that only a meagre amount of light from the scene ahead spilled in. Victor fumbled for the side of the boat and tried to shake it loose, but something had it well and truly jammed. He struggled with it, having to hold his breath for bouts while he dipped beneath the water. That was when he felt something touch him. Reaching under his shirt to place a cold hand on the small of his back. He spun round, spluttering water but it was too dark too see anything.

“Hey!” he shouted, not liking the way his voice echoed throughout the tunnel. It sounded afraid.

Nothing answered.

Victor swam around the boat and tried to climb up onto the stone lip, but his feet couldn’t settle on a foothold. The stone edge was too slippery for his hands. It was like the water wouldn’t let him go. Panic started in his stomach and spread upwards. He tried to stay calm, and breath deeply. He placed both his hands on the ledge and tried to think of the coolness of the stone and the water seeping into him and making him numb, emotionless. Somewhere far off he thought he heard Rose’s voice calling for him, but he couldn’t seem to call back. The little mind-trick was working, though, he was starting to feel a numbness creeping through his limbs, like slender hands stroking his skin. They reached up and around him, over his waist and chest, down his legs and up towards his collar bone. Whispers rose in the Tunnel, like twin voices. He felt a tugging.

“If I don’t feel anything I won’t lose it,” he said, mechanically.

The hands began to drag him slowly away from the edge, into the water. He saw shapes above him. He was being tugged from the waist downwards. The ground that had been beneath his feet moments ago now just seemed to fall away.  In the last of the light, Victor saw their roundness; their glittering bodies. It made him go limp. He knew them like he knew himself, he thought, and so he let them take hold of him. Their faces were not at all how he imagined them to be. Their skin was puffy and loose. They had cherry-red lips, but their eyes were pale and insipid, almost devoid of colour. He looked into their faces, longing to see the joy, and familiarity he felt, but their expressions were utterly passionless. Workmanlike, they pushed him down beneath them, wrapping his body in their long muscular tails. His hands flailed for them, but they were inconstant. They moved too fast for him to hold anything but air. Their greed for him was rabid, hungry and desperate. He would give them what they wanted for as long as they needed him. It was easier than resisting. It was good to be needed, to give until the point of exsanguination. To feel your own ego, obliterated by another. The waves licked his body in undulations as they pulled him down. Whispers slipped between his ears but breaking through the murmurs he heard Rose calling to him for the last time. There was a sharpness in his heart, and in his stomach. The hands which had been stroking him were claws. The two thoughts converged. He ripped open his lungs to scream but the water swallowed him up with a snap, leaving only ripples.

Rose had waited for Victor, but he never came. When his walkie talkie couldn’t be raised she and Maurice had converged upon The Cove without bothering to consult one another. Tunnel One was a empty; a silent column of darkness. The blue water shimmered as the rogue boat, now turned loose, drifted aimlessly. Rose began to shout out for Victor again, flashing her torch beam in wide arcs, its light penetrating beyond the tunnel mouth to reveal only walls and water. A feeling was creeping its way down her neck like an icicle. Maurice looked over her shoulder. He was making laboured breaths but no movements. He seemed to be trying to come to a decision. Together, they stood like that for a moment, staring into the tunnel, each thinking their own dark thoughts, and the boat slipped gently away behind them, carried off by the lapping waves.

It was then that Rose caught a faint suggestion in the air of a scent. Aftershave. The sound of rain on the cavern roof. A memory of an experience that wasn’t hers. Her name being called. She handed Maurice the torch, and jumped into the water. There was the remnant of a whisper in her ear and a vision of floating, bloated faces. She whirled around as an instinct pulled her gaze upwards towards the rock.

Nothing but a pair of plaster sphinxes. Headless, in the shadows.

Rose plunged into the tunnel, and tasted blood. The water was deeper than it should have been.

Somewhere in the depths, a voice was calling to her.

#33 Now That They Are Gone

 

What happens to the house now they are gone?

Hands gather on the iron gate. Fingers that cannot hold are slipping through the bars to grasp the air, left burning even by the faintest touch. A line of desire stretching as far as the onset of night on the plantation fields is visible. Somewhere beyond, daylight has just left, and is streaking away.

What happens now the rooms are all shut up? Locks turned in every key hole, windows barred with thick blocks of iron. Rust is gathering on the panes, on the old door handles and window frames. Gasping, those who wait outside the walls are aching for the decay inside that house.

Dr Barnstable has long since left. He took with him his servant and his big, leather bag. The clasp snapped shut on his box of tricks, the claw hammer has nailed its last. He is going into retirement now, never to come back to this place. The stake and sacrament can be left to someone else, he says, as his servant merrily throws open the gate. There is blood on his collar and cuff, gore trails the trouser leg, but a pipe is lit and a night of comfort is waiting for old Dr Barnstable and his servant.

What happened afterwards? There had been a fire in that old place, just before the sun went down. They all saw it, the ones outside the gate. They saw a burning in the attic window, and a figure on fire, plummeting to Earth like Lucifer, evaporating on the North Wind in a pathetic final puff of desperate half-life.

Now the house is empty. Only the living can enter, and none will buy the place. Left to rot on the old plantation, the house sleeps restlessly, and the dead watch it. They are gnawing at the gate post, digging in the dirt until it stings them. Their limbs disappear, their essence annihilated while others take their place. It is the Holy Water burning them but they will not leave the house of their King, even long after Dr Barnstable dispatched him into thin air.

Slipping past the crowds of phantom watchers the gate will easily swing upon your touch. You put the cold, iron key back in your pocket and proceed because you did not hear them cry to see a living soul walk where they cannot. Down the gravel path to the sound of cawing crows, to the beating wings of ravens and the creak of the bows of the antique scarecrow. Knocked down and losing his stuffing, birds have pecked out his eyes and in the patch, pumpkins are rotting.

Towards the house your steps are crunching on the pebbles. The leather of your newly shined boots is scuffing and your tailored jacket is too fine to resist the cut of the wind through the corn field. It stretches away out to right and something perpetually rustles through it along the rows.

The house is here and waiting. The door you unlock with another, newer key. They changed the locks. Dr Barnstable ordered it done and the man came on Sunday and now the key is small and neat in your hand, and sparkling. But see how it turns uncertainly in the lock. The man has made rough work, the key struggles, you twist and twist. The key snaps. The door, as if aware of the resistance, opens creaking loudly, you think it could almost be laughing.

The house is barren now. Holy Water on the hearth, the door jam smeared with brick dust from a pouch. There is the smell of burnt sage wafting down from the gallery like a host creeping down the stairs to greet you, now that the old host is gone. Trails of blood will never be washed from the floorboards, decades of viscera smeared into the carpet. Half the rooms are shut up, and will never be opened again. The others are places where graveyard earth has been scattered . Consecrated broadcasting, Dr Barnstable was thorough as he sewed the Holy grains from space to space. It doesn’t matter that no one will ever buy the place.

The dead waiting in droves at the gate spend hours just sniffing. They long for the night when the smell of sanctity finally ebbs and flows away. Its sacred atoms scattered to the wind, just like their King. Inside the house you stare out of a French window. Is there something unusual about the line of darkness beyond the tall, black fence?

A picture collapses down the wall, but you only jump inside. Are you afraid to move? The key is broken, you think. You have to call the man back tomorrow, but he will only come on a Sunday. Dr Barnstable has gone back to Germany. There you go, he is saying to you again in your memory, it’s your inheritance now.

Dr Barnstable died in his bed in the brand new hotel. The hotel with the plump towels and the bright lights and monogrammed bathrobes. His servant found him face down in the scatter cushions with lash marks all over his spotted, wrinkled body. They think the local call girl did it. They found a leaflet in his trouser pocket with her picture on it. Vampira. She looks to old to be only 16.

You are standing in the kitchen looking out at the herb garden. You laugh because they won’t be growing garlic in there. You need to laugh because it’s getting colder and you only wanted to see the place. You’re staying at the little inn on the crossroads because you don’t have Dr Barnstable’s bag of tricks. You don’t even know he’s dead. No one can reach you on your room phone, it’s ringing off the hook and hits the ground. The servant replaces his receiver and quickly packs. He’s thinking about driving out to you, but he has a boat to catch.

