I drop the handset back onto its cradle.
It doesn’t rattle. It doesn’t rock. It lands dead centre with a clack.
‘Help yourself.’
I pick up the pencil and scribble over words on the pad in front of me. Again.
The phone rings. Again.
I ignore it.
I score through word after friggin word, cutting the piece down to less than half it was before; hell, less than half. I’m doing well. Space is a premium. Good writing more so. Do these guys write this in green ink first? Do they transfer it to type and hope to fool me, to fool the readers? Does it matter?
Readers?
‘Hah!’
What readers?
Ring.
You would think I purchased this black lump of Bakelite for effect. It came with the rest of the dump. The dusty floorboards, the dented filing cabinet with its crooked lock in the corner, the fly-papered windows, the chemical spoil of the earth around the building. Hey, when you need cheap you sink low, okay? Give me a break.
Anyway, that stuff out there acts as a kind of moat, full of the kind of dead earth that bubbles under its own rot. The kind of earth that burns holes through bird-flu-proof galoshes. Who would negotiate with that? The weirdo who wrote this shit, no doubt.
The phone rings again, and again.
Not a nice lilting electronic ring but a full metal jacket ring.
I used to think it was quaint. I fooled myself in the beginning like that. I used to like its brown plait cord from handset to cradle. Its wires smothered in rubber, the kind of coating that lets you smell the short circuit on your life long before it goes up in flames.
You’ll never make it, Sally said.
I never did.
I never admitted to it either.
I still don’t.
Egos, she said, burn.
Yeah, right.
Ring.
‘Get lost!’
I throw the pencil down on the pad and rub my eyes. I hope it will dissolve the scratchiness. I hope that by making the situation worse I will make it better. That massaging my eyeballs will take away the nicotine sting, the lack of sleep sting, the too-late-at-night sting.
And while I’m at it, where does night end, these days?
But the gritty feeling only hardens into defiant water-repellent shitty kitty litter bits.
You’d think I’d learn.
And I ask myself, why does everything I think will do me good turn out to be mad bad and snotten to the core? Maybe it’s Fate’s fault. Maybe Velikovsky was right after all, and nothing I can do about that, can I? Like this lonely weirdo at the other end of the line.
Worlds in Collision, Immanuel said.
When Worlds Collide, there will be no one left to write about it, I say.
And that thing is ringing itself off the cradle.
Should I? Shouldn’t I?
I take my smoke from the ashtray under the green shaded banker’s lamp, disturbing its upward curl of cremation spirals. It’s like watching the phoenix of my dreams throwing up a grey worm of descent.
Elbow on desk my fingers hang in a limp junkyard grabber of a thing over the handset and squeeze my eyes shut for a second.
Another nut. It’s always a nut. Never sensible. Never informative or revelatory, not even halfway to sane, but always the psycho, the nutcase, the completely off the wall, dyed in the wool, hidden behind closed doors, closed shutters, nut. And there is always a never-ending line of chattering monkey nuts waiting to tell an even nuttier tale than the last nut. If you can’t be known for being a somebody, you might as well make it as a nut. The eat-me-first nut. Each nut nuttier than the last nut. Some nights I just pray for allergy. Which reminds me. Did I eat today or yesterday? Does coffee count as food?
God knows.
Okay, my hand is hanging, my fingers are twitching, and I know I will regret this.
I lift the handset.
I put it against my ear. I wince and hope this nut doesn’t possess a high-pitched whistle to blow my brains out.
No talk, only breathing.
‘Yeah?’ I say, taking a drag.
A heap of ash does a crash and burn.
‘They’re watching me.’
What? I want to yell. Again?
I want to say we are all being watched, pal. It’s the nature of the beast. Try living without being watched. But no, that won’t work. It wouldn’t make the nut feel special, that he’s been picked out from the crowd of mediocrity. And the nut needs to be noticed even if he tries to make it sound like he wants the exact opposite.
‘Yeah?’ I ask in a nice slow drawl that says I couldn’t give a shit.
‘Help me.’
It’s not a question but a statement. Like sure, I’ll drop everything right now, run over and listen to your nuttier than nut tale. I’ll give up my whole life to help you win the war with your own paranoia. Only by doing that, pal, I’ll make it worse; I’ll be colluding in your nuttiness.
