The sun bore down on the sandy concrete, dust blowing up from the wind that casually swept through the narrow buildings bringing a respite to the midsummer heat. A young girl, no older than maybe seven or eight, ran along the narrow strip of shade cast down from the houses, smiling brightly to herself. Her feet skittered lightly, the patter of her sandles echoing on the bare walls, one hand trailing across the cool brick to keep her balance.
Her face shone, her happy eyes wandering around the road looking for a new toy for her imagination to bring to life. Boredom had given away to exploration that afternoon and she was determined to eke some fun whilst her mother did the chores.
She came to a junction where the alleys flowed into eachother, and stopped to reach into a bag she was carrying for an old plastic bottle full of water. She unscrewed the cap and gulped some down, scowling briefly at the sun for being so hot and pulled her headscarf further over her forehead.
Then something finally caught her eye. Up ahead in the distance, she saw a glimmering reflection on the ground. She popped the cap back on the water, slung it back into the bag and ran up to it.
The girl bent down and screwed her eyes up against the glare of the object that lay in the grit. A cylinder of golden metal reflected the sun back up at her. Slowly she bent down to pick it up, her hands curling around it before suddenly retracting as she realised how hot it was.
She stood up and kicked it back into the shade, where again she took out her bottle and poured the (slightly warm) water over it to cool it off. The cylinder was even brighter without the layer of dirt it had gathered. It was about the size of one of her fingers and bent in at the top where the hole was. She prodded it then gingerly picked it up lengthways between her thumb and forefinger. The bottom of the metal was blackened and when she held it to her nose and gave it an inquisitive sniff, it smelt strange.
The girl considered it for a second, then pocketed it in her bag before taking another sip of water. The afternoon was still young, as was she, and she had every intent of making use of her free time to explore the backalleys further.
She hoiked the bag back up, slinging it around one shoulder and over the opposite hip (having it on the same side was proving problematic) and took off again. The sun was pretty much overhead now and the shadow was starting to recede to a fine line. There was barely any escape aside from making sure that her scarf was peaked over her face.
The girl was suprised she hadn't bumped into any of her friends yet. It had gone quiet in the hour or so she'd left home. Her mother wouldn't be worried though... it wasn't the first time she'd gone out on her own, and she knew pretty much everyone in the community so it wasn't as if she was going to get lost, or worse in trouble, without being able to knock on the nearest door.
The next alley was pretty much a dead end, aside from some bins and a short fence. Being seven, she could barely see over it, but knew just over it the countryside would sprawl into the distance where tree's and rooftops were clumped on faraway hilltops, places she would often dream of seeing when she was old enough to go and explore beyond her small town.
She pulled herself up onto one of the bins, being sure not to spill the top, and lifted herself up so she could see over.
The golden, dusty landscape spilled out away from the village in front of her. Other villages and houses were speckled across into the haze beyond. The road which led in ribboned out into a valley, where far away a column of dust rose into the sky, drifting at an angle in the light wind.
The girl squinted. Something was coming.
She turned her head to the left to look at the village entrance which in easy peeking distance from where she leant. A group of men, some of whom she recognised being her mothers friends, were looking down to the approaching objects. One of them, instantly recognisable as her uncle with his shaved head and untucked white shirt, had his hands raised up over his eyes and was talking inaudibly to the others. Another older man nodded and raised some binoculars up.
All of them were frowning. One was sat down with his head in his hands.
The girl felt a sudden pang in her chest. It wasn't excitement like before, when she was running the streets with the sense of adventure filling her heart with adrenaline. No, this was something she'd felt before when she was younger. When the sky was dark and full of lights. When her father had gone into the night.
She suddenly realised she was gripping her hands so tightly onto the fence it was beginning to hurt. A large splinter had entered the center of her left middle finger and a trickle of blood had started to flow slowly into the webbing between her digits. For a moment, distracted, the feeling in her chest went away as she turned to the shard of wood that dug in underneath the surface of her skin. Her forehead creased with the pain as she reached a fingernail underneath and extracted it with a sharp intake of breath.
Even with the splinter gone, it still bled and the wound continued to hurt.
The girl looked briefly back up at the distant yellow cloud, then jumped down off the bin and ran back to her mother.
If anyone could make her better, make her feel safer, it was her.
Thursday, 27 August 2009
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Deadline
It was late - and getting later.
A man in his mid thirties sat in a blank office somewhere in a nondescript town at the edge of nowhere. The walls were white and the large sheet glass windows looked out onto a dull, grey industrial estate, the sky as blank and as featureless as the room he sat in. The only exit was a plain wooden door in the wall behind him.
He was typing, transfixed to the single monitor on his otherwise bare desk. The mans fingers rapidly moved across the keyboard with almost supernatural speed, his eyes darting up to look at the clock. To him, its hands seemed to be getting quicker, as if the faster he typed time sped up... and so the closer the deadline drew.
To the casual observer, the reams of apparently random numbers and letters he laid out on the screen would've made little sense. Occasionally you could make out a word within the text and code, but it would be quickly swallowed up and swamped in the crazed reverse Tetris of characters. The matter of fact was that even to the man, what he was writing made little sense. It was stream-of-conciousness babble. But that's what he was there to create. That was his job.
The hand ticked closer and closer to three o'clock in the morning.
Sweat had appeared on the mans brow. The speed of his typing had got a point where it had become a physical exhertion, his fingers screaming at him to stop, the ache of carpal tunnel beginning to enter his wrists. Damp patches had appeared on his grey shirt and a trace of condensation had begun to creep up from the bottom of his glasses.
Numbers followed numbers that followed letters. The scrolling had become almost rythmic. The blank system font rolled ever upwards, the occasional break in the unintelligible sentencing giving it the appearence of an ancient scroll.
Thirty seconds.
He gritted his teeth. The pain had really start to hit him now. His fingers were almost raw at the tip, blisters had begun to form. The keyboard itself seemed hot to touch. But he had to keep going.
Fifteen seconds.
Nearly there... nearly there...
Ten.
His eyes nagged at him to look at the clock, but there was no time... no time...
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
The man gritted his teeth.
One.
At that precise moment, the screen locked. His hands hovered over the keys and he allowed himself a glance up at the clock, before looking down again at the final sentence of characters.
+--YK1MCH1ZUK7>'=12ADMSCL5LNDnN23F2J//]
He lowered his head, took his glasses off and wiped them dry on his shirt. Then, letting out a sharp breath, he turned to the simple white phone on his desk, picked it up and pressed the hash key twice.
There was a click on the line. The man cleared his throat.
"We have a new deadline."
Then, slowly, he put the phone down, stood, took his suit jacket that was draped over the back of his chair, walked over to the plain wooden door, opened it and walked out.
The room lay quiet and still - until the next day, when it would all begin again...
A man in his mid thirties sat in a blank office somewhere in a nondescript town at the edge of nowhere. The walls were white and the large sheet glass windows looked out onto a dull, grey industrial estate, the sky as blank and as featureless as the room he sat in. The only exit was a plain wooden door in the wall behind him.
He was typing, transfixed to the single monitor on his otherwise bare desk. The mans fingers rapidly moved across the keyboard with almost supernatural speed, his eyes darting up to look at the clock. To him, its hands seemed to be getting quicker, as if the faster he typed time sped up... and so the closer the deadline drew.
To the casual observer, the reams of apparently random numbers and letters he laid out on the screen would've made little sense. Occasionally you could make out a word within the text and code, but it would be quickly swallowed up and swamped in the crazed reverse Tetris of characters. The matter of fact was that even to the man, what he was writing made little sense. It was stream-of-conciousness babble. But that's what he was there to create. That was his job.
The hand ticked closer and closer to three o'clock in the morning.
Sweat had appeared on the mans brow. The speed of his typing had got a point where it had become a physical exhertion, his fingers screaming at him to stop, the ache of carpal tunnel beginning to enter his wrists. Damp patches had appeared on his grey shirt and a trace of condensation had begun to creep up from the bottom of his glasses.
Numbers followed numbers that followed letters. The scrolling had become almost rythmic. The blank system font rolled ever upwards, the occasional break in the unintelligible sentencing giving it the appearence of an ancient scroll.
Thirty seconds.
He gritted his teeth. The pain had really start to hit him now. His fingers were almost raw at the tip, blisters had begun to form. The keyboard itself seemed hot to touch. But he had to keep going.
Fifteen seconds.
Nearly there... nearly there...
Ten.
His eyes nagged at him to look at the clock, but there was no time... no time...
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
The man gritted his teeth.
One.
At that precise moment, the screen locked. His hands hovered over the keys and he allowed himself a glance up at the clock, before looking down again at the final sentence of characters.