What does the house do, now that it is so empty? No one can use these rooms. Fortified against the dead they lie waiting, crumbling into themselves. Ivy is tracing a lineage already up through the cracks, plunging its way into the masonry, hunting out the houses’ heart. You take a look upstairs. The beds are writhing. Beetles are clicking through holes in the Egyptian cotton and take no notice of Holy curses. The master bed is positioned in front of the altar. It hasn’t been slept in in years. You think about going to the attic.

Dr Barnstable said the cellar was fine, but the attic was out of bounds, which sounds ridiculous. Everything Dr Barnstable said was ridiculous, including his fee. You push open the attic door and peer inside. Dust motes are swirling delicately in the moonlight. Your lamp is only disturbing them, clashing with the moon, making monstrous light where shadows should be. The room is resentful. A giant cross is hogging the room. Oh, you think, so that’s where my money went. not only on fancy hotel rooms, and monogrammed bathrobes. The cross has nailed a shadow to the floor. It might have been intended to look like silver, but you’re guessing it’s tin plated. You lift the cross, but it’s heavier than it looks. I paid for it. You say this aloud to the room as it watches you. Somewhere outside the gate, the sniffing stops. You’ll never hear it with your ears.

You drag the cross down the stairs. It’s not going to help you sell the place and the agent is coming first thing on Monday morning because they aren’t as easily spooked as the locksmith. They want the money too much. It’s a big house. Tripping on a loose board, admitting defeat, you lay the cross down on the first floor landing and it falls like stone. The crash disturbs the dust. Something is making your skin prickle. It’s allergies, you say, speaking aloud again.

Taking a last look around you get ready to leave. It really smells in here, the sage hasn’t quite done its job. You glance in the downstairs rooms again quickly. The stains are starting to get to you, but they can do all sorts of things now with chemicals. You don’t want to have to pay for new carpets. You never even knew you were the last surviving relative. It’s too much work, and your business won’t run without you.

That’s when you stop, and see the stairs.

The cellar. But you don’t need to go down there. It’d be damp and the smell will be worse. Still, people will pay good money for a wine cellar. Your lamp goes out in a puff. You retrieve your matches and light it, but something feels, different. It’s truly dark now. You can no longer gaze out of the French window and see the line of shadows because they are  now indistinguishable from darkness.

Every step is an adventure. You’re laughing a little nervously because it’s just like being a kid. The sloping wall above the stairs is coated with watery slime and you can’t always dodge the drips. At the bottom is a corridor leading to the rows upon rows of empty stacks. The old miser didn’t leave you any rare vintages. You search around and peer into abandoned alcoves, disappointed to find nothing you’d care to keep. You aren’t even creeped out. It’s even warm down here, strange, the rest of the house is ice cold.

The old master is dead. Dr Barnstable had said before you handed him the cheque. Hocus pocus. It was part of the will, something tacked on at the end by a magistrate official you never got to meet. There was something about a county council, Freemasons, you grunted as you read the will, but there was no fighting it. You had paid up, and now felt a little disgusted that Dr Barnstable clearly hadn’t bothered to make the place look a bit more, respectable. After all, how long could it have possibly taken to perform his mumbo jumbo? His servant had called you and said – in a tone you found unneccesarily cloak and dagger – Would you like to be there when he does it? It had seemed like the entire town was crazy and didn’t realise that Dr Barnstable had connived his way through life and was now probably half-way to Germany with a enough money to buy a thousand silver crosses and teenage girls. No thank you. You replied, and hung up the receiver.

You turn to take the stairs upwards again. You feel less certain now than you did because a hot wind is suddenly at your back. You can hear the old Doctor again, The cellar is fine, I didn’t do too much there, just leave the attic well alone for now. Perhaps it would best if you rent the place, and keep the door up there locked. He had a strange accent. He said he had been adopted. It all made sense. Still, now you’re annoyed that he suggested you rent it. Of course you’re going to sell, of course you’re going to open all these locked doors.

Outside the line is waiting. Still reaching out their hands towards you through the gate. Still risking oblivion for one sniff of their dead King. Somewhere underneath the sage, they can still smell blood. They felt the ground tremble while you were in the attic. They waited in agony. Now the hot breeze is blowing at your back and they are resuming their grasping, frantically pawing the ground in front of the plantation gate.

You worry about what to do with Dr Barnstable’s cross, but you didn’t see the shadow slip from under it, and seep into the wood. The warmth you feel behind you is followed by an aching, roaring, hollow sound as the ground suddenly collapses. Licks of fire are catching at the timbers, ignoring the sage and Holy Water trails. It’s just another job, Dr Barnstable had said, as he had closed the door and felt in his overcoat for the pipe, already imagining the cloying comfort of a cheap floral scent on firm, apathetic young breasts. The fix doesn’t hold if you don’t really care..

You don’t know what is happening as you rush upstairs, but the stairs are collapsing under your feet. Then in an instant there’s a hand on your shoulder, you feel yourself thrust by brute strength upwards onto the floor of the entrance hall. You’re lying on your waistcoat within a finger’s touch of the door but your head is tilted sideways. You’re panting and everything spins so you grip onto the floor. That’s when you notice the house is burning. Outside the gate, hordes are stomping and gnashing, amassing in clots of darkness. A cold hand strokes your neck. Fingers are slipping beneath your collar and you sigh as it loosens the buttons, and rips off your tie. Soon you’ll be able to breathe.

The fingers are caressing your skin lovingly, until suddenly, they stop.

Four nails are plunging into your neck, into the arteries, impaling you in a last gurgle. The arm does not only bend at the elbow, it twists and bends and bends and bends…

A shadow is wearing your clothes. It passes through the door, now left hanging on its broken hinges, swinging with creaks which sound like laughter. Part of what used to be you is leaving, and will never come back.

The fire goes out in the plantation house, smoke smoulders and is caught by the wind but no one will smell it for days. No one will buy it now. Somewhere outside the gate, a trail of black figures trickles away, gnawing at the air, following, sniffing.

One question remains.

In a nearby harbour, Dr Barnstable’s ship is leaving with an extra crate on board. A cold fog has rendered the deck unusually quiet. As he lights the Doctor’s orphaned pipe, his servant wonders to himself:

What happens to the house now that they are gone?

****************

Image by Witthaya Phonsawat, courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

 

 

31# The Tree Father

Photo © Carsten Erler | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Thin, spine-like fingers on the window gave a tentative touch. It was a creeping caress, producing a gentle scraping barely audible above the sighing of the wind. Sullivan dreamed he was lost in a forest and that the cold, humid air was flying down his throat like a series of moss-faced devils on broomsticks. Finally they arrived at his lungs, which they poked with their knotted wooden pitchforks. He awoke with a gasp, grabbing his inhaler and gasping in the chemical breath which would soothe him. He relaxed, and fumbled for the light switch, his eyes blurred from sleep, reaching out for a glass on his nightstand. He drank the cold water in long gulps. The light illuminated the room partially, leaving triangular shadows and untouched blobs of darkness lurking in the corners and folds. Sullivan was twenty-eight years old, so he wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore. He reminded himself of this as he settled back down into his bed. He reached an arm out of the duvet to turn off the light, leaving a pale glow from the window to shine across across his bed covers. This sickly glare provided by streetlights was mostly obscured by the sweeping branches of an old lime tree. The wind blew continually, and the tree shivered. Sullivan dreamed again of the forest.

On returning home from work that day, Sullivan hadn’t noticed there had been one more tree on the avenue. No one on the street had noticed. It looked entirely authentic, as if it had sprouted up through the pavement, cracking the stone over a series of decades – more even – so that no one thought to question when it had appeared. It was as if it had always been there. They pushed their prams past it, and detoured around it, and complained about how people should take more care to trim their hedges, and how the council should make more of an effort to improve the roads and pavements and other things that adults talk about. No one had bothered about the tree at all, or noticed that it was not like the other lime trees. Its bark was much darker, though studded with moss. No one had seen the sickly ruby sap oozing from cracks in the wood, though they admired the rich, red leaves.

