Tag Archives: folk horror

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.’

What We See in the Woods, Part Six: Isobel’s Tree

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What We See in the Woods, Part Six: Isobel’s Tree

The stories kept most people out of the woods, but for some people, those stories are what draws them in. Isobel was no ghost hunter or folklore enthusiast. For her the stories spoke of a world beyond our own that was calling out to be visited. If the woods were a portal to that world, Isobel intended to step through it.

She chose a warm summer day, and still being of this world, she took a bag with a drink and sandwiches. At first it was a struggle to make a path in, because the undergrowth of brambles and bushes was so dense. Once she got through the outer edges, the undergrowth thinned out beneath the trees, giving way to broken, nettles, and stands of horse tails like miniature primeval forests. Birdsong filled the air. It was all lovely, and very ordinary. As far as she could see, there was nothing sinister here, only an old piece of woodland going about its many lives in peace, happy to be neglected by human beings, left to grow and rot and grow. Everything was as it should be.

Isobel kept on walking, hoping to see spirits, or the Old Lady, but only seeing what anyone would expect to see on a summer walk in a wood near a small town.

Sometimes she had the feeling of being watched, but there was no-one around, and she put that down to her unfamiliarity with being alone in a wild place. Gradually, she got used to it, and began to relax into the idea that she really was alone, no other person nearby. No-one to watch her, judge her or threaten her. She walked slower and slower until she stopped and stood, quiet in the midst of the green.

All around was the pulse of life and death. The crackle of drying leaves, the whisper of stealthy fungal growth, the streaming of sap in the trees and bushes, the hurried rush of mice and insects in the mulch of decaying matter. Sometimes the heavier tread of the fox or badger, and above and among it all, the endless singing, fluttering busyness of birds.

In the town, life was life and death was another thing altogether. Here, in the woods, they were the same, with no dividing line between them, turning hand in hand in the endless dance.

Isobel dropped her bag and, secure in her aloneness, began to take off all her clothes until she stood naked, her toes curling into the leaf litter, her eyes seeing only the green of moss growing on the trunk of a fallen tree.

As she stood all of the chatter in her mind faded away until there was nothing there. Perhaps not even Isobel remained, only quiet being with awareness of the whole world about her. An ant began to climb her leg and she recognised its existence, but she was as still as the sapling ash tree at her left hand.

The sun moved past its zenith and began to travel down towards the western horizon. The skin on Isobel’s legs began to crackle and dry. She had found the portal. From her feet to the tips of her fingers bark covered her soft skin, hardening in the cooling air. She lifted her arms and watched new growth leaves spring from her fingers. Her hair turned to moss and leaves. Bark grew over her eyes, but then she saw everything.

It was many days before anyone thought to search the woods for her. They found her clothes and her bag resting against a small but sturdy tree. She was never found.

At certain special times of the year, a small group of women go into the woods to lay flowers and offerings at the foot of this distinctive tree. They are often overcome by a profound stillness and drift into a trance, hearing a voice whispering to them. One member of the group must always stand back, stay alert, and when she feels a certain danger point she rings a bell to end the communion.

To go there alone would be to risk never being seen again.

Night Dancers

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Night Dancers

Lori pressed her fingers to her lips, tried not to move, not to make a sound, not to be. She must not let them know that she was there, these dark things, or they would vanish, and she would never understand what kind of creature they were.

Amoebic blobs of darkness, dancing at the edges of the inadequate illumination from a few well-spaced street lights, it was hard to make out any form in them, and Lori felt a sense of wrongness, but did not know if it was coming from her own uncertainty or from the things themselves.

She had encountered a lot of strangeness, but nothing like this before. Walking home alone at almost one in the morning on a moonless night was worrying enough. Her keys were in hand, their ends projecting between the fingers of her fist, and the self-defence moves learned years ago, but never used in anger, were uppermost in her mind. None of this any use against dancing pieces of some deeper night.

Then the street lights went out.

The council called this their dark skies project, but really it was just a money saving strategy. At one o’clock every night, all of Shuckleigh’s street lighting was turned off.

And Lori could see nothing at all.

