Black Ink - Part 2

It wasn’t just the silence, there was something in the air that was stale, off somehow. I got up and tried the garden doors, they were locked, and no keys to be seen. Being outside at the front with the strange statue didn’t appeal, so I ran up to the living room, found keys on a side table, shoved them into the lock, they jammed, tried again, there was a click, a release, a turn, and the doors slid open. I stepped onto the balcony and breathed in deeply. The wide stretch of blue-grey water rippled and shone in the sun. On this side of the house, the sounds of the city surrounded me; shrieks of children from the school playground at home-time, the hum of chatter from riverside pavements, the constant rumble of slow moving vehicles. I could hear life, I could hear people, I could hear that I wasn’t alone. 

Back in the kitchen, I made another coffee and checked the drawing. The house captured the contemporary grandeur I’d been aiming for, as well as a sense of aloof hostility created by the black ink. I sat back and sipped. I picked up the pad again, held it up to the light, changed the angle, and held it closer. Something was wrong. One of the trees at the front of the house stood out; it was the pattern on the trunk. Prickles rippled over the back of my head. Embedded in the trunk were two oblong knots, revealing a pair of staring eyes, and below them was a black hole that formed a mouth saying ‘O’.  A tormented face was looking out from the picture, directly at me. I dropped the sketchpad. 

Forcing myself to look again, it was still there - a face with knot-eyes and black-hole mouth. I reasoned that it was an illusion. but like a Rorschach test, I was unable to un-see it. Sitting back down, I picked up the nib and a fine brush and added more lines and dots to the trunk, and expanded the canopy. I worked in a focused fury until my fingers were sore, my wrists ached, my fingertips blackened with ink. My eyes searched for other sinister shapes lurking within the shading, but there were none. 

The sun began fading out, dimming the sky to a pinky mauve. I turned on pendant lamps over the island and spotlights that sprinkled across the kitchen ceiling, then moved throughout the house turning on all the lights and closing the doors of the rooms I wouldn’t be going into, not wanting to walk past the empty spaces when darkness fell. 

When I reached my room, I stopped at the doorway watching the tree outside the window. It was the tree that I’d copied and where the face had appeared. And just like in the drawing, my bedroom was on the first floor behind the tree. Moving further inside I peered down at the trunk; there were knots, burls and divots in its trunk, but no face. I placed healing crystals on the bedside table, just in case, switched on the light and shut the door behind me. Heading straight to the living room and onto the balcony, I absorbed comfort from the city. There was music - from a pub maybe, the traffic continued, as did lively chatter from surrounding restaurants. The world was carrying on as normal.

In the kitchen I checked my phone, there was a missed call from my aunt, and a text message. 

“Hope you’re settling in okay and getting on with the drawing. Plenty of food in the fridge and cupboards. Make sure you eat!” 

I called but she didn’t pick up.  

I wrote: “Yes! I LOVE the house. It's incredible. Not sure about your sculpture in the front though -  creepy!”

There was no reply and I began working on the long shadows so that they crept across the lawn and driveway. I avoided looking at the tree where the face had emerged, completing its shadow as soon as I could. By the time I stopped, the sun had left the sky and several string lights popped on outside. The glowing white dots threaded through branches, crisscrossing the back garden. I got up and pressed my head against the cool glass thinking it would be nice to sit out there. Further down the garden, I noticed that the lights didn’t quite reach all the way to the back, leaving a recess of darkened space. I could make out two trees in the shadows, distant and inscrutable from their unlit section. I also saw what looked like another one of the sculptures between the trees, facing me. I pulled down the blinds. 

There was little point in going to bed. I wouldn't be able to sleep and anticipated being plagued by images of faces in trees, ancient gravestones and sinister sculptures. I was alert, so decided to work into the night and finish the drawing, fuelled by coffee. Sleep could wait until the morning.

Midnight came and went. Back upstairs, I stood on the balcony to gather the soothing sounds of the city, but the traffic had become infrequent, speeding along vacant roads; there was no music, no talking, no laughter, no footsteps - all things had seemingly shut off one by one in the hollowed-out hours of early morning.

I looked out at the river, but it looked back at me, deep, dark, and silent. I drew back inside, locked the door, found a cord and tugged the curtains shut.

It was too late to call anyone, so I switched on rolling news on the kitchen TV to keep me company and remind myself that the world was awake with me.  

