1.EASTMAN
It’s one of those games we still played even after all this time; where did we think Eastman was born?
There
was a day when every city west of Berlin claimed him as their own but
in the end it was probably London or across the water in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
You
wouldn’t have picked him out at the start as being the type of creature
he became. The story is often told of him being referred to as The
Quiet Man, the gentle man.
He
wasn’t a devout anything, never really went to church and rarely spoke
of religion. To be honest, he wasn’t extreme about anything. Not at
first.
He
was born with that indefinable gift of people liking him. He magnetized
them, flattered them, became their friend and then used them.
He
spoke on television, on the web, wrote best selling ebooks and even
composed several successful music downloads. He was the champion; he was
the peoples’ champion, he was their champion.
His
‘Deacons’, as he called his close followers, financed his rise. He was
astute and he waited until the time was right. After the crash of the
Eurozone and the 60% unemployment, he offered cheap food in Eastman
Stores, all making a loss and all promoting his ideals. Cheap camps were
setup in Spain and England and these were known as Eastman Vacs, where
families could vacation for almost next to nothing.
This was when he was loved and this was when he made his move.
It was as quick as it was well thought out.
He
didn’t attack the churches at first, not at first. On his daily web
broadcast he maybe hinted at his objection to the church, its power and
its money. Only later did he talk of the actual buildings being insane
asylums – only later did he suggest that holding a faith was a mental
illness.
Then
the first one went, a Baptist Church in South London was razed to the
ground. The Eastmen (as the disciples now insisted that you call them)
blamed it on a race issue – wasn’t the church full of outsiders? But it
didn’t stop there. Within two years, any form of worship in England was
outlawed. This didn’t apply to the former UK countries of Ireland North
and Scotland, they had gone their own way.
When
Eastman finally claimed power, it was amongst the poor that lived in
tented cities in the parks of England. They ate Eastman Food, watched
Eastman Broadcasts, Eastman Movies and drank Eastman Gin (Orwell would
have smirked at that last one).
Every June the 1st was Eastman Day and the Eastmen would hold parades in every corner of the country. It wasn’t an option to attend.
But
what you might ask, became of the opposition? Or the devout
Catholics/Muslims/Protestants/Jews and others? Those that insisted on
worshiping were slung into the other type of Eastman camp and worked to
death.
Those who spread any form of socialism or brotherly love were beheaded in the Eastman Squares at the centre of every city.
Eastman
Money was offered to anyone who snitched on their friends and family
who worshiped in secret. Normally their homes were set on fire with the
occupants inside.
Somewhere in all the cynicism of the 21st century we stopped caring and as we stopped caring we fed the beast.
As
I sit here, I think back to the greed that started all of this; the
bankers, the debt, the crash of the Eurozone, the unemployment, the
riots and the rise and rise of Eastman.
You may mention Hitler in the same breath and you’d be right.
And all of this?
Well these are my final thoughts as I know they’ll be coming for me soon.
You may ask what my crime was?
I was a writer.
I’ll be taken to the re-education showers shortly.
No one ever returns.
2.The Stones
Willie
wiped his brow and looked out at the desert. There had been stories as
far back as the dawn of time about the desert, the Moonboy Hills and
those stones.
It
had been said that when the stones started to move the end was coming.
Willie always wondered what end these folks were talking about. He had
been too long in the saddle to really care about such things now. There
were names and places that he had started to forget and well, his end
was probably coming sooner rather than later.
Willie guessed there must be a right time for everything.
He
remembered when he was a boy and that first evening he’d ridden up into
the Moonboys. He’d been arguing with his paw about some nonsense or
other. Taking off with his old horse General had seemed the easiest way
to resolve things. The first two nights had been lonely and cold, boy
could it get cold up there.
On
the third night he’d taken shelter in a cave and managed to light a
fire. That was when he saw them - the weird carvings on the far wall.
When
he’d asked around town about them, one of those clever college guys had
talked about the pre-Clovis people being responsible but Will had no
idea what he was going on about. The Professor had asked if Will could
take him to the exact place where he’d seen the carvings but Will wasn’t
too keen. He just said he’d forgotten. Anyhow Willie felt it went a lot
deeper and darker than those Clovis folks, there was something strange
about those signs and that was the truth.
Funny
thing to tell, he’d never actually shown anyone other than his own
family the location of the carvings. In his teenage years Willie had
spent a lot of time up in the hills worrying and thinking about one
thing or another.
Girls, money, work, you name it he always took his problems ‘to the cave’.
When
he met Sarah he’d stopped going up there. Then, when the kids had come
along, he’d take them up one by one on his horse to show them the
pictures. But they had all grown up and moved away and no one apart from
his youngest Brad had kept up any interest in the place.
Recently
after Sarah’s death he’d found himself coming back to the place more
and more, to think over his life. Things didn’t feel so lonely up there.
The kids and their children very rarely came visiting anymore and he’d
usually see the clan at some Christmas get-together, then nothing until
the following year.
Willie
didn’t mind saying it, he was as lonely as hell and wondering if it was
time he should be moving on. Life was for the young and he would tell
you, he hated getting old. It hurt in every sense of the word. He was
tired and it was as plain and simple as that.
Then
a couple of weeks ago the stories had started circulating around the
place. Over at Jacob’s Rock and in Wall Fire Alley there had been folks
talking about the stones, they were moving, sometimes as much as several
feet in a night.
Over
in Kent County a minister had called it the end of days. He’d seen the
stones moving with his own eyes, may God strike him down if he was
lying.
Some
folks from the big city came and took photos of the stones and they
were kind of thinking that the locals were up to no good, perhaps moving
them in the middle of the night. But as the good folks of the Moonboys
had seen, there were no footprints near the stones. No rope marks. No
way, anyone or, anything could have been involved.
Sixty
years before the stones started moving when Willie was still a
teenager, he had taken a rubbing of the cave carvings. He was sure he
still had them somewhere.
