The Kimota Anthology Part 32

Inside was a different world.

There was a street, a small row of houses. Some were completely ruined, one or two were nearly intact. I expected them to have been looted, but the furniture was still there, frozen in time, a snapshot of the war. Nature had tried to take over. Trees had grown through the floorboards, ivy and bindweed were competing to cover the walls and the ground outside. Or rather, they had been. The area was derelict, wild, but everything was dead. The smell of stagnant water and rotting vegetation was strong.

I could see no evidence that anyone had lived here since the bombing. I walked through the houses, treading carefully in case the floors were unsafe. I had just decided that the thin man had moved on when I heard a faint rhythmic sound coming from the next house. I went outside and edged up to the rotting window frame. He was inside.

He was sitting in the remains of the kitchen, the quaint faded yellow units contrasting with the taut menace that ebbed from him. He was working on stone, using a hammer and chisel to cut letters into a polished slab of marble. He was making a tombstone.

And he knew I was there.

In the instant before he turned around I knew he'd sensed my presence. And then he was looking at me. I didn't see him turn. I don't think he did turn, as such - one second he was busy working, the next he had put his tools down and twisted around. It was like a film that had jumped a few frames. His face, like his body, was long and thin, the bones prominent, angular. Lank black hair stuck out from underneath his top hat and his long, black coat tails hung nearly to the floor.

His expression was quite terrible. He had the air of an undertaker, an insane funeral director. And just as I wondered if I would be able - or would want - to read his thoughts, they exploded in my head. It was as if he had lobbed them neatly to me. In the s.p.a.ce of a second I knew the legend was true. That this was the Stonemason, a thing from h.e.l.l, called up by the witches that were burned or banished from the town. And the doorway was here, in this bombed out row of houses.

The Stonemason stared at me, completely still. I was shaking, drenched in sweat, full of awful, dreadful knowledge. I knew I could not get away, could not outrun him. He beckoned me inside and I went.

I looked at the tombstone. There was a man's name on it that I did not recognise, a man who had just a few months to live. I tried to swallow my fear.

"So this is when you're going to kill him. Just like you killed Sarah Smith."

The Stonemason went back to his work. "I did not. I have never killed anyone. I am not a murderer. I am just a messenger."

He stopped again. "You people should be grateful. It is surely freedom to know how much time one has left."

I found myself echoing the words of Elizabeth Martin. "But no one wants to think about when they're going to die. You're as good as giving them a death sentence. These people are innocent. Why punish them for something their ancestors did three hundred and fifty years ago?"

The Stonemason grinned, a grotesque expression that split his face nearly in two. "Innocent, are they? Well, have a look around this room. See how innocent they are."

I looked. The room was untouched, the same as it would have been the day it was bombed. Cutlery and a rolling pin lay on the draining board, cleaned and dried over fifty years ago. A chair was lying on the floor, another was upright but at an angle to the table, as if someone had vacated it in a hurry. The calendar caught my eye. It was for April, a busy month, judging by the notes on it. I turned the page. May was blank. And then I saw the year.

"But this calendar's wrong," I said. "The war ended in '45."

"Clever girl, know your history!" screeched the Stonemason. "The Germans didn't bomb this street during the war, the local RAF did it afterwards."

"There's still some people alive here today who took part in that raid. They wanted to seal the door up again, they wanted to kill Yours Truly," he leapt to his feet, took a bow and then sat down again. "They failed! But they slaughtered the people who lived here. It was carnage, blood and bones and flesh everywhere. I knew they were all going to die. I'd been busy. I'd made the tombstones."

I couldn't believe it. "But why would they not warn the people living here?"

The Stonemason laughed. "They thought the people in this street were possessed. They knew the door was here somewhere and they a.s.sumed the people who lived close to it were in league with me. So they murdered them. And their sons and grandsons have been covering up for them ever since. History repeats itself, doesn't it? Round and round!" The Stonemason made a jerky circular movement with his forefinger, laughing. He was doubled up with mirth.

