All stories

I wrenched myself from the paralysis of sleep with such force the scream stayed trapped inside. I could feel it jammed in my lungs as though it were too big to pass through my throat. It was as I sat, rigid and howling mutely into the dark, that I noticed how wet everything was. I couldn’t tell if it was sweat or piss but there was enough of it to leave me splashing around like a plumber who’d passed out on the job; maybe it was both. The condensation on the window shook; I didn’t know if I was trembling, or the world was.

Christ, it was hot.

The time before sleep sliced through my brain in flashes. Muscles and wine; oysters and tequila; blue cheese and tequila; tequila and tequila. My stomach lurched and its contents nudged against my scream forcing a little of it out as a groan, or a gasp; some wretched compound.

The thing that was trembling, it was definitely me.

I knew any moment I’d need to move and I’d need to move fast but the idea of shifting from this position, even by a foot, seemed insanity. I tried to focus on something to anchor me but every part of the room was moving; juddering and sliding in impossible directions; mechanical madness. I felt something leak from somewhere; what and where was anybody’s guess.

I pulled the duvet tight around my shoulders to ward off the chill and tried to breathe.

That’s when the face appeared, inches from my eyes. Every cell in my body tensed in defence and I could feel my mind searching for an escape. I don’t think it cared if I went with it.

Synapses crackled and spat trying to bring memories into focus like a water-damaged TV; I was sure I could smell smoke. The remainder of my scream exploded into ten thousand shards and, finally, I felt my lungs deflate, though I wished they hadn’t. They refilled with pure pain and the whirl of an old black and white projector signalled the start of a horror show.

The face was further away now, on the other side of a table, a debris of shot glasses and seafood vessels between us, and I was speaking. I was speaking and I was feeling and I was speaking about what I was feeling and I reached my hands in front of my mouth trying to catch the words and push them back in. I wanted to displace the pain and the scream with the words that never should have been let out and reglue my shattered insides… somehow.

A light pulsed at my side, it registered in my temples first. I recognised the illuminated name, blurred and shaking as it was. The name went with the face. The name went with the face that heard the words. The name went with the face I could never see again.

The moment to move arrived, and I moved like lightning.

She remembered her very first night here, the night she’d moved in. Andy would join her in a day or two and she’d use the time to start unpacking and break the back of the cleaning.

She remembered the glorious isolation of the place. Not a soul for miles, no cars, no streetlights, nothing but a dirt track road, their beautiful house and fields for miles.

She remembered how far from beautiful the house had been that day, how the brickwork crumbled, how black mould had danced its way, unchecked, across the plaster, like ice forming on a window pane in winter. How condensation had streaked the walls and glass when she lit the camping stove as the sun went down.

But none of it mattered. It was theirs; their house, their home, and they would make it work. They had A Plan. The house had taken every last penny they had scraped together. They were excited about the work, about the project. Her hands trembled as she filled the kettle with water from the rain barrel for a cup of tea, heated on the bare flagstone floor of the ancient kitchen.

There was no electricity or heating. No bed, no furniture. No running water - that was all coming later with Andy, he was a plumber, sort of, or his dad was anyway and he’d get that side of things all fixed up in no time. So she unrolled the sleeping bag, filled a hot water bottle and settled down to sleep beside the big open fireplace, pretending it was filled with a roaring, crackling fire. Soon, she knew, it would be.

She remembered waking up that first night to the flicker of movement in the tall, splintered doorway and the way the shape peeled itself away from the shadows to stand over her. She couldn’t see its face.

She remembered how she knew it was watching her, how she couldn’t move or speak and how there was nowhere to go and no-one to help her even if she could. She felt the familiar overwhelming terror coursing through her body and the utter helplessness that always rode with it.

She remembered the way the shadow’s arms rose, black in blackness, no street lights here to show the reality of a badly draped dressing gown, the truth of a sinister blowing curtain. How it reached towards her and how it drew itself down to crouch by her makeshift bed. How she tried to scream and nothing would come, nothing would move, nothing would stop it. How she thought she would run mad if the shadow came any closer.

Then the world shifted suddenly, lurching on its axis, tipping everything back into place. There was the fireplace, there was the window, bright with moonlight, dripping in condensation. There was the movement in her arms, her legs, all as it should be. She sat up trembling, sweating, wishing for Andy.

And she remembered the shadows’ arms wrapping her up in a tight embrace. This was theirs; their house, their home. And she was safe with them now.

It all started with the audition, I thought it would be a laugh like, that grey day in Kentish town in 1978. Some of ‘em was at school with me and they wasn’t all that.

Then when I got up there my nerves failed me and I completely froze. It was a bit of an embarassment to be honest.

They looked at me kindly and one of ‘em said “Perhaps you just ain’t cut out to be a nutty boy!”

I left feeling crestfallen, but didn’t think no more of it, really.