After a barrel load of searching one stormy afternoon, he’d found them in the attic, three clear images of the carvings.
The
first image was of little rocks sitting on a plain. In the second, the
rocks had changed position and they all seemed to have moved or been
moved in the same direction. On the third there was a figure that
someone in antiquity had attempted to erase from the carving by rubbing
over the image with something rough.
It
had never made any sense to Willie except there was something peaceful
about the carvings and the cave. There was no doubt about it there was a
connection between the story that these carvings were telling and the
rocks moving.
Willie
decided he’d go out to Lazy Boy Canyon and have a look for himself.
He’d go at night when the desert was a lot cooler then he’d catch the
stones as the sun came up.
He
pitched his old tent by an overhang that helped him get some shelter
from the frost. He tried as best he could to get some sleep but this
wasn’t a night for it.
Just
after two in the morning he could hear a scraping not too far from the
tent, he guessed it was just another lonely animal out looking for
company or food.
He
rested a while but around four in the morning the sun rose over the top
of the Moonboys and caused the tent to heat up real bad. Willie felt
the only place to go was outside and anyway he was eager to see the
stones.
Sure enough, there they were, streaks of sand behind them like they had been moving on their own.
Surely that couldn’t have been what he’d heard in the dark of night?
Willie walked over to the rock and all of a sudden he felt a peace come down on him like he’d never felt before.
He bent down and touched the rock and smiled.
A few days later they found the tent but nothing was ever found of Willie.
There
was one strange thing that only the wild animals would have seen, the
rock that Willie had touched had moved forwards a few feet.
3. Can't Stop This Gun Crying
It
had been welcomed by the scientific community as a life saver, as the
next step in metal technology and a new generation of those shining
babies was about to be unleashed on the world.
The
team that had developed the idea at Los Alma had received the Nobel
Prize that year and were ready to be courted by every large
manufacturing company.
They
had no need to worry where their next research dollar was coming from,
indeed none of the team had any need to work for the rest of their
lives.
The principal was simple although the actual practical solution had taken decades of research:
A material that repaired itself.
You see it wasn’t so terrible when you put it down on a piece of paper like that. It seemed so innocent, beneficial almost.
The
plan was that one day, aircraft while in flight could self-medicate, a
nut or a bolt here would be re-grown and replaced. However that was
still some way off and the actual exposure of the general public to
SeRep (Self Repair), as it was christened, was minimal.
It
was planned that cars too would have the ability to repair themselves -
although there had been several showdowns at government level between
the makers of the materials and the car manufacturers. The way things
were looking, it meant that after you purchased a new car, and with a
good headwind, it could last you a lifetime (and the rest).
As you can imagine, the automobile industry was readying for a fight - big time.
The
first public structure to be made of SeRep was a bridge in Illinois,
chosen by some wise guy at Los Alma who had stuck a pin in a map of the
Ohio river.
A
Bridge had been selected as a structure that could suffer wear and
tear, be exposed to public use and certainly be enhanced safety-wise by
the use of the new material.
The Tamaroa bridge was the one chosen and it crossed the Ohio at the southernmost tip of Illinois.
As
with all great ideas there were teething problems. The material, for
instance, had to be guarded because of theft. The ‘bridgits’ as they
became known would hack off a piece of SeRep meaning the bridge would
have to repair and replace and then they'd sell it (or at least try to)
on the 'Net.
Sometimes the material that had been stolen was so large that the bridge displayed a permanent scar. Just like human skin.
At
night when there was less traffic going over the bridge (that’s not to
say it was totally quiet as people came from all over to see the wonder –
day and night), but at night when the bridge was repairing itself it
sounded like a muffled cry and this caused the bridge to be nicknamed
the Bridge of Sighs. It almost sounded like a child in pain.
There
had been the odd accident, the biggest of which was the General Custer,
a tourist boat hired by some big corporation, packed with sweaty, drunk
salespersons on a free trip to see the Bridge.
At
the inquiry it had been shown that the Captain had been more than a
little drunk and had almost destroyed the bridge supports on the
Illinois bank. The damage was so severe that the SeRep guys decided to
give the bridge a helping hand and assisted in the repairs.
Yet
anytime the bridge was left alone it would still continue to do the
work it had been created for and it could always be heard to sigh.
Janus
Jones was a mid western boy straight out of college and about to set
off for the Florida panhandle in a car his Pappy had bought him. The
present was not for finishing school but for staying out of jail unlike
Kevin, his older brother. Janus could have flown pretty cheaply but he
wanted to follow the Mississippi all the way south and then cut across
to Tallahassee.
So it was a surprise when he found Kevin loading a bag into his new car on the morning of his trip.
“Coming
with you Bro’. No arguments, I got nothing from Paw but aggravation and
you get this brand spanking new car – so the least you can do is take
me as far a New Orleans.”
Then Kevin jumped in the car.
And
so the two Jones brothers (you’d have sworn they’d had different
fathers) set off on a trip that would shake their worlds forever.
At
the trial Kevin, although missing most of his left arm, was still able
to act as a credible witness. The way he told things it was as if the
brothers had been the innocent victims. That wasn't totally true.
Just
before the incident Kevin had driven for several hours south which had
let Janus sleep, although with Kevin at the wheel Janus tended not to
sleep too soundly. They’d stopped at the very last bar in Illinois going
south to allow Kevin a few beers, Janus drank cola and several of the
witnesses had told the court that Kevin had forced Janus to stay, and
that Kevin had drank too many beers. That was just Kevin.
As
they left the car lot, instead of Janus driving, Kevin jumped into the
driver’s seat and was beginning to move off. Janus had no choice but to
jump in over the rear of the car. Chances are Kevin would have left him
for cold, just standing there and let him make his own way home – Kevin
had done it before.
“Where you at?”
Kevin ignored Janus and continued down the narrow road.
“This ain’t the way.”
“Tis, if you’re going to the Tamaroa. I wanna see the magic bridge.”