She stood still, waiting for her eyes to adapt. Gradually she became aware of movement again, just where they were before, or a bit closer? It was hard to tell. In the sky a multitude of stars glittered. further up the street two windows showed dim, curtain-obstructed, light. None of this was much help. Lori unzipped her bag as quietly as she could and fumbled for her phone. At this slight noise, all the dancing things stopped, drew together, and began to move towards Lori.

She got the phone out and found the torch setting, jabbing at the screen. The street ahead was suddenly illuminated and all the dark things scattered into the gloom at the sides of the beam. Lori swung the patch of light around but they, whatever they were, always stayed just at the edge of the light. Then her phone lost charge and shut down.

She was there in the dark, her night vision ruined by the bright phone light. Ah, well, blobs — who knew what that was all about? She set off to walk the rest of the way home, keeping a hand out in front of her and going slowly until she could see a bit better.

Her cheek was brushed by a soft, velvety something, warm and yielding, and then another, and another. Startled, she swiped at them with her fist, forgetting the keys bristling between her fingers. There was soft pop as one of the blobs burst under the unintended assault. then they came at her all at once, and the world was blacked out by soft, suffocating bubbles of night.

Lori would have yelled for help, but she was afraid of swallowing one of these things, and what might happen if she did. Flailing with desperation, she fought through them, aware that she was popping more of them, but unable to resist the panic, until she could see the faint window lights ahead, when she began to try to run. The things clung to her, dragging on her legs and body, but she managed to make some progress.

A motion-activated security light flashed on and the bubbles were gone at once, but she knew they were waiting just outside the pool of light. If she stayed still, the light would go out at any moment. Lori decided to run for it.

Home was only five minute’s walk away, but she made it in two, with fear at her heels. Up the stairs, in the door, shut it, lock it, turn on all the lights.

Her hands and arms were covered in a fine black powder. When she brushed at it, the dust shivered, fell away, and disappeared. Lori felt a sudden chill of guilt. Were they living things? Had she, in her ignorance and panic, killed some of them without even understanding what they were?

The last of the black dust scattered in the air and vanished. Lori was left remembering the soft impact of the unknown against her face, and wondering what kind of encounter she had allowed fear to destroy.

The Imaginary Passenger

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The Imaginary Passenger

‘I don’t know what to do about it,’ he said, glancing at the rearview mirror to make eye contact with the pale young woman in the back seat. ‘I ought to tell him why he’s wrong, you know, but I don’t want to lose my job.’

He had just driven across the old bridge over the River Lost on his way into town, going slow because there were often animals in the road after dark, and he hated running things over. Suddenly all this work related stuff flooded into his mind and he just wanted to tell someone. The passenger gazed back at him and said nothing.

‘No, you’re right,’ he said. ‘I have to keep my mouth shut. I can’t afford to get fired, but I’d just like to tell him what I think of him. When I find a new job, after I’ve got a reference, then I’ll tell him.’

He glanced into the mirror. She gazed back at him.

‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re right. I’m never going to say word. I don’t have the guts.’

He smiled ruefully. The outskirts of town came up. He looked into the rearview mirror, but there was no-one there. After a moment of confusion he realised that of course there was no-one there. He must just have imagined a passenger because he needed to get all that anger and frustration off his chest.

*

As the motorcyclist rode across the bridge over the River Lost, he felt her arms tighten around his waist.

‘I’m glad you’re there,’ he thought. ‘I really missed you.’

She squeezed him a little more and he felt comforted. he could feel her arms around him, her body against his back, her slight weight altering the performance of the bike. Not alone after all.

As the street lights of the town approached the feeling faded until she was no longer there. He choked up.

‘I miss her so much, I imagined her with me,’ he thought. ‘I’ll call her, ask her to forgive me. No— I’ll write her a letter. Better that way, to get down exactly how I feel.’

*

‘I just had to get out,’ said Prim, ‘even if it did mean walking three miles on a dark road to get home. I’m so glad you’re here. It’s better to have someone to walk with.’

The river rushed by under the bridge and the pale woman walking by Prim’s side smiled.

‘I expect you feel the same,’ said Prim. ‘Walking in daylight is one thing, but at night you just think every car has a mad rapist at the wheel, don’t you? And I’ve had enough of creeps for one night. I swear, I’ll never go on a blind date again.’

They walked on in silence. Prim admired the shimmering dress her companion wore, just like flowing water.

