This piece is competing for a cut of the $400 prize pool in NOPE Interviews: The Bounty open submission call.

This is based on real events and conversations experienced by the author during the course of IVF which ultimately proved to be fruitless and costly in all manner of ways.

Interviewer: The Author [NW]

Subject: wished to remain anonymous [S]- also undergoing IVF

Cameos: Lab Technician 1 [LT1] and Lab Technician 2 [LT2]

Location: CARE Fertility Clinic, Nottinghamshire

The Interview: The IVF Man

Location: the reception-cum-waiting room of the clinic.

[S enters the reception area where NW is already waiting]

NW: Morning.

S: [nods but appears very distracted and keeps looking back at the door.]

NW: You alright?

S: What? Sorry?

NW: You look a bit…

S: [Shakes head]

NW: It’s nerve wracking isn’t it. All this.

[Gestures at all the tasteful slightly soft focus images of embryos on the wall.]

S: It’s just there was this eagle or something…

NW: What?

S: Massive bird, in the car park. I was sat in the car and this massive bird just fucking smacked into the window [fist hits palm]. Shit myself.

NW: Bloody hell! An eagle? You sure?

S: Well, maybe not an eagle; bird of prey though, had that fan tail. It was massive. Red Kite maybe. Smacked right into the window. [fist slaps into palm] Then it was flapping like it was trying to get in!

NW: You don’t need that do you.

S: Too right.

NW: You in for egg collection today?

S: Yeah. You?

NW: No. My wife’s having an examination. Just had round 4 fail last month.

S: Four? We’re on six now. Wife’s in surgery now. I’m waiting for the call, you know, the old windowless room.

NW: It’s tough isn’t it.

S: [nods] Last time this one. Can’t hack it. Can’t afford more.

[a few minutes pass]

NW: Hope you don’t mind me asking…I’m writing an article for a magazine, about IVF from the man’s perspective. Could I ask you a few questions, man to man?

S: Oh yeah? Which magazine?

NW: Well, any that I can get interested really. I’m just asking blokes like me, in the waiting room, if they can share any experiences.

S: Yeah, fire away.

N: So, you said this is your 6th attempt. How do you feel now compared to how you felt at the start.

S: [laughs] Broke and sick of it.

[we both laugh]

S: Seriously though, at the start we were dead excited, and the first couple of goes were free on the NHS, but by the third go, it’s all getting a bit serious. That’s when we decided to come here because of the success rates 36-38%. But after you’ve forked out the thick end of ten grand a couple of times…”

[LT1 enters the reception area. She is a tiny woman wearing a blue robe and a black niqab. Only her eyes are visible. This takes both of us by surprise. ]

LT1: Sorry to interrupt, can you follow me please Mr. S.

“Good luck.” I find myself saying, and then immediately feel a bit weird. S gives me a strange look. I feel like a complete dick.

[Note: at this point, S will be going to what the clinic calls the “Production Room”. Colloquially it goes by other names such as: “The Windowless Room”; “Glans Hatch”; “The Wank Room”; “The Jizznasium”.]

[A few minutes later, LT1 walks back into the reception area and through some double doors on the other side. About 5 minutes later she comes back. I double take: She’s holding a steel box in her hands which is padlocked and attached to one wrist by a length of sturdy chain. She sees my puzzled look and as she passes me she says

“Sperm thieves.”

[A few moments later, she walks back into the reception, closely followed by S who sits back down. We avoid eye contact. I say nothing. LT1 walks off with the metal box swinging from the chain.’]

NW: What was that all about? That metal box?

S: Apparently they’ve had sperm thieves. Women coming in and snatching the samples.

NW: [shakes head in disbelief] Isn’t there a hatch?

S: It’s out of order. When you’re done, you press the button then someone comes to pick it up instead.

NW: That must be when they strike then, eh, the Sperm Thieves.

S: Must be. She put it in that box anyway. Padlocked it up. It felt weird handing over a pot of, you know. Still warm. And her being muslim and that, in that robe thing.

NW: Mmm

S: Still, better a woman than a man.

NW: Is it?

[He thinks about this for a moment and I know he’s thinking about whether it’s gay]

S: Shouldn’t make a difference, but it does. I’d have prefered the hatch.

NW: I hate the hatch. I always imagine they’re listening…

S: Or timing you or something. Having a bet on how long you’re going to be.

NW: Puts you right off your stroke.

[We think about this for a while.]

S: Do you think I should tell her?

NW: eh?

S: Tell the Mrs. About the eagle?

[I shrug]

S: I mean is it good luck or a bad omen? She’s superstitious.

NW: Maybe not then.

S: But then if I don’t tell her, and it doesn’t work…

NW: You can’t get sucked into that hole, mate.

S: I know. I know.

NW: That’s a good question though.

S: What?

NW: For the article…superstitions, rituals. Daft things people do.

S: Oh yeah. We have to wear lucky undies.

NW : No Way! My wife does that.

S: The first time we got an implant that held for a few weeks - the undies we had on? “Lucky Undies.”

NW: My wife is exactly the same. She put them on this morning.

S: But maybe they were the unlucky undies all along. Or maybe hers are lucky and mine are unlucky and it cancels out.

NW: Best not to have these things isn’t it, but then you can’t help yourself, once you start. It’s like when they say they have a new process that’s increases success rates by 2.8%

S: You can’t not say yes can you.

NW: Nope. Then they tell you it’s three grand.

S: Like that video thing? You done that.?

NW: Where they film them and pick the best ones?

S: uh huh.

NW: Amazing though , when you see it splitting.

S: I just think they’re having your eyes out and you have to go along with it. I mean, they’re just blobs right, so how do they know what’s the best blob?

[we talk about being hostage to IVF and blindly stuck in the system]

NW. You got any other quirky rituals?

S: She won’t eat cake for the whole cycle.

NW: What!

S: Not since the first go. It was just after it was implanted, and it was her birthday and she reached up for the cake tin and said she felt something pull inside. Then she had some spotting. Two weeks later, the scan showed there was nothing.

NW: Can’t have been that, though, can it.

S: Yeah but you can’t tell her that. She was beside herself. Even after the consultant said there was no way it could have been that.

[Note: at this point, the lab will be washing S’s sperms, cutting off the heads and preparing them to be injected into the eggs collected from his wife. Egg collection is an unpleasant, painful and often crushing experience, but if there is a good harvest of eggs, some can be frozen]

S: So what’s your wife in for then?

NW: they’re checking her cysts on a new progesterone regime. Might get us more eggs for the next cycle.

S: Right.

NW: I hope they fix the hatch. That woman with the sperm safe would put me off.

S: I hate the hatch. You’re stood there, hunched over that bench or whatever, fapping away. There’s no way they can’t hear you, just the other side.

NW: I hate thinking some other blokes just been in there, wanking off. I never touch the porn.

S: It’s never great anyway. Probably ten years old.

NW: I don’t even look in the cupboard. Wouldn’t want to touch it.

S: [begins to laugh] There was this one time, right, no word of a lie, I went in and there was a copy of Horse & Hound open on the couch.

NW: Horse and fucking Hound?

S: Centrefold, saddles and whips.

NW: Fuck off!

S: Must be a joke, right. The lab techs having a laugh.

NW : Could have been worse…

[ we spend some time thinking of unlikely types of masturbation magazines- Anglers World; Tractor World - rule 34 gets a mention.]

S: Shame there’s no way the Mrs. can be there to help out, really. Little bit of romance wouldn’t go amiss.

NW: what’s the worst experience you’ve had then?

S: Aside from the eagle?

N: Yes

S: I dropped the pot once.

NW: Fuck

S: Yeah, lost the lot.

NW : Nightmare. You can’t just crack another one out either.

S: Nah, and even if I could, the second shot is no good apparently. They did try and get some off the inside of the lid, but, nah.

NW Did they freeze the eggs at least?

S: Yes, but the Mrs was fuming.

NW: “You had one job!” right?

S: Yep. Spare room, silent treatment the works. Still, I wasn’t getting any anyway.

NW: Tell me about it. It does get like that doesn’t it.

[LT2 appears in the reception. ]

LT2: MR Winney, your wife is out of theatre now, so you can come through.

[turns to S]

NW: Alright mate, well that’s me- nice to talk to you and good luck with it.

S: Likewise. Fingers crossed!

NW: Legs open!

With thanks to and the NOPE brigade for this excellent idea.

NOPE - the interview

The video at the beginning of this piece shows the astounding moment when LIFE begins and the sperm and egg do their thing and cell division starts. These two brave bundles of cells did not survive past 9 weeks, I am afraid to say - long enought for us to see their little hearts stop beating. All the events and conversations actually happened, although not quite in the way I have put them together here.

“Who Looks Inside Awakes.”

Carl Jung

They said if you looked for it, you’d never find it. Lost souls under dark bridges; drunks gathered round glowing braziers, they told the Man as the bottles passed: “You have to want it, really want it. Need it, then it will find you.”

The Man felt his need and took to the road.

Lost to passing time the Man strides, head down, against dusk and rain when, up ahead, a light on a dim horizon; layers of grey-fading hill-tops receding into his gloom. The Man stands tall, his dark outline one with the silhouette of his destination. His heart quickens.

Is this the place?

The Inn showed itself, stone-grey, squat and lumpen as he drew near. The gable wall: a face with a blacked eye bricked shut and lamp light gazing from the other. Fingers of mist crawl down the hill dragging fog. He stands at the door and gazes up at the creaking sign, hung by a chain: two forearms, erect and muscle bound. Veiny. Hands gripping, thumbs pressing into flesh. A handshake of sorts. Beneath the bulging arms, violent red letters, gold edged and peeling:

“THE TRAVELLER’S FIST”

At last.

His throat dries at the threshold.

But…is it?

Mist curls and hugs the hulking stones then reaches to steal the promise of warmth inside; so inside he goes.

The innards stretch impossibly far. To left and right: men. Hunched men huddled, lonely over tables of black wood. They nurse flagons, grip rum bottle necks and turn amber filled glasses slowly in a hand. Heads turn and mutters cease. Some nod then slump; others fix their eyes on him, sit up; sup; swap glinty glances over curling lips. A fire crackles.

His boots grate the knotty boards and five steps to the copper topped bar see him eye to eye with the one-eyed barman, bearded and bold. The only man standing. Red braces taut on a barrel chest dressed in a roll-sleeved chalk white shirt. A shark tooth on a chain shows and gold gleams in the cracks of his slow smile. He rests meaty hands on the bar and leans in, like a real man would.

“What’ll it be?”

He doesn’t know how to ask but the need sits heavy on him. The Barman’s head tilts over and back, over and back, getting a measure of the Man’s tick-tocking cogitations. The Man feels a gathering, the tables closing, drinkers leaning, heads raising, mutters growing. A crowd forming, watching, waiting. One and all of them.

“They tell me…” says the Man, at last. The Barman leans closer, grins deeper and his one eye, wet black and widening reflects a flame. The shark tooth swings out and back from his neck.

“They tell me…” the Man says.

“Go on.”

The sheet copper distorts around the Barman’s fingertips and tendons raise shadows on the backs of his hands.

“That–”

“—that a Man can find…?” The Barman tempts him, teases, fishes.

“...can find here the thing he needs. The thing life never yet gave him.”

“D’YA HEAR THAT BOYS!?”

The Barman roars, both hands hammer down, fists sinking into the metal. The roar is echoed back. Black tables grate and slide closer, the old hunched boys shoulder to shoulder, row on row, raising each a single arm –the left– to shower beer and liquor over the cheers. Muttering no more, they holler and howl, lusty and loud. Feet stamp and leg irons rattle and clank.

The Barman roars again and grasps the back of the Man’s neck to smash and grind their beetling brows together. The Man sways to the power in it, to the challenge, his own roar rising to meet and mingle and be lost to the blood driven moment. The Barman vaults the bar and glasses jump to their death as he lands. He pumps his fists, facing the crowd, now all the old boys around them. He spins on the heels of oxblood boots and slaps his leather apron.

“A CHALLENGER, BOYS. A CHALLENGER! BRING US BELLODORA!”

The crowd erupts. The room turns about an axis. The axis is the Man. Contorted faces, punching arms and hammering tankards - emptied of ale - rush past him clockwise. Now, only now the Man sees the trophies: forearms nailed through the palm to wooden shields covering the walls. Shreds of leather flesh and yellow bone shafts. Torn sleeves, copper bangles, wedding rings and stopped watches tell their owners’ time. Empty nameplates weep above each shrivelled right hand.

A full circle turns and the Man finds he is standing at one side of a tall table. The Barman faces him across it, slicks back lacquered hair and pulling taut his face as he smoothes his beard. Gold teeth flash and he bows and sweeps out an arm, a chuckle thick in his throat.

“The Lady Bellodora: arena of dreams and the needs of men. Men like us.”

From her oak surface, hand grips stand; moulded, red leather and fixed with brass bolts like pig knuckles. “House rules,” says the Barman. “Challenger chooses first –left arm or right– Three bouts decides it.”

The Man nods.

From the crowd a voice calls out: “Don’t be forgetting the Doctor!”

And then another: “Aye, a shot of Doctor Knox’s!”

The Barman leers and from a back pocket pulls out a flat glass bottle of poison blue. The cork squeals out in his teeth and he spits it, tips and swigs, his hog-thick neck bulging as he glugs half the bottle down. He offers it over with a liquor-dripping smile, beads of acid yellow trail all syrupy across the gleamy wood.

“A good long slug of the Doctor, mind. That’s the rules.”

The Man knows he must match the Barman, face to face, man to man. That’s what real men do. The glass is cold but the juice is hot and loose about the tongue and teeth and the tang is every wrong he’s done… but underneath?

Underneath it is so sweet.

One swallow pulls itself in a single shivery slither and the bottle empties. His gullet boils. Bloody tears start from his eyes.

“HE TOOK THE DOCTOR DOWN, BOYS!”

The Barman whips up a hand and the crowd roars, throaty with courage, eyes alight. “What’s it to be, Brother? Left or right?”

The Man’s greatcoat falls to the boards. He rolls one sleeve and then the next and forms a fist. His right elbow hammers the glorious wood and he seeks out the Barman’s eye with gimlet steel to pin him. But the Barman’s head does not rest; over and back, over and back, tick tock to a temple pulse and a widening grin.

“That’s the spirit, Brother!” The Barman’s right arm crashes down, white knuckle fisted, saluting the challenge.

“Fire in your belly, Brother? Are the Doctor’s ghosts let loose in the attic?”

The two men lock hands, knock sweating brows and push their elbows flush with a crack. The Barman whispers in his ear:

“If a man don’t know what he’s needing before he comes to grace this table? Well, he’s all as good as lost the game.”

“That’s what I heard tell,” the Man grunts. He grasps the creaking leather handle to his left.

The Barman grips his own handle likewise, and the two men crush each other’s right hand. As the strain mounts, sound whistles to silence in the Man’s ears, a silence that fills with the voices of ghosts. The Barman’s face softens and begins to spin, trailing the colours of sound. Only their arms are real.

“Come on Brother. Show us what’s in your tank!”

The Barman’s voice glows from his mouth. Waves ripple out from shimmering muscles as they tremble and shake power into the air. Tattoos float above their skin in layers. Voices of ghosts flit in the Man’s mind. Ghosts of dead and unforgiven men clamour from shadows and slide through doorways.

You’re a good boy…you’re a good boy.

The Man rages. He screams, tendons taut and ruinous with old pain, he smashes down the Barman’s arm. He’s found nothing he didn’t know. The Barman licks his lips and wipes his brow.

“You threw the bout. You let me win,” said the Man.

“You showed me what you had, there, Brother, good and proper and no mistake. Right is might and might is right, eh? No better choice than that.”

They go again, clashing like rams. Only their arms are solid, reality distorts and roils, shudders and tremors around throbbing limbs. Veins pop, sinews stand, jaws clench, teeth grate and blood thuds. The Barman sings low.

“What does the Good Boy want then? Does he not know what he needs after all?”

The Man closes his eyes, focuses on the pain in his hand. Bones inside rupture and split the flesh about them. Blood sweats from the knuckles and the ghosts –the crowds of ghosts– rush at him now, bringing out their faces from locked boxes. He beats them back, smashes mouths, and crushes noses. Teeth split their lips and eyes blacken, swell and close. A dozen faces and a dozen more and another dozen. Father and son; wife and mother. Friend and stranger; young and old.

He does not relent; cannot. Then, at the end, the face is his own, but he doesn’t know mercy; was never shown it. The harder his blows fall, the closer to the wood he feels his straining arm bend.

The room snaps into focus with the cry of the crowd; the Barman has him beat. Head leant full over to the side, level with the Man’s vanquished arm, the Barman flips up the cup of his eye patch and fishes out a milky orb. He cleans it on his shirt, the wet socket pulses a wink at the Man, then the barman slips the glass back in.

“All this emotion brings a tear to the eye, Brother. And a man can’t be havin’ that.”

The Man says nothing. Echoes of ghosts fade. He massages the right hand with the left. It shows no signs of the damage suffered.

What is my need?

The Barman straightens his shirt and hooks his thumbs beneath the red braces. His head tips over and back, over and back with a smile that never leaves him.

“The count stands one apiece and the choice is yours, Brother. Right or left?”

“I yield,” says the Man.

“What?”

“I yield. The game is yours.”

“Them ‘aint the rules of this House, Brother. You shan’t yield. You must give me a hand, right or left. Best of three. Them’s the rules. A fight must be won or lost. Victory can’t be a gift, it must be took!”

The Man stared. “I can’t find what I need across this bloody table.”

“GIVE. ME. THINE. HAND!”

The crowd mutter and draw close. They stink of empty threats. The Man rolls up the sleeve of his left arm and rests the elbow on Belladora’s oak. The Barman stiffens, sniffs and paces, rubs his hands together.

“Ready a table for the guest, Boys,” he says, but the Boys stay sullen and still. “I took you for better than this, Brother.”

The bout begins and the Man bows his head and waits for the ghosts. He feels the grip of the Barman’s hand.

I will yield.

The tensing muscles of the Barman’s arm judder, but the Man cannot feel his own; it has become stone. He whispers to the ghosts:

I understand.

The Barman’s teeth grate and grind. He growls and strains, the table shudders but the Man stays motionless. The ghosts are fading and his arm is iron. He closes his eyes and he’s looking into his mother’s face. She sweeps him up into her arms and holds him warm and close. “Tell me what’s the matter,” she says and this time he does.

The Barman rages, purple faced and steaming. The crowd glowers, their silence a judgement he cannot endure and his grip spasms and fails. His arm bends to the wood like a reed.

The Man sees a woman look back at him from a doorway.

I understand.

The Man opens his eyes. He stands amongst his ruin and she is not there. A broken door swings in the wind. He steps outside. It’s dawn; birds sing. He takes to his road.

I will yield.

© Nick Winney 2026

All rights reserved.

Introduction

This story struggled to find its way to the end I had in mind, and before I finished it, the call for the amazing WEATHER REPORTS came, and I knew that Mark’s story after this would be perfect for that - and so The Widower was written and now the Lunar Awards was inspiration for me to finish the original story. Arse about face I know!

With thanks to and and for all they do with the Lunar Awards and the fiction community generally - better world because of you.

Good luck to all who participate.

The Beyond

For a while, Livvie thought her dad would never come back from his shadow-clad existence. He wasn’t a believer, not like her mother. He never looked beyond the immediacy of his surroundings and the void left by Mum was a merciless vacuum. He would sit for hours fixating on a fading horizon, a past where she was still alive. Ahead, he saw nothing; Livvie was alone. Then his father died; not unexpectedly, not cruelly; not suddenly or unfairly, like it had been for Mum, and Dad returned.

“She was my life, Liv. That’s all I could think about, all I could see.” He crushed her to him in one of his huge hugs and she cried into his shirt. “We’ve got to make the most of each other. I thought we could have a holiday? Go somewhere we’ve never been, get out of the house. Give Mum a rest?”

“That would be great, Dad,” Livvie sniffled through snot bubbles. “Where’re we going?”

The ferry docked in St. Malo early and they drove west through Brittany. “Looks a lot like Cornwall; it won’t rain all week will it?” Dad was non-committal. As they arrived at the Air BnB, yards from the shore, the smell of the sea and dawn breaking on the horizon greeted them. They soaked up the beauty of the view as the engine ticked and cooled, then dad took her hand. They looked at each other, their tear-worn eyes smiling, their sadness lifting to the warmth of a joyful sunrise.

“Swim, or unpack?” Livvy asked.

“Race you!” He grinned.

They erupted from the car, flinging clothes from their cases in their haste for the brisk waters which shocked away their breath and the dust of sorrows. After a numbing swim, with skin tingling and warm, they settled in and explored the house. It was much larger and more rambling than it had first appeared.

“Hard to tell how old these places are.” Dad poked his head through an ill-fitting door in the kitchen, opening onto dark cellar stairs. For all its size, the house had only three bedrooms, and one of those was on the ground floor; an afterthought tacked onto the side of the original building.

“Mum would like it here,” Livvie said, as they sat on the veranda later, enjoying a salad, some cheese and bread. Wilding gardens enclosed the house: a squat, rectangular thing with sturdy pink granite quoins and a steep-pitched roof of slate. A kiwi vine embraced the veranda, delighting Livvie with ripening fruits dangling, velvet and promising between the broad leaves.

“She’d have loved it.”

That night, Livvie slept well. On their second night, she noticed the light, but it didn’t trouble her.

“Did you leave a light on last night, Dad?” She asked over breakfast.

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“There was just like a weird orange glow in the corner of my room. Maybe it was something shining through the window. Never mind.”

She read until her eyes felt heavy. The house was alone by the sea and the night was black. The thick darkness and distant hiss of waves soon brought sleep. She wasn’t sure what woke her or what time it was, but as she uncurled to stretch, there it was again: in the far corner of the room, high up on the wall, an orange glow, like a streak of fluorescent paint.

She rubbed sleep from her gluey eyes but couldn’t make sense of it. She stumbled crossing the unfamiliar room and with a flapping hand found the pull string light under the medicine cabinet. She had to turn it off again to see the glow. She traced it with a finger; it wasn’t something shining onto the wall, it was coming from inside the wall, from behind the floral wallpaper.

A thin line like the top of a door.

She tapped the wall; there was a hollow wooden sound. It must be an old doorway into the kitchen. But when she tiptoed to the kitchen, it was dark; dad wasn’t to blame. She returned to her bed and dragged the covers over her head.

The next day they had an early start for a day-long trip to the standing stones at Carnac. The sky above the stone-fields was solid white, the bright white of sunlight diffused through featureless cloud. They squinted up at the glow of a hidden sun. The ranks of standing stones cast no shadows and kept their secrets. The air above felt charged like a storm brewing. When they laid hands on the menhirs, Dad insisted there was buzzing in his ears, but Livvie couldn’t hear it. Instead, she said it made her feel tense, like something was coming.

On the way back, she was overpowered by tiredness and kept nodding off. “Did you not sleep well?” Dad asked.

“The light was there again. It shines through the wallpaper, like there’s a room behind or something. I’ll show you when we get back.” Then she dozed. After dinner, she went to bed early, mumbling red wine and sea air.

That night she didn’t wake. Instead, she dreamt of her mother. She couldn’t catch hold of it when she woke up to sunlight filtering through the shutters, but it left her disquieted. It was a sense of her mother trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t hear the words. She remembered the last sing-song message she’d left on Mum’s phone. She hadn’t tried to call again, never wondered why mum didn’t call back. How could she have known why? Guilt still had hold.

Over breakfast she cried a little and they talked about Mum. Livvie didn’t get out of her dressing gown; it was going to be one of those days. Dad hugged her. “Let’s have French toast –your favourite, and tell me about this light?”

“I’ll need to show you,” she said.

After breakfast, they went to her room. “It’s there, in the corner where the sink is.” Dad ran his hands over the wall. “You might be right. You can feel something under the wallpaper, look.” She followed his lead, tracing the outline of the doorway beneath.

“You know, this wall is an outside wall. This part of the house looks like it was added later. The brickwork’s totally different.” It was the sort of detail Dad noticed.

They went into the kitchen, then back into the room; something didn’t make sense. There was no sign of another doorway where there should be one. It was baffling. There were cellar steps down and rickety wooden stairs up to the first floor. Dad paced it out. “There’s space here, behind the stairs,” he concluded. “Another room, or maybe old steps into the cellar.”

“Why is there a light on in there, though?”

“Maybe some dodgy wiring? If it comes on again tonight, wake me up and I’ll have a look.”

She dreamt of her mother again. Obscured in mist or vegetation, she was shouting something, shouting silently. Livvie ran towards her but she never got closer, and death…death was coming. She awoke with a start; the duvet had slipped off and she was cold but as she reached for it, she saw a gleam in the corner again. The light pulled her from her bed. As she reached out a hand to the glowing streak, the light grew brighter, warmer even. Something like radio static whispered and she pulled back her hand, shook her head. She stomped into the kitchen and yanked open the cellar door. Its darkness yawned up at her, the dim kitchen light illuminating only three or four steps before it was consumed.

A torch hung from a nail on the wall and she took it and sent a thick beam into the depths. Down she went. Standing at the bottom, the torchlight probed into far corners, sending shadows crazing. The cellar seemed larger than the house above and there was a raw dampness to the cavernous space. Piles of junk, crates, kayaks and tools lay heaped about. Things hung and drooped from ancient beams, but there was no source of light, no door, no steps but the ones she had descended.

“Livvie?” Dad’s voice made her jump. “You all right, kiddo?” He started down the stairs.

“Jesus Dad! I nearly wet myself.”

“Sorry love. What are you doing down here? Christ! It’s massive.” He sniffed and grimaced at the dank air.

“The weird light came back. I didn’t want to wake you. I thought I’d check it out, but there’s nothing down here. Just junk and stuff,” she said. “But there’s kayaks!”

“Let’s sort it out tomorrow; have a proper look.” He shivered and hugged himself. “Do you fancy hot chocolate?”