Sullivan tossed and turned in his bed that night and dreamed he was walking along a corridor of trees with bent branches, hunched over him to make a suffocating canopy which shut out the light. His feet kept catching on rocks and stones, on piles of rotting leaves and branches, on cracks and crevices. That sound came to him; of an imploring hand at the window, the sound of a rough palm being dragged ever so softly down the glass; of a pawing desire. But there were no windows in the forest, he remembered. He continued walking. The wind was picking up, but there isn’t any wind here, he thought. Sullivan trudged on though he had no idea where he was going, only the vague feeling that he was late to meet someone, and that time was marching on. Soon he would be very late. Panic was beginning to set in. He increased his steps. Outside Sullivan’s window there was a rustling, a creak of bark and a snapping of twigs. Something edged closer to the window, brushing the branches of the old lime tree aside, which gave way with a shuddering of leaves. Sinewy ivy tentacles felt the edges of the glass, probing miniscule crevices, grabbing footholds.

Someone was at the window, Sullivan knew, but he couldn’t get up to open it because he was still in the forest. He began to run, but the scene ahead of him was all shadows, and showed no sign of any new horizon. It was always light enough to see his path, but no more. Sullivan stopped running the instant he heard the sound of his window being prized open, the wood screeching as the pane of glass was pushed roughly upwards. All around him the forest closed in and drowned him in its noises. All was relatively quiet, but the faint sounds of the forest were so many that it was like being scratched with a thousand small needles all over. Hands had reached out for his bed. Long hands, long fingers, green flecked, spine-like. They pulled back the covers and crept over his body. Sullivan was still dreaming. The forest had tripped him, he was lying on the ground as tree roots snuck over his limbs and entwined themselves around him. Sullivan felt a new lethargy descend that wasn’t tiredness, but was dream-like. Dreaming within his dreams Sullivan became part of their roots.

In Sullivan’s bed, newly formed branches rested. The long green hand retracted, pulling its new limb with it, out of the window like a retreating snake. The dark-barked tree held the new limb high up as if to observe it, and then sent the branches down towards the ground. There the tree-limb lay, and upon contact with grass and soil, part of it seemed to wither away, leaving only a sapling. The new tree threw out roots like tentacles, rippling. It shook, and grew and became tall. It raised its branches to the moon and sprouted fresh leaves. These leaves began instantly to fade into the deep, rich red of autumn, and its new bark cracked, and became dark, as the ruby sap oozed.

The sapling, now grown, departed. Darkness obscured its path. The Tree Father retreated from its place opposite Sullivan’s window. It began to creep up the sleeping street past the neat rows of houses facing one another amicably, their inhabitants asleep, and dreaming of forests.

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30# Men of Ice Have No Business Being Near Fires.

Image FreeDigitalPhotos.Net by franky242

I am a man made out of ice. No, I’m not your Jack Frost. I don’t leave glinting white fern trails on windows overnight. I just walk around in the dark, and I try not to touch anything.

When the sun comes up I’m face down on the grass. I can’t feel the wetness of the morning on the green blades as they pierce right through me. Exhaustion makes me grab at the ground to pull myself up, but I pull up no clods. There is currently no earth under my fingernails. I am transparent in the sun, the world walks right through me. I can barely see my own hands.

During the day I find myself inside houses, trying to open doors. It takes a lot of concentration, but if I try I can open them. I know there are things inside but I can only vaguely see objects huddled on shelves, furniture in corners. Afterwards I always feel disappointed. I know shouldn’t touch anything, but I don’t know why. It’s just a feeling I have that it isn’t right for me to be touching them. Sometimes I can’t. I reach out for a door handle and find my  whole arm is gone. In the back of my mind I can hear screams, as if I someone was in those rooms with me. I turn around thinking I must not be alone, but all I ever catch is the edge of a skirt, or the heel of a shoe, and a tap-tapping, frantic, down the stairs.

I said I was a man made out of ice. This isn’t strictly true, but I make things cold. I know this because voices tell me. Cats sneeze when I come near them, and back away. I can see the breath of animals. I know that I carry my own cold with me everywhere. I don’t know if I feel cold, because I always feel the same. Exhausted. I don’t remember things like warmth and comfort. I can see a fire burning in a hearth and sometimes I’ll have a recollection of what it meant to be beside one. I can put my hands out now, towards the fire, and I see only a fog around my hands. Men of ice have no business being near fires.

At night, I feel more substantial. I don’t know quite why. I think perhaps it has something to do with the way the darkness fills up the spaces where parts of me should be. I hold my hand up to the sky, and when I look through it, I can see stars sometimes. The moon makes me feel like I have an outline. Sometimes, I think I can see people. For a moment there will be a face on the street, lit up with a sudden panic. They vanish after that, and the street is empty again.

Once, I met someone just like me. He was standing in the graveyard, under an old yew.

“Do you ever wonder why the trees, and the animals and everything here looks real, but you never see any people?” He asked me. I shrugged. It had been so long since I had seen anyone like me that I had forgotten about talking.

“Well I wonder about that,” he said.

I thought perhaps the conversation was over. I thought about leaving, but part of me wanted to try to talk to the man. It had been so long, but I was sure that I used to talk to people, and feel warmth, and eat and laugh and do all those sorts of things.

“There’s just the cold now, isn’t there. It eats right through you. You just feel like an icicle, walking around, spreading the fog, and the chill-”

“You have it too?” I asked him. I couldn’t hear my own voice.

“Yeah course.” He said. “Course I do, everyone like us does. Once you get to this stage, it’s hard to thaw. You want to, but when people come near you and feel the cold they scarper. You can’t get enough warmth from them to put out all that ice inside. Can’t even hold yourself together. You fall away in bits. That’s what happens if you don’t thaw.”

I mused over what he had said. I told him about about how my hands fogged up when I went near a hearth. “I’ve come to the conclusion now that it isn’t worth your while trying. Men of ice have no business being near fires,” he said.

I last saw him a few months ago. He was in a state because a girl had started coming to the graveyard at night. There are no fences around it, only the road which winds round a little stone wall. Foxes dart about between the trees, up and over the wall, and into the traffic, They give night drivers quite a scare. I see the cars, but not the drivers.

He was agitated because the girl was coming regularly, and it made him feel uncomfortable. He worried she would know he was there, and it would get awkward. He was older than me I think, but I don’t know. He just seemed like someone old. Thinking about that made me wonder if I was old, because I couldn’t remember. But he definitely seemed older than me. I thought it was funny that he was so worked up about the girl, but I sort of knew what he meant. I didn’t like having to see people either, or being seen.

I saw her in the graveyard, she was vague at first, but the more I saw her, the more she became quite real. He had said she was a girl, but I thought she was more of a lady. I think the old man called her a girl because he was old. I like now to measure myself somewhere in between the old man and the lady, in terms of age. It makes me feel more substantial. I like knowing that something about me can be measured.

She reads books on the benches, or on the grass at the edges of the graveyard where a little light from the street lamps floods in. The foxes don’t know what to do about her either. She tries to talk to them but they panic and run. She saw me one night, and looked at me for a while, her eyes grew very wide, but I think she could tell that I didn’t like it, and so she went back to reading her book. I could see that her hands were shaking though, and I felt bad, so I left.

I keep coming back to the graveyard. Sometimes I sit on the bench and watch her read. she talks to me now and I think I reply but I can’t hear my own voice most of the time. Sometimes the words come out though, and it makes her smile.

One day she asked me. “Why are you always so cold?” I told her the saying, “Men of ice have no business being near fires.”

The next night she brought me a candle. She showed me how to hold it. “The trick is not to let go,” she said. Somewhere beneath the wisps of fog I thought I could see a pair of hands.

They were my hands.

 

28# Vestiges

Image by Pansa. Freedigitalphotos.net

They dissected his heart with fine tools, certainty and unwavering hands. Dr Plowers had performed the operation a total of one hundred and forty-six times before and his assistants were equally well trained and experienced men and women. The viewers watched on from the gallery and took notes, nodding, sharing the odd flat whisper, admiring technique and the technology. Dr Rawl looked down at the heart of the dead man being so carefully manipulated by his colleague and felt nothing out of the ordinary. There was no body for context, only the heart, penetrated by blades.