"Can the curse be broken?" I asked. "Surely you don't want to stay here forever?"

"A few hundred years? It's not a lot. The town will be driven to madness. And all because the good people here cannot accept their own mortality. Some people discover they have forty, fifty years left to live. They should rejoice. Instead they let the knowledge be a shackle, a ball and chain. They close down, a living death. They're fools! But that's not my fault."

"Your landlady, by the way, your lovely landlady who's throwing you out on the street, will find out tomorrow that she has three weeks and four days to live. You might get to stay in that house after all!"

"She was trying to save me," I said. "She wanted me to leave town."

"Perhaps she thinks you're a witch!" screamed the Stonemason triumphantly. "She can't save you. You will die when you die, either here or anywhere else you care to be."

"Do you want to see the door?" he asked suddenly.

The door was underground. There was a trap door in the cellar of the house the Stonemason was working in. Steps led down to an old sewer system and there, nearly invisible behind pipes and spider webs, was a door. What I could see of it looked like rusted metal. The Stonemason brushed the webs away. It was not rust covering the door, he said, but old, dried blood. I asked him what lay behind it.

"h.e.l.l, of course. Your worst fears and nightmares come true, forever and ever amen. I could open it, just a crack, give you a taste if you like."

Terror must have showed on my face. The Stonemason laughed, the sound bouncing up and down the tunnel.

"What's to stop me going back and telling everyone where the door is?"

"Oh, I think they're resigned to their fate now. They're too worn down to come storming down here with flaming torches. Besides, I don't think you'll tell anyone. I don't think you see anything wrong with what I do. You think they're weak."

For a moment I forgot to be afraid. There was a lot wrong with taunting children about death and I was angry enough to tell the Stonemason so. He shrugged, unconcerned.

"The little girl came in here. She found what she was looking for. It's how you look at it that's the problem"

He bent towards me, suddenly very serious. "They're wasting their lives away, Molly. You know that as well as I."

The Stonemason walked back up the stairs. I turned to the door. It looked unthreatening, like the entrance to a service tunnel. I reached towards it, wanting to touch it, to see if I could believe it, and hesitated. Fear was beginning to seep into every inch of me. I was aware that the Stonemason would be watching, enjoying every moment. In an act of bravado I took my handkerchief, spat on it and cleaned a small section of the door. The surface was uneven, a texture unlike the wood or metal I was expecting. I bent forward, squinting in the half-darkness. Staring back was an eye. Next to it was a mouth, the tongue lolling out over swollen lips. As my hand brushed across the rest of the door my fingers found the curve of a woman's breast. The door was covered in human flesh.

Disgusted, I bent down to wash my hand in a pool of water. It was raw sewage. The foul smell hit me and I jumped up again. Retching, I rubbed my hand violently against my s.h.i.+rt and made for the steps, the sing-song sound of the Stonemason's laughter bursting into life all around me.

The Stonemason was walking away from the house when I ran up from the cellar, his jerky movements only slightly hindered by the tombstone he was carrying. I sat on one of the chairs and wondered what to do next. The Stonemason would not be stopped, the town could not be saved. I questioned whether it deserved to be. I decided, then, that I was going to leave. Mrs Click's house, the town, this whole place. The Stonemason was a figure from a nightmare, the door underneath where I was sitting led to who knew where, and I never wanted to see either again. The town was cursed, hopeless. I wanted to get far away.

I left the house and walked down the remains of the street. How would it have been for the people who'd lived here? To have survived the war, seen Spring arriving and then.... And the men who had dropped the bombs - they must have truly believed that the end justified the means. But the words witch hunt went through my mind as clearly as if someone had whispered it in my ear. Perhaps there had been other motives; old feuds, scores to settle. Even now, the town seemed unsure, or unwilling to touch the land. Was it guilt? Unless, as the Stonemason had said, the people had given up, defeated by the curse. In which case, of course, his work would soon be done. And what would happen then?

