We went to buy the Christmas tree in yet more driving torrential rain. The big Chrimbo tree by the harbour had been decked out in electric blue lights, and looked so wonderful that Misty insisted I drive round the area a couple of times, so that he could see it from all angles. His enthusiasm was so infectious that the staff in the garden centre practically made cooing noises at him as we selected our own. Whilst we were waiting in the queue for the machine which wraps the trees in a sort of big string vest, I overheard Jeannette’s steel-trap voice. She was trailing around with faithful hounds, Henry and Rowland, in tow.
“I just happen to think that £80 is rather a lot to spend on an artificial tree”, Henry was bleating, ineffectually as always “And perhaps we should be a bit more careful with the money”.
“CAREFUL?!” Jeannette almost yelled at him, sounding like a bad-tempered Empress reprimanding an incompetent member of staff “And just where the hell has being Careful ever got you!”
“Why are they spending all that money on a fake tree?” said Misty “We got a real one for 17 quid!”
“Particularly as Jeannette’s the sort who’ll put it up Christmas Eve, and take it down Boxing Day!” I said, having a depressing image of Jeannette cantankerously hurling a tree, complete with tinsel and baubles, down the garden path of ‘The Hedges’.
She caught a glimpse of us, and gave me a look that could have gorgonised me.
“I do so find Christmas preparations such a drag!” she shouted, and then swept back into the main building of the garden centre, with Henry and Rowland scampering after her, exchanging quick frightened looks with each other.
I was fast coming to the conclusion that the entire country was stark staring bloody mad. The Temples and their annoying friend Rowland were a classic case in point. I then began getting angry, barely comprehensible e-mails from some idiot who didn’t like it because I wouldn’t let her advertise her own brand of cellulite-removing drink on our website. I had pointed out that we only advertised things that were relevant to the Shinglesea and Fobbington area, and there were plenty of other places for her to advertise this sort of stuff. I must admit her advertisement blurb didn’t help matters. It went as follows:
“THIS IS FOR MY CELLULITE AND SLIMMING RECEPIE. THIS RECEPIE IS PROOVEN TO WORK IF USED AS INSTRUCTED. THERE IS NO MUCH HUSTLE IN PREPARATION AND IT’S A DRINK YOU WILL MAKE IT YOURSELF AND DRINK IT IN THE MORNING. I HAVE UPLOADED PICTURE TO SHOW YOU THAT IT WORKS WELL MY CAM IS NOT VERY BRIGHT BUT STIL YOU CAN C I DON’T HAVE THAT ORANGE SKIN LOL. I WAS SIZE 18 AND AFTER 2 MONTHS IM NOW SIZE 12 WOW! TRY IT! IT REALLY WORKS!” (sic!!).
I tried politely to ask her if perhaps English wasn’t her first language, and I got some indignant tirade back about how she wasn’t an immigrant. She has lived in this country for 34 years, and has spent most of that time “improving the water in our county”. To which my first thought was “she works for Southern Water, suddenly it all makes sense!” Since then she had been bombarding me with torrents of e-mails, stuffed with mind-numbing text-speak and bad spelling. I was getting dozens of them in the course of one hour. I left out a selection for Al to read, and his comment was simply “What the fuck ….?!” I had to come to the sorry conclusion that she was the maddest person I have ever had the misfortune to encounter, surpassing even Tara Mitchell. She tried to make out I was being difficult because I secretly fancied her, and that she wasn’t thick, that she would willingly show me her “brains”. An offer that I found surprisingly easy to resist!
Foolishly I decided to take Misty to ’The Ship’ for lunch to try and escape from it all. We were taken into the back room, and seated alone in glorious isolation. I was just starting to relax when an officious little twerp came bustling in, and said that he hoped we wouldn’t mind, but he would be coming in at any moment with a large party, and that they might be very noisy.
“Why, what are you going to do?” I said, envisaging a large gang of beer-swilling rugby players in full throttle.
“N-nothing”, he said, nervously “B-but we have small children with us, and you two are sitting alone, you might want to move”.
By now I was feeling extremely bolshy, and said “I see, we’ve got to move because you’re bringing your family in here?”
He crept away with his tail between his legs (if you’ll pardon the expression). As it turned out the children were extremely well-behaved, and only started to play up towards the end, when they were clearly getting bored. I could only assume that if they were his idea of noisy kids, he really needed to get out more. The last I heard of him he was plaintively asking the kids if they wanted to go to the children’s playground, an idea which was being greeted with a marked lack of enthusiasm from all the adults present. I came to the sorry conclusion that he was very much like our dear Government: so desperate not to cause offence … that they end up causing far more offence than if they had never bothered in the first place!
We were in for a spell of wild weather. Bright sunshine during the day, and gale force winds and torrential rain overnight. I would wake up in the early hours of the morning, and hear the wind moaning like a demon outside. One morning I had a bad attack of sleep paralysis. I woke up and found that I couldn’t move my body at all. I was lying on my back and I wanted to turn over, but for several minutes I couldn’t move a single damn thing. (I later found out that this is called hypnopompic paralysis, isn’t that a wonderful word … hypnopompic!). This was frightening and uncomfortable whilst it lasted, but I decided to keep it to myself, because the state everybody was in at the moment, they’d probably take it as a sign that I had been abducted by aliens!
When daylight came I decided to get up and try and make a list of all the strange things that had happened in this area in recent months. I thought it was high time I started trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Misty sat the kitchen table and helped me with this.
“Right here goes”, I said, looking at the list I had made “The two strange men who called here when we were out one day, and Xanthe noticed the noise vortex, or whatever it was … the various old hag sightings that have gone on for ages now … the strange figure I saw by the old bowling-alley, and the one walking along the road out of the village back in the Spring … the black-eyed woman in ’The Ship’ … people disappearing, and some turning up dead, like Anna Turnball, or never being seen again … the man on the swing who called you by your real name … the animal mutilations ….”
“Tufty disappearing”, said Misty.
“ …. the generally strange atmosphere in the Rattlebone Farm area …” I continued “… the strange black shape Xanthe photographed in ’The Hedges’ … the weird phone calls … the huge cracks that appeared in the apartment Magda wanted to buy … Tara Mitchell’s lunacy … the funny little creature I saw leaning out of Kristy’s window on the morning of the big thunderstorm back in October …”
“The peculiar face you saw in the picture Mr Beresford showed us”, said Misty.
“Yeah, I’m not sure I should count that”, I said “I still think that could be just an artist’s prank. Anyway … the 1950s couple I spoke to outside the Darklight Cove campsite … Misty, what the hell does all this mean?”
“Aliens?” said Misty, forlornly “Devil-worshippers? Portal area?”
“I can’t believe it’s E.Ts from Outer Space”, I said “If such beings do exist, why are they coming all this way just to act so bloody oddly? I mean, what’s in it for them!”
“Jason says some strange orange balls of light have been seen near Brighton recently”, said Misty “And meteors have been ruled out”.
“That’s Brighton’s problem”, I said “We’ve got enough to ponder on with this area! What I do think is that some kind of window has been opened up here, whether it was the students playing the ouija board in Franklin’s old house that caused it I don’t know, but I do think that’s what’s happened. And time has got distorted perhaps, hence the 1950s couple we saw. It might also count for some of the other odd people we’ve seen. You wouldn’t expect people in another dimension to look the same as us”.
“What about the animal mutilations though?” said Misty “And the people disappearing?”
“That leads us back to our old friends the Devil-worshippers”, I said “There’s no reason to suppose of course why there shouldn’t be TWO entirely separate mysteries running along here. It was the Devil-worshippers who killed Anna, it’s them who stab the horses and who killed the pregnant dog, it might even be them who are making the warning phone calls to me. After all, if they are doing all these things, they’re not going to like somebody like me poking their nose in. They’ve got too much to lose. Then of course, there’s the other factor which can’t be ruled out … that I’m going bonkers!”
“You can’t say that”, said Misty “Because the rest of us have all seen things too! I like what you said about time distortion. Think of all the tape-recordings Jason’s made. Picking up noises that you wouldn’t expect in this area in the middle of the night”.
“The one mystery I keep coming back to out of the whole lot of them”, I said “Is the 1950s couple. It’s what they said. They wanted to go somewhere where there was lots of people“.
“They were fleeing from something”, said Misty.
“Wanting to go somewhere around people because of safety in numbers”, I said “But fleeing what? And WHEN were they fleeing it? Has all this been going on for a lot longer than we’ve thought? How far back do we have to go?”
Misty wanted to get on with putting the decorations up, and made it quite clear that he didn’t want me in the way, meddling with everything. I went out to the mini-mart to buy him a job lot of sticky fixers, and heard some gossip from Mrs Jackson that Henry had gone down with bronchitis, and was getting worse by the day. I instantly knew, almost as if somebody had whispered it in my ear, that this was because he wasn’t taking care of himself. Instead of staying indoors in the warm, resting until he was on the mend, he’d be running around doing everything for the great goddess, Jeannette. Knowing Henry, he was probably waiting on Rowland as well! Not for the first time I wondered if Henry was on some kind of death-wish.
When I got home I took the computer into the bedroom, to get out of Misty’s way, and did some work on the website. Jason had tinkered with it a bit, and made it look as though little snowflakes were cascading down across the screen, which was very pretty. I decided to keep it like that for the month of December, even though we didn’t stand a hope in Hell of getting any snow. The e-mails brought the usual raft of nutters. The cellulite drink lady was getting seriously out of hand. At first she was so completely bonkers that she had made me literally cry with laughter, but now she was just boring me, and I decided to put a block on her. More grim was the news that Julie Sparrow had a friend of hers (nay, a SPECIAL friend) that she wanted me to meet. He had news that I would find of monumental importance, she wrote. I felt that this was extremely unlikely, but also had a presentiment that she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
I decided not to reply to her just yet, and instead concentrated on typing in the important news to the website that Father Christmas would be taking time out from his very busy schedule, to visit our local library on Friday afternoon. It’s little things like that which keep me sane.
Everywhere there were signs of Christmas. One of the nearby cottages had festooned their entire frontage with fairy lights, and an illuminated Santa, which I thought was wonderful, until the hours of the evening that is, when the lights in our living-room would dim significantly because they were getting lit up over the way. I knew that all of this festive cheer would seriously piss Henry off. He had gone ballistic enough back in the Spring when he had caught me buying an Easter egg for Misty, as it offended his Christian values, so I took a malicious pleasure in imagining how annoyed he would be by all this!