‘That’s a beautiful dress. Been to a party, I suppose? Aren’t you cold, though?’

The woman smiled.

‘Well, It’s a warm enough night,’ said Prim.

The first of the street lights were just coming up. ‘Almost there,’ said Prim, but her companion had gone. Prim assumed that she lived in one of the houses they had just passed, but thought a goodbye would have been nice.

*

A woman was in the lorry cab next to him. She appeared as they went over the bridge, and It was all Will could do not to slam on the brakes. She was pale, wearing a thin silky dress and she was dripping wet.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, though he could not understand where she’d come from. Had she been hiding in the back of the cab?

It seemed to him that she was asking if he was all right.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Never better. But what about you —.’

There was no-one there. He pulled over and stopped. There was no-one there. The seat was perfectly dry, too. He sat for a minute or two, his heart racing.

‘There was no-one there. I imagined it,’ he thought. ‘Why?’

Will drove on, but the vision of the pale woman and her silken clothes flowing with water would not leave him for days.

*

Ron gripped the steering wheel of his car and tried not to think, not to remember what had just happened.

It had not happened. He would take the car through the car wash first thing tomorrow and forget all about it. A moment’s distraction, that was all it was. Could have happened to anyone. But it did not happen.

He was just driving across the bridge when he knew he had a passenger. In the rearview mirror she looked at him, blood and water running down her face. Panic took him, and he braked too hard, the car struck the kerb, tipped and rolled over and over. Darkness.

Flashing lights, a policeman looking in at him, the car door opening. He tried to look around, but his neck hurt.

‘Stay still,’ the policeman said. ‘The ambulance will be here soon. You shouldn’t move.’

‘What happened to her?’ Ron said.

‘Who?’

The police spent some time looking. They noticed the blood on the radiator and the bonnet of the car.

‘Could be a deer?’ said the policeman.

His partner took a flashlight and searched the bridge, back to where the skid marks began, but she found nothing. She looked over the bridge, down into the river, and for a moment she saw a woman beneath the water, pale and fluid, dark hair trailing in the current, but when she shone her light into the river, there was only water weed streaming with the flow.

A different ambulance sped past them, and reports of a hit and run incident followed over the radio.

As she walked back to the accident, the police officer saw, from the corner of her eye, a woman standing on the bridge, pale and cold, water streaming from her hair. The officer knew that if she turned to look there would be no-one there, but she also knew that the river woman was watching.

Dancing Shoes

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Dancing Shoes

‘Pretty aren’t they?’ he said.

They were. Soft red leather with a sprig of daisies embroidered on each rounded toe, a heel, but only a small one, nothing to teeter on, beautiful shoes.

‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ she said. The Wednesday market was known for its vegetables, the artisan bread stall, wonderful sausages from Holly Farm, pottery sometimes, but never a shoe stall.

‘Hand stitched by me,’ said the cobbler. ‘Everyone should have one pair of red shoes. Try them on.’

He was bright-eyed, with dark curly hair and slender hands that did look capable of embroidering daisies onto leather — and the shoes were lovely. Jessie tried them on. They were a perfect fit, almost as if they were made for her. The price was ridiculously reasonable. She bought them.

Later, she wondered when she would ever wear them. There was nothing red in her whole wardrobe. They might go with black, she supposed, or navy blue, but her feet would be the most striking thing the whole outfit. It was a pleasure just to look at them, though. Perhaps she would do exciting things in these red shoes. She put them next to the chest of drawers in her bedroom and they were the last thing she looked at before putting out the light.

The next morning she noticed that the toes of the red shoes were a bit scuffed. How could that have happened? She had not even worn them yet, except for trying them on at the market. Had she accidentally kicked them last night? She could not see how, but that must be the answer.

That morning she bought some special red polish which covered scuffs, and in the evening, carefully polished the shoes, avoiding the embroidery, returning them to almost pristine condition. Jessie arranged a place for them in the shoe section of her wardrobe, thinking of saving them for her next special occasion.

She went to the pub with some friends that night. The red shoes definitely weren’t pub shoes. Even though they had not been expensive, they were so pretty that she wanted to keep them perfect, and she found herself thinking of them now and then. Admitting this to her friends started up a whole discussion about shoes. Pinching toes, heels — how high? How much agony to put up with just to look good.