I pa.s.sed the last house and stopped. A surreal image caught me off-guard; in the remains of a respectable looking 1940s sitting room, were a collection of tombstones, brand new, the work of a master craftsman. I went inside, wanting to remember every bizarre detail. The tombstone the Stonemason had just finished was here, resting on the carpet, next to the fireplace.

A creak on the floorboards behind me told me I was not alone. I turned to find the Stonemason standing in the doorway, grinning again. He pretended to wipe away a tear.

"She's leaving us, she's leaving us," he sang softly. "And where will she go? What will she do?"

The Stonemason sat down. "But you can't leave yet. You haven't finished here." His grin got wider and wider. I thought of the question, the situation I'd been avoiding all along: what about me? How long have I got? And I knew, the Stonemason's face told me, that in this museum piece of a room was my own headstone.

I looked around. There it was, my own name, carved immaculately into the stone. I couldn't take it in. It looked ridiculous, unreal. Untrue. The Stonemason sat staring at me.

"Well, Molly, nearly fifty-four years. Think of all that time! Over half a century! Isn't that marvellous? What are you going to do with all that time?"

The Stonemason raved on enthusiastically. But his words were insignificant. I was going to die. A hundred, a thousand years, would not be enough. I felt frail. Which part of my body would fail me first? I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, saw it counting down the seconds of my life, the hands moving faster and faster as I watched. Time and the reality of my own mortality began to crush me.

Elizabeth had been right. It was as if the walls were closing in. It was unbearable. I began to wish I'd never been born. The whole of my life - forty years - an unstoppable march towards death. Gasping for breath, I crawled into a corner and covered my head with my hands, a futile attempt to protect myself. To stay safe and watch every moment approach and then pa.s.s me by.

And there, nearly fifty-four years later, is where I died.

[Originally Published in Kimota 16, Spring 2002].

THE HAPPY CLAPPER.

by Jonathan Taylor.

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None of these improvements, however, stopped the Reverend Scaper going home one day to beat up his autistic brother and take an overdose of Vitafaith.

He'd been overjoyed at first when, six months before, the Resurrection Channel had asked him to host one of their game shows. Relations had been getting a little strained in his old parish, especially with his Treasurer. The Treasurer had been exhibiting an unhealthy interest in G.o.d's financial affairs, and in the couple of trips taken by G.o.d's collections to and around Aintree. (What did it matter anyway, since G.o.d had made sure His money went on the right horse?) As it had turned out later, the Treasurer had also been taking an unhealthy interest in Scaper's wife.

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He would always remember one delectable moment when he was recognised on Blackburn High Street. A number 6 'bus had pulled up at the stop opposite - a 'bus emblazoned with a smilingly attractive picture of him on the side, swearing by a bottle of pills he held aloft. At the same time, a little boy had started pointing frantically between the advert and the original, tugging his dad's sleeve, "Jesus Christ, dad, it's that Jesus Christ man!" Scaper heard only the praise, not the vain use of Jesus' name so he patted the boy on the head and agreed to sign his Pokemon Guide Book.

For a short while, things just got better and better. For a short while, G.o.d and cable television granted the Reverend Scaper some almost-fame. One perceptive critic (Scaper read all the critics) even went so far as to call him the "Bruce Forsyth of the Evangelical Movement."

But then his wife left him for his old Parish Treasurer.

Of course, his fame and ratings soared at first because of the scandal but, actually, it wasn't a cynical marketing ploy. He had, in his own way, rather liked her. And, anyway, her leaving meant there was no one but him to look after his d.a.m.ned r.e.t.a.r.d of a brother and keep him out of the way.

In a frank interview with a local tabloid, Scaper's wife (pictured lying in a pink camisole, red hair splayed like an octopus over the pillow) said she'd left him for both religious and s.e.xual reasons. She told the reporters that she'd never quite credited his apocalyptic predictions from the pulpit of an imminent Second Coming because she'd never known a first.

But don't worry. Even G.o.d has His off days and wonders what it'd be like to become a free thinker. [Picture of a troubled, white-bearded, old man in the clouds. Think Father Christmas]. Even G.o.d sometimes finds it hard to believe in His own omnipotent remarkableness. Even G.o.d looks down on the Earth He's created now and then and wonders whether it's a great work of art or just a big poo.