While they sipped their cocoa, Livvie told him about her dreams. “They’re awful, Dad. It’s mum; she’s trying to tell me something, but I can’t hear her. I can’t reach her, and I know she’s going to die. It woke me up this time. And then the light was on again. Could we swap rooms?”

She spent the rest of the night on the sofa, sleeping through the sunrise. Dad let her slumber and went to investigate the cellar. He found a light switch, and bright fluorescent tubes flickered and chink-chinked on. He studied the wall. There wasn’t any sign of a door or stairway, but there was something about it. It bulged into the cellar at one side, like the base of a round castle tower. The stonework was rough; rocks fitted together, not dressed stone blocks like the rest of the walls. He looked for cracks in the mortar, thinking the cellar lights might be shining through, but the wall was solid.

He woke Livvie with a coffee. “Come on, I need your help.” With her mug in hand and the window shutters closed, she studied the bedroom wall while her dad flicked all the light switches on and off, one by one, around the house. “I can’t see anything” she shouted to him, slumping against the doorway. As her shoulder touched the wall, she felt the crack of a static discharge and white noise hissed in her ears. She jerked away with a yelp.

They swapped rooms. Livvie worried she would dream of her mother again. She was fearful of the light –would it stir the dream from the shadows? Dad’s only concern was for Livvie; he wasn’t bothered much by dreams, but a dream came to him, and Evie was in it.

She was the dead Evie of his waking nightmares, but also alive and trying to speak to him above the crackle of flames. Her voice was muffled through curtains around a hospital bed and behind gauze bandages. Through tangles of wires and liquid-filled tubes he glimpsed weeping eyes, weeping burns, lips moving soundlessly. A monotone machine drowned the urgency of her voice, slowing and deepening in tone to a single never-ending sound. He started violently from the dream, sweating and hoarse. In the corner, a light was glowing through the wall.

He rubbed his eyes, blinked hard, twice, but it was there. Livvie had not imagined it, nor the dream of Evie. What had she been trying to say? Memories of that night stirred sullenly from the corner where he had left them. He went to the sink for water and studied the wall; the wallpaper was peeling back at one corner. He moved to touch it–did the light brighten as his hand approached? It seemed so. It began to curl away from the wall as he stared, as if invisible fingers were pulling at it. He pinched the corner between a finger and thumb, and it effortlessly folded down, flakes of dry plaster coming with it and scattering to dust on the floor. The top of the doorway was revealed and an orange glow leaked from it.

He pushed his face close, to see through the crack into the space beyond and a static hiss filled his ears, intensifying, then fading as he pulled away. The whole length of wallpaper sloughed off bringing the plaster with it. He watched it, mesmerised, as it crumpled onto the floor in a swirl of ancient dust, the door undressing itself before him, baring its wood. An invitation.

Both edges of the door were still obscured by wallpaper, but he couldn’t resist, not now, and whisperings coaxed him. As easily as the first, two more strips of paper and dusty plaster fell to the floor, revealing the doorway fully. Crude, iron flat-head nails studded it and bracing strips leached rust into the wood. There was no handle. He counted the nails: eleven rows of eleven nails.

This is not a door.

As if something sensed his resignation, the static in his head coalesced into a single distorted word: “Mark!” then burst into white noise again. His stomach spasmed and he choked out “Is someone there?” He pressed his head to the wood, his ear to the crack at the top, and called again, into the static: “Hello? Is someone there? Answer me!”

Nothing…No…what was that? Perfume? Evie’s perfume?

Come the morning, Livvie found him in a blanket on the sofa, head down, empty brandy glass and a mug of coffee by his side. She sat beside him but he didn’t look up, and when he spoke it was monotone. Defeated, like before.

“I had a dream. About Mum. Just like yours. She was trying to tell me something. She was dying and I was there, like I was watching it happen to her. I was desperate to help her, but I couldn’t do anything. Nothing. I’m so glad you didn’t…you didn’t see her… like that.”

“Oh dad,” Livvie began, but he turned to her, more urgently, gripping her shoulders, wet eyes fixed.

“There was a sound, a sound like hissing, like waves. Then I heard someone say my name and then there was the smell of perfume. Mum’s perfume!”

Unspoken thoughts passed between them and they went to the room to look at the door. Their faces showed the same fear. Why would someone nail it shut?

Dad called the owner of the house, a Monsieur Le Guen. The conversation was difficult given the subject matter, but he agreed to come and soon arrived. He hadn’t understood dad’s attempts to explain “A hidden door and strange lights,” and his face showed it when they took him to Livvie’s room.

“I didn’t know about this. But it was my grandmother’s house. I never live here.”

“Never?” Livvie asked. He shook his head.

“No-one live here after grandfather die. It is empty for years.”

They explained about the light that appeared at night and woke them, and the strange noises.

“What? You think there is a ghost? Pfff!” He laughed and banged on the wood with a fist. “Alo? Monsieur le Fantôme?”

“Why don’t you stay here tonight, if you think it’s funny,” said Livvie.

“I will speak with my mother. She live ‘ere when she was young. Perhaps she know something. I will call someone with the tools for it, and we see what is in here? Ok?”

They ate dinner in silence with little appetite and conversation swallowed up in thoughts. “Can we both sleep upstairs tonight, Dad?” Livvie asked as they did the washing up. ”I don’t want to go back in there.” They gathered their bedding and clothes and made up the single bed for her in the smaller upstairs bedroom. As he said good night, she asked him to promise not to stay up late, not to drink on his own. He nodded but his face looked drawn, eyes black.

“Don’t go back there Dad.” She held on to his hand to stop him leaving the room. “It wasn’t your fault.”

When she heard her father come up she turned off her light and closed her eyes, praying not to dream. Sleep came eventually, but a sound roused her, close to dawn. Through a waking fog, a grating sound; metal on stone. Sitting up she called out then got up and fumbled her dressing gown on when there was no reply. In the hall, the sound was more distinct, coming from downstairs. Dad wasn’t in his room–his bedding lay strewn on the floor. She ran down, the noise growing louder with each step.

At the bedroom door, reluctant to enter, she called out “Dad?” There was a clang of metal hitting the floor. Her father cursed and muttered and she rushed in.

“DAD!?”

He was kneeling before the doorway with a crow bar in bloody hands, scraping at the wood, levering out an iron nail. She stood in baffled horror. “What are you doing!?”

He flicked her a mad-eyed glance, but didn’t stop. A thick, black nail squealed out from the wood and joined others on the floor. “She’s in there! Don’t you hear her?” Grunts of effort punctuated his speech as he started on another nail.

Livvie threw her arms about him, pinning his arms to his side. She pulled him away from the door and they fell backwards. In the fall, the crowbar struck Livvie in the face but she didn’t let go. He struggled to get back up but she hung on, strength in her desperation. He gargled meaningless sounds but his will to resist, to struggle back up, ebbed as she whispered in his ear “Dad! Stop. It’s all right, it’s all right,” over and over, imploring him gently. With a rattling sigh, he gave up the ghost and wept.

“She’s not in there, Dad. She’s at home. She’s at rest,” Livvie said when his crying had stopped “But I’m here now. I’m with you.” She stroked his head and tasted a trickle of her own blood. He saw the bleeding and the realisation of what he’d done brought him upright in shame, but she told him it was fine, she understood; the dreams seemed so real, after all.

They went to the sea to swim; to escape the madness of the room.

In the cold water, they gave themselves to the swelling mass of waves between jutting granite fingers. The sea lifted them up and let them gently down. It owned them and everything was real again. Simple and clear. They held hands and trod water, feeling the smooth fronds of bottle green kelp on their legs. They cried happy tears at their togetherness, at their bond; they were a father and a daughter and alive. Their tears joined the sea and they laughed until the coldness was too much.

Holding hands, they walked themselves dry up the coastal path to the nearby village where, like everywhere, there was a bakery. When they returned to the house with breakfast, the owner, Le Guen, was there together with a grisled workman leaning against a battered van, smoking. Le Guen didn’t look pleased to have found the door locked and nobody home.

“I’ll make coffee,” Dad said, “We have pain au chocolat?” He offered up the bag of pastries with a rustle. The workman stubbed out his cigarette and pushed himself forward.

“Erwan,” he said, offering a hand to Dad.

“My cousin,” said Le Guen. “He will open it.”

Livvie and Dad went into the kitchen while Le Guen and Erwan rattled away in French and went to the bedroom. Le Guen returned immediately, brandishing the crowbar.

“You ‘ave tried already, I see.”

“There were noises again. Last night. But it was too difficult,” Dad replied after an uncomfortable silence.

“With this? But of course!” Le Guen inspected the dried blood on it, flicked a glare at Dad then dropped the offending tool. The sound of Erwan clomping down into the cellar and the percolator choking to a boil interrupted the growing tension. “Coffee?” said Dad. They sat and Livvie found a plate for the pastries.

Le Guen explained he’d spoken with his mother but she had drifted off into the past. When her mother had died, some seventy years before, she and her twin brother were only five or six years old. Their father took them to live with an aunt. She remembered very little about the house. But then she had told him something she’d never revealed before: the man she thought was her father - a bitter, solitary man - was not in fact her father. Whoever her father had been, the truth had died with his grandmother.

Erwan came into the kitchen and flopped like a sack onto a chair. He poured himself coffee, dunked a pain au chocolat and pushed most of it into his mouth while reaching for another. As he finished the second he motioned Le Guen to follow him and they went to the bedroom. Livvie and Dad exchanged glances and went outside.

It would have been a perfect day for lounging on the beach, or a trip to Treguier for the market, but the anticipation of what might be behind the doorway kept them there. The sun crawled past noon and into lunchtime. As they sat on the veranda with some bits and pieces, too distracted to make a meal, Erwan appeared. He sat and rolled a cigarette. They heard Le Guen’s car leaving in a spray of gravel.

“Are you enjoying your stay Brittany?” Erwan asked. Dad stopped, mid crunch on a celery stick and Livvie took the bread from her mouth to answer.

“Very much. Apart from the house, anyway. The sea’s lovely.”

“You English, you like it here, no? There’s a lot of you, buying up all the old houses, old farms. I get a lot of work, so I practice the English.” They weren’t sure what to say and he went on. “Don’t worry- better an English than a Parisian; that’s what I say.” He lit up and caught Livvie eyeing the tobacco pouch. “You want one?”

She nodded, ignoring the side eye from Dad. He didn’t say anything, not this time. He knew she smoked on the sly, and he fancied one himself.

“So, Monsieur, this door. My cousin tell me you say there has been a light coming from behind and strange noises?”

“The light only comes at night.” Livvie butted in. “It wakes us up. There are sounds, like static. And voices.” She drew on the cigarette. “And we are both having strange dreams,” she finished, exhaling smoke.

“I worked in a lot of old buildings, you know, but I never see a door like this.”

“Why so many nails, iron nails, in the door? Eleven rows of eleven, did you see?” Dad asked.

Erwan shrugged. “It is maybe not a door. There is no frame, no hinge, no handle. And the wood is very thick. This was made not to be open.”

“To keep people out?”

“Or keep something in. Hidden.” Erwan leaned in towards them over the table. Lowering his voice. “You know it does not surprise me what you say. About strange things.”

“How so?”

“There is some history here. My father would tell me my grandmother, who live here, was “mari-morgan”. Like a witch, from the sea. They say she could cross over. People would come to her here, with silver, to speak with the dead.”

“Why would they say she was a witch?”

“When she disappear, they say she go back to the sea, to her people.”

Erwan let this sink in then leaned back in his chair. “But these things are just superstitions. A lot of gossip. It was said her husband was not the father of her children. It could happen that when a woman disappear, like she did, it was the husband–” he rolled his hand in the air, “-the husband that make the wife…disappear. Because of the honour.”

All of them looked back towards the house, towards the nailed-shut door.

“Maybe we will be calling the gendarmes when I get it open, eh?”

Livvie gasped and covered her mouth.

“Or maybe she did just run away,” Erwan blurted, trying to claw it back, sensing Livvie’s horror. “Grandfather was a connard. Violent. Maybe she just leave him. Maybe she throw herself in the sea–” he pointed in the direction of the shore, “-to escape.”

The rustic house loomed behind them, no longer quaint. It seemed sullen, misshapen, twisted by the past. The kiwi vine wrapped it like a wreath and the black slate roof above was now a cowl, not a hat.

“That poor woman,” said Livvie quietly, desperate to break the silence.” Does nobody know what happened to her?”

“Maybe once. Not now.”

“What was her name?”

“Morganne; an old Breton name, but still you find it.”

As Erwan spoke the name, fingers of mist clawed through and over the bushes and trees bordering the garden, dragging thick fog behind. Within a few moments, the sunny space was engulfed in chilly, roiling greyness.

“Perhaps I have raise up her spirit, no?” said Erwan, gesturing into the thickening fog.

“Oh stop it!” said Livvie. She ran inside.

“It’s just a sea fret, love,” Dad called after her “It’ll pass.” The french door slammed shut.

“I think I have said too much,” said Erwan, holding up his hands.

“You know, we lost her mother. Last year. It’s been a difficult time. For both of us.”

Erwan was aghast. “You must excuse me and my foolish talk of ghosts and spirits and dead grandmothers. Oh, the poor girl. And monsieur! I am so sorry!” He shambled off cursing himself.

Through the open window of Livvie’s room, Mark could hear her crying. He knew she would prefer to cry it out alone. He poured himself more wine; one glass, then another. The salty mist lifted as suddenly as it had fallen and he went back to the house, craving a smoke. In the bedroom, Erwan was standing back, arms folded, looking at the doorway. To one side of him the heavy slab of wood was propped up against the wall. The black nails lay strewn across the floor. But the doorway was not open.

“This is a door,” said Erwan, jabbing a finger.

Mark came close. Filling the doorway there was another door –clearly a door– with hinges and an inset handle. Instead of nails, there was a triple spiral motif, a single strip of grey-green tarnished metal, hammered flat into the wood. He’d seen the pattern before. The surface of the door bore the gouge marks of the iron nails hammered through the slab in front.

Erwan grasped the edge of the slab of wood by his side, “This? This was to keep the door closed. It was never to be open.” He looked troubled.

“And what about this?” Mark rubbed his hand on the inlaid spiral.

“La Triskele. You see it everywhere ‘ere,” said Erwan, rubbing the back of his head. His voice was taut, his French accent more pronounced. As Mark traced the spiral with a finger, Erwan grew more uncomfortable.

“Maybe it is better you don’t touch. This symbol? Made like this, in silver? It is–I don’t know ‘ow you say it, but in French we say ‘un sceau’.”

“What’s that?”

“It mean a sign, made for a purpose. Per’aps to protect, per’aps to curse? The door is Historique; very old. We must leave it close. We must notifier –give a notice– to the Mayor. It is the law for, you know, l’archaeologie.”

“Can’t we just open it now, see what’s there? A little peek? Who’s to know?” Mark grasped the door handle but Erwan slapped his hand away.

“NO! Fait chier! You must not touch. We must not go in. Allez-allez!” With uncharacteristic anxiety for a man who had been so jovial only half an hour ago, Erwan shooed Mark from the room and fished his phone from a pocket. He called Le Guen, spoke rapidly then shouted at the phone. It was obvious to Mark what was said: Get back here and don’t fuck about.

Le Guen arrived and immediately there began a quarrel between the two Frenchmen. Erwan, gruff behind folded arms, Le Guen nasal and flapping, pointing first at the house and then at Mark. He tried to intervene.

“What’s going on?”

There was silence for a few moments as Le Guen looked back and forth between Mark and Erwan, but it was Erwan who spoke first. “He is sorry, but you will ‘ave to leave.” Le Guen spluttered, strode off then paced back and forth, hands on hips.

“What do you mean, we have to leave?”

“We cannot ‘ave you stay here. Because of the door…”

“...But we’ve got five more nights. We’ve paid. We haven’t got anywhere to go. I’m sorry, it’s out of the question.”

Le Guen walked back over, arms open. “You see? Of course they ‘ave to stay.”

Erwan pushed him away, held him back with one hand and threw menace at Mark in a low, earnest growl. “You don’t understand. It is not safe. It is not safe for anyone to be in there.”

They came to a compromise: Erwan would put a lock on the bedroom door, Mark and Livvy could stay the night and the next day, Le Guen had a friend who had a place they could go –nicer than this. He would arrange it.

After Erwan and Le Guen had left, Mark went up to see Livvie. As he passed the newly bolted bedroom door he felt a pulse of static and a thickening of the air. Small hairs rose on his arms and the back of his neck and the padlock on the bolt twitched. He reached for it and a spark bridged the gap with a crack. He backed away, sucking his finger, and the sensations died down.

Livvie lay on her bed when he poked his head round the door, and she bade him come in. He told her about the door and that they were going to have to leave. She was not disappointed.

“Oh god, I wish we could go tonight! I knew there was something wrong about this place. You feel it too, don’t you?” Dad said nothing; he walked over to the window.

“Tell me about this door then Dad? Why did they say we had to leave? Not that I mind, of course. Where is the new place, do you know what it’s like? Is it far? Dad? Dad!”

He wasn’t listening. He was leaning out of the window, looking to left and right and up into the sky.

“DAD! Answer me!”

She got off the bed when he still didn’t answer. “What are you looking at?” She said, slapping his back and nudging him so she could get to the window too.

“Have you ever seen clouds like it, Liv?” They craned their necks to see the globular formation darkening the sky above. On the beach, a couple with a dog had stopped; they were looking up too. Livvie and Dad went into the garden. From there, it seemed like the cloud was forming directly above the house.

“Rain’s coming. You can smell it.” said Dad, turning to the sea behind. A steel grey wall closed, dense and seamless from the horizon to the sky.

“Oh, look Dad, lightning. Purple lightning in the cloud.” Dad turned back; after a few seconds it came again, flickering fingers tracing the contours of it. “Will there be a thunderstorm? I love lightning but the thunder always scares me.”

“Looks like it,” Dad said, putting an arm around her. “You fancy pizza? Don’t want to be cooking if we have to leave in the morning. We can watch the storm over the sea.”

They drove to Treguier –the closest place for pizza– Dad driving back as fast as he dared to beat the storm. Livvie held the boxes, hot pizza almost burning her bare legs through the greasy cardboard. The sky was darkness under pressure, almost glowing at the edge of vision, as if the sun was trying to burn a way through it, a curtain call before sunset. The road descended to the sea and above the village the globular cloud roiled motionless above. It looked heavy. It seemed impossible it could remain in the sky; at any moment it must pour down and engulf the cluster of houses below. Purple lighting played across and within it, but rain didn’t come, the storm didn’t break. Thunder held itself back, seething, prowling across the back-drop of the dark horizon, dark as the end of the world. Tension hummed just beyond audible range in air thick with the threat of it.

“When it breaks, it’s going to be immense, can’t you feel it?” Said Dad as the car rolled up to the house.

They ate their pizzas from the box, sitting in the conservatory gazing out over the veranda, out to sea, not wanting to miss the first flash of lightning, but the storm did not break. Livvie stood and pressed herself to the french windows. The sea was a flat slab of grey, smooth as oil. The only waves were at the shore, not a fleck of foam out in the bay. The beach was empty.

“I’ve never seen the sea so calm. It’s like glass. How can there be a storm but no wind?” Livvie returned to the sofa.

“I don’t know, but the low pressure, the charge in the air? It’s giving me a headache.” Dad pressed his temples. He could feel crackling inside his mouth, through his jaw bones to his ear. He opened his mouth, wide as a yawn and; static whispered from it.

“Oh my god Dad! What’s that?”

“I think it’s my fillings.” He rubbed his jaw.

Livvie leaned closer, “Open your mouth again.” As he did, the fluorescent strip light above began to glow and the sound of static hissing from his mouth modulated, like an old radio tuning. Then they both heard it.

“Mark…M-m-m-m-m-aaaaark.”

They were stunned for a few seconds. “That sounded like Mum.” Livvie whispered.

The light above glowed brighter still, flickered, died then blazed. Dad groaned then yelled out in sudden pain, clamping his hands to his ears, screwing shut his eyes. The light fizzed hot white, there was a ‘pink-pink’ sound then ‘crackkk’. The tube exploded, wafer thin shards of glass showered them and a heavy thudding bang sounded from the bedroom. Livvie screamed and hugged Dad, hand clawing at him. There was silence then the drum of rain on the glass above.

“What’s happening Dad? I’m scared.”

“Stay here, Liv. I’ll go and see.”

In the hall beyond the kitchen soft light seeped out from the edges of the bedroom door. Dad reached for the padlock –again, a static discharge shocked his hand back. The radio in his head whistled and hissed.

Right. Enough.

In the cellar, the fluorescent lights strobed and jinked giving movement to the rough stone wall; it appeared to bulge in peristaltic waves. He found the crow bar and returned. Livvie called for him as he attacked the bolt, each blow of metal on metal punctuated with a burst of static, half words, screaming frequencies. The bolt was fastened well and resisted, so, gripping the crow bar with both hands, he wedged it into the loop of the padlock. The metal buzzed painfully but with a grunt and all his determined weight behind it, the lock gave with a pop and skittered on the flag stones. He opened the door and cool light streamed out into the hall. Livvie peered from behind the kitchen door, catching the silhouette of her father as he entered.

“Don’t Dad! Don’t go in there!”

In the bedroom, the heavy slab lay on the floor where it had fallen, revealing the door behind. The silver triskele glowed within the wood so brightly he felt sure it would burn when he touched it, but it was cold. Livvie appeared at the bedroom door as he reached for the handle.

“DAD!” she screamed.

“He turned to her, wide-eyed but smiling. “She’s in there. Can’t you hear her? Touch it, touch the silver and listen.”

She laid a wavering hand on the spiral motif and there it was, beneath the hissing like waves under water - a voice, a quiet voice. It was her mother, calling Dad’s name, cut with slices of static amidst other words, meaning lost to warbling and distortion. But there was something else, something beneath; another voice, a woman speaking in a language that sounded like French but was not.

“What did I tell you?” Dad saw the recognition in her eyes.

He wrenched at the door but it needed the crow bar to crack the rusted hinges into movement; it opened to the smell of sea and the wet slap and echo of water on rock. Before them was a circular chamber, a dark pit from which dim light rose. Flat stones protruding from the wall formed a spiral stair down into the depths. Dad did not hesitate; for Livvie, the fear of being left alone was only just more powerful than the fear of what lay below; she edged down after him, pressing her back to the wall.

After one full circle of the pit, the top of a standing stone emerged in the darkness, rising from the centre of the pit. Crystals glowed within the rock - the white light of the silver spirals. The light pulsed brighter as he descended deeper, white noise in his head like wind beneath waves and voices…voices: Evie’s, but now another voice, the voice Livvie feared, the voice of another woman, insistent, deep.

What are they saying?

Another circuit of the pit and the massive stone grew thicker, he saw the surface of water below him, the stone disappearing below it and the steps following on. At the water’s edge he scrabbled to a stop: a skeletal hand gripped the step, the arm descending beneath, sightless eye sockets of a skull gazing up at him, distorting as the water rose and fell. An iron hoop was around its neck and a chain snaked down, out of sight.

“Evie, where are you?!” He screamed. Livvie shouted back at him to come back up, terrified to go on, terrified to remain.

Mist formed above the water and rose; light beneath it, from the stone grew brighter. Dad’s vision split into layers of perception one atop the other, cycling flickering: first the skeleton, then the woman mouthing her strange words, chained below the waves, then the despairing face of Evie, beseeching, but he could not hear her over the water and the strange foreign tongue.

What was she saying? He thought he understood it: “My love, my love, come to me”

Above him, Livvie pressed her back to the wall. The air in the chamber thickened with ozone and mist, pressure built in her head. Her mother’s voice grew clearer through the static. She smelled her mother’s perfume but the sense that something terrible was coming grew stronger too, the same sense she had had amongst the stones at Carnac. Below, in the water, a crack of light in the stone rippled upwards through its centre, up to the tip of it. The reality of the stone thinned, its physical presence took on transparency, as if her hand could sink into it if she touched it. Something was coming, coming from within, from beyond. Her mother was there, but something else too.

“Dad!”

She screamed down at him. He was leaning forward, reaching for something in the water —something reaching up for him. It moved, snaking, pallid, black hair swirling. It was a woman but also not. It flickered in and out of being but when Dad grasped its hand, it manifested. Livvie screamed again and peeled herself from the stone wall and down the last few steps to reach him.

“Dad, no! It’s not Mum!”

The woman looked up from beneath the water, beautiful and terrible. Its mouth peeled open, too wide, too hungry now, hungry for the need her father had, his death wish stronger than the bottle he had made for it. Its mask slipped, its movements became urgent, animal and he saw it was something…other. His mind filled with the taste of what it wanted. He tried to let go, to pull back but it would not let him.

Livvie closed her eyes and saw her mother as she was, the day before it happened.

Are you there, Mum? Is it you?

Beneath the cacophony in the chamber her mother’s voice could not be heard but her smile was a truth and it said that soon they could be together always. All of them. Livvie jumped into the water, into the light of the stone, into the beyond.

In the pit, all was dark. In his hand, only bones. In the air, only the echoes of her name and the vanilla biscuit scent of her perfume.

End….?

This story struggled to find its way to the end I had in mind, and before I finished it, the call for the amazing WEATHER REPORTS came, and I knew that Mark’s story after this would be perfect for that - and so The Widower was written and now the Lunar Awards was inspiration for me to finish the original story. Arse about face I know!

With thanks to and and for all they do with the Lunar Awards and the fiction community generally - better world because of you.

Good luck to all who participate.

Week 12. The Rules of the Pool.

This morning, I get another 34 euro ticket – I check the parking space I was in for hidden signs: all is revealed - I’ll have to add the 2^nd rule of parking in France:-

1. You can not park anywhere unless it’s in a designated car parking space.

2. Except on market days, when even those spaces are forbidden.

Girlfriend says: “One of my uni friends tells me you can park your car at the swimming pool for free.” I find the pool. There are lots of spaces. I decide to go swimming.