And then I think to myself, as my sense of self-preservation slides over a rocky outcrop of oblivion, like begets like. I’ll be filings to the pig iron of your magnet. I won’t be able to tell reality from your helter-skelter slide into shit. I’ll end up a nut like you. Yeah, right. I learned that lesson long ago.
But…
‘How?’ I ask
‘I know something.’
Don’t they always.
‘Yeah? Like?’
Maybe I have nothing better to do. Maybe I don’t want to think about the deadline. And maybe I’m just too all beat up and washed out enough to listen. And, hey this is all a nightmare, right?
There is a lot of mileage to be made of conspiracy. But I got myself into this lark for purely honourable reasons. I wanted to give voice to the little people that the big hand of authority didn’t want to be heard.
I wanted to give them a voice. I wanted them to be heard.
I hate authority and I was born with a spanner in my hand.
But what I’ve ended up doing is providing a focus for every attention seeking creep on the planet. It is not what I had wanted. I wanted genuine. Instead, I got me bucketloads of fruit cake and nut loaf laced in psilocybin and mescaline meat pie. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I am a cynic. I am a hardheaded, head-butting, wall-busting cynic for the people.
Right.
Okay, so do I wear a Homburg and a long grey coat for this creep? Out here on the outer limits of reality that’s a necessity. It goes with the territory. Gray Barker, eat your hunchbacked heart out.
‘So, what is it you know that’s so important?’ I ask, knowing I shouldn’t.
Dead silence, then a click at the other end of the line but no dial tone.
Into what I think is a deadline I say, ‘I’m busy.’
‘I saw them tonight?’
And his voice is all hush hush sweet Charlotte aflutter with moth wings.
Okay, breathe deep, count to ten.
One…
‘Okay, who did you see?’
I could sense the walls of a hole rising fast on all sides of me. I light another cigarette and lean back.
‘Them.’
‘Who they them then?’
More silence.
‘If you don’t talk, I can’t listen, and I have a deadline to keep—’
‘I can see.’
‘Glad to hear it. No white stick then. Always a good sign.’
I lean forward. The chair creaks. And my backside is necrotic from the pressure.
I turn and glare into the dark of a far corner festooned inside a dusty shroud of old cobwebs. There’s some coffee left, by now broiled to poison, but who gives a—
‘I recorded them, tonight, out at the old iron foundry, by the weir at Dowe’s Mill.’
A weir that is no longer a weir, but a blocked off stagnant pool of algal snot stinking to high heaven. A health hazard the city fathers seem to care less about. Call it stone walling. I call it dry diking. It suits the city fathers’ pockets sagging from the proceeds gained from illegal dumping of that toxic crap. It also keeps everyone sane away from the place. Neat trick. No witnesses. So, no one complains. Like no one complained about the stench from Sachsenhausen either. Seems like only a nut would go near it, the old mill that is no longer. Only a brainless idiot would go near it now.
Bang on target for this guy then.
And there’s a thing about monsters. Always to be found near junk, abandoned scrap heaps and stagnant pools of water. You didn’t know that? Well, you do now. Monsters, real or not, phantasms or human, you’ll always find them lurking around that kind of crap—with a kapital K.
‘Recorded what?’ I ask.
‘Them.’
‘Care to be less cryptic. I can’t write about The Sound of Them.’
Just then the weirdest noise comes down the line. It isn’t voices. It isn’t a sound like I’ve heard before. More like a harsh whisper recorded long distance from an echo chamber. It lasts five seconds, but long enough to make my back creep up to my neck.
I say nothing. I take another drag on my cigarette. I wait. I don’t know if my heart is thumping because this is something new, or because it’s something too weird even for me. I rock back in my chair and suddenly I don’t feel tired anymore.
‘Hi.’
‘Jesus Christ!’
The shadow moves forward. It’s too dark to see much but I detect a grin, or so I hope not.
‘You always jump out like that?’ I ask, not expecting an answer.
Sap-gloop drips on my shoulder with a splat.
‘Didn’t mean to scare you,’ he says.
‘Well, you did,’ I say.
‘So, what gives?’ I ask, trying to regain my composure and glad I decided to wear a hat. A homburg with a wide brim.
‘Them,’ is all he says.
‘That’s what you kept telling me on the phone.’
‘I don’t know what else to call them,’ he whispers close, too close. I jerk my head away to give him the hint.