Julie Sparrow wasn’t letting up in her quest to bring me together with her Special Friend. When all else failed, she turned to that good old standby: emotional blackmail. “He’s very young, he’s only 21”, she wrote “And he’s come all the way from Perth, Australia [what for?], and he’s feeling dreadfully homesick, and he can’t cope with our Winter weather at all. He’s not used to it you see”. I had weird images of some guy in full bushwhacker gear, complete with corked hat, forlornly wandering the streets of Fobbington, crying with homesickness, and shivering with cold. So I compromised, by saying that I was far too busy to see him in person at the moment, but that we could exchange e-mails if he liked. Unfortunately he did like.
I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. This poor guy was seriously off the wall. He was so bonkers that he made the cellulite drink lady seem the epitome of reason and solid commonsense. I think he has to register as the most insane and deluded person I have ever come into account with, and when you consider I have Jason and Xanthe camping in my front garden, not to mention Henry Temple living in the same neighbourhood, that’s quite something! It was all both tragic and hilarious at the same time, and I make no apologies for that. I feel I can’t give you his real name, after all, it’s not as if he’s dangerous or anything, just … well … mad I suppose. Anyone of a particularly sensitive or nervous disposition should stop reading right now. And no climbing up on your politically-correct high horse either, claiming I’m poking fun at the mentally ill (why should I? When years ago, Misty would probably have been institutionalised!). It’s just that, as I said before, sometimes tragedy and comedy go hand-in-hand. The Ancient Greeks understood this, so I don’t see why we can’t.
The first e-mail from him was headed “PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY”, which I felt was a bit high-handed, but there you go. Anyway the first e-mail went like this:
“OK I HOPE TO GOD THAT YOU MAY UNDERSTAND THINGS BECAUSE AT THE MOMENT NO ONE BELIEVES ME THAT I AM A SPECIAL ALIEN. IF YOU’RE AN ALIEN TOO PLEASE STAND FORWARD JUST TELL THE PEOPLE WHO YOU ARE. ALL EARTH PEOPLE WANT TO DO IS EAT AND SLEEP ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT [chance would be a fine thing!], AND I AM NOT JOKING THIS SHOULD BE A ALIEN AND HUMAN FREEDOM OF SPEECH WORLD AND I EXPECT PEOPLE TO LET ME SPEAK. I CANT TELL YOU MY CIVILISATION [convenient] AND I DON’T EXPECT PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND WHO I AM. I AM THE GREAT LEADER LINATNAL AND IF I WERE TO DIE IN THIS DIMENSION I WOULD RISE BACK TO THIS DIMENSION BACK TO LIFE AS A SUPER BEING IN YOUR DIMENSION IF YOUR PREPARED TO BELIEVE IN ME. LAUGH AT ME GO AHEAD IF YOU WANT. LAUGH AWAY IF YOU WANT TO EXCEPT ME EXCEPT ME [‘accept’ for fuck’s sake!] THE WAY I AM ONE DAY I AM NOT JOKING YOU WILL LIVE ON WITH YOUR ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY FOR THOUSAND YEARS BUT THERES ONLY ENOUGH TIME UNTIL OTHER ALIENS WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE AS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES, AND I AM NOT OF THIS PLANET [you can say that again!] I AM AN INNER SPIRITUAL LORD AND I WILL COME BACK TO EARTH TO REFRESH MANKIND OR POSSIBLY I MAY NEVER LET HUMANS EXCEPT ME HEAR ON EARTH. I AM NOT GOING TO LEAD A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE TO KEEP MYSELF SILENT. AND I AM ONLY GOING TO SAY THIS IF THERE IS ANY ALIEN EMMBASSADORS ON EARTH TOWARDS ME AND SPEAK TO ME DON’T LAUGH AT ME BECAUSE I AM VERY SPECIAL TO THIS WORLD”.
“I sometimes think the whole world has gone stark staring mad”, I said, when I showed this to Al.
“I don’t know what he’s been drinking”, said Al “But I’ll have a pint of it!”
“You’d think that a great spiritual lord would at least learn how to spell properly wouldn’t you!” I said.
“Is there a village in Australia that’s missing it’s resident idiot?!” said Al “What are you going to reply to him?”
I replied very simply. I told him that he needed to seek psychiatric help, and I was being absolutely serious in that.
And so I got his next reply:
“OK THIS PLANET FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS HAS BEEN ANYLISED AND EXAMINED BY EXTRATERRESTRIALS AND AS THEY EXAMINE THE PLANET THEY USE PLANS WITH OR AGAINST THE EARTH. IS THEY WILL LEAVE HUMANS ALONE AND THE AGAINST? [you what?!] THEY WILL PRESS EARTH PLANET, WHY? BECAUSE THIS PLANET IS MADE UP OF A GAS AND A RADIOACTIVE EXPLODE AND DESTROY THE WHOLE PLANET AND THE SYMBOLS EXPLAIN EITHER ENGINEERING FACILITY OR EVEN WORSE AN EXTERMINATION OR ANNIHILIATION OR A HUMAN PROCESS. ALIEN PEOPLE ARE PLANNING THIS ALREADY. AND THEY ARE VERY EVIL PEOPLE THEY ARE MONSTER LIKE PEOPLE THERE ARMS ARE EVEN MORE HAIRY AND THEY ARE A HELL OF A LOT STRONGER THAN HUMANS THEY HERE FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS AND THEY KNOW THAT THERE IS A RESOURCE FOR MAKING FACILITIES. THEY CAN NEUTRALIZE MANKIND’S WEAPONRY AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY TO BECOME ENDANGERED SPECIES [by this stage I wasn‘t entirely sure whether it was us or the aliens who were going to be the endangered species]. I LINATNAL HAVE PREPARED TO COME BACK TPO THIS PLANET THIS WORLD I WILL RETURN TO EARTH IN THE 3RD DIMENSION AND FIGHT FOR MANKIND [jolly decent of you!] DO YOU THINK I AM CRAZY???? [well now you come to mention it …] THE EARTH CANT BE DESTROYED [you just said it could be, dear boy!] IT WILL GO ON FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS BUT YOU WILL BE FORCED TO LIVE AS PRIMITIVE NOMADS IT HAS HAPPENED TO EVERY ADVANCED UNIVERSE AND I KNOW THAT, LISTEN TO ME!!!!”
“So let me see if I’ve got this right”, I said to Al and Misty “There are a bunch of hairy-armed aliens, who are very strong and very evil, and they have destroyed every advanced civilisation in the Universe, and they are going to blow something up here, possibly our weapons and technology, and turn us all into primitive nomads. But if we listen to him he will come back in the 3rd dimension and try to save us. Is that what he’s saying?”
“Why are you looking at me?” said Al “I’m as baffled as you are!”
“You’d think that if he wanted to save everybody”, said Misty “And he wants everybody to listen to him, that he’d make himself a bit clearer wouldn’t you?”
“There you are”, I said, triumphantly “Misty hit’s the nail on the head yet again! I can’t believe even Jason would take any notice of this tosh!”
“What are you going to say to Julie Sparrow?” said Al.
“Say to her?” I said, angrily “Say to her? I’m going to stick a rocket up her arse, that’s what I’m going to do to her! She should be trying to get this lad some help, not encouraging him in this rubbish! The irresponsible cow!”
We had a full and frank exchange of words over the telephone. Julie Sparrow said she objected most strongly to me using the word “loony”, I said I objected most strongly to her indulging this poor lad in his delusions, instead of encouraging him to get proper help. And if I found out that she had uprooted him from his home and dragged him across the world just to exhibit him to her paranormal circle, then I would be even more bloody angry! She said that wasn’t the case, he was a friend of her nephew’s, and they had started up a band together (just the two of them in it), and if I didn’t believe her, I could look them up on MySpace. They went by the name of ‘The Gathering Thunder Clouds‘. (I did look them up later, and got a picture of two pallid looking youths, both scowling, one wearing a Benny from ‘Crossroads’-style woolly hat pulled down over his ears, and a brief excerpt of music which sounded like ice cream van chimes underwater).
When I came off the phone, I found Misty and Xanthe both making notes in an exercise book. Xanthe had started keeping a dream diary apparently, and was hoping to get some clue from recording everybody’s dreams. I said that the only dream I had had recently that I could remember was of trying to wash my hair in the bathroom, but Liam Gallagher kept bursting in. She said that to dream of a celebrity means you have a secret fascination for them. I said I had honestly never given Liam Gallagher a single thought in my entire life, and why he should be popping up in my dreams now was completely beyond me.
I went out into the back garden, to see if I could try and tidy it up a bit and make some room for Misty to play golf. I hadn’t seen Kristy for ages to get the fence sorted out, as she was rarely at home these days, what with her panto work, and her mother (who lives out towards Darklight Cove) being ill. Whilst I was working I had that strange feeling you get when you know somebody’s watching you. I turned round, and found Rowland (of all people) staring through the overgrown hedge round Jeannette’s old house at me. He must have scratched himself to pieces clawing his way through the foliage. I could only assume he was there because Henry and Jeannette were going ahead with their stupid plan to move back in. I made some wanking gestures at him, which may have been rather childish of me, but it was very effective, as he disappeared backwards like The Cheshire Cat at high speed. I did cogitate briefly on the thought of punching his lights out, but came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to have that kind of close physical contact with the annoying little squirt.
More Day Of Judgement weather, torrential rain, gale-force winds, and the odd rumble of thunder thrown in for good measure. Made all the more bizarre by the occasional spasm of brilliant sunshine. Misty came with me when I had to drop some stuff off at Mr Beresford’s emporium (I was amazed by how much work I had managed to get done in the past few weeks, all things considering). It was the kind of December day where it seems to go dark at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Mr B was in good spirits, and told me that he had seen a handsome hardback omnibus edition of three Patricia Highsmith novels at the second-hand bookshop down the road, going for a very reasonable sum. It’s these occasional little kindnesses of his that make it worthwhile doing his business with him.