I have swimming shorts, and they have a “modesty lining” (a slightly uncomfortable net like pouch thing for the old groinicles which does not go see-through when wet). Go to pool, pay, get ticket, go into changing rooms. Have to give ticket to this lady who gives me a sort of cross between a coat hanger and a shopping basket. I get changed and somehow manage to wedge and tie all my clothes on to this woefully inadequate hanger thing.

I try to give basket lady the hanging basket, but no, it’s too full - “Just for your coat and shoes. Lockers are on the right when you go into the pool,” she says.

I bundle all my stuff into my bag, including glasses etc., almost blind without specs, but manage to find some lockers. There are 10 huge ones: 8 locked, the other 2 full of polystyrene floaty things. Another swimmer points out the public lockers round the far side of the pool. Most people leave their bags along the side of the pool – what’s wrong with the lockers? They take 1 euro. I trudge back to basket lady to get euro. “You must take valuables with you, for security,” she says. What does she mean by that?

Back at lockers, stuff everything in, but attendant stops me getting in pool.

“Monsieur, you must wear a Maillot de Bain, shorts are forbidden. For hygiene.”

“But these are special shorts for swimming” I say.

It’s no good – I look round, everyone is wearing speedos. I go back to locker, then to basket lady. She looks puzzled – I explain, I don’t have a Maillot de Bain – she says “You can buy them in the machine outside. 7 euros” – I get dressed quickly and go out – what I thought was a snack machine is a “trunks machine”; ingenious. Do I get medium, or shall I go large?

Back in changing rooms, large means the tightest skimpiest speedos you ever saw. This is not good. I squeeze into them – it’s not pretty – even if you aren’t overweight, they give you a spare tyre. Even if they had a modesty lining, they still leave nothing to the imagination. I hope the water is not too cold. Or maybe...

Go through basket and locker procedure again. About to get in the pool, when the attendant stops me again.

“It’s forbidden to swim without a bathing cap, for hygiene.”

BATHING CAP? Hygiene? Do they not have chlorine in France? I’ve got more hair on my toes than on my head – are they mad? Couldn’t he have said so before? Even though I’ve paid 2 quid for the swim, they can stick their wretched pool. I storm back to locker, then to basket lady. She looks even more puzzled – “I haven’t got a swimming cap,” I explain.

“You can buy them in the machine outside. 3 euros,” she says.

Thinking I will have to get one some time if I want to swim at all, I buy one. Back in changing rooms, there must be some mistake – are they having a laugh? The swimming cap is TINY – what size heads have these French got, I ask myself loudly. I struggle; I stretch it until it sounds like it’s ripping. Eventually, it goes on, like a spring-loaded scull cap; it’s giving me a face lift; I can barely close my eyes. There must be something I’m doing wrong – I look at the packet – it says “bébé” on it. It pings off, leaving a red mark across my forehead. Get dressed AGAIN, nip out, buy adult sized bathing cap. Check speedos to see if they were “bébé” size, but no, this is as big as they get.

Finally, the attendant can’t find any more breaches of regulations, so I get to go in the pool. They swim like there’s nobody else there. To avoid head on crashes I have to swim a sort of slalom. This doesn’t stop them trying to do front crawl over the top of you from behind though. They drive the same way.

“What’s that red line on your head?” asks girlfriend when I get back.

This is the second and final part of my submission to the AMAZING

Top In Fiction event : Spring Fever: Horrir in Bloom

brought to you by the wonderful Garen Marie and Erica Drayton and with artwork by Keith Long

Advisory Content

This story is a departure for me in that it contains even more graphic descriptions of sexual acts, implications of rape, and infertility, in addition to my more usual bloody violence and horror.

This is not even the first version of the ending - there’s an even more virulent sex and violence filled version that came out of me first, but I felt it was unrealistic.<yes, I know>…

Mandragora Part 2

Sarah went to the bathroom; there was a smell: menstrual blood, earth and something else...sickly sweet. A small, stainless steel pedal bin menaced from it’s niche between the toilet and the bath; she let it keep its secrets. A long hot shower cleared Sarah’s head and the stink from the room.

When she went downstairs, Tom was stirring something on the stove. He didn’t greet her, didn’t turn.

“What time is it?” She ventured

“Late. I’m making soup. D’you want some.”

“That woman’s here. You said…” she trailed off.

“I know. I had to call her.” Tom stopped stirring the pot. His back tensed. “There was blood in the bed this morning, Sarah.”

“Oh god! Didn’t you take her to hospital!”

“No.” He turned to face her, “she wanted Bridie. She wanted to be at home. Anyway, it’s done. She’s fine. Now, do you want some of this soup?” His voice cracked with levity as forced as his smile.

“I don’t think I could keep anything down.”

Sarah spent the rest of the day in her room. She dozed, she read and she dwelt on the past. When it began to get dark, she heard the tapping of Bridie’s stick pass her door and down the stairs. She crept to the bathroom and through the window saw Bridie make her way up the garden path with Tom. It seemed she barely needed her stick at all. There was a knock on the bathroom door. It was Kate.

“Are you in there, Sis? I’m sorry about last night. Can we talk?”

“Strange not to see Tom in here, it’s like he lives in the kitchen,” said Sarah when they went downstairs. “He had some soup on the go earlier. I couldn’t face it, but now? I’m actually starving!”

“It’s spiced butternut and something or other,” said Kate. “I had some earlier; still on the stove, look. Help yourself.”

Sarah fetched a bowlful, and they sat at the table. Kate was transformed, serene and lighter of spirit than she had been the night before. Her eyes were still red, but now there was a smile at the corners.

“I’m listening,” Sarah said, and sipped at the soup. Kate told her about the children her body had given up in the night. Tiny, little bigger than butter beans, but unmistakably almost -almost -perfect babies.

“I wanted to die, Sis. I just wanted to die and for it all to be over. But then Bridie came and she helped me to know them. They were dead, Sis, but she found their souls! I felt them…knew them: a girl and a boy! I named them: Eoster and Alban. Then Bridie released them and I said goodbye. It hurts, Sis, but it’s more bearable now I know them.”

Sarah mouthed the unfamiliar names. “What did you do with…” Sarah trailed off.

“Bridie has taken them. Tom’s with her. She’s giving them back to Faedor Eorth. It’s where we all return in the end.”

Of course it is.

“Bridie told me there’s something wrong in me, something I gave them; they would never have lived. It’ll always be hard for me to be a mother. Dangerous even.”

Her eyes grew wide and black and to Sarah it seemed like Kate’s voice began to shimmer at the edges of her words. “I need to ask you something, Sarah.”

“Anything Sis. Anything at all.”

“You might think this strange, but it’s important to me and I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t. Tomorrow, Alban Eoril —the equinox— I’m going to the giant on the hill, to honour Faeder Eorth, in the old way; to receive a blessing of fertility. Would you…”

“Of course I’ll come, Sis.”

“Not just come with me…will you work the Magick with me too? The two of us, sisters, together? The blessing will be all the stronger for it.”

Of course it will.

That night, Sarah dreamed disquieting dreams. Their mother —a mother? —was trying to wake her, scratching at her with twigs in her mouth but a man’s voice commanded sleep with words warm and syrup-thick. She pushed herself up from lush grass into sunshine, waking from a dream within a dream, then it was gone and there was Tom, drawing back a curtain. Confusion ate her words.

“Morning. Thought you’d have a thick head so I brought you chai latte and a magic potion.” He dropped two soluble aspirin to fizz in a beaker of water.

“What time is it?”

“Gone twelve.”

She groaned, gagged on the painkillers and sipped the tea. Sweet and spicy; perfect. She lay waiting for the tablets to work and felt sleepiness crawling back over her. The brightly coloured tag on the herbal tea bag dangled over the side of the mug and drew her gaze. The patterns on it swirled; the writing crawled off the turmeric-yellow paper and around the side of the mug.

“Oh!” She whispered, not at all surprised, then fell asleep.

Kate and Tom looked down at Sarah as she slept.

“I can’t believe it,” Kate hissed.

“How could she know?”

“Bridie’s never wrong, Tom. Not about things like this.”

Tom said nothing.

“Bridie sensed another soul in her, in her blood. She’s carried a child, a child that lived! And she gave her up! I can’t believe it.”

Tom pressed a finger to Kate’s lips. “It doesn’t matter now, love. This way will be better.”

Sarah woke with a start for the second time; Kate’s looming presence shredded the hazy gauze wrapping her mind.

“Fucking hell, Sis!”

“Sorry, hun. I would have let you sleep, only, we’re doing the thing, right? On the hill? You said you’d come.”

“Oh God, of course. Yeah. What time is it? How long did I sleep?”

“All day and half the night. It’s nearly nine and we need to get up there soon.”

Sarah groaned.

“I’ve run you a bath; you have to be clean. When you’re done, I’ve put a long dress out for you –don’t give me that look –just put it on. I’m wearing one just the same. And no knickers.”

Before they left, Tom gave them each a flask, “Hot chocolate, it’s going to be cold. Very cold.” He gave them a knowing look.

“Not coming?” Sarah asked.

“Not allowed,” said Kate. “No men but Faether Eorth, It’s the rules.” She held up a small book, bound with bark. “From Bridie.”

Sarah shook her head. “Pfff.”

Once they had gone, the door of the understairs cupboard creaked open. Bridie emerged from the cellar, back-lit by a flickering glow from below.

“Bring the planter up will ya, Thomas.”

He went down into the cellar and returned hugging a large earthenware plant pot to his chest with both arms. He placed it in front of her.

“Now fetch me a basin of rainwater from the garden; I need to prepare.” She worked her hands into the rich brown loam, burrowing down for something beneath the soil.

Kate and Sarah climbed the Giant’s Hill. It was impossible to make out the shape of the Giant, but the crowds of new-age folk, druids, and hopeful women squatting on the huge phallus made it obvious where they were to go. The crowds began to thin once the sun had set, and they found space to sit. They ruched up their dresses, backsides naked against the grass.

“Quite nice, all this foliage on the fanny,” Sarah said.

Kate tutted but didn’t raise her eyes from Bridie’s book. “There shouldn’t be any men here, not when we perform the rite. Let’s hope these stragglers leave soon; they’re all doing it wrong, anyway. Nobody’s taking it seriously.”

They lay on their backs, holding hands as night descended and stars became visible in the cloudless sky. It grew cold and the hill emptied quickly, the sound of folk music from the town and the promise of warmth in the pubs enticing everyone away.

“How long do we have to stay, Sis?”

“As long as we finish the ritual before midnight, that’s what matters. Everyone’s leaving - won’t be long by the look of it.”

“I’m going to have this hot chocolate then. Bloody frozen. Did I tell you the one about the baby polar bear?”

“Don’t you take anything seriously?”

Soon, silence came to the hillside, broken only by the calls of nightbirds. Kate took out seven tea lights in glass holders, placed them in a rough circle around them.

“We’ve got a thirty-five-foot cock all to ourselves, Sis. Whatever shall we do?” Sarah whispered.

Kate let a small laugh slip out. “Before we start, you have to promise me you’ll do as I ask? Don’t make a joke of it, otherwise, we might as well go home now.”

Sarah made mad eyes but promised.

“First, we make the womb ready.” Kate took a small jar from her bag and pulled out a pale finger of something. The surface shone like it was oiled. She reached down between her legs and slid it into herself, exhaling in a long sigh. Then she picked out another from the pot and held it out between finger and thumb. Sarah looked mortified.

“You promised!” hissed Kate “It’s mandragora; Bridie grows it. And trust me, you won’t have felt anything like it.”

Shaking her head, Sarah did as she was told. Within seconds, the sap took effect. She felt herself swelling, warming deep inside. Her clitoris twitched and pulsed. Her pelvic floor contracted and relaxed on it’s own, as if she was gripping something inside her.

“Oh my god, Kaz! It feels like…like…almost like being fu–-”

“—Shush will you?! Focus. Now, eat this.” Kate took out another jar; in it were dried slices of mushroom, thin-stalked with wide, rust coloured caps. Sarah mouthed “mushrooms?” Kate nodded and Sarah looked a lot keener. Together, they chewed and swallowed one thin slice.

“That’s all we’ll need. Now, we just lay here and wait. When I can feel it, when I start to speak, just repeat what I say. It’s a summoning of Faether Eorth; giving our wombs to the spirit of fertility, opening our minds to hear the blessing.”

Sarah focussed on the growing intensity of the sensations inside her. Twenty minutes later, the psychedelic fungus began to take effect. She felt every part of her back grow heavy, sink into the ground, but at the same time she was floating. Kate began to read from the bark-bound book in a low, sonorous tone. Her words distorted and echoed, harmonies following just behind and stretching out like hot glass ribbons that cooled to ice then shattered. Sarah opened her eyes and swirling melted heavens spiralled towards her. Heat and longing boiled in her belly. Her mouth formed the words she heard, but when she spoke them, she was a nightbird calling, in flight above the hill. The chalk lines of the Giant were illuminated; the trees glowed.

Feather Eorth, Ic eom freo

Faether Eorth, min wom is reaype

Faether Eorth, fyll mīnne bealgan

Nimmeh, gief meh thynne bletsunge

Kate’s chanting felt like hot water whispers in her ear flowing over her face, soaking her. The strangeness of the sound throbbed with primal power. As the phrases repeated, over and over, the sense of something deeper, older, a rising force, impossible to resist engulfed Sarah. She wanted it, needed something, something inside her, filling her. Wetness welled from her. She arched her back, opened her legs and reached to touch herself. The need to be taken was intense, all consuming.

Oh Christ! I need to be fucked.

Sarah stroked herself, shivering with the magnified intensity, lost in the voices, sensations, pressure, humming and a terrible need to climax. From a view point in the air, high above the Giant she saw his white chalk outline tear itself from the ground to stand -giant indeed -with his club, hollow eyes and proud, urgent phallus. She descended to it, swooping within globules of colourful sky.

Sarah’s hips rose and fell, her fingers circling, rubbing harder in her lap, as her orgasm built.

Oh god I need it.

In the sky, Sarah descended onto the tip of the glowing phallus, her body unfolding like a fractal magnolia flower to receive it. She hovered in the air, on the cusp, in the exquisite moment then came in a juddering, bucking climax. In the sky, the giant phallus impaled her swirling essence.

For several minutes there was nothing but the sound of their panting. A candle flickered and died and with it went any sense of the Magick binding them to another reality. Then Sarah sat up, confused, gripped by a wave of nausea, and vomited.

“Fuck me.” She said, after she finished heaving.

“Are you ok?” Kate sounded like echoes.

Sarah took a few moments to think about it. “I feel like I just fucked a God.”

“That’s the idea.” Kate patted the ground next to her.

“You got any water, Sis?”

“In my bag, but we have to just lay here until the candles to go out.”

They hugged for warmth, each recounting what their experience had been like; for Sarah it had been much more than it had been for Kate.

“Faether Eorth will never bless me. I can’t carry a child, they always die inside me.” Kate began to weep. “But you, Sis, he came for you, didn’t he? Your womb gives life; mine brings only death.” She couldn’t be consoled. Sarah bit back the words she knew her sister wanted. Silence grew between them, thick with the unspoken, with the un-asked.

One by one the candles died and the potency of the fungus ebbed with the light. The moon was setting somewhere behind the crest of the Giant’s Hill, and below them street lights were tiny floating orbs on the rising sea of a ground mist slowly drowning the town.

“Can we go back, Kaz, I’m freezing.” Sarah began to stand but Kate stayed her and held her arm.

“Sarah…”

“I can’t, Kate. I can’t. I know what you’re going to ask me, but don’t.”

“You had a child.” Kate’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Stop. Stop it.”

“Bridie told me, she can tell. You had a child…”

Sarah shook off Kate’s arm and stood up, brushing down her long dress.

“…and you gave her away.”

“You don’t understand, Kate.”

“No, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you can’t -won’t do this for me.”

“I’ve never told anyone about this.” Sarah choked on the words.

“But I’m your sister. We’re all the family we have. You knew how much a child would mean to me…how could you…”

“I was RAPED! Raped by someone I knew. Trusted. I didn’t go to the police. I told myself it hadn’t happened; convinced myself. But it had. Then I deluded myself that I wasn’t pregnant. But I was. And then I told myself I would lose it, that it would die; that my hatred would never let it grow. But it did. And then it was too late. The Doctor said it was too late. And it grew. And I grew and the hate grew and I…I did something. Something terrible. But it -she- didn’t die. She lived and it was me that almost died. When she was born, I didn’t want to see her, to face her. The guilt, the hatred, the shame. And him, that man? A father? So I gave her up.”

Sarah took a moment to breathe and wipe her eyes on her sleeve.

“And then when I was well enough, I went to a private clinic and had them take everything out so I would never have to -could never- face it again.”

“Oh my god, Sis.” Kate stood and hugged her. They both cried now, but Kate’s tears were more for herself than for her sister; the burden Sarah had carried was a crushing weight upon her hopes. They walked back hand in hand, but in silence.

Back at the house, Tom was waiting up for them. “Well? Are we bursting with fecund energy?” His words died as he saw the strain on their faces. Kate rummaged in the back of a drawer and went to the garden. The smell of a cigarette wafted through the French Door. He looked at Sarah.

“I can’t do this now,” she said, filling a glass from the tap. “I’m going to bed.”

It wasn’t long before Kate came back in from the garden. “Where’s Bridie?”

Tom waved at the cellar door. “She’s down there, getting things ready. What happened?”

Kate told him about Sarah’s revelation. “I know it’s awful, what happened to her, and I understand, but I hate her, Tom. I HATE HER for it. Am I a bad person?”

Before he could say anything, rattling came from behind the cellar door and Bridie emerged. Her head swept the room. “I smelled a cigarette. I hope it wasn’t you smoked the filty thing, Kate?”

Nobody spoke.

“Something’s amiss. Where is she? Did she take the root in her? Was she blessed?” Bridie stalked around the kitchen table until she drew close to Tom and Kate. She leaned in and sniffed at Kate.

“What are you thinking girl, smoking! Do you not know the pisens in those things? The womb must be pure-”

“-It doesn’t matter, Bridie. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“What are you sayin’?”

“She’s had it all taken out, after she had the child. Her womb, her ovaries. All of it. It’s all been for nothing. You didn’t sniff that out with your Magick, did you.”

“Stop a moment will ye? Let me sit and tell me again. Tell me everything.”

Bridie listened, tutting and rubbing at an amber bead hanging about her neck. When Kate had finished, she rocked back and forth on her chair.

“But the spell, up on the hill, you worked the spell all the same did you?”

“Yes, but—“

“—But me no buts, Kate. Was she took by Faether Eorth? Was she opened? Answer!”

Kate snorted. “She said she felt like she’d fucked a God, if that’s what you mean. But the Magick can’t work on her now, can it.”

Bridie brooded then sat up “There’s another way, Kate. It’s not the way I would choose, but the choice is not for me to make.”

“What do you mean?”

Bridie began to chant, growling out the words. As she did, her white eyes slowly reddened, thin blood vessels swelling within her sockets.

“Blood Magick, Kate. Your sister has something of the soul of her child within her. The Magick can be worked with that instead.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You wanted a child, and our bargain was I would give it to you and your man would give me the thing I need in return. Now, that part of the bargain I’ve had, and plenty of it, but my side of the bargain remains to be settled.”

“What are you saying.” Tom spoke this time but Bridie stayed him with a hand.

“This is a thing between women. You must leave us now.”

Tom hesitated until Kate urged him to leave them and go to bed. Bridie went on:

“Have you the book I gave you before, Kate?” Kate retrieved it for her.

“The spell is here—” Bridie tapped the book and then rested a hand on Kate’s chest, above her heart “—but the power must come from the blood, not the earth.”

Kate nodded. Bridie’s eyes grew deeper red.

“I’ll give you the choice and that’s my bargain paid and done. But you must know this: you will have to carry the child, and there is a price to be paid by another. Do you understand me?”

Kate blinked, then bobbed her head just once, like a secret sign. Bridie felt it and laid the bark-bound book on the table. She lifted her patchwork bag and laid it, heavy, beside the book.”

“Will you help me, Bridie? You’re the witch, after all.”

“Kate, ‘Witch’ is a name given to women by men who don’t understand Nature. Nature is neither good nor bad; she is just Nature. But Nature does no wilful harm. My ways are the ways of Nature. I’ll not be your judge, but blood Magick is a different thing; the sacrifice must match the desire. For every gain, there is a loss.”

Kate’s head dropped.

“I’m showing you a path to what you want, but I can’t lead you down it. You’ve to make the choice, aAnd if you choose otherwise, then spring will come again and I will be here for you,” she patted the bag. “This is yours, if you choose. You’ve to thank Thomas for it. And thank him for me.”

Bridie stood, her walking stick more like a staff than a crutch. “I’ll see myself home.”

Kate sat alone for a long while, then went to the knife block. One by one she took them and ran her thumb across the blades before sliding all but one of them back in.

The next morning, Tom woke up and stretched. His head ached. He reached for Kate, but she wasn’t there.

“Good morning husband.” Her voice came from the end of the bed. Confused, he raised his head; she was sitting there, cross legged. In the sunlight filtering through the curtains he saw she was still in her white dress. It was covered in blood. He sat up, stunned.

“Kate, Jesus, what’s happened?”

“Don’t worry darling.” She lifted her dress and reached between her legs. With a shuddering sigh, she pulled out the root. It seemed impossibly long, but was shrivelled now, flaccid, it’s taut nodules limp and empty. It pulsed weakly in her hand and bloody fluids leaked from its head.

“I can feel it. I can feel it inside me. It’s alive. Tom, it’s alive! We’re going to have baby, a baby girl.”

In another house, in another town, far away, a little girl stared up at her terrified mother with deadenend eyes, fragments of china spinning across the kitchen floor.

For the other submissions to the event check out the Top in Fiction event index Here

This is part one of my submission to the Top In Fiction event : Spring Fever brought to you by the wonderful and and with artwork by

Part two is here

Advisory Content

This story is a departure for me in that it contains graphic descriptions of sexual acts, implications of rape, and infertility, in addition to my more usual bloody violence and horror.

Mandragora

A strange woman was fumbling at the garden gate as Sarah approached her sister’s house. The woman was older, with close-cropped salt and pepper hair. She wore a greenish linen smock, colourful scarves about her neck and head, and silver jewellery hung from everywhere it could; beads and turquoise. Over one shoulder hung a patchwork tote bag, heavy with something. Her complexion spoke of an outdoors life and she could have been fifty, or ten years either way. She leaned on a gnarled walking stick whilst her other hand –a gauntlet of rings– explored the ironwork of the gate.

“Feckn thing,” she muttered.

“Let me help you.” Sarah reached over and clicked the latch down. The woman raised her head and Sarah realised at once, from the way her neck weaved about and the cloudy whiteness of her eyes, that she was blind.

“You’re so kind. I couldn’t find the bloody latch,” said the woman, smiling into space. She shuffled through the open gate and as she brushed past Sarah on the narrow path she stopped.

“Would you mind if I touched your face, girl?” She grasped Sarah’s arm. Sarah hesitated and the woman took it as consent. “I’d like to get a look at ya.” Her smile was wide and warm with a prominent gap between her front teeth. She brushed light fingertips over Sarah’s face, tracing jawline and eyebrows with particular care. “Ah! You must be the sister,” she said. “What do they call you?”

“Sarah.”

“I’m Bridget, but call me Bridie. Now, go in to Kate. She’ll be needing you.” She tapped at Sarah’s leg with her stick then walked away, swinging it briskly before her.

Tom opened the door and they hugged on the step before he bustled her in to the kitchen.

“Good trip?”

“Not bad. Would have got here sooner but had to stop for a pee and a coffee. How is she? How are you both?”

Tom shrugged. “Not the best.”

“You poor loves.” Sarah hugged him again. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs. She needs rest but go up, she’ll want to see you. Leave your bag, I’ll put it in your room.”

Sarah headed for the stairs, but at the kitchen door she stopped.

“Tom?”

“Hmmm?”

“There was a woman. A blind woman leaving, just as I arrived.”

“Oh, Bridie? Did you speak to her?”

“Yeah, she was struggling with the gate.”

“She was here for Kate.”

“How do you know her?”

“She’s sort of a…midwife I suppose. She brought something for Kate.” He pointed at a kilner jar on the kitchen table. “Herbal stuff.”

Sarah nodded slowly. “She wanted to stroke my face…I didn’t know what to say.”

“She’s not shy. Quite a character in the town.”

“Yeah. She looked a bit…”

“Witchy?”

Sarah arched her eyebrows.

“Bohemian, then? Esoteric?”

“Earthy, I was going to say, Tom. Earthy. She even smelled earthy, like she’d been digging something up.” Sarah walked back to the table and picked up the jar, studying the dry, leafy contents.

“I’ve just brewed a pot,” said Tom. “Why don’t you take it up to her?”

In a darkened bedroom Kate was buried under the duvet, her back to the door.

“Are you asleep Sis?”

The duvet stirred. Sarah sniffed at the mug of herb tea, then pushed aside candles and books on the bedside table to make space for it.

“I brought you some tea, Sis.”

The duvet stirred again.

“Sazzy?” Kate turned over, and her tear-worn eyes emerged from beneath the edge of the covers.

“Kazzer.”

Sarah opened her arms and Kate sat up to meet the embrace. They buried their heads into each others’ necks and hugged, desperate and hard. Kate keened, dry eyed and forlorn, and Sarah rocked her, stroked her back and ‘shushed’ softly. She breathed in the familiar smell of her sister’s skin, undercut with the sourness of days in bed.

“Nine weeks, Sazzy. Nine weeks,” Kate mumbled into Sarah’s jumper.

“Oh you poor love. You poor poor love.”

“I really thought that this time - this time - we’d done it.”

“I know. I know. It’s so unfair, Sis.”

Kate leaned back out of the hug. Her hopeless eyes brought Sarah close to tears herself. She reached for the tissues.

“I brought you some tea up,” she said, wanting to do something, anything. “Tom says that Bridie brought it for you? Smells rank, bound to be healthy.” Kate blinked but didn’t take the mug.

“They’re still inside me, Sis. They’re dead and they’re still inside.”