+--YK1MCH1ZUK7>'=12ADMSCL5LNDnN23F2J//]
He lowered his head, took his glasses off and wiped them dry on his shirt. Then, letting out a sharp breath, he turned to the simple white phone on his desk, picked it up and pressed the hash key twice.
There was a click on the line. The man cleared his throat.
"We have a new deadline."
Then, slowly, he put the phone down, stood, took his suit jacket that was draped over the back of his chair, walked over to the plain wooden door, opened it and walked out.
The room lay quiet and still - until the next day, when it would all begin again...
Thursday, 22 January 2009
A Visitor
Jenny liked to lie on her bed when the lights were put out and stare at the shadows dancing on the ceiling, cast by the trees outside.
In that respect, she'd later note as an adult, she was unusual for a little girl her age. Most kids wanted the door slightly ajar, knowing that their parents were a quick bolt away should anything appear under the bed or from behind the closet door. But not Jenny. She loved the dark, it was mysterious and romantic, not frightening and strange. Some nights if she couldn't sleep she'd throw back the covers, tip-toe into her dressing gown and slippers and go downstairs to the conservatory to sit. If it was a clear night, with a moon casting its silver light over the garden beyond, she'd look up at the stars (for there were many where she lived in the country, away from the orange glow of city streetlights) and speculated as to what would happen if she were to shoot off in one direction at the super speed, what she would see.
Her gaze would turn to the garden, bordered at the end by a forest, and wonder what strange animals were staring at her from the safety of the thicket. Maybe there were faeries there, or other supernatural forces. But these thoughts didn't scare her like they did other children – instead, they fascinated her.
When it began her mum or dad would come down to find her there, scold her and take her back to bed. Behind her back they would discuss their daughters odd night-time habits and wonder if it was worth doing something about, but aside from that she led a pretty normal life, did well in school, got on well with her friends and had a keen interest in playing the violin. So eventually they decided to give up and let her get on with it, keeping a blanket to hand to cover her if it was cold and sometimes finding her asleep in her chair in the conservatory the following morning.
But Jenny was to discover something one day the week before Christmas. That if you spend enough time watching, eventually you'll see something, or find out that something was probably staring back all along....
It had been a pretty normal day in school. Jenny had rushed home as ever, had her dinner, polished off some homework and spent some time practising her violin. Later she watched a film and, come ten o'clock, shipped herself off to bed (her parents rarely had to nag) to spend a while reading with a glass of water before switching off the light.
As usual, four hours later, she woke up. As her eyes opened, the jagged shapes of tree shadows swaying on the white paint of the ceiling swam into view.
Jenny yawned and lay there, still, her eyes half closed. She needed the toilet. So she stirred, checked the time (02.18) and rolled out of bed. Her toes dipped down into her slippers as she slid off and after walking crookedly to her door, she grabbed her dressing gown off the hook and disappeared to the bathroom.
A few minutes later, she shuffled back in, a little more alert than before. It was a bit cold and she shivered slightly, keeping the gown on as she moved towards the bed. The moon appeared to be full outside, and the room was cast in a white glow, sharp shadows scattered everywhere through the treetops outside. Jenny reached the edge of her bed and looked up. The wood swayed in a breeze and above it the sky was free of cloud and swathed in blankets of stars. She blinked, slightly stunned. Somehow it looked so much clearer tonight, as if she could see billions and billions of miles out to galaxies that even the largest telescope couldn't reach. Then she realised that it wasn't the moon illuminating her room, as it was absent that night, but the stars alone.
Countless tiny points of light clustered around each other here and there amongst the ocean of blue blackness, punctuated by larger, brighter distant suns... and giant nebulae, deep purple, pink and red, formed massive, cloud-like waves as if they were threatening to crash towards Earth. The sky was alive with detail, stars weaving together and sweeping through the air like silk trailed by a dancer. Venus and Mars hung bright and fierce in the sky and when she squinted Jenny swore she could nearly make out each one as a crescent in the night.
Excited, Jenny banished all thoughts of sleep, grabbed a blanket and made her way downstairs. Her feet navigated about the creaky floorboards so as not to wake her parents as she crept downstairs through the darkness to her favourite red wooden chair in the conservatory. She passed through the lounge which was aglow with the warm lights of the Christmas tree, and when she reached her destination noted that the plants almost seemed reverent, the leaves wilting slightly as if bowing to the breathtaking sky above. As she sat, she looked up into the garden. The light from the sky above had taken away the colour of the world and left it almost monochromatic and when she looked up at the majestic scene spread out before her she felt almost dizzy with vertigo, as if her dream of shooting off into the galaxy was about to come true.
She sighed and huddled up to her blanket, pulling it over her mouth so the soft wool warmed under her breath. The garden sat silent. No animals scurried and the plants themselves seemed frozen, bewitched by the magnificent sky. Sparkling frost covered the grass, competing with the stars for her attention. The forest frame the scene as if a theatre backdrop, black branches curling up into the night, the twigs giving the illusion of millions of hands reaching up to pluck the tiny lights like diamonds in a pitch black mine.
It was then she noticed the shape.
There, right in the middle of the garden, something was hovering.
She leant forwards and blinked. Whatever it was, it was floating above the centre of the lawn, a few meters high into the air. A faint shadow lay underneath as confirmation of its existence.
Jenny got up and swept the blanket around her like a cloak, all the while watching the shape, which appeared to be spinning quite slowly in place. She tiptoed up to the window, narrowly missing knocking over a pot plant, put her hands up to the cold glass and stared. Occasionally it would glint a reflection of light which came from the house, probably from something in the kitchen window, and after a few moments staring, she decided that it was... a triangle. No... a pyramid.
Jenny didn't feel scared or frightened by the presence in the garden. It seemed benign to her. Non-threatening... and she got the feeling that it was waiting for her.
She gave it a thought for a moment about what to do. Her parents would want to stay inside. Talking to strangers was one thing, but approaching strange objects? Where did it come from? What did it contain? Was it an alien from another planet, like in the films she saw on TV? She recalled the few she'd seen... one with a creature with a glowing chest, another about a boy who befriends a spaceship and yet another about little robots that could have babies. She pressed her nose against the glass and let out breath, frosting it before leaning back. Through the dot her nose left, surrounded by the decreasing haze, the object floated. She was certain it knew she was there. If it was going to do anything bad, it probably would've done it by now.
It was then she decided that at least going out to see what it wanted was the right thing to do.
Jenny crept back into the lounge and walked up to the tree, before carefully removing a single silver bauble, thinking that a gift would be appropriate when welcoming a visitor. It was a pretty silver one that reflected the colours of the tree lights in thousands of tiny triangles of glitter. She smiled, popped it into the pocket of her dressing gown, huddled the blanket closer and set off for the conservatory door.
The pyramid still hovered in place in the garden, she noted as she passed back through the conservatory glass. She picked up the key hidden under a pot away from the door, then, holding the cold metal door handle, put it in the lock and turned it. As she pulled the door open, she let out a little gasp as the cold air rushed in over her feet, then stepped out into the frozen night.
The blanket kept her warm, but each breath caught in the back of her throat and her face felt numb in the chill of the night. Her slippers crunched the frozen, well trimmed grass as she stepped off of the path that led from the conservatory and out into the forest beyond (or at least that part which belonged to her family), and carefully she walked out towards the obsidian shape. Jenny briefly looked up at the sky, her head swimming at the sight of the cavernous universe above, the scale reminding her of the cathedral she'd visited in school the previous term. She recalled how far away the ornately decorated ceiling seemed, giant stone arches streaking off into its darkest corners, the distant faces of gargoyles and angels staring down as if looking through a portal from some unknown, darker part of heaven.
Her eyes tracked back down to the pyramid as she continued her approach. Now she was closer, she could tell that it definitely wasn't a figment of her imagination. It looked like it was carved out of a solid piece of stone, smoothed to a shine. No light came from it, but it reflected everything about it – each surface facing up to the sky trapping the stars in their black mirrors. Jenny halted a meter away. Now she was closer, she could feel warmth coming from it. The air seemed to vibrate and an electric smell, reminding her of her parents kettle the month before, permeated the air. Yet despite both she couldn't hear a motor, her ears only settling on the occasional creak from the tree's and the distant sound of a branch dropping in the silence of the wood.
She reached into her pocket, felt for the cool orb of the decoration and pulled it out. With a shiver she cradled it in both hands for a moment before hesitantly holding it out up to the little pyramid.
Almost immediately, it started to slow down.
Jenny looked about. Her parents lights were still off, so nobody knew she was there. For a moment she wondered if she should have gone and told them what she'd seen. But then the pyramid came to a stop and her attention was drawn back to it. It had tipped forwards slightly so that one of the triangular sides was facing flat towards her.