“Here we go, here’s where the magic happens,” Plowers said in a monotone. His catchphrase drew no smiles, it was routine. There were more nods from the viewers. Dr Plowers held open the now exposed chambers, making sure to get the best angle for the cameras above the operating table. There, sure enough, were the memories. They moved within the heart like living figures in a doll’s house.

“The vestiges,” Plowers said, indicating with a scalpel a particularly active figurine in one upper section which waved its tiny arms, demanding to be noticed.

“Patient history,” he demanded, and one of the shorter attendants shuffled forward and began speaking in clipped tones.

“Male, Caucasian, fifty years of age, death by drowning. Survived by a brother and sister. No offspring. Two nephews, one niece. One cat. Member of a local neighbourhood watch scheme. Played poker with colleagues once a fortnight. Considerable savings. Maintained a dating profile-“

“How active was this profile?” Plowers asked. He was staring down at the heart, and the little figures which phased in and out of being under the faint lavender light shed by lasers pointed into the chambers.

“Very active. Particular interest in a woman named Valerie Smythe. They had been dating on and off for approximately seven months, signs of significant attachment.”

“Yes I can see that. Describe Ms Smythe please, in terms of physical appearance.”

The attendant began to talk, his voice was pleasing, plain and without any significant inflections or flaws.

“Five foot five inches. Caucasian, freckled. Dark red hair, shoulder length. Grey eyes, wide set, hooded eyelids. Size twelve. You can see all these points from her account picture, plus some additional information listed on her voting profile.”

The attendant tapped the tablet he was holding and an image was projected onto a large screen both behind the operating table and in front where it was displayed on the glass in front of the viewers. Valerie Smythe surveyed them joyfully from out of her profile picture: her prominent teeth, her pink lipstick carelessly applied, the wind in her hair, the park backdrop with blazing greenery in the sunlight, the freckles on her nose.

Plowers nodded, he was staring intently at something inside the heart. “There she is,” he said, and turned to the viewing gallery. He let Dr Rawl shuffle into his place. Rawl took command of the heart with one hand as he adjusted the laser with the other in an almost offhand, effortless manner as Dr Plowers addressed the crowd through a small collar microphone.

“As you can see, here we have evidence of this patient’s love affair with this woman, Valerie Smythe.”

As he said her name, the woman’s image vanished and was replaced by a close up of the heart. There inside was a tiny shape which exactly matched the description of the woman, only in a different outfit, a distinctive vivid blue cocktail dress. She was waving her arms, pacing up and down and shouting, but no sound could be heard. She kept pointing to herself and then pointing outwards. There were many craning necks in the audience, the scratching of pens on paper, fingers jabbing at screens, notes being made and compared.

“As you can see,” Dr Plowers intoned, “using the Victor Phase-Light enables us to create memories from out of the past, holograms of emotions, not just artist reconstructions but images fashioned from genetic imprints left by human experience. Notice the snazzy outfit? She’s most likely dressed just as the patient chose to remember her best.” From over his shoulder, Rawl heard one of the attendants begin to hum, The Way You Look Tonight. A ripple of recognition shuddered through the nurses, mouths smirked behind masks. An old joke. Plower drawled on.

“Now as you can see, this man is dead, but Valerie is very much alive, both in the real world (according to her current voting status) and also in this man’s organs.” Here, Plower leered at Rawl who happened to be in his line of sight, Plower was ready for the big reveal.

“Of course, we use the heart as the example, because it is the organ most often associated with love,” he raised a hand to silence the murmurs, “yes I hear you, we could just as easily have opened up this man’s testicles, it makes no difference, you see any part of the body might retain these vestiges, see here:”

A trolley was wheeled into the centre of the room, on it was a foot. Even though he had seen this trick many times, Dr Rawl now found himself recoiling a little from the severed body part, from its disembodied coldness, its redundant flesh.

He did not watch as Dr Plowers began to dissect the foot under a new set of lights, revealing more vestiges within, and continuing with his spiel about how attached humans had become to the human body’s constituent parts as separate entities with separate imagined personalities when in truth, every part was ultimately composed of the same mixture of particles on a fundamental level. “Its all the same, everywhere you look,” he was saying, pointing to the Valerie, still storming up and down under the lights, still voiceless and irritated.

Dr Rawl was watching her also, but within the heart. In there too he saw the little tabby cat, licking its paws, beside it a ball of twine. He saw strange shapes flicker in and out of the light, people who had almost made an impression, but were not important enough to leave an indelible mark in the man’s heart. Heart Rawl sighed quietly under his mask. Heart, foot, testicle. Dr Plowers was debunking it all now, reducing the symbolism down to nothing, to atoms. Inside the heart Valerie had stopped shouting and was looking intently at Rawl. Is she looking at me? He felt a sudden shiver rush over his skin, he wondered what it would be like to have a little irate Valerie, pacing indefinitely throughout his own organs, forever catatonic. But in a moment the figure was moving again, storming off into another part of the heart. Rawl straightened up, sweating uncomfortably in the restrictive protective clothing which blocked out the radiation from the Victor light but not the heat. He felt unusually tired.

“My, look at the little woman go!” Dr Plowers was saying, cranking up the ringmaster patter for the final delivery. “You’re lucky to be able to see this folks because usually our vestiges aren’t so active. Guess Valerie must be a real cracker, and hey, good news, she’s single now!”

The audience laughed from behind the glass. The presentation was brought to a close and the trolleys were wheeled away. Dr Rawl stood for the ovation and the applause, realising that the demonstration had all passed him by in a blur.

Back in the executive locker suite, Plower addressed Rawl as he was pulling on his clothes after the precautionary decontamination shower.

“So how’s Pamela?” he asked in a light-hearted voice, with a winched up smile he perhaps intended as an indication that he cared about the answer.

“We broke up six months ago,” Rawl answered, tying his laces.

“Joel, I had no idea, and after all those years too-” the smile fell down like a stage curtain, but was not replaced with anything.

“That’s how it goes.”

“You got back out there yet?” it had only taken a minute for the jovial tone to be resumed.

“Yes actually, I’ve been on a few dates.”

“That’s my boy, you go tiger.” Dr Plower left the room. Joel Rawl watched him waddle away, pawing at his thinning grey hair, off to meet his acolytes.

Outside the skies emptied a waterfall onto the streets as Rawl ran to the car park. He hefted a duffle bag onto the back seat of his brand new car and slipped into the driver’s seat. The car smelled like plastic. The wheel felt smooth, the dashboard shone. He wanted to admire it for a moment, to admire the way he had picked up his life, how he had transitioned from aching, wrenching futility into a blank emotional canvas everyday with seemingly little effort. Inside he started the ignition. He thought about Valerie Smyth, and the realisation that it didn’t matter how well he recovered from heartbreak, because one day, some glib Dr Plower was going to pull open his chest, take out his heart, or his foot or his testicles and reveal inside them, all the people he had ever loved and could never be free off, even though they were gone.

 

 

27# The Lovers

Photo: Sira Anamwong. Freedigitalphotos.net

“If you come any closer I’ll drown you,” she said from the rocks.

“If I pull you out of the water you’ll die,” he said, reciting the line as he always did when he came too close to her.

The man and the woman from their separate vantage points stood sadly surveying each other from a distance, as they had done, year after year. The man had kept a weekly vigil by the lake for so long now, that people had stopped asking him when he would settle down and take a wife. Now the local people avoided him because they had watched him grow into someone strange. “Handsome, but witch-touched,” the old women would say about him as he walked alone down the street.

Tonight, a lilac moon hung over the heads of the lovers; the last pink of day mingling with the black of night over the dark waters and the sloping pines to the east. The man’s back was to the pine forest, he faced the water’s edge and felt in the pocket of his woollen coat for the gift he had brought.

“I have something for you,” he said, producing a wooden box. It was small, made of dark wood like mahogany, and criss-crossed with a lattice filigree of darting silver lines. It glinted in the moonlight as he held it out to the woman in the water.