She burrowed back under the duvet and Sarah hugged her shuddering form beneath the bedding.

In the morning, the sounds of Sarah hunting for the teabags brought Tom downstairs. Cardigan drawn across a bare chest and still in pyjamas, he apologised, and dragged eggs and bacon from the fridge.

“How is she?”

Tom’s eyebrows told her everything. After a few moments, she spoke.

“Tom, Katie told me…She told me that they’re-”

“-still inside? Yeah.”

“Oh god…I can’t imagine. It’s bad enough…” she didn’t finish.

“Yeah. Yeah it is.”

“And she has to…has to, carry them inside her? I don’t understand. How long for?”

“We have to go back in. For a ‘D&C’? It’s basically an-”

“-an abortion.”

“Yeah. Tuesday.”

“Three days?”

Tom nodded. They stared at each other, Tom with the eggs and bacon in his arms, Sarah with a hand to her mouth, both contemplating that reality.

“I wish there was something I could do,” said Sarah eventually. “I’d do anything to help.”

“Would you?” Tom stared. Sarah shifted in her seat at the directness of his gaze but he didn’t look away. “Nobody can do anything, though, Sarah, can they. Nobody.”

Neither of them felt much like bacon and eggs, when they thought about it, so Tom made tea and toast and took some up for Kate, and Sarah went to explore the town. The spring equinox was close, Sarah realised, as dozens of druids, green men and white witches meandered the streets. Stalls touted flagons of mead and crystals; images of the famous local landmark were everywhere. Sarah resisted the temptations of phallic souvenirs, but not the allure of a Devon cream tea. On the way back, she bought a jar of local honey, remembering the bitter aroma of Bridie’s herbal tea.

“What d’you think of the place?” said Tom.

“Lovely. Very quaint, even with all the giant dicks everywhere. Busy though.”

Tom laughed. “Always is this time of year. You saw the Giant then?”

“I didn’t go to the hill, but you don’t need to. He’s everywhere!”

“It’s why we came here, in a way. Well, one of the reasons.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Fertility thing, you know.”

“Really?”

“Well, not just for that, but we were kind of looking for a place in the area and we thought, why not. It was funny. At the time.”

“How’s it supposed to work then? You go up there on a full moon and sit on the huge nob end with your knickers off?”

Tom looked sheepish.

“What? That’s never it, is it?”

“Bridie’s the one to ask about that.”

“I’ll bet; she looks the part.“ Sarah laughed and shook her head. “Jesus. Has Kate tried it then? Have you been up there?”

Tom shook his head.

“Did you feel a bit threatened? He’s a big lad, isn’t he!”

“About thirty five foot.”

“Including the balls?”

They both laughed.

“We joked about trying it, but the IVF-”

“-seemed more likely to work?”

“We couldn’t focus on anything else but IVF. It sucked up everything - time, money, and, well, you know…that.”

Rapping at the front door broke the silence. It was Bridie. “I’ve come to see how she’s getting on,” she said, her stick scraping the floor and rattling off the skirting boards as she swept in. Tom guided her to the table and pulled out a chair.

“Tom was just telling me you’re the one to ask about the Giant, Bridie.” said Sarah.

“Faeder Eorth, you mean? Your man on the hill?”

“Yeah, you know, the rituals and all that?”

Bridie turned towards Tom, white eyes glistening in a hard, sightless stare, then back at Sarah. “That’ll wait for another time, girl. It’s Kate I’m here for. How is she?”

“She’s not so good, Bridie. Still in her bed.” said Tom.

“Aye, she’ll want to be nowhere else while those poor dead souls are inside of her. She needs them out.”

“Tuesday, Bridie. We’re going in Tuesday.”

“Three days they’re making her wait? That won’t do, that won’t do at all. Did you give her the tea?”

“I took her some up yesterday, but I don’t know if she drank it,” said Sarah.

“She had some this morning,” said Tom.

“Good. That’s good. It will help to bring them out whole, the natural way. Not with all the scraping and scratching the doctors do. That’s no good at all, leaves the dead inside. Can you imagine that? Will you take her up some more tea now? Make it good and strong.”

“I bought some honey for it,” said Sarah, bringing the jar out from her bag. “Might take the edge off, it smelled really bitter.”

Bridie swung up her stick and banged it hard on the table. “Don’t you feckn DARE be putting honey in it, girl!”

Sarah jumped in her seat and the jar flew from jittering hands across the table. Bridie’s head weaved as she followed the sound of the jar sliding slowly to a stop just over the table’s edge. Sarah watched in shock. For a moment all was still then Bridie rapped her stick down once more and the jar fell to the floor, the smash of glass muted by the thick honey.

“Jesus, Bridie!”

“It cost ten quid that, you know!” Sarah butted in.

Bridie turned her head toward Sarah, the milk white, unblinking eyes fixed on a distant point behind her.

“Will you give me your hand, girl, so I know where you are to speak to?” Sarah hesitated, then pulled up her chair and stretched out her hand. Bridie took it in both of hers, as sure as if she could see it.

“Your sister is afflicted. There’s death inside of her and it must come out. The tea is bitter for a bitter purpose, and to put sweetness in it? Well, there’s more to honey than just the sweetness of it, you must know that.”

“Well I know it’s healthy.”

“And so it is, so it is, but another medicine needs to do its work. Do you follow me?”

“Medicine? You a doctor are you?” Sarah’s voice hid nothing.

Bridie’s voice took on an edge. “I’m a healer, girl; a healer of women. My medicines are older and better than any muck a doctor would put in you.”

Sarah said nothing; Bridie’s eyes were impossible to read.

“Well, there we are,” Bridie said, her voice warmed again. “Will we take some of the tea up to Kate? I’ve brought something for you, as well, Thomas. For after.”

“I’ll fill the kettle,” said Tom.

Bridie brought Sarah’s hand up to her face, unfurled her fingers and kissed her palm, then, with a sudden move, pressed her nose to it and inhaled. Sarah jerked her hand away, pushed back on her chair and stood up, face contorted. She threw a glance at Tom: Did you see that?! then glared at Bridie: If you weren’t blind!

“Tell me, Sarah. Do you have a child of your own?”

Sarah took a moment before answering. “No?”

“And have you never had one?”

There was a longer pause.

“Jesus Christ! Tom! Who is this woman? Who does she think she is?” Tears started in her eyes and she fled the kitchen and out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Moments later, her car revved and sped off. There was a long silence then Tom spoke.

“We need her. Kate needs her, Bridie, and you coming here? That was not what we agreed.”

“It’s as well I did come though Tom, isn’t it.” She hefted her shoulder bag from the floor and laid it on the table with a soft thud. The fabric of it folded around something large and shapeless within. She nodded her head towards the far end of the table. “Fetch me a taste of that honey, will you, be a shame to waste it all.”

Tom walked round the table and knelt over the smashed jar on the floor. He slid two fingers between the shards of glass, scooping up a blob of honey, then approached Bridie and held his dripping fingers just above her mouth. She opened it slightly, her tongue just visible.

“I sometimes wonder just how blind you really are, Mrs Geraghty,” he said, as a thin ribbon of honey descended. He trailed it over her lips and she tongued it.

“I don’t need eyes to know what’s in front of me, Thomas. Now, let’s have it.” Her words caught on the sweetness. He pushed his fingers slowly into her mouth and her lips closed around them. He slid them out then pushed them in again, deeper. Her tongue worked, while Tom used his other hand to unbuckle his belt. A moan of encouragement burred in her throat and she reached to unzip his trousers. She stopped sucking his fingers when she’d freed his stiffening cock, gripping it with one hand, cupping his balls with the other.

“That’s good, Tom. That’s good, you’ve kept them full, just as I asked. Heavy and full. Now let me bring home the harvest.”

She took him in her mouth and he moaned as she worked him with her hands, gripping his balls, weighing them, feeling the tightness of them grow as she brought him closer and closer to climax. When his breath quickened and he began to gasp and thrust into her mouth, she pulled back and gripped him hard.

“Hold it. Gather it. Summon it all up for me.” She groped in her bag and withdrew a bulbous, leathery tuber. The surface was mottled, earthy and green; wrinkled in places, taut and almost shiny in others. Nodules like stunted limbs protruded, each ending in a tangle of thin hairy fingers. One end of it was thick and round –a head on a short, neck-like stalk. She brought it close to the end of Tom’s engorged penis and a hole opened in the root, split and widened –a toothless mouth. Pinprick beads of sap grew on the rim and it moved, sensing the heat pulsing from him, its wet lips gaping now. Tom tensed and pulled away, but Bridie grasped his shaft and drew him back, guiding the tip of his cock into the sucking root.

“Now. Give it now. Take hold of it; feel it, give it up for me.”

She pushed the root onto him, holding the base of his cock steady with one hand, until the whole length of him had slid into its slick depths. His initial grimace of revulsion succumbed to helpless pleasure. They both took hold of the root now, her hands on top of his, using its organic contours and fibrous nodules for purchase. It pulsed and undulated with snake-like strength. Tom gripped it hard, exhaling in determined bursts through his nose. Together, they worked it back and forth, Bridie controlling the speed and depth of the strokes, muttering ancient words. Tom grunted, and she moved to cup his balls, feeling them clench, until he came with a shuddering groan. Bridie crooned, massaging him, feeling him spasm as he spent himself into the depths of the hideous swollen tuber.

“That’s it, good boy, every drop now.”

When he had nothing more to give, he pulled his hands away, the squeezing, milking sensation suddenly unbearable.

“Get it off me…get it off!”

Bridie chuckled and slid it off, leaving him aching, reddened and hard, glistening with trails of sap. The mouth of the root puckered then closed and Bridie placed it back in her bag. Tom collapsed back onto a chair.

“It’s not natural. It’s…It’s…” but he didn’t know what it was. He ran a hand roughly through his hair; his scalp itched and his cock was hot, angry.

“You gave a fine, full measure, Thomas. I felt it and the root knows. It knows and it gives back its thanks. You can’t deny the pleasure of it, not like any woman can give, eh?”

“What is it, Bridie? How is it…?”

“Magick. Old Magick; of the earth. Don’t be asking about the what and the how…what it does is all that matters.” She leaned towards him, feeling for him, grasping hold of his aching erection. “Now, you’re going to be blessed with this for a good while yet, I’ll work us up a little more Magick.” She stood, hoisted her dress up and straddled him, then sank down, the sap of the root warming her as he slid easily inside. Her whole sex pulsed and flowered as the sap took effect. She rocked back and forth, rolling her hips and cradling his head in her bosom.

When I’m done, I’ll need to be away; I’ve to get it back in the earth. Make sure you take up that tea for Kate.

At the mention of Kate’s name, Tom looked up, something like tears in his eyes. Bridie pressed a wet finger to his lips.

“None of that now. You know the bargain. I give Kate what she wants, and you–” she ground herself hard on him “-you give me what I need.”

She rode him, muttering words he didn’t know as she came; when she started again, harder, he asked her to stop but she wouldn’t.

“I need it, Thomas. I need the Magick of it.” She began to pant as another orgasm built. “And the sister, Thomas, will she give what’s needed to the womb, or must it be took? Does she know?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll give you something that will help her hear the truth.”

Sarah spent an hour pacing the streets with no direction in mind, only a growing rage. Her first thought was that she would just leave, pack and go home, but that would mean going back to the house. She couldn’t face that woman. She was still shaken -how did she know?

She found a bar, sank a large gin and tonic and then another. Too drunk to drive back, a bottle of red became a good idea, and soon she was too drunk to go home. At the end of the bottle, she was drunk enough not to care if the witch was there or not. She called a cab.

When Tom opened the door to her, she jabbed him in the sternum.

“Is she still here?”

“She’s gone, Sarah. She won’t be back while you’re here. Come in, we were just about to eat.”

She weaved her way into the kitchen and sat at the table opposite Kate, who was tossing a salad. Tom brought a lasagna over.

“You’re up! How are you feeling Sis?” Sarah tried not to slur, but failed.

“Are you pissed?”

“I wouldn’t say pissed but-”

“-it’s barely half seven. What’s wrong with you?”

“She had a bit of a disagreement with Mrs Geraghty, love.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Sarah said, folding her arms at Tom.

Kate pointed at Sarah but spoke at Tom. “There’s no point asking her when she’s in that state.”

“I’m not that drunk.”

“You’re supposed to be here with us, Sarah, not off out getting hammered!” Kate stood, salad tongs held like knives. “My babies are dead inside me, Sis,” she screamed, hurling the tongs into the bowl sending rocket and cherry tomatoes flying. “I need you and you’re falling off the fucking chair!” She glared down at Sarah then stormed upstairs.

There was a long, long silence. “Do you want some lasagna?” Tom said, as if nothing had happened. Sarah snorted at him, eyebrows so high her brow hurt.

“I suppose so,” she said, eventually, inviting him to her plate with an open palm. As he served she said “What were you going to ask me then?”

“Oh...nothing. Best leave it for tomorrow.”

Tomorrow came and with it came the dead. Sarah surfaced through thick waters that muffled wails and frantic voices.

Something’s happened.

She lurched from the bed, thick tongued, glue eyed and desperate for water and a piss. As she opened the bedroom door a crack, the air about her seemed to pulse and push into the room. She shut it. Her stomach heaved.

The witch is here.

She felt it, knew it, overcame it and opened the door again. Bridie walked past, stuffing something into the patchwork bag with one hand and holding a large, steaming jug in the other.

“I’m seeing to Kate. The bairns are out of her. Don’t be going near her ‘til that skinful of drink ye had is out of ye. D’ya understand?” She barely slowed as she passed Sarah and disappeared into Kate’s room.

To be continued…In Part 2

For the other submissions to the event check out the Top in Fiction event index Here

“I hate the gym. Hate it. I have perfect health for a man of eighty plus. What difference can it make at my age?”

The Attendant smiled. “It won’t be the last time I hear that, Sir, but twenty minutes a day can make a lot of difference, at any age.”

“That’s what my physician said. He’s a great doctor, great, really, but that’s not going to happen. Not happening. I told him, I’m doing it for the photo op. and that’s it. Great visuals, my press guy says. They’ll be along any minute.”

“Whatever you say, Sir.”

“If I have to do this, I’m gonna be sitting down. Can we get more light in here?”

“I’m afraid not, Sir. Now, if you could just follow me over to this machine here, I can set you up with something not too challenging, get the ticker up over a hundred. You won’t even break a sweat.”

“What is this? Some sort of sex chair, all these handles and straps. Is that what this is? Hmm?” he grasped one of the smooth, black rubberised handles and grinned. “Get some pussy on here and you might get me back in.”

There was a pause and then the Attendant’s smile cracked wider, showing perfect teeth. “It’s a recumbent bicycle, Sir. Would you mind taking off your suit jacket, and maybe your tie? You’ll be more comfortable.”

“The tie stays on. Never lose the tie, not for a press thing.”

“Of course Sir, as you like it. Now if you could just put your feet into the pedals like so, and grasp those handles down by your side, I can get you set up with something perfect.”

He pushed his feet into the toe holds of the pedals and the Attendant tightened the velcro straps then started tapping on the touch screen. “What are you, six two and two hundred and forty pounds?”

“Who’ve you been speaking to?”

“When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you can size people up.”

“Too close for comfort. Say, can we get something more interesting there?” He jabbed a thick finger at the graphs and figures on the bike’s generous high definition screen.

“Of course Sir. I was just getting your baseline stats. We can choose from a whole range of scenery, but I thought you’d like something familiar to start; I’ve got just the thing.”

“Get me my phone, will you?” He waved an impatient hand towards his hanging suit jacket. “That moron press guy shoulda been here by now.”

The screen flicked over to a wintry, urban street scene. “If you start pedalling, Sir, keep that number between 12 and 15, and see where we get to.”

He began to move down the snowy street, passing parked cars and pedestrians, shop fronts and cafes. It looked familiar, ordinary but familiar. Up ahead, he could see a crowd was forming, waving signs, milling at the sides of the road.

“Where are we at? Is that a rally up ahead? Is that it?”

Two cars overtook at speed and rammed into another, forcing it off the road. Eight masked men in khaki fatigues leapt out, guns raised. More paramilitaries rushed in from the wings, dispersing the protesters with batons and pistol butts.

“I know where this is, you sneaky bastard!” He looked to the side with a crooked grin. The Attendant nodded ever so slightly. On the screen, the armed men dragged a woman from the car, swarmed her, rained down blows. Pedestrians with home made protest signs flocked in to help but were pepper sprayed and beaten back. As he passed he could see the woman’s bloodied face mashed into the snow.

Fuck around, find out.

The view changed as the bike turned a corner and the snowy streets gave way to sunshine and tropical greenery.

“Let’s go a little faster, shall we?” The Attendant leaned over his shoulder to tap the screen and the pace quickened. The road became dustier, buildings brighter but ramshackle, interspersed with palms and flowering trees. Ahead, an industrial complex came into view and then was obliterated in a series of huge explosions. Black and orange clouds of flame roiled into the sky. The view shook.

“Wow! It’s like actually being there. So realistic. Really terrific!”

He felt the warmth of the Attendant’s cheek close to his own as his eyes were fixed on the scenes of destruction looming closer. He cycled past burning corpses. Steelwork collapsed into the street. The bike weaved its way through the carnage.

“Gets the blood pumping, doesn’t it,Sir?”

The scene changed again and the pace quickened further. He cycled through featureless farmland, stretching to bleak horizons. A village came into view, the houses blasted, empty ruins, trees shattered to stumps. As they wound through the destruction, the screen began to shake and tanks and APCs rumbled into view and past on his right hand side. As the last of the convoy passed him it exploded violently, the gun turret popping into the air like a toy. One by one the armoured units exploded into chunks of scrap and fragments, the rhythm of destruction like a slow heart beat. Ragged troops fled from them, some burning, some firing wildly into the air.

The bike passed by it all without stopping. On the screen, the heart monitor hit 120.

“This is fantastic, but slow it down…drop the pace a little.” He struggled as he spoke, sweat streaks showing on his jowls.

“But you’re so close to the finish line.” The Attendant whispered in his ear. “You don’t want to stop now…just two more minutes, Sir.”

“I said slow it down! Did you hear me?” He jerked his head round, but the Attendant had disappeared from view. He tried to reach for the screen but he couldn’t let go of the handles.

130.

“Hey! HEY! Get back here! You are so fucked!” He rages, but the Attendant is nowhere to be seen. The room darkens, the screen brightens, the pedals turn faster and the heart rate climbs. The view changes again, wet farmland and rusting tanks give way to a hellish wasteland of skeletal concrete.

On the back of his neck he feels the breath of the Attendant. “Close now, Sir. Keep it up.”

140

On the screen, eyeless children and limbless fathers stumble and drag themselves to left and right, senseless and screaming as missiles blast pointless holes into their dead homes.

“Stop this fucking thing now!”

“But you’re doing so, so well, Sir.”

The pace quickens again as the bike weaves through a crowd of desperate filthy ragged people, clamouring for sacks of rice and bottles of water being dispensed from the back of trucks. Soldiers appear with machine guns, scything through them in bloody waves. There is nowhere for them to run. They cannot escape. They do not. The trucks are set ablaze one by one. The bike glides past it all.

156.

He grunts and gargles, pulse thumping in his ears, knives stabbing his chest.

150

120

60

15

0

20:00

The sibilant breath of the Attendant is a warm caress on the back of his neck.

“Well done, Sir! You made it!”

The screen goes black. His head lolls but the machine keeps turning, motor humming, pulling his legs round and round. The Attendant lifts his head by the saggy flesh of his chin and dabs at his forehead with a small white towel. He throws it, stained, into a wicker basket and snaps a fresh one from the pile with a flourish.

I'm going to get the minor critique points out of the way first so that we can focus on all the positives and not leave a soured taste in the mouth or any BUTS at the end of this review.

BUT ALSO LOOK AT THAT FANTASTIC COVER - HE MADE IT HIMSELF!

I have read most of James' fiction on his sub stack, and so in a purely literary sense, this novel has a few moments where the prose is not quite at the standard of beauty and technical skill that he now achieves -but this is a novel length piece of work and nobody can keep it up that long without the odd cliche or echoed adjective, and he may not have had a professional editor look at it to spot these things, which makes his achievement even more special considering how good it is. AND ITS HIS FIRST GODDAM BOOK.

POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT NEXT 4 PARAs

There are also some, I am sure, that might be slightly confused by the ending which is sudden and also quite strangely at odds with the the vast majority of the book, other than in the sense of joy and hopefulness it has, and that it's a happy ending for the love of the baby Jesus - and Christ do we need happy endings these days.

As someone that loves a great plot, I found the mechanism of how James brings this story to a close to be a strange choice, because there are very few hints at what is happening in the middle distance and the ending relies on a plot mechanism which , shall we say, is not 100% dissimilar to a "then they woke up and it was all a dream".

I think James could have dropped a few more clues to the bigger world picture along the way, to tie the ending and the messages in to the story more fully.

Having said that, I love the ending - it is a bold move and it does work with the surreal aspects of the story (which just seem totally normal) and more importantly with the rag tag characters, and what we want for them, what we have been hoping for them all the way through the story - just, in a totally sudden and bizarre way (and no it isn't ACTUALLY an "it was all a dream" ending, don’t be silly.)

PLOT SPOILERs OVER

So these minor minor de minimis points, which should not get in the way of any normal person admiring this novel and loving it and being sad when they get to the end and there is no more of it, let me continue with the effusive praise.

There are three aspects in particular which made this novel fantastic.

1 - The story itself - it’s a road trip, it’s a love story, it’s a coming of age story, it's a friends against the world story, it's a tragedy, it’s a comedy, it's surreal and also everyday and relatable. It delivers on many many levels. As many have said, it is hard to categorise what it is on a purely genre level. It says a lot that Mr Worth can make this novel so many things for so many people all at once.

2 - The characters - the four main characters are fantastic creations. We are on their side, all of them, all the way through. They are immediately believable, recognizable for all their extreme almost unbelievable circumstances. James make us love them, care for them, believe in them. The only villain is the world. They speak with authority. The dialogue is pitch perfect. The love scenes are hot and affecting because of their innate truth and beauty and sometimes their ugliness.

3 - the power of James' ability to capture human emotion in all its terrifying and wonderful forms. His characters are living breathing feeling, hurting, broken and brave - Mr. Worth has a great skill at conjuring up with mere words powerful feelings - you will feel the roaring passions, crushing insecurities, weaknesses, strengths and hopes of all the characters - you will invest in them, you will root for them.

This is a rare thing, in my experience, that a novel can make you love FOUR characters who are all so very different, and even deeply flawed or objectively bad - He makes us understand how they are who they are, warts and all. Mr Worth is a young man, but he has an uncanny skill with capturing human emotion in an utterly real and recognizable way.

I have a theory about this novel, which is that James must have drawn from himself to paint his characters so true and my feeling is that Jamie is James Worth, as he sees himself. Marshall is who James wishes he really was and Lana and Beaver are the devil and the angel on his shoulders. I shall say no more.

I would love to see the film of this book - although it is so vivid in my mind because of Mr Worth's uncanny skill at making words come to life in technicolour, that I don't think any film could live up to what the reader will have painted in their own mind - but don't wait for the film, get the book now.

I urge everyone to buy this book - its wonderful and Mr Worth deserves to be wildly successful.

Find more of James Worth work here: Just Wonderin’

You can also buy the book here, which is where I did, from the marvellous indie publishers Drek Death and Doom brough to you by who does not publish anything lightly.

When I told this tale to my fiancee, her reaction was not what I had hoped for. It wasn’t that she was repulsed, repelled, sickened or full of self loathing for agreeing to marry me–nothing as harsh as that. She was just not amused; disappointed, actually.

My father, on the other hand, found the whole thing hilarious. Being a man, anything to do with toilets, bodily functions, embarrassment and such like? Well, it’s automatically funny, isn’t it? Even I found it funny, after the initial horror.

Now, where were we…ah yes: in the shadow of Mount Etna. Are we sitting comfortably? Good, because that is an important part of the story.

It was 2018 or 2019 - something like that - and one of my fathers (from whom the DNA is derived) and I had decided to have a “Lad ‘n’ Dad” holiday. We have not spent a lot of time together during our lives (won’t go into that now) and it’s only very recently that we have been on holiday together. And only twice. Both times in the middle of winter: once to Portugal and once to Sicily. For anyone unfamiliar with European Geography (that’s you, America) Sicily is the home of Mount Etna. It’s erupting right now, look!

We were staying in an agri tourism place which for some reason had opened for one week only in January - the week following Epiphania. The 6th January is a big deal in Sicily. La Befana (completely Christian and not in the least pagan) is a bit like Santa, only she’s a gift-bearing witch, not a flying fat man with magic deer.

In January, Sicily is bloody freezing, especially if your digs are a rustic, charming barn conversion which was never intended to be occupied by humans before April. The owner was bemused when we turned up, saying they forgot to take the week out of their calendar on their website. They never thought anyone would want to come so soon after christmas when it was freezing cold and there was no “agri tourism” going on because of, er, winter.

But they don’t know how much we Brits love a bargain holiday and cheap flights!

So, what was there to do nearby? The beautiful coastal town of Taormina was about an hour away and demanded a visit. Here it is - and it’s even more beautiful in the flesh.

We drove our hire car there and were lucky enough to find a little corner to park in quite near the town centre; there was some benefit to being there in early January after all. The approach to the town is beautiful and the twisty roads weave through steep rocky ravines to which colourful buildings cling in that delightful Mediterranean way.

We strolled along quaint shop-lined streets, passed through chequer board piazzas and crumbly-looking churches. The whole place is utterly charming and highly recommended.

We came to a grinding halt outside the magnetic window of a Pasticceria - (cake shop). The groaning shelves of stunning, colourful cakes was an echo of the town’s own landscape. We both moaned with the anticipation of ecstasy at the sight of a glazed pistacchio cream fondant tart looking thing. One of them even had my name on it.

We sat in the late afternoon sun at a small table outside the pasticceria and began to consume the exquisite cake and sip our coffee. It was perfect. Then… I felt a call of nature, and I went inside to enquire: Dov’e il bagno?