Almost imperceptibly at first, a thin trace of white light broke through the glossy surface as a rectangular shape cut itself free and ejected out of its slot towards her. The thin piece of stone then started to slope out towards her and the light began to flood outwards so brightly that Jenny found herself shielding her eyes. The bauble reflected it like a mirror ball, casting silvery points out into the darkest corners of the garden.
Then the light went out.
Jenny lowered her arm. Her retinas were still a little burnt with the shape of the door, but she could see that the door had now fully lowered into something resembling a little platform and the space behind it had become pitch-black. As her sight adjusted back to the dark, she then noted a shape moving outwards from inside the little object.
At first, a thin, white leg, smooth and featureless, curved out into the night air. Jenny retracted her bauble and moved a little closer. It didn't have a foot as such, the leg (or whatever it was) came down to a point and was supported by what looked like four little white roots. Then, after a moment, the rest of the creature followed. A small hand, with only three tiny fingers, if they could even be called that, curled around the side of the entrance and out stepped the most peculiar little creature Jenny had ever seen.
It had a long, thin white body, two arms and two legs, and a head that didn't have any identifiable neck. It seemed like a formless worm from deep underground had taken the shape of something approximating human. It had eyes, but they were more the eyes of a small rodent than a person, being two unblinking black orbs that sat outside of its face on stubby little stalks. Yet despite their simple appearance were very expressive, their movement indicating that it was looking about at its surroundings. Under the eyes Jenny couldn't make out a mouth, but rather a cluster of the same small white tubes that ended its feet and hands, which wriggled out around in the direction it was looking. This was accompanied by a gentle sniffing sound, so she decided that they must be its nose.
Jenny could hear herself breathing. She felt a palpable buzz of excitement. She'd forgotten how cold it was and in her transfixed state had let the blanket she was wearing slip to the icy ground.
The worm-man, hesitant, stepped out further, looking about with small, smooth movements. Its feelers pawed at the air for a moment before it turned its attention to the small girl standing below, nervously holding out her silver bauble. It had now reached the end of the platform and was leaning quizzically over the edge, peering at the surface of the glittering orb at its hundreds of tiny mirrored reflections.
Jenny let out an involuntary shiver and quickly placed her hand over her mouth, eyes wide. The creature straightened in suprise. Jenny cleared her throat to speak, and as she did so was surprised to hear herself in the stillness of the garden. Then it hit her that she had absolutely nothing to say and even if she did – would it understand? She held the bauble up.
The visitor relaxed from its upright posture and put a hand towards the gift in a gesture of curiosity . Jenny croaked out, suddenly aware that the cold was catching her throat. Her words came out crooked and raspy, not at all the friendly introduction she'd had in her mind.
“This... this is for you.”
The worm-man stood stock still. Its little tubes moved about slowly as it processed the sound, then it reached out and plucked the bauble from her grasp. Jenny quickly retracted her hand and put it in her pocket, before huddling up her shoulders against the freezing temperatures. It held the bauble aloft in examination, turned its head somewhat theatrically back to Jenny, then bobbed its head like a bird before startling her with an odd sneezing sound, like a sped-up elephant.
Jenny let out a little giggle. The creature visibly jumped a bit then leant back towards her, before bobbing its head again. She bowed back in return, which seemed to please it, for the visitor then squeezed its eyes shut (the eyelids seemingly coming from nowhere) and bobbed its head back in return. It then gathered itself up in a haunch, before throwing the bauble up into the air. Jenny reached her hand out involuntarily to catch it before she realised that instead of arching down back to her, the silver ball floated up above her head and carried itself onwards up above the conservatory and beyond the roof of the house.
The little white creature watched as it rose, following its ascent until the glinting silver orb joined the myriad other stars in the sky. Jenny looked down back at the creature which cocked its head back at her like an inquisitive puppy and gave another of its distinctive sneezes.
Jenny smiled and put out a hand.
The creature looked down at it, back at her, then reached out. Jenny watched as its tiny little tube-like fingers curled around the end of her index finger. It was surprisingly warm. She looked up at its black eyes and smiled. The little whiskers vibrated slightly in response and she guessed that, in some way, perhaps it was smiling back?
At that moment, an odd sensation ran through her body. She felt light and her mind fuzzy, as if someone had stuffed her head with cotton wool. Her vision blurred a bit and she blinked to see the face of the creature towering above her.
Then she realised she was standing next to it. Jenny gasped and looked about - she was still in her garden, only now the creature was standing in front of her far bigger than before. Somehow it had shrunk her down to its size, only comparatively speaking in proportion the worm-man was far bigger than she. Looking down at her feet she saw her slippers were on the surface of the little craft, and when she turned to look about the sky seemed so much bigger than before, an epic painting in a chapel of infinite size, and the garden and house dwarfed the pair entirely.
The creature bobbed its head then started to lead Jenny back to the hole in the pyramid from whereupon it emerged, tugging her gently and insistently onwards. At first she was hesitant, but it seemed to her that the visitor didn't seem to wish her any ill will, its benign presence filled her with confidence. So she followed, realising how cold she felt now she was so much smaller, and together they made their up the platform, which she could now tell was of a rougher surface than she first made out, and towards the dark portal gaping before them. Warmth emanated from it and Jenny began to walk alongside the striding visitor, eager to get out of the winter chill.
As the warm darkness enveloped them, the creature let out another sneeze. The light from the craft started to shine again, and they paused before it.
Jenny looked at the worm-man, who bowed in affirmation, then she squeezed her eyes shut and took a step forward...
There was another sneeze.
Jenny opened her eyes. She was looking up at her ceiling.
She sneezed again.
Shadows from the trees outside danced above in silvery overcast daylight, which hurt her eyes as she blinked herself awake.
The feeling started to flow as her body began to wake up. Almost immediately her throat started to complain, then as she moved her limbs ached. Her head followed as she became dizzy as she sat up, and she fell back down again. A mild sweat clung to her forehead.
Jenny gave out a little moan. She was ill. Her mother shouted up the stairs for her to come down for school, and six minutes later when Jenny didn't respond, she rushed in to tell her off only to see her daughter lying there, pale and feverish, holding the bedsheets tightly over her mouth with a slightly desperate look in her eyes.
She stayed home that day. Her mother brought up the small television from the study and the video player from downstairs and, when not tending to household chores, sat at her daughters side. The doctor came and went, commiserating to Jenny about her terrible influenza and talking in hushed tones and long words with her parents that evening about things she couldn't understand. Comics were bought and she was spoilt rotten for days, missing the last few days of school and spending most of her time in bed, to the point where she couldn't remember ever being well – and if she'd ever know what it was like to feel normal again.
Throughout her ordeal Jenny suffered silently, all the while thinking about her visitor that night. It all felt like a fever dream, an alternate reality that had intruded hers from the pages of her favourite fantasy novelist. As Christmas rolled on, then the New Year, Jenny begun to reminisce less and less about the strange little worm-man. They year went by, then years, and the entire ordeal of the visitor was swamped with vague memories of childhood illness.
It was much later in her life when Jenny had a daughter of her own, that the memory resurfaced, one late night whilst sitting in their cabin in the country staring at the stars. Even then she couldn't remember if it was just something she saw on television, a strange dream, or a story told to her by her parents. She held her sleeping daughter close to her, looking up at the sweeping night sky, wondering what it would be like to fall into it, to be enveloped in its blanket of stars, a quilt of dark silk that endlessly wrapped around itself through infinity.
She hoped it was real, feeling a twinge of sadness ath the thought that it most probably wasn't. Jenny felt her daughter stir. She looked down at her blonde head, her baby's face staring out at something in the woods beyond. The girl looked up, a quizzical expression on her face and one arm pointed out at something she couldn't quite see.
“Mummy... what's that?”
Jenny looked up... and smiled.
In that respect, she'd later note as an adult, she was unusual for a little girl her age. Most kids wanted the door slightly ajar, knowing that their parents were a quick bolt away should anything appear under the bed or from behind the closet door. But not Jenny. She loved the dark, it was mysterious and romantic, not frightening and strange. Some nights if she couldn't sleep she'd throw back the covers, tip-toe into her dressing gown and slippers and go downstairs to the conservatory to sit. If it was a clear night, with a moon casting its silver light over the garden beyond, she'd look up at the stars (for there were many where she lived in the country, away from the orange glow of city streetlights) and speculated as to what would happen if she were to shoot off in one direction at the super speed, what she would see.
Her gaze would turn to the garden, bordered at the end by a forest, and wonder what strange animals were staring at her from the safety of the thicket. Maybe there were faeries there, or other supernatural forces. But these thoughts didn't scare her like they did other children – instead, they fascinated her.