The
traffic started slowing about a mile from the bridge as there was a
queue of cars taking their time crossing. At one point, due to the
weight of cars on the bridge and regardless of its properties, the cops
had stopped the cars coming north, to allow the south bound queue to
clear.
As
Kevin approached the bridge he swerved over to the left hand lane and
drove down the wrong side. Some of the cops started giving chase on foot
but Kevin put his foot on the accelerator and then started hollering
and whooping.
“Yee-haa, little bro’, yee-haa. Let’s just see how good this thing is at rebuilding.”
Kevin
drove the car so close to the edge that sparks flew from the girders.
Janus’ new car was badly damaged down that side. Not satisfied with
this, Kevin started to run the car into the supports causing them to
buckle and bend.
It
was just as Kevin was ready to inflict a fatal blow on the bridge that
the road beneath them opened up and Janus, Kevin and the car plummeted
to the river below.
The
cars behind, seeing what had just happened, had managed to swerve
around the hole. Kevin swam to shore leaving Janus to sink with his new
car. The older boy was way too drunk to try any heroics and was probably
lucky just to save himself.
Janus’
father grieved for his good son and wasn’t going to let something like
the Bridge of Sighs or its owners or the Los Alma scientists get away
with their responsibilities and so he took them all to court.
I
guess it would be more accurate to say he put the bridge on trial.
Janus’ father claimed that the bridge had opened up the road to dump the
car in the river in order to protect itself.
The newspapers had a field day – ‘The Bridge that kills’
What
the father attempted to prove in court was that the bridge, or at least
the material, was self-aware and that it had made a positive decision
to break a hole in the road in order to rid itself of an irritant.
Of
course the court over-ruled the claim and declared the accident as
death by misadventure. Whatever was fully known was never put in the
public domain, the bridge manufacturers were ordered to dismantle the
structure and the material SeRep was banned from use in any public
construction.
It
wasn’t the end of SeRep however, the armies of NATO built tanks and
weapons from the material. They’re using them at this very moment in the
wars out east.
I hear tell that the soldiers talk of the weapons that cry in the night.
4. The Haunting At Mrs Trelawney's
Going home was all that he had left. The family and friends
had long since gone from the little town on the West coast of Scotland but it
had been home once and would be again.
The snow fell as he stepped from the railway station. It
had been a long, long journey from London and all of it spent travelling in
third class. Like his family the money had disappeared, some through his own
carelessness and some through the dishonesty of others. Now all he had was a
few pounds to rent a small room in his old town.
Mrs Trelawney was expecting him and she seemed cheery
and homely.
“Your room is all prepared Mister Lawson and I’ve had my
daughter light a fire to take the dampness out of your bed. If you would like
to go straight up and get settled in, I’ll show you the way.” Mrs Trelawney
climbed the three floors but hesitated at the final floor. Sam Lawson assumed
it was because she was out of breath and so he went to help her.
She pulled away, adding “I am fine, Mr
Lawson.....really, I am fine.”
Sam thought that the woman spent as little time as
possible in his room.
“If you need anything Mrs Lawson my daughter will bring
it to you. These stairs are a killer for me,” said Mrs Trelawney. The thing
that struck Sam as strange was that she was younger than he was.
Once he had unpacked he sat down to write a letter, the
main one being to the Carters in London who had so graciously helped him in his
time of need with a bed.
He placed his paper and pen on the old wooden table that
sat in the corner. It would have to be used for all things considering it was
the only table in the room. He had just laid his pen on it when there was a
knock at the door.
“Coming, Mrs Trelawney,” he called but when he opened
the door the hall was empty and his, was the only bedroom on that floor. He
noticed an old store room across the way and he wondered if the person had
disappeared in there. He knocked on it quietly and when there was no response,
he tried to open it. It looked and felt as if it hadn’t been opened in years.
Sam returned to his room.
He closed his door and sat down to write the letter but
suddenly a cold chill ran up his neck for on the paper that he had left blank
were scrawled the words ‘help me’. He crushed the paper wondering if there was
a child in the house who perhaps had thought it all a joke. It was something he
asked about the next morning as he ate breakfast.
There was a crash as Mrs Trelawney dropped her knife on
the kitchen floor.
“A child you say? There’s been no child in this abode for
many a year. Isn’t that right, Isabelle?”
Isabelle, Mrs Trelawney’s daughter, nodded her head but
neither seemed that convincing. Sam decided he must be imagining it all and
apologised.
Sam took a stroll and bought the local paper in order to
look for a job. The local paper was always the best place to find something. He
took it back up to his room but just as he reached the top floor he could
distinctly hear a man’s footsteps run across the hall. It ran into his room and
then the door slammed. His heart skipped a beat.
“Hello? Is there anyone there? Hello?”
He knocked his own door gently then decided to open it.
It was so small a room there was nowhere for anyone to hide. He carefully bent
down and looked under the bed; satisfied there was no one there he opened the
door of the small cupboard – nothing. The window was locked from the inside so
he could not have escaped that way. Sam wondered if he was having a break down,
it probably was deserved given the troubles he had found himself in.
He sat down to read the paper then noticed that
scratched on the table, by a fingernail by the looks of it, were those words
again: ‘help me’.
He must get a job as soon as possible and get out of Mrs
Trelawney’s rooms. She had been unexpectedly cheap and Sam was beginning to
understand why.
He circled a few jobs in the newspaper. The first one he
was going to try was the ice cream shop at the corner of the street. He had
turned his hand to working in restaurants in London and in Paris and felt he
could hold his own in an out of season Scottish town.
It was snowing harder as he pushed open the shop door.
Mister Bertolli, the proprietor was cleaning out the ice cream making machine.
“Hold-a on, I be-a with-a you in-a minoote,” he said in
a half Scottish, half Italian accent. He wiped his hands, took off his gloves
and then shook Sam’s hand warmly.
Mister Bertolli offered Sam a job in helping with the
ice cream making. It was hard work and long hours but he surprised himself with
how much he enjoyed it. When the shop was busy, he was even allowed to serve
the customers.
