Monthly Archives: October 2022

Spot

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Spot

There was something slithering around my bedroom in the dark, a fragment of nothingness whispering across the walls. I sat up. There it was again — darker darkness on the periphery of my vision, sliding away. I clicked on the bedside light and it was gone.

For a couple of weeks now I had been half seeing this thing. A black spider running across a surface near my hand, a mouse shadow running into a corner, something falling from the ceiling — and always nothing there when I turned to look.

There was something wrong with my vision.

The optician said everything was fine.

So. There was something wrong with my mind.

I could have sought help, but it seemed a trivial matter, the illusion of small shadows. I chose to try to ignore it.

Sometimes I thought it might have been a real spider — one that ran very fast and hid when I looked for it. At other times perhaps it was just a misinterpretation of ordinary shadows moving as I turned my head. After all, the world as we see it only exists inside our minds. What is actually out there — well, I don’t want to think about that.

I began to manage the problem of the moving shadows quite well. When I noticed them, and you can’t not notice movement in the corner of your vision, I trained myself not to look. I hoped to train myself not to see it at all, but it wanted to be noticed, and hated to be ignored. The little black scrap started to scurry across the desk in front of me too fast for me to see what it really was, or to run over my feet and into the corner of the room.

I am not a nervous person, but this was turning me into one. I began to think I saw it even when it was not there. Any little unexpected movement would make me jump. It was like having mice, except that it didn’t eat my biscuits. The only thing for it was to get the exterminator in.

Charlie the exorcist moved around my flat as if looking for the spoor of my infestation.

‘I’m not picking anything up,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t always mean there’s nothing here, though. I’ll give the whole place a good clean out.’

He spent four hours chanting, ringing bells, thrusting smoking bundles of ritual herbs into every corner. The place seemed different when he left, calmer, emptier. I relaxed.

But he had missed a spot.

The shadow was back again that night, flitting past my feet while I was trying to watch TV. The more I ignored it the more often it appeared. This thing meant for me to pay attention to it, which suggested it had thoughts and feelings — a suggestion that I placed firmly out of sight at the back of my mind.

I refused to look at the racing black spot. Then it stopped on the floor in front of my feet. I kept my eyes on the TV screen, but my whole consciousness was focussed on the tiny patch of darkness on the carpet. Even so, when it moved it took me by surprise, darting forward onto the toe of my slipper and up my leg.

I screamed and jumped up, dusting away at my trousers to get the thing off me.

After a minute of noisy panic, I searched for it. I couldn’t see it on me, or on the floor. Running into the bedroom, I pulled off all my clothes and examined myself all over in the mirror, but found no dark marks. I threw my clothes into the bath and ran the cold water until they were drowned. Over the sink I combed my hair through and through and looked in my eyes and mouth for any sign of it. If I had swallowed it what was I to do?

Shivering, naked, my clothes soaked, I stood in the bathroom wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I have never been afraid of spiders or insects yet here I was becoming hysterical over a tiny patch of nothing.

Later that night I was made aware of my mistake. It was not in my drowned clothes or in my hair, but had made its escape into my bedroom when I threw my clothes onto the floor. Now it was running over the walls, mocking me. I slept on the sofa instead, waking every now and then to check whether it had followed me. Whatever it was, inside my head or outside, it was not going to be easy to get rid of it. I could move house, but I suspected that it would be as persistent as bedbugs, hitching a lift in my luggage. Whatever it was, it was mine.

The next evening I sat on the sofa reading a book and watching it out of the corner of my eye, scooting around the room, approaching closer and closer until it stopped by my feet again. Holding my breath and my nerve I waited. I was terrified — a little black dot and it took all my strength not to run away.

It hopped onto my slipper and rested there a moment, then began to climb my trouser leg. I gritted my teeth and did not react. It went out of sight for a second, then popped onto the right hand page of my book. I stared directly at it, a speck of dark awareness focussed on me, nothing but an absence of reflected light.

‘Hello,’ I said.