I decided to brave the surly bastard who runs the bookshop, even though countless times I’ve threatened never to give him any further business (the very first time I went in there, I innocently asked him if he took credit cards, to which he replied snottily that he didn’t Do Plastic, and “sorry I’m not sophisticated enough for you”, when I had scraped together the required amount of cash he had snapped “see! It wasn’t too difficult was it!”). Anyway, for a handsome set of 3 Patricia Highsmith’s I was ready to put up with even him. Today, fortunately, he was too busy fuming about a previous customer, and growling how he wasn’t a bloody charity, to vent too much spleen on me. As we were leaving a little old lady went up to the counter to buy a book of local ghost stories, and had him snapping “some of the things you people read!” at her.
“I don’t know why the hell we put up with him!” I said, when we were back outside “He wouldn’t last five minutes in business in another country!”
“I expect he would”, said Misty “You’re always saying that the French are even ruder than us. He could go and work over there!”
The weather was so foul that I took Misty into the Baker’s Oven nearby for a cup of coffee. A real mixed-bag of a crowd in there. At one table a young Russian chap was having his passport and other travel documents explained to him by an earnest-looking woman. At another a cheerfully scruffy bloke was offering to show his gunshot wound to a party of students. For one horrible moment I thought he was going to take his trousers down, but in the end the gunshot wound was (mercifully for us) on his shoulder. A party of schoolgirls at another table were playing with a musical Santa Claus, which when activated burst into song, sounding more like the demonic child from ‘The Exorcist’!
Everyone behind the counter was talking about a tornado which had that morning hit North London and caused untold damage.
“Just been talking to my sister on the phone”, said one woman “She said it ripped her porch door clean off its hinges”.
“She wants to think herself lucky”, said a big, burly lad, who reminds me a bit of Michael Moore to look at “Some houses have had theirs roofs ripped out. They’re saying that there’s dozens of people gonna be homeless because of it. I wonder if it’s got anything to do with that massive solar flare we’ve had”.
“Could he be right?” said Misty, when we had sat down at a free table. The joy of the Baker’s Oven is that its lousy acoustics, combined with the din of the coffee machine, makes it a wonderfully private place to have a conversation “About the solar flare I mean?”
“I think he’s over-egging the pudding a bit!” I said “Been watching too much sci-fi I expect. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing!”
“I hope ‘Barnacles’ doesn’t get its roof torn off”, said Misty, his little snub nose pink from the cold “Where would we go?”
“We could always sleep in the van”, I said.
“Oh”, said Misty, unenthusiastically.
“You’ll sleep where you’re put”, I said, making him laugh. (He loves it when I talk to him like that).
I glanced around at all the other customers, and noticed that - unusually for this weather - there was only one person sitting in the cosy bit at the back of the shop. Normally when it’s cold like this people avoid the door area, because every time somebody comes in or out you get clobbered with a blast of icy cold air, (and some ignorant git will insist on standing there, holding the door wide open, whilst they have a conversation or put all their outdoor clobber on), and so naturally everyone gravitates towards the back. I looked at the person who was sat there in solitary splendour, surrounded by empty tables, and I just had this feeling that nobody wanted to sit near him. He looked respectable enough, being clean-shaven, fairly smartly dressed in a clean denim jacket, and his hair was washed and combed, so I didn’t think it could be a bad case of personal hygiene! Curiously, he was wearing sunglasses, which is very odd for mid-afternoon at this time of year (particularly indoors!). Suddenly he gave me a sarcastic smile, and I couldn’t have been more spooked if a cadaver had suddenly parted its jaws and grinned at me. I felt a cold, prickly pins-and-needles sensation run right through my body.
“They are amongst us”, I thought to myself “You fool, why have you chosen to ignore it, when all the evidence has been there around you? … It’s very simple, because I still don’t know who They are!”
The van was playing up as we drove home, doing kangaroo petrol. When we finally made it back to ‘Barnacles’ I found that some lunatic (most likely Henry) had stuck a leaflet through the door, headed “BE READY FOR THE THREE DAYS OF DARKNESS”. This was an excerpt from some religious nutters’ website, which (as is usual for this sort) declared that the end of the world is nigh. I won’t bore the arse off you with all the details of it, but it can be summed up as: Due to the increasing decadence of the world (most particularly the tolerance of homosexuals and loose women), God will destroy civilisation. BUT we will get a warning … a very cold night.
During this very cold night, the wind will howl and roar (much like normal at the moment), lightning and thunderbolts of unprecedented magnitude will strike the Earth (I wish for fuck’s sake that one would strike Henry!!!), the whole Earth will shake (cripes), terrifying apparitions will take place, many will die from sheer fright (including George W Bush with any luck!), all large cities will be destroyed, poisonous gasses will fill the air (everybody’s overdone the sprouts this Christmas), cries and lamentations everywhere, the unblessed will burn in the open, the Earth will look like a huge graveyard. Three-quarters of the Earth will be destroyed.
(If this is their precious God of Love, I think I’ll take my chances with the Devil from now on!!!).
To protect yourself on this bitterly cold night, you should go indoors, lock all the doors and windows, pull down the blinds, stick adhesive paper on and around the doors and windows. Do NOT answer the door to anybody (so no helping anyone in distress, what a very Christian attitude!), do not look at the windows or you will die on the spot (more likely you’ll notice that there’s bugger all going on, and you’ll realise what a big con it’s been!).
And then after this the fun really begins: there will be no more big business, people will work in the fields (didn’t Pol Pot have ideas like this in Cambodia?!), married women will bear many children, as it will be a sin for women to be childless. Single women will enter religious orders. (That’s what all this rubbish has always been about, shoving women back hundreds of years, I cannot possibly think of a better example of power freakery!). This … ahem … Golden Period will last approximately 30 years.
No clue as to what will happen at the end of this 30 years, other than that I presume everybody gets thoroughly bored with it, and has a basinful of this blessed “Utopia“! Either that, or they will realise the hard way that this idealistic way of living is totally unrealistic, and large amounts of people start dying of hunger and disease.
All I can say is … A PLAGUE ON ALL YOU VILE, SADISIC MORONS WHO BELIEVE INTHIS RUBBISH!!! YOU MUST HAVE WET DREAMS ABOUT NATURAL DISASTERS KILLING VAST NUMBERS OF PEOPLE. SICK!!!!
I slept badly. Misty told me I was crazy to give this bunch of nutters any attention whatsoever, and I’m sure he’s right, but it got under my skin all the same. When we woke up the next day, and were perched on either side of the bed like book-ends, Misty asked me if it was all bothering me because it reminded me of that strange darkness which had afflicted the area last Winter. I said no, it wasn’t that, I don’t believe the religious nutcases can possibly be right about anything, it’s the sexist, homophobic rubbish I can’t stand.
“Look”, I said “If Nick Griffin was roaming around the neighbourhood, posting BNP leaflets through the door, saying that a golden time will come when the slave trade would be reintroduced, there would be hell to pay, and rightly so. I don’t see why this should be treated any differently just because it’s women and gays this lot have a problem with!”
“What’s happened to your back?” he said “You look like you’ve been scratched by a lion!”
I touched the area above my right hip and found a couple of very large scratch marks, which I certainly hadn’t noticed before.
“I must have scratched myself in my sleep”, I said.
I went into the bathroom and leaned against the basin for a while. Looking at myself in the mirror, I was astounded that I didn’t look 150, which is about what I felt!
The festive season was getting near, and I so badly wanted to give Misty a good Christmas. He has a lot to put up with, living with me, and most of the time he’s the soul of patience and longsuffering. As I was seeing it, a ridiculously large proportion of the year had been taken up with the problems of the dreary Temples, and I was absolutely determined that they weren’t going to contaminate Christmas as well. Although if, as I strongly suspected, Henry was responsible for that bloody leaflet, he was getting off to a good start!
Things that day though didn’t get off to a promising start. I had a long e-mail from my so-called psychic adviser in the States, who had recently branched into numerology, and had decided to practice by using me as a guinea pig. After dissecting my full name in minute detail, she came to the conclusion that I was a forceful, acutely paranoid loner who hated crowds, who wasn’t able to do a proper job, (who in fact was just one step up from having a criminal mentality!), who would spend his life plagued by financial insecurity, who had had a bad childhood which had left me traumatised, who was academically not very bright, and whose perceptions were all shot to pieces. I would have more to come in her next e-mail. (MORE?!). Well there’s nothing like a cheery bit of character assassination to start the day!
Gossip reached me, via the people in my front garden, that the Temples had now moved back into ‘The Hedges’, and that Henry (by the look of things) was very ill indeed. I said how come he had the energy to wander the neighbourhood putting despicable leaflets through people’s doors then?
“You might want to sit down”, said Misty, looking nervous “As you’re gonna get very angry when you hear this”.
“Spit it out”, I said.
“Henry has to leave the house at certain times of the day”, he said “Because Jeannette has old Toady in then”.
“My God”, I said, in dismay “We ARE going backwards!”
“No”, said Misty, miserably “It’s just some people never learn, and Henry’s one of them. They’re never gonna break out of it, Gray. You’ve just gotta accept it and leave ’em to it”.
Later that day I was returning from a solitary walk along the sea-wall when I saw Henry setting off down Beach Lane. It had started raining (again), and he was looking frail, sick and miserable. I had recently heard a motorbike, so I knew Toady was probably in the vicinity. I deliberately avoided Henry, as I just didn’t know where to begin as to what to say to him, and I had a feeling that I would make a complete cock-up of it. But oh boy, was I angry! And this time it was with Jeannette, not that dratted leaflet.
I’ve heard that in the old days, if the occupants of a village got seriously pissed off with someone in their midst, they would go out at night and ‘rough music’ them, that is, gather outside the culprit’s house and bang pots and pans noisily to voice their disapproval. I so badly wanted to do that to Jeannette. For a short time she had taken me in as well, and I had oozed sympathy for her, and took her side against Henry. Now I felt like a chuffing idiot. I didn’t do the rough music, but I did go out into the lane, and slam the recycling boxes about (nearly full, collection day tomorrow, so they made a nice lot of noise) whilst shouting “you evil bitch!” Unfortunately I suspect that all it did was to make Xanthe jump, and that Jeannette didn’t take a blind bit of notice.
“You alright, mate?” said Al, opening the back door of his wagon and leaning out.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you”, I said, absolutely shaking with rage, I was that bloody livid!