The next layer of ink was drying. I’d completed most of the difficult reflections of the large square window panes successfully. The sense of achievement was short-lived however. In one of the windows I could see what looked like a blot of black ink. My initial reaction was frustration - I’d been so careful and I berated myself for working too late.  I found a thin brush to rectify it. When I looked again I could see it wasn’t a smudge. It was something else. The shape of a person, an inked-in figure, was standing in the window on the upper left-hand side of the house. It was in the window above the face-tree; my window. The bedroom where I was supposed to be asleep. I closed the sketchpad. 

I heard a click.  It was coming from upstairs. It sounded like a metal latch in a door.  Click, click. Someone or something was trying to open the bedroom door. 

The loud thumping I felt in my chest was now in my ears. I put my arms across my head covering my eyes like a child not wanting to see.  I wanted to scream but covered my mouth. I had to move, I had to leave the house.

Running to the hallway, I pushed my feet into my trainers and realised my bag and phone were in the kitchen. I didn’t want to go back in there and see the drawing, nor could I go out in the dead of night without them. I hovered at the kitchen entrance looking for my things.  On the central island I noticed the sketchpad. It now lay open, displaying the drawing again.  My bag and phone were beyond it, on the table by the garden doors. I ran in to get them, glancing at the drawing as I went past. I couldn’t see the figure in the upstairs window anymore, but I wanted to get out. Grabbing my things, I passed the drawing again and stopped to check it. The figure had reappeared, but was no longer in the bedroom. It had moved, and was at one of the ground floor windows. In my drawing, the window was to the right of the main door. In my aunt's house, it was the kitchen window facing the front - a few feet behind me.  Standing at the counter looking at the drawing, I realised that it was in the room with me. My body began trembling, my head swayed and I thought I would swoon. I clutched the edge of the counter and somehow regained the strength to move and flee from the kitchen. I looked straight ahead of me, not turning to see what was there. The main door opened easily and I ran out into the middle of the square. 

It was 3am. The office buildings were dark and silent, as was the school; the house next door was empty. The church was to my left and beside it a house - a vicarage? The lights were on. I walked quickly that way, not what I was even going to do or say to them at that time. I took out my phone and saw there was an earlier message from my aunt that I’d missed.

“I don’t have a sculpture of a man!?”

I turned my head towards Fescue House. There were lights along the front in the planters and beneath the trees. The sculpture wasn’t there. My eyes moved to the kitchen window - nothing. I dragged them up to the bedroom window. It was now black. The light I had turned on had been switched off.  My eyes flickered back downwards to movement, and I watched as the front door began opening slowly inwards. I turned and ran towards the grey house. 

In the following days, I told a couple of friends. They said that it was probably too much coffee, too little sleep, that I’d been anxious and overwhelmed. So I stopped telling people and besides, I wanted to forget. I didn’t even tell my aunt the whole story. I threw away the drawing and hired a freelancer to finish the illustration. Shortly after that I left my job, moved out of the flat and went to live with my grandparents for a while. Everyone said it was stress, some kind of mental breakdown. In time, I found people who understood and I began to recover; I got rid of the crystals and beads. 

In my last few weeks at my grandparents’, my grandfather asked if I had any photos of Fescue House he could look at. I still had the photos I’d taken for the drawing and I let him scroll through. 

“Oh”, he said after a couple of minutes.“Who’s that?”

I looked over. The photo was of the lower section of the house. In it, was a reflection of me in the kitchen window, taking a picture with my phone.  My grandfather was pointing at the tall thin figure behind me.

Momentum

When it is your birthday, you want the day to feel special, different from all the other days in the year. Even though one is vaguely aware of the fact that millions of other people on the planet have the same birthday, the sun seems to shine only for you. The coffee you make takes on an aura of significance, its steam rising and enveloping you in a warm hug of celebration.

She was a creature of routine. Every Sunday morning, while much of London slept, she would go for a run, filling her soul with the blissful quiet as she advanced jauntily through parks and along canals. But as this day was her birthday, she had planned a route just that little bit special. She would run a longer course aiming to reach Monument just before opening hours, then be the first to enter and sprint all the way up to the top. Proper uphills were not easy to find in her part of London, so she could conquer a landmark and get her heart pumping at the same time. What a great way to start the day filled with golden moments.

Several miles after gently closing the front door, she felt the presence of the Thames. The air was faintly salty and sea gulls screeched out of sight as if the river owed a debt to the vast seas that had fed the city for hundreds of years before.

Turning a corner, she came to the delightfully named Pudding Lane and there, looming up into the sky, was Monument, the tower built to remember the Great Fire of London. At that moment, her joy turned to frustration, when she saw at the base of the tower a long line of tourists queuing ahead of the opening time. She was hot and sweaty from the run, and the babbling of the unwelcome crowd irritated her even more.