‘I brought the recording along,’ he says, stuffing his hand into an inside pocket. My heart lurches for a second. And maybe it’s a knife or a gun or…
‘An old MP3,’ he enlightens shoving it at my face. ‘Wanna listen to it?’
I don’t fancy both my ears stuffed at the same time with the phones, so I poke one into my left ear, leaving my right free and open and closest to him, the thing, the weirdo, the nut loaf off the meat hook in the flesh. Just in case of any fast moves.
And there it is again, a harsh, distant, whispering echo in my ear, somehow too maniacal and too close. It feels like it’s drilling into my brain. Yeah, it’s that too close and icky.
I rip the earpiece out.
‘You could have made that up,’ I say. ‘Anyone smart enough with a computer could.’
‘Except I didn’t,’ he says, unfazed, cool as you like.
I feel like a lump of meat thrown between the bars surrounding a cage of brain monsters.
‘Anything else?’ I ask.
‘Can show you where I recorded it,’ he says a little too lightly. ‘Down there by Dowe’s Mill.’
So, we walk. Him first, me following and me always looking over my shoulder. Spidery vines brush against my face, and I keep batting away at them with the backs of my hands. And there is the stink, of course, stronger with each lurch into the forbidden zone.
‘Why were you coming down here anyway?’ I say to the back of his head. He turns around, walking
backward, as if he knows the place like the hair on his palms. He shrugs and grins like a happy kid. ‘Peace and quiet?’ he says.
‘It stinks,’ I say.
‘That’s why it’s always quiet here,’ he says. ‘Except when they’re dumping that illegal goo into the water.’
I stop dead.
‘Is it safe?’ I ask.
‘I’m still here to tell the tale, aren’t I?’ he says.
Yeah, but what were you like before, nut?
I shake my head just as more gloop drips on the brim of my hat, a long gelatinous glob of snot. Seems like even the trees get sick around here.
‘What’s up?’ he sounds perplexed.
‘I don’t even know why I’m down here,’ I say.
‘Them,’ he reminds me.
‘What are they?’
‘Christ knows! I just see them occasionally. Guys, at least they look like guys, except for the glow.’
I stop dead a second time.
‘Glow?’
Now my skin starts to creep.
‘You’ll see,’ he says in a lilting bunny-wunny way.
I used to have a nightmare as a kid. I’d be the only one left on the last bus out of town. Just me, sitting at the front, watching streetlights go by. Then the bus stops. Someone climbs on board. The bus moves off and I listen to footsteps climbing slowly up the stairs. And guess what? He’s getting closer and closer and…
‘Bring a camera or anything?’ the nut asks.
I only jump inside.
‘Do I need one?’ I ask as my face slams up against the inside of a granite facsimile of the real thing. And before I can say, No I didn’t bring a camera, because the only one I have is part of my mobile phone, cretin, and mobiles can be tracked, homed in on. Do I look that stooped? Ever heard of dronezzzz.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘Nothing much ever comes out when you try taking a picture here, anyway.’
‘Aw, you mean we’re not going to be fielding orby things?’
‘Huh?’
‘Look, pal, what I need is something I can actually print,’ I say, like I’m trying to enlighten a dumb kid.
‘Just saying you might have got lucky if you had brought a camera along,’ he says. ‘Maybe next time, if you’re still interested. I mean, just think, a real exclusive right on your own doorstep.’
I touch my forehead to make sure it’s still there. It feels like it needs degaussed.
The guy is giving me the creeps, never mind Them, whoever, whatever they are. Come to think of it, if there is any such thing as Them, he must be one.
‘Okay, how much further?’ I ask, trying my best to sound tired, bored and oh so fuckin disinterested.
‘Not much,’ he says, turning and walking away. I’m glad to see his head turns around with the rest of him.
Okay, so at this point I can be repelled. Scared is not the word for it. And I can run back the way I came. If I can find my way back that is. Or I can continue to follow, drawn like a magnet to cast-iron shit.
But turning my back on the creep and making a run for it might just be the trigger that snaps the jaws shut on this guy’s gin-trap. So, I don’t. Later I would wish I had.
God almighty but that stench!
I shut my face against it. I seal my mouth like a Velcro fly trap and realise I have more orifices in my face than the one I suck tar through. But that stink is so thick. Seaweed rot and fermenting crap.