One day, when things were quiet, Sam and Mister Bertolli
were having a coffee and Sam brought up in conversation his problem at Mrs
Trelawney.
“So what-a you think it is, Sammy?”
Sam told Mister Bertolli that he thought it might be a
ghost.
“I don’t-a know much about ghosts, but maybe it’s-a
trying to warn-a you,” said a very serious Mister Bertolli.
“About what?” Sam asked.
“Search-a me.”
Every night when he got back to the top of the stairs at
Mrs Trelawney’s, the scuttling and running of the unseen man would welcome him.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” Whispered Sam but
every time he spoke to the room nothing was forthcoming.
At 2.27am every night there were cries from the
fireplace of ‘help me’. Some nights Sam lay there waiting on it and other
nights, especially if he had had a busy day at the ice cream shop, he would
just turn over and go back to sleep.
“Help you what?” shouted a frustrated, Sam.
It got so common and frequent that Sam was starting to
get used to it all and on the nights that there wasn’t the scuttling or the
noises, he would feel that there was something missing.
Finding his room unwelcoming, Sam spent more and more time in the Trelawney’s
company. It was not unusual for Sam to spend the whole evening with Mrs
Trelawney and her daughter, eating, reading and talking about the troubles of
the day.
He even felt comfortable enough to mention the noises in
the top room but neither of the women had heard any disturbances or even heard
it mentioned by previous tenants.
Sam was happier than he had been in a long time, now
that he finally had a family of sorts and a place to call home.
One morning a telegram was delivered to the house to
inform Sam that his old boss in London had died and left him some money. Not a
fortune but enough to keep him in comfort for a few years. His first action, as
a thank you for their friendship and company, was to take Mrs Trelawney and her
daughter on a holiday to the Isle of Man. They all stayed at the best hotel in
Douglas and fine dined every evening.
Over the next few weeks Sam spent time and consideration
buying his new family presents for Christmas and hiding them in his room. It
was going to be a great celebration this year.
One Saturday evening Sam tried a new soup that Mrs
Trelawney’s daughter had made that day. Sam thought the soup delicious and said
so, but felt he should retire early as it had been a tiring day and he went up
to his room.
When Mrs Trelawney and her daughter came to check on him
at 1am he was already in a coma. They realised that this would make things a
lot easier. They tied him up and dragged him from the bed; they had both already
worked out what they would do with the corpse.
Mrs Trelawney’s daughter tied the body into the crevice
and then they both started to place bricks over the fireplace, he would be dead
soon enough.
At 2.27am they had finally bricked up Sam and as mother
and daughter went back downstairs, they were already discussing how they would
spend his money.
Mrs Trelawney would inform Mr Bertolli that Mr Lawson
had been called unexpectedly back to London.
Just before he died, while he was entombed in the
fireplace, Sam Lawson managed to whisper his last words: ‘help me’.
5.The Flight Of The Geese
She stood staring at the sky and with one deep breath the arctic air slashed the back of her windpipe.
She had almost to close her eyes to see their forms in the upper field as the sun seared the earth.
The wild geese had been there for days, nestled in the higher ground, feeding from the tilled soil and waiting – just waiting.
Every year they came and every year their presence caused a stirring in her heart. She felt right again. She felt needed.
She
painted pictures of them as they fed in the field, she sketched their
flight and sometimes she just smiled. She listened to their cries and
more than once she was sure they called her name.
The
geese swept in formation over her house and bestowed upon her a victory
wave as she lay in bed, grasping her bed cover whilst looking from her
window.
On
the morning that she never woke again, the geese prepared themselves to
take to the skies; to head home and to carry another soul to that
resting place in the far, far north.
They had got what they had come for.
6. The Rain Country
"You
think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from
barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass" . The Power-House ,John Buchan , 1913
He
dreamt of letting his hand dance under the cool water which flowed
freely from a tap and then watch as the unwanted liquid disappeared into
the hole.
He
awoke with a start and yet there were not the usual battle noises that
kept him awake at night. This was a darkness that brought with it
nostalgia, an aching for the past that was guaranteed to suffocate any
of his happiness that clung for survival.
He walked the top officers’ corridor, the one which was plastered with the war propaganda:
“Remember our enemy – they squander”
This was supported by photos of water being abused at the hands of the barbarians to the north.
Placed at the far end of the corridor was the most famous poster of all:
“Remember why we fight” the photo of a tap and a drip of water.
Every home had one on the wall – put there by order.
He
had been a night-walker ever since he was a child, long before the
Drought, long before the War, long before the dreams of the past.
The drought and the war were things he could fight against but the
nostalgia was the worst, it lured him into a warm land. In his dreams he
was bathing in hot water while his family prepared the evening meal in
the rooms below.
Those days had gone and most of his family were dead or taken as slaves and shipped to the north.
Once
people crossed the rebuilt Hadrian’s Wall they were very rarely seen
again. Satellite photos showed camps for re-education on the outskirts
of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. For re-education read extermination camps.
Those
unfortunate enough to be captured were usually worked to death building
underground storage areas for the water or the new gold as it was
better known.
His
own parents had gone ‘over the wall’ ten years ago. They had moved for
safety to the hills in the Lake District but had been captured on a raid
by The Reivers. Those to the north had the water but not the manpower -
so that need had brought them raiding as far south as Old Manchester.
If
the war continued it would be thirty years old next February. The war
was older than most of the people left in the United English States, he
guessed that was why they had made him a General - he was forty three
years of age and one of the few people that old. One could still make
out ‘General Robert Star: UES Army’ on his fading breast badge.
He
had sent his wife and child to a holding camp near Liverpool as it
still had some water and was considered safe, at least for now.
It
was estimated that the population of the United English States was just
under a million, many had perished in the first drought but disease had
been the main cause for most.
The
Barbarians on the dark side of the wall had an estimated 200,000 and
probably another 100,000 made up of those captured or those who had
defected.