I held my hand out to it and it zipped across the page, coming to rest in the centre of my palm. There was nothing to feel, no tickle, no tingle of presence, but I swear it curled up a bit tighter and made itself at home there.

Sometimes other people see it on me for a fleeting second. They take it for a spider or other bug.

‘There’s nothing there,’ I say, but there is, always scooting across my skin. My companion. I am still afraid of it. One day it may burrow into my flesh and show its true purpose, but until then I must think of it as a friend. I call it Spot, and try to smile.

Recall, Remember, Forget

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Recall, Remember, Forget

Bones of an unusual small animal, a battered fob watch in a fine silver case and a tattered silk handkerchief with a dark stain in one corner. Eddie hated jobs like this.

As soon as he got the text telling him to come to the front door, not the basement entrance, he knew something was wrong. He contemplated not going at all, but the money was double and this was his profession.

A nice fresh corpse meant things would go smoothly. One long gone and nothing but a few personal possessions to work with meant difficulty and danger.

Lamia had let him into the Dark House, and hovered behind him now.

“Can you do it?’ they asked

He sighed.

‘Triple my fee,’ he said. ‘Where’s the question?’

Lamia nodded as if the inflated fee was only to be expected, and handed him a sheet of grubby paper with one line of writing scrawled across it.

The thing on the top floor was screaming again. Lamia looked upwards with a concerned expression, as if a baby was crying not a — whatever it was. Eddie had seen it once, by accident, and it had almost lured him in, sweet as it seemed. Only the amulets he always wore kept him from being consumed.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

Lamia shook the paper at him.

‘That is what you’re here to find out. I brought your things up from downstairs. If you need anything else, call me.’

Pushing the paper into his hand, Lamia left him in the dimly-lit room. Overhead, the screaming continued.

Smoothing the sheet of paper, Eddie stared at the writing. Baffled, he turned the paper through 180 degrees and tried again. No. The writing was an incomprehensible line of wobbly marks whichever way he looked at it. Eddie had some grasp of quite a few obscure and ancient scripts, but this was nothing he recognised. It hardly looked like writing at all, but more like something an illiterate person might produce if forced to ‘write’ something.

Eddie left the room and went to the bottom of the stairs. (He knew better than to climb them.)

‘Hello?’ he called, several times. At last Lamia appeared to the top of the stairs, paler even than usual. Eddie waved the paper. ‘If this is the question, I can’t read it. How can I ask an unreadable question?’

‘Show it,’ said Lamia, and turned away, running back up out of sight.

Show it. The Recalled were not generally in the mood for reading, but he was being paid triple rates, so he shrugged and went back to make his preparations.

From his box of necessaries he took a human skull complete with lower jaw hinged in place with silver wire, and arranged the possessions of the one to be recalled around it, along with other items which it would not be prudent to mention here.

After an hour’s worth of incantations and deep concentration Eddie was sweating and exhausted with the effort, but the skull began to vibrate. It started to chatter its teeth together like a wind-up toy, leapt into the air and flew across the room, bouncing off a red velvet chaise longue and onto the floor.

It appeared that this Recalled One did not wish to fit itself into someone else’s skull.

Eddie considered his options. Resistance called for a more direct approach. He thought of that triple fee. He thought of taking a holiday somewhere warm. Somewhere hot.

There was a little bottle of oil in the box of necessaries, which he he seldom used. The tools of the trade were, of course, only vehicles for the trained practitioner, but this was a particularly powerful tool.

He took the handkerchief and laid the silver watch and the collection of small animal bones on it. The tiny skull was peculiar, with huge eye sockets and many pointed teeth, all black and shiny. Eddie drew up the corners of the handkerchief and tied it all into a small bundle.

Unscrewing the top of the oil bottle, he let two drops fall onto the carpet in front of him, then, with the bundle of possessions in his left hand and the unreadable question in the other, he began a long, repetitive incantation. Concentrating on the air in front of him, the objects in his hands and the sound of his own voice, he continued the rhythmic chant on and on, never pausing, never allowing his mind to drift. At last a small spot of mist appeared, widening into a circle like a dissipating smoke ring, opening a dark hole in reality. The hole grew to about the height of a man. Eddie continued to chant until he was sure it was stable, then he began his recall.