Marching to the front of the line, she began pleading her case to the ticket attendant setting up for the day.

‘It’s my birthday and I had this plan to come early today before the opening time and climb up. Just one wish for the day. Would that be alright? I’ll be quick and I won’t hold up the people behind me.’

There was a ripple of mild protest from an Italian couple behind, who had got the gist of the conversation.

‘I am sorry, but you will have to join the back of the queue. Those are the rules, luv. Next time, come earlier and you won’t have to wait as long.’ The ticket attendant shrugged his shoulders apathetically, as if he had said the same comment many times before.

‘But you don’t understand. It’s my birthday and this is the one thing I wanted to do this morning. There won’t be another time soon. Please.’

‘Sorry.’

With the definitive rejection, she felt a surge of heat pulse to her head and a burning desire to complete her mission, whatever the consequences.

‘You’re sorry. I’m sorry too, because I need to do this.’

Before there was any time to respond, she had barged her way past the ticket attendant, through the tiny opening into the tower and started her sprint up.

‘You can’t do that! Come down. I can call the police if you don’t.’ 

She heard the ticket attendant try to run up after her but he was gasping at the end of his sentence and gave up the chase, calling a colleague instead. As she sprinted up the spiral staircase, she could make out only a few words, ‘…guv…nothing I could do…police?...’

Inside the tower, the voices below became muffled and dimmed. She could concentrate just on her breath, rebounding off the stone walls. Her feet pushed off each keystone step as she found her rhythm up and round, up and round the spiral staircase.

At the top, she stepped out on to the platform and took in the view, panting. The Thames, the City, London spread all around her. She exhaled deeply, savouring the moment. 

‘Oi, I see you. Get down here now!’ The gruff voice of the ticket attendant suddenly cut in, along with a disgruntled cacophony of Spanish, American and Chinese murmurs far below.

‘I see you too. Coming!’  She gave a big wave to the crowd and then turned back inside the tower.  Down she pattered. When she emerged at street level, the ticket attendant was waiting, phone in hand. A handful of tourists had closed in around the door and were waving their tickets in the air.  

‘Thank you. I’m done now. I did say I wouldn’t be long. Sorry but It’s just, it’s my birthday you see.’ She had broken through the group keen to escape, head turned back to explain and, with any luck, be forgiven.

‘You didn’t pay the entrance fee,’ said the ticket attendant, holding up one hand to quieten the tourists.

‘Oh yes, I forgot. Here and a tip for your trouble.’ She fumbled in her pocket for the crinkled note and handed it to the bewildered ticket attendant.

She was already on her way when the security car turned into Pudding Lane, the ticket attendant moving towards it gesturing towards her fast departing frame.

The heat in her head and legs were forgotten as she fell back into her comfortable rhythm, one foot in front of the other. She felt powerful as she moved forward along the streets that belonged to her.

Not much passed through her mind on the journey home except a few responses she could offer when asked how her run had been. ‘Great.’ ‘Managed an uphill challenge today.’ ‘Endorphins were high.’ 

Little did she know that she had just run her personal best.

Creature of the Night - Part One

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With apologies to the late Laura Brannigan

‍ ‍

For the night

is my world.

‍ ‍City nights,

painted swirl……

‍ ‍

And I,

I am a creature of the night.

I live, I live,

‍ among the creatures of the night.

But hey! Like all you Clubbers, Ravers, Dudes (and Dudettes) down there, who hit the scene at night, I’ve got a regular job too.

Me? What do I do? Well, I work in the Fourth Circle of Hell. That’s Greed if you’re not familiar. Yep, Fourth Circle is where you’ll usually find me, though sometimes we get moved between Five and Two, that’s Lust, Gluttony and Wrath. Our Boss, you know, the ‘Big Man’, likes to ensure we’re skilled in tormenting all types of souls: he believes it keeps us motivated. As managers go, he’s pretty fair.

So long as you obey the rules.

Now, I know you’re experiencing some scepticism right now, because you don’t believe that Hell and its Nine Circles exist, do you? You think that they’re just an invention of that poor lovelorn sap, Dante and his Inferno.

And no, by ‘Dante’s Inferno’ I don’t mean the ‘Immersive Action-Adventure Game’ that comes up first on Wikipedia when you Google it. (Frankly, I’m disappointed some of you are that uncultured - I was hoping for a more highbrow audience here). If you keep scrolling down, you’ll see it’s actually a mega poem about Dante and Virgil taking a lads’ road trip to us in the Underworld, some 700 years ago, to write a best seller about folks like me who put sinners through unimaginable and exquisite trials. Oh, and there’s a cold-hearted chick called Beatrice who won’t put out, and some sort of moral in it – can’t remember what though.