“No, I was just watching a DVD of ’Falling Down”, he said “God, sometimes I really identify with Michael Douglas’ character in that film”.
“At this moment, so do I!” I said, passionately “What I could do with a gun in a briefcase would make your hair curl!”
“He’s angry about how Henry’s being treated”, Misty explained.
“Really?” Al looked at me in astonishment “Why? The bloke’s a complete dickhead! He was making catty comments to me earlier about how much money you’d spent on your Christmas tree, I’d never heard anything like it!”
“What?” I said “All 17 quid of it?!”
“Take no notice”, said Misty “Henry’s jealous ’cos we’re gonna have a nice Christmas, and he isn’t”.
“And whose bloody fault is that!” I snapped “Stand up, Henry Temple, the repressed tight-arsed little faggot!”
My only crumb of comfort (if you can call it that) was that Jeannette’s latest antics hadn’t just offended me. Her callous attitude towards Henry’s serious illness (after all, he was Under The Doctor) was baffling and irritating everyone who I spoke to about it. She had had a fair bit of support in the neighbourhood since she had come to live here, almost entirely because of the cancer, which is perfectly natural. People are still compassionate at heart. And I suppose because of the cancer, people had made a lot of allowance for her bad attitude which they wouldn’t have done normally. But although she had earned sympathy and respect for coming through it, her bad-tempered arrogance and her cold attitude towards everyone hadn’t secured her much in the way of affection from anybody. Respect is one thing, affection something else entirely.
When she did that sudden, unexpected flit to Spain everyone had been very enthusiastic (although I do wonder how much that enthusiasm was because they were glad to see the back of her!). But now she was back again, and by all accounts, even more awful than ever. Whatever strange bitterness and anger was stored inside her was being vented on Henry, and he was such a hapless idiot, with a distinct “kick me” attitude, that he was almost perfect for the job I suppose. I heard rumours that he wasn’t being quite as much of a doormat as he had been, that sometimes he did bite back, but not enough it would seem.
Her wickedness was brought home to me one day when I was informed of her callous remarks about the murders of the prostitutes in Ipswich, which was currently horrifying the whole country. Jeannette had been heard saying in the post office queue that in her experience (?) ALL prostitutes were from low-life backgrounds, ALL were on drugs, and why should we weep any tears for them. They knew the dangers before they went into that game. (All this coming from a woman whose personal morals don’t exactly bear too close a scrutiny!).
It was then that I finally came to the conclusion that Jeannette Temple wasn’t human. Oh I know there are plenty of spiteful, bigoted, narrow-minded gits out there, and people who utter such shameful, unfeeling remarks aren’t all demons or extraterrestrials - or whatever - but this was just the culmination of some extremely weird behaviour on Jeannette’s part. I had known her for several months now, and in that time I can honestly say I have NEVER known her show any warmth, emotion, feeling or kindness. (There was a very brief glimmer of it when I spoke to her just before she went to Spain, but it was negligible). It’s as if a soul had never found a home inside her. I had tried to think of more rational explanations for her behaviour, such as that she might be autistic perhaps, but it didn’t seem to fit. As far as I know autistic people see the world too logically, (in the same way that Misty gets confused sometimes, because he takes what people say too much at face value), and that’s why they have trouble relating to people at times, (who are usually anything but logical!). Logic wasn’t Jeannette’s problem, if anything it was a complete absence of logic that dictated her life!
I was thinking about all this one afternoon when I was sweeping the kitchen floor (Misty was having a bath), and I was trying to get up enough enthusiasm to give it a much-needed swab down with the mop. Robbie appeared at the back door, as he had knocked off work early for a change. I asked him if he saw much of Jeannette these days. They had been quite pally for a while back in the Summer.
“No I won’t be seeing anymore of her”, he said, and something in the way he said it told me that he didn’t want to pursue the matter.
“Fair enough”, I said.
“I have been wondering though”, he said “That’s why I popped in as a matter of fact. Would you like to come with me to Foxley sometime?”
I knew that Foxley was the village in the wilds of Essex that Robbie and Duncan had investigated last year. It was supposed to be a strange place riddled with underground tunnels. It was also where Jeannette had grown up, and where she had been the centre of a bizarre (and much-publicised) poltergeist outbreak when she was a child, which had affected the whole village.
“But all that was nearly 50 years ago”, I said, when I had made us some tea “What do you hope to find out now?”
“Jason thinks it might be another portal area”, said Robbie “I know, I know what you’re going to say, Jason thinks everywhere is a portal area, but I think he’s right on this one. Don’t you think it’s strange that Jeannette has lived in two portal areas, Foxley, and now here?”
“Coincidence”, I said (I was still reluctant to give up my role as Devil’s Advocate).
He looked disappointed in me.
“Hang on a minute”, I said “For what it’s worth I don’t think Jeannette is human. Seriously. But I want to be sure it’s worthwhile, before we go traipsing across to the other side of London in this weather!”
“Jason’s going to be so pleased with what you’ve just said!” said Robbie, and his eyes were fairly gleaming. I felt like a born-again Christian who had just been welcomed into some evangelical sect!
“Do you honestly think you can find out anymore about Foxley than you did when you went there with Duncan?” I said “After all, from what you’ve told me there isn’t exactly a lot to see! I think we might be better off staying here and doing some Googling”.
“Jason and me have already done all that”, said Robbie “There really isn’t much to find. As far as the Internet’s concerned, Jeannette Boot - as she was then - disappeared completely from public view in the late 1950s, when her family left Foxley to get away from all the fuss, and has never been heard of since”.
“Is Henry human though?” said Misty, walking into the kitchen with a towel wrapped round him “I’ve been listening in to you in the bath”.
“God knows what Henry is!” I said “There have been plenty of times when I’ve thought he’s completely insane, but I don’t get the same aura about him that I do about Jeannette”.
“But Henry does know Jeannette better than anyone”, said Robbie, earnestly “He’s been married to her for over 25 years. Do you think if we got him back in here, talking, that he might let slip some sensible information?”
I looked understandably sceptical at this one.
“What does all the archive stuff on the Foxley poltergeist case say about Jeannette?” I asked “As a person I mean. Does it give much detail on her personality? Was she a bright kid, a lively, cheerful one. If she was, did she change as the haunting went on? I suppose what I mean is, was she born this way, or did something happen to her, probably because of the haunting, that changed her?”
“It’s more likely she was born this way”, said Robbie “She has special powers”.
“Some of the hexing stuff she did on us back in the Spring”, said Misty.
“As a kid perhaps she wouldn’t have been able to control them”, Robbie went on.
“So she subjected the whole village to some kind of a reign of terror”, I said.
I could just picture her as some sulky, bad-tempered little brat, unleashing her dark powers on anyone who dared to cross her, tyrannising the people of a remote hamlet, convinced probably that they were all against her. A witch child. A demonic child. Had her powers waned as she got older? After all, what she had done to us back in the Spring was pretty feeble as curses go. It was more irritating than frightening. Or was it just because the people of a seaside village, in a densely populated area, in the early years of the 21st century, aren’t going to be as susceptible and easily spooked as the people of a remote, isolated hamlet in the 1950s. How much do so-called curses rely on the power of suggestion to work effectively?
I ordered Misty to go and put some clothes on, and then observed that Robbie seemed very tense. He was pacing about the kitchen, gnawing on his little finger.
“Oh s’nothing”, he said “Gary Sanderson’s peeing me off even more than normal. He’s sent me a load of sick jokes about the Ipswich murders”.
“Sounds about par for the course, from what I’ve heard about Gary Sanderson!” I said “People always make sick jokes at times like this, just ignore ’em. For some of them it usually means they’re afraid, and it’s their way of coping”.
“I’m just not in the mood for it”, said Robbie. He picked up a fork which had been lying on the draining-board, and made delicate little jabbing movements with it.
“That’s how Jeannette eats her food”, he explained “Like a fucking bird. Delicately stabbing at little bits of salad, and then she picks up a piece of bread”, he illustrated this by picking up the dishcloth and pretending to tear it into little pieces “And stuffs tiny little pieces of it into her mouth. Sometimes I just wanted to yell at her, ’oh for crissakes woman, can’t you let rip and show a bit of enthusiasm for something, just once!’ I can’t believe how much I hate her at the moment”.
“You’d be much better off just forgetting about her”, I said “Plenty more fish in the tank you know!”
Misty received a Christmas card from Julie Sparrow, which was hand-delivered whilst we were out admiring the handiwork of some thugs, who had ram-raided the mini-mart and made off with the cash point at the side of the building. There were various vans outside, with men perching in the doorways smoking, and scaffolding erected all over the vandalised area.
The envelope containing the Christmas card was stapled around all four corners, presumably so that the ogre (I.e me) wouldn’t get any ideas about trying to open it behind his back. (What a VERY silly woman she is!). The card contained the news that she had got a job at the Museum Of Local History in Fobbington, and already she was convinced the place was haunted. Her medium friend (whose name I forget) had told her that she was a “magnet for spirits” (!) so this didn’t surprise her. She wrote that Misty was to tell Jason that (why can’t she tell him herself?) that she had already experimented with EVP around the building, and had had startling results. The Creature From Outer Space (the Australian one) had come to see her at the museum, but had become terrified by a picture they’ve got there of a giant worm climbing out of a well, and had sworn never to set foot inside the building ever again.
[The legend behind this is that a local aristocrat had returned from the Crusades (or whatever) back in Medieval times, bringing with him various exotic pets. One was a giant worm, which had broken out of its cage and run amok in the countryside, before finally being disposed of down a well. The legend has big comparisons with St George And The Dragon, the Lambton Worm, and Bram Stoker’s ’The Lair Of The White Worm’. You find this sort of thing all over the English countryside].
Misty wasn’t very thrilled by Julie’s card, and said he was annoyed she hadn’t addressed it to me as well. I said (quite truthfully) that I couldn’t have cared less if I tried.
Al, Magda and Xanthe came in to see us in the afternoon. Al was desperately seeking inspiration for a 500-word newspaper article he had to write on What Are The Most Important Things In Life. He had been under orders to make is as uplifting as possible for Christmas.
“Air”, I said, probably unhelpfully “That’s pretty important isn’t it? I mean without it we wouldn’t get very far!”