‘Come forth by night. Here are your treasures, here is a question for you. Come forth.’

There was no response. It would have been easier if he had a name for the target, but he suspected that he was calling on one with a dangerous name, or no name at all. Again and again he demanded the presence of the owner of the handkerchief and its contents, insisting on his right to call them to answer.

The eventual response was not exactly what he expected. a violent groan carried on foul air emitted from the hole. Eddie held his nerve and continued his demands. Suddenly something long, dark and flexible reached out of the hole, grabbed him by the neck and pulled him through into the darkness.

This was a new experience, but he had to hold his concentration or everything would be lost. Eddie demanded his answer, holding out the paper with the unreadable squiggles on it. Something stumbled towards him. Its breath was cold and it stank of putrefaction. For a brief moment, Eddie questioned his choice of profession. That moment was just long enough for his attacker to take the paper away from him, and almost succeed in taking the handkerchief bundle, too. Eddie managed to keep hold of that just because he had taken care to tangle his fingers around the knot.

The Recalled One was angry. It howled and treated him to another blast of icy stinking air. Eddie could hardly breathe, but he was a professional and he held his ground, and the bundle that enabled him to control the recalling. Again he demanded an answer. What he got was a ferocious blow into middle of his chest. He lost both control and consciousness. The world was black inside and out.

His neck was twisted to the right, his cheek pressed into a fuzzy surface. A skull, someone else’s, he hoped, lay close by, mouth open wide. It took a few moments for Eddie to realise where he was. He pushed himself into a sitting position and found his fingers still entangled in the knotted handkerchief, which had a few more unpleasant stains on it now, still moist.

Up near the ceiling a dusty, half-seen, feathered creature shifted.

‘Yeah,’ he said to it, ‘not quite, not this time. My lucky day, not yours,’

It shifted again, and was gone.

The screaming from upstairs continued, but at a different pitch. Lamia entered the room, flustered and distressed.

‘I heard you yell,’ they said.

‘I yelled? That’s possible.’

Eddie pushed himself to his knees, intending to get up. Something dripped onto the floor. Oh yes, his nose was bleeding. He almost used the hanky bundle to stem the flow but stopped himself in time, disentangled his fingers and set it onto the chaise longue. Then he got up and sat next to it, found a tissue in his pocket and held it to his nose.

‘I didn’t—,’ he began, but Lamia gave a cry and swooped down to pick a ball of something off the floor. Fingering it open, Lamia spread it out on the table next to Eddie’s box and smoothed it down. It was the question.

Eddie got up to look. The paper was well-chewed, damp and sticky, but under the original line of squiggles, there was another burned into the paper, as if someone had written it with a sharp smouldering stick.

‘What does it say?’ he asked

‘I have no idea.’

Lamia grasped the paper and ran from the room and Eddie heard them dashing upstairs. After a minute or two, the screaming stopped.

With a sigh he picked up the skull and put it back in the box. Then he untied the handkerchief, laid it on the table and opened it out. The battered fob watch was ticking, and the animal skeleton was covered in flesh with scales in many shades of blue. The creature opened one large eye and looked at him. Eddie took a step backwards out of caution, but it showed no inclination to do anything but lie there on its back twitching its tiny paws.

He left the room, closing the door, and waited in the hall, holding a sodden tissue to his still dripping nose. After a while, Lamia came down, smiling (though he wished they wouldn’t). They offered him a clean linen handkerchief, and he took it, feeling that losing too much blood in this house was a bad idea.

‘It seems the answer was satisfactory,’ said Lamia.

‘Good,’ said Eddie. ‘Who was it I recalled?’

‘Best not to think about it.’

Ah, not a someone then, more of a something, that had once had need of a timepiece, or — but no, best not to think about it.