The
defectors were known as ‘Thirst Runners’ and if they were re-captured
by their own people, they were normally flayed alive and laid out on the
grass as a warning to others.
Robert,
or Bobby as he liked to be called by his men, had been a soldier for
most of his adult life. As the drought moved up what was once known as
Britain, so Robert’s garrison followed. He had spent thirteen years in
Old Manchester before moving to this new camp called New Manchester
built on what had been once a town called Preston.
Preston had been razed to the ground at around the same time as his parents had disappeared.
He
was issued with a small bottle of water each Sunday and this was to do
him for the week. There was still some water reaching them from Wales
but most of what was left of those supplies had been stolen, the pipes
having blown apart. Those who lived in the border areas of Wales were
systematically erased, it was considered better to rid the area of
Drinkers (that was how the UES referred to non-combatants) than wait for
them to become potential terrorists. Except the extermination gave
birth to more terrorism than if the place had been left alone.
The
scorch and burn policy was now dropped in favour of bribery. Give the
Drinkers water and they had no need to hit back at the troops.
Everyone
knew on both sides of the wall what was coming next - it was
inevitable. It had been discussed, planned and resourced from the
Garrison in Old Manchester. In two days time the entire UES Army was
going to attack the wall from both the Carlisle side and also using
those battalions based at the River Tyne; there had been a proud city
there once.
Robert always finished his nocturnal walk as the dawn was breaking through - this shortened the dream-time.
The next few days would change the war one way or another for everyone.
What they couldn’t do was stay where they were.
7. The 'Tweens
In
all the time that planet Earth had been circling our Sun, it was a
miracle that they hadn’t been seen or at least caught on camera before
now.
They
had lived here far longer than us and had kept themselves apart from
us. Perhaps that was the reason they survived. Homo Sapien’s impatience
with those different from themselves had long been demonstrated.
They were probably mistaken for Yeti, or Ghosts, or Monsters – Man had called many things monsters except perhaps, himself.
The
Universe was theirs – they lived amongst the dark matter, they lived in
the time between seconds, they lived in the rooms that were left empty
until we entered them, they lived in the spaces that we had not owned or
destroyed. They lived in the inbetween.
There’s one now in the next room from you, living the life of a ‘Tween - until you turn the door handle that is.
8. Meet You At The Circus
When Sebastian was seven, a traumatic thing happened to
him. He had seen the monkeys in a cage from the corner of his eye and had
wandered over to feed them. He remembered one of them bit his little finger.
Blood oozed from the wound causing Sebastian to turn to
show his parents. They were not there as they had gone on without him.
Sebastian screamed and wept until a woman came to help.
She asked Sebastian who he had come to the Zoo with, and
he replied his two brothers and his parents. She then asked what was the last
thing they had said to him?
“If anyone gets lost we’ll meet up at the circus, “he
told the woman.
So that is what she did, she took Sebastian to the
circus and there they found a very worried looking mother and father.
Sebastian never wandered off again.
When Sebastian was nine, a traumatic thing happened to
him.
When the siren wailed, the whole family, as they had practiced,
went to the fallout shelter at the end of Frankenholme Street.
Sebastian remembers the darkness, then the sudden
brightness and then the oozing of blood. When the sun came up again, Sebastian
was the only one left.
Only dust and shadows filled what was left of the
shelter.
Then he remembered what his mother had told him that day - so
long ago - and went off to find the nearest circus.
9. The Ape Who Sang
By
the time that Christopher had reached the grand old age of twenty
seven, he had already completed sixty eight of the things he wanted to
do with his life before he was thirty.
Sky-diving
and swimming with sharks had all been ticked off from the list, but the
one he’d shied away from , the one that would take everything that he
had - was to cycle across Asia on a push-bike; if he was to complete it
by his thirtieth birthday then he was going to have to get a move on.
Christopher
had compiled the list on his twenty-first birthday and that evening
when he’d finished writing the last thing to do, he’d assumed that there
would be all the time in the world to complete them but as we mere
mortals already know, life always seems to get in the way.
So
with over thirty of the more difficult activities to arrange and still
accomplish, and with less than three years to do it in, Christopher was
starting to get anxious. Apart from his trip into Space, the Asia
journey was the next biggest activity which he could take part in.
He
managed to get himself a summer job in a hotel in the Scottish
Highlands and he spent the warm days working very hard from early
mornings to late afternoons, the rest of the time he spent cycling up
and down the glens. They were tough climbs but after several weeks he
began to eat up the roads and miles as if none of them mattered.
His
plan for the trip was to start in South East Asia after the September
monsoons had drifted. He had considered all the safety aspects -
although he was going to cycle several thousand miles alone so maybe safety was not a word to bandy about.
His
bought a ticket on one of the cheaper airlines and to him that was all
part of the experience, and by the start of October he would be in
Thailand.
It
was too expensive to take a bike over there but he’d found an old
ex-pat on the ‘Net who was willing to trade his bicycle for some British
cigarettes and a few quid.The bicycle was older and more damaged than
the photograph had shown.
Christopher
spent a couple of days in a very plain but clean hostel to get his
energy back and to sleep off the jet lag, it also allowed him time to
get the bike into a decent shape. By the Friday he was ready for the off
and by the time he had arrived at the outskirts of the city, his
adrenaline was pumping at the speed of light.
The
smells, the heat, the trees and the people all gave the trip a feeling
that he was moving in another world. He was in love with a country and
she was going to be difficult to shake off.
His
plan was to travel to the north and then take a train into China. He
hadn't planned to cycle the whole of Asia as that would take several
lifetimes and besides, he still had thirty one activities to finish in
the next three years.
On
the fourth day, he stayed in a small hut which he shared with a young
couple from Glasgow. They told him about the Ape Trail, a path about ten
miles to the east that they had said had been their most magical part
of the holiday so far.
“There’s monkeys..”
“Apes” her boyfriend corrected her.
“Apes everywhere.”
“Really tame as well, they’ll eat out of your hand.”