In the little shop, there was space only for a very little bagno, one for both men and women to use. Here, I will make a confession: I am a man that likes to take a sit-down wee, if there is the option. It’s more comfortable and you do not splash piddle everywhere, which is impossible to avoid standing up, especially at urinals.

I sat down and enjoyed the long, luxurious depressurisation of a much needed micturition. It was only when I stood and pulled up my jeans that the horror began…my trousers were soaking wet!

“What the fuck?”

There ensued some frantic scrabbling, dropping of the pants and utter bemusement: I had emptied my bladder right into my own trousers…and had not noticed. But how???!!

I’ll show you how…

I stood in a state of shock while the reality of my situation - amongst other things - sank in. I felt the moisture descend from the arse area of my jeans down my legs. I dropped my pants and sat down again, visualising the stream of my urine jetting out of the front of the toilet bowl - where there should have been an impervious wall of porcelain, like in proper English toilets - straight into my unsuspecting gusset.

I reached for my phone…but then, what could I say to my dad? How could he help?

Gritting my teeth against the–now cold–wetness, I pulled up my jeans, washed my hands (of course) and shuffled from the cubicle. I vainly used my jacket to obscure the wetness of my trousers without appearing deranged and suspicious. Yes, we all hold our jackets behind our back, hanging over our bottom in England. Nothing to see here.

Back at the table, the wrought iron of the seat exacerbated the uncomfortable wetness of my situation. “Dad,” I said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

After the confusion, disbelief and disgust, came the hilarity. But what were we to do? Look for a clothes shop and some public toilets. I tied my jacket around my waist, schoolkid style, and Dad assured me he couldn’t see any wetness. Off we went.

Taormina is a tourist destination; there was nothing remotely like a Marks and Spencer or a JD Sports anywhere to be found. The few clothes shops were designer shops - Prada, Boss, Armani. All the jeans were ludicrously expensive. All the assistants gave me weird looks. After a very unpleasant and increasingly desperate search for an affordable solution, we opted for a beach towel from a tacky souvenit shop to protect the car seat. There were no public toilets to be found and without a change of clothes, what would be the point? We headed back to the car. On the way, we passed a Calvin Klein shop we had not seen before. I went in for one last desperate attempt and hurriedly purchased a single pair of striped boxer trunk things. The assistant suggested that it was a better deal to buy a three pack, but I insisted that I just needed the single pair. Her eyebrows raised ever so slightly.

When we got to the car, I dropped my trousers behind the open passenger door while Dad kept a look out for widows and children. The place was still quite lively, and I couldn’t risk taking off my underpants even in the gathering dusk.

I laid the towel on the passenger seat and got in, shuffling out of my soaked undies. It was at this precise point that two police officers walked past and did a huge double take at me, pants down, nob out, in the front seat. They stopped and stared. More police officers walked past. We had actually parked outside the police station.

They stared. I tried to drag the towel over my crotch, but that involved sort of thrusting up my arse to yank it repeatedly (the towel) whilst waving the new calvin kleins as if that was some sort of explanation. Dad wandered away. His presence would not have helped matters. In my very poor Italian, I tried to explain that there had been an “accidento coi pantalone” and “devo cambiarlo questo.” I pointed at the urine drenched jeans on the pavement.

Eventually I covered my lap enough with the towel and managed to extract my soiled briefs from beneath it and swap them for the new striped CKs. Yes, disgusting and unwashed as I was, but at least the new shreddies were dry. Perhaps I had made myself understood; perhaps they took pity; perhaps it was just time for dinner. Whatever the reason, I escaped arrest.

Even though I had promised to drive back, and Dad’s eyesight is not great driving at night, he valiantly got us back to our freezing digs, accepting my argument that, with everything else that had gone wrong, it would not do for us to get pulled over and me be driving in only my underwear.

Our further adventures in Sicily were much much more refined and involved a lot of food, wine and a volcano. Not all at once.

I still have the CKs, and hold them in some affection. I have stopped saying “Did I ever tell you about that time in Sicily when…” to my wife every time I pull the CKs out of the top drawer.

True to his Nature.

Aki found the cabin, or it found him, told him where it would be; old memories dusted free, crisp like frost-dried linen.

“Cabin should be raised north side of a lake, Son. Facing the water, facing south.”

The quad bike yawled and grumbled, shooting slush and grit behind. The track was losing to winter and frost grew him a beard. Shoulda shaved, but it’s been weeks now. The sting of ice kept him keen. It couldn’t be far.

The guy at the bike rental place had looked at Aki like he’d dragged shit in on his boots.

“You know that guy?”

“…Way back.”

“He’s got a cabin on Lake Melville. Head for Uranium City then cut north. Trail’s signposted. Ten miles, give or take. The eastern trail’s longer, but it’ll get you there. West side? Can’t say there’s much trail at all.”

And there it was, just where it had to be. A window lit up as the night ran in. The last flames of the day licked over the sky and mist sank and blanketed the hills, blunted the teeth of the blackening pines behind it. Whistler ducks thrashed up from the water and scudded the lake shore as the bike closed on the cabin. The door opened to a man’s silhouette.

“Guessed as much,” Aki’s father said.

“Happy Christmas, Pa.”

Their breath mingled on the threshold.

They shared a twelve ounce bottle of rye, swapping fewer than a half dozen words while fifteen years skulked like wolves in the tree line. Logs settled in the fire. Flame-cast shadows danced the walls. The walls of the cabin seemed to close like a trap as Aki thawed, but it was too dark to leave.

“I’m turning in Son.”

Aki nodded.

“‘Bout how long you fixing to stay? Place ain’t built for company.”

“I got my bedroll, Pa. Couch is just fine.”

Aki got up to piss in the night. There was no wind but high clouds sped beneath the moon. It shot the lake through with glittering silver that stilled in the distance. When the john door banged, a wolf cried in the dark; a song of the past, sorrowful as widows.

In the morning, bacon woke him. He poured coffee and found his father outside. Winter sun was low in a turquoise sky, shattering bright on a million snow crystals.

“Wolf wake you last night?”

Aki grunted.

“Today is a good day to hunt, Son.”

Aki studied his father’s braided hair and sipped his brew. “Christmas day, Pa? You ain’t got nothing hung up ready?”

“No. We hunt. Show me how much you forgot.”

Moments passed in silence then Pa surprised him: “Did you leave, Son, or did she?”

He must see it in me. Smell the loss, the spoor of failure. Mary was the one that packed, that made it happen but it was my shit she packed. She knew inside it was me that had to go. She just made it easy. Fifteen years ago, had we left Pa, or had he left us? Had he just made it easy for us?

“Can’t rightly say, Pa.”

“A man should stay with his kin.”

“Like you did?”

“I never left.”

“You killed those miners and they put you away, Pa. That ain’t exactly stayin’.”

“They died—

“—Killed? Died? Same difference, ain’t it?”

“You know what happened.”

“I know we had to leave. Know we was driven out. Know Ma stayed for you. Stayed ‘n’ died.”

“The land cried out. What I did, I did for my family, my people. What does it mean to live, if the land dies?”

Ravens gronked in agreement, high in the pines. Aki looked out over the lake and filled his lungs. Elk brayed from across the water. “The land ain’t dying Pa. Didn’t make no difference to the land, what you done.”

They followed the lake shore north and came to wetlands at the lakehead. Dammed water flowed under patchy ice. Aki took a bead through the reeds at the square head of a beaver ploughing the water, but his father stayed his aim.

“Can’t touch nothin’ from Athabasca waters; lake’s good as dead now. Bad for everything. This lake’s clean though. Beavers coming back. I give ‘em space.”

They set snares for cottontail and hare and Pa took trout from a fish trap in the creek. “Beaver to thank for these,” he said, holding out the glistening gasping fish.

They followed the creek then climbed to a ridge. At the crest they made a fire. An old larch showed scratch marks of a bear that even Aki’s city-blunted eyes couldn’t miss.

“Bear won’t trouble us none,” said Pa, as Aki traced the deep claw marks. “Not up here. He’s got fish to catch, same as us.”

They brewed coffee then cooked the trout on hot stones. Combs of bones sprang clean from the pink flesh with the tip of a bowie knife. It tasted of life, of the earth. They continued up the ridge and hit a game trail winding down. Two eagles circled.

“What’s bringin’ the eagles, Son?”

Aki guessed wrong a half dozen times and scowled. “Thought this was huntin’, not twenty questions.”

“We are hunting, Son. Did you find nothing?”

As they descended and emerged from the tree line to the valley bottom, Pa gestured. “There. That is what brings the eagle.” Aki needed binoculars to see what his father meant: buffalo. A small herd followed the river, their heads swinging heavy, sweeping snow from the grass as they grazed. They marched slowly, steaming like a machine. At the back of the herd, abandoned, motionless in the snow, a dark shape lay. The eagles circled lower then landed.

“Do you see now?” Asked Pa.

They followed the herd with the river between them. Aki dipped his canteen under fast creek water and a smooth green stone caught his eye on the stream bed. He tossed it to his father.

“Jadeite?”

Pa studied it. “You found a totem, Son,” he said, tossing it back. “Turtle spirit. I’ll string it for you. You should wear it.”

“Jade might fetch a dollar,” was what Aki had been thinking. He tossed it up, felt Pa’s eyes on him, thought better of it and caught it.

The snares had taken rabbits and a hare. The rabbits had given up to shock but Pa had to snap the neck of the hare, offering up thanks. Two critters that looked so alike but lived so different. Aki saw the life leave its black eyes as Pa stretched it out from shoulder to wrist. A twist and a click.

Shoulda let him live.

Back at the cabin, Pa bade him follow and led them to a clearing in the trees and the willow dome of a sweat lodge, covered in blankets and canvas.

“We’ll get good and clean, then eat.”

Aki nodded. His bones ached with memories of heat.

In the darkness, hot stones glowed between them. Sage and steam stifled everything but the heat pressing against them that slowed the breath. For a while it was enough. They came out to take water and rub snow on their slick skin. Back in the lodge, Aki spoke first.

“What do you do here Pa? To live, I mean?”

“I got enough. Trap some, fish some. Whittle totems and string stones.”

“Folk here trade with you, after what you done? Folk got long memories, ‘specially them that lose kin.”

“There’s some understand. They don’t cast blame. They know what I was fighting.”

“The mine and the money that’s kept this town alive for seventy years? That it?”

Pa said nothing.

“Why d’ya stay here at all, Pa?”

“There’s things here need to live beside the town. Things a lot older. You laugh, Son, but you know it within you. That’s why you came back. A man must be true to his nature. I see you Son. I see you trying not to see.”

“I see what’s in front of my eyes, Pa, not shaman spirits. All that with the beaver? The buffalo and eagle, earlier? I’m not a kid now Pa.”

“All the Grandfathers blessed us today, Son.”

“It’s the fuckin’ wilderness, Pa. They just live here. You know, Pa, sometimes a dead buffalo is just a dead buffalo and an eagle just gets lucky.”

“And what of the Wolf in the night? The Raven this morning? The Bear on the ridge? The spirit of the Turtle in the water?”

“Jesus Pa. The heat is getting to you.”

“I stay here because Gitchi Manitou is here, Son. I am a guardian. The town is poison. It kills everything. It killed your mother.”

Aki shook his head in the blackness. The heat was freeing.

“Pa. You need to know something. Kendra? She had the doctors take her tits off. She did some test, on account of Ma and the cancer. She got the same thing. It’s genetic. It ain’t the mine. It’s just the roll of the dice. And this turtle stone? It’s just another stone.” He threw it onto the hot rocks and hauled himself outside. Pa followed him, watched him gather his clothes.

“Son. Four times we should make sweat. You know that. Job ain’t done; there’s things still to say.”

“Forget it Pa. I’ve had all the steam I need.”

“I felt you coming, like winter, and I was joyful. But this? Your disrespect? This will not do, not in this place.”

Aki grasped his father by the shoulders; the man seemed smaller than he ever had, like the heat had shrunk him. “Pa. I came back because Mary had enough of my bullshit, It’s Christmas, and you’re the only folk I got anywhere for a thousand miles. Go back in the darkness with your smoke and spirits. I’m going inside. It’s too cold to eat out here.”

In the cabin, he cracked a beer, put his feet up and looked about. “Christmas Spirit. That’s what’s missin’,” he muttered. He went out to the log-pile for the axe, then into the woods. He didn’t plan to go far, but he hit a trail that dragged him along like a secret. He came to another clearing where he found what he was looking for. That and something else. He took out his smokes. “That’s something, old man. That is truly something,” He said, lighting up.

Aki paced around the bare trunk of a lightning-struck cypress. It was tall, twenty feet or so. It was a work of art, carved with Eagle, Wolf, Beaver, Buffalo, Bear, Raven and Turtle. But the tree of seven Grandfathers wasn’t dead; from its spreading root base, a sapling grew. It was the perfect height. Aki finished his cigarette and threw the butt down. He thought about fifteen years and all that had been done and not done; all his father’s work before him. The eyes of the spirits stared, their mouths grinned.

He attacked it. The crack of the axe drowned the crush of silence in the glade as he destroyed the mocking faces of the spirits. But he couldn’t reach them all and his anger was not enough; his raging died in heaving sobs. The spirits stood, wounded and watchful.

“Gitchi Manitou,” he panted up at the tree “I’ll take me a little Christmas Spirit, at least.” He took the sapling down with three clean swings. Might even be some candles for it somewhere; some light in this wilderness.

He reached for it and his mind erupted as he touched the bleeding wood. A groan of a million years of the mountains, shattered earth, peaks screaming into the sky, echoes of thunder and crazing shattering winter ice, thawing and freezing. The song of the leaves of a million trees in the challenge of storms. The roar of water grinding valleys, torrents of bottomless blue, sun-startled shallows and the black-as-oil fingers of volcanic stone clawing, weed-green skirted, smooth like salmon, sharp as knives into the air. The drum beat pulse of a million hooves–horse and buffalo–lightning-lit on plains, mud boiled in rain, dusty in the sun, bellowing under the moon. The cry of eagles, scream of cougars. Forests burning and growing in deafening eternal cycles.

The bark of the sapling exploded in his hands. Wood fibres split and rippled, ruptured his skin, pulsed like liquid through his muscles, meshed with bones. Exquisite pain and understanding. The scent of earth, lightning, pine and blood-iron. Joy, fear and adrenaline as the invading force stopped his heart, burnt his lungs, flowered in his eyes. He screamed in silent ecstatic concert with the orchestra of nature. He knew the Great Spirit.

In the sweat lodge, Pa sang old words into the smoke of sage and sweetgrass. His son was home.

In writing this I have taken pains to understand the mythology of the Cree and other first nation peoples and the history of the town of Uranium City on the shores of Lake Athabasca in Saskatchewan. This is written with nothing but the greatest respectful intentions and in the belief that nothing written is contrary to those ancient animistic traditions. In my imagination, a powerful manifestation of the Manitou within the body and mind of a man unwilling to respect it and accept his heritage could overwhelm a mortal being.

With thanks to for the challenge and for his help to find the story I was trying to tell amongst the mess of words.

“She bled to death right here, right on this very step. Makes you think huh?”

“Does it?” Spiro was unimpressed.

“Can you imagine? The elevator door opens and it’s just, like, your wife’s ripped off leg lying there?”

“Is that what happened?”

Zatek nodded like a lucky cat and the two of them looked down at the step: the first one up to the fourth floor. All the steps of the stairwell were dove grey marble, feathered blue. All except this one.

“It’s her blood, right? Mabel Agnew’s actual blood, soaked into the stone. Still here, one hundred years later. Fucking awesome.”

“I don’t know about that—”

Zatek panned his camera up to Spiro’s face. “You’ve been Super here for how long, Mr Georgiou?”

Spiro batted the camera away, “Do you mind?”

Zatek turned it round and spoke to it.

“Here we are my Ghouls: 301 Cumberland Street, Fort Park Brooklyn New York City. One of the theeee most haunted, mysterious and legendarily evil apartment blocks in the city. AND I JUST MOVED IN! My dream came true: I live in New York…In-a-haunted-house! And I have all of you, my wonderful Ghouls, to thank for that.”

Zatek air kissed to camera.

“Mr Zatek, I got floors to polish.” Spiro made to leave but Zatek grabbed his arm.

“Five seconds to camera, Mr Georgiou, for my show, my Ghouls? You’ve got the best face for a super I ever saw. They’ll love you. I love you.”

“Pfah!” Spiro stumped off, head shaking, hand waving no fucking way back over his shoulder.

Zatek whispered to camera as Spiro disappeared:

“Mr Georgiou? He’s the building Superintendent and let me tell you: he’s the creepiest thing about this place. So far.”

His face zooms in…

“But it’s still light out!”

…and zooms out.

“I’m Chad Zatek, New York City’s premier ghost hunter, the voice of The Neon Grave coming to you straight from my very own haunted house. Remember: We meet…at midnight!”

Mr Georgiou danced the polisher around the foyer. Not a waltz, but he covered the ground with a grace all his own. He always hums some old Greek song his mother loved while the wax goes down and the buffing pad whispers promises of perfection. Sepia streamed through the amber glass panes of the revolving door. A warm gold; gold of past days, better days and better people.

Smells like rain.

As the buffer stopped turning the door spun and a diminutive lady entered, leopard print and Louboutin. It’s like Spiro had to finish the floor before it was fit for her to catwalk. A golden Pomeranian squirmed from her bag to the ground. Lipsha: a spherical haircut with a stylist more expensive than its owner’s. Lipsha is always excited to see Spiro.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Rubenstein. Been to the park? You got lucky –here comes the rain.” Spiro bent to let the golden fluff ball sniff at his hand while it ran figure-eights between his legs then chose one to hump.

“Lipsha! Leave the man alone! Oh, he’s such a one for the boys.” Barb Rubenstein laughed like she never stopped smoking and pulled down her sunglasses just enough for him to see the kohl of her eyes. “Would you be an angel, Spiro, and help a lady up the stairs? That elevator is making me nervous lately.”

After he saw her to her apartment on first, he checked the elevator; the rattles were getting worse. He got out on third and looked at the floor, stroking his chin. “I gotta wax these landings. Always something,” he muttered and headed back down, crossing himself as he caught sight of the red step.

Mr. Georgiou hated change, and Chad Zatek was a chunk of it and not the right kind.

“Vlogger?” The kid needs a real job. None of them do a hard yard these days. Malakas.

It boiled Spiro’s piss that making dumb videos paid enough to buy the penthouse.

Not just rent it– buy the whole thing. Two million dollars? No wonder he’s always so cheerful. Fucking ghosthunter.

He managed to avoid Chad for most of the week, but when gadgets appeared in the hallways? And that dog? That huge bong-eyed dog? What did he call it, a “malla-noise” or something?

One dog was more than enough in this place; he was going to have to lay out some rules about that wild-eyed wolf. Which meant a hike to the fifth—the elevator was out of service, waiting on parts and who knew how long the fuck that would take?

Chad let the Super in with a smile.

“Mr Georgiou! Great to see you. Come in, come in. I’ve been wanting to catch you all week.”

“I won’t stay long. Just a few house rules.” He walked through, nodding as he took in the remodelling, making some consciously biased assumptions.

“Building Regulations.” Spiro slapped paperwork on the kitchen counter. “In particular you need to note the parts on hazards and pets. Seeing as I’m here, I’ll tell you myself. For one: no obstructions, equipment, whatever it is, in the hallways. It’s a hazard. For two: dogs. Dogs do not ride in the elevator. Walk your dog regular; there’s three parks nearby. If they shit–excuse me–poop inside, you gotta take care of business. There’s a receptacle in the basement for this, next to the dumpster. On no account does the poop–” he pointed at the waste chute hatch “–go down the chute. We had problems with that in the past, and I will know it’s your dog.”

“Egon never craps inside. You have my word.” The dog tick-tacked into the kitchen on hearing his name.

Spiro tipped his head to one side. “Is there something up with the dog’s eyes?”

“He’s blind in one eye. Makes him clumsy, but his others senses are heightened. He’s sensitive to… the other side. Goes with me everywhere, don’t you, my handsome boy,” Zatek roughed up the fur between Egon’s ears. “And the followers love him.”

“Followers?”

“My YouTube channel: The Neon Grave?” Zatek put on his intro voice, ‘Chad Zatek, bringing you the strangeness…as it happens?’ That’s me.”

“Like a Joe Rogan thing?”

“Without the politics. Ghosts, horror, axe murders. All the juicy stuff.”

“And people like that?”

“Are you kidding? It’s why I bought this place. This building has history! A year’s content easy, literally on my doorstep. Radio, TV, merchandising. Probably a book.”

Spiro was blank faced. He was thinking about the disruption this idiot was going to bring, but Zatek misunderstood.

“You know…the ghost of Mabel Agnew? All the children that vanished? The Beast Sightings in ‘53?; the bodies in the furnace and that guy, what was his name?”

Uncle Theo…

Spiro held up his hands. “A lotta stories, but not much truth, Mr. Zatek. I been here a long time—”

“—So, you must have seen things, right? Sinister goings on? Strange noises? Anything like that you can tell me?”

Spiro shook his head. The last guy had this place was a dick for sure, but this Zatek… “If you came here looking for ghosts, Mr. Zatek, you’re gonna be disappointed. But do what you have to do. Only, don’t bother your neighbours.”

He got to the door and turned back “You know, there was never any bodies found in the furnace. They got that wrong for a start.”

Zatek was disappointed by Spiro’s brush off, but he was sure he could wring the truth out of him with flattery and patience. It was all about finding the right buttons. In the meantime, there was the fabulous Mrs. Rubenstein. “You must visit me. Come for coffee. Your work sounds fascinating!” She’d said when their paths had crossed in the foyer. Dogs are always a good icebreaker. She would have the goods, Zatek could tell she was a talker. He bought flowers.

On his way down, on third floor, there was that smell again: old churches. “We’ve been in a few of those, haven’t we boy?” Egon sniffed at the apartment door. Zatek took photos of the red step, stroking its cold smoothness. The way the deep colour faded towards the edges thrilled him. How long did it take her die? Did she have to watch her own blood soak into the step, her cries for help fading? Would she have heard her husband scream as the elevator door opened? That’s good. He said it again, recorded it.

Mrs Rubenstein didn’t disappoint. She’d known one of the vanished children, Judith, and “Had her suspicions.” She even recalled the aftermath of the Beast Sightings.

“If you don’t mind me saying, Mrs. Rubenstein, you don’t look nearly old enough to remember back that far. You look incredible. What’s the secret?”

“Clean living, dear boy.” She cackled, pressed an innocent palm to her chest, fingers thick with rings. “No, seriously, I spend a fortune—my late husband’s in fact—on treatments; ointments, creams.”

“Well, that ointment is working, what’s in it?”

“Oh, you know, the usual: blood of virgins, angel’s tears.”

The next day it was raining and Zatek exercised Egon in the apartment. He opened all the connecting doors and got out the A.I. controlled drone car. It had a toy rabbit taped to the top which there was no real need for. Egon’s good eye bulged and his tail helicoptered when he heard the squeak of wheels. He skittered round and round on the polished oak in ecstasy, his tongue whiplashing on the bends. Zatek could watch this forever but the doorbell chimed. He checked the ring camera and saw an unfamiliar face.

“Mr Zatek? Chad? I’m Ellephick, your neighbour from downstairs. I heard you were home and wanted to bring you a housewarming gift. I’m such a fan of The Neon Grave. The biggest!” They held out a potted plant.

“Oh my god! Could you hear my dog? I’m so sorry. It’s these wooden floors. Is he really loud?”

“Not overly, but no matter. This is vanda falcata. She’s a night orchid. I cultivate them myself.” They thrust the pot forward again. “Would you sign my T?”

Chad was about to take the plant when the toy car interrupted the moment, careening into the entrance hall. It passed between Chad’s legs and ricocheted off Ellephick’s boots, closely followed by Egon, a dog born to chase. Chad tried, but failed, to grab the collar. Egon and the car disappear down the stairs. Below, Mrs Rubenstein had just returned from a walk and was unfastening Lipsha’s damp designer rainwear at her door. He was freed of his diamante collar for just a moment when his ears pricked up at the sound of another dog. Lipsha is a small dog, full of small dog bravado; nothing could stop him.

The swelling sound of an orchestra would have perfectly accompanied the scene that unfolded. One dog ascending, the other descending; the thrumming cello of a shark attack; the staccato stab of a psycho shower violin. Both dogs rounded their final corners, time slowed, the string sections silenced, one dog leapt, the other stumbled and as they collided above the red step, the manga shwiiiingg of crossing swords.

There was blood, but just a little.

Lipsha was dazed and panting on the step. By far the smaller of the two dogs, he’d come off much worse than Egon who just looked confused. Chad had shouted, broken the two dogs apart and tried to tend to Lipsha but got a sharp bite for his trouble. Mrs. Rubenstein arrived and swept Lipsha to her bosom. Chad got a black look, but she was gracious, pulling tissues and a small pot of tincture from her bag to dab at Chad’s dripping hand and clean the bite.

In the commotion, the door to number 3 cracked open and the pallid sliver of a face appeared: Mr Ridley. He observed, unseen until both owners and dogs had gone then slipped onto the landing and across to the red step. He’d seen something.

Ah yes. Yes indeed.

Mr. Ridley is slim and limber with a face that defies accurate aging. Only, he would never be described as young. His attire never varies: charcoal suit trousers, waistcoat and emerald green cravat. The sleeves of his once-white shirt are stained with ink at the elbows. He carries about him a foetid air; a smell of underground places and mouldering books.

He bent at the waist and drew a finger through the droplets of blood. Just a smidgen. Just enough.