“Clean water”, said Magda “That’s extremely important”.
“Chocklit”, said Misty, impersonating Marjorie Dawes from ’Little Britain’.
“Brandy”, said Xanthe, with a sweeping arm gesture, sounding as though she’d already been liberally sampling it “It’s known as the water of life in some places you know”.
“Look none of you are trying!” said Al, in exasperation.
“I bet you don’t normally think that!” I said.
“It has to be something vaguely spiritual”, said Al.
“Well it seems a bloody silly subject to write a newspaper article about!” I said.
“Why don’t you write about your cross-Channel swim?” said Misty.
“Because he hasn’t done it yet!” I said “All of this sounds a bit quasi-religious, Al. Why have they asked you to do it?”
“I have no idea”, said Al “I’m a fucking atheist! They’d be better off asking Henry to do it”.
“God forbid!” said I.
The next morning I was listening to the official findings on the Diana death probe on the news, when Jason called in. I had thought all this conspiracy theory stuff might be right up his street, but he was very dismissive of it all.
“She died because she wasn’t wearing a seat-belt, pure and simple”, he said, startling me with his commonsense “Surely people can see that the one person to survive that crash WAS wearing one! People just can’t seem to accept that accidents happen, they happen all the time, and if people are going to be so arrogant as to stuff cocaine up their noses and then drive along at high speed with no seat-belt on … well it would have been more surprising if there HADN‘T been an accident wouldn‘t it! Anyway, why should the Establishment go to all the trouble of having her taken out? Why would they take the risk? She’s been far more trouble to them dead than she would have been if she’d carried on living. A little fact that hasn’t been registered”.
“You never cease to surprise me, Jason”, I said, feeling like I wanted to shake his hand.
“I’m more concerned about what’s going on in the here and now”, said Jason “Why are we supposed to get all worked up about the death of one Princess 9 years ago, when there’s all those poor women being found dumped in the countryside in Suffolk! Anyway, I just popped over to tell you something I’ve heard this morning. Is Misty around?”
“He’s gone out to buy some milk”, I said “Shouldn’t be long”.
“Oh I’d better be quick then”, he said “You know the old guy who lives in that house on the other side of the green, you know that really rundown old house?”
“An old guy lives there?” I said “You know in the all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen any sign of life in that house, never seen anyone come in or go out, and I’ve driven past it loads of times”.
“Well he was a bit of a recluse by all accounts”, said Jason “People didn’t see him for weeks on end, and he didn’t exactly encourage visitors”.
“I know”, I said, thinking of the notice he had posted on his veranda warning people to keep out. Also he clearly didn’t go out much, because there was a rusting old car parked in the drive there, with grass growing under it.
“Anyway to cut a long story short”, said Jason, looking behind him furtively, as if expecting Misty to reappear at any moment “He’s disappeared”.
“Well who can tell?!” I said.
“One of the neighbours saw him a couple of weeks ago, and she said he was very upset”, said Jason “It wasn’t like him, ’cos normally he never speaks to anybody. But he was really cut up. He said somebody had strangled his dog”.
“What?” I whispered.
“And even worse, he’d seen them do it”, said Jason.
“How do you mean?”
“He’d let his dog out late one night into the garden, to do its business. And he heard it yelping. He looked out to see what was wrong, and said he saw this big dark shape throttling it. By the time he ran outside, the person had run off, and the dog was lying there, with its neck broken”.
“Our dog killer caught in the act”, I said, thinking of the pregnant bitch Misty had found on the scrubland. I could see why Jason didn’t want Misty here when he told me about it, although Misty was certain to find out.
“The old man was really cut up about it”, said Jason “Said he was going to hunt down the bastard who did it, if it was the last thing he did. He was making all sorts of threatening noises. The neighbour urged him to ring the police instead, but she knew he wouldn’t, so she rang them. By the time they came out to speak to him, he’d disappeared. No one’s seen sight nor sound of him for a couple of weeks now. The police have put out an alert, saying that he’s suffering from depression. I think they’re hoping to pin it down to suicide, that’d make it all more neat for them I suppose”.
I didn’t say anything. I was trying to understand the mentality of someone who could throttle a dog, let alone rip its insides out. It was beyond me.
The telephone rang, and Jason said he’d catch up with me later, and left me to answer it. It was Mr Beresford, in an agitated state.
“Gray”, he said, coming straight to the point “I want you to take that damn picture off my hands, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I’ll give it to you, free”.
“You’re giving a picture away, Mr B?” I laughed “What’s the world coming to?! What damn picture anyway?”
“That one I showed you at the kitsch exhibition back in September, I think it was”, said Mr B “The house in the woods, with the face at the window, you remember?”
“Oh yes, that monstrosity”, I said, shuddering at the thought of that chocolate box horror.
“After the exhibition, when no one wanted to buy it, I took it back to the shop and put it up here”, he went on “But customers are reacting badly to it. They say it makes them feel ill”.
“I’m not surprised!” I said “It’s hideous! It can’t be the skull face that’s making them feel ill, Mr B, you can only see it when looking at it through a magnifying-glass”.
“One woman said she’s convinced it’s cursed or haunted or something”, said Mr Beresford “She said I should exhibit it with a warning on it, like it was a bloody video nasty. Would you like it?”
I had to laugh at this. Him trying to palm off a hideous picture on me, which was allegedly making people feel ill!
“I haven’t got the wall space for it, Mr B”, I said “And even if I had, I wouldn’t want that thing around the house!”
“OK thanks”, he said, mournfully, and hung up.
Whilst we had been talking I had been idly turning over a pile of sketches I had left next to the phone. One of them, a sketch of Misty in profile (just a head and shoulders piece), helped to erase the memory of that bloody awful picture of the house in the woods. He looked so wonderfully innocent in it. Like an angel.
As the day wore on I found myself getting more and more brassed off with the Princess Diana story. It’s become a common trait in this country, that when a major news story breaks about a member of the Royal Family, (or in this case, ex-member) your instant thought is “what does the Government want to hide today then?” Well as it turned out, Tony Blair was being questioned by the cops in the cash-for-honours row. Serious stuff. A British Prime Minister being questioned by the cops whilst still in office. Extraordinary. But no. We have to hear about an event which happened nearly 10 years ago instead.
Fortunately I was so busy letting off steam about all this, that it helped to distract Misty from the dreadful news of the dog being strangled. I also kept giving him little jobs to do, which also helps to distract him at times like this. Late that night whilst he was making us some soup in the kitchen, I caught the end of that weirdly surreal film ’Secretary’ (I still want to know how she manages to breathe underwater!). I couldn’t help feeling that the Lee Holloway character was a female version of Henry. The scene where she spends days sitting at a desk, without moving, just because her lover has told her to, is exactly what Henry would do. Even his bid for freedom back in the Summer, when he moved in here, doesn’t seem to have ultimately changed him. I saw now that his complete indifference when Jeannette fled to Spain (briefly) was his way of trying to wean himself from this bizarre love drug. For a brief while he had transferred his devotion to Rowland, but presumably old trainspotter Rowland didn’t quite cut it in the love tyrant stakes like Jeannette had done. When she came back and reclaimed him, effectively snapping his leash back on, he went obediently.
Also, like the Lee character, Henry’s not interested in a full sexual relationship. What he wants is the submission. The only time the lack of sexual intercourse bothers him is when he’s haunted by his religion, which preaches that the only true marriage in the eyes of God is a consummated one. I don’t believe he has any desire whatsoever (to put it bluntly) to fuck Jeannette, I still believe that if he has any real sexual feelings at all (and that’s very debatable) then he’s a queer. No, where Jeannette’s concerned, he wants to serve her. I don’t believe there’s any true love between them, or even liking. I think Jeannette despises him, and he has given every indication sometimes that he hates her, but they both desperately need what the other provides. They’ve proved to us all now that they can’t live without it.
I suppose some people reading this might think “ah yes, but what you and Misty have isn’t that different”. It’s way different. There is genuine love between us. Let me put it as straight as I can, and if it sounds arrogant, well that’s something I’ll have to live with: I could no more despise Misty than he could live without me. Without me he would be a lost waif, an innocent at large in a hard, cruel world. Without him I would be a hollow shell. We get a bit kinky sometimes, but it’s extremely mild stuff. We’re not exactly talking whips, leather masks and dungeons here. For many people it would be so mild as to not even register on the graph. Misty also likes me to tell him what to do, but if I told him to spend days sitting at a desk, he would simply look as if I’d suddenly lost my marbles and say “why?” Bless him.
I had taken to avoiding going out in the lane between noon and one o’clock, simply because that was often the time that Henry was given his marching orders, and Toady would turn up on his bike. Jeannette’s antics were getting me so angry that I felt it would be best if I had as little exposure to them as possible. Misty said it was ridiculous that I was letting Jeannette dictate my life in any way whatsoever, but sometimes the old Ignorance Is Bliss cliché really does work. What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over, and all that jazz.
Early one morning the doorbell rang whilst we were still in bed. We ignored it. Somehow I had a feeling it was Henry, don’t ask me how, but I just did. That morning I had an appointment to have my hair trimmed in Fobbington, and I left Misty holding the fort. I spent an enjoyable few minutes in the salon, listening to a conversation about one woman whose husband had erection problems, but, although it was very difficult for her, she wasn’t going to leave him “just yet“, as she was “very fond” of him really, and anyway they were going to put him on a course of Viagra, which sounded to me like a dog being put on a course of Bob Martins! I was dying to ask if they hoped he was going to have a nice glossy coat and a wet nose at the end of it all! Someone else suggested buying a Rampant Rabbit from Ann Summers, but she had already been given one for her birthday. I couldn’t help feeling that some men listening to all this would have their worst fears about women confirmed! I couldn’t help feeling sorry for this poor wretch, haunted by his impotence, and having it clinically discussed in a hair salon!
When I went to pay afterwards, the Irish girl on the reception desk caught an electric shock off the credit card machine. I said something along the lines of the weather must be turning frosty.
“No it was worse than that”, she said “It was a real electric shock, right up my arm!”