“What is it?” She asked.

“Would you like to see it?” He stepped closer, somewhat timidly holding it out towards her. Seeing her reaction he cried,

“No don’t go back, you won’t hurt me!” but she was afraid. “My family will be watching,” she said, and made as if to swim away, but then he opened the box with a click, and laid it on the ground between them.

“What do you wish, more than anything?” He asked.

She looked up at him, blinking her wide iridescent eyes, then answered plainly, “for us to never be apart.”

The man smiled, and a light caught like a spark inside the box. It soon became a glow which spread into the air like smoke, and was sweet smelling, and made a noise like chimes as it floated above them.

“You can drown me now,” he said, and held out his arms.

“You have made magic!” She cried, feeling the smoke tingle as it settled upon her skin, each contact blazing like a star.

“Love makes even ordinary men magicians,” he said, as she gave in at last to her nature, leaning in to grasp him with soft, wet, ivory arms.

At last embracing, with a kiss they froze, and became two stone lovers. The box which had lain between them closed with a click. The waters lapped ferociously at the rocks, and cries filled the air like bleating gulls. A dark hand grasped out to grab the box, and pull it beneath the waves.

Years passed, but no one came back to the lake. It seemed as if the Lovers had been forgotten.

* * * * *

Centuries later, a young couple wandered down to the lakeside. The man was a stranger, but he held the hand of a local girl.

“That’s a funny sort of bridge isn’t it?” he said, pointing to a misshapen stone edifice by the rocks.

“Oh,” the girl shrugged. “Those are the Lovers.” Seeing his blank look she continued with a playful glance back at him. “A man, and a mermaid, it’s an old folktale – oh never mind.” They were quiet for a moment, and both stood surveying the huddle of weatherworn stone which now resembled a little bridge from the land to the water.

“My Grandfather thought there were really mermaids in the lake, so he would never let me come here.” She said. “I once had a joke with him – said that mermaids only drown boys, but he insisted that the mer-people had been very angry about their daughter getting seduced and turned to stone, and that they would likely try to do me a mischief anyway.”

She picked up a stone and hurled it towards the lake. It hit the surface, then seemed to hang right on the edge for a moment, before slowly sinking below the waters. The girl rubbed her eyes, there were ripples spreading all over the surface of the lake like a shudder.

“Let’s go,” she grabbed the boys’ hand and pulled him away from the water, but he said “wait a moment,” and dashed off towards the rocks. He had darted down towards the stone bridge snatching something up from the water’s edge, it was a box. The couple set off back the way they had come, as behind them, a green hand slunk back down below the water.

“Where did you find that?” The girl’s voice could be heard to say.

“I saw it just sitting there, on the rocks.”

“That’s funny, I don’t remember seeing it. What’s inside do you think?”

“Don’t know, I can’t open it.”

“Wait until we get back, we can use my brother’s tools.”

“But I don’t want to break it,”

“Then take it to the Friday market,” Her voice was barely audible now,

“There’s an old man I’ve seen down there who sells things like that…”

Soon they were gone, and the forest had swallowed up the sound of their voices. In time a light rain began to fall, washing over the faces, hands and bodies of the stone lovers, now merged together, indistinguishable from each other, half in, and half out of the water.

26# Ghost Train

Image by ponsulak, Freedigitalphotos.net 

By the light of our lanterns we gazed at the train, Mandy, Amelia, Roberta and me.

Part of the driver’s cab and a lone carriage was all that was left, hanging out of the bushes in bits and pieces as if it had made a break for it. There were no tracks in sight, just a trail of debris around the carriage that disappeared off into the darkness behind the trees.

It began to rain. We huddled a little more closely together and Mandy and Amelia began whispering to one another so Roberta turned to me.

“There was nothing here before,” she said. “The trains haven’t run here for like, years.”

“How do you know?”

Roberta shrugged. “My brother Cam did a project on it, all about how the trains stopped coming here, and how they closed the tracks and got rid of the old railway bridge.”

“Why?” I asked, as we followed the others towards the carriage in the lashing rain.

“Oh,” Roberta’s face took on a sort of knowing look, her mouth forming a dramatic oval.

“Well, people kept throwing themselves off the bridge,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “I think they hung themselves.”

I shuddered and she nodded with that same knowing look in her eyes.

“And they had to shut down the train tracks because of the accident.”

“What accident?”

“Oh a big crash or something, no one talks about it anymore but lots of people died. It was a really long time ago though.” Roberta said, growing disinterested in the conversation as we approached the train.

It was in a real mess, all broken bits of wood and twisted metal just lying there with the rain bouncing off it. It gave me the creeps but I stood there with the others, just staring at it until my arm got tired holding the lantern.

“Let’s go home.”

Amelia shot me a look. “Are you kidding? This is cool. We’re not going yet, I want to look inside.”

Shivers passed over me as the storm beat heavier on our backs, but I didn’t say anything because Amelia was the boss. We all moved forward, swinging the meager light from our cheap, battery-powered Halloween lanterns at the wreck.

“It must be really old,” said Mandy, uncertain. “It looks like an old steam train, like it’s been here forever but I don’t remember it.”

“That’s because it wasn’t here.” Roberta repeated, hanging back a little, but Amelia shot her a look like murder, and so she trod forward.

“Somebody must have cleared the trees around here, it must have been hidden before that’s all. Don’t be such a baby.”

We got up to the cab and Amelia said for us all to hold our lanterns up so she could see inside. Mandy’s lantern went out with a POP; the vampire face with the plastic fangs suddenly vanishing from view.

“There’s nothing in there anyway,” Amelia said, banging the side of the cab. We all followed her in silence as she moved further back towards the carriage section.

“Gimme that,” Mandy said, snatching at my pumpkin lantern.

“Get lost!” I snatched it back, but it made me stumble and feel stupid. Mandy was older than me, so was Amelia. I didn’t want to go along with it but I was afraid to look like a coward.

“Give her the lantern and stop being such a child.” Amelia said, but again I shook my head, I was tired and cold, and just then I thought about my parents and how late it was.

“I’m going.” I said, and practically ran off because I didn’t want to hear them making fun of me, and I didn’t want them to try and make me stay.

“Pathetic!” I heard Mandy shout after me. I turned after I’d crossed the street and saw Roberta standing a little way behind the other two, looking back at me. I felt bad then for leaving her, because she wasn’t as bad as the others. From where I was standing at the crossroads I could now see Roberta join Amelia and Mandy, her skeleton lantern bobbing along until it joined Amelia’s werewolf. They were trying to get into the carriage, I could hear their voices but not what they were saying.

I was about to give up and head home then when I heard a noise. It was like a door creaking in the wind, and there was a rattling sound too, it was so strange that it made me stop where I was. A light appeared in the wreck, it lit up Amelia’s face and showed her shock. She raised her hand up to cover her eyes as Roberta grabbed for Mandy and pulled her away from the carriage. I heard steam hiss and a whistle blow and suddenly the carriage was moving; the cab reared up in front like a dancing cobra, pulling the carriage back underneath it. Fallen, rusted metal rods leaped up from their place on the grass and reached out like grasping fingers, sweeping the girls off their feet with a roaring whooosh as their bodies disappeared into the darkness inside of the carriage. Their screams lasted only a second before cutting off dead.

I was frozen to the spot, watching speechless as the light within the train-thing flickered on and off in the lashing rain. It stood up tall, big metal arms hanging limp at its sides now somehow attached to the body of the train-thing.

It watched me for a while, and I suppose it was thinking. I couldn’t do anything I was so afraid. In the corner of my eye I could see Roberta’s skeleton lantern fizzle out and die by the roadside. That changed things. It made me want to move as fast as I could to get away from there, and I’ve never run so hard in my life. I ran so hard that I tripped and fell, skidding on the wet concrete and cutting my jeans open. I cried out in pain and looked back because I was convinced the train-thing was closing in on me.

But it was gone. I was all alone in the street.