Back in his den he paced with purpose through the hoarder’s labyrinth that was his home. There was space enough to cook, to sleep, even sometimes to wash, but every other cranny was for his Archive. It filled his apartment and beyond, in hollows within walls and narrow gaps between floors where a slender man can creep. Carefully, with his fingertip wet with blood, he climbed an iron ladder within the service duct, up into the roof space of the building where his dark secret resided. It is a husk, a papery fragile thing. It hangs, desiccated, webbed and dusty; wrinkled and blind. Ridley reddened his lips with the fingertip of blood and pressed them together, then sucked the finger clean. He kissed the thing, pressing his lips against leathery shreds. He pushed his tongue into the mouth, seeking a needle-sharp tooth, cold and hard as frosted steel.

In Ridley’s mind its voice was like wind-blown sand, yearning, questioning. He answered it. “It’s safest this way, my love. Just a smidgen. Just enough.”

On the third floor landing that night, the remaining traces of blood had soaked into the marble. The light in a wall sconce flickered and dimmed briefly. The blood-red step began to fade, as if the stone was sucking the colour into deeper depths until only one spot lingered and then was gone. On the step above, a sudden bloom of colour burst, spread and darkened until the whole tread was a deep, deep red.

The next day, Chad called on Mrs Rubenstein bringing dog chews as a peace offering.

“That’s very sweet of you, Chad, but Lipsha isn’t accepting visitors today. I took him to the veterinarian. He needs rest. I hope you understand.”

On the way back to his apartment, the smell on the third-floor landing wrinkled his nose. Then he saw the red step and forgot all about the stench.

No. Fucking. Way!

He raced to fetch his video camera, scripting a voice over in his head as he went. He called the whole crew on zoom: Murphy, Shane and Curtis. He needed them all for this. They were sceptical until he sent them the before and after shots of the step, jabbering as he recounted what happened with the dogs. “I’m telling you guys, yesterday, that step got blood on it. Today, it’s fucking moved. This is huge! How soon can you all get here?” They were busy, it would take a few days, but they were pumped.

Later, when his excitement had calmed, a thought occurred to Chad; he went to find Mr. Georgiou. “I know you’re sceptical of my work, but I need to ask…did you move the red step last night, as some kind of prank?”

Georgiou was not amused, but he followed Chad up the stairs, cursing for his wasted time. Chad was a live wire. “When I moved in here, it was the first step, right. Now it’s the second. Look. Look at it!”

Spiro stared at Chad, then looked at the floor, then back up to Chad. He stroked his chin. “Are you feeling ok, Mr. Zatek? The red step ain’t moved. It’s right where it always was. Stop with the bullshit and get that camera out of my face.”

The next day, the step had moved again. He went to Georgiou, showed him a photo, but things grew tense. “If you think you’re getting me up those stairs again with your moving step bullshit?Malakas!” He slammed the door in Chad’s face.

Zatek set up an infra-red camera with a Wi-Fi connection and attached it high up on the wall on fourth, looking down the stairs. If it was Georgiou fucking about, he would find out. But if it wasn’t? The footage would be gold. He wished the crew was already there with all the electronics, but he’d have to wait a couple more days. In the meantime, melatonin and red bull, he was staying up all night for this.

Chad sat with Egon on the giant L-shaped sofa. The TV was on for background noise. He wasn’t watching, he was tapping away on a laptop, copy for the piece he was planning on the red step. Egon’s ears pricked up. Then he lifted his head from Chad’s lap, growled and padded towards the hallway. He sat, hackles up, staring up the dark corridor.

“What is it boy?”

The alarm sounded on the camera feed. Chad opened the viewer on his laptop then cast it to the flatscreen TV. The image was grainy but clear enough, even in the dim lights of the stairwell. Nothing moved but then…what? The wall light flickered, and static lines cut the screen.

There’s nothing there.

The wall-light dimmed and then…and then? A freezing claw raked down his spine: the red step began to fade. He blinked as tears started in his eyes, but it wasn’t imagination. The colour drained from the step and then, on the next step up, dark red blossomed. Colour swelled and spread, covering the step, then shrank away, disappeared only to burst out again on the step above.

It’s got to be trick!

He lurched out of his door and down to the fourth-floor landing. It wasn’t a trick; the red step was halfway up. Before his eyes, inexorably, silently, it climbed towards him. Six steps away…five steps. It was coming, getting faster. Zatek edged back from the top of the stairs, he called for Egon but the dog only whimpered. Four steps…three steps… His nerve broke. He fled to his apartment, bolting the door, but he cannot escape the horror: on the TV he saw it seeping into the marble of the landing. He held his breath; still it didn’t stop. The tiles of the landing blossomed and faded, bloody footsteps crossing to the bottom of his stairs where the wide angle of the camera catches the first step turning red. Fear clawed at his throat. He ran to the door threw the security chain and leant his back against it, pressing with all his strength, feeling the peephole stab his back.

On the TV, the red step climbed. Chad fumbled for his phone and calls Murphy. It rings and rings. Come on! A low, animal groan escaped through gritted teeth, the cords of his neck strained as he saw the redness of the top step fade. It’s on the landing!

Murphy answersed “What the fuck, Chad, what time d’ya—”

“—It’s coming! It’s coming, Murph.” He hissed through thick spittle, tasting metal.

“What?!”

“The red step, Murph! It’s…”

He didn’t see it seep beneath the door until the chill of it around his feet, rising up his legs, drew his eyes downward…

“Chad? Chad? CHAD!?” Murphy shouted into silence.

Mr Georgiou was annoyed. First, it was Zatek’s friends. Insistent bastards, they’re never getting in here. Then it was the media and clips of him giving paparazzi the finger, scuttling hunch-backed into the building. Then it was Zatek’s “followers”, flooding the internet with wild stories and that last phone call. The dog. The guy’s parents flying in. It was too much. The cops are coming, sure as day.

He was in Mrs Rubenstein’s apartment, and he was pissed off. He’d dragged Ridley out of his stinking nest and the pair of them sat before him, impassive. Ridley in his mouldy suit, Barb all in black. Lipsha had died, she told him, but maybe there was a dash of guilt in all that black. Her sunglasses hid everything.

“Missing persons don’t make the news like they used to, as we well know.” Spiro said, with a heavy nodding head. “But it’s a different story when it’s a ghosthunter with a zillion followers gets it on our doorstep. Do you know what I’m having to deal with right now?”

Nobody spoke.

“Well?”

Nobody spoke.

“You’re really disappointing me, both of you. You know that?

Barb and Ridley exchanged slight glances.

“One of you knows something and I don’t have all day.”

Ridley cleared his throat. “He, ah…he summoned the Step. I’m afraid.”

“My Lipsha bit him. It was only a nip but-

Mr. Georgiou looked incredulous. “FUUUuuCK!” He rasied his hands to the sky. “Not this shit all over again. Jesus Christ.”

“And it’s worse, Spiro.” said Barb, dipping her sunglasses a fraction.

“WORSE? How can it be WORSE?”

“Lipsha’s blood got on there too.”

With huge thanks to everyone involved in bringing the Midnight Vault II to us all:

, (incredible work with the graphics!!) The aritistic directors.

The editors , &

Everyone else that helped me in particular Emil for making me try harder and cut 2000 words (I did try harder, honest)

and @brennen C. for reading the beta and encouraging me not to quit but to save the good bits. And of course, the innimitable and + many others for their banter along the way.

You are all incredible and I cannot wait to read the what I am sure will be a legendary trove of the bizarre and incredible.

The Midnight Vault

The Midnight Vault II

Born from a shared respect for a legendary series…

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6 months ago · 106 likes · 22 comments · Shane Bzdok and J. Curtis

Along a green lane, hung over with hazel and yew at last you will come to the place the Town has long known as Hollow Meadow.

No building has graced it, no chapel has risen near it. No beasts are wont to graze it; no farmer seeks to till the soil.

Sunshine struggles to warm it; mist seems keen to cloak it. No deeds are found that tell who owns it and none seek to claim it.

Why could this be, such a seemingly green and pleasant place? As with many unanswered questions, the hand of the Gheeldyn rests upon it…

From the ground stands a warped rod of iron which rust never takes hold upon. Some say the place from which it grows moves with the seasons. Some say they can never find it, no matter how hard they search. All agree it is never wise to lay a hand upon it; the Devil Iron.

There is a song that fiddlers know the tune of and children know the words to… yet none can say who taught them. Who knows if there be anything but a grain of truth within the myths…who knows what lies beneath the earth of Hollow Meadow?

“Hollow Meadow” - Composer: Trad. Author: unknown. For fiddle tambour and flute.

Each verse to be danced, in couples. Partners to swap in a similar fashion to Strip the Willow.

Grandma didn’t live with Grandad. She wouldn’t share a house with him, wouldn’t have him in the house, but she wouldn’t divorce him; Catholic. She wouldn’t do it; against her principles.

“I won’t live in that huge, hideous house with that man,” she’d say. “That man, and that house full of those…things. I’ve got principles.”

Growing up, I was only aware of Grandad in the abstract: the shadow he cast on the family, creasing Grandma’s brow, darkening my mother’s face whenever I asked about him. I’m sure I saw him once or twice, around Christmas time, when I was a kid; a dark shape at the door glimpsed as dad ran me upstairs to bed, my sister over his shoulder. Christmas gifts from Grandad that mum would unwrap before she gave them to us.

“This is from Grandad. If there’s anything you don’t like about it, tell mummy, ok?” She’d say. I always thought that was an odd thing to say. I still have the last present he gave me somewhere: an ocarina. I never got the hang of it, I’m not musical. My sister is, but she didn’t want it, said she didn’t like the sound that came out of it. The Christmas after that one was the strange one; the one where mother cried for hours and dad went out almost the whole day and dinner was cold. We didn’t get gifts from Grandad that year or ever again.

“Curiosity killed the cat.” That was one of Grandma’s favourites. She had a lot of those. “The wind will change and you’ll be stuck like that,” or “If you eat too much sugar, you’ll get worms!” I can’t shake the feeling there could just be some truth in that. Anyway, she never would say anything about him except not to ask. The only time anyone ever let anything slip was at Grandma’s 60th. Uncle Keith was there. I was thirteen and Uncle Keith slipped me a glass of port because I was a teenager now and “grown up enough for a sip of booze.” Mum got mad and dad shook his head with a wry smile and Uncle Keith held up his hands.

Later that evening when I came down in my Winnie the Pooh dressing gown to say good night, Uncle Keith said “Aren’t you a bit old now for Winnie the Pooh?” and “Would the young man like a scary story from his uncle Keith?”

The young man absolutely did want a scary story from his uncle Keith and that was when something slipped out. Mum said “Nothing too scary.” and uncle Keith said “I could tell him about the leg?” There was a count of three and Mum collapsed like a rag doll. Dad was stunned, frozen. He had no idea, same as me. And Grandma? I never saw Grandma move so fast! She was up and out of her chair and beating Uncle Keith around the head, cursing at him “HOW DARE YOU!”, face screwed up in blue murder. Mum sagging to the floor, on her knees sobbing, rocking and Uncle Keith curled up under his mother’s rage.

Dad said “Go to your room son.” Mum crawled and stumbled out. I heard her retching in the downstairs toilet as I ran up the stairs. I listened at my door, heard Keith apologising, “It was a long time ago.” Grandma telling him to “Get out!” and “You are a living disgrace of a man!” slow and cold, each word a slap. Dad drove Keith home; he’d had most of a bottle of port. He was a drinker, Uncle Keith.

I asked Dad about it because I was too scared to ask Mum. He said something happened a long time ago when Mum was young. After that, Grandma left Grandad and took Mum and Keith with her. It was something Mum wouldn’t talk about–didn’t even want to think about–and Uncle Keith had brought it all back up.

“What did Uncle Keith mean about the leg?” I asked. Dad said he didn’t know, but his eyes said something different. “Was it something Grandad did?” Dad wouldn’t say yes or no, he just shook his head and told me to leave it.

But how can you leave something like that when you’re young? I mean, how could I?

“Maybe your Grandad chopped off her leg? Maybe he ate it! Is her leg false, did you see it, like really see it? It could be like a terminator leg, like an android. Or maybe there was like some psycho-killer with one leg chased your mum. On Halloween?” Tommy Chinchen –my best friend then–had a lot of ideas; mostly crazy ones. Aliens and psycho-killers featured.

Crazy as his ideas were, Tommy got me thinking about Mum’s leg. I remember making up some stupid thing about hurting my knee and it feeling funny. I asked if I could feel hers; see if they felt the same. She knew I was up to something –mothers always do– but she didn’t know I was checking her out with a magnet.

“No, mate, they’re made of titanium and stuff, they’re not magnetic,” Tommy said. “You need to get up close and check the joints. Look for a socket or something.”

I got my chance that summer, on the beach when she was sunbathing and I was digging a moat all round her in the sand, waiting for the tide. There was something strange; circular scars, about the size of a penny, all in a line down the outside of her leg; three above the knee and three below it. I couldn’t check on the inside–no way– but when I told Tommy, he was convinced. “See? Your mum is a cyborg! Nailed on. I bet she plugs it in at night!”

I was coming up twenty when Grandma died. Cancer. She took it a lot better than Mum; she was a stoic woman. Got us all in to see her at the hospice, one by one, me and my sister too, to say her goodbyes, say her piece.

“James,” she said, “James, when I am gone that man may try to contact you. I have spent most of my life making sure that man did not come near my children, my family.”

My eyes were asking her why, not showing the promise she was going to ask me to make. She didn’t like that at all.

“That man…” her voice caught and her eyes brightened with tears. “You do not understand the capacity of that man for harm! Willfully courting evil in our home… JAMES! Are you listening to me?!” Her bony hand gripped mine with surprising urgency.

“Yes Grandma, of course I am.”

“You mustn’t see him, James. You mustn’t. When I’m gone, he’ll try, he will, but you mustn’t.”

But I did see him; at least, I’m sure it was him. Who else would it have been, all in black, holding a hat to his chest, standing amongst the shadows of the wellingtonias when Grandma was lowered into the ground. He was a good way off; far enough not to be noticed but close enough to watch. When I saw him, I almost tapped on Dad’s shoulder, but thought better of it. If nobody saw him but me, that would be best.

As we were shaking hands with the guests outside the church hall I thought I caught a glimpse of him again. A dark figure, with the hat on now, close to the grave. It was too much; I had to see if it was him, but by the time I got a chance to slip away, he was gone. I looked down at Grandma’s casket; something struck me: the handfulls of soil we had cast down upon the coffin lid were gone!

I got over my jitters and eased myself over the side, smearing my backside with dirt. Graves are deep when you get in them. There were muddy streaks on the lid, like someone had swept the dirt off with their hands. Then I saw the brass bolts were loose, high on their threads…had he opened the coffin? He had. The lid lifted easily, just an inch, and I paused. We had all paid our respects in the chapel not more than two hours before. The undertakers had made her look serene, and yet…now she had been lowered into the ground? I hesitated, fearing some ghoulish transformation, but I had to know what he had done.

I lifted the lid. I don’t know what I was expecting; perhaps a flower, a letter, a ring on a chain…but no. It was a glass ball, resting on one of her eyes. I picked it up from the socket It was a marble. A large one, what we called a “kingy” at school. It was a beauty. I held it up, turning it in my fingers to catch the light. The glass was opaque, milky. The swirls within it, from a certain angle, made it look like an eye; an eye with an impenetrable darkness at the centre.

Mum gave me hell about the state of my suit when I got back to the wake. I felt the weight of the marble in my jacket pocket, but didn’t say anything. Uncle Keith got wasted.

A few weeks after the funeral, I got a letter. It was from Grandad. I recognised his scratchy, cursive.

My Dear Grandson James.

I trust you are well. How you have grown!

I kept my promise to your Grandmother during her life and will continue to do so until such time as you should express any desire to see me. If you have not promised otherwise to your Grandmother, then it is my profound wish that we should meet. There are things I would have you know.

Your loving Grandfather.

Olivier Van Gekkehuis

Van Gekkehuis? Was he Dutch? I had no idea! I had never once thought about it –he’d always just been ‘Grandad’. Uncle Keith was an Armstrong, like Grandma, and mum and dad were Mr & Mrs Worth. At the top of the thick notepaper in embossed gothic script it read:

The Residence of Dr. OLIVIER VAN GEKKEHUIS. DPsych, CPsychol.

“HEIMDALLR”, Chaplain’s Hill, Crowthorne, Berkshire. Tel: 020 7937 8984

What else was there to discover? The internet provided some answers, but not to the questions that mattered most. Grandad was obviously a shrink, and it took no time to learn he was a very well published one: “Evil: A Qualitative Comparison with Wrong Doing”; “The Psychology of Forgiveness and Punishment.”; “ A Re-examination of Xunzi’s Arguments on the morality of Evil.”; “Electroencephalographic Manifestation of Ideation in the Psychopathic and Schizoid Brain.”

The list went on, and with a common theme to his expertise: the minds of evil men. Then I discovered where the ‘huge hideous house” was: uncomfortably close to Broadmoor, that infamous prison for the criminally insane.

He must have worked there!

I wondered if he had treated the Yorkshire Ripper or Ronnie Kray. I began to understand Grandma’s fears better; thoughts of phoning Grandad made me uneasy.

A few months later, we were at Grandma’s house. A buyer had been found and Mum wanted us to choose a memento, something special. I went to Grandma’s bedroom looking for something more personal than her awful dark furniture and china dogs. She had an antique bureau with secret compartments that Sis and I used to love trying to find when we were kids. I rattled through the drawers. The very hardest compartment to open was a cupboard behind a false panel inlaid with mother of pearl roses. There was a satisfying click when one particular petal was pressed. Inside was a faded letter. I recognised Grandad’s writing immediately.

My Darling Mary

That you cannot find it in yourself to forgive me or understand is my deepest sadness. A loss for all of us.

If we shall never see eye to eye and if it is your sincere intention never to return then I ask that you accept this talisman into your safe keeping. It is a precious thing. Keep it close, place it where the sunlight may shine upon it and where you may see the beauty within it. It is one of a pair, and specially made. I hold the other and, by this, know that I shall be bound always to you and remain true to my vow always to love you, forsaking all others for as long as we both shall live.

Always with you in spirit

Olivier.

What talisman? Except for the letter, the envelope was empty. I fumbled about in the alcove; there was nothing, but the back panel sounded hollow; was there another secret place behind? A narrow strip of wood in the bottom of the alcove yielded to my exploring fingers and slid out. With a click, the rear of the alcove popped open. Behind was a small space, and in that was a black velvet bag. I knew what was in it the moment I felt the weight of it.

I held up the marble to the window to examine it in the light. It was just like the one I had retrieved from Grandma’s coffin; only, when I looked into it, rather than an impenetrable black centre, there was something else. I held it closer and closer to my eye, the detail of what was within becoming clearer and clearer until the sphere was practically touching my own eyeball.

Wait a minute…no! It couldn’t be!

That evening, I hunted for the letter from Grandad and rang him.

“James…is that you my boy?” His voice held a hint of Dutch. It was soft; not a whisper but not much more than that. It was an old voice. Within it, there was a burr, a smoker’s growl. I imagined him with a pipe.

“Ah! I am so glad, so happy that you have called me James. Somehow I knew that you would. How are you, dear boy.”

“I saw you at Grandma’s funeral.”

“I would have loved to pay my respects properly but you are aware of–”

“I found what you put in her coffin.” I interrupted him; I couldn’t keep it in any longer. There was a long silence.

“Did you take it? Do you have it?”

“I have both of them.” There was another long silence.

“That is…unfortunate.”

“For who?” I heard him mumbling something indistinct. “Why unfortunate?” I insisted.

“We must speak of certain things sooner than I had hoped. That is all.”

“You need to explain yourself better than that Grandfa–”

“No. Not on the telephone.” There was another long pause and then he went on. “James…will you do something for me? Something important?”

“What?”

“Ask your mother to look in on her brother. He is a weak man. He needs her now. I have tried to help him, from afar, but he will not come, he will not speak to me. He is bound by his foolish–his promises–to his mother’s memory. Will you do this?”

I felt I had no choice.

“Very good. Do this first, then we shall speak again. And James, keep the orbs apart.”

I didn’t know how to broach this with mum, or dad for that matter. The glassy orbs weighed heavier in my hand, as if the truth of them had manifested as greater mass. I struggled to believe what I’d seen when I’d stared into the one in Grandma’s cabinet…my own room! That was where I’d put the other one, on my windowsill. How could it be possible? It made me nauseus to think how he had defiled Grandma with it. I didn’t want to hold them, but I struggled to put them down. What had he meant, keep them apart? I put one in each pocket. ‘Orbs’ I said to myself; ‘marbles’ was no longer the right word for them.

I agonised over what to say to Mum. I couldn’t think of a way to get her to speak to Uncle Keith without her asking questions. I was a terrible liar. I couldn’t risk her knowing I’d spoken to Grandad, so I went by myself; borrowed dad’s car. I suppose it was probably better that it was me that found him, swinging gently from electrical cable as if he had kicked the stool away only minutes earlier. Only two days after Grandad had said someone should go. I couldn’t see his face clearly from the doorway where I had frozen, but from the colour of his skin, the crooked lolling of his head, there was no question he was dead.

I had never seen anyone dead before and I didn’t know what to do. There was something unreal about the scene; it seemed staged. On the floor in front of him was a small mirror in an ornate frame, the glass cracked and crazed. On the worn arm of his tatty armchair, there was a letter, and propped against the side, a slim cardboard box. On a side table next to the chair, a bottle of red wine, a glass with an inch of wine in it and the telephone. The mouthpiece hung by its cable, spinning very very slowly as Keith’s legs swayed.

I haven’t seen one of those phones in years.

That was all I could think; some kind of self defence from the reality, from the feeling that I should do something, but not knowing what.

I crossed to the chair and with one finger, rotated the letter to read it. Of course, it was from Grandfather.

My Dear Son

The trouble in your voice worries me, as it would any father. With your dear mother gone, will you still not see me, even now? There is much more I can do if you will but see me. You know the nature of my work. But, if you will not see me, then let me help in another way. With this letter I have sent a distorting mirror. It is used for therapeutic practice and has proven effective.

Sit comfortably and look into the mirror. Reflect upon the man you see, his troubles, his fears, his desires. The mirror will alter your reflected appearance and assist with dissociation from your real self and visualisation of an “other self”. Call me upon the telephone and I will work with you through an exercise of affirmations. It will help you move forward.

Call me at any time, but evenings are better. I rise later and later these days.

Your loving father.

The letter described perfectly the scene before me; Keith had followed every instruction. And then…

I called Dad and I told him what I’d found. My voice sounded like someone else’s.

“Call the police. Don’t touch a thing.” Dad’s voice jogged me out of my spiralling thoughts. I pulled back my finger from the letter.

“Shouldn’t I, you know, try and cut him down?”

“Christ no, Son! Go sit in the kitchen, make yourself a cuppa. Don’t touch him, don’t touch a bloody thing anywhere near him. The police will be all over it and you don’t want to be tampering with anything, incriminating yourself. God…how am I going to tell you mother.”

“Righto Dad.”

“Oh, James. Is there a note? It’ll be good if he left a note–”

“--I don’t know. I can only see the letter. From Grandad.”

“Shit. Fill the kettle, Son. See you in an hour or so.”

I told him I’d taken his car. He wasn’t happy.

I couldn’t bring myself to hide in the kitchen. I wanted to rest a hand on him, to comfort him somehow, my poor uncle Keith. At the same time, I didn’t want to see his face, to see what he had faced in his last moment. I walked close enough to touch his hand, brushing it with the back of mine. Not warm, but not cold either. I could hear the soft beep…beep…beep from the phone. I saw his greasy finger prints on the half full glass of wine.

He loved a drink.

The scene unfolded in my mind: He gets the parcel and opens it. He reads the letter; he fetches wine; he settles in his favourite chair; he looks in the mirror and picks up the phone. And then…and then he…

I pulled my jumper down over my hand and picked up the phone. It was the sort where the key pad and an LCD screen were in the middle of the handset. I pressed redial. The phone rang and I thought, they’ll check the phone records, but fuck it. It rang and rang and then it was answered. There was silence for a few seconds and then…

“Keith? Is that you?”

It was him. The surprise in his voice was clear. I hung up and then I dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance. That’s what I should have done the second I’d found him. But why hadn’t I? As I spoke to the operator, I caught my reflection in the shattered glass of the mirror. My face was distorted, fractured, each shard holding a different slice of me. I knew it must be the light, must be me swaying, must be the way the glass was broken, must be a trick my mind was playing, must be the shock…must be something. Each image of me looked like a different me.

I didn’t wait for mum and dad’s taxi. I didn’t wait for the ambulance. I scooped up the broken mirror and slid it into the cardboard box and drove to Grandad’s house. When I arrived it was beginning to get dark. I could see it was a large house, a detached Victorian villa with a sweeping drive. I didn’t stop to take in anything but its brooding presence. I needed to see him, confront him.

I pounded on the door until he opened it. We stared at each other.

“Grandfather.”

“James.”

His face was like an egg, the dome of his bald head pointed. He looked old, very old, yet at the same time the skin had the tightness of youth. With only dim light from within, the hollows of his eyes were dark sockets within the pale translucence of his skin.

“You have caught me unprepared James.” He pulled from the pocket of his burgundy smoking jacket a meerschaum pipe which he lit with long and deliberate draws, the heavy blue smoke clouding my view of him. “But do come in.” He stood to the side and I strode past him, into a large square entrance hall.

“I’ve just come from Keith’s house. I found him dead. I found him with this.” I thrust the box at him, and he took it from me. “And I found your letter. He did what you told him to do and then, he hanged himself.”

Grandad nodded very slowly, pursing his lips, but said nothing.

“Why do you think he would do that, Dr. Gekkehuis?”

“You didn’t speak to your mother, James, like I asked? Didn’t tell her to go and see her brother?”

“You killed him, you made him do it! He did everything you said, he called you and then–”

“--My son was a troubled man, James. I told you. He had suicidal thoughts. He told me–”

“No! He didn’t finish his wine! A man that was planning to take his life would not open a bottle of wine and not even finish a glass.”

He absorbed the logic of this in silence, puffing at the pipe.