You have a deadline, I remind myself. And what I have for it doesn’t add up to anything yet.
I watch his shadow sink deeper into the shadows along the path. And I remind myself no one in his right mind would be seen dead walking down there. So, I play zombie, one foot in front of the other.
I want to call out. But I daren’t for fear of attracting an ambush.
I start to freeze from the feet up. Where the hell is he? My legs turn to stone and my arms are out in front of me. No point in walking into a drystone dyke.
‘Here!’
‘Jesus!’
‘Quiet,’ he whispers.
A hand clamps my shoulder. ‘And get down.’
My knees crack like dry sticks. And suddenly I’m hunkered down in the shitting position while my feet are having a hard time skating wide through the gloop.
‘What’s that sound?’ I whisper.
Bubbling, slow bubbling, thick and snotty right there through the leafless brush in front of us.
‘Chemical shit,’ he hisses close.
I peer through reeds and twigs sans leaves. Everything, I note, is dead and dried.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Over there.’
I can’t see a thing.
‘Over the other side, there, see?’
Nope.
All I make out is the high side of the opposite riverbank. It slopes up steep from the gunk and thick bubbling glop.
I turn to him and swear I’m looking at a giant praying mantis with big red bug eyes. Something sticks out from the mouth far too far for it to be a man. Maybe a nut, but not a man.
I would yell but for the instinctive trapdoor that slams through the inside of my neck.
Something grabs at my arm and yanks me to my feet before my back has a chance to collide with the sludge my heels are skidding through.
‘Better put this on,’ comes the voice. Only now it’s muffled.
‘A mask?’
‘Hurry!’ mantis man says.
I tug the thing over my face, and he pulls the rubber straps tight at the back of my head. I breathe. At least I try to. It isn’t easy sucking air through this thing. But the stink is less.
‘Now look,’ he urges.
Okay, so I turn my head and look through my goggle-eyed view. I’m faced front and peering between dead reeds and scraggly brush.
I’m looking. But at what? I’m thinking.
What I see is the surface of the weir, now a stagnant pool of rot and slime, and slow rising, slow bursting thick bubbles the size of tennis balls.
Then I look over to the opposite embankment.
‘What the hell is that!’
‘Quiet!’
All this is spoken in rubberised muffles. It doesn’t matter. What does is what I’m looking at.
Something is moving around behind the brush way over the Styx. Something weird. Something glowing. And something glowing violet.
‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘A gas?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘See what?’
‘Keep watching.’
Sometimes you want information second-hand. There’s safety in that kind of device. And sometimes the way people say it makes it sound weirder than it is, which is good for my subscribers. There’s also something good about being the editor too. I get to keep the lunatic stuff at arm’s length, and mine are telescopic. It saves me bearing witness to this kind of thing, which is way too creepy, close and personal for my comfort zone.
Suddenly what I think is a mist is an outline, and it’s as big as a man. But no man on Earth is like this. And now there are three of them, closing in on each other, and weaving through dead vegetation.
They’re tall, over six feet, and wear what look like tight fitting silver biohazard suits with violet halos. I watch as they clear through the brush.
I see their faces and wish I couldn’t.
They have hair that looks like straw. Where their mouths should be is nothing but a vertical slash that starts from a narrowed-to-nothing jawline and slices up to between the eyes.
‘I’m out of here!’ I say.
‘Don’t move!’
‘Watch me,’ I say.
There’s a crackling sound before I can do anything. I look back over the pool and see one of the things step onto the surface. Everything else is weird, but this is the weirdest yet. The sludge jumps out of the way of the thing’s feet. I can see it, like it’s being repelled away with each slow step the thing takes.
‘Neat, huh?’ mantis man says.
I can’t see him smile, but I can hear it.
I jump to my feet and those things are skating around like Bambi on acid. Before I know it, my hands and knees slam into the shit under me. I scramble up again, looking over my shoulder. No dream this then, and all I want to do is rip the mask off my face and get the fuck out of here.
They move fast, too. They don’t just walk on filthy waters; they flicker forward on it, all three of them at the same time.
I don’t do a Lottie and look back for a second chance.
I rip the mask off, and something loops around my neck, something tight and hard. Yanked back I claw at the wire. Pure reflex, you understand. Who wouldn’t?
‘Not so fast.’
It’s mantis man.