 

Dead Men Telling Tales: Maritime Gibbet Lore in Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture

Image: National Maritime Museum (BBC News London Website)

While not a piece of original fiction as is usually my remit here, I wanted to plug a short  factual piece I wrote recently about how the link often made between pirates and the punishment of gibbeting (hanging in irons or hanging in chains) such as you might see in films such as Pirates of the Caribbean is traceable to at least the nineteenth century. This fascination with maritime gibbets is certainly visible in various literary works during the century, and in newspaper articles appearing around the latter half of the Victorian period. In this post I examine this phenomenon; delving into the history of gibbeting and into the folklore which sprung up around the practice.

The post is featured on the Port Towns and Urban Cultures website, a research group attached to the University of Portsmouth. Please check out all the other great maritime themed scholarship while you’re there!

My article can be found here: http://porttowns.port.ac.uk/dead-men-telling-tales/

Thanks for reading.

Eilís

23# The Building.

Image by gubgib, courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

I was so proud to work there. Every morning as I rounded that final corner I would catch a glimpse of the building basking in rising sun. It dominates the skyline from every direction, you can’t escape it. As a feat of architecture it’s not only functional but aesthetically captivating, it has a terrible beauty about it which makes even the locals stop, and stare when they come near it.

When I first started there I was on top of the world about it. I mean you would be wouldn’t you? Starting at a firm like that. My decision to re-train, at my age, was such a gamble. I really thought it had paid off. It wasn’t the firm, not at first, I mean it was, but it was the building. I know you won’t understand until I explain it all, but the people were a delight to start off with. Most of them were very nice, and very sociable people, you know, always inviting me to their houses, and barbeques and all that. I never went of course, being me, I sort of wish I had now because maybe then I would have sensed something from them. But then, I still don’t know who knew about it, about the building.

It really started one day when I was in at the weekend, on my own. I remember waking up that day and thinking that I could do a thousand things with my time, that I was on top of all my work and so could spend the day doing anything, or nothing, and yet, suddenly there I was, on the way to work. I just needed to be there. Suddenly I felt as if not being there was a waste of my time.

Here’s a picture I took. You can see how the surface of the copper on that side catches the sunlight so beautifully. It’s a sculpture really isn’t it. All those layers, those jutting edges. Yes, that part does look like a face doesn’t it? You could almost believe it was watching you. I have so many photos like that, all from different angles. Even in the rain it looks majestic. Perhaps, especially in the rain.

I have no idea who built it. I tried to find out but it isn’t even on the net anywhere. The design is always credited to the firm and what they call the C.C.C, “Collective Creative Cooperative” which is a kind of employee program I suppose you could call it. It was brought up in meetings but I never seemed to be able to find out much about it either. Some sort of extracurricular artistic collaboration I thought it was. You know modern businesses are so hellbent on teamwork and bonding and expressing yourself, all that gumpf.

Where was I? Yes, the day I went in for no reason.

I stayed there all day, I worked on a project, idly. I remember thinking, as I ate my lunch, I should feel lonely here. But I didn’t. I was almost glad to be alone. To have that space to myself. I remember looking at the walls and marveling at how I thought there were must have been paintings up, but there were none at all. Just the wall, but it in itself was fascinating. The way it seemed have that natural flow, like water, like a river. It was part stone, part metal, it seemed to shift with the eye.

It got late and I suddenly realised that I hadn’t typed anything or read anything, or even thought about anything in at least half an hour. It was so peaceful, like being in a womb. Because at night the lights would go dim naturally, and the huge windows would let the soft sunset in. The sunsets up on my floor were spectacular, it was like bathing in a watercolour, every night.

It became a habit. I couldn’t stop going back there on the weekends, and during the week I’d stay late. Sometimes others would stay too, but we kept to ourselves. It was as if no one wanted to disturb the atmosphere, that strange, calm movement the place had, like sitting in a giant rocking chair.

One night I thought I could make out voices. Whispers. There was no one in the office, and I had to check my phone to make sure I hadn’t called anyone by accident, I hadn’t. The whispers were coming from all around me. I thought I had been dreaming, but In a few minutes of getting up, standing very still and listening, I realised where the sound was emanating from. It was coming from the walls. I lent my ear up against one and heard it. The voices all whispering. I think there were actually speaking loudly, maybe they were even shouting, but all that material was blocking the sound, trapped it in stone and iron.

Don’t even bother to look at me like that until you’ve heard the rest of it.

Yes it dawned on me that they must be piping sound in through the walls somehow. It could have been one of those arty ideas, to make the building a talking installation or something. They do that in art galleries sometimes don’t they? And the building is a work of art, or rather it’s even more than that.

One day I was invited to join the C.C.C. My manager showed me a leaflet with lots of vague statements on it about “giving back” and “rewarding loyal employees”, “personal enrichment” that sort of thing. I glanced at it and said I would love to be a part of it, at once, without even asking what it was.

By this stage I was in work all the time, and I had begun to notice how quickly people came and went in that job. Many faces remained to treat me kindly or to give me increasingly unsettling stares in the corridor, but there was also a high turn-over of nobodies. I guessed they were just part-timers. I never really made an effort to get to know anybody who I didn’t have to directly work with. Every so often one of the managers would talk about the “dispatchables”, and I soon realised that they meant those come-and-go staffers whom no one really knew but who seemed to fulfill their roles and then quietly fade into obscurity. I remember my own manager, the man who had given me the leaflet, say,

“Jim, you’re special. You’re an indispensible. A future custodian, It’s people like you who eventually maintain us all.”

The business was ludicrously successful. When he said that, I pondered my future at the company, and it wasn’t even about a promotion or the money, it was about what he had said, about maintaining. I wanted to be a custodian, of that building. It had become my whole world.

Finally, they took me aside and said that they would explain the CCC to me. They said that I had shown enough dedication and had been there long enough to enjoy its benefits. It was in a meeting at 6pm on a Friday, when everyone else had gone home. I remember watching the last rays of light glide down onto the table, and looking around at the faces of the others who had fallen into shadows. I was suffering from exhaustion. The voices in the walls were now everywhere and when I left that building I couldn’t sleep because I missed them. I felt disconnected without their chatter.

The managers led me away from the conference room. One of them explained the architecture of the building to me in terms of  flows of energy, like in Feng Shui. As we passed room after room, down flights and along more corridors her voice mingled with the wall whispers and her hands pointed out this feature and that. She imparted the wisdom of the structure to me, how it caught all the positive energy like a trap, reached out and grasped energy from its surroundings, and from us. But people like me benefited from this. We were wrapped in this flow, our energies becoming one with all the others; streams and eddies of opportunity, of luck, of wisdom, all caught up in the building’s every living breath.

“Imagine that this building is a beast, that every twist and turn you see is a coil of its body. That we are all existing inside it, protected and nurtured by the air its breathing circulates.”

I didn’t really think much about the validity of what she was saying as we walked. Of course it sounds ridiculous, but I just listened. Everything made perfect sense to me then because my work was my life. Whenever I entered that building I came alive, and when I left I was emptied of it.

We ended up at a small door down in the basement. It was dark and hot down there, like a boiler room. They opened the door and we all stepped inside. You wouldn’t believe what I saw in there, how majestic that room was for all its inauspicious appearance from the corridor. The walls were like gold with glints of copper, bronze, I don’t know what. They whispered and writhed. The floor was a dark red, like a resin, like a very deep amber, and in it floated shapes, seemingly borne along by a current.

In front of me I saw two men and a woman. They stood before a patch of wall marked like a doorway without a door. They all had their backs to me. The man was limp, as though drunk or asleep, held up by the man and the woman.

My manager turned to me and said, “I wish I could have my first time, again. Just watch.” He smiled wistfully.

Then the man and the woman woke the slumped man. They said some things to him which seemed to distress him, before leading him forward. They propped him up against the wall and everyone waited.

Nothing happened for a few minutes, then I saw his eyes widen, and swivel. He moved, he was being pulled backwards, sucked. His shoulder went first and he struggled, but fingertips appeared to grasp him, and pull him further in. A foot appeared, more limbs, it was as if a struggle was going on between those behind the wall and the man in front of it. I saw a palm go up on the golden wall, beating against the material, but it couldn’t break the surface. The man was now pinned, both his arms behind him, screaming at us.

