Untitled Short Story #2

The thing that struck me most when we arrived was the stillness in the air. Not oppressive, nor as the prelude to a thunderstorm. Everything felt so…peaceful. Even when we started searching and found the horrors that lay behind every door in that tiny hamlet, the aura of the place was one of serene tranquillity.

I know I wasn’t the only one who felt it either. As Jim and I got out of the patrol car, our conversation had ceased suddenly, as if the air had been stolen from our lungs. We had pulled up next to what we took to be the village green. I remember that Jim said something about how the smattering of houses that made up the hamlet of Dantons View could fit onto that green 3 times over. It wasn’t a particularly amusing or witty comment you understand. It was exactly like Jim; factually accurate, somewhat irritating, and requiring a forced laugh from myself to prevent any repetition. But it’s the last thing I remember him saying. I’m told we were there for just over 15 minutes before backup arrived, and I can’t remember either of us saying a thing in that whole time. I mean, we must’ve of course, but I just don’t remember what it was.

We both stood there stunned by, and into, silence. At the risk of repetition and incurring your disbelief, I have to stress this; everything felt so golden. So…so awesome. Don’t get me wrong; what we found there knocked that feeling right out of my head. But sometimes, I do wonder about why it all felt so right when everything turned out to be so wrong.

Jim cleared his throat, and I looked across the patrol car at him. He jerked his head toward the small cottage to my left; it was a pretty little stone-built affair with a small but clearly well tended garden that was an explosion of summer bloom. Jim placed his helmet on his head and started toward it. I shook my head to clear it, and then refocused on the task at hand.

We didn’t hear the 999 call that had led to us being here. All we heard was the dispatch calling all cars about a possible violent disturbance at Dantons View. Jim and I were just finishing up a working lunch in the beer garden of The Hanged Man. Jim always liked to stop by at one of the many pubs that seemed to be scattered around Dorset like seeds in a field. He was a Dorset boy, born and bred, and I think he liked the status afforded him as a dedicated country-boy bobby. Me, I always thought that was just an act to get himself free beer and lunches. But I suppose you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.

I got to hear that call a few months later, when the doctors said I was well enough to be interviewed about what had happened. It was the strangest thing; you hear the 999 operator’s voice, professional tones cut with that oo-arr accent I used to love. But she’s cut off by a woman saying…no, shouting I suppose. She shouts “Please!” Just once, that’s all. And not crying and tearful either. She sounds scared all right, but she sounds shakily in control. Then there’s a click, and then a sort of high pitched whining, bit like what you get on them old tellies when you switched them on and off. Only it keeps going, gets louder and higher. All the doctors in the room looked like rabbits in crosshairs when they got to that bit of the tape, and I don’t suppose I looked to good either. You can just hear the operator going “Agh!” and there’s some thumping, which I suppose must’ve been her ripping her headset off and throwing it away. That whine lasts for 20 seconds, but it felt longer. Then there’s a silence for just a moment.

After that, I hears this voice saying one word. It’s a difficult voice to do justice to, but I’ll try and describe it although you might not like what I’ve got to say about it. It was…well, I’m a father twice over. If you’re a dad like me, you’ll know what I mean but if not you’ll have to take my word for this. Anyway, when you’re a dad, one of the proudest moments of your life is when you hear your little ‘un say it’s first word. It’s a joy, it really is. You see this little intelligence behind your kid’s eyes; they’re not just babbling, they’re communicating with you for the very first time. I’ve heard it twice now and it hit me in the same way each time; pride, joy, tears, and wonderment. Your little lad or lass stops being something that you just care for, and they start to be something you can relate to. They’re not just a gurgling receptacle for you your love and care any more; they’ve started on the road to being thinking, talking, breathing beings, and they’re something that came from you from nothing. You feel like you’re part of a miracle. All of that, all of it comes from that first word from your child’s mouth.

The voice said “Good.” That’s all it said, but in that one word I got that same feeling; something making tentative steps toward intellect and it’s own identity. It even sounded like a little kid’s voice. If you’d heard it in any other context, you would’ve coo-ed and ahh-ed at it. As is, soon as I heard it I started screaming. They had to sedate me for another week; every time I came round I started screaming again. I hear two of the three doctors who were there listening have quit now. Doesn’t surprise me.

Anyway, Jim walks up to the gate and unlatches it. We both walk through and take the 6 steps to the front door. Jim knocks on it. No answer. He knocked again, a bit harder and this time the door opens. No Hammer Horror creaking or anything like that, just a duck egg blue door swinging slightly and quietly inward. There weren’t any noises inside except for the tick of a Grandfather clock. But in that crack of the door opening, I thought I saw something inside.

I shoved Jim aside, interrupting him as he was about to call out “Mrs Henderson?” I would guess (her name, along with the name of the house, was all the dispatcher had given us). Jim always took himself very seriously, and I can’t imagine he would’ve let me off easy about that shove later on. As it happened, it didn’t matter and I don’t suppose it would’ve mattered even if he’d lived bearing in mind what was in there.