‘None,’ said Beth, who wore Doc Martens with every outfit and in every season.

The talk made Jessie laugh, and when she got home she kicked off her everyday shoes and felt her footwear obsession go into the corner with them.

The night was filled with vivid dreams that faded as soon as the alarm woke her. She was stiff all over — probably too much booze. Dragging her eyelids open with the force of will, she saw, in the early morning light, something red by the closed wardrobe doors. Those shoes.

They stood together neatly, but when Jessie took a good look, she saw that they were scuffed again. Definitely too much booze. Definitely.

Polish the scuffs out again, put them away, promise not to drink so much in the future, and stop thinking about shoes.

She stayed in the following evening, feeling rather tired, watching five episodes of The Oracle, then going to bed and falling asleep right away. There were more dreams. When she woke, Jessie knew that she had been dreaming, but could not hold onto a single moment of it, and she felt more tired than the evening before. So it took her a while to notice that the shoes were out of the wardrobe again, and this time they were spattered with mud.

She stared them for a good long while, and the only explanation she could come up with was sleepwalking. Somehow, her mild obsession with the shoes had turned into a nightly expedition. She was getting up in her sleep, putting on the shoes, and from the mud on them this time it looked as though she was leaving the house. That was a terrifying thought.

People drove cars in their sleep, she’d heard of that, but where did she go in her pyjamas and red shoes?

By sheer good luck and persistence, Jessie managed to get an emergency appointment with her doctor. he was not wildly sympathetic, but she did get him to agree that she might be put in danger by her nocturnal activities. He prescribed some strong sleeping tablets, suggested putting an alarm on her front door that would be bound to wake her if she opened it, and referred her to a sleep clinic. The waiting time for an appointment was three months.

Before going to bed, Jessie put the red shoes downstairs in the kitchen cupboard, along with the saucepans. She had the stupidest feeling that, just before she closed the door on them, the shoes smiled and winked at her. Not possible. No eyes, no mouth, no winking, no smiling. Just another sign that she was suffering from stress, though she could not actually say that she felt stressed by anything other than the sleep walking.

The next morning the shoes were back in her bedroom.

Jessie stopped cleaning them and they became, day by day, more scuffed, muddy and worn on the soles. In desperation, she decided to try to stay awake the whole night. Coffee would do it. She was very sensitive to caffeine. Two cups, no sleep.

Sitting on the bed, watching the shoes, there came a peculiar moment. Something surged through her, and she was in the shoes, dancing out of the room. One look back and she saw herself sitting on the bed still, but she was leaving, too, wearing a red velvet dress. One, two, three steps and she and the shoes were out in the woods, which were all aglow with flying things, and people were dancing through the trees. They looked like people. They danced and she joined in. There was no choice, the shoes took her where they wanted. Someone with dark eyes and bright silver hair grasped her by the hand and they whirled and flew together through the night.

This time, she remembered it all in the morning.

It happened to be a Wednesday, and she was at the market early, shoes in hand. The cobbler’s stall was there and she marched right up to him, an angry tirade rising in her mind.

‘Hello,’ he said, smiling, ‘you’ve worn them out really fast, haven’t you? Need another pair?’

She did not quite know what to say anymore.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s been awful. What did you do to me?’

‘Really? I thought you were a party girl. My mistake. I don’t do refunds, but I can exchange them for you. Here, try these.’

He took the red shoes, and put a green pair into her hands.

‘No!’ she yelped. ‘I don’t want another pair of your cursed shoes!’

Jessie was looking right at him and his smile, but he was no longer there. She was standing in front of a fishmonger’s stall, shrieking and waving a pair of green shoes. Embarrassed, she turned away, noticing that these shoes were embroidered with dragons in glittering purple thread.

The shoes are in her bedroom, but she is afraid to try them on. They are tiptoeing their way into her heart, though, and she wonders where they will take her. Someday soon her feet will slip into them and she will find out.

Wild Swimming

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Wild Swimming

The Shuckleigh Women’s Wild Swimmers were rebels, lawbreakers. You could deny them permission to swim in your bit of water, but they would do it anyway.