My remark about the weather turning colder was just wishful thinking. It was extremely mild. So much so that some of the trees seemed to be trying to break into blossom! Before going home I decided to call in at Fobbington Church and light a candle for world peace (well I keep trying, you never know one day it might happen!). The Church was busy, as apparently they were going to broadcast a carol concert from there later on in the day, and there were loads of people marching purposefully about trailing long lengths of cable everywhere. The bank of candles had been stuffed behind a pillar for the duration, and I was busy there, when I looked up and saw a strange bloke staring at me. I would hazard a guess and say it was about a couple of years younger than me. He was thin and mousy-haired, and had skin so pale it looked as though he had spent several years living in a darkened room.
“I need to speak to you”, he whispered to me, so low in fact that I could barely hear him.
“Go ahead”, I said.
“Not here”, he said, stuffing his hands nervously into the pockets of his jacket “I work at the burger bar down near the station. I’m there most afternoons. Come and see me there as soon as you can”.
He turned and walked off briskly, his shoes squeaking on the polished floor.
I felt curiously calm about this strange encounter as I drove back to Shinglesea. Or perhaps it was that I had got so used to odd things happening, that I was just grateful for somebody who didn’t appear threatening in any way! This feller had been so nervous that he seemed more scared of me than I could possibly be of him!
Back at ’Barnacles’ Misty was in a state. The silly arse had gone and let Henry in whilst I was out, and although he was gone by the time I got back, I still wasn’t happy about it.
“He said he wanted to come in and see our Christmas decs”, said Misty “I didn’t see any harm in it, I mean it’s not as if he had his suitcase with him! But he was acting really strangely”.
“How can you tell any difference from his normal behaviour?!” I said.
“He seemed really out of it”, said Misty “And he said to give you his love”.
“He can shove it up his arse!” I said, in the true spirit of Christmas “He’s playing games again, Misty, like he was that day in ‘The Ship’ when he started talking about Kristy in front of Rowland. Henry’s one mixed-up motherfucker”.
Henry’s silly behaviour had really got to Misty though, and it took me a while to get him calmed down. He even started cracking his knuckles at one point, and I said I’d sit on him if he started giving me any trouble. This made him laugh fortunately. When he was calm again, I told him about the man in the church.
“Will you go and see him alone?” said Misty.
“No I want you come”, I said.
“He might want to talk to you in private though”, said Misty.
“I have a feeling it’s about … well whatever’s going on around here”, I said “And that affects you every bit as much as it affects me. And personally I don’t feel, the way things are, that anybody should go meeting strangers alone at the moment. For all we know he could be another Dennis Nielsen!”
“But you said you felt he was harmless”, said Misty.
“I think he is”, I said “But you can never be entirely certain”.
“If you thought he might be another Dennis Nielsen I wouldn’t let you go alone!” said Misty, which was rather pleasing.
“By the way, Henry did something else that was odd”, he said.
“Go on then”, I sighed.
“He’d bought a Christmas card with him”, said Misty “It was for Jeannette, and he wanted us to sign it. He said he wasn’t certain that we’d remember to send her one otherwise. I refused to sign it, I told him I was sick of the sight of Jeannette”.
“Misty”, I said “You’re a star!”
My horoscope said that I was in for a week of soul-searching. Oh fine! You know just for once why can’t it say I’m in for a week of endless shagging, drinking and eating? MORE bloody soul-searching? I’ve had a basinful of soul-searching this past couple of months. I would be more than happy if I never had to do any ever again!
Jason came in for a cup of tea, and said he had a new theory about UFOs which he was very excited about. Instead of coming from Outer Space, he said, perhaps they come from under the water. I asked him if he had been reading John Wyndham’s ’The Kraken Wakes’. He said he’d read it several years ago, and he hadn’t got the idea from that. A great deal of the Earth was covered with water, he said (yes I have noticed), and the deeper parts of it are still a mystery of us. Perhaps E.T is coming from under there? I said it made more sense than the aliens travelling millions of light years across the Universe, just to come and irritate us! He was quite pleased with my reaction to this one, and said he was gong to try and go out on a fishing trip soon, and see if he could soak up any Special Atmosphere.
I hadn’t told anyone but Misty about my encounter with the nervy little man in Fobbington Church. I knew it was significant in some way, but I wanted to keep it as low-key as possible for as long as I could. I had a very strong impression that this guy wouldn’t welcome a lot of strangers suddenly descending on him, all asking impertinent questions.
We were blanketed in thick fog, and the horns were bellowing all around the area. Jason said that in this weather Shinglesea Beach made him feel like he was living in Innsmouth. I said that Shinglesea often reminded me of Innsmouth these days. Certainly Henry and Jeannette’s house would fit well in with the general air of decay that was prevalent in Lovecraft’s descriptions of that town!
I did some work on the website. One bloke asking if we did sand sculptures in Shinglesea (what aspect of the name Shinglesea Beach does he not understand?), and I had to patiently point out that our beach was all shingle … hence Shinglesea Beach. ’The Flowerpot Restaurant’ in Fobbington wanted us to announce that it was up for sale. My heart rang with joy on hearing this news. It’s been run since 1964 by a curmudgeonly old git who flatly refused to move into the modern era. When we first set up the website I had sent out a notice to various local businesses, asking if they’d like to advertise on it. The response I had from this old sod was that he had been doing this job for over 40 years, and he didn’t need my pissy little website. Not content with that, he even stuck a copy of his reply to me on the door of his restaurant, so that everybody else could read it as well! This was stuck next to his snotty notice that he welcomed all smokers all over his restaurant, and everybody else could just put the hell up with it (along with the one about how he didn‘t cook steak and chips).
I was curious though as to what had finally blasted the old tosser out of his lair. I did a Google search on ‘The Flowerpot Restaurant’, Fobbington, and found a blistering review on a gourmet website from the end of October this year, in which a discerning customer had left it a measly score of 1 out of 5, and flung around comments like “soggy vegetables”, “frozen fish” (unforgivable in this area), “school dinner plates from the 1960s”, “stupid card index-style menu, which I had to take apart to read“, “where’s Gordon Ramsey when you need him?”, and “this guy’s been running this place since 1964 … AND IT SHOWS!” After reading all this, I felt like doing Chaplin-esque high kicks all around the living-room.
“There seems to be rather a lot of bitchy old men in this area”, said Magda, when I told her the reasons for my uncharacteristic joy.
“We specialise in them”, I replied.
The fog was getting worse as the day wore on, it wasn’t lifting at all, but somehow I still felt that we had to make an effort to go out and find our friend in the burger bar. I played soft music, and fed lobster paste sandwiches and tea to Misty, to keep him calmed down over lunch. As we were reversing the van out into the lane, Henry appeared, looking so pathetic that it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d started wringing his hands!
“I’m still not well”, he whinged.
“Go and see a doctor then”, I said.
“I am”, he said “But all she does is keep giving me antibiotics. She says she’s utterly baffled by me”.
“She’s not the only one!” I said, with feeling.
I drove at a snail’s pace into Fobbington, getting more and more bored with staring into nothing but murky greyness. We parked at the station, and went to find the burger bar. He was indeed there, and said he could get a little time off to see us, as he could take his dinner early. I’ll call him Andy, even though it’s not his real name. You must be getting sick of me using pseudonyms after the bizarre Australian episode, but I feel it’s necessary here. Andy would be deeply afraid if I made his identity public in any way. He was lodging in one of the little Victorian terraced houses by the harbour. The bloke who owned the house was a racing commentator for some obscure digital channel, who was hardly ever there, and wanted Andy there more to keep an eye on the place in his absence than for any financial reason. Andy apologised for the state of the place.
“It’s just that he’s away so much he doesn’t really notice it”, he said, in his strangely fey little voice.
The place stank of stale tobacco smoke, I noticed that first off. Even though I grew up in a smoker’s household, I’m just not used to it these days, and everything in this place reeked of it. The living-room was decorated in a bright yellow colour, which wasn’t exactly restful, and the furniture was straight out of a 1970s sitcom. He offered to make us some coffee, then remembered that there was no milk in the house.
“It’s very cold in here”, he said, and fidgeted about with gas fire. We all kept our coats on whilst we waited it for it to make an impact.
He said he had heard about it me from Julie Sparrow, who said that I was running some kind of commune for paranormal enthusiasts out at Shinglesea Beach. I was horrified to hear my humble little abode described in this way, and said I wasn’t running any kind of commune. Anyway I largely let it pass, because I wanted to hear about him. He struck me as a person who didn’t find it easy to make conversation, and I knew that he wouldn’t hold us up with pointless tittle-tattle.
“I grew up around here”, he said “I had to leave the place in the early 1990s, and I’ve just recently come back”.
“You’ve been away?” I said, uneasily, as this was evoking memories of Rufus Franklin. Don’t tell me I was dealing with another bloody convicted paedophile!
“I’ll tell you why in a moment”, he said “When I was in my early twenties I made friends with a group of people. Nothing sinister about it, we all just hung out together, as young people do. Anyway we all got talking over a few cans one night, and I let it slip that I thought I might be psychic”.
“And are you?” I said.
“Possibly”, he said, evasively “I’ve blocked myself off so much that I’m not certain anymore. One of my friends said he was interested in Black Magic, and he’d like to see if we could raise a demon. Well all the others got scared and said they wanted nothing to do with it. In the end it was just three of us who decided to go ahead with the ’experiment’. My friend Terry lived with his parents out in a lonely house on the marshes just beyond the Darklight Cove campsite. You’ve probably seen it from the road”.
“The old coastguard’s cottage?” I said “I thought it was derelict?”
“It is … now”, he said “His parents were going away for the weekend, and so it was a golden opportunity for us to give it a try. The house is so isolated that we wouldn’t have to worry about the neighbours getting curious. Stupidly we didn’t use a magic circle. That was our big mistake. The demon can’t be contained then you see. It’s the sort of thing Aleister Crowley used to rage about apparently, people summoning demons as though it was a party trick, and not taking the proper precautions. Although really I shouldn’t be calling it a demon, that’s a very anachronistic term. Negative energy or negative spirit, is the proper term these days. Terry had read that we should turn our backs, as to face the demon was almost certain to cause death. So we did. Or at least two of us did. Terry couldn’t help himself you see. His curiosity got the better of him - and he looked”.
He paused for quite a while. I could faintly hear someone’s washing-machine next door going into its final spin. Misty’s face was still pink from the cold air outside.