When it began her mum or dad would come down to find her there, scold her and take her back to bed. Behind her back they would discuss their daughters odd night-time habits and wonder if it was worth doing something about, but aside from that she led a pretty normal life, did well in school, got on well with her friends and had a keen interest in playing the violin. So eventually they decided to give up and let her get on with it, keeping a blanket to hand to cover her if it was cold and sometimes finding her asleep in her chair in the conservatory the following morning.
But Jenny was to discover something one day the week before Christmas. That if you spend enough time watching, eventually you'll see something, or find out that something was probably staring back all along....
It had been a pretty normal day in school. Jenny had rushed home as ever, had her dinner, polished off some homework and spent some time practising her violin. Later she watched a film and, come ten o'clock, shipped herself off to bed (her parents rarely had to nag) to spend a while reading with a glass of water before switching off the light.
As usual, four hours later, she woke up. As her eyes opened, the jagged shapes of tree shadows swaying on the white paint of the ceiling swam into view.
Jenny yawned and lay there, still, her eyes half closed. She needed the toilet. So she stirred, checked the time (02.18) and rolled out of bed. Her toes dipped down into her slippers as she slid off and after walking crookedly to her door, she grabbed her dressing gown off the hook and disappeared to the bathroom.
A few minutes later, she shuffled back in, a little more alert than before. It was a bit cold and she shivered slightly, keeping the gown on as she moved towards the bed. The moon appeared to be full outside, and the room was cast in a white glow, sharp shadows scattered everywhere through the treetops outside. Jenny reached the edge of her bed and looked up. The wood swayed in a breeze and above it the sky was free of cloud and swathed in blankets of stars. She blinked, slightly stunned. Somehow it looked so much clearer tonight, as if she could see billions and billions of miles out to galaxies that even the largest telescope couldn't reach. Then she realised that it wasn't the moon illuminating her room, as it was absent that night, but the stars alone.
Countless tiny points of light clustered around each other here and there amongst the ocean of blue blackness, punctuated by larger, brighter distant suns... and giant nebulae, deep purple, pink and red, formed massive, cloud-like waves as if they were threatening to crash towards Earth. The sky was alive with detail, stars weaving together and sweeping through the air like silk trailed by a dancer. Venus and Mars hung bright and fierce in the sky and when she squinted Jenny swore she could nearly make out each one as a crescent in the night.
Excited, Jenny banished all thoughts of sleep, grabbed a blanket and made her way downstairs. Her feet navigated about the creaky floorboards so as not to wake her parents as she crept downstairs through the darkness to her favourite red wooden chair in the conservatory. She passed through the lounge which was aglow with the warm lights of the Christmas tree, and when she reached her destination noted that the plants almost seemed reverent, the leaves wilting slightly as if bowing to the breathtaking sky above. As she sat, she looked up into the garden. The light from the sky above had taken away the colour of the world and left it almost monochromatic and when she looked up at the majestic scene spread out before her she felt almost dizzy with vertigo, as if her dream of shooting off into the galaxy was about to come true.
She sighed and huddled up to her blanket, pulling it over her mouth so the soft wool warmed under her breath. The garden sat silent. No animals scurried and the plants themselves seemed frozen, bewitched by the magnificent sky. Sparkling frost covered the grass, competing with the stars for her attention. The forest frame the scene as if a theatre backdrop, black branches curling up into the night, the twigs giving the illusion of millions of hands reaching up to pluck the tiny lights like diamonds in a pitch black mine.
It was then she noticed the shape.
There, right in the middle of the garden, something was hovering.
She leant forwards and blinked. Whatever it was, it was floating above the centre of the lawn, a few meters high into the air. A faint shadow lay underneath as confirmation of its existence.
Jenny got up and swept the blanket around her like a cloak, all the while watching the shape, which appeared to be spinning quite slowly in place. She tiptoed up to the window, narrowly missing knocking over a pot plant, put her hands up to the cold glass and stared. Occasionally it would glint a reflection of light which came from the house, probably from something in the kitchen window, and after a few moments staring, she decided that it was... a triangle. No... a pyramid.
Jenny didn't feel scared or frightened by the presence in the garden. It seemed benign to her. Non-threatening... and she got the feeling that it was waiting for her.
She gave it a thought for a moment about what to do. Her parents would want to stay inside. Talking to strangers was one thing, but approaching strange objects? Where did it come from? What did it contain? Was it an alien from another planet, like in the films she saw on TV? She recalled the few she'd seen... one with a creature with a glowing chest, another about a boy who befriends a spaceship and yet another about little robots that could have babies. She pressed her nose against the glass and let out breath, frosting it before leaning back. Through the dot her nose left, surrounded by the decreasing haze, the object floated. She was certain it knew she was there. If it was going to do anything bad, it probably would've done it by now.
It was then she decided that at least going out to see what it wanted was the right thing to do.
Jenny crept back into the lounge and walked up to the tree, before carefully removing a single silver bauble, thinking that a gift would be appropriate when welcoming a visitor. It was a pretty silver one that reflected the colours of the tree lights in thousands of tiny triangles of glitter. She smiled, popped it into the pocket of her dressing gown, huddled the blanket closer and set off for the conservatory door.
The pyramid still hovered in place in the garden, she noted as she passed back through the conservatory glass. She picked up the key hidden under a pot away from the door, then, holding the cold metal door handle, put it in the lock and turned it. As she pulled the door open, she let out a little gasp as the cold air rushed in over her feet, then stepped out into the frozen night.
The blanket kept her warm, but each breath caught in the back of her throat and her face felt numb in the chill of the night. Her slippers crunched the frozen, well trimmed grass as she stepped off of the path that led from the conservatory and out into the forest beyond (or at least that part which belonged to her family), and carefully she walked out towards the obsidian shape. Jenny briefly looked up at the sky, her head swimming at the sight of the cavernous universe above, the scale reminding her of the cathedral she'd visited in school the previous term. She recalled how far away the ornately decorated ceiling seemed, giant stone arches streaking off into its darkest corners, the distant faces of gargoyles and angels staring down as if looking through a portal from some unknown, darker part of heaven.
Her eyes tracked back down to the pyramid as she continued her approach. Now she was closer, she could tell that it definitely wasn't a figment of her imagination. It looked like it was carved out of a solid piece of stone, smoothed to a shine. No light came from it, but it reflected everything about it – each surface facing up to the sky trapping the stars in their black mirrors. Jenny halted a meter away. Now she was closer, she could feel warmth coming from it. The air seemed to vibrate and an electric smell, reminding her of her parents kettle the month before, permeated the air. Yet despite both she couldn't hear a motor, her ears only settling on the occasional creak from the tree's and the distant sound of a branch dropping in the silence of the wood.
She reached into her pocket, felt for the cool orb of the decoration and pulled it out. With a shiver she cradled it in both hands for a moment before hesitantly holding it out up to the little pyramid.
Almost immediately, it started to slow down.
Jenny looked about. Her parents lights were still off, so nobody knew she was there. For a moment she wondered if she should have gone and told them what she'd seen. But then the pyramid came to a stop and her attention was drawn back to it. It had tipped forwards slightly so that one of the triangular sides was facing flat towards her.
Almost imperceptibly at first, a thin trace of white light broke through the glossy surface as a rectangular shape cut itself free and ejected out of its slot towards her. The thin piece of stone then started to slope out towards her and the light began to flood outwards so brightly that Jenny found herself shielding her eyes. The bauble reflected it like a mirror ball, casting silvery points out into the darkest corners of the garden.
Then the light went out.
Jenny lowered her arm. Her retinas were still a little burnt with the shape of the door, but she could see that the door had now fully lowered into something resembling a little platform and the space behind it had become pitch-black. As her sight adjusted back to the dark, she then noted a shape moving outwards from inside the little object.
At first, a thin, white leg, smooth and featureless, curved out into the night air. Jenny retracted her bauble and moved a little closer. It didn't have a foot as such, the leg (or whatever it was) came down to a point and was supported by what looked like four little white roots. Then, after a moment, the rest of the creature followed. A small hand, with only three tiny fingers, if they could even be called that, curled around the side of the entrance and out stepped the most peculiar little creature Jenny had ever seen.
It had a long, thin white body, two arms and two legs, and a head that didn't have any identifiable neck. It seemed like a formless worm from deep underground had taken the shape of something approximating human. It had eyes, but they were more the eyes of a small rodent than a person, being two unblinking black orbs that sat outside of its face on stubby little stalks. Yet despite their simple appearance were very expressive, their movement indicating that it was looking about at its surroundings. Under the eyes Jenny couldn't make out a mouth, but rather a cluster of the same small white tubes that ended its feet and hands, which wriggled out around in the direction it was looking. This was accompanied by a gentle sniffing sound, so she decided that they must be its nose.