‘I’m going on holiday for a month.’

‘Thank you for letting me know. Your fee has been sent direct to your bank account.’

He nodded and stepped out of the front door. Dawn was just breaking, the eastern horizon brightening to a pale lemon which to Eddie was the most beautiful colour he had ever seen.

Up On The Roof

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Up On The Roof

‘Forget about the tunnels,’ Lori said.

Gabriel rubbed his face with both hands.

‘I can’t. I can feel them under my feet all the time.’

‘That’s your imagination. For all you know, there aren’t any more than the one you went down into.’

‘There are more. I can’t prove it, but I can feel it.’

‘Then you need to feel something else. Drink up and come with me.’

The were in the Has Bean Cafe on a Saturday morning in June. At just after nine, the place was quiet, only a couple of other customers. Gabriel drank the last of his cappuccino and ate the remaining chocolate-sprinkled froth with the coffee spoon, not hurrying because he was a little afraid of whatever Lori had in mind.

‘This isn’t another of your weird friends, is it?’ he asked, scraping the bottom of the cup with his spoon, not looking at her.

‘You are one of my weird friends,’ said Lori, ‘and don’t you forget it.’

Gabriel smiled and got up, ready to follow wherever she took him.

They headed up the hill, and the Dark House loomed at the top. Gabriel became less enthusiastic — he did not want to go there again. Lori turned left at the top of the hill and they walked away from that house. For a while Gabriel felt as though it was watching him. He looked back, but saw no-one at its windows. His preoccupation meant that he did not recognise their destination until it was too late.

Lori stopped at a big old house that was divided into flats and rang the bell for number 6. After a couple of minutes the door was opened by a pale man in his early thirties. He looked pleased to see Lori, but when he noticed Gabriel a shadow passed over his face.

‘Hello Rob,’ said Gabriel, affecting a cheer he did not feel. ‘How are you?’

Rob did not reply, except for a slight shake of the head. Gabriel had been avoiding him for months. After what had happened there was a deep well of complicated feelings that Gabriel preferred to avoid looking at.

Rob held the door half open for a moment or two, but then made the decision to let them in. They followed him up to the top floor flat and into his living room. He offered them coffee. Gabriel was about to decline, but Lori accepted for both of them, and when Rob was out of the room she started to explain.

‘He’s been having some trouble he thinks is a haunting,’ she said.

‘Why did you bring me? I’m no ghost hunter.’

‘No, but the problem is on the roof, and you are an experienced rooftopper.’

‘So is Rob.’

‘Not any more,’ said Rob, bringing in two mugs of what was clearly instant coffee. ‘Not since…you know.’

Not since Frida’s accident, he meant. Gabriel tried no to think too much about that. There were no photos of her in the flat, but he supposed it might be too painful for Rob to look at images of her when she was full of life and the spirit of adventure.

‘So what’s on you roof?’ Gabriel asked, hoping to head off any awkward moments.

‘The landlord says it’s just pigeons,’ said Rob, glancing out of the window, ‘but it isn’t. I don’t know what it is, but it’s driving me crazy. Help me get rid of it.’

The flat was built into what had been the attic servant’s quarters in the building’s past, and it was directly under the roof with sloping ceilings and small dormer windows.

‘Well,’ said Lori, ‘now we just wait until something happens.’

‘And then I go out to take a look, I suppose.’

Gabriel took a sip of his coffee, grimaced, and walked over to the window to see what the roof was like.

‘There’s a skylight in the bedroom you can use to get out there,’ said Rob. ‘I’ll get the stepladder set up.’

When Rob was out of the room again, Gabriel said, ‘Shouldn’t we be here at midnight or something?’

‘No,” said Lori. ‘This is a daytime manifestation.’

‘It probably is just pigeons, or his imagination. You know what happened to his girlfriend?’

Lori nodded.

‘If it is bird, we can set his mind at rest, don’t you think?’