So
that night Christopher went to sleep, deciding that he was going to
make the detour and go and see the apes the next morning. After all,
this is what the trip (and life) was all about.
He’d
cycled longer than he’d wanted to down the path realising the couple
had forgotten to tell him just how muddy the whole place was. Eventually
he’d got off the bicycle and walked several more miles without setting
eyes on any apes.
The
road, if that is what it could be called, narrowed at points until it
was only wide enough to let one set of feet walk at a time. Christopher
was struggling to keep his balance and once or twice grabbed out for a
muddy wall to keep upright. It was on third time of doing so that he
grabbed a lump of mud which caused a large hole to form in the
embankment and send tons of mud above to slide down on top of him and
his bike.
Both
he and the bike tumbled down into the darkness.He sometimes lost
consciousness with the lack of oxygen and then the next minute he would
shoot into the air, it was at these moments he would inhale with
everything he had. The bicycle hit him several times, once almost
breaking his back.
When
Christopher came to rest, he was on the floor of a forgotten valley.
Luckily for him, the mud had allowed one of his nostrils to peak through
and although he was unconscious, he was still able to breathe. He had
survived.
There
was no telling how many times the sun had come and gone before he came
to . The mud had begun to dry and had caused a crust to form around his
body but it had also soaked up the blood from a large wound on his
head.
It was the thumping of the ape on the mud that brought him into the sunlight and into a new life.
He had no idea who or where he was.
His
friend, the hairy one with the long arms, and another pulled him clear
of the mountain of mud and as he lay looking at the sky and wondering
why it was that colour, he saw a large shiny thing shoot past his face
ridden by another of the hairy men.
The
apes had found Christopher’s bike and were fighting each other for the
chance to push it forward and then attempt to sit on the cross bar. The
apes had seen the men from the mountains ride them before but never had a
man made his way into their midst with one of them.
High
Hands, the chief of the valley apes, had intervened between two of the
lower cast apes who had wanted to smash the human to death. They had
seen many of their family die at the hands of men.
But
High Hands had seen that the man was injured and the family law did not
allow injured beasts to be beaten to death within the camp. He was to
be cleaned of the mud and helped to a better health. That was the law as
written by the elders since the time before time.
High
Hands had expected that more of the men would come looking for their
own but it had not been so. Two cycles of the sun earlier, a large shiny
eagle had passed which made the noise of the gods and had scared the
younger apes. High Hands had seen it all before and stood firm.
Perhaps
the man was an outcast, he had seen such men in his younger days but
whatever his story he was to be cared for as if he was one of High Hands
own family.
One
morning the man felt some warmth and strength in his arms. His arms
were not as hairy or as strong as the rest of the family - perhaps was a
weakling of the tribe? He could not remember. One of the elders had
given him two small rocks and when they were referring to him they would
place the two rocks in the sand and point. The man guessed that his
name must be Two Rocks and so he called himself such.
As
he was recovering, the family had washed him and given him water to
slake his thirst and each time he had awoken from his fever, he could
recall terrible pictures in his head. Yet there was always one of the
elders sitting by him to watch over and protect him.
The
dreams were strange. Thoughts of large structures that reached into the
sky, shiny boxes that went faster than High Hands could run, metal
birds that flew and contained others like himself, (those with less hair
than his family).
After
one moon had passed, the man was able to use signs to talk to his
family. Two Rocks could ask for food and drink, he could understand that
the borders by the large trees were not for the likes of him - for that
was where death lay waiting.
Then
one night a strange thing happened. It was a night when the moon, the
god of the sky, was shinning brighter than usual that the man went to
the highest of the hills located within their territory and he opened
his mouth and made a noise.
“Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday ....”
He
had no idea what the sounds meant but they were pleasing and they made
him feel calm. Down below some of the family were concerned and said as
much to High Hands, but High Hands knew that men had to make such
noises. It was the way they were made by the Sky God.
Each
night as the sun cycle came to a close, the man would climb the hill
and make the same noise. High Hands had told Two Rocks that the Sky Gods
were happy with the noises.
As
Christopher sang to the moon some tourists had heard the song and on
their return from the mountains had told the local police. They said it
was the apes, they made noises at night that sounded like a human
singing. So no one came looking.
But
when the second moon had come and gone, something peculiar happened to
the man. He felt something in his heart, he felt an ache and he felt
the loneliness. He knew that his family, for all he wanted to be with
them, was not enough.
It
was something to do with his dreams and the singing. None of the other
family members sang and when he would come down off the mountain, they
would all keep their distance and try to avoid him.
So one night, after the third moon had come, he went up the mountain and sang his song.
“Happy Birthday to you....”
When he had finished, he wept and wept and wept.
He
looked back at the family but instead of returning down the mountain he
walked away to the trees where death waited. He wasn’t afraid, he was
more afraid of staying with the family and feeling the loneliness again.
So he walked down the other side of the mountain and decided to take his chance with the forest.
10. Strange Diary
November 22.
The strangest goddamn thing ever, and I mean ever, happened to me this
morning. Jeez, my hand is still shaking as I write this even although
the boss told me ‘no notes, no traces, no records’ but hey, it’s only
one little bitty diary.
I had got up this morning, had breakfast and kissed my wife and
prepared myself for what I was going to do, today. ‘Change the world for
the better’ is what the boss said to me. So last night I double checked
everything and the equipment was all ready. I’d taken it out to the
Plains last weekend to make sure everything was A, okay. It was.
So I took all I needed up to the top floor and waited. I kind of
guessed it would be a long wait but I was ready. ‘You’re the man’ as my
boss told me last week.
Jeez, I nearly died when those folks turned up right behind me. I kid
you not. One minute I was alone, the next they were standing right
beside me. I didn’t even get a chance to reach for the rifle.
“Did you do this on your own?” Asked the man with the grey suit.
I asked him what he meant. I mean were they Feds or what?