It was only a couple of years later when I saw them on Top of the Pops that I felt a pang of regret, I’d got my girl pregnant and trainee plumbers didn’t earn much back then. Meanwhile here were these herberts walking in a stupid line in front of DLT and Legs and co.

It rankled, but I figured, popstars aint famous for more than two years and plumbing’s a job for life.

But they wouldn’t leave me alone, when my car broke down on the way to a job in Leytonstone, they was on radio 1 driving in their sodding car too.

It seemed they was laughing at me from afar and I wished they’d just shut up.

This went on for years. I began to believe that Suggs had stolen my life., There was me up to my knees in effluence and condensation, there was him, hobnobbing with Michael Caine.

Then they went away. Became yesterdays men and my life took a turn for the better.

We moved out to Essex, business went well, we went on holidays, I was happy, who wanted to be a silly popstar?

All was fine til they announced a comeback, only this time they stayed forever. Of course, things got worse very quickly for me, my wife left me, I went bankrupt and was left here in this rickety old house in the middle of our street. Now they was on every radio station, not just pop ones. On radio 4 Suggs done a documentary about the London docklands while on radio 3 an orchestra played the overture from The Liberty of Norton Folgate.

I became a recluse unable to move from my bed, gripped by sleep paralysis, trying to remember one better day, with only the constant earworms of my evil nemeses to remind me of the outside world.

It was time to fight back.

My plan came together surprisingly easily. All you have to do is hang round Camden Town long enough dressed as a mid-century comedy figure like a cop or a chimney sweep and they can’t resist coming close enough.

I got “Chrissy Boy” Foreman on a zebra crossing on Parkway posing as a lollipop man, for “Monsieur” Barso” I donned the attire of a French mime artist in Regent’s Park, Lee “Kix” Thompson and “Chas Smash” fell for the old convict carrying a ball and chain ruse. Suggs himself was hardest but I eventually caught him by parading up and down Camden High Street in a pair of the baggiest trousers ever made, back of the head with a plastic cup, into the van!

I deposited each of them into my pitiless dark cellar with its legend “welcome to the House Of Fun” upon the door and left them there to devour each other, starve or be eaten by vermin.

The police came this morning. Sadly when they got the door open, they found they was all still alive, shivering and cold. They led em away barely able to take one step beyond another.

And now as I prepare for the judge to pronounce my fate, I realise that I have had the last laugh, because, of course, I have ended up in madness after all.

His quick slim eyes darted around the room, checking for danger. It rested on the slumbering body gently rising and falling, under a thick dark blue duvet that reminded him of the blanket his dad would hide under to eat, shoving fitsfuls of chocolate into his decaying toothless mouth as he stared at the telly, washed down with warm beer, which sat lined up at his feet, testimony to his unwillingness to make trips to the rumbling fridge. He wiped his glasses with his gloved hand, condensation had from the change of the cool night air to the warm bedroom. His tongue nervously flicked along his teeth, familiar, reassuring. He walked lightly towards the bed, testing with each foot for the creak of floorboards or the knock of toys left untidied in the tumult of bath and bedtime stories, wondering if the sound of a story being read aloud would anger him now; the forced narrative imposed, words emphasised that should be muted, rushed voices instead of the required pause. Why should someone else decide how a story should be told. And decided that he had missed nothing. He inched closer to the form and slowly took a small rucksack from his shoulder. Quielty he unclipped the straps and searched within. His gaze rested a moment on a book; Sally Summer the Splashy plumber. How odd he thought that the idea of a plumber who splashed should be so appealing. No order no job done right, messy. He rolled out a cloth, a selection of metallic tools glistened in the dim light of night light. His tounge raced across his teeth and a slight tremble began in his feet, slowly working his way up his body. He found the smell intoxicated this close. His hands selected a long thin metal device which he held up to the muted light. He brought it close to his mouth and his tounge darted out running across the length of the device. He wondered why they never woke up. Was it some sort of sleep paralysis or just a child's ignorance. Would he say anything or just stare at them he thought. But they never wake. His whole body seemed to be trembling now as the time few closer. Always he had been the same, from that first bloody moment when he held it in his hand as a child, horror and fascination mixed in a grim intoxicating blend. He raised the metal object higher and gently pushed the tip into the unresisting softness, without a sound. He felt his body pulsing in the thrill. Twisting slightly he probed deeper, searching for hardness amongst the soft. And then with a gutteral sigh he felt it. there. with that resistance his body shook as if he convulsed. Slowly he withdrew the tool and held something up, it's pale white form like a misshapen moon. In another moment it was gone into his bag and in its place a single shimmering coin. He giggled softly as the coin spun in his thin fingers. Then he selected another device, flat and smooth and in a few moments the coin was nestled under the softness of the pillow. He seemed to release then and his body finally stopped shaking. He sniffed the air deeply and rolling his cloth bag of tools up he secured his rucksack and crept slowly from the room. Another night's work done. His father would be so proud.