The last I saw of his face was his gaping mouth as the wall consumed him. Then it was all over, as if nothing at all had happened.

The woman who had given me the tour quietly said,

“I almost envy the Dispatchables.” Then we all left.

After that day I started to notice, more and more, the missing faces in the office, in contrast to the voices, to the sudden shapes that I would imagine I could see in the walls. I say imagine, but really I knew what I was seeing.

“They have to be alive.” My manager had said to me after we left the golden room. “We need their energy.”

I gave three people to the wall. Not that many, not as many as the others. I knew their names because I had to research them first. They couldn’t be sick, mentally or physically. That would affected us all.

But one day I got sick. I nearly died. Something I picked up from a late night meal on the way home. I was in hospital for weeks.

At first not being near to the building was unbearable. But as I grew in strength I started to forget about it, it lost its hold on me. I mean I still knew that I was guilty of hideous things, but somehow even my guilt was tied up with the building. It wasn’t a part of me, because when I was there I wasn’t myself. Strangely enough, it was only when I passed the building on the bus that it hit me. All of what it was. A living, breathing thing. Hungry, insatiable. And I had fed my colleagues to it. I looked out at the building from the bus window, and something looked back at me. We were both remembering.

I never went back. The firm never even contacted me, except once. They sent me a chatty letter, reminding me that the C.C.C was “the future of corporate business”, and that I was always welcome, should I wish to return. It mentioned they were planning on expanding.

A branch in every town by 2020, the slogan read.

 

22: The Guest. Part Two.

Image Simon Howden, freedigitalphotos.net

Julie eventually called the police.

To be honest I was surprised that none of the other guests had, but then really we were the last of the immediate family, I suppose everyone just assumed I would do it.

When they came they asked the usual questions, and we all sat in the ballroom and drank tea and answered them in bewilderment. No one knew anything. No one knew Uncle enough to know anything.

“He was something of an enigma you see.” Julie said. I just laughed at her.

“He wanted everybody to think he was an enigma,” I corrected her. He was just an arrogant prick I was thinking to myself. The letter my grandfather had written to him was etched into my mind. I hated that there were family secrets that my uncle had withheld from us, that he might have gone against Grandfather’s wishes on anything.

“Are you alright, do you want to head back to the city?” Julie asked me anxiously after the police had left to search the grounds.

“No, of course not. We can’t leave not knowing a thing.”

“But you look so tired, and I’m tired, it’s this place, it’s so–I don’t know…”

“You go. I can take care of things from here.”

Julie looked up at me through pink-tinged eyes.

“Are you sure?I really don’t want to abandon you here.” She was desperate to leave.

I told her to go home and she was gone that afternoon. As if taking that as their cue, most of the others abandoned ship too. In the end there was only myself, Marshall and Frank. Frank stayed as he and I went back a long way, to university, he was a friend of the family, Marshall stayed I think because my uncle owed him money. I don’t blame him one bit, but he never got a penny of it back.

We, the three of us, spent the evening discussing events in minute details. When was the last time anyone had seen or heard from Uncle? What correspondence had we had with him? What had we discovered in our searches of the house? Most of it was fruitless chat that led nowhere, I got the distinct impression that all of us knew things about my Uncle that they didn’t want to discuss with the others. Enemies? Of course he had none.

The police found nothing on the first sweep round. They said some officers would come round in the morning to continue the hunt.

“What are you looking for exactly?” Frank asked them. Marshall and I exchanged a look between ourselves and the officer he addressed shifted awkwardly.

Frank cleared his throat. “I mean, you don’t think they’ll be bodies do you?”

That night I dreamt I heard the sound again, that bellowing. I dreamt I was being hunted down by something I could never fully see. It was like a whirling mass of dark hair, sticky with blood which glinted where the moonlight struck it whenever I happened to turn to see the thing advance upon me. I ran until I stumbled, I cried out for my grandfather and I thought I could hear him shouting to me from somewhere through the mist. I called for him, but even in the dream I was still searching for my uncle. The beast was right up behind me and I felt like it would catch me at any minute, I felt myself slowing, and as I did so, it did too. It hunted my steps and drove me forwards. I looked up and saw, illuminated by a ghostly glow, the copse. The mists parted and I saw it clearly; there was a little chapel with a light in the window nestled right in its heart. But something moved and suddenly the light was extinguished. I looked again and the chapel was a ruin. I ran towards it, but it appeared to crumble away to rubble as I advanced. When I reached the copse, I saw that it was as I had always known it, nothing but straggles of overgrowth and mournful, barren trees. I turned then, and looked for the beast, but it had completely vanished. I woke, thinking I heard a howling, and could not get back to sleep.

The police found the room my uncle had been sleeping in. Frank owned up and said he had thought it was just a storage room on the ground floor, and I can’t say I blamed him. It was filled with junk. There were mops and ruined towels covered in paint; some broken cabinets and a couple of pieces of awful wall art. The bed had been almost totally obscured by boxes. Over in the corner, tucked under a mass of bed linen, they found a suitcase.

I don’t know why, but something about seeing that suitcase filled with my uncle’s possessions finally made me feel something. Perhaps I had only ever seen him as a caricature, now, gazing at the open case I saw his life encapsulated in the few things he treasured and had chosen to hide. The police showed it to me, they asked if I could identify it as belonging to my uncle. His name wasn’t on anything. There was a diary, his shaving things, a newspaper clipping from the restaurant he had owned many years ago. There was a battered copy of Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and tucked away within it, a photograph of a woman.

I shan’t go into the rest. I don’t like to think about it. There was a diary too which the police showed to me. I immediately recognised my uncle’s handwriting. How badly I wanted to get out of there! I didn’t want to read his words, but I was suddenly gripped with a desire to find him as I did, to put an end to all the mystery and the waiting. As my eyes scanned the scrawled paragraphs, brief passages about minutiae seemed to me to be obscuring something. I read on a little more and then stopped short.

“Anything in there you think relates to his disappearance?” The officer asked me, waiting.

“No, not a thing,” I lied to him. I didn’t tell him how scared my uncle must have been, to write some of those things. They would find out for themselves.

Kristen has just reminded me to check the blue bathroom on the ground floor, she thinks there might be rats. She says she can hear them scurrying about near her room and thinks they may be nesting in there. I think she’s being jumpy but I’ll check now anyway. I could leave it til tonight but I hate turning my back on that window that looks out onto the lawn. I keep thinking I can see a light in the copse…

It’s 6am. I had that dream again. Every time it’s like I feel the thing’s breath on my neck. I keep waking thinking it’s tearing me apart.

As soon as I read those final lines, I put the diary back and stepped away. They took what remained of my uncle away in that suitcase and I never saw it again. Julie kept it. I wouldn’t have it anywhere near me.

I told Frank and Marshall that it was pointless to stay. The police would do everything they could. Frank being the affable soul that he was offered to stay but I convinced him to go, Marshall packed up in a hurry, with a face like thunder. The last I saw of him was his bent frame hunched over a telephone in the reception area, speaking to someone in hushed, irritated tones. “This is all some ploy of his, I know it is,” he was saying.

I could have gone then and there, just taken my things and left. But I told the police I would stay one more night and then leave in the morning. A mad idea perhaps, perhaps I should have just left with the others. But for whatever reason, I stayed. I think it was this fading hope that my uncle would return once the police left. I kept looking out for him, listening for the door.

As I watched the others drive away I was greeted with a sunset like a bleeding wound, a red light spilling onto the grounds and a bitter wind. I made a dinner of sorts in the kitchen, and then resolved to head straight to my room, but as I turned the corner on the landing I thought I heard something, a rustling, like rats. Remembering the diary entry I followed the sounds to the blue bathroom and peered inside. The light illuminated a huge bath tub and the usual toiletries, but no rats. I was about to turn to leave when I saw, tucked down behind the bath, a pamphlet. I managed to extract it from where it lay nestled in amongst the pipes and flicked through it. It listed the history of the area, and several pages in, I saw an etching of the old copse as it had once been, complete with the little chapel. The page had been folded over at the corner, as if the reader had specifically marked that spot.