Gabriel agreed, thinking that the least he could do was to humour everyone. When Rob had the ladder set up, Gabriel climbed it, opened the skylight and assessed the roof for climbing possibilities. He had clambered across worse in the dead of night, so he had no worries. the rest was just waiting. They drank their unpleasant instant coffee, Gabriel suspecting that it was the cheapest off-brand stuff, and made limping attempts at conversation, always avoiding the only things Rob and Gabriel had in common — urban exploration and Frida.

There came a point when the fourth invisible presence in the room became too much for Gabriel and he suddenly rose to his feet and began to pace up and down the small living room. the others stared at him.

‘Too much caffeine,’ he said, shaking his arms and flexing his fingers. Then he sat down again, trying to be still and to feel a little sympathy for this man he now realised he did not like at all.

Why? Rob took Frida away from the Urbex community. They did their own things as a couple, which was theoretically okay, but Gabriel thought that Frida lost some of her sparkle, and she would not even stop for a chat in the street, let alone meet up with her old friends. When he came back to the moment, Gabriel realised that Lori, with her usual fearlessness, was broaching the very topic he had been trying so hard to avoid.

‘I was so sorry about your girlfriend’s accident,’ she said. ‘That must have been hard to bear.’

Rob looked away.

‘Thank you,’ he said, with a little choke in his voice. ‘It was terrible. I had no idea she’d gone out on her own like that’

He looked at Lori mournfully, moisture glistening in his eyes, then he noticed Gabriel watching and his expression turned to irritation. Lori was about to say something more when there was a scrabbling sound above them, outside on the roof. They all looked up, as if they would be able to see through the ceiling.

‘That’s it,’ said Rob.

Something was moving over the roof, pausing here and there to scratch at the tiles. It was nothing like any bird noise Gabriel had ever heard. He got up and went to the bedroom, with Lori following.

‘Be careful,’ she said.

He eased himself out of the window and took a good look around the roof. At first he saw nothing, but then he noticed a dark shadow by the chimney pots.

‘Looks like a bird,’ he called down to Lori. ‘A really big bird. I’ll see if I can get a better look.’

He pulled himself up onto the ridge of the roof and began to move towards the chimneys. The bird did not retreat or fly away, but began to approach him. No — not a bird. What was it? He struggled to make out a proper shape to the thing. Gabriel tried to focus but it was impossible — and then it was on him.

‘Stupid bitch,’ it said, ‘stop whining.’

There was a hand on his face, pushing him. He thought it was a hand. Grabbing at the ridge tiles he tried to hang on, but the force was too strong, and filled with malice. Losing his hold, Gabriel slid down the roof and over the edge, falling through empty air, a long time falling, with someone else’s memories flowing through his mind, ending with a dreadful crack. Then nothing.

He opened his eyes.

He was still clinging to the ridge tiles. Lori was calling to him, ‘Are you all right?’ There was nothing on the roof with him now. It took a minute to begin to understand what had happened, and before he could safely move.

Lori was halfway out of the skylight.

‘Don’t come out,’ he said. ‘I’m okay.’

He was not okay, but he managed a tight smile, and started to make his way back down to the skylight, every muscle in his body trembling. Not until his feet touched the bedroom carpet did he feel any relief.

‘What was it?’ asked Rob, but took a step back when Gabriel turned to answer him.

Gabriel’s fury filled the room.

‘I think you know,’ he said.

Gabriel took a few steps towards Rob and put his hand on the man’s face, pushing.

‘Stupid bitch,’ he said. ‘Stop whining.’

He gave Rob a violent shove that sent him falling backwards onto the floor.

‘You were up there with her that day, weren’t you?’ said Gabriel, trembling with rage now.

Rob shook his head and held his hands up protectively.

‘We’d better leave,’ said Lori, and Gabriel did not argue in the face of his strong desire to beat Rob senseless.

‘It was an accident,’ said Rob, in a pleading tone. ‘I never meant to —‘

He was cut off by the slamming front door.

Later, when Gabriel had calmed down enough to explain what had happened to him, Lori asked ‘What shall we do?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave it to Frida.’