Jenny could hear herself breathing. She felt a palpable buzz of excitement. She'd forgotten how cold it was and in her transfixed state had let the blanket she was wearing slip to the icy ground.
The worm-man, hesitant, stepped out further, looking about with small, smooth movements. Its feelers pawed at the air for a moment before it turned its attention to the small girl standing below, nervously holding out her silver bauble. It had now reached the end of the platform and was leaning quizzically over the edge, peering at the surface of the glittering orb at its hundreds of tiny mirrored reflections.
Jenny let out an involuntary shiver and quickly placed her hand over her mouth, eyes wide. The creature straightened in suprise. Jenny cleared her throat to speak, and as she did so was surprised to hear herself in the stillness of the garden. Then it hit her that she had absolutely nothing to say and even if she did – would it understand? She held the bauble up.
The visitor relaxed from its upright posture and put a hand towards the gift in a gesture of curiosity . Jenny croaked out, suddenly aware that the cold was catching her throat. Her words came out crooked and raspy, not at all the friendly introduction she'd had in her mind.
“This... this is for you.”
The worm-man stood stock still. Its little tubes moved about slowly as it processed the sound, then it reached out and plucked the bauble from her grasp. Jenny quickly retracted her hand and put it in her pocket, before huddling up her shoulders against the freezing temperatures. It held the bauble aloft in examination, turned its head somewhat theatrically back to Jenny, then bobbed its head like a bird before startling her with an odd sneezing sound, like a sped-up elephant.
Jenny let out a little giggle. The creature visibly jumped a bit then leant back towards her, before bobbing its head again. She bowed back in return, which seemed to please it, for the visitor then squeezed its eyes shut (the eyelids seemingly coming from nowhere) and bobbed its head back in return. It then gathered itself up in a haunch, before throwing the bauble up into the air. Jenny reached her hand out involuntarily to catch it before she realised that instead of arching down back to her, the silver ball floated up above her head and carried itself onwards up above the conservatory and beyond the roof of the house.
The little white creature watched as it rose, following its ascent until the glinting silver orb joined the myriad other stars in the sky. Jenny looked down back at the creature which cocked its head back at her like an inquisitive puppy and gave another of its distinctive sneezes.
Jenny smiled and put out a hand.
The creature looked down at it, back at her, then reached out. Jenny watched as its tiny little tube-like fingers curled around the end of her index finger. It was surprisingly warm. She looked up at its black eyes and smiled. The little whiskers vibrated slightly in response and she guessed that, in some way, perhaps it was smiling back?
At that moment, an odd sensation ran through her body. She felt light and her mind fuzzy, as if someone had stuffed her head with cotton wool. Her vision blurred a bit and she blinked to see the face of the creature towering above her.
Then she realised she was standing next to it. Jenny gasped and looked about - she was still in her garden, only now the creature was standing in front of her far bigger than before. Somehow it had shrunk her down to its size, only comparatively speaking in proportion the worm-man was far bigger than she. Looking down at her feet she saw her slippers were on the surface of the little craft, and when she turned to look about the sky seemed so much bigger than before, an epic painting in a chapel of infinite size, and the garden and house dwarfed the pair entirely.
The creature bobbed its head then started to lead Jenny back to the hole in the pyramid from whereupon it emerged, tugging her gently and insistently onwards. At first she was hesitant, but it seemed to her that the visitor didn't seem to wish her any ill will, its benign presence filled her with confidence. So she followed, realising how cold she felt now she was so much smaller, and together they made their up the platform, which she could now tell was of a rougher surface than she first made out, and towards the dark portal gaping before them. Warmth emanated from it and Jenny began to walk alongside the striding visitor, eager to get out of the winter chill.
As the warm darkness enveloped them, the creature let out another sneeze. The light from the craft started to shine again, and they paused before it.
Jenny looked at the worm-man, who bowed in affirmation, then she squeezed her eyes shut and took a step forward...
There was another sneeze.
Jenny opened her eyes. She was looking up at her ceiling.
She sneezed again.
Shadows from the trees outside danced above in silvery overcast daylight, which hurt her eyes as she blinked herself awake.
The feeling started to flow as her body began to wake up. Almost immediately her throat started to complain, then as she moved her limbs ached. Her head followed as she became dizzy as she sat up, and she fell back down again. A mild sweat clung to her forehead.
Jenny gave out a little moan. She was ill. Her mother shouted up the stairs for her to come down for school, and six minutes later when Jenny didn't respond, she rushed in to tell her off only to see her daughter lying there, pale and feverish, holding the bedsheets tightly over her mouth with a slightly desperate look in her eyes.
She stayed home that day. Her mother brought up the small television from the study and the video player from downstairs and, when not tending to household chores, sat at her daughters side. The doctor came and went, commiserating to Jenny about her terrible influenza and talking in hushed tones and long words with her parents that evening about things she couldn't understand. Comics were bought and she was spoilt rotten for days, missing the last few days of school and spending most of her time in bed, to the point where she couldn't remember ever being well – and if she'd ever know what it was like to feel normal again.
Throughout her ordeal Jenny suffered silently, all the while thinking about her visitor that night. It all felt like a fever dream, an alternate reality that had intruded hers from the pages of her favourite fantasy novelist. As Christmas rolled on, then the New Year, Jenny begun to reminisce less and less about the strange little worm-man. They year went by, then years, and the entire ordeal of the visitor was swamped with vague memories of childhood illness.
It was much later in her life when Jenny had a daughter of her own, that the memory resurfaced, one late night whilst sitting in their cabin in the country staring at the stars. Even then she couldn't remember if it was just something she saw on television, a strange dream, or a story told to her by her parents. She held her sleeping daughter close to her, looking up at the sweeping night sky, wondering what it would be like to fall into it, to be enveloped in its blanket of stars, a quilt of dark silk that endlessly wrapped around itself through infinity.
She hoped it was real, feeling a twinge of sadness ath the thought that it most probably wasn't. Jenny felt her daughter stir. She looked down at her blonde head, her baby's face staring out at something in the woods beyond. The girl looked up, a quizzical expression on her face and one arm pointed out at something she couldn't quite see.
“Mummy... what's that?”
Jenny looked up... and smiled.
Monday, 8 December 2008
It happened on a Thursday.
It happened on a Thursday.
James Fields had woke early as usual, filled up on far too much muesli, downed a coffee, showered and shaved, pulled on his clothes (comprising of the usual grey shirt, dull tie and barely ironed trousers), grabbed his briefcase and jacket and bombed out of the door into the cold morning air. It was late December, and an unexpected cold snap had blanketed the capital overnight, bringing a shiver to his frame as he cursed himself for not putting on more layers. The sun was very slowly making itself present in the night sky, a rich royal blue creeping into the star flecked darkness which competed with the glow of the orange street lamps.
He made his way carefully down the steep road in Forest Hill, being careful not to rush as the ground had frosted. The dregs of a cold still clung to the back of his throat, which felt sticky and a little dry, the brittle air catching it and causing the ache to flare up. As he walked, he absent-mindedly cast his thoughts to the previous night relaxing with friends down at the local pub, wondered if that last pint was a good idea, then sighed out a breath that hung for a moment in the December sky before melting away.
Finishing his descent he rounded the corner to a junction, a few cars were beginning to fill the streets, and crossed over to the station. Only a handful of early risers milled around at this hour. James liked to get in as soon as possible as typically it meant leaving early as long as his work was done, plus he usually ended up beating the rush hour both ways. The IT department at Fosters pretty much ran itself with only the occasional hiccup, being a small company with few staff. It was a lucky gig, truth be told, as even though it wasn't particularly fulfilling nor demanding the money was good and the hours flexible. Plus it was pretty stable, something he was thankful for at this time of year.
The platform to London Bridge was almost devoid of life aside from a few dark-suited office types milling about. He walked towards the end of the platform where the first carriage would arrive, under a footbridge and in front of an old disused building where an attractive young Indian woman was talking quietly on a mobile. The journey from this station wasn't spectacularly long, but it was boring, and he made to stand close to her so that at least he had something to fantasize about on the way there. No eye contact, strictly peripherals, as after all chatting up random strangers on London trains was hardly a done deal. Besides, he'd noticed her before on a few previous journeys and welcomed the regularity of her appearance in his life, so the last thing he wanted to do was scare her off with a clumsy attempt at flirting.
He looked up and peered back towards the station to the train times. The red letters indicated a couple of minutes. James idly reached into his pocket for his MP3 player to pull it out, casually eyeing the girl as he did so, before unwrapping the wires and putting the buds in his ears. It was when he started to put the second one in he heard something behind him.
James turned back towards the footbridge. There was a bit of space between him and the next salary man down towards the station. Then the rustling noise infiltrated his consciousness again and he looked back towards the building that rose up behind the bank of brush near the platform. Peering into the dark, he could see a short, yet quite thin, figure stumbling away from a window in the half light that started to clumsily make its way down to the platform.