But I digress. Yes, you thought it was all one big literary fiction cum video game, did you? Well, you’re wrong, it’s real. I’m living proof. And if you still don’t believe me, all I can say is you’d better watch out because every now and then ‘He’ lets us out to do a bit of ‘harvesting’.

What do I mean by that? Well, naturally we get souls delivered to us all the time: great blubbery oligarchs who died eating one too many sour cream and caviar blinis, or some sinewy tin-pot dictator from a-country-you-have-never-heard-of who believed them when they said the glass was bullet proof.

And, don’t get me wrong, they’re decent specimens. But they’ve been processed. You see, by the time they’ve shuffled to the front of the queue at the Pearly Gates and then been told their name’s not on the list, they’re full of preservatives and a little bit stale to boot.

Fresh is best, we all know that, don’t we? And that there’s nothing better than going out onto the land for a bit of ‘pick your own’. I bet you’ve all been blackberrying or gone to some farm with a basket for some nice strawberries and raspberries. Taken along the kiddies and your Nan. Then you all said how much better it tastes than the stuff you get from the supermarkets.

Well, it’s the same for us. Nothing beats a fresh soul or two.

Best of all, just as you can travel between farm and field to forage, we can go back and forth through the ages. We’re not stuck on this linear treadmill of time like you – and jeez; you ought to see what the future is looking like for you guys………

The challenge, though, is finding the right, and for me, the greediest candidate or two, to take home and, as you probably know from your own picking, the most luscious fruits are often the hardest to reach. That’s the real test. Bring back indifferent quality and you don’t get released as much. And me? Yes, I’m good. Really good.

So, being who we are and having, as I mentioned before, a reasonably liberal boss, we can pretty much do what we like, with one condition:

don’t get involved.

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Charred Wood

Fire is not a luxury that belongs to my generation. Once oxygen became a scarcity, any activity that sucked those precious atoms out of our atmosphere was forbidden. Lighting a fire has been punishable by death for years. Redundant really, as there is nothing left to burn, no trees, no grass, nothing.

“Are you ready, lieutenants?” Captain Raynor breaks my train of thought. His voice, normally booming at us during training, sounds infinitesimal in the vast hall, hollow echoes bouncing off the steel and glass surrounding us.

We nod. The atmosphere in the hall is electric, all eyes on the priest who has arrived to perform the rituals. He holds the small velvet box in front of him, his cassock billowing out, softening the hard edges in his vicinity.

My hands shake so I hide them in the pockets of my uniform. Now that the priest is here, there is no going back. I swallow, the voices in my head growing louder. “You’re too young, too inexperienced. Who cares you came top of your program. What do you think you’re doing?” I received maximum points in all disciplines except meteor shower calibration, which frankly still annoys me.

I look down at the chip embedded in the mound below my left thumb. 22.06.2296. Our mission date. The tiny holographic numbers twinkle at me. The date was selected several years ago. Calculated as the optimal for our journey out past the galaxy but also the most auspicious in accordance with the old pagan rites we still revere. Summer solstice 2296. The longest day of the year sending us off on our search for a new and better habitat.

With a solemn sweep of the hand the priest opens the velvet box. I know what is inside. A small piece of beech wood, saved from the last trees before they died. They have been preserved over decades for occasions such as this one. Captain Raynor told us this is the last remaining piece.

As the priest holds the chemically prepared wick close to the precious wood, small sparks fly. A faint curl of smoke rises. It’s the closest thing we will ever get to a real fire. I have read about the bonfires people used to light to celebrate summer solstice. Huge burning mounds, fierce flames reaching far up in the sky. All to honour the abundance of life and fertility. Now we don’t need to mark the middle of summer anymore. It is hot all year round. Abundance of life on the other hand, that’s a problem.

The priest passes round the glowing wood in a small fireproof bowl. We bow to it. A whiff of smoke reaches my nostrils. Sharp, acrid but too faint to do any harm. To think people could light fire anytime they wanted, never having to worry about the oxygen they needed to breathe. 

We head to the ship. Once strapped in, I receive the small piece of charred wood, now wrapped in a simple velvet cloth. A talisman for our journey. I can still feel the warmth of the wood seeping through to my fingers. The last touch of nature before we head out into the unknown.

Inspired by the rituals for Summer Solstice and a future where humans must adapt to climate change.