“He died of a heart-attack, there and then”, Andy went on “At the age of 23. My memories of what happened after that are very hazy. I have it on good authority that my mind went into total collapse. I was Put Away, sectioned, fed lots of lovely drugs. People often feel sorry for me when I say that, but I liked it in the home. I felt safe there. And we had a lot more freedom than people realise. After a while, we could often go out for the day by ourselves, as long as we were back by 8 PM. I was there for a few years. When I came out I found that both Terry’s parents had died soon after … what happened. They were both quite elderly, they’d had him late in life, so I suppose - after the shock of what happened to Terry - it’s not really surprising. The house hasn’t been lived in since”.
“What happened to the third person who was there?” I said.
“Oh she’s still around”, said Andy.
“SHE?” I said “Do you mean Tara Mitchell by any chance?”
“Yes I mean Tara”, he said, wispily “I don’t have any contact with her. She went away for a while after it happened, not put away like me, I think she just went to another part of the country. We don’t want to see each other. I saw her in the distance one day. She looks very ill”.
He got up and began to pace around the room, tugging nervously at his jumper as he did so. Through the window I could see it was going dark, and the fog was getting worse than ever.
“What you’ve told me is very interesting”, I began, awkwardly.
“But you don’t believe me?” he snapped.
“I do actually”, I said “Although even now I still find it hard to believe in demons and Black Magic, in spite of everything that’s happened. I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s very more complex than Devil worship”.
“It is”, he glanced hurriedly at the clock “There’s so much more to tell you, and I haven’t much time. I can’t afford to lose this job. I’ve had so many over the past couple of years. Bad news travels fast in a small community like this, and I’ve already got a reputation for being unreliable, and there are plenty of immigrants around all wanting my job. I’ve had that made perfectly clear to me!”
“Please tell me anything more that you think I need to know”, I said, feeling like a police officer.
“First things first”, he said “The demon we summoned is called Marbas. He’s often depicted as a powerful lion vomiting fire, and he can transform himself into a man. He’s something like the Grand Duke of Hell, in charge of 36 legions of demons, or something like that anyway. He can cure diseases”.
“That doesn’t sound very demonic!” said Misty.
Andy turned and stared at him, as if he was seeing him for the first time.
“He can also inflict them”, he rasped “He can alter the shape of the human body”.
“Jeannette!” I cried. I urged Andy to go on.
“When I first came back here”, he said “I got a job on one of the fishing-boats. It was hard work, and very poorly paid, but I suppose I was just so desperate to live as a normal person again. One day though, when we were out on the seas, I saw something in the water. It looked like a face, underneath the water, peering up at me. It triggered something in me, and I lost it, said I couldn’t go back out on the water again. So I lost that job, and everybody assumed I was still flaky, that I hadn’t made a full recovery, that I was still doo-lally. Soon after, I got another job at the pizza restaurant in the High Street. That was another mistake. The head chef there hated me, made it clear he didn’t want me around. At first I thought it was because he resented having a certified nutcase on his staff, but after a while I realised it was because … I knew too much. One night, after everyone else had gone home, he got me in a corner of the kitchen, and told me I’d better watch myself, that I’d better be careful who I went around talking to. It’s not exactly a nice feeling being threatened like that. I had a room over the bakery next door at the time, and when I went back there, I found a man waiting outside my door. He looked perfectly normal, except he was built like a brick shithouse. But he also got aggressive, and repeated what the chef had said. Unless he’d somehow been in the pizza restaurant - and we’d locked up by then - listening at the kitchen door, I don’t know how he could have possibly known about that little scene. I was as scared as hell. I’ve been scared ever since”.
He gave another glance at the clock, and snatched up his coat. This utterly bizarre meeting was over. I urged him to contact me again, he knew where I lived, and if all else failed he could contact us through the website. He said he would, he had other things to tell us, things that were happening now and not in the past. And he let us out into the foggy darkness.
We inched back to Shinglesea, and Misty went into the house to put all the lights on. I popped in to Al’s wagon to tell him about the curious events of the afternoon, and found he was being somewhat bellicose about it. He seemed to be implying that I was being naïve for even listening to what Andy had said, let alone believing him.
“I can’t win with you lot can I!” I said “If I adopt a sceptical stance, then I’m being narrow-minded, if I listen to what’s being said, I’m being gullible!”
“I’m a journalist, first and foremost”, he said “And when someone’s got a long history of serious mental illness, and has even been put away for it, then I am naturally going to take what he tells me with more than a pinch of salt!”
“It’s no big deal being sectioned, Alan”, said Robbie, who was pouring hot water over some tea bags in a couple of mugs “Plenty of people have been. Xanthe was when she was younger”.
“Was she?” I said (although why this should come as any great surprise to me I don’t know!).
“Yes”, said Robbie “Although I think a lot of it was down to some eating disorder she had”.
“She’s still got it if you ask me!” said Al “That woman seems to live off fresh air!”
“This guy’s genuine”, I said “I just know he is. I’m going to try and get him over here, and if you can behave yourself, and promise not rip into him, I might invite you in as well!”
“All I’m asking is for you to bear in mind that paranoia is one of the chief aspects of mental illness”, said Al “People start seeing dark conspiracies everywhere”.
“Some might say you were being a bit paranoid when you came back from Clag Heath last year”, said Robbie, suavely. (Game, set and match).
“Alright alright”, said Al “But all this talk of a demon giving a 23-year-old a heart-attack …”
“I heard of a girl of 21 having a heart-attack once”, said Robbie.
“It’s the demon bit I’m getting at!” said Al, waspishly.
“It’s no more far-fetched than half the other stuff that’s been going on around here this past year!” I said “Just give him a chance, that’s all I ask. Don’t come over all tabloid journalist on him. He needs SENSITIVE handling”.
Paul thumped into the wagon.
“Misty’s calling you in for a cup of tea”, he said to me.
“And not before time if you ask me!” said Al.
“Bloody Al”, I said, a few minutes later, when I got into ‘Barnacles’ “He sits over there, reclining on his cushions like some Roman Emperor, whilst his minions fetch him cups of tea …”
“I didn’t think the Romans drank tea”, said Misty.
“Now don’t choose now to start getting clever”, I said “That’s not what I keep you around here for!”
A lot of the country was fog-bound for days, and it was thick, freezing fog too. I couldn’t help feeling we weren’t used to such cold temperatures anymore. I had much electronic communication with Andy in the run-up to Christmas. He gave me a detailed account of various disturbances in and around his house that he attributed to … well what exactly I couldn’t tell you. On reflection I didn’t believe for one minute there was a demon called Mabras, or Barbras, or whatever stalking the countryside, but I did think that something was acting as a unifying force, something that accounted for so much, like Tara Mitchell’s irrational behaviour, like Jeannette’s cancer, plus the fact that even though Jeannette had beaten the cancer, she seemed to be physically fading away in front of our eyes. Written like this it all sounds a bit inadequate, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to bear with me.
Andy believed not only that he was being followed and watched, but that something was getting into his room at night and messing with his things. He said he often found his belongings had been moved around in the morning, and on one occasion he had found a large circular burn-mark on his bedroom carpet, which was far too large to be a cigarette burn, (it was the size of a wastepaper bin) and anyway he didn’t smoke, and the racing commentator (the source of the stale tobacco smell which permeated the house) had been away for several weeks now. Naturally, the sceptical view is that he was either doing this himself (by walking in his sleep perhaps), or that someone was breaking into his room and messing around. Andy said he would expect everybody to take that view, but that he would try and get proof. He would set up a camera and film his room whilst he slept.
This he did. The results were astonishing. He sent the link to me, and said that he had edited much of the film, because so much of it was just nothing but darkness and him snoring in the background. The fact that he had edited it damned him completely in Al’s eyes. I was glad I watched the footage without Andy there, as Al was quite scathing in his criticism of it. There were two things that stood out about this film: one was the brief glimpse of someone’s hand in front of the camera at one point, and this someone had 3 fingers, and the other was that someone (something) suddenly pressed its lips up closely against the lens. Andy left notes that these two incidents occurred a full 45 minutes apart (hence why he had edited the film).
“The 3-fingered hand looks like someone’s sellotaped their fingers together”, said Al “There is nothing about that film that doesn’t make me thing that either he’s hoaxing us, or someone’s playing a practical joke on him!”
“I don’t know what it is”, was Magda’s more open-minded response “But if this is someone getting into his room at night then I will be seriously worried about him from now on. How can he sleep so soundly with all this going on?”
“Because he’s faking it that’s why”, said Al, stubbornly.
“Al, if you’d met him you’d know he’s not the faking sort”, I said “Or the practical joke sort. There is just something about him that tells me that”.
“Have you noticed that that person has no knuckles?” said Misty “And its arms are very long”.
“A monkey’s getting into his room at night”, said Al, which seriously made me want to brain him with the computer!
“That’s more bloody far-fetched than this creature being an alien or a demon!” I said.
“A monkey!” Misty laughed.
“A monkey breaks into his room night after night, messes around a bit, tries to set fire to the carpet, and then leaves again?!” I said “What do you think this is, ‘The Murders In The Rue Morgue’?!”
Misty wanted me to invite Andy over on Christmas Day, on the grounds that the poor chap would be on his own. I wanted to, but I also wanted to make sure that Al wouldn’t roast him over an open fire at the same time. Misty pointed out that it was our house (a little fact that has been all too bloody easy to forget this year), and that if Al got obstreperous he could be sent back to his wagon to stew.
On Christmas Eve Mrs Jackson brought her sister round to see us, a ‘treat’ I could have done without, as I find this woman to be an absolute abomination. It never ceases to amaze me how you can get two people in the same family so different in personality. Soo Ashton is a bigoted, aggressive bore. She’s like my brother-in-law in that she’s a Northern snob, who believes that anyone or anything south of Birmingham is completely beyond the pale. I swear she only comes down here to give us a sort of tour of inspection, so that she can go back to Preston (the centre of the Universe, don’t you know) afterwards and tell them how backward and uncivilised the natives here are.