“It’s got something to do with that fucked up mirror, hasnt it. ‘Dissociated from your real self’ that’s what you said. I’ve looked into it, and I’ve seen what it does! And what about these fucking things?” I pulled out the orbs, one in each hand. “Why would you do that?”

He bridled, eyes flicking from one orb to the other. He knew what I meant. For a second, I saw fear, then something else and then…calmness. He relaxed.

“James. James. There is much you do not understand and much I will try to explain. Come, let us be calm. Come to my study where we can sit in comfort. You’ve had a terrible shock.” He motioned me to follow him across the hall and into a corridor, where, at the far end, a glow of light showed through a slightly open door.

The corridor was lined with cabinets and every space on the wall held framed photographs. Everything was labelled and dated, all the curious and everyday items in the cabinets: combs, paperweights, cutlery, jewellery, bones, skulls, clothing, spectacles. It was a menagerie. The portraits were of tortured faces, restrained with straps; mad, twisted or dead-eyed but also, in some cases, beautiful or handsome. Some smartly dressed, others in medical gowns or prison garb.

“What are all these things? Who are these people?”

“Patients, subjects. Some mine, some not. Some infamous, some harmless; some not. People with particular minds that warranted study. And the objects? These are things that belonged to them. Gifts, tokens, talismans. Threats. Things they kept on their person; that they cherished. Some given to me willingly, and some taken from them.”

We entered the study and he motioned me to a leather arm chair. “Let us have a drink, to settle ourselves, and then let us talk.” He walked over to a cabinet and I heard the chink of glasses. He returned with whiskies. “By the way, does your mother know you have come to see me?” he asked.

I shook my head and took the drink from him, drained it then slammed the glass down, followed by the orbs. They rolled around on the table top. He tensed.

“You…are going to explain these impossible fucking things to me.”

“Impossible? But yet…they do work. Don’t they?”

“And how did you make Keith kill himself? You can deny it all you like, but I know. I KNOW it. I saw it, clear as I see you now. He called you and then he dropped everything and hanged himself. What did you say to him!?”

He sipped his whisky. “Have you heard of the concept of manifestation of will?” He said, at last.

I hadn’t.

“Let us say that certain people can cause their thoughts—their will— to manifest in the real world. Either as a happening, or by imbuing an object, perhaps, with the power of their will.”

“Telekinesis? Are you serious?”

He chuckled wryly “I’m deadly serious. And the people with this power? They are the sort of people that must never be released from medical supervision. For the good of everyone.”

I stared at him.

“They’re not all as bad–or as mad–as people think, you know. The people who have been under my care. Not all of them.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

He stood up sharply and paced the room, fetched the whisky and filled our glasses again.

“The mirror that I sent to your uncle was once owned by a man in the care of my hospital.” He said, his words coming clipped and fast. “The man was a dangerous man; a very dangerous man. He was driven by violent compulsions to kill strangers whom he believed were looking at him, judging him, seeing into him, seeing the truth of him that he could not see. And so he would kill them. He would take out their eyes and consume their brains, one spoonful at a time whilst they still lived, to take their knowledge of him inside himself. He believed so firmly in this that he spent hours, days–weeks– manifesting his will to know what was truly inside himself within a mirror. A mirror that it would reflect for him the truth of himself.”

“Bullshit.”

“I do not know how he did this, but, as I said, it is a trait of certain people. It is my hypothesis, that they can indeed achieve this manifestation of will. The mirror worked for him. It worked for others. It worked for me and I prayed that it would work for your uncle. It showed him something that was too much for him to bear.”

I found myself drawn to believe him, despite the impossibility of it.

“What do you think your uncle might have seen within himself that he could not bear, James? Something unforgivable? Disgraceful?”

I thought about what Grandma had said: “You are a living disgrace of a man!”

“Above all else, I know this to be possible,” Grandad said softly, coming close to me and scooping up the orbs one at a time from the table, “Because I made these. It was my wish always to know that your Grandmother was…well, whatever the distance between us. It was my wish. I willed it, and it was so.”

He loomed over me, eyes glinting within their dark sockets.

“Grandma said you were evil. She said you brought evil into her house. She would say “That man and those things.” I waved my arm towards the corridor. “Is that what she meant, the things in those cabinets?”

“What does it even mean, ‘evil’? I have a desire to understand the power in the mind of man. That desire is stronger than my desire to conform to ethical norms. Is this “evil”?”

“Tell me what happened to mum. I’ve seen her scars. Tell me about the leg."

He laughed, or something like a laugh. Braying, animal, guttural. “Stay there,” he said, “I have something to show you. And please, do not touch a thing.” He left the room and I heard him climbing stairs. A few minutes later, he returned. In his hands he held a strange contraption: metal rods, straps and hoops and joints and buckles. It looked like a leg.

He laid it on the floor before me then stood behind my chair and bent to whisper in my ear. “This…is the leg.”

I leaned forward to look closer and barely felt the needle slide in. Coldness seeped into my neck and down my arms. “What the…” my mouth lost all feeling and my jaw drooped, tongue lolling, drooling. I couldn’t speak, my eyes lost focus. I began to slide off the leather armchair and crumple on the floor. I managed a few feeble movements but then lost all feeling, all power. I was aware, but not there.

“Make yourself comfortable, James,” he said, dragging me down from the chair, laying me out straight on my back. Then he sat behind me on the floor, raising my head so I could see the contraption.

“I want you to see. To see and be convinced.” He leaned forward and began to busy himself with the apparatus, talking as he unbuckled the leather straps.

“You are wondering, I can tell, what this strange thing is. It is a caliper. It belonged to a soldier—a very effective soldier—in the first world war. His leg was horribly injured and he was fitted with the caliper. He was unable to return to the front, but that did not stop him killing. Far from it. He spent the rest of his days secured away, locked into his cell, locked into his caliper. He was a very old man when he died. Very old and very interesting. I spoke with him often.”

Grandfather finished what he was doing with a satisfied grunt.

“And when he died, and we tried to remove it from his leg, do you know what happened? A most curious thing.”

The apparatus began to rattle and creak of its own. It began to move, to bend and flex at its knee and inch its way forward towards me. I couldn’t move. I could only watch as it inexorably dragged itself onto my leg, the straps and buckles tightening, the metal pins along its length turning, screwing inwards on their own, grinding on my flesh, harder and harder, piercing it in six places on either side. I couldn’t scream, I could only feel pain as it sank its rusting pins deeper and deeper into my flesh, grating on bone, the strapping welding to my skin. It was unbearable, and yet there was nothing I could do but endure it. The thing eventually stopped, at the extremity of its straps and bolts, my leg a tortured mass of constricted, bloody meat. I hovered above unconsciousness, but perhaps the drug kept me from it.

“It was your uncle, you know, who took it from its box and set it loose on your mother. Disgraceful behaviour. I was just in time. But only just. I’ve always wanted to see it at work again. Fascinating, isn’t it? But now, for you, there is only one choice, James. The caliper will only loose its grip when the wearer dies; or I can give you something to take all the pain away. What will it be?”

I stared at him, eyes bulging, imploring, all understanding lost.

“Impossible, yes? And yet still…it works,” he said, stroking my forehead.

With thanks to for organising INANIMATE OBJECTS and the inestimable for his generosity of spirit and editorial high speed wizardry to help me hit the wordcount. This is the full un-expurgated (some might say bloated) version, and was my choice of friend to meet a grisly end. It will come to all of my friends, eventually…One day, I might even kill you…dear reader.

She cracked the broadest smile and clicked eight perfect, emerald-green nails with a staccato flourish on the glass topped reception desk.

“If you go walking on cliff-top-path, please, you must wear some ah…sturdy shoes.”

I nodded. “Thank you…?”

“ ‘Graça’.” She tapped her gold name badge twice. “It mean ‘grace’.”

“Thank you–obrigado–Graça. Could you show me the best beach nearby? On the map?” I swivelled it towards her. She took a blue highlighter and swivelled it back round so that I faced the sea.

“You go down from your apartment here, past swimming pool here, then there is sign for “cliff-top-path”. You follow this, you come to the green gate and you need the green key; this one.” She picked up the key ring by the green key, jangled the rest of the bunch then dropped them back down. “From the gate, you can go left or right, either way you get to nice beach here, ten minutes,” she scribbled, “or here, maybe fifteen.”

I picked up the keys and smiled. She tilted her head to one side. “Oh, and from gate, there is also a path straight down. But don’t go there. Is very dangerous cliffs, with…ah big holes. You cannot go there please.” I nodded. She handed me a pool towel. The smile never left her face for a moment.

The first two days were bars and sea food, nothing as edifying as hiking, but, by day three, I wanted to find the beaches.

Starting out early I was soon through the green gate and looking left and right along rocky paths, trying to recall which beach Graça had said was the closest. On both sides, the path cut up steeply to the top of the cliffs through dense junipers, flowering bushes, giant aloes and shrubs. Short sections of rickety wooden stairs and walkways appeared here and there through gaps in the dusty olive-green undergrowth. Cicadas buzzed ceaselessly, warning of impending heat. Left or right…

From the undergrowth straight ahead, where the ground fell away steeply with no suggestion of a path, I heard the hack and spit of someone clearing their throat. Footsteps scraped grit and foliage swayed. There was a grumbled curse in Portuguese and an old man emerged, freeing himself from tenacious thorns. He drew up sharply on seeing me. He wore canvas trousers, sun-faded to greenish black and held up with a knotted rope belt. An ancient pea coat, fastened with its two remaining buttons, gave him a crooked frame hanging off him in angular folds. Perhaps it had once fitted him. On his head was a greasy fisherman’s cap and in his arthritic hands, gnarled like juniper roots, he held a short length of thin rope. One end formed a noose.

“Bom dia.” I said. He squinted, creasing his leathery face yet further, then nodded one sharp nod and grunted from the back of his throat. He looked down at his hands, turning them palm up briefly, one still holding the rope, then buried both in his coat pockets and shuffled off up the cliff path. He left an unwashed, animal stink behind as he limped away, one leg dragging awkwardly. I stared after him; I wasn’t certain, but it looked like blood on his hands.

I recalled what Graça had said about dangerous cliffs and big holes. What had he been doing down there? I had to know. I pushed aside thoughts of a day on the beach and forced my way into the thorny scrub.

The ground naturally formed crude steps down through the tangling undergrowth. Sun-bleached roots twisted out from the parched rock and I scattered lizards and fragments of fossil shells as I clambered down. It was hard going, but with nothing worse than a scuffed knee and a few thorn scratches, I emerged from the vegetation and the slope flattened out, becoming easier under foot. I was at the bottom of a narrow ravine between the imposing limestone bluffs. Once, a stream must have flowed here; now it was hard baked rock, barren save for tufts of despondent weeds and desiccated cacti, their greenness dulled by dust. I hopped over the remnants of a low stone wall and walked on towards the irresistible blue of the sea ahead.

If it hadn’t been for a tangle of rusty barbed wire, I would have had no warning of the hole in the ground. Broken stumps of posts were all that remained of a fence that had once encircled it. I peered into the darkness. Some way down, a scrawny fig tree gripped the side of the shaft, reaching for the light as if to claw its way back out. I dropped a rock into it, counting seconds as it rattled into the darkness one…two…three…four…splash. Fuck me that’s deep. How deep? I had no idea.

A sound brought my head up from the hole. I looked about, it came again: high pitched bleating. A sheep? No…a goat. It was coming from somewhere up ahead. It sounded distressed. I went on, the ground growing smoother, water-worn and sloping downwards again in flat, stepped slabs of rock. I could hear the sea and then something like long, labouring breaths: a deep whumping exhalation followed by a long, hissing inhalation. The sound grew louder, as did the bleating of the goat. I advanced with caution, one rock step at a time until I came to the last step before the cliff edge, still some height above the waves. Just below me was a goat, chained by the neck to an iron ring set into the rock at the edge of another gaping hole.

Whump…Hissss…

A mist of water sprayed from the hole, catching a brief rainbow. The goat screamed, its cloven hooves scrabbled for purchase on the wet stone, one rear leg buckled lamely. I thought of the old man and his thin rope noose.

Whump….Hissss…

This time the goat slipped over as it lost purchase on the wet stone. For a moment I thought it would fall into the hole, but it righted itself, the lame rear leg jerking up each time its hoof touched the ground. Its bleating was like the scream of a child. I lowered myself down onto the ledge with the goat, which struggled towards me as if sensing salvation, straining taut the chain which was attached to a wide leather choker. I reached for the clasp and noticed blood oozing from a deep slash in the goat’s haunch; it had been cut with a blade. The second the chain was unfastened, the goat was away with a rattle of hooves. Despite the wound to its leg, it scaled the rocky steps and galloped towards the undergrowth.

Standing by the hole, watching the goat disappear, I shook my head in disbelief. What was the old bastard thinking?

Whump…hissss…

Blowholes. I had heard of these before, caves in the rock carved out by the relentless sea.

Whump…hissss…

Just like breathing. I ventured as close to the edge of the hole as I dared and leaned over. There was the dimmest hint of blue in the depths which darkened to black as the next ‘whump’ sounded and water was forced upwards. Hissss. Sea sprayed out from the hole and then subsided. As it did, the blue glow returned, light from the cave mouth somewhere filtering through. I watched the cycle fascinated by the rhythm of the waves and the light. It was hypnotic. I had an urge –one I often had when I stared down from high-up places– an urge to jump. I shook away the thought and was about to turn and leave when, in the dim blue depths, something moved: a dark shape in the water. Whump. The next wave hit and it was gone.

When I got back to the cliff top path I was rattled. Angry. I used to be sceptical of Iberian stories of donkeys set on fire and goats hurled from church towers, but the cruelty of the man! The beach would have to wait; I needed a drink. At the pool-side bar, after I lost count, I began to regale anyone and everyone about what I’d seen. until the barman politely refused to serve me. I sulked up to my room and showered the day off, certain I could smell a trace of goat. I meant to nap for just an hour but when I woke it felt late. I was sobered up enough to realise the fool I’d made of myself at the pool bar. I needed to get out of the hotel, get a bite elsewhere, not show my face at dinner. I went to reception to order a cab.

I smelled it before I saw it: the goat.

It was lying in the foyer with its throat slashed open. A purple tongue protruded grotesquely, like it was lapping at the pool of blood. There was no doubt it was the same goat; the colouring, the wound on its haunch. Its golden, slitted eyes seemed to blame me as I approached. The doorman was ushering people away. Two Brits stood to one side, arms crossed, a small child sobbing as she gripped her father’s leg. “Did you see? Did you see what he fuckin’ did? Unbelievable.” one of them said. Graça was on the telephone, stopping every few seconds to shout at two porters, circling the corpse, unsure which end of it was the worst.

“What happened?” I called over to the Brits.

“Never seen anything like it. We were just on our way out when this old boy came in. Stinking, he was, ranting, dragging the poor bloody goat with him. We thought it was a laugh at first, but then he pulled out this bloody huge knife and just ssssshhhhht.” he drew his finger across his neck.

“Completely. Mental.” Said his friend.

“He needs locking up! There’s kids here and everything.”

Graça finished her call and hurried over. “Sirs, Sirs, please. Everyone, please, kindly to go to the bar for just a short while until we clean up all of this…this–”

“What happened Graça?” I interrupted.

“Sir. Please, if you can go into the bar-”

“The man who came in with the goat, was he wearing all black? Did he have a fisherman’s hat on, was he limping?” Graça looked puzzled, her face said: ‘How did you know’.

“Sir?”

“I saw him, on the cliff near the sea, earlier. Blood on his hands. He’d tied that goat up, on the cliff edge. He’d cut its leg too, there, look.” I pointed at the black crusted gash on its haunch as the grimacing porters hauled the carcass away. “I set it free…why would he bring it here and do this?”

Someone in kitchen whites appeared, unwinding metres of blue absorbent paper onto the floor from a huge roll. The blue turned black as the blood soaked in.

Graça looked perplexed. She stared at me, one arm tight across her chest, her chin resting in the palm of her other hand. Her jaw muscles pulsed. “You see him before, with the goat?”

“Couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“Sir, when he come here, he said he was looking for ‘The English’. Nobody understand what he mean. Then he kill the goat and everyone like this–” she mimed horror: eyes and mouth wide, hands in the air, “-and after that, he say: ‘The English monkey should stay on his own tree. Here is the goat. Give it to him. Now he owes me a life.’”

The two Brits stepped back. “Woahhh!” one of them said. “Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes!”

“I called police.” Said Graça, “You tell them all this, what you say to me, when they come, tomorrow, yes?” I nodded. She urged everyone into the bar once more and I followed; I was too sober again.

At the bar, my friend from the pool was serving. He welcomed me with a wry smile and reached for a beer glass. “Think I need something a bit stronger, Silvio.” He nodded and pulled down a brandy balloon.

“Crazy night. This doesn’t happen here, these kind of things. Not all the time, anyway. ” Silvio winked.

“I told you, didn’t I, earlier? About the bloke down on the cliff with a goat?” Silvio nodded. “Did you hear what he said? I owe him a life?”

“Yes, sir. He say that. He say something else which I don’t understand. Old Portuguese, words we don’t use in these days. He talk about the ‘Zashio’.”

“Zashio?”

“Yes, and what you were saying at the pool bar? It remind me something my grandmother would talk about, to scare us when we are kids.”

Silvio had my attention.

“The Zashio is old superstition. A monster which live in the waters. Grandmother would say to my sisters: Don’t go in caves by the sea at night. Don’t swim in the river if, you know, you’re a girl and it is your monthly time. What the Zashio takes, it never gives back.”

“We have something like that in England, mermaids, sirens, “ I said.

“No. Is not ‘siren’. Not a woman with fish tail. Is a different thing. It makes a bargain, like for like.”

The next day two officers from the Guarda Nationale came to the hotel and Graça sought me out. One officer was old, one was young and spoke good English. They took our statements and talked together. They asked Graça to repeat what the old man had said about me, “The English”, and about “Owing a life”. She showed the security footage from the night before. It was horrific. Their whole demeanour changed, their voices took on a serious tone. I heard the younger officer repeat “Alvaro Machuca?” and the older man nodded and tapped the side of his head, saying “Machuca Maluco.”

“Maluco: it mean ah…crazy.” Graça chimed in.

The younger officer turned to us, “We know him. Alvaro Machuca. He’s a fisherman, living alone. Also has farm with the goats. They say he’s crazy, but he’s never been in trouble. Never done anything like…like this.”

The older officer spoke again and Graça translated for me. “He lose his daughter, Angelina, many years ago. She drown. Then his wife disappear, she leave him. Because of this, he go crazy.”

“Senhor. Senhora. Would you come with us? To identify if this is the man you see? We will speak with him. You can stay in the car, don’t worry.” Graça couldn’t leave the hotel but I was keen to go with them; I wanted to look the old bastard in the eye.

The madman must live close, I thought, walking distance along the coast, especially with that leg of his, but the Algarve coastline is ragged with inlets, inaccessible beaches and ravines. The track to his farm was tortuous, one that even a donkey would take slowly and it took us longer than I expected to get there. We approached a ruined looking farmhouse with haphazard stone outbuildings forming a rough ‘U’ shape around a yard patrolled by a scrawny rooster. The place was an oasis of greenery amongst acres of dry scrub; the only evidence that the farm was not abandoned.

As the police car drew up, a rangy dog launched itself from the shade of its kennel to strain at the end of a chain. It growled constantly, barely drawing breath. The officers got out, motioning me to stay in the back as they walked up to the main building. It was hot; I opened a window, the dust on it grating as the motor whined.

The noise of the dog brought the old man out from a barn. He was leading a goat by a rope round its neck. The officers approached and spoke to him. They looked back at the car, one of them pointed. The old man leaned to see beyond them, raised a hand to shield his eyes and stared. He recognised me and I stared back. For a few moments, nobody spoke or moved. Then, with a shrug and a few words, he handed the rope to the older police officer and went inside.

“Hey. That’s him.” I shouted from the car, leaning out of the open window and pointing at the farmhouse. The officers both turned towards my voice just as the old man emerged with a long barrelled gun. Without hesitation, he shot the younger officer in the back, blasting him to the ground face first.

The older officer was still facing me and we both flinched with the shock of the sound. He swivelled to face Machuca and got out a few words whilst fumbling at the holstered pistol on his hip, the goat tugging at the rope he was still clutching. Machuca lowered the barrel to listen. He muttered something, shrugged, like he was apologising, then hefted the gun to his shoulder and fired, obliterating the officer’s head in a shower of bloody fragments. His body seemed to take forever to hit the ground raising a cloud of dust. The goat pulled free and ran.

“Fucking hell!”

Machuca broke the shotgun open and fished out shells from the pockets of his pea coat.

Nonononono.

I rattled the door handle. I didn’t stop, even when I realised the child lock must be on. Harder and harder until broke off in my hand. I couldn’t take my eyes from him as he walked towards the car, slotting the shells into the gun and snapping shut the barrel.

NONONONONO!

I jabbed at the window button to close it and leaned over to try and open the other passenger door. I heard him tapping on the window behind me with the gun. I didn’t turn, couldn’t look my death in the face. He opened the door, and then someone shouted –it had to be the young officer!

Sitting up I saw he’d got to his feet and was shakily aiming his pistol at the farmer, shouting “Abash-eh soo-arma” over and over. Machuca swung the shotgun up and round. There were two sharp pistol cracks then the shotgun boomed again and the officer crumpled and disappeared from view.

“JesusChristJesusChristJesusChrist…”

Machuca turned back to me, nodded and pointed to the sky; he understood Jesus Christ. He motioned at me with the gun: get out of the car. I crawled out, fear cramping every muscle in resistance to what was coming.

“Please don’t…please don’t kill me.” I burbled, almost falling from the car, legs shaking, head down, hands clawed in terror. I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye but I saw blood dripping from his hand and glanced up; he’d been shot; shot in the right shoulder. As realisation crossed my face, he swiped the gun butt into the side of my head.

I woke to the insistent buffeting and nibbling of a goat at the collar of my shirt. For a moment, I was confused, then a bucket of water to the face shocked me into reality. I blinked and shook water from my eyes. We were inside the farmhouse. The old man sat on a stool a few feet in front of me. The shotgun lay across his knee. I tried to scramble up, to get away but my hands were tied in front of me and I was sitting on the floor, my back up against wall. Pain throbbed in the side of my face.

We stared at each other, the chirp of crickets through the glassless windows measuring out the seconds. Minutes passed; I didn’t understand why I was still alive. The goat trotted back up to me, licking at my face, the tongue so sudden and rough I yelped.

“Você salvou vida, desta cabra.” Machuca growled, pointing the gun at the goat. He winced as he did so; blood from the bullet wound in his shoulder was seeping through the crude bandage he’d wrapped round it. Flies lifted then settled back down but he didn’t seem to care. Dried blood caked his arm.

“What are you going to do to me?” He didn’t reply. Instead, he stood up and shuffled to a dresser, picked up a wooden picture frame then slumped back onto the stool. He held up the frame for me to see. It was hinged in the middle; on one side was a faded photograph of a young girl, maybe five or six years old. On the other, a severe looking woman.

“Uma vida…por uma vida.” He said, pointing first at the girl, then at the woman.

“Your daughter? Your wife?” I ventured, pleaded. He nodded. Then he pointed at me, and then back to his daughter. “Uma vida… por uma vida.”

“I don’t understand.” My voice cracked with desperation, but I did understand: a life for a life.

“Esperamos a maré alta.” He looked at his watch, pain showing in his face every time he moved his right arm. He crooked his head down to look at his shoulder, probed at it with his other hand, grunted something and spat.

“Ok. Vamos ande! Em seus pés.” ‘Vamos’ I understood.

He got up from the stool with a groan and shuffled over to jab at me with the gun. “Em seus pés”. It was a struggle but I got up. With some clucking noises and a whistle, he called over the goat and unhooked the trailing rope from its neck. He kept me at the end of the gun, the barrel jutting into the small of my back. Then the noose was about my neck and jerked tight.

“Vamos!”

I knew where we were going.

We left the house. In the courtyard, the bodies of the police officers shimmered under heat haze, blood pooled black in the drit around them. I was glad I couldn’t see their faces. By jerks on the noose and jabs with the gun in my back, he guided me through a small grove of olives and out of the farm on a dusty path. Downhill, always downhill. I thought about running—he sounded weak, he must have lost a lot of blood—but the thought of how he had executed the old officer sapped my resolve. How far would I get? One second would be all it took to pull the trigger.

When we got to the cliff path I had another thought: he’s not going to shoot me…not here, not yet. My chance came when I heard him stumble behind. The noose pulled tight and then loose as he fell and let go of the rope. I heard him crash over and curse and I ran, stumbling, shouting for help, screams tearing my throat. I made it maybe thirty yards before I heard the shotgun blast and felt stinging in the back of my legs. I went down hard. My tied hands took the brunt of the fall but my face still smashed into the rocky ground, filling my mouth with grit and dust.

His ragged breath and shuffling feet approached. A shadow fell on me and I smelled the sweat and dirt of him. He broke open the shotgun and a spent shell case bounced into the dirt a few inches from my face. The gun clicked shut. I closed my eyes. If I just lay here.

“Em seus pés.”

I started to cry. He kicked me and pressed the hot gun into the back of my neck.

“Em seus pés!”

I didn’t move. I lay with my face flat in the dirt, sucking in grit as I sobbed. The rope round my neck tightened and he pulled until I was choking and had to lift my head up. I stared up at him. Fresh blood glistened all down his arm, the bandage hung off him and his breathing was as laboured as mine. Seeing him like this gave me a glimmer of resolve.

“Fuck…you!” I hissed.

He fired the shotgun into the ground, inches from my face. My whole body spasmed instinctively from the shock of it, the mind-shredding noise so close to my head. I screamed but could only hear the endless whistle that the shotgun had blasted into my ears. On my back thrashing, gargling, the two black holes of the shotgun barrel came into focus. I gave in to their power, their menace, and struggled to my knees, then to my feet. My calves burned where pellets of shot had hit me but I could walk; the wounds couldn’t be that bad.