James looked about. His first thought was maybe he should do something, but who was he kidding, he didn't want trouble. Any Londoner knows the best thing to do is to ignore potential problems whilst on public transport. Don't get involved. But there was something about the spidery gait of the person tumbling onto the platform that caused him disquiet, registering unease with that tiny, sickly part of the mind that ignited whenever he'd read a ghost story as a child.
He turned away and popped the bud in his ear, vowing to mind his own business.
Fumbling for his MP3 player, he heard two solid heel clicks as the figure's shoes finally met the platform. The footsteps stumbled, then solidly walked to his immediate right, steady and strong. James couldn't place exactly why, but suddenly the world felt a great deal colder, and he froze before adult logic set back in, giving himself a little shake before returning to his playlist.
The man came to rest beside him.
James knew he couldn't resist glancing down at the presence that had interrupted his mundane daily routine. He took his eyes off his player and made to look across the platform, before dancing them downwards at the figure below.
The man stood to his front right and directly on the yellow line before the edge of the platform, at an angle where he couldn't quite make out his features. The morning was still a cold blue, although he was illuminated slightly by the lights further down the station. Whilst quite small, his tiny body was proportioned as if tall and thin, giving the impression of a shrunken basketball player. His hair was lank and black, twisted and a bit greasy, falling around to shoulder height and covering his ears. He was wearing a dark, velveteen suit, which appeared slightly worn and covered with flecks of dusty debris and wore black brogues that had been polished to a shine. The figures gnarled hands were clasped behind his back, appearing discoloured and pale in the dull light.
James had only regarded him for a few seconds when the stranger's head jerked to the side, surprising him and causing him to snap his attention quickly back to the MP3 player. He'd barely caught a glimpse, but the features he did catch were unsettling. The man's face gave the appearance of someone with a disability, although which he had no idea. However, it wasn't a look to inspire sympathy - his cheeks were gnarled up close to his odd almond-shaped eyes and a crooked, drooped nose melted down close to his top lip.
James realised that the man wasn't looking at him, but the same girl that had his attention only a few minutes before. She was staring down the platform past both of them, and when he turned his head to follow her gaze he was greeted by the sight of his train curling, snakelike, around towards the bottom of the station where it had begun to slow to a stop. The small man stepped up to the line with the rest of the small crowd of business men and women that had gathered at the edge of the platform, while James moved up to the top of where the first carriage would come to a rest.
The girl stood beside him, idly checking her messages on her mobile phone. James looked over briefly to see the nose of the man protruding out from the small crowd gathered around him, and seeing that nobody had really taken any notice of him, decided to put the uneasy feeling he had about the stranger aside. The train finally pulled up, and as he and the girl boarded he fetched one final glance to see that the figure had joined the throng and had hoisted himself onto the second carriage, out of sight, out of mind.
James was surprised to find the carriage relatively full that day. The seats were full of tired looking commuters, some rustling through papers, others reading books, but all generally ignoring each other with the glazed-over look so popular amongst public transport users in London. Moving out of the way of the doors, he put his case down between his feet, gripped the nearest handhold and queued an album up on his player just as the train started to pull out of the station. The Indian girl was stood a little further into the carriage, had produced a magazine from her bag and was doing a fine job of retaining her balance whilst reading. He allowed himself to stare for a moment. She was truly pretty. Big brown eyes set into a delicate face, full lips, her lithe figure betrayed by the way her coat clung to her form. She flicked her eyes up towards him and he immediately turned away to squint in faux interest at the train map splashed in the middle of the adverts up above the seats.
The train continued its steady rush to the next station. The sun had maintained its crawl upwards and the gentle light rendered the rush of grassy banks to each side of the carriage a dull blue, yet it was still dark enough outside for the lights inside the carriage to reflect the passengers like a mirror in its windows. The winter chill had followed James into the carriage and he pulled the lapels of his coat closer, continuing to cast his eyes vaguely in the general direction of the girl under the pretence that an advert for vaginal thrush cream was of great interest. It was then the door at the far end of the carriage opened.
James couldn't quite see who it was, and as he tried to catch a glance the cold morning air rushed over him from the other side. A few people shot irritated looks back towards the source of the gust, maybe thinking that some annoying homeless person had entered to pester them for their hard-earned shrapnel, only to turn away a moment later, satisfied that their consciences were safe for the time being. James, however, was still transfixed at the now-closed door, for right in front of the portal, as if ejected from some otherworldly dimension, stood the man. Through the line of commuters wobbling from side to side with the movement of the train, he could make out the tiny frame standing and peering about with jerky motions, putting him to mind of a penguin in a zoo enclosure.
Now James could see him clearly, he balked in disgust. The stranger’s eyes were a baleful, almost yellow colour, the pupils’ tiny black dots surrounded by inward slanted eyes that put to mind runny egg-yolks, deeps set into a pasty, deeply contoured face. The drooped nose hung crook over a mouth that was screwed up tight in concentration, folding his skin in waves, whilst his hands were raised and posed as if a chef deliberating over the taste of fine cuisine. He was sniffing the air.
James felt a chill run through his spine. As if the mere sight of the character was to inspire an unsettled feeling, his bizarre behaviour was enough to instil a twinge of fear in the back of his mind. Yet even so, his curiosity was sparked and he couldn't tear his eyes away. It was then he noticed that clustered around the far door to either side of the stranger, the commuters had moved apart as if unconsciously to let him through. The grotesque little head craned towards each on in turn, allowing a couple of sniffs, and with a feeling of creeping dread James watched as gnarled, thin little fingers reached out to each in turn.
The ghoul stiffened and looked down the coach.
James instinctively reacted, as any Londoner does, at being caught by hovering his eyes over another part of the carriage, still watching the man as his head turned back to his obsessive fascination with his fellow travellers. Keeping him in his peripheral vision, James, now having developed a cold sweat that ran thin down between his shoulder blades, watched as again the hands crept up to each commuter in turn, when suddenly one darted out and touched a fellow on the thigh.
The thigh's owner, a middle aged man of the age of forty or thereabouts, reacted instinctively as if being stung by a wasp. His hand reached down and brushed his leg, looked about and, not registering the bizarre hook-nosed dwarf, returned to his paper. Then as scanned across the days news, James noticed a minor transformation occur. His skin started to lose its colour, instead being replaced by a mild grey pallor. The eyes seemed somehow dead suddenly, as if the lights in the coach had dimmed and the shoulder slumped where once they were straight. It was as if the little creature's touch had sucked the life out of him, leaving only a shell where once a man stood.
James swallowed dryly, the soreness in his throat making him acutely aware of the reality of what was happening. Although he wasn't sure entirely what had happened, he was pretty sure it wasn't good, and certainly not something he wanted to happen to him. The man advanced a few steps down into the carriage and continued his erratic sniffing and James knew that whatever had taken place could easily happen to him – and he was stuck right at the end of the carriage, near the driver door, with no escape should they not pull into the next station before the character's advance.
It was then, with that alarm ringing in his head, it occurred to James that the train hadn't slowed down. It had been racing continuously through the high-banked gully for nearly five minutes without slowing, and yet nobody had noticed. They sat around as before, absorbed in their books, music and own little worlds, utterly oblivious of the fact that the train had hurtled onwards without respite. James ducked his head past a suited couple next to him and peered diagonally forwards through the door window on the platform side. The scenery tumbled by as if in a late seventies children's cartoon where the scrolling backdrops were on continuous repeat.
James was really sweating now. He peered up at the face of the man next to him. The guy, in his late twenties, stared at him blankly. James quietly moved his hand in front of his eyes and waved, but nothing registered. He merely stared straight ahead as if James didn't exist. He still appeared to be breathing, his paralysis seemingly solely located in his mind. The body kept functioning.
James straightened, his head now a mess of conflicting thoughts. This was impossible, unreal even. Staring back down the carriage the little figure had ventured further in, and was now near the halfway point. Like zombies the passengers shuffled aside to let him through without looking, and every now and again he would stop his ceaseless sniffing to touch one, only for them to react exactly like the first before slumping down into a monochromatic stupor.
But what to do? James' first thought was to warn everyone about what was going on, as it seemed to him that he was the sole person who was aware of their predicament. Maybe moving around and making a noise would attract the attention of the gnomelike entity that was now passing over into the half way point. The rhythm of the train and the ever loudening sniffing made James realise that whatever music he'd idly put on was now stopped, or that the MP3 player wasn't working any more. It was as if the carriage was travelling along another plane of existence where everything was half frozen and time had marched on, leaving an imprint of what had gone before.