Like me, Mrs Jackson has adopted Shinglesea as her spiritual home, and only occasionally pines for the North when she gets nostalgic about holidays in the Lake District when she was a child. I first met Soo Ashton a couple of years ago, when she told me that, in her considered opinion, my pictures were over-priced. I pointed out that Mr Beresford did all the pricing in his own shop, and that it was really quite reasonable when (to get all corporate about it for a moment) you consider the amount of man-hours I put into each picture.
“At least Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask!” was her endearing response.
Today she was as bad as ever. The true spirit of Christmas hadn’t reached anyone from Preston it seems. Mrs J had (disastrously) tried to find a common meeting-ground for us, by stressing Soo’s creative side.
“She writes the nature notes for one of her local magazines”, said Mrs J.
“People often say I should be a writer”, the fiend drawled.
“Why don’t you then” , I said, with the not unreasonable assumption that writers … er … write.
“I have to earn money”, she said “I have no time for all that ’artist starving in the garret’ stuff”.
I was extremely glad when the old misery left, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to see her again.
Late that evening we went along to ’The Ship’ for a drink. It was packed out, and from the outside, with the shapes of people thrown against the window, and the booms of the music, it sounded like some kind of Satanic mass was in progress. We got served eventually, and hid in a corner, which was usually obscured by the Toby Jugs. Al and Xanthe found us there.
“You aren’t staying here are you?” said Xanthe, who was about as rat-arsed as you can get and still stay vertical “Oh I do hope not. It’s very dangerous in here”.
“It always is”, I said “Have another bottle of gin”.
“Tell me, Gray”, said Al “This Andy feller, you don’t fancy him do you? S’alright, I won’t tell Misty”.
“Misty’s here”, I said “And no I don’t fancy him! Look, if that guy dragged the corpse of his night intruder here and flung it down outside your door, you’d STILL say he was faking it!”
Mrs Jackson gravitated over from the other side of the bar, and said she felt she had to apologise for her sister.
“She’s very much one of these take-me-as-I-am type people”, she said “Not much we can do with her at her age I’m afraid”.
“Well at least I haven’t got to put up with her over Christmas”, I said “You have that pleasure”.
“And I know what she’s bought me too”, said Mrs J “A copy of some diet book by Dr Gillian McKeith. I can hardly wait!””
A woman nearby was complaining because she had won a very bloody side of beef in the meat raffle held earlier that evening.
“And we’re both vegetarian!” she complained.
So why take part in a meat raffle, I asked myself. As Alan Partridge would say: “this country!”
I drove over to Fobbington on Christmas morning, and picked up Andy. He seemed relieved to be getting away from his digs for a night, and I really hoped that Al wouldn’t go and spoil it all by giving him a hard time. We had everyone in for a cauldron-full of spaghetti bolognaise at lunchtime, and had to take the kitchen door off its hinges so that we could seat everybody around it. There was microwaved Christmas pudding for afters. Very nice too.
There was a lengthy table-top discussion, most of the afternoon, about Andy’s night intruder, and most of it was fairly civilised. It only got a bit hairy when Al carped that Andy wasn’t doing enough to find out what this creature was, and to get solid evidence of it.
“If it was me”, he said “If I thought I had a real-life alien breaking into my room at night, then everything else in my life would go on a back burner. Hang work. I’d burn up the credit cards buying the latest equipment, and would catch that bloody thing on film. I would get evidence so solid no one could possibly argue with it, and I would send it to every newspaper office and t.v company I could think of!”
“And be soundly ridiculed by hard-nosed journalists everywhere!” I said, caustically.
“I would take that risk”, said Al “What would be my personal reputation to the scoop of the century, because that’s what this would be!”
“However solid the evidence was”, said Andy, who had stayed commendably calm through all this “People still wouldn’t believe me. They would still say I had faked it”.
“Get it checked out by experts”, said Al “Get them to verify it”.
“That’s been done before, Al”, said Robbie “There have been plenty of ghost photographs that have been pronounced genuine by experts, and yet some people still won’t have it. The truth might well be out there, and I believe it is, but it seems it’s too big for some people to absorb, so they’ll always dismiss it”.
After this protracted lunch, whilst the others divided their time between washing-up and a DVD of ’Godzilla’, I went out into the back garden to talk to Magda.
“You know what all this is about don’t you?” I said to her, by Kristy’s ruined fence “He’s giving Andy a hard time because he himself still can’t come to terms with what was going on in Clag Heath, that’s the trouble!”
“Possibly”, said Magda.
“There have been times over the past couple of days when I’ve wondered if this is the end of a beautiful friendship!” I said.
“No, let’s not lose him”, said Magda “I have a feeling it will be useful to us to have someone amongst us with a working knowledge of how the media operates. Plus I do believe he will come round to the story in time. It’s just that, as you said, he has a hard job coping with some of this weirdness. Clag Heath did him a lot of harm. According to Robbie, he had a nervous breakdown over it”.
“I know”, I sighed, absolutely fed up with people who wouldn’t acknowledge they had problems when they did.
We spent Christmas evening trying to decide between ’The Shawshank Redemption’, ’Pulp Fiction’ or ’Pretty Woman’ to watch on the t.v, and ended up watching ’Mutiny On The Busses’ instead, as the only one that got a universal shout of enthusiasm from everybody! Every time Olive appeared, Robbie would chime “she used to be a stripper you know”, which made me feel more than ever that we would have to get the lad a girlfriend next year, and a REAL girlfriend, not bloody Jeannette Temple!
An absolutely unspeakable thing happened in the days between Christmas and New Year: Henry threw a party. I know this sounds extremely implausible, and I can honestly say it was of the most wretched events I have been to in a long while. Even the worst kind of office party, with tepid wine served in paper cups, and the computer draped in pathetic bits of tinsel, would be a veritable Roman orgy by comparison! Of course, you would be quite justified to ask why the hell I went. Well it certainly wasn’t out of choice. Nor was it because Misty wanted to go (in fact he threatened to lock himself in the wardrobe). No, Xanthe plied us with so much emotional blackmail I’m surprised we didn’t all suffocate under the onslaught.
“He’s very lonely”, she said “And I know only too well how that feels”.
Jesus Christ, I could almost hear the screeching of the violins! I was in a grot anyway because Soo Ashton had come round to say goodbye, and had bought us a present of some shop-soiled chocolate advent calendars (what moron buys you an advent calendar after Boxing Day for crying out loud?!). To add insult to injury she charmingly said she had just bought them for half-price. Gee … thanks.
So as you can imagine I wasn’t in the best of humour of Henry and his little do. I decided we could at least take our own booze along for the occasion, as I doubted we would get much out of him. Smart move, even if I say so myself. Anyway Turd-Henry had stipulated that we were to present ourselves at ’The Hedges’ at 7:30 sharp, so we all traipsed along there. It took us an absolute age to get either of them to acknowledge our presence at the front door. After all Henry’s catty comments about our Christmas tree, we found that their decorations were limited to a dwarf-sized artificial abomination standing lopsidedly in the hall, which looked like as if Jeannette had made several repeated attempts to throttle it!
They had just got back from Sainsbury’s when we arrived, and had left half the shopping at the check-out (don’t ask), which meant they were having a full-scale row in the kitchen. Jeannette ordered us all to sit in the grim living-room. The clocked ticked round remorselessly. No sign of either of them or any drinks. In the end I went into the kitchen, where they were painstakingly counting up the cost of the shopping they had left behind to the last penny (if you’re curious, it was £4.65). I said could we at least open the bottles of wine we had bought along. (I had already made up my mind that I was walking right out of there if they refused).
Magda in a blindingly misguided act of goodwill, asked if she could help.
“Yes you can”, said Jeannette, in a tone of utter viciousness, (not so much as a “yes please” or “if you could kindly …“) and instantly set her to work rolling sodding napkins around knives and forks!
I was gob smacked (even after all my exposure to Jeannette) at this utter rudeness and lack of hospitality.
And then bloody Rowland turned up. He crawled into the armchair nearest the door, and shielded his eyes from Magda and Xanthe. When I spoke to him, he completely ignored me (I suppose you can’t blame him really), so I shouted at him, just for the sheer joy of watching him jump out of his skin.
As if all this wasn’t horrific enough, another guest arrived, and this one made Rowland look like a suave, sophisticated man of the world! You would have to have a kinder heart than my flinty old effort not to shudder when you look at Damien Colsworthy. He’s an almost classic example of in-breeding. Physically, he’s like a walking cadaver. Tall and emaciated, with an annoying rictus grin permanently plastered on his face. He also has a way of looking you up and down lecherously when you’re introduced (male or female it makes no odds).
He had brought along a bottle of sherry as a Christmas present for Henry and Jeannette, and promptly guzzled the whole lot himself. I have absolutely no idea how he came to be invited to this little shindig. I will hazard a guess that Henry must have met him through the local evangelical church. I found out later that he is extremely well-off, because various rich elderly relatives had died and left everything to him, which only served to confirm his slightly sinister appearance to me! Part of his vast wealth might also be because he’s a compulsive sponger. The sherry was a classic illustration of this. I later learnt that, in spite of his money, he doesn’t even possess a television set, and instead - if you’re not careful - he’ll turn up and spend the entire evening watching yours (don’t say I didn’t warn you!).
Jeannette went totally silly in this idiot’s presence, constantly leaping up to refill his glass, and fetching him fresh plates of food. She even hauled Rowland out of his armchair so that this creature could have it. I have never found it easy to put on a veneer of politeness for the sake of it. If I don’t like someone I find it hard not to show it, and I found it came all too easily to me to treat Damien Colsworthy with complete and utter contempt. Unfortunately he seemed to like this! Towards the end of the evening he gigglingly came and sat next to me on the sofa, and started vigorously slapping and groping my knee.
I decided it was time to go home … before I was physically sick.
We all miserably wound our way home in a gathering gale force wind and torrential rain. Misty kept up a mass of complaining all the way to bed. He even threatened to sleep in the living-room, but the strong winds whistling around us convinced him that it would be a miserable night to spend alone.
“There are times when you can be very irksome, Misty”, I said, when I had finally rid myself of my clothes.
“I’M the irksome one?” said Misty “You went believing all Xanthe’s sob stories! I hope you make it your New Year’s Resolution not to have anything more to do with the Temples!”
“I would happily have made that resolution at any time this past year!” I shouted above the wind rattling the house “All I can say is that I shall try my absolute damndest , now shut up and come to bed!”