I can’t talk. I can’t breathe.
You don’t think too much with a thin wire cutting into your carotid, except maybe, Whahappined? But I can’t even think that. Instead, my fingernails are clawing at the thing digging into my neck.
‘What’s the hurry, man?’ he asks without so much as a hint of irony, and like I can answer even if I want to.
I feel as if my face is about to burst open with the pressure. Something warm and sticky runs from my nose. I think it’s snot until it pours into my gaping maw, and I taste the blood.
The wire loosens a little and I gasp for air.
‘No false moves,’ he says with a I’m doing you a favour lilt through gritted teeth. ‘And I won’t be forced to do anything nasty. Not that it would bother me if I did. But that’s me.’
‘What are you doing?’ I ask like it’s the most absurd thing I can think of in the heat of moment. And his voice is too damn close to my ear, mask or not.
‘You’ve seen too much, you know too much, and you make too much trouble for anyone’s good,’ he tells me.
‘Mind taking that thing off my neck and telling me what this is?’
‘Piano wire,’ he says. ‘A little twist, a great big pull, and off with your head.’
It’s not quite why I asked, but it’ll do.
And the man raves on. ‘That’s what I could do. It’s what I want to do, and I would do too, see, ’cos I’m like that. Especially when I’m bored to fuck. But those guys are my friends. I don’t know ’em, but I like ’em. I give them what they want, and they give me what I need; death, destruction, mutilation and mayhem, that kind of thing.’
I feel the mouthpiece of his mask nodding affectionately against my ear.
‘Can’t help it,’ he says. ‘It’s in my genes, my hormones, whatever. But I really don’t give a shit. I just know what I am.’
I sort of find myself in a position where agreement is the best policy.
The dark seems to pulsate around me, but maybe it’s my eyes. The sides of each embankment reach higher and over like big jaws ready to swallow me whole in one great greedy gulp.
‘So, either do as I say,’ he prattles on, ‘and what they want, or I’ll cut off your head and throw it in that stinking mess back there. Then after that I’ll rifle through what’s left of your torso for your car keys. And when I find them, I’ll dump what’s left of your torso into that gluey gunk to follow your beautiful mind.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Because you’re a pest,’ he coos into my ear. ‘On the surface you’re a minor irritation. But what lies beneath is a pustulating capacitor. We live in a multi-layered society. You know that? There are all those dummies out there who will do anything for the quiet life and acquiesce to everything the big guns tell ’em, all lies of course, and then there’s goons like you who inflame twisted passions with what you write. Like mine I suppose, when I think of it. But what I am trying to say is that they guys over there own the fucking planet. Only not too many of us know that, never mind seen ’em, except guys like me, and now like you too.’
I’m twisted around and my feet slither all over the place.
‘Stand up, will you, for Christ’s sake!’ he barks through the mouthpiece. ‘That’s better. Now, take a good look. Do you understand what they’re doing, or even what they are? Nah? Well, me neither. Not really. And to tell the truth, I don’t care. Which is where you come in.’
Tall, thin, and glowing violet, the three things keep walking around the surface of the pool, and just like before, each footfall throws up stagnant filth, repelled out of the way by some invisible force.
I don’t know what is scaring me the worst. Those things out there or this psycho who thinks my neck is Red Leicester cheese.
‘How the hell do you think this world goes round, man?’ the mantis preys.
Okay, so now I’m looking straight at the goggles of the beast. What the hell do I say now? ‘I just print the stories, that’s all. You can trust me. Honest.’
It doesn’t have the Quaalude affect I’m hoping for.
‘Creeps like you make me sick,’ he says.
I would nod in agreement except I might lose my head.
Anything for a quiet life.
I close my eyes, grit my teeth, and wait for the zip of piano wire through my spine.
But it looks like he likes an audience.
Me.
‘You see, a psychopath’s life is a lonely one,’ he explains. ‘I don’t understand much, like feelings, that kind of thing, except for my own, of course. And that’s what matters here. So don’t appeal to my conscience. From what I read about those I don’t have one. So, it would be a waste of effort. To me, you’re all paper dolls, cardboard cut-outs, and just as stupid. I feel pain. I just don’t feel yours. You should try it some time.’
In a mind-boggling sort of way, I was really beginning to understand where this poor guy was coming from. A kind of forced acceptance given my circumstances.