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Reverend Scaper was increasingly dependent on an hourly dose of Vitafaith, trying to stop the old desperation slithering back.

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Scaper's movements on the evening after the last show proved difficult to trace, let alone understand. One of the studio's cleaners told the police that Scaper was still in his dressing-room at seven-thirty, obsessively arranging and rearranging some Biblical Fuzzy Felts on his desk; the landlord at the Headless Chicken reckoned Scaper was there for three hours, silently drinking, refusing to speak to anyone; a prominent member of Blackburn's Neighbourhood Watch made a (peculiar and unreliable) statement to the effect that she saw Scaper peering through the window of Number 66 Scythe Street for a whole hour in the rain. That would have been about midnight.

Number 66 Scythe Street was the address of Leonard Lincoln - a member of St. Michael's Parish Church Council, and the final contestant of the final Test Your Faith.

Leonard Lincoln had managed to survive the ultimate test of faith, and had thus gone home with 600 for the Church Repair Fund of his choice, a do-it-yourself Holy Communion kit and a brand new Mercedes Benz.

Leonard Lincoln had stoically withstood "Trial By l.u.s.t" the one test which no one had ever got through before.

Leonard Lincoln had been tied to a huge Cross in the middle of the studio with electrodes attached to his "nether regions" (as Scaper called them). Three voluptuous and scantily-clad blondes had then entered and, using every trick they were aware of, had tried to tempt Leonard and his nether regions into betraying themselves. An electronic chart suspended above the stage displayed Leonard's relative s.e.xual excitation as sensed through the electrodes.

The studio audience and the audience at home watched breathless - in more ways than one - as the girls stripped, kissed, tickled, stroked and licked the man on the Cross for four minutes. (Every now and then, a disclaimer flashed at the bottom of the screen, rea.s.suring everyone that, as stars of illicit films, these ladies were d.a.m.ned anyway, so it didn't matter what sins they committed on the show).

Reverend Scaper watched from the wings, biting the side of his index finger, snapping occasionally at a make-up artist, and s.h.i.+fting his weight uneasily from one foot to another.

(And the Reverend Scaper's brother watches, as usual, his favourite programme and his favourite brother on T.V. at home the babysitter meanwhile watching him. "Do you like those girls, Charlie?" she asks. "I like my brother best, Miss Blyth," he answers. "But do you like them, Charlie? Do you like what they're doing, Charlie?" "I like my brother best," he answers, feeling himself getting hot, though he has little or no idea why. "But do you like what the girls are doing to that man, Charlie? Do you think I'm as nice as they are? You don't need to be uncomfortable, Charlie. I think you're quite lovely." "I like my brother best.") Throughout, Leonard Lincoln's level of arousal remained stubbornly low the green pulse on the electronic chart never fluctuating once.

After three and a half minutes, an astounded studio audience started counting down. Some of them had rather shaky voices.

After three minutes and fifty seconds, the cheering had already begun.

After four minutes, the last trumpet sounded, and the whole audience shouted "Hallelujah" with one accord, thinking they'd never before seen such beatific fort.i.tude.

Leonard was taken down from the Cross, and his family rushed onto the stage to congratulate him. The "Gates of Paradise" at the back of the stage then opened (creakily) to reveal the Mercedes he had won. And finally, everyone joined in a final song of praise, with much trumpeting and tambourining, as they all followed the Lincolns and the Mercedes out of the studio.

Everyone except Scaper, who stood watching for a minute, and then retired to his dressing-room and the Fuzzy Felts.

And then to the pub.

And then to Scythe Street, looking through the window at the perfect Christian family: the children all huddled cosily round the television, the wife making a victory cup of Ovaltine in the kitchen, Leonard in his reclining chair reading, the Mercedes in the drive s.h.i.+ning self-satisfiedly in the rain.

(A pamphlet called Dealing With Impotency hiding between the covers of the Bible which Leonard's reading).