Old Witchmare is a small village perched on the side of a hill, where a wide valley opens. They call it the Witches’ Cauldron because of its shape of a semicircle east and west of Mount Crescent. The river Slithe once sprang from the mountain and carved the valley with its many streams, digging deep gorges and caves. Since the 1790s, hundreds of mills multiplied in the valley, making its inhabitants wealthy and its textiles admired all over Europe. However, the river mysteriously dried up around 1880, all the channels turned into stony ditches and the mills were shut. Their wheels still hang today over the empty canals like huge, broken toys. Old Witchmare is picturesque, with its crooked, old buildings made of timber and chalk, of two or three floors, with large bow windows, projecting dormers, and fantastic faces carved on the projecting beams. The locals are friendly, and the oldest pub in the village, Stork & Lamb, always spreads a delicious smell of stew. Like every other place, though, this lovely village has its specks, the first of which is precisely its name. When the hamlet was founded in 1625, the plague had emptied London, and rumour spread that witches and wizards roamed the land unchecked, anointing the walls with venomous concoctions. In the county of B., it was known to everyone that the valley of the Slithe was haunted by witches. Thus, to avert a wave of collective violence, the government authorized the foundation of a military outpost at the mouth of the valley. Within weeks, a square, fortress-looking settlement had been built, with wooden barracks for troops all around the central courtyard and a few shabby buildings made of brick and timber for the officers of the Health Tribunal, the jail, and the canteen. There is no record of what happened there in those years because Old Witchmare was sieged and destroyed by Cromwell’s army during the Civil War when the archive was lost in a fire. What we know about the dark origins of the village is the matter of folktales and gloomy legends of massacres, torture, and executions of many unfortunate people who had found refuge from the plague in the valley, only to be arrested and burned alive as worshippers of the devil. The anonymous chroniclers report that the flames of the stakes were visible every night from the main road that connected London to Bristol. However, those creepy stories have permitted the village to get back on its feet because it is thanks to them that tourists visit the Witches’ Cauldron year-round.

Some years ago, I read about Old Witchmare in the book Witchcraft Legends and Folktales, published in 1948 by celebrated ethnologist Waldo Percival Barnstormer. More interestingly, though, I stumbled once again on the name of this village a few weeks ago as I was attending a geology conference in Lancaster where Dr Brian Jackson delivered a fascinating paper about sinkholes in the Witches’ Cauldron. After the talk, I asked Brian to tell me the rest of his story, which he agreed to do at dinner. Never the saying “curiosity killed the cat” was more appropriate to the context, albeit tragically, as I eventually found out.

The visitors were lucky to explore the Witches’ Cauldron with Jacob Forsyth. He had explored nearly every gorge and cave in the valley and knew all the dark stories about the witch hunt. At the end of every tour, he enjoyed telling one or two anecdotes he rearranged following the inspiration. In his fifties, solitary and shy, he lived alone with his beloved cat Horatio in his house built for a wealthy family of pharmacists in 1670, of which he took care with devotion and for good reasons too. Ancient as it was, it required attention as an elderly lady, the beams creaked and groaned from time to time, and the wooden frames of the windows felt the weight of the centuries. Jacob’s secret refuge was the back garden with its mossy stones, roses, lilies, hydrangeas and daffodils. When evening came, Jacob would sit on the porch with Horatio on his knees, admiring that small corner of peace.

And there he was, at the beginning of this story, sitting in the breeze of a mid-summer evening, smoking his pipe, his heart at peace and his mind clear, for he felt that everything around him was just right. He was smoking lazily with his eyes closed, and when he opened them, he caught in the dim light a small, dark spot on the kitchen floor. Horatio looked half asleep, but his wagging tail revealed that he had noticed the thing too.

“What is it, my love?” Jacob asked.

The thing in the kitchen sprang forward and stopped again. Now it was perfectly in sight.

“What the hell is that? Horatio, won’t you go have a look-see?”

The cat didn’t move. When the dark thingy zoomed and vanished under the cupboard, Horatio jumped off Jacob’s lap and trotted into the kitchen. Jacob stood up, the daydreaming was gone, and a feeling of irritation remained. Horatio had slipped under the cupboard, and only the tip of his tail stuck out.