‘As I see it, I’m the only honest one here. I pick on the vulnerable and I kill for the thrill. It just amazes me how people fall apart when they discover my handiwork. They get angry, they get pissed off, they cry, sometimes they even jail the wrong guy—and I find that funny. Do I care? Why should I? How can I? For a guy like me, caring is no compendia. See, I’ve got a sense of humour.’
I try to lighten up and laugh for the goof’s sake. I only manage a squeak.
The wire tightens around my neck.
Jesus, it stings!
‘You peddle lies, shit bag, in your own way just like the big guns. I follow my instincts to kill and kill again. I deserve credit for honesty, don’t you think?
‘I’m like the go-between, the link that bridges the divide. Those things out there don’t care what I do. I don’t care about them. What I know they care about is people like you. You get in the way. You print stuff that might lead to them, give them a legitimacy they don’t want. Now what I, we, them, those things, need you to do, is to go back to that shitty little underground mag of yours and throw everyone off the scent. Print what you like, just don’t print anything that leads to them.’
Okay, sounds reasonable.
I nod, but not so fast I’ll lose my head over it.
‘And that’s the deal?’ I croak, trying to smile.
‘The deal here is you know they’re real. But you had to see for yourself, okay? Hearing it from anyone else, you wouldn’t believe it, would you? Just another weird story to print. And believe me, man, there are always some nutters out there who believe anything they read. Before we know it, the curious would be down here snooping around and what we end up with is Boggy Creek all over again. Shit, who needs that? And those curiosity seekers will make sojourns, bring their crystals and pyramids and wigwams and stay all night chanting mantras to Princess Moon Owl. Then some smart shit will say something about all the illegal crap being dumped here, that there shouldn’t be, that the place is sacred. There will be pressure to have it cleaned up. And that will be the end of those things, of me, and, well… I’m sure you get the picture, don’t you? You better, that’s all I can say. So now what I need is for you to keep everyone off the case, or you die. That’s the deal. Anyone tells you about ’em, you tell ’em to fuck off!’
‘And what if I go to the police?’
‘You can dial faster than a speeding bullet? No? Listen, you’ve got to sleep some time, okay? So, sleep easy.
‘Let me get on with my life of fun fun fun, let those creepy things get on with whatever it is they do, and you can get on with yours, and we’ll all be happy.’
I try swallowing. I can’t. So, I try croaking instead. ‘A bit one sided.’
‘Get over it. Every deal is one sided. And don’t try writing about it either. And if anyone does happen to tell you about it, just dump it, ridicule it, say it’s happening someplace else, or not at all. No one believes that crap you print, anyway. No one important, that is. But someone might. Someone maybe not as bad as me, but there’s more of ’em, a lot more. Brittle minded closet case fuckers with Dayglo pens itching to get in on the action, man. All we need you to do is to be the vector that inoculates the population into thinking everything is just dandy around here.’
The wire tears from my neck and I fall to my knees. I claw at my throat, feel blood, grip at the gash I think is there, don’t find one and thank God I’m still breathing, just. I twist around and look up at the psycho.
‘Better get goin’,’ he says, leaning over. ‘I think they heard something. Like you shittin your pants.’
I look up long enough to see violet glows through the reeds getting closer, and each step brings a crackle of static.
I scramble to my feet and run.
Totally in the dark I think I’m making good time. But then I hear psycho’s mating call.
‘Hey! Here! Here! He’s over here, yah fuckin’ blind mudballs!’
I don’t know which way I’m going. I don’t know which way to go. All I do know is my heart is about to burst up through my neck. There’s blood pouring down my face as my feet kick up gravel. At least I’ve made my way to more solid ground.
I hear them after me, a kind of humming static. Angry bees swarming at my back in the dark. I know it’s those all-wrong guys with faces like they’ve been rearranged with a fire axe, up front, personal and dead centre.
I dive and duck under dripping branches. Lumps of sticky moss and vines slap and slither over my face.
I break into the clearing. Fifty yards ahead and I can just make out the car. I don’t run. I fly at it. And mantis man psycho wanted to steal this rust bucket? I could have laughed. I almost do when I can’t find the damn keys and that swarming sound grows closer and closer.
What now?
I’m covered in icky slime from when I’ve fallen. I stink to high heaven. Every pocket I punch a fist into drags a skin full of festering swamp in with it.