Some guy shouts in a strange voice that they weren’t meant to get
involved, that they would have to abort the trip and everyone was to
return. Sounds crazy? That’s what I thought. When I got myself together I
started to chase after them as the disappeared around the corner. Then I
felt real weird and blacked out.
When I came to, I heard one of them say that I would have to be dropped
off later. A kind blonde haired girl, a bit like Marilyn offered me a
drink, smelled like coffee but I turned it down.
She asked me how I was doing and I said fine, she said that we’d need
to wait till the bomb had gone off before we would return to get me
home.
I know this is going to sound crazy, if anyone reads this – but she
said they were time travellers, that they were on a tour of the big
ones: The Crucifixion, First Man on The Moon (I’m tellin’ you that’s
what she said), The start of World War 3 in 2012 – apparently a dirty
bomb went off in….no, I’m going to stop there you wouldn’t believe me if
I told you and the Assassination of the President – J.F.K. and that was
why they were visiting me. I asked her how she knew and she said she
was from the future and that she knew everything about me including Jack
Ruby. Wow, my blood ran cold when she said that name – how did she know
the Boss?
She said that I would be given a drug or something to make me forget so
she could ask me anything. ‘Did I work alone?’ – I asked her what she
meant. Did I shoot JFK on my own? I haven’t done it yet, I told her.
Well are you working alone? I told her of course I’m not, I am only up
in the Depository to make sure there are no loose ends. There are two
guys down on that grassy knoll that will do the shooting.
She seemed real puzzled at that. She left me for a while but she
returned after she’d seen the city blown sky high. She told me that the
world would be at war within hours. She had been crying. She’d been on
this type of tour before but never to Dallas or to the bombing.
I’ve no idea what went wrong but if they did give me a drug to make me
forget it didn’t work ‘cause next thing I know I’m waking up in the
Depository again and I’m wondering if I had taken a stroke or something.
Anyway, things are back to normal, as I write this the time is 11.40am
and the President is late.
11. The Look Of Strangers
There
are those amongst us who slip into to this life like a well worn glove,
who very rarely question its strangeness and in most circumstances
prefer to take everything that it offers.
Then
there are people like me, Michael Andrews, sometime author, sometimes
happy but mostly otherwise confused. There are days when I intentionally
tell myself I’m stupid so as not to think too much, so as not to over
analyse too much. But on other days...well on those other days I look
around and scare myself with what I see. All of us sharing a little rock
in space without rhyme nor reason, perhaps that is part of what makes
me an author or maybe I’m just going plain mad.
There
can only be two answers to this universe; either there is a God in
control of everything or there is no one in control and now that I’ve
had that thought I don’t want to get out of bed - ever.
Perhaps I’ll just hang on to my mattress and hope that Gravity does its job and keeps me in place.
So
on the days I have to go into the city to see some colleague or other, I
look at the faces on the subway or on the buses or on the trains or in
all those faces of people walking. I look for some recognition that I am
not alone in this belief, the belief that this existence really is only
for the stupid and that the rest of us are terrified out of our minds
the whole time.
And
then there is always that nagging feeling which has been around since I
was a kid – a feeling that I might have forgotten something important,
something that when I remember it will make sense of all of this.
Then
I see those faces in the city, those faces looking back at me and I rub
my own face looking for marks, or bleeding from my nose or words
written on my forehead that say ‘stare at this man’ – but there’s
nothing on my face, it’s just the look of strangers.
Maybe
they are also looking at me for some recognition that I am going
through the same hell as them, but I have that well disguised expression
of the stupid and they find no comfort in my face.
But I now know what it is and the truth is even more terrifying than my fevered imagination could have ever created.
I am going to tell you all this as a warning, to tell you to take care. I will tell you what I know and then let you decide.
Last
Saturday morning the sun was bleaching the streets of the city and so I
decided to take a walk from the central station up to the bohemian part
of town.
I
passed by the government buildings, the Royal palaces, the squares and
avenues that were full of tourists. I walked under trees and arches and I
walked around bistros, street cafes, theatres, cinemas and all of them
full of strangers, some of whom caught my eye and other who walked on.
Then
as I passed a glass shelter at a bus terminal a strange thing happened,
I could see in the reflection that many of those who were behind me or
had walked passed me were now looking in my direction.
But
when I turned around no one was looking. No one was staring and
everyone was going about their business. Now I know what you’re
thinking. You’re saying it’s the start of the decline, the start of the
long journey into the dark. Soon names will be a thing of the past and I
will be left in a corner with vacant eyes.
Perhaps I was thinking something similar myself until it happened again.
I
had a pair of sunglass, the type that allows you to see behind oneself,
maybe made for this very exercise and there they were again, people
looking at me behind my back and when I turned once again - nothing.
Paranoid? - Perhaps.
I
took my phone, the one with the video recorder, and began to keep it in
the palm of my hand, always filming behind me. At the Gin Joint Cafe I
had a coffee and excitedly started to watch the film.
There
they were - people who showed no interest in me apart from a look while
passing – who, when they were behind me, would stop, look at me and
apparently discuss amongst themselves some detail or another. People who
were apparently strangers were talking about me.
Insane? - You would think.
I
did what any insane person would do, I turned quickly and started to
follow them through the streets and the arches and the squares until
several of them disappeared into a doorway, one that slammed shut in my
face. I waited on them but no one came out.
I waited and waited and still nothing.
I walked with my head down back to the railway station until in a shop window I saw more of them, a new crowd watching me.
I am ill, I must be.
I
let it be. I went about my life ignoring the look of strangers. Some
still walked by me and watched my face as if they were drinking in every
last detail.
I just assumed I was wrong.
Then
one night in the Gin Joint Cafe I drank more than I should have. I sat
at the bar like the old soak of a writer I was. It had just gone eleven
o’clock when the girl sat next to me.
“You’re Michael Andrews, the writer?”
“What do you want? An autograph or maybe you want to buy me a drink?”
“I just wanted to shake your hand” she said “we are not supposed to do this. It’s against everything.”
“What is?” I asked, slipping back another short.