There was a brief paragraph detailing the history of the chapel and its uses, and it remarked how the site had fallen into disrepair generations ago. There was even a little legend about the place, about some goings on between the lady of the house, and a local man of the cloth. It was pretty standard fayre for the most part; the head of the house was rumoured to be involved with the occult, several servants deserted their posts due to strange noises and visions. It was all the usual stuff they put in those sorts of amateur guides, but right at the end there was something odd, about how they had found the two clandestine lovers horrifically mauled inside the chapel.

This part of the pamphlet had gotten wet and was wrinkled enough to make reading difficult. Someone had scribbled something in pen, which had bled in the damp, all I could make out were the words: “- guest”

I resolved to take the pamphlet with me to bed, and scrutinize it further. As I stood up I felt a cold chill on the back of my neck and turned around to see the window, and a light in the copse.

Without thinking I ran out to it. I was afraid and I stumbled as I ran but some vain hope made me think that it might be my uncle. That he might still be alive. I couldn’t stop thinking about that suitcase, about the fragmented life that it contained. We had never seen eye to eye but he was still my uncle, in spite of it all.

As I rushed out to meet the light I never once looked back, I could see, in my minds eye the beast from my dreams at my heels. I thought of the passage in my uncle’s diary and knew that he was haunted by a similar monster. Real or imaginary, it didn’t matter. I arrived at the ruins, panting, fog had descended and made the air painfully cold as it entered my lungs. The grass was squeaky with dew and the ground muddy underfoot, Up ahead the trees loomed, thin and miserable. I hunted for the light, I pushed my way in and trod on jutting gravestones as I did so, but I saw nothing, just the last rays of the sun going down. That was all I had seen.

I had no nightmares that night, not that I slept much. The house was eerily silent, as if it was finished with me, as if it had toyed with us all enough and was now dormant again. I closed the heavy door and locked it, wondering if I would ever return to that place. I’d persuade Julie to sell it; if uncle was really gone then it would pass to one of us, surely. In the cold light of day it seemed plausible that he had simply abandoned the place, that he had run off with that woman, Kristen, determined to leave it all behind. I told myself that as I walked towards the car. Before I could get in, something caught my eye. A man was walking towards me from the grounds, he was waving and I had to stop, frustrated, and wait for him.

“You’re his nephew aren’t you?” The man said, his accent thick, his clothes muddy. I nodded and waited for him to continue.

“Are you for the off then?” Was all he said. “Yes,” I said. “Did you know my uncle?”

He seemed to find this amusing, “Lord no. Spoke to him once maybe, that’s about it.”

I made as if to go but he stopped me.

“They won’t find him.” He raised a bushy eyebrow at me as he said it, and it made me pause.

“Why, exactly?”

“Do you want to know where he is?” He asked.

I nodded. I’ll admit I was a little afraid, but looking at the man I decided that he was too old and slight to be a murderer, so I followed him across the fields in the damp morning.

“You know the place.” He said, we were heading towards the copse.

“Yes. But the police searched in there.”

The man snorted. “Police!” He said and shook his head.

We came upon the copse, it looked a lot meeker, and smaller in daylight. Last night it had seemed so infinite, sprawling, almost alive with menace.

“He tried to get them to dig it up, all this ground, he said he wanted to build a, what do they call it? A spa. That was it. It was gonna be a small, heated shed, something like that, that’s what they told me.” The man gestured to where the sunken tombstones protruded through the grass like parts of a spine.

“A sauna for the hotel?” He nodded. “Why didn’t they? Why didn’t he build it.”

“Ah.” The man wiped his head. “Well I know why. I mean, they were local boys. But officially, they said it was because the ground wasn’t right. That it would be take too long and cost too much and your uncle didn’t want to listen to all that so he sent them away and tried to clear a lot of the rubble by himself, with the woman.”

We wandered into the heart of the copse, scattered remains of fallen masonry littered the ground under our feet.

“Not far now, though I hope I’m wrong.” The man took me to a spot, bordered by trees and stones.

“The police won’t have looked in here.” He said. I went over to him, and watched him kneel and pull back a covering of thick branches which disguised a hole in the ground, like a rabbit warren big enough for an average man to crawl through.

“Do you want to go or shall I?” He asked.

“What is it?” I didn’t move. I didn’t want to look like a coward but I trembled at the thought of going into that dark tunnel alone.

The man sighed, “It’s a grave, it’s where they buried it, long ago, and they built the chapel over it. But one of the masters got wind of that and tried to bring it back, then when that all went wrong, instead of blocking it in, they just built a trapdoor over the grave and threw away the key. Stupid, foolish thing to do. Your uncle must have found the spot, see how the door’s rotted clean away-” He pointed to the hole. I tried to digest the information he had rattled off at me.

“I don’t understand, what did they bury?” But the man just looked at me as if I was an idiot.

“Do you think my uncle might have fallen down there, is that what you’re saying?” I felt panic mounting, it was looking as if I might have to go down into the dark after all.

The man just pointed to hole, “see for yourself” he said, and handed me a little pack of matches. “For when you get to them,” he said, without optimism.

I got down on my knees and stared into it. I steeled myself and inched forward into the hole. The cloying smell of the earth was rancid, and the air in the tunnel, unusually warm. I pulled myself forward a little way, until I felt the passage begin to slope downwards. I called out my uncle’s name, but the earthen walls deadened the sound of my voice almost immediately. I scrambled along, my heart pounding, desperate to turn back, but compelled by pride and morbid curiosity to keep going.

My hands touched something cold. A stone floor. In that instant I could smell it, that cloying scent stronger, mixed with something foul. My hands shook as I tried to light a match but when the flame ignited I had to struggle not to blow it out. In front of me lay the bodies, a mess of bones and flesh atop a mound of collapsed rubble. I closed my eyes and clapped a hand to my mouth to keep from retching. When I opened my eyes again I saw the same scene of guts and spilled blood, and on the floor, line after line of carvings into the stone. They might have bee words, or just patterns, I only caught a glimpse of them, I can’t be sure what they were exactly, but they encircled the room. A few feet away from me the carvings were disturbed by a hole in the stone, a pick axe lay nearby. It looked relatively modern.

I scrambled out of that hole as fast as I could go backwards. I didn’t dare turn my back on that place. The man took hold of my legs and pulled me out onto the grass, his face pale and etched with concern.

I had no idea what to say to him, I couldn’t erase from my mind the image of those eviscerated bodies.

“Did you not know.” The man said, with pitying eyes. He produced something from his pocket and handed it to me, pointing to a page, on paper I recognised.

“That’s my wife’s handiwork. I gave the woman a copy when I saw her out here, hunting around, I thought it might help but they just laughed of course.”

I looked down at the pamphlet, the same as I had found in the bathroom. I realised that it had been in my jacket pocket since last night.

I brought it out to show him.

“Aah yes, that’s my writing there too,” he pointed to where the words had faded in the water.

“The missing letters, they should be B…A…R.”

The name came back to me, from stories of my youth of black dogs on the moors. I saw again the image on the book my uncle had sent me.

“Barguest.” I said, and the old man nodded.

“I saw the bodies, they were lying on broken stones.” I found it hard to tell him what I had just seen, but he appeared unsurprised, his weathered face long and forlorn.

“Broken stones,” he said, and tutted. “It’ll rise again. Have you had the dreams?”

I stared at him terrified, because I knew what he meant.

“Yes, yes a few times.”

His face grew even darker, “then you best be off. Sell the house, but before you do, send some men to fill in that hole. Cement, anything solid. I don’t know if it will make a difference but it might stop someone new from tampering with it. Your grandfather knew all about it from my father, that’s why he didn’t go poking around, you don’t want to risk the same happening to some other poor fool who thinks you can ignore these things.”

“What do I tell them police?” I asked.

“Not a damn thing.” He said, and he began to walk off. “You must never come back here, never, none of your family can.”

“But what if it’s not them?”

He motioned me to follow him, “what do you think,” I knew in my heart he was right, and that it was my uncle and that women who had been so brutally annihilated.

I followed him out of the copse, and I did as he said. I still have the dreams.