Then I find them. Always the last pocket. It never changes and I never learn.
I take a quick look over my shoulder.
Three of them emerge from the brush, all a purple glow and funny faces and straw for hair.
The creak of the door as I yank it wide sounds like a rusty chainsaw running on sand.
I dive in and slam the door. I fist down the locks and hold up the keys. I can’t see a damn thing.
And there they are, right at the side of me.
‘Key, the key…’
I can’t keep my eyes off them out there. Like I don’t want to look but I can’t stop myself. My eyes are peeled wide and I’m glaring right at the nightmare I don’t want to be looking at.
It would look like a human hand but for the fingers being way too long. It touches the glass, and that awful purple glow starts to seep inside, like it’s reaching out for me. Then there is a whining sound, a high-pitched screech as the glass vibrates.
‘Key, for crying out loud!’
I ram it into the ignition.
The screech of the thing’s hand on the glass has me screwing up my eyes. Pain knifes out from the back of my eyeballs.
Hunched over the wheel, eyes half-shut, I twist the key just as the glass pops and I’m showered in crystal. I don’t know which is the loudest, the shattering, my screaming, or the ancient engine revving to oblivion.
I grind the gears to molten pulp and ram my foot down. The car spins like a manic carousel. I don’t care. I hammer my foot to the floor and drive as fast as I can. It takes me a while to open my eyes again.
My heart is slamming its way out of my rib cage.
I smash through some bushes and keep a tight grip on the wheel.
Escape, that’s all I can think.
Escape.
And after I’m sure I’m at a point of safety, I do a bad thing.
I look in the rear-view mirror.
The thing jumps at my back.
I yell.
I crash into a tree.
Dumb luck.
Next thing I know I’m on a gurney and having my head examined by deep x-ray.
‘Not unusual,’ the old doctor says, ‘at least, after head trauma causing a loss in consciousness it isn’t.’
I turn away raising up my hand and flex my fingers, and think, really doc!
Rays are shot through my skull. There are no fractures at least. The doctor has me raise my arms and legs, slowly, and one at a time. He makes me twitch my toes and grasp his fingers.
He asks me stupid questions. Do I know what day of the week it is? Do I know the year?
I’m not asked how many fingers I can see waving around in front of my face and I surmise that only happens in old movies. What he does ask is if I have any blurring of vision. I answer, No.
My blood pressure was one-twenty over seventy-eight, my pulse sixty-four, my temperature is thirty-six point nine—all normal.
Overhead lights are dimmed and a pen torch flashed into my eyes.
That makes me sweat.
‘Pupils equal and reacting,’ the doctor mumbles.
The lights come back on and I’m blinking against the glare.
There are no signs of inter-cranial bleeding, I’m told, no signs of a sub-dural hematoma. But since I’ve been knocked out for more than two minutes, and Christ knows how long really, a CAT scan is advisable.
I asked the doctor what the cat in CAT scan stands for.
‘Computed Axial Tomography,’ comes back the reply. ‘It’s a machine that takes X-rays at right angles to the body; a way of seeing the insides of someone, slicing it up as it were.’
My hand goes up to my throat.
It sounded too much like being cut in half.
The doctor looks over at me. ‘Any idea how you came to have those marks around your neck?’
But all I can do is swallow, glad that I can, and shake my head.
‘Hmmm,’ he says, turning back to his notes.
After the CAT scan comment I swung my legs over the side and jumped down on the tiles. I whimper at the pain in his left leg. Grimacing, I straighten myself up and say I’m leaving.
The doctor’s eyes flick up from his notes and take a long look at me.
I know what that look means.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, wincing. Damn leg.
He sighs and turns back to his desk and continues writing. He rips off a prescription sheet from a pad. Standing up he walks over to one of the cabinets on the wall, reaches inside and takes out two little brown bottles. He gives them to me.
‘What’re these for?’ I ask.
Apart from aspirin for hangovers and childhood vaccinations that I had no say over; I’ve taken no medications in my life. I don’t like hospitals, I dislike the smell of them, and I can’t stand the thought of someone else knowing more about me than I do about myself.
‘Codydramol and Sceptrin,’ the doctor informs me. ‘Something for the pain, and a broad-spectrum antibiotic in case of infection.’
‘Broad spectrum?’