This lovely lake was part of the old Mosse estate, and was strictly off limits to all swimmers. Sure, there had been past drownings, but what stretch of water has never had someone drown in it? The women of the club swam everywhere, and always had an eye to safety, knew what they were doing, and were all strong swimmers — and were very buoyant, too, most of them. Something to do with cake, no doubt.

Maureen was the treasurer, a post which required no more than collecting a small contribution from each member towards the cost of the apres-swim cakes, and the purchase thereof. It was she who had suggested this lake for their next swim. They asked permission, of course, but received only a simple refusal without explanation, except that the lake was dangerous.

‘How can it be dangerous?’ said Elly, the club secretary. ‘It’s not that deep, there’s no outflow to cause currents. I don’t know what he means.’

‘It’ll be the mere-maid,’ said Nelly, the oldest member, tiny, white-haired, and with a headful of local stories.

‘Mermaid?’

‘Mere-maid, like the pub. She’s supposed to guard a treasure in the lake, and sometimes appears to young men, luring them to a watery death with the promise of her beauty.’

There was general hilarity, laughter spreading in waves through the cafe where they were meeting, breaking over the heads of the other, disconcerted customers, along with cries of ‘She won’t be interested in us then!’, and ‘Unless she likes ladies too!’, followed by many dirty jokes about the sexual leanings of mermaids. Several customers drank their coffee and left.

Now, with the waters of the lake lapping at her ankles, Maureen felt an unfamiliar sense of unease. the lake looked far deeper than it was supposed to be, the waters black in the early morning light.

Elly and Nelly and half a dozen others were already up to their waists in water, chatting and giggling, but quietly, since they were here without permission, trespassing with intent to swim.

Maureen watched the others plunging into the water, striking out towards the centre of the lake. It did look good, but there was something else she could feel, creeping up from her chilling feet through her bloodstream to her heart.

‘I’m not brave enough,’ she thought, and then wondered where that had come from. ‘Buck up,’ she told herself. Pushing aside all anxiety, she waded in, feeling the silty, slimy mud oozing between her toes. Stretching forward, she plunged into the water and breast-stroked her way towards the others.

In the middle of the lake she paused, resting in the water, sweeping her arms gently around her, feeling the silky liquid passing through her fingers. The others were swimming nearby, breaststroke, backstroke, crawl. Maureen’s thoughts drifted away into nothingness and she found the great peace of an empty mind for a moment.

Then something brushed against her leg. It felt like a hand. One of the gang playing tricks. She scanned about to see who was missing, but they were all in sight, and besides, not one of them was noted for their underwater swimming skills. Probably just a fish. Or the mere-maid. She laughed, and began to swim. Again, a hand brushed her leg. She stopped and pulled herself into a ball, which caused her to tip face-forwards into the water. Floundering, she opened her eyes and saw, down in the dark brown water below, a pale face looking up at her. She thought it was a corpse floating there, suspended below the surface somehow, dark eyes open — but the face smiled at her, the eyes widened.

It is not advisable to scream underwater, but she tried it. Tannic liquid in her mouth advised her otherwise and she reared back to the surface, gasping in air.

She was not sure that she had seen what she imagined, and nobody was close enough to speak to. Maureen began to swim towards the shore, afraid of what might be below. For speed, she was doing the crawl, not her best stroke. She had not gone far when, on the downstroke, her left arm was grabbed and she was pulled to a stop. This time she screamed in the air, and then managed to pull in one last deep breath as she was dragged under.

Down, down, how deep was this lake? She thought of the cake and flasks of hot tea waiting in her car, she thought of home, then she forgot all of that.

The mere-maid was leading her down, the grip on Maureen’s arm strong and unrelenting, but it was not dark down there. Black streams of the mere-maid’s hair obscured Maureen’s vision, but would drift aside to show wonderful things, all ablaze with light.

She forgot about the bother of not being able to breathe underwater, filled with elation at the great blooming of truth she saw below.

Someone grabbed her trailing hand. There was a short tug of war for possession of Maureen, then the mere-maid let go, gazing after her with sorrow in her eyes. ‘No,’ said Maureen as the vision faded.

Choking up water, lying on the grass with towels thrown over her and Elly pumping away at her chest, she gasped back into the ordinary world. All the women in bathing costumes and one angry man were standing around, looking down at her.