On we went, both of us struggling: me in hopeless fear, Machuca from his wounds. I heard him stumble repeatedly before we got to the place where we had first met near the green gate. If I could get him to fire the shotgun again, would anyone hear? Would somebody come? The hotel was visible, but only as distant lights. He saw me looking up towards them and the gun butt smashed into the back of my head again. I felt him yank the noose and the gun barrel showed me the way, jabbing into my back. I imagined his finger slipping on the trigger and my spine exploding into pulp. Down we went. Down towards the sea, his mumbling a constant guttural stream behind as the sound of waves grew louder.

What did he want? “You owe me a life” That’s what he had said about me, “the English”. What did he mean? I thought of the goat: bleating, terrified, maimed and blooded, helpless and chained at that gasping cave’s throat. A sacrifice? But for what? To what God?

As we stumbled from the scrub into the bare ravine, the sun was setting but I had no time for the deepening red beauty of the sky, only desperate thoughts. He means to tie me to that iron ring, just like the goat. Would he tie me and leave me to fate, like that poor goat? Would he cut me, maim me? Had he brought the knife? The thought of him slashing me with it was nauseating. I thought I might have a chance to charge into him and topple him into the first hole, the one that I had almost tumbled down, but the closer we got to his destination, the steadier on his feet he grew. His resolve strengthened and he steered us well to the side of it and on to the sea.

Whump….Hisss…

The breath of the blow hole grew louder. When we got to the final rocky step down, my knees gave out and I rolled forward, my head briefly hanging over the lip into the darkness. I squirmed on the wet rock like a landed fish on the line, gasping as Machuco hauled on the noose, dragging me back by the throat. I heard the iron ring clanking and then, again, I was dragged backwards across the rock, choking, eyes bulging, my feet pedalling, heels scrabbling for purchase on the slippery stone. I felt the cold iron against the back of my neck and then Machuco looming over me from behind. He knelt, one knee on either side of my head, his rank breath in hot waves in my face, the stink of goat heavy on his clothing. He muttered as he wound the rope about my neck and through the hoop again and again. I tried to hook my thumbs under the rope, to pull against it, but with wrists bound tight, resistance was pointless. With a final drawn out grunt he leaned back and hauled the rope tight to the point where I could barely rattle a breath in and out. My head was fastened tight, my cheek pressed to the rock.

The labours of our breathing slowed to the rhythm of the waves washing in and out of the sea cave below. The tone changed as the water rose higher and higher within its throat. The tide is rising. Machuco had collapsed behind me but I heard him, sensed him moving away.

“Where are you going? What are you doing? Don’t leave me.”

Words gushed from me in panic. He came into view, the shotgun over his arm. The barrel of it loomed, wavered and he pressed the end of it to my mouth.

“Callyeh Si!” His voice rattled. I groaned. The gun barrel brushed haphazardly over my cheek, my lips, my chin and scraped my teeth. I tasted the sulphur and the steel.

“Silencio!”

I keened, gulped, swallowed, screwed shut my eyes, expecting oblivion at any moment, but I was quiet. He pulled the gun away with a grunt and shuffled to the far side of the blow hole and sat on the rock ledge, facing me.

We stared at each other. I lay with my cheek on the rock and from this angle, tiny stones and scraps of seaweed cast lengthening shadows as the sun set then disappeared in the deepening dusk. The blow hole breathed Whump …hisss… over and over. I tried to convey my utter pitifulness; could I move him to untie me, to feel any sense of remorse or guilt with just my eyes? His head dropped, but not through shame: exhaustion. The gun rattled from his knee to the ground and startled him upright. He reached for his shoulder, wincing. The wetness of fresh blood showed all down his arm. His hand looked slick with it and the sight of his own blood stirred him again. Slowly, he drew the knife.

“No. No. No!” I beseeched him, shaking my head as much as the noose would allow me any movement. He shrugged and hefted the blade, but each movement of his arm was agony for him and he passed the knife to his left hand. A glow of light from the rising moon began to filter into the ravine. The knife blade almost seemed to shine. He laboured to stand. I closed my eyes and recalled the livid bloody weal across the haunch of the goat. A low moan of despair crawled out of me.

“Silencio”

I opened my eyes as he shuffled towards me. He began to rotate the knife in his hand so that the cutting edge faced inwards but then dropped it with a panggg and a clatter of steel on stone. He cursed and fumbled, sagged to his knees, groaned, cursed again and toppled forward onto his damaged shoulder, crying out. He lay like that for a few moments and I began to think, to hope that maybe he too had reached his limit, but then his left hand snaked out across the rock, feeling for the knife. It wasn’t over. I snapped.

“You fucking bastard. You fucking bastard. I’ll fucking kill you.” I grunted at him, face mushed against the rock. “You cunt, you sick fucking cunt.” Again and again I cursed him, spat at him. I didn’t care now. He was coming, he was going to cut me, kill me, leave me here to die. There was nothing I could do so I let it out, the rage, all I had left. His hand found the knife. His body shook with the effort to sit back up but he couldn’t stand, he could only kneel, broken and pathetic. His right arm was drenched now, it hung useless at his side, blood pooling, trickling, blooming in the brine upon the rock. His head lolled and slumped forward.

Whump…Hisssss…

Spray misted from the hole, water gargled as the swell ebbed back down. I began to laugh, laugh in sobs. This was it. Unless by some fluke someone saw me, I was going to die here, tied to the ground. That,or the mad goat farmer would stir one last time and find the energy to stick the knife in.

The moon appeared over the trees at the head of the ravine, washing everything in silver. The sea whumped into the cave, but there was no hisss: instead, a glug, and a swell of water flowed over the lip of the hole and washed out, splashing into my face and swirling around Machuca’s bloodied form before it flowed back into the hole. Again and again and each time a little more. I had to close my mouth to stop it filling with the water that was beginning to pool around me. Was I going to die like this?

I watched with morbid certainty as each wave crested the lip of the hole. Then, something emerged. Something glistening like kelp in the moonlight. It moved about the lip, moved like a hand feeling for something in the dark. Something like a hand, but not a hand. And then another hand, and then… something lithe and fluid hauled itself from the hole. It was dark, mottled black, a black that was really green. Something with bulbous limpid eyes in a head like a monstrous seal. Its nostrils flared open then closed shut and membranes flicked across its eyes. Its head split apart: a gaping black mouth impossibly wide with double rows of razor teeth and a black tongue…a black that was really purple.

It sniffed the air, head weaving, snake-like, first up and then down and over the ground. The purple tongue flicked out, lapping at the bloody salt water. It’s whole body oozed out of the hole, as it followed the blood to its source. Webbed feet with prehensile toes, frog-like limbs and a long, flat tail, grooved and with ribs of bone or cartilage that extended up and along its back. Despite the rictus of terror that gripped me, I must have moved slightly, my neck muscles spasmed and the iron ring grated. The thing cocked its head sharply to the side so that it could look directly into my eyes before looking back at the hunched form of Machuca. Then it stood up, tall on its rear legs, taller than a man, drawing a long rattling breath before it sank down onto frog-like haunches, head twitching left and right.

It spoke—at least, it made sounds like words, like a question. Machuca raised his head at the sound of it and scraped the knife against the rock. “Alvaro…Machuca.” He said, barely more than whispering. The thing approached him.

“Zashio,” Machuca groaned. He managed to cough and gargle two more words before his head lolled down again, “Uma Vida…”

The creature folded its webbed hands around Machuca’s head and lifted it up from his chest. It licked his face, sniffed deeply along his blood soaked arm and then it spoke again, but this time I knew the words: "Por uma vida”, it said, with a voice thick as glue.

Machuca raised the knife and pointed it at me, but the creature, with one hand still holding up Machuca’s head, took the weapon from Machuca’s trembling hand and dropped it into the mouth of the blow hole. It held Machuca in its arms, pulling him close in an embrace and crooning, whispering, bubbling…singing to him, rocking him, webbed hands stroking his head and lightly gliding down his wounded arm. The song ended in a long ululating sigh. The gentleness of the singing? The terror I felt at this impossible creature subsided, but only for a moment. Something erupted out from the blowhole, the sudden wash of water stinging my eyes shut.

When I opened them, crouching at the lip of the hole, low to the ground, one eye gleaming in the moonlight from behind long black hair: a woman. She was naked and in her hand she held Machuca’s knife. I let out a strangled cry at the sight of her and Machuca, finding strength from somewhere, called out “Angelina!”

She approached him, the creature moving away like a shadow. She pressed her face right up to his, and he grasped her with his one good arm and pulled her to him, mumbling her name over and over, weeping, incomprehensible. She backed away from him, he clawed at her, not wanting to let go. She grasped his thinning hair with one hand and held back his head. I could see his eyes bulging, a glint of moonlight reflecting in them. She spoke, spoke in that strange way the creature had, with words I couldn’t understand. When she finished, she pushed the knife up under her father’s chin and into his throat, slowly and deliberately, hooting, cooing softly as she did until the blade was completely buried to the hilt.

He gargled for a few moments then stopped. She withdrew the blade and a gush of blood followed it. The creature slid forward, opened its mouth wide and clamped down, sucking greedily. When it was finished, it let out its warbling cry again and dragged Machuca’s body to the edge of the hole. It waited for a wave to surge upwards, and as the water receded, it slid in taking Macguca with it to the depths with barely a splash.

The woman turned to me, bloody knife in hand. We stared at each other. There seemed to be no understanding in her implacable black eyes. I held out my bound wrists towards her.

“Help me?”

She approached like a cat. She sniffed me, all along my body, then ran a hand over my face and along the ropes binding my neck.

I tried again. “Help me?” The words were dry with fear in my mouth. The noose bit my flesh and constricted my breath.

She held the knife close to my neck and worked the blade under the rope then began to saw. There was a moment of tension, pressure when the noose tightened as the blade worked against it, then the last fibres parted and I was free.

“Thank you, oh thank you.” I began to cry, then sob, tears, laughter, emotions in confusion at my release. I held my wrists up to her, so that she could cut those ropes too, but instead, she dropped the knife, took my hands in hers and dragged me, screaming, down into the watery hole.

The Time has Come… for Love

About understanding love, but only when it’s too late.

“The more of us there are somewhere, the less anyone seems to belong.”

This is one of the first pieces I posted here, when I used to try to stick to 1000 words. It’s maybe somewhat trite and then 3 body problem came out and I was like - “Oh. Well. That’s that idea already had by somebody…” But as a line, I really believe it, I really feel it captures something of the spirit of our times.

Read the story here: The Time Has Come...For Love

Homeward Bound

A post apocalyptic tale. What would you do if you were the last person in the world?

“She had stroked her baby’s face, just once, her skin whorled and folded, like all children of radiation tainted mothers. The last children of the last mothers. They fled. I had no choice she told herself no time. Not even time to name her.”

This passage was the one that seemed to stay with people the most, although the very last line is the one I liked best and which inspired the story in the first place. For me, there is something deeply affecting when we imagine the impacts of a situation on children. it’s an effective tool for a writer of most genres.

Read the story here Homeward Bound

Appetite

A killer leaves nothing but his legacy.

“It saddened him, enraged him sometimes that so much pain, emotion and guilt went into it, the suffering he had to endure and for such a fleeting, transient reward.”

I was particularly pleased with this line, because he is not talking about his own suffering that he has to endure to get his reward. Lines that can be read in more than one way always delight me, and as a writer, when your reader spots the other meanings, it’s always great. I am not sure anyone read it the way I intended though.

Read the story here: Appetite

Earring Coin Tarot Card

Stream of Consciousness PoV workshop piece. I never named this piece - the words are the three prompts in the workshop from which the story was inspired.

“I prefer it when they don’t find them. They never found Stilletto.”

I am particularly proud of this piece because of how it flowed out of me. This way of writing was awakened in me by the incredible Edith Bow whose work is a truly unique expression of a truly unique mind - but we ALL have a unique mind, if we open it up - I can’t stress enough - if you have never tried this, you really must.

This was also a first for me in terms of enforcing a structure on a story - deciding it was to be a monologue and 1st person POV, not just a stream of my own consciousness but a stream of the character’s mind and his personality - I fully immersed myself in the character, and drew on real places in my home city. Whilst this quote is the very last line, I don’t think it gives the game away to post it, and I love it because I think it captures the nature of the man and nods back to the horror and the objectification which was something not everyone picked up on as a message.

Read the story here:Earring Coin Tarot Card

And they Shall Know Me

another piece inspired by Edith Bow’s Stream of Consciousness PoV workshop.

“There he saw the knee buckled pigs bolted and brained, dropped and dragged to the blow torch and the heavy aproned man scorching with practised arcs the hair from their pink backs.”

I love the poetry and violence of the language. I am very proud of this whole piece - there are a lot of lines that I like in it, and also I recall the writing of it, the time I spent researching demonology, and then the moment when the story opened up like a black flower as childhood memory of trips to the butchers with my own father. It showed me the story I needed to tell. It is dark I won’t deny it, and it makes me wonder how my own mind works.

I have not gone back to Stream of Consciousness pieces for some time - I am somehow afraid to do it, because my best work came from it, and when I read it, I feel I couldn’t possibly do as well again. Foolish, I know.

Read the story here: And They Shall Know Me

Word Get’s Out

YET Another piece from a stream of consciousness workshop.

“That’s the spirit,” she says, and I feel her gloved hand sheath my trigger finger and trace the length of it nails dragging light to the tip and then back to grip it. “Oooooh, baby boy Blue,” she hums, “This is the one that does all the work, hmmm?”

I am very proud of this piece again because of how it was written, how it came out of me and lord knows how it was inside me, really. It has opened up a possible world for me that I think could become a short novel or something, and spawned a prequel piece, which I wrote in a workshop hosted by Craig Clevenger. It is of course heavily styled and tongue in cheek - a pastiche of the noir genre.

For me the best thing about this is the dialogue and how I think it creates the characters and gives them authority. The hit man is rendered impotent by the mysterious fortune teller. The worst part is that I am pretending I am a Yank the whole way through, so that probably shows…

Read the story here: Word Gets Out

read the prequel here if you liked this one ! Desert Drive

Homo Myceliensis

This was a climate fiction piece submitted to a project created by the wonderful Claudia Befu. In a way it is the last 60,000 words of a novel I have written some of, condensed into 6000 words. I felt pleased with myself at the philosophical musing here.

“The world is our home. Think on this: the Egyptian pyramids are huge piles of stones in a sea of dust. They serve no purpose, nurture no life. The great river that enabled them to be made is almost gone now, isn’t it. The people that made the pyramids are gone. All of that human endeavour to make a pile of stones. What would you rather be there, the stones or the plants; the river and the life it gave, or the bones of its poisoned fish?”

For this piece I had to really get into the heads of three chracters - a fiesty journo, a mother and her daughter as eco warriors, of a sort…And also create a believeable scenario for an uplifitng yet also horrifying premise. This came after reading a lot of fungus based research and some great horror pieces - possibly this novel has missed its boat of originality if I ever get to finish it…

Read the Story here : Homo Myceliencis

The Shame

A classic horror story submitted for the Lunar Awards - it did not place. I was disappointed - I won’t lie.

“Take it, Meg. Don’t you look on it. Take it and put it out with the night water and think no more of it.” Beneath the towel something writhes, a red stain blossoms on the white cotton. Meg, head bobbing, hurries away.”

This is part of a flash back scene where I had to put on a different voice and different language to convey the different times. I also decided to tell the story from the PoV of an old man reflecting on his life and his mother’s life. This clip is, to me, part of what creates the sense of brooding horror that has underlain the past. As such, I think these sorts of elements need to be either early on, OR come as the twist right at the end which creates a sudden realisation in the reader.

Again- this story relies on children, birth, in fact, to worsen the impact of the horror. Real places inspired the story - the strangeness of the names and the atmosphere of the fens and a creepy old house. You can gather your palette everywhere you go.

read it here : The Shame

Four Calling Birds

A piece submitted to Garen Marie’s Dark Tidings project christmas 2024 - this was a blast - if you get the chance, you must join in on a community project - really the best things here.

“In the Valdai Forest dacha the Russian Premier stroked the glossy blue-black plumage of the magpie. Flashes of blood red showed as it spoke quietly and insistently “The time has come”. A complex arming device sat before them, a satellite phone connected to it. He gave the orders, then settled back into his chair. The birds take flight.”

I was really pleased at how the idea was woven from numerous small vignettes, together painting the greater picture of a world wide conflagration. I did very much imagine this as an apocalypse type film - it’s how I do a lot of my work - I imagine a scene very vividly, put myself into it, say the lines, taste them. Write it down - it doesn’t always allow a story to flow as well as I would like however….take 34…and action. This was also a piece where I was beginning to apply some editorial advice from fellow stackers - cutting out glue words and adverbs if I could, to tighten up the prose.

In this case, many of the characters were actual peoples’ actual names and roles.

Read the story and find links to all 12 days of horrible christmas here: Four Calling Birds

The Legacy Part 1

I can’t let one of my most loved characters slip through the net. This started as an idea for a christmas horror story… but then, from somewhere, this awful Dickensian character popped out of me, and I was trapped by him! This became 22,000 words and 11 chapters - a novella spanning 150 or so years. I did very much enjoy slipping into ludicrous over the top prose and inventive ridiculous names - here we see the nature of the man - the Reverend Severin Speighhart.

“Six feet of God’s dirt must cover the doomed, Mungo! Six feet under must they be and not an inch less! This black rod of mine is made precise for this good purpose, Mungo. Six feet of dirt above and one and one-half feet below for the casket in which the pitiful sinners rest. Listen! Do you not hear the bones of Mrs Golightly, the bed-hopping harridan, shivering within her box afore the alter whilst her corpse awaits the reckoning? Doubtless the Lord’s judgement shall be one more justly harsh than any I shall muster at her funeral service. Foul slattern! Widow’s weeds for barely a year before she leapt like a spring heeled harlot to the next coin purse, then shameless came to me each time to bless the union! She must feel the full weight of the pit pressing upon her! Dig! Dig on man, and deeper until the skull atop my stave is down there too!”

I think this shows the power of a character to write its own story through you, once you let them out. The tale drifts from gothic tongue in cheek to dark, present day psychological torment. Happy Christmas! Writing serialised fiction is something I love and hate but I keep doing it.

AND YET AGAIN - children embody the horror.

The first chapter is here: The Legacy

An index to all 11 chapters is here: The Legacy - Index

A Tale of Turmeric

This was an experiment for me - shamelessly pulling from the tone of magical realism stories from authors like Rushdie and Marquez. The Idea came from a single line that I just found myself saying one day in the kitchen when I was making dhal and peeling some fresh turmeric root. Where did it come from? No idea, but the story was well liked.

“But Tirah knew that this was not the truth. There was chapter untold. It choked him like a boiled egg swallowed whole. He longed to speak it, to free it from his nightmares, but he would not give it to this child, and so within his mind it stayed.”

I was trying to create the sense of a man needing to unburden himself of childhood trauma, but being unwilling to do so when the story was too awful for another child to be burdened with. I imagined that feeling when a memory, an emotion, a sad song etc., tightens your throat - trying to think of a metaphor that would resonate.

I was so happy at the reception of this story, and I encourage everyone to experimet with a style - it doesnt matter if you try to write something LIKE someone else does - its all work and your own voice will colour it in anyway.

I was never happy with the name of this story, but could not think of anything else.

The story is here: A Tale of Turmeric

White Matter Disease

This is a speculative Sci Fi Story in two parts which got out of hand and was too long for the submission. But the story is what the story needs. Andy Futuro and his here already dystopian horror (and soem trips to the docs) were very influental at the time.

“We looked at each other; death wasn’t something we had thought about before, but now the possibility of it was alive. We both nodded. “Yes of course,” we said, as one.”

I was particularly happy with this line and the juxtaposition of life and death, the idea of death coming to life. The story is about the insidious power of a medical institution, our willingness to follow rules, how we trust and how trust can be subverted. Again medical procedures, our helplessness under the knife, consent stolen from you insidiously - these are all great horror tropes because we have all been in those situations - you don’t want to do it but the doctor says its for the best…

This was written from my experience of having MRI scans and feeling totally freaked out by helplessness in the machine and the images of my own brain.

Read the Story here: White Matter Disease

A Decision

this is a prequel slice from the bits of the cli sci fi mystery novel I have batting around for literally years. The character here is in fact the Helen character from Homo Miceliensis - no really!

“She had watched him walk away and turn up the street out of sight, then had gone into the lounge and sat on the sofa bed, pulling a throw over her. She stared at the envelope, preparing herself for some long, angst-filled letter of explanation. But it hadn’t been a long, angst-filled letter of explanation, or a confession, or any sort of letter. It was more a sort of invoice, for her share of the last few months’ bills. She scraped at something ingrained in the fabric of the throw with her nail and thought that she must have completely misunderstood what love was.”

Here I was trying to create and destroy the character of Michael in as few words as possible. He only has one line of dialogue (not shown above) and I tried to put myself in Helen’s shoes, on the sofa, on her own, getting dumped in the most mundane way possible. It is possibly the closest to lit fic I have come, because the story, as such, is (at this tage) not overtly sci fi, or horror or anything genre, only the story of a young woman with a difficult choice to make. I would love it if read this, because he is a legend at capturing emotion in words. No pressure.

here is the story: A Decision

I’m late, I’m always late, but then the rest of them are always early and even if I was on time, I’d still be last.

Every three months these meetings are on and it will be my turn to host soon. I must remember to get biscuits sorted myself because…didn’t the committee rule that we couldn’t have biscuits at public expense? No such strictures in the other 5 councils; always the poor cousin, us.

So, I’m late. Signing in at the back entrance for council staff, council lanyard round my neck, my face grinning, swinging beneath my face. Behind the counter, she’s there. Nameless Woman. It’s always her - the easiest job in the world?

“Name please.”

“Who are you here to see?”

“Can you sign the register - date and time.”

“Please put your car registration if you used the car park.”

There you go - pop that in your badge and I’ll buzz you through.”

I look at the plastic container on the counter. Inside it there are name badges with little pins on the back. Nameless Woman behind the counter – they stopped making us wear name badges, too many weirdos – slides me a paper slip with my name on under the glass screen.

“VISITOR - OFFICIAL” It says.

On the container full of name badges is a label. It says in large, well spaced bold letters:

“B A D G E S”

Well I never! In my hand is my pen, the one I signed the visitor book with. Nameless Woman has turned away, her job done. Swiftly, overcome with some primal urge, I write a single letter “r” on the sign in biro.

“B A D G ErS” it now says.

The elation I feel at this is hard to explain. I go up to the fourth floor - I know the way now, smile and nod at a few people. And I’m not late, we’re still waiting for “A.” I sit, we chat, catch up. This committee is just for head lawyers of 6 councils. We meet to chew legal fat every few months and I tell them about public transport stuff, that’s my remit: buses, trains, cyclepaths. Someone always cracks the “What? psychopaths?” joke. Then “A.” arrives, ruddy cheeks, shopping bags and apologies.

“You want a coffee A? How do you like it?” asks B. the host.

“Strong and black…like my MEN.” A says. We all laugh. A is a hoot. We shouldn’t laugh; it’s probably racist. I wonder if A really would like a strong black man. That’s probably sexist and racist.

“Who’s doing the minutes?” I say.

By chance, the very next week, I have to come back to the same place. Different meeting. Different agenda. Serious business this time. No potentially racist sexist jokes. At the reception desk, I see the container.

“B A D G E S”

My pen comes out. The BADGErS return.

For the next few months, there is a lot of high-powered devolution business going on amongst the councils. My little authority is stuck in the middle. Encircled. Decisions are made about us that we do not get to know about until we are instructed to deliver them. But the Monitoring Officers have to be there…monitoring, and I get the bad news before anyone else. I get to listen to the council leaders talk about taking us out. Eye opening.

We realise, after a short while, that we are fighting for our existence. It’s not a fight we can win, despite our technical superiority and singular function; our necessity to the community, our relatively tiny weeny budget. Our efficiency. We try to do something, but nobody is listening in government.

Every week when I go to these meetings, I see that the “BADGErS” have been dealt wit and every week I make sure they return. It’s not as if tuberculosis is even a thing in the council, why is anyone even noticing? Is Nameless Woman noticing? She must be; it seems to be getting more and more difficult to get a second unobserved to draw that little R.

Then they laminate the label - the biro doesnt work! That will stop the nonsense.

I make my own label. Brazen now. I don’t care.

“B A D G E R S”

Printed in a font even larger, bolder than before. I stick it over the other one with blu-tac. I am a 45 year old man. For the next few weeks, I come with BADGERS ready to deploy. Eventually, I even print them with a small badger on the corner.

The End comes.

I am at the desk. Nameless Woman slides the slip of paper under the glass screen and watches me carefully. I fold it in half and take a badge from the BADGES container. BADGERS lurk in my coat pocket. She does not take her eyes from me. I slip the folded visitor pass into the badge. She does not take her eyes from me. I look at her and smile. She leans forward imperceptibly. I take a long time fumbling the pin on the badge as I try to pin it to my lapel. Her eyes are boring into me, she is not going to turn away. I finish attaching my badge and look back up and smile a great big smile. We stare at each other.

“Is it…” she starts to speak then stops.

“Sorry?” I say.

“Is it you that…” she stops again.

We stare at each other. I can see her agonising over it. Can she bring herself to ask this man, this SENIOR LEGAL OFFICER the ridiculous question that is on her lips…Because, in order to ask it, it means that she must accuse him…to accuse him of…something utterly ridiculous.

“Is it me that…what?” I beam.

She cracks. “Oh nothing. Sorry. Main council chamber Sir. Through the double doors and straight on.”

I nod and she buzzes me in, hawkish, not giving me my chance. She has won this round. After the meeting, I note down the resolution that will herald the demise of my little council. It is to be subsumed into something else and all its staff scattered, absorbed or tempted to early retirement. At tax payers’ expense.

I leave by the back entrance, which I do not usually do, and as I drop my BADGE back into the BADGE box at reception, Nameless Woman isn’t there! Nobody has buzzed to come in the door, you see…

The BADGERS return but I never do. The final battle is mine, but the war was lost.