The creature’s pin-like fingers reached up and stroked the face of the first person sitting down to the right of the doors, and the teenage girl lapsed back in her seat as if melting into her own shadow. There was a few people between him and the man, the closest being the Indian girl he'd so been admiring shortly before. She appeared to be in deep concentration on her book, but her eyes were no longer scanning the text and were instead frozen in the spaces in between the words.
James felt a twinge. What if he touched her? In the back of his mind, he thought briefly about the utter, utter stupidity of what he was thinking, but for some reason some protective instinct had kicked in over the cold fear. What difference did it make to him, if she was? What made her different to anyone else in the carriage, why would he potentially risk his life to save hers? The sniffing permeated his consciousness. He was the only one who could see this creature and the only one who could make a difference. A small, possibly selfish one, maybe, but a difference nonetheless.
He reacted without much more thought, and grabbed the girl as the creature twisted his head away towards his next victim, eyes closed. She barely reacted as he clasped her forearm, and he found her surprisingly easy to pull towards him. The little man was bent over an old woman who was in the middle of reading a thick tome, his hand arching over her head as if in deliberation. James twirled the girl around so she was against the far corner of the door away from the platform side of the train and stood between her and the ghoul. If he was going to be taken, then so be it, but at least he'd made a small gesture in his final minutes. He allowed himself to look at the girl's face once more, her face frozen in the middle distance, beautiful and dark-skinned. She'd probably never know what he'd done for her should reality return, he thought, wondering what her reaction might be should she snap out of whatever had her ensnared.
He looked out at the scenery rushing past, and then adjusted his focus to the reflection of the demonic figure behind him. The man had now moved to the metal bars at the end of the seats and held his head high with nostrils flared. The eyes were slits in the mush of folded skin creasing up around them, the demented face framed by the lank, greasy black fronds of hair. The fingers waved about in the air, and it was then that James noticed that the tips glowed with a soft blue light. The freakish head that rose out of the tight-fitting suit swayed around, ever searching for the next victim, when suddenly it stopped.
The watery yellow eyes opened. The pursed mouth under the icicle nose retracted into a mirthless, empty smile, full of black, crooked teeth. James then noticed the smell, like mothballs and dust that filled the corner of the carriage. The hands were still raised but now the fingers had stopped waving, and he realised that the next victim was going to be...
He span about with a yell.
James Fields had woke early as usual, filled up on far too much muesli, downed a coffee, showered and shaved, pulled on his clothes (comprising of the usual grey shirt, dull tie and barely ironed trousers), grabbed his briefcase and jacket and bombed out of the door into the cold morning air. It was late December, and an unexpected cold snap had blanketed the capital overnight, bringing a shiver to his frame as he cursed himself for not putting on more layers. The sun was very slowly making itself present in the night sky, a rich royal blue creeping into the star flecked darkness which competed with the glow of the orange street lamps.
He made his way carefully down the steep road in Forest Hill, being careful not to rush as the ground had frosted. The dregs of a cold still clung to the back of his throat, which felt sticky and a little dry, the brittle air catching it and causing the ache to flare up. As he walked, he absent-mindedly cast his thoughts to the previous night relaxing with friends down at the local pub, wondered if that last pint was a good idea, then sighed out a breath that hung for a moment in the December sky before melting away.
Finishing his descent he rounded the corner to a junction, a few cars were beginning to fill the streets, and crossed over to the station. Only a handful of early risers milled around at this hour. James liked to get in as soon as possible as typically it meant leaving early as long as his work was done, plus he usually ended up beating the rush hour both ways. The IT department at Fosters pretty much ran itself with only the occasional hiccup, being a small company with few staff. It was a lucky gig, truth be told, as even though it wasn't particularly fulfilling nor demanding the money was good and the hours flexible. Plus it was pretty stable, something he was thankful for at this time of year.
The platform to London Bridge was almost devoid of life aside from a few dark-suited office types milling about. He walked towards the end of the platform where the first carriage would arrive, under a footbridge and in front of an old disused building where an attractive young Indian woman was talking quietly on a mobile. The journey from this station wasn't spectacularly long, but it was boring, and he made to stand close to her so that at least he had something to fantasize about on the way there. No eye contact, strictly peripherals, as after all chatting up random strangers on London trains was hardly a done deal. Besides, he'd noticed her before on a few previous journeys and welcomed the regularity of her appearance in his life, so the last thing he wanted to do was scare her off with a clumsy attempt at flirting.
He looked up and peered back towards the station to the train times. The red letters indicated a couple of minutes. James idly reached into his pocket for his MP3 player to pull it out, casually eyeing the girl as he did so, before unwrapping the wires and putting the buds in his ears. It was when he started to put the second one in he heard something behind him.
James turned back towards the footbridge. There was a bit of space between him and the next salary man down towards the station. Then the rustling noise infiltrated his consciousness again and he looked back towards the building that rose up behind the bank of brush near the platform. Peering into the dark, he could see a short, yet quite thin, figure stumbling away from a window in the half light that started to clumsily make its way down to the platform.
James looked about. His first thought was maybe he should do something, but who was he kidding, he didn't want trouble. Any Londoner knows the best thing to do is to ignore potential problems whilst on public transport. Don't get involved. But there was something about the spidery gait of the person tumbling onto the platform that caused him disquiet, registering unease with that tiny, sickly part of the mind that ignited whenever he'd read a ghost story as a child.
He turned away and popped the bud in his ear, vowing to mind his own business.
Fumbling for his MP3 player, he heard two solid heel clicks as the figure's shoes finally met the platform. The footsteps stumbled, then solidly walked to his immediate right, steady and strong. James couldn't place exactly why, but suddenly the world felt a great deal colder, and he froze before adult logic set back in, giving himself a little shake before returning to his playlist.
The man came to rest beside him.
James knew he couldn't resist glancing down at the presence that had interrupted his mundane daily routine. He took his eyes off his player and made to look across the platform, before dancing them downwards at the figure below.
The man stood to his front right and directly on the yellow line before the edge of the platform, at an angle where he couldn't quite make out his features. The morning was still a cold blue, although he was illuminated slightly by the lights further down the station. Whilst quite small, his tiny body was proportioned as if tall and thin, giving the impression of a shrunken basketball player. His hair was lank and black, twisted and a bit greasy, falling around to shoulder height and covering his ears. He was wearing a dark, velveteen suit, which appeared slightly worn and covered with flecks of dusty debris and wore black brogues that had been polished to a shine. The figures gnarled hands were clasped behind his back, appearing discoloured and pale in the dull light.
James had only regarded him for a few seconds when the stranger's head jerked to the side, surprising him and causing him to snap his attention quickly back to the MP3 player. He'd barely caught a glimpse, but the features he did catch were unsettling. The man's face gave the appearance of someone with a disability, although which he had no idea. However, it wasn't a look to inspire sympathy - his cheeks were gnarled up close to his odd almond-shaped eyes and a crooked, drooped nose melted down close to his top lip.
James realised that the man wasn't looking at him, but the same girl that had his attention only a few minutes before. She was staring down the platform past both of them, and when he turned his head to follow her gaze he was greeted by the sight of his train curling, snakelike, around towards the bottom of the station where it had begun to slow to a stop. The small man stepped up to the line with the rest of the small crowd of business men and women that had gathered at the edge of the platform, while James moved up to the top of where the first carriage would come to a rest.
The girl stood beside him, idly checking her messages on her mobile phone. James looked over briefly to see the nose of the man protruding out from the small crowd gathered around him, and seeing that nobody had really taken any notice of him, decided to put the uneasy feeling he had about the stranger aside. The train finally pulled up, and as he and the girl boarded he fetched one final glance to see that the figure had joined the throng and had hoisted himself onto the second carriage, out of sight, out of mind.
James was surprised to find the carriage relatively full that day. The seats were full of tired looking commuters, some rustling through papers, others reading books, but all generally ignoring each other with the glazed-over look so popular amongst public transport users in London. Moving out of the way of the doors, he put his case down between his feet, gripped the nearest handhold and queued an album up on his player just as the train started to pull out of the station. The Indian girl was stood a little further into the carriage, had produced a magazine from her bag and was doing a fine job of retaining her balance whilst reading. He allowed himself to stare for a moment. She was truly pretty. Big brown eyes set into a delicate face, full lips, her lithe figure betrayed by the way her coat clung to her form. She flicked her eyes up towards him and he immediately turned away to squint in faux interest at the train map splashed in the middle of the adverts up above the seats.
The train continued its steady rush to the next station. The sun had maintained its crawl upwards and the gentle light rendered the rush of grassy banks to each side of the carriage a dull blue, yet it was still dark enough outside for the lights inside the carriage to reflect the passengers like a mirror in its windows. The winter chill had followed James into the carriage and he pulled the lapels of his coat closer, continuing to cast his eyes vaguely in the general direction of the girl under the pretence that an advert for vaginal thrush cream was of great interest. It was then the door at the far end of the carriage opened.