‘I informed you that this lake was dangerous,’ the man was saying, but no-one was listening to him.

Maureen wondered if he knew why the lake was dangerous. She closed her eyes and remembered and began to cry.

‘It’s all right, Maureen, you’re okay now,’ said Elly, not understanding when Maureen shook her head.

They sat her up and gave her hot tea, and then an ambulance arrived and a nice young paramedic took her pulse and listened to her watery lungs and insisted she go to hospital.

‘I don’t want to see any of you here ever again,’ said the angry man.

Just before the ambulance doors closed, Maureen thought she saw a pale arm rise from the centre of the lake, and she imagined swimming with the mere-maid again.

Far Away, Getting Nearer

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Far Away, Getting Nearer

Noises in the house walls has to be rats, right? Or mice? Or maybe beetles?

I mentioned to our neighbour that we were calling in pest control, and she gave me one of her looks.

‘Might not be living things,’ she said.

“What?’ I struggled to think what she might mean by that. Crumbling mortar?

‘No,’ she said, looking at me as though I was some kind of fool. (I’m sure she thinks exactly that, she looks at me this way every time we have a conversation.) ‘Elementals, or poltergeists, something like that.’

I did not give her the ‘you’re clearly a fool’ look back, but some of it may have leaked through my attempt to appear politely surprised.

‘You’ll see,’ she said in a doom-laden voice. ‘You’ll find out.’

She turned away with a dismissive wave and went back to dead-heading her roses.

‘I’ll let you know what we find,’ I said, hoping that it would not be beetles. Rodents I can cope with, but little scuttling things freak me out, and the gulls. They were getting particularly noisy. We are nowhere near the sea, but like everyone these days we have gulls, and a whole flock of them had taken to sitting on our roof.

I told Danny, ‘Mrs Watson think we have poltergeists.’

‘That would be a poltergeist. I don’t think you can have more than one of those,’ he said, but he didn’t take it seriously. Neither did the pest control man. He went about the house, lifting floorboards, examining skirting boards, listening at the walls. Finally he went into the attic. I went up there with him and watched while he poked around in all the dusty corners.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No what?’

‘No sign of rats, mice, beetles, wasps, bees or ants. Not even any spiders. Cleanest house I’ve ever been in.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘There should be something. This isn’t a new house. There should be something. It’s not normal for there to be nothing.’

‘But what is causing the noise in the walls?’

He shrugged.

‘Maybe the water pipes? Never heard anything like it myself.’

Danny and I lay in bed at night listening to the sound in the walls. It had a sighing quality to it, and was like a thin stream of sand running over a rough surface.

In the morning I came into the living room and found Danny with his ear pressed to the wall.

‘It’s louder here,’ he said.

I put my ear to the wall and heard what sounded like waves pulsing onto a shingle beach.
That night I had a dream. It seemed very real, but it must have been a dream.

I woke to the sound of waves, louder, closer, and the cries of the gulls overhead. The gulls were so noisy that I could not get back to sleep. I wondered what was upsetting them so much in the middle of the night, the one time when they were usually quiet. I got up to get a drink of water to relieve the dryness in my mouth. The sound of waves had grown much louder, as if it was coming from outside, not in the walls. I opened the bathroom window to look out.

A great sea stretched to the horizon, and waves broke against the stony bank on which our house was perched. Cold moonlight illuminated the waves. A gull cried once and swooped away into the far distance.

Not understanding what I was seeing, I went downstairs and opened the front door. The street was gone. The town was gone. The house stood by itself on a rocky outcrop, surrounded by shingle, surrounded by sea. I walked all around the house. Rocks and sea were all I found.

Far on the horizon, in every direction, dark shapes moved. It was impossible to make out what they were, but they were coming closer, and I was afraid. I ran into the house and got back into bed.

In the morning, there was no sea, but I remembered the smell of it, and the cold breeze on my skin, and my lips tasted salty.

Mr Watson was out in the garden again, and she asked what the pest control man had found.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

She nodded wisely, ‘You mark my words—’ she began.

‘It’s the sea,’ I said.

She frowned at me and shook her head.

‘There’s no sea.’

‘It’s in the walls,’ I said.

She backed away from me, and went into her house. We don’t have conversations any more.