Considering how much blood there was in that living room, I don’t know why it struck me as odd that none of that sticky crimson mess had seeped through into the kitchen or the entrance hall. It was as if someone had taken that living room to another building to commit its atrocity, then quietly taken it back. I stood there, dumbfounded; walls, ceiling, floor, and anything on them were covered in blood. When you say that, you just say it and you imagine a room painted red, right? This wasn’t like that; there were thick black clots of it oozing around. There were purples in there; it looked like a madman’s palette. And the centrepiece…I understand that they’ve still not been able to figure out how he did it; the bones and fibres of muscle were all knotted together. 7 people died to make that abomination. Both of Mrs Henderson’s cats too; I saw a couple of paws sticking out from that ungodly mess.

Jim and I, well we were rooted to the spot. We didn’t want to see something like that, but when you do see something like that…well you just can’t stop watching, can you?

At first, I thought the noise was Jim throwing up until I realised that it wasn’t coming from behind me but in front of me. A small, squelching, and human noise. I swear to God I saw the thing move, and that broke my trance. I turned and I ran. Jim took his lead from me for once, and he ran too. We got back to the patrol car, an oasis in the desert of sound with it’s crackling radio. I hadn’t noticed that our own radios had gone dead as soon as we’d gone into the house, and they stayed that way after we got out. I grabbed the mic and tried to say something. My throat was cracked though, and all I could manage was a couple of little squeaks that would have sounded hilarious at another time. I guess the fact that I was trying to talk to control but couldn’t was what made up their minds to send backup. By my reckoning, that means there was about 10 minutes between my failed attempt to use a simple police radio, and the arrival of half a dozen squad cars, ambulances and (a little later on) a team of 4 soldiers to try and take old Albert down.

I heard Jim give a gasp from outside of the car. When I looked out, he was staring at the upper window of Number 1, Dantons View. It was a great big old thing, probably a farmhouse way back when, but now owned by a burnt out bigshot from the city, Jonathon something or other, and his wife. There was something undulating in the window, but I couldn’t quite see what it was; it was greenish-white and I can’t swear to this, but I thought it looked like old dead skin. The more I looked at it, the more I became certain I could hear, just at the margins of the silence, the sound of someone giggling.

Jim turned and ran. He ran the 200 or so yards across that village green, went straight over a fence, and through the open door of one of the other houses. The door slammed shut, and I was 100 yards away, Jim’s mad dash having taken me off-guard. I flung the door open as I got there 15 seconds later. Jim was stood only 2 yards in front, his back to me. Facing him was a man who must’ve been in his Sixties. He was a strange looking man, beanpole legs supported pot bellied and sallow frame which in turn sprouted spindly arms. His white hair was wild, but his face was serene and he was smiling that terrible, calm smile that I still see in some of my nightmares. I’ve been told his name was Albert, and that he was a retired antiques dealer. That smile never left his face. Not then, not when he killed 2 more police officers who were there as backup, not when he was shot through the knees to render him immobile. I’m told that as he bashed his own head in whilst he was awaiting trial in his cell at Brampton, even whilst his brains sprayed out of his self-destroyed skull, he still had that smile on his face.

I don’t know about that, but he was definitely smiling when his hand snaked out and took Jim by the throat. Smiling when he lifted him. Smiling as he looked into Jim’s eyes. Smiling when, without any seeming effort, he closed his hand into a fist crushing Jim’s larynx and tearing through his arteries. Jim danced a stringless puppet dance as he died, and Albert kept staring at him. Again, this could be just an imperfect recollection of a pretty emotional moment, but I thought Albert’s eyes changed a little as Jim died. They went from blankly smiling to a kind of puzzlement. No, that’s not right. Curiosity.

Then he looked at me, and dropped Jim like an old toy. I’m not ashamed to say that my bladder failed me when that old man looked me in the eye. It wasn’t fear though. Aye, I know; that sounds like coppers bravado, but it wasn’t. I felt elated when he looked at me. I felt like everything bad that had happened to me didn’t matter any more, and that everything was going to be all right. Now you might say that’s a stupid thing to think whilst Jim’s arterial blood was spraying me, Albert, and the whole room, right? And you’d be right. But you weren’t there. So to hell with you; you don’t know.

Albert’s beaming visage came closer to mine, and as it did the ecstasy in my brain doubled, then tripled. It was sheer bliss, that feeling. I wondered if that’s how everyone feels when they know, unequivocally, that they are about to die. Then everything went black.

By the time I came round, 4 days had passed. The doctors said that they couldn’t find any injuries on me, and that my coma had been as a result of extreme nervous trauma. My parents, worried looking and drawn, were sat by my bed as I woke. I don’t see them much nowadays. I think seeing their son screaming obscenities and with madness in his eyes when he first woke up has somewhat affected their view of me.