“Well talking to you, the greatest writer since Shakespeare.”
“I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.”
“No I haven’t, Michael Steven Andrews, born 1963, died 20... wait I’m not supposed to let you know that.”
“You know when I am going to die?” I asked.
“You died years before I was born” she said.
“We come back to visit all the great ones, you and Shakespeare are the most popular.”
“Come back from where?”
“The
future, your future, I mean you have already found out that Einstein
was wrong and things can travel faster than light. It won’t be long
until you start sending objects back in time.”
I was about to ask what asylum she had escaped from when she disappeared.
So
now you know what I know. When you get that look from a stranger then
perhaps they are more than just inquisitive. Perhaps they are one of
your own descendants or a student or a time tourist.
Who or whatever they are, just do what I do and keep on walking.
It's safer that way.
12. Shadow
for Halloween
It had been ninety years since they had disappeared.
Ninety years of theories, of conjectures, of those who
said that maybe they had, and those who said that maybe they hadn’t.
To commemorate their climb and to search for the final
body, Jack was going to lead an expedition which would reach the top of Everest
on June 8th. Perhaps this would be the final proof to show that the men had
indeed been the first on the summit of the highest mountain in the world.
What happened on that June day in 1924? Had George
Leigh-Mallory and Andrew Irvine died on the way up or had they perished on the
way down from the summit?
When the news came in that they’d found Mallory’s body, a
couple of thousand feet below the summit, Jack had been excited and
disappointed at the same time. It had always been his dream, ever since he was
a kid, to bring home the bodies of Mallory and Irvine and to prove once and for
all that they had indeed been the first. He was excited that the truth would
soon be known but disappointed it hadn’t been him.
“It wasn’t on him?” said Jack, who had to put a finger
in one ear to try and hear the climber on the other end of the phone line.
“No sir. There was no camera on the body of Mallory.”
It was known that Mallory and Irvine had taken a
Vestpock Kodak with them and if they had made it to the top then there would be
photographs (assuming the film was still able to be developed) to show this
fact.
The only other option was that Irvine, when they found
the body would have the camera with him. There were a lot of bodies out there
lost on Everest, at least 120 – a needle in a haystack came to Jack’s mind.
Jack’s expedition was got underway in May that year. It was
on June 7th that Jack directed the expedition to another area near
the summit, one – and this is the weird bit – that was given to him by a crazy
woman. She was a friend of the family and some of the things she’d said had
rung true with Jack. Not that he would have told anyone that.
One night not long after his mother had died, Jack had
been given a message by the strange woman. “Your mother says ‘Tickety Boo’,” she told him. Right
there and then Jack felt as if he had been hit by an ice cold bolt; one that
ran from the top of his head to the extremities of his toes. ’Tickety Boo’ had been the saying that
only him and his mother had said to each other, no one else knew.
The woman even told him what results he was going to get
in his university exams. He’d worked as hard as he could to disprove her prediction.
But in the end she had been spot on.
So when she told him it was important to search on the
north east quadrant of the mountain, he felt he should listen to her. Jack
could see the doubt in the eyes of his team – why there, they were screaming
but he insisted on it and they followed.
On June 8th, the body of Andrew Irvine was
found and yes, the camera was with him. Jack thanked whatever god had led him
to that location. He was happy that he had accomplished what he’d dreamed of
when he was only 10 years of age. He had brought the last body home.
A few weeks later when he was back in New York, he got a
call from the company that was developing the photos.
“It was like we feared, Jack some of the photos have
been exposed by the cosmic rays. Some have decayed but we still managed to save
three photos. I think you should get over here, as soon as you can.”
Jack didn’t need to be asked twice and within the hour
he was driving north to Poughkeepsie to the film company.
Dr Carter shook Jack’s hand and led him into the
boardroom.
“Can I get you some coffee?” asked Dr Carter. Jack said
he was impatient to get on.
Carter made sure the door was closed and then displayed
the photo on a big screen.
The first one was taken at the previous camp by one of
the base team. The second photo was one of a smiling Mallory and the third, well
the third was Mallory and Irvine standing smiling at the camera on the summit
of Everest.
“They had made it. They had made it.” Jack started
whooping and dancing around the room. “Wait until the world sees this.”
Then Jack looked at Dr Carter and wondered why he wasn’t
as excited as him.
“You knew this and yet you don’t seem that moved about
it all,” said Jack.
“Oh, I’m excited all right but not for the reason you
think. Have you looked at the photo, I mean really looked at the photo?”
“I just see what you see,” said Jack “Mallory and Irvine
smiling at the camera after they’ve made it to the top of Everest, and more
importantly, thirty years before Hillary and Tenzing.”
“And what else do you see?”
“What else is there to see?” asked Jack.
“Who is taking the photo?”
“Perhaps they placed the camera on something, a piece of
ice? or a small tripod?” said Jack.
“Look at the shadow at the bottom of the photo.”
Jack went up to the screen and looked closer. His blood
ran cold. He saw what
Dr Carter was getting at, but he let himself take a few
seconds before he reacted.
“It looks like there is someone else there. The shadow
looks like someone else is taking the photo other than Mallory and Irvine.”
“Now you see my concern,” said Dr Carter.
“Perhaps it is one of the team who went up with them,”
said Jack grasping at straws.
“That was my first thought but all the rest of the team
were accounted for,” said Carter. “There is something else, something in the
second photo that I think you should see.”
Jack couldn’t see what he was supposed to.
“Look at the reflection in Mallory’s glasses.”
Dr Carter magnified the image and it was then Jack saw it. The
person who took the photograph of Mallory standing on his own wasn’t Irvine.
“Who is it?” asked Jack.
“What is it, is probably more accurate,” said Carter.
“It’s a man...I think...and it looks like he’s
got........but that’s impossible," said Jack.
Dr Carter stood up, “It looks like he has a pair of
wings.... like an angel...is that what you were going to say?”
bobby stevenson 2013
thoughtcontrol ltd
bobby stevenson 2013