I often wake to hear the sea at night, and a low, loud, booming, far away but getting closer. I never go to look because there is nothing I can do. They are inexorably approaching. What will happen when they arrive? I try not to think about it. It’s only a dream. Isn’t it?

Night Terrors

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Night Terrors

It is never dark in my dreams. The world is bright and filled with light. But this time — I was walking down a street that I was familiar with (in the dream world), though I had not been there for some years. There were shops, and I was walking downhill. As I came closer to the bottom of the hill everything got darker. There was one shop, selling antiquities, that was well-lit inside, but most of the other shops were shut and dark, possibly closed down. There were no street lights. I could hardly see. A dimly-lit cafe seemed to be open, but was barely visible in the misty darkness all around me. I wondered what had happened. It never used to be like this.

I didn’t hear them coming.

Suddenly someone put an arm around my throat. I choked and struggled, and woke up.

My memory of the dream is vivid because of the darkness, and because it seemed to me that I did know that street, and whoever or whatever attacked me, I knew them too.

We say these things are only dreams, but they are as real as life itself. They are life itself, or part of it.

This dream did not leave my waking life alone. I could not shake off the disquiet and the sensation of not being able to see properly, of being alone in a strangely altered place, at the mercy of someone who wanted to do me harm.

The dream darkness was not clean — it was as if there was a dirty mist over the world, or perhaps the darkness was not only from a lack of light, but also from a dimming of my own vision. I became increasingly convinced that there were things around me that I was not seeing. Something was stalking me. Each night I went to bed, hoping for another dream to show me the truth.

Again, I was walking in a dark place, but not one I knew. There was the same quality of murkiness, of a lack of light and a dimming of sight. The ground was hard underfoot and gritty. The air felt damp. There was a little light, as much as might be given by a slender moon behind thin cloud, but not enough to see by. I held my hands out in front of me as I went, but felt nothing but a fine cold mist.

A shadow moved to my right, but when I turned, there was nothing there. On my left side some darker patch of darkness moved. I turned towards it and saw something else behind me. They were all around.

I ran. Pale hands reached for me out of the grainy air. I screamed and fell, and woke.

The darkness loomed at my back through my waking days, but it did not come into my dreams for many nights. The days filled with gloom were worse than the nights of disturbing dreams. I was dragging a great burden behind me, one that might at any moment waken and destroy me. It made me so uneasy that I began to wonder why these dream people were hunting me? Had I done something to deserve it? Was some transgression of mine causing these nightmares?

No matter how hard I looked at myself, I could not find anything other than mundane failings such as any human being commits, yet I felt as much uneasiness as I would have if I was a murderer, and the body was buried in my garden.

I reasoned that perhaps, since my persecutors lived in dreams, the sin might have been committed in the dream world. Of course, I remembered only a tiny fraction of my dreams. In that world I might be a monster, and would never know on waking.

The third time I dreamed of that dark place, I was aware that I was dreaming. This had never happened to me before. I had spent so much time thinking about the dreams that I recognised what it was. Now, I thought, since I was fully here in the dream I was in control. I could steer the dream in the direction I wanted it to go.

The ground under my feet was wet and muddy this time and I had a sense that all around there were trees, crowding close. I told myself that there was a torch in my pocket. I was wearing an old blue coat of mine with deep pockets and, feeling among all the inexplicable bits and pieces in there, I did find a torch. Pulling it out, I pointed it ahead and turned it on. It flashed and died, but not before it had illuminated a terrible face, dark grey and so deeply wrinkled as to look melted. Purple lips curled back to reveal many yellowing teeth in a bright red mouth. The eyes — they were not human, ochre irises with vertical slits for pupils.

I was terrified, but told myself that this was only a dream and that I could be the monster here if I willed it — if only I knew how to be a monster.

Taking a deep breath, I prepared to roar my monstrousness, but the now unseen thing took one squelching step towards me and grasped me by the throat with a scaly clawed hand. I tried to scream. I should wake now, the fright should wake me. Stinking hot breath blew foul against my face, teeth sank into my flesh. I screamed once, briefly, then all was pain and silence.

I did wake up, of course, but what am I now? My sleep is a black empty void. I am not even a ghost in the world of dreams. I feel like a ghost in this place that we call the real world, broken and empty. The dark mist is inside me, and that is all there is.