James couldn't quite see who it was, and as he tried to catch a glance the cold morning air rushed over him from the other side. A few people shot irritated looks back towards the source of the gust, maybe thinking that some annoying homeless person had entered to pester them for their hard-earned shrapnel, only to turn away a moment later, satisfied that their consciences were safe for the time being. James, however, was still transfixed at the now-closed door, for right in front of the portal, as if ejected from some otherworldly dimension, stood the man. Through the line of commuters wobbling from side to side with the movement of the train, he could make out the tiny frame standing and peering about with jerky motions, putting him to mind of a penguin in a zoo enclosure.
Now James could see him clearly, he balked in disgust. The stranger’s eyes were a baleful, almost yellow colour, the pupils’ tiny black dots surrounded by inward slanted eyes that put to mind runny egg-yolks, deeps set into a pasty, deeply contoured face. The drooped nose hung crook over a mouth that was screwed up tight in concentration, folding his skin in waves, whilst his hands were raised and posed as if a chef deliberating over the taste of fine cuisine. He was sniffing the air.
James felt a chill run through his spine. As if the mere sight of the character was to inspire an unsettled feeling, his bizarre behaviour was enough to instil a twinge of fear in the back of his mind. Yet even so, his curiosity was sparked and he couldn't tear his eyes away. It was then he noticed that clustered around the far door to either side of the stranger, the commuters had moved apart as if unconsciously to let him through. The grotesque little head craned towards each on in turn, allowing a couple of sniffs, and with a feeling of creeping dread James watched as gnarled, thin little fingers reached out to each in turn.
The ghoul stiffened and looked down the coach.
James instinctively reacted, as any Londoner does, at being caught by hovering his eyes over another part of the carriage, still watching the man as his head turned back to his obsessive fascination with his fellow travellers. Keeping him in his peripheral vision, James, now having developed a cold sweat that ran thin down between his shoulder blades, watched as again the hands crept up to each commuter in turn, when suddenly one darted out and touched a fellow on the thigh.
The thigh's owner, a middle aged man of the age of forty or thereabouts, reacted instinctively as if being stung by a wasp. His hand reached down and brushed his leg, looked about and, not registering the bizarre hook-nosed dwarf, returned to his paper. Then as scanned across the days news, James noticed a minor transformation occur. His skin started to lose its colour, instead being replaced by a mild grey pallor. The eyes seemed somehow dead suddenly, as if the lights in the coach had dimmed and the shoulder slumped where once they were straight. It was as if the little creature's touch had sucked the life out of him, leaving only a shell where once a man stood.
James swallowed dryly, the soreness in his throat making him acutely aware of the reality of what was happening. Although he wasn't sure entirely what had happened, he was pretty sure it wasn't good, and certainly not something he wanted to happen to him. The man advanced a few steps down into the carriage and continued his erratic sniffing and James knew that whatever had taken place could easily happen to him – and he was stuck right at the end of the carriage, near the driver door, with no escape should they not pull into the next station before the character's advance.
It was then, with that alarm ringing in his head, it occurred to James that the train hadn't slowed down. It had been racing continuously through the high-banked gully for nearly five minutes without slowing, and yet nobody had noticed. They sat around as before, absorbed in their books, music and own little worlds, utterly oblivious of the fact that the train had hurtled onwards without respite. James ducked his head past a suited couple next to him and peered diagonally forwards through the door window on the platform side. The scenery tumbled by as if in a late seventies children's cartoon where the scrolling backdrops were on continuous repeat.
James was really sweating now. He peered up at the face of the man next to him. The guy, in his late twenties, stared at him blankly. James quietly moved his hand in front of his eyes and waved, but nothing registered. He merely stared straight ahead as if James didn't exist. He still appeared to be breathing, his paralysis seemingly solely located in his mind. The body kept functioning.
James straightened, his head now a mess of conflicting thoughts. This was impossible, unreal even. Staring back down the carriage the little figure had ventured further in, and was now near the halfway point. Like zombies the passengers shuffled aside to let him through without looking, and every now and again he would stop his ceaseless sniffing to touch one, only for them to react exactly like the first before slumping down into a monochromatic stupor.
But what to do? James' first thought was to warn everyone about what was going on, as it seemed to him that he was the sole person who was aware of their predicament. Maybe moving around and making a noise would attract the attention of the gnomelike entity that was now passing over into the half way point. The rhythm of the train and the ever loudening sniffing made James realise that whatever music he'd idly put on was now stopped, or that the MP3 player wasn't working any more. It was as if the carriage was travelling along another plane of existence where everything was half frozen and time had marched on, leaving an imprint of what had gone before.
The creature’s pin-like fingers reached up and stroked the face of the first person sitting down to the right of the doors, and the teenage girl lapsed back in her seat as if melting into her own shadow. There was a few people between him and the man, the closest being the Indian girl he'd so been admiring shortly before. She appeared to be in deep concentration on her book, but her eyes were no longer scanning the text and were instead frozen in the spaces in between the words.
James felt a twinge. What if he touched her? In the back of his mind, he thought briefly about the utter, utter stupidity of what he was thinking, but for some reason some protective instinct had kicked in over the cold fear. What difference did it make to him, if she was? What made her different to anyone else in the carriage, why would he potentially risk his life to save hers? The sniffing permeated his consciousness. He was the only one who could see this creature and the only one who could make a difference. A small, possibly selfish one, maybe, but a difference nonetheless.
He reacted without much more thought, and grabbed the girl as the creature twisted his head away towards his next victim, eyes closed. She barely reacted as he clasped her forearm, and he found her surprisingly easy to pull towards him. The little man was bent over an old woman who was in the middle of reading a thick tome, his hand arching over her head as if in deliberation. James twirled the girl around so she was against the far corner of the door away from the platform side of the train and stood between her and the ghoul. If he was going to be taken, then so be it, but at least he'd made a small gesture in his final minutes. He allowed himself to look at the girl's face once more, her face frozen in the middle distance, beautiful and dark-skinned. She'd probably never know what he'd done for her should reality return, he thought, wondering what her reaction might be should she snap out of whatever had her ensnared.
He looked out at the scenery rushing past, and then adjusted his focus to the reflection of the demonic figure behind him. The man had now moved to the metal bars at the end of the seats and held his head high with nostrils flared. The eyes were slits in the mush of folded skin creasing up around them, the demented face framed by the lank, greasy black fronds of hair. The fingers waved about in the air, and it was then that James noticed that the tips glowed with a soft blue light. The freakish head that rose out of the tight-fitting suit swayed around, ever searching for the next victim, when suddenly it stopped.
The watery yellow eyes opened. The pursed mouth under the icicle nose retracted into a mirthless, empty smile, full of black, crooked teeth. James then noticed the smell, like mothballs and dust that filled the corner of the carriage. The hands were still raised but now the fingers had stopped waving, and he realised that the next victim was going to be...
He span about with a yell.
* * *
It wasn't so cold on Friday.
Ankita walked to the end of the platform, clutching her book in one hand and her purse in the other. It'd been a hard week leading up to Thursday afternoon's appraisal and she was looking forward to unwinding that evening, thankfully the day was hardly packed with things aside from a few dull tasks to do. Her eyes passed along the platform and she noticed with a slight note of disappointment that the cute guy who'd been eyeing her up for the last few weeks wasn't there this morning. Not that she'd meant to do anything about it, but she'd been toying with the idea of finding an excuse to talk to him at some point.
The platform seemed slightly emptier in general. She'd been lucky that the lay-off's hadn't affected her in any way, she noted absentmindedly.
Then her mobile went off. As she flicked it open, she didn't notice the little man standing further down the platform.
But then, nobody ever did.
END
Sunday, 7 December 2008
The Mischievous Cat...
... sat plump at its desk, paws at the ready, staring at his first blank page. As any artist knows, a white canvas is a scary thing indeed, full of promise and danger. The initial stroke may seem like a good idea but later down the line as the painting is coming together who knows if that curve might seem unsightly or out of place... or if the structure will fall apart due to flimsy foundations.
The cat looked up and out the window. A mist hung low over the town below, illuminated by the soft glow of the full moon above. The trees in the garden were silhouetted against the tableaux, giant black claws threatening to drag the scene into the darkness... and with that, he knew what to write.
It happened on a Thursday...
The cat looked up and out the window. A mist hung low over the town below, illuminated by the soft glow of the full moon above. The trees in the garden were silhouetted against the tableaux, giant black claws threatening to drag the scene into the darkness... and with that, he knew what to write.
It happened on a Thursday...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