It took even more time to get me from screeching loon, to catatonic stupor, to tentatively sane recovery. In all that time, no-one has told me what was in the other houses in Dantons View. No-one has explained what happened to me. No-one seems to want to talk to me about it. I know none of the houses there have been re-occupied; they all sit empty with rather forlorn looking FOR SALE signs in each of their gardens. The story may not have made headlines, but word gets around and even the whispered rumours of what happened have been enough to put off any interest.

I’ll be getting medical retirement from the force in a few months. No-one seems to begrudge me it. In fact, most of ‘em are happy to see me go. Coppers can be a superstitious bunch, and I think they see me as a Jonah or something. Or maybe they’re angry at me for not dying like Jim or the other two. I don’t know, and to be honest I don’t care. By the time I get my retirement, I’ll have been on convalescence for almost a year. I’ll have saved up £20,000. With the way things are, I’ll be able to put down a good sized deposit on a house in Dantons View. I haven’t decided which one yet, but I’m counting down the days until I can go and see the Estate Agent’s and put in my offer.

This could be a new beginning for me; the start of something much better.

Untitled Short Story

I dunno. Things seem a lot more peaceful now that the confiscations are all in the past. The recent past I grant you, but the past is what it is; best left behind. It all seems sorta distant now. What’s that feeling you get, when you’re having a dream? Disconnected? Is that it? Whatever it is, that’s what I’m talking about.

The whole thing seems ridiculous now that I come to say it out loud. The newspapers are forbidden from reporting on it now, and to tell you the truth, they all seem pretty relieved about that. Maybe not the reporters themselves; I’m sure there are a few good apples out there. But the big media barons? Heh; you can bet they’re about as happy as pigs in the proverbial right now. How do you run a story like that without making yourself look like a fool? Or scaring the shit out of your readership. Either way, who wants to pick from one choice or the other?

Anyway, that’s not what you give a shit about, right? You just want the good stuff. Fuckin’ MTV generation…yeah, I know I know; it was all better in the “good old daze” right? Well…fuck you. It was. It’s called a daze for a reason. It means a pleasant stupor. Did you know that? We were all pleasantly stupid about what was going on. Not like now; now we know something is going on but we’re fucked if we know what. That being true, I think I’ll stay with my happy memories of being stupid. That okay with you?

So there’s this closed session at the UN. For the first time in it’s history, every world leader is gonna be there. Every one. Didn’t matter if they were the Queen of Sheba or the Cunt from Canada. All world leaders were gonna be face to face. The idea was to “provide a face to face forum to end world war” or some such shit. I don’t really remember and, well, I can’t check my facts any more can I?

Anyway, the session lasted 17 days. The whole world seemed to hold it’s breath while the king shits of turd mountain sat and talked. Two of ‘em died. I always think it was a fuckin’ miracle it was only two; all those fat, rich, happy bags of piss and wind? Putting them all in one room for so long? Jesus, I’m surprised no-one suffocated on the bullshit.

2 fewer and 17 days older, the press got summoned to hear what all those brilliant world minds had agreed upon. I remember watching it on YouTube before the internet got shut down; some bleary eyed American President announced that “measures will be taken across all countries and by all peoples to guarantee peace in our time”. At which point, if we’d been a halfway sensible people, we’dve thrown those pricks back and that room and told ‘em to fuck off. Pretty much every conflict worldwide had died down in those 17 days. 17 days with no stupid old man trying to solve a grudge with young man’s blood had led to a distinct lack of direction for people whose hate petered out pretty quickly without orders to sustain it.

Then the books started being confiscated. The list was drawn up (not that we ever saw the fucking thing) and the authorities started cleaning them up. Funny; you always think that sort of thing is gonna be all stern faces and moustaches on pricks. Turns out it’s a bunch of mousy, polite men and women in overalls collecting books from shops and from houses to be removed “for the good of mankind”.

I’m not sure anyone really even misses them to be honest. Hadn’t read most of ‘em so who gives a shit, y’know? There was a lot of protests by people saying that their civil liberties were were being taken away from them. I dunno about that; if you want to read, there’s plenty of books still to choose from. But…well like I said at the start; it’s weird. We all heard that there was a big plan for world peace, and then the confiscations started so we all just assumed…well, it must be for our own good, right? Why else would all our leaders want to get rid of certain books?
Now…now there’s a strange atmosphere. I get the sense that everyone is waiting to see what happens next. No-one seems to know but I know there’s that tingle in the air; not the one you get before a storm, but the one before a senseless pub kicking or when that kid got caught stabbing cats. We’ll see I suppose.

So why’re you making this program then? Wouldn’t have thought talking about this stuff was exactly popular now.

Who did you say you were with again? BBC?




Can I see your press pass again please mate?