“Did you find it, darling? What was that?” Jacob asked. Then, he moved the cupboard enough to look behind it but saw just a little dirt. At a closer look, he noticed a small, barely visible crack. It started from the floor, crawled upwards for a few inches, and was just one millimetre wide. Jacob didn’t like that some roach came out of the wall and planned to plaster the crack tomorrow. For now, he just stuck some paper in the gap, but no sooner had he touched the wall than the plaster crumbled all around, revealing a much larger cavity. Jacob quickly withdrew his fingers. He immediately prepared some stucco and closed the hole as if treating a wound. When the work was done, he pushed the sideboard back against the wall and thought no more about it.

The rest of the week passed as usual, but on Sunday, while he was making breakfast and listening to the news on the radio, Jacob saw the black spot on the floor again. Even before the word formed in his mind, his full attention was on the intruder. He stopped scrambling the eggs and slowly turned his head. Horatio, too, was sitting motionless next to the insect, looking down at it. Jacob expected to see his fat cat catch its prey any moment now, and he thought that he could crush the roach under his foot, for it was only a step away. But that thing was big and dark. Jacob looked at the antennae waving in the air and wondered how he had made it through the plaster. Yeah, cockroaches can dig, but that stopper was thick. He stood there with the bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other and watched in horror at the insect. Suddenly, he could see its head as if magnified and its great pincers clacking as if trying to reach some prey. The vision faded and left Jacob paralysed, for he knew the stucco dam could not resist those crushers. Suddenly, the roach zoomed and disappeared under the cupboard.

“You fat bugger”, Jacob whimpered, “why did you stand there like a sucker and do nothing? You must have grown a little too picky. I’m cutting your food, let’s see if another time you’ll eat that lousy roach. Actually no, it ain’t gonna happen again, this thing stops now.”

He moved the cupboard and froze. Feeling as if a heavy, cold ball had descended into his belly, he stared at the wide crack that crawled along the wall up to his chest. The plaster was spread in crumbles.

“What the hell?” Jacob exclaimed in a panic. His heart was pounding, and his throat was dry. It was like looking at the marks of a hideous disease on a friend’s face. A friend, of course! It was then that he called me. He sounded upset, so I told him there was nothing to worry about, for old houses play such nasty tricks. However, I popped by and had a look at the damage. I have seen much worse in old buildings, so I prepared a bucket of cement, and after half an hour later, we were looking with satisfaction at the filled crack. I wouldn’t say it was a fine job, for the line was still visible as a grey, ugly scar. Anyway, the cupboard hid the wound. I left Jacob, who went out for his usual Sunday walk, but despite the sunshine and the warm summer breeze, he could not relax. As he roamed the fields, he thought, for the first time in his life, that the absence of water in the Cauldron was disturbing. He looked at the marks the water had left everywhere, scarring the hills. Jacob stopped suddenly, for a crazy image had formed in his mind. He could see the Cauldron from above as if he was a bird – so he told me – and a complicated web of cracks crisscrossed it. He got back to reality, amazed and scared. Above his head, he could see the branches of a dead tree that drew an intricate pattern of cracks against the blue sky. Cracks, cracks everywhere! He thought about his living room, but even that peaceful image came with disturbing background noise, like a feeble crunch. With the eyes of his mind, he saw the floor move and wriggle as thousands of roaches were vomited from a large crack in the wall.

He looked around, sweating and feeling dizzy. The walk was ruined, and the weather was getting sulky, so he made up his mind to go home. When he arrived, he flung the door open and stood on the threshold listening. Without taking off his boots, he went into the kitchen holding his breath. Everything was silent and still. He even moved the cupboard and saw with relief that the cement was dry and solid. After lunch, the rain began to pour down. Jacob was sitting in the living room with a book, but the dull light entering from the window made him uncomfortable. Not even Horatio was there to comfort him. Despite the rain, the sucker was hanging around. Maybe, he was now sheltering in someone else’s house, the traitor. Jacob decided to go to the pub, where he could at least chitchat with the bartender and me, for I usually spend my Sunday afternoons there. Before leaving, he only glanced into the backyard, in case Horatio was there, but nothing. Instead, she noticed that the rain had formed a large puddle in the corner of the garden between the roses and the hydrangea.

Horatio did not come home that night. Jacob stayed up late waiting for him and left his bowl on the porch, but nothing: apparently, the cat was gone. When the hours got small, he began to worry seriously, although he knew there was nothing to do but wait – cats are like that, especially in spring. They smell a female in heat and take off. “He’ll come home – he said to himself – he’s not that stupid.” And to bed did he go.

The following morning, he got up early for work. He immediately ran downstairs and opened the kitchen window. Horatio was in the garden! Happy as ever, Jacob stepped onto the porch to welcome his friend but stopped with wide-open eyes. Horatio was sitting in the same corner of the garden where the rain had formed the big puddle the day before. Now, the water was gone, and the cat was staring at a wide crack in the ground. Jacob couldn’t take his eyes off it, as if that crevice had swallowed every other thought. The cat lifted its head and meowed softly. The air was still and silent, and not a bird was heard. The whole village seemed fast asleep. Jacob didn’t know what to do with that crack, but it was already late, he really had to go to work. He decided to lock Horatio inside, but as he tried to grab him, the beast leapt and disappeared over the fence. Jacob cursed and stopped looking at the crack. He picked up a twig, and when he scraped the dirt on the edges, some clods disappeared in the dark with a muffled sound. Jacob thought of moles or something like a hedgehog or even a badger, but he knew they wouldn’t crack the ground like that. He wondered if the heavy rain had maybe carved that ditch. Yes! That explained why the water had disappeared so quickly and why the hydrangea and the rose bush seemed slightly lower than usual. The water had formed a stream of great power, and God knows how much damage it could have done if it had not stopped.

That night Jacob returned home quite late after an endless dinner with his colleagues, and on his way back he had found the only road leading to the Cauldron blocked. The cops said that someone had gone off the road and died. When the police finally lifted the blockade, the line of cars moved slowly and like a funeral procession passed by a car smashed in a ditch. The lights illuminated a trace of oil that crossed the carriage like a long crack in the asphalt. Jacob shivered and began to brood and mumble that cracks were opening everywhere, the world itself was cracking, and someone should have done something with that. Suddenly he felt the need to check behind the cupboard again. So he parked his car, got inside, rushed into the kitchen and moved the heavy furniture. The cement was there, an ugly grey scar. He opened the back door and called for Horatio. The garden was quiet, and the moon shed a pale light. With a shiver of horror, Jacob saw a dark shape crouching in the garden that resembled, he told me later, a child. The thing sat on its heels beside the crack in the cold, damp darkness. And then the most terrifying of metamorphoses occurred. Two small lights shone in the centre of the head, and then the being stretched slowly and began crawling rapidly across the courtyard. Jacob nearly screamed in terror as he recoiled and fell on the porch steps when the creature entered the cone of light meowing.

“Horatio! You scoundrel, bloody traitor! D’you wanna see me dead? Nice way to say hello to daddy, you bum!”

The cat seemed in a good mood, but when Jacob stroked him on his back, he noticed that the fur was all caked with mud.

“Where the hell have you been?”, he said again, but Horatio leapt into the night and disappeared again.

The next day Jacob called work to say he was sick and would not be going. He had had a restless night and felt like lying in bed a little longer than usual. However, morning laziness is a joy one can appreciate only with a free mind and a light heart. Jacob didn’t like changes, let alone surprises. Since he had started seeing those incomprehensible cracks everywhere, an unpleasant feeling had built in his guts. Now he could hear them run from the roof down to the bottom of the house. Half asleep, he thought he could catch some ominous creaking in the silence. Then, he fell asleep again and dreamed that the crack in the garden was opening into a chasm, out of which monstrous creatures with flat, long, pale faces and hollow eyes emerged. Jacob woke up very frightened only to discover that the ceiling of his room was crossed by a long crack. He leapt to his feet and gave a high-pitched scream that echoed through the house. His neighbours told me later on that it was awful to hear. I think that the worst crack opened right then in the head of my poor friend, as it were, one that couldn’t be filled.

When he went to the kitchen, Jacob tripped over an uneven tile. He looked more closely and saw in amazement that the floor was oddly wavy, and a long crack ran up the wall to the ceiling. The fissure started from behind the cupboard, and Jacob knew all too well that whatever was pushing from the other side, there was nothing he could do to hold it back. It was only a matter of time before those things would come out. He dialed my number and told me everything, as I accounted for. He still sounded lucid but there was a note of excruciating tension in his voice, as if something in him was about to snap. I was out of town for work and could go to him only in the early afternoon, unfortunately too late. Jacob welcomed me with feverish eyes, wearing his pyjamas. Almost stuttering, he kept telling me that some creatures living under his garden had kidnapped Horatio. He was convinced that those things were trying to bring his house down. I tried to cheer him up and checked out the cracks in the kitchen, and I told him that the damage could be fixed but that we had to act immediately. I promised him that I would send someone to check the hole in his garden, but I dared not suggest that he should send for a doctor too.

The following morning, the County Council sent an engineer to inspect the site, but Jacob insulted him and rudely sent him away. He reported that some madman was barricading himself in a crumbling house, and the matter passed directly into the hands of the police. The house, meanwhile, had begun to lean dangerously towards the backyard, where the crack had spread. I begged Jacob to let in the engineers and firefighters, but he refused to open the door. Everyone in Old Witchmare said that Jacob had lost his wits, and that was no surprise after all, for everyone knew about his sudden episodes of daydreaming when he zoned out only to return some moments later as one who has been abducted by the aliens. His head was full of cracks, everyone said, just like his old house.

While the police chief argued with the firefighters and the prosecutor about whether to break the door and drag Jacob out, I climbed over the fence and immediately noticed that the chasm was literally sucking down the garden. I could see the plants slowly move towards the hole and I had to run away not to be swallowed. In a few minutes, the house fell apart and sank into the hole without leaving a single nail behind. The news spread, journalists came and the lawyers with the insurance agents. Some geologists appeared too, who climbed down a well not far from the village. Their report left us speechless. The underground of the Cauldron is a gigantic anthill, an incredible labyrinth of caves and galleries that has grown over the millennia. The leader of the expedition explained to me that the cavity that had engulfed the house had opened up due to a larger and deeper landslide, which had set off a chain reaction. He said that the water of the Slithe and all the streams of the Witches’ Cauldron must have been sucked into the depth of the earth after some catastrophic collapse. They found the water, deep down, streaming dark and cold. And so, the mystery was explained. The ground was then consolidated and the other houses were declared sound and safe.

The empty space left by Jacob’s house makes me melancholy. What bothers me is thinking that Jacob was inside when it happened. And there’s something more. The geologist who had signed the report called me a week after the collapse. He had sent for a solicitor and wanted me to see something too.

“I’m glad you came”, he told me when I arrived. “We were about to close the well, when we found something that might be worth seeing. You know, you’re an expert and I could use your qualified opinion about that.”

“Ok, let’s see it then”, I said, both curious and reluctant.

He took me to the well and down into a side gallery. Below us, the hole was dark and deep, and the sound of distant water came from the depth. As we entered a half-collapsed chamber, the man explained that this was the epicentre of the collapse. With his lamp, he showed me two dozen skeletons wrapped in rags and stretched out in two parallel rows. Perhaps, this chamber had once been a tomb where they hurriedly buried those bodies. I believe there is some truth to the witch hunt legends for which the Cauldron is famous. In fact, all the bones of the limbs and necks were broken. Those poor devils were broken on the wheel and hanged, maybe as anointers or witches, who will ever know? When we emerged to the light, the solicitor ordered to seal the well and no one objected. Maybe, one day, someone will come and dig into its secrets. For now, it’s best to leave the past and its mysteries alone because the population is still quite shaken and doesn’t need any more scares. Besides, there is something that makes me wonder. In a remote corner of the chamber that I explored on my own, the debris formed a niche, and a white speck attracted me. It was Horatio, lying there, with his neck broken. Have you ever heard of any cat breaking its neck for falling down a well? I did not, but one never knows.

Gianluca Cinelli lives in Italy and is a scholar in Italian and Comparative Literature, editor of the Close Encounters in War Journal, and author of fiction with a taste for the weird, the spooky, and the uncanny. When not writing, he loves building wooden ship models and playing the bass guitar.

If you would like to be part of The Chamber Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. If you like more mainstream fiction and poetry with a rural setting and addressing rural themes, you may also want to check out Rural Fiction Magazine. 

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“Billy,” said Joshua McIntyre. “Why don’t you get yerself a girlfriend steada watchin’ all that DVD porn?”

Billy Babbitt and Joshua McIntyre, friends since their college days, were sitting in Flakey Jake’s, a dive bar near Putnamville. Both were lifelong inhabitants of the small Indiana farm town, and the two of them met most evenings in Flakey Jake’s. Now in their forties, they lamented the course of their unexceptional lives. Joshua, once a high school gym teacher, had been fired from his job when a CNN video showed him vandalizing the Capital building during the January 6 insurrection. Billy, once an aspiring novelist, had shelved his manuscript years ago when a book publisher dismissed him as a third-rate, James Joyce wannabe. Now a reporter for the Putnamville Gazette, Billy devoted his literary skills to covering local bake sales and high school football games.  

“Well, why don’t ya?” Joshua said. “Women in the flesh are a lot more entertaining than women in porno flicks.”

“Tell that to yer wife,” Billy said. “I’m sure she’ll be flattered to hear it.”

“Naw, I don’t wanna spoil her,” said Joshua. “But I will admit to this. Without Stella’s loving touch, I’d just be a bum in a bar.”

“You’re a bum in a bar just the same,” Billy said. “I can’t see where yer wife’s made a difference.”

Joshua shook his head and took a long swallow of beer. “Women keep home fires burning,” he said. “That makes one hellava difference. Wouldn’t ya like to go home to a honey instead of a stack of DVD porn?” 

“Women want nothing to do with me,” Billy snapped. “They think I’m a literary nerd. If I had to pick between women and porn, I’d just as soon settle for porn.”

“Maybe ya haven’t tried hard enough.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Get rid of those polyester bell bottoms you’re wearing. Replace ’em with designer jeans. And get yerself a decent haircut ’cause your cowlick’s all over the place.”

“Designer jeans are expensive,” said Billy.

“Well, go sell your porn collection—ya gotta be sick of it by now. That’ll probably net you a fortune, and it wouldn’t be no great loss.”

Billy was unwilling to admit it, but Joshua was right. He had long been bored with his pile of porn and longed for a real female’s touch. But the tyranny of habit still gripped his guarded soul. “Do I gotta sell Deep Throat?” he said.

Joshua sighed like a kettle. “Billy, ya gotta ditch yer distractions. That starts with yer smut collection. You’re not a bad-lookin’ fella, ya know? You just gotta tidy up.”

“So where do I look for a babe in the flesh?”

“Try a singles dance at the Holiday Inn, and practice your line a bit first. Hell, it shouldn’t be long ’til a fella like you is beatin’ ’em off with a stick.”

The thought of beating off love-starved nymphs was more than Billy could resist. “All right,” he said. “I’ll sell my porn, but I’m hanging on to Deep Throat.”

*

After setting aside his favorite DVDs—Deep Throat and Lesbian Lunch—Billy took his depleted collection to Jaybird, the local porn shop. He sold his collection for only a fraction of what he had paid for it, but the hundred dollars he netted was enough to buy some designer jeans.

A week later, wearing his fancy-new jeans, Billy showed up at a singles dance at a nearby Holiday Inn. He walked into the ballroom confidently, his cowlick slicked into place, but the women were chatting among themselves and none looked in his direction. His confidence suffered further when he asked one of them to dance—a leathery blonde who stifled a yawn as she texted on her cell phone. “I don’t like the band, little man,” she drawled.

“How ’bout I buy you a drink?” Billy countered, “That oughta even things up.”

“How about you don’t,” the woman replied, “and we’ll call it even at that.”

Billy approached several more women and met with equal results—not one of them accepted his invitation to dance. “Hey, don’t I know you?” one said. “Don’t you report for the local paper.”

“I’m really a budding author,” Billy said. “Some call me the Renaissance Man.”

The woman cackled and rolled her eyes. “Is that what they call you, hon? I didn’t know Renaissance men wrote for the Putnamville Gazette.”

After a fruitless hour, Billy abandoned the Holiday Inn. If he had hoped to beat off babes with a stick, he had come to an unlikely place. The ballroom was not filled with wanton belles, as Joshua had suggested, but matrons in their fifties who had led concentrated lives. Lives that enabled them to see Billy for what he was—an underachiever whose desperate baggage was more than they cared to pick up.

Adding to Billy’s disappointment was the all-to-sobering thought that singles dances were no less stale than the porn he had given up. “Stuck-up bitches,” he muttered as he slipped into his car, and he cursed himself for the cash he had blown on a pair of designer jeans.

*

The following afternoon, Billy pawned his Mac for a hundred and fifty dollars, and then he returned to Jaybird hoping to buy back some of his porn. He realized that renewing his vice would afford him nothing more than the sterile embrace of his television and a change of solitude. But his soul felt so impoverished, so gravelly and bare, that nothing green seemed likely to ever take root in it.

Billy had not expected to meet the love of his life in Jaybird. He had not expected his heart to leap like a rabbit trapped in his chest. But sitting high on one of the shelves, as though watching for his arrival, was a stunning, life-sized brunette so appealing that Billy could not catch his breath. Her eyes were aglow with yearning; her cheeks were flushed with excitement; her pale, slender arms reached toward him in a permanent embrace. And her open, oval-shaped mouth bore the innocence of Eve in Paradise Lost—a naïf who had gasped when first she saw her reflection in a pond. She was wearing a short, frizzy nightie, which did her no justice at all—her perfect, hourglass figure belonged in an elegant evening gown.

“How much for the toy?” Billy asked the sales clerk, a greasy kid with acne. Billy kept his voice condescending as though he were pricing a used car. It would never do for that kid to suspect that he had suddenly fallen in love.

“You’re in luck,” said the kid. “We’re letting her go for a hundred and thirty dollars. She was made in Tijuana. Only the best dolls come out of there.”

“Has she a name?” Billy asked the kid. He knew his question was foolish, but he asked it anyway. It would be presumptuous of him not to know the doll’s name before he escorted her home.

“We call her Blow-Up Bertha,” the kid said, “but name her whatever you like.”

As he paid for the doll, Billy felt proud for the first time in his life. He felt as though he rescued a damsel entombed in a pirates’ cave. The kid winked as he handed Billy the doll, along with his receipt, and Billy was pleased to discover that she was uncommonly light.

*

After placing the doll in his car and fastening a seat belt over her chest, Billy drove her to the boarding house where he lived in a rented room. A few of the tenants stared at him as he lugged her into the house, but Billy was too excited to care about what they might think of him. Reaching his room, Billy opened the door and carried the doll over the threshold, and then he sat her ceremoniously on the bed and began to take off his pants. It did seem as though he was rushing things, since they had met just met an hour ago, and when a gentle voice admonished him, he felt like a dog caught raiding a cookie jar.

“What are you doing?” the voice purred. “Are you taking liberties with me, sir?”

The tone was sweeter than honey, softer than a summer rain, and the heavy Spanish accent made Billy’s underpants swell. The remarks had come from the doll even though her oval-shaped mouth had not moved, but her eyes were locked upon him as though he had escaped from a cage.

Billy zipped his pants up and hung his head in shame. Since the voice carried the weight of karma, it did not seem out of place. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Don’t think badly of me.”

The doll did not drop her stare. “Have you not kidnapped me, señor, and thrown me on your bed? And is it not your intention to have your way with me? Señor, you give me no choice but to have bad thoughts of you.”

“I’m n-no rapist!” Billy sputtered.

The doll looked at him more appraisingly, and the alarm went out of her voice. “So what are you then? A sad little man who lives in a messy room?”

“I’m a budding author,” said Billy. “They call me the Renaissance Man.”

“Yes, I’m sure they do,” said the doll. “But have you a proper name?”

“My name is Billy Babbitt, and I paid good money for you.”

“Good money does not buy slaves, Meester Babbitt. What a pig you are. And what might my name be, or did you bother to find out”

“I think it’s Blow-Up Bertha,” said Billy. “It says that on my receipt.”

“Dios mio!” the doll exclaimed. “Some stupid boy must have named me. Please address me as Bella Blanco, or I will be very cross with you.”

They looked at each other strategically. Billy struggled for something to say.

After a minute, the doll broke the silence. “So tell me Billy Babbitt,” she teased. “have you greater ambitions, sir? Or is it your calling to grab señoritas and ravage them in this room?”

“Can’t we think of this as seduction?” asked Billy.

“Seduction? Pah!” the doll snapped. “Does seduction not have stages, señior? Should you not date a woman first?”

“I’m out of practice with dating,” said Billy.

“Que pena!” the doll replied. “Have you ever dated a woman, at all? I doubt that, Billy Babbitt.”

“I’ve tried,” Billy said, “but women don’t like me.”

The doll gasped like a broken pump. “Why should women like you. You’re a skinny hombre who lives in a sty, and you probably watch naughty movies. What makes you think any woman would want to waste time on you?”

Billy grew redder than a plum, and his palms began to sweat. “W-would you like to go out to dinner?” he stammered.

The doll gazed at him with pity and sternness. “Dinner?” she spat as though scolding a child. “You want to take me to dinner? All right, I accept your offer, señor. At least, that might give us a start.”

*

After dressing Bella in a black, evening gown, which he bought in a Goodwill store, Billy took her to Hot Tamales, a Mexican restaurant in Putnamville. The proprietor, perhaps thinking that Bella was a prop for some local play, expressed no objection as Billy seated her at one of the corner tables. Fortunately, the evening was young and the restaurant had no other diners, but Billy still took the precaution of sitting Bella with her back to the door.

Billy ordered a platter of arroz con pollo and a plate for each of them. After heaping both plates with chicken and rice, he said, “Bon appetite.”

Bella did not touch her food, but she seemed pleased by the restaurant’s décor. She was clearly glad to be somewhere other than Billy’s dirty room, and her voice bore a note of approval as she renewed their conversation. “So tell me, Billy, what do you do when you’re not kidnapping innocent women?”

“I write for the Putnamville Gazette.”

“How interesting. Tell me all about it.”

“There’s not much to tell,” Billy shrugged.

“Well, what are your hobbies, señor.”

“I go to the movies a lot, Miss Blanco, but what’s there to say about that?”

Bella chuckled politely, but her tone of voice grew bored. “Billy, it seems I have more questions than you have answers to give me.”

“I’m not much of a talker,” Billy confessed.

“Please make more of an effort, señor. Perhaps you could tell me the reason you are called the Renaissance Man.”

Billy needed no prompting to expound on his pet peeve: the indifference of the corporate-run publishing houses to scribes out of step with the times. He described, in painful detail, the progress he’d made on his book: a dreamscape of poetic allusions that he titled The Sweat of the Sun. Of course, this made him a throwback to an age of literary giants, writers whose towering efforts would never be published today. If he had only lived in Paris, during the 1920s, Billy would have dined with Gertrude Stein and gotten drunk with Hemingway.

Bella listened intently and sighed when Billy was done. “For this, they call you the Renaissance Man, or is that what you call yourself?”

Since his pose had failed to impress her, Billy decided to change his act. Perhaps the role of a paramour would bring him better results. “I’ve given up writing,” he proudly announced. “My passions belong to you. I even pawned my Mac, so I could rescue you.”

“How simpatico,” Bella huffed. “But tell me something, señor. What makes you think I wanted a bobo to take me out of that store?”

“A pervert may have bought you if I hadn’t shown up first.”

“Since you quit your writing to buy me, señor, I am no better off with you.”

“I was hoping you might be grateful,” groused Billy.

A sob crept into her voice. “Grateful for what, Meester Babbitt? A man who buys me cheap dresses and insists he was born too late? Señor, I believe you’ll soon blame me for not finishing your book.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because, Meester Babbitt, you are much too fond of complaining. It is bad enough being your captive without becoming your whipping girl too.”

Stunned by Bella’s bluntness, Billy averted her eyes. “L-let’s talk about something else,” he pleaded.

“Let’s end this date,” Bella snapped. “I appreciate your effort, but I’ve lost my appetite.”

*

As Billy lugged Bella back to his room, his heart began to pound. After all, they had had their first quarrel, so he expected some makeup sex. But his hopes for compensation were dashed when he set Bella back on his bed. She told him not to touch her and went into a lingering sulk.

Bella’s depression continued for days, and Billy felt miserable. Compounding his grief were the tearful laments she would mutter to herself. “Why oh why,” she moaned, “do I not have a loving home. Mother Mary, what have I done to be trapped in this terrible room?” She seemed like a modern-day Emma Bovary, a woman doomed by her dreams, and his was the role of Emma’s drab husband who richly deserved her contempt.

After several days, Billy tried to improve Bella’s opinion of him. He acquired a loan from a local bank, took his computer out of hock, and emailed the first chapter of his manuscript to several small publishers. A week later, a publisher emailed him back and said his chapter showed merit. She liked his stream-of-conscious technique, and she asked him to send her the book. When he told this news to Bella, she practically swooned. “Do send her the book!” she cried. “I want you to be a real author, señor. I want to have good thoughts about you.”

Billy emailed his book to the publisher. She accepted it the next day, describing it as a Proustian gem that did not need much polishing. She promised she would get back to him in two weeks with the edits and cover design, and she said she hoped he would use the time to come up with a marketing plan.

Flushed by the specter of future success, Billy was jubilant, particularly since this wonderful news pulled Bella out of her funk. “Billy, I feel like dancing,” she gushed. “Forgive me for doubting you, sir. Dios mio, I’m glad it was you and not a pervert that bought me.”