‘Covers everything,’ the doctor explains, ‘Just in case that cut of yours should become infected.’
He turns back to his desk and scribbles some more. Then he stops and looks at me.
‘Actually, I should have asked you about this before,’ he says. ‘Are you allergic to anything?’
I look at the little bottles before stuffing them into my pockets. I shake my head. ‘No.’
‘Well, that was short and sweet,’ he sighs. ‘But if you do notice any blurring of vision…’
‘I’ll see to it,’ I cut in before cringing at the stupidity of what I’ve said.
‘Okay, son, it’s your life. Though I strongly recommend that you have that scan.’
‘I feel fine,’ I say, wincing as I pull on my coat.
The doctor raises his eyebrows, stands up, and walks up to me.
‘If you need anything, this is my number,’ he says to his new if transient patient.
I take the note, fold it in half, give a weak smile, a smile that aches, say thanks and leave.
It’s three-oh-five and I’ve missed the deadline. I’m sitting back, I’m shattered, I’m rocking in my desk chair and there lies the pad and scribbled text I left late last night.
It doesn’t matter how many times that I think it over, I still can’t believe it happened for real. It was a dream, a nightmare, the pressure. I cracked up, went out and drove too fast into a tree. It’s what I need to believe. It doesn’t stop the pain.
I can’t remember which is what in which bottle, so I swallow pills from both. The phone rings mid-way though the gulp and I nearly throw them back up.
Let it ring.
No one’s home.
It stops and starts again.
I yank it off its cradle. ‘Yes?’
‘Hey, cool guy.’
I flick ash into the air. Blow out a streamer of smoke. Okay, it wasn’t a dream. Or I haven’t woken up yet. Either or it’s bad.
‘Who is this?’ I ask as if I don’t know.
‘You’re the Good Samaritan,’ he says.
I still amaze myself, knowing someone is smiling even when I can’t see his face.
‘Nearly lost your head back there,’ he says. ‘Hadn’t been for me calling the ambulance you might have died in that car wreck. But do I get any thanks?’
‘You nearly had me killed.’
‘Yeah, I’m getting too soft. But after seeing that junk heap of a car of yours I thought, nah, it’s not worth him losing his head over.’
I don’t say anything.
‘Catgut your tongue?’ he asks all smooth, and I hope I didn’t hear what I thought he said.
‘I don’t have to listen to you, you maniac.’
‘Forgotten our deal already, huh?’
‘What deal?’
I slam down the phone hard.
It happens so fast I think I’m having a flashback. The wire snaps tight around my neck and half yanks me out of my chair.
‘This deal,’ he says low into my ear. ‘Tut tut tut. A lot of shitty gunk you got lying in the ground outside this dump. I’m surprised anyone let you have this place on the legit level. Or did they? No, didn’t think so. So officially you’re not even here either, are you? Ain’t no one’s gonna know where to look for the invisible man. Hah! And with all that toxic crap out there, no one’s gonna bother looking either. Conditions are perfect, I’d say. Just the way my friends like it.’
The wire’s so tight my eyes are about to pop.
‘Oops, forgot to tell you. This is why I never get caught. My friends zap me through the ether to where the jobs need doing, like here, like now. You have no friends, no mother, and no father. There’s also the fact that no one ever liked you even when they did know you, so they ain’t gonna care to look for you either. But best of all is the fact that no one comes around here except you. Which means no one knows where the fuck you are, if the fuck you are, who the fuck you are, or even fuckin cares. Genius. Still, with a history like yours I really thought you were in with a chance. Guess you didn’t like the deal.’
My eyes are squeezing out from the pressure, and I think the buzzing I hear is only inside my head. But then I realized my mistake.
I look over one last time and see those nightmares ooze out from the shadows. A triad of them, the same ones, or new ones I don’t know. They stand there with their split faces, watching the show.
‘And this is how the world is made a safer place, for me, and for my buddies. We take over and we spread the word our way,’ he tells me. ‘A real agenda for change.
‘It’s all part of the new revolution of evisceration, brother. We recycle all the crap on planet earth. We stomp it, we kill it, we crush it, we burn it, we make it fuckin’ disappear.’
One of my fingernails rips off, clawing at the wire. My hands squelch through the blood as it saws through my neck.
‘Die monster die,’ he whispers sweetly in my ear. ‘We’re taking over the show now.’