Since a celebration seemed in order to keep Bella’s spirits high, Billy took out another loan and booked them a carnival cruise.

*

Billy was so elated by Bella’s festive mood that he did notice the stares of the passengers as he carried her aboard a plane to Miami. Nor did he hear their laughter as he fastened Bella into her seat or turn his head when a woman cried out, “What kind of airline is this?” A flight attendant suggested that Bella be placed in a carry-on rack, but Billy showed her his extra ticket and she let Bella stay in her seat.

Bella drew even more attention at the cruise terminal in Miami. A child shouted, “Mommy, I want that balloon,” a security guard called for backup, and several people raised their iPhones and took videos of her. But a check-in agent grinned good-naturedly and gave Billy two boarding passes. “Is that prop for the Mardi Graz party?” he asked, and Billy stopped holding his breath. When the security guard waved the couple aboard, Billy squeezed Bella’s hand reassuringly then he clutched her as though she were a life preserver and rushed her onto the ship.

Billy had hoped that a carnival cruise would bring Bella to amorous heights but Bella, a lady of breeding, had no use for the noisy boat. The costume balls did not interest her, the stage shows made her yawn, and she certainly had no desire to be force-fed six times a day. “Billy,” she said, “who are these people who party all day long? Their drunkenness and gluttony are depressing me, señor.”

“How about that sunset?” said Billy as they stood on the promenade deck.

“The sunset is beautiful, mi amor, but must we share it with fools?”

At Bella’s insistence, they deserted the cruise when the ship docked in Nassau, and her mood improved considerably as they explored the island together. The tropical gardens enthralled her, the waterfalls made her gasp, and the flamingos in the nature center took away her breath. She particularly enjoyed snorkeling with dolphins because she had no trouble staying afloat, and she laughed like a child when one of the dolphins nudged her with its nose.

They consummated their relationship in a hotel overlooking a bay, but Billy’s joy turned to panic when Bella sprang a leak. The leak hissed like an angry snake, accelerating Billy’s fear as he cupped his hand over a shriveling breast and lugged her to the front desk. “Help her! Help her!” he shouted. “She’s going into shock!” The clerk summoned the hotel limousine driver who drove the couple to a garage where an attendant glued a tire patch onto Bella’s wheezing breast. A couple of blasts from an air hose restored Bella to her full size, and Billy wept with gratitude as he took her back to their room.

Perhaps Bella considered the patch to be a blot on her beauty, or perhaps their constant sightseeing had sapped her energy. In any case, she had no desire to renew their connubial bliss. “Later, mi amor,” she snapped when he reached for her in bed. “If you start treating me like a plaything, I will not think well of you.”

“You’re the joy of my life,” Billy protested.

“I’m a balloon,” Bella replied. “The joy of your life should not be a balloon You need to complete your book.”

*

A day after they returned to Putnamville, Billy’s publisher sent him an email with some attachments, and Billy realized that completing his book would prove a daunting task. The edits seemed excessive, the cover image looked trite, and Billy was irked that she’d sent him a contract to split the promotional costs.

“Damn,” Billy grumbled as he scanned the edits. “She’s mending my book with an axe. On top of that, she wants me to pay for butchering my voice.”

“Well, pay her,” said Bella. “Can you not see she has given you a chance? Are you too pigheaded, mi amor, not to bet on yourself?”

Billy took out a third loan and sent the publisher a check, and then he grudgingly read through the edits and tried to revise his book. But his manuscript was suffering the death of a thousand cuts—a torture so cruel and calculated that Billy could not witness it. After deleting the publisher’s emails, Billy cursed his damnable luck, and Bella, unable to cope with him, retreated into herself. She did not need to say anything, her stiffness said it all, and in a matter of days, their common-law marriage had grown intolerable.

 Hoping to salvage some vestige of the happiness they had known, Billy contacted a therapist and booked them for couple’s counseling. But Bella refused to open up when Billy took her to their first session, and the therapist took Billy aside and gave him a piece of advice. “Mister Babbitt,” he said. “You’re much too fond of your psychotic break. If you decide to return to normality, you will have to get rid of the doll.”

Since normality meant only rejection and a new pile of DVD porn, Billy refused further treatment and carted Bella home. But Bella, who continued to assault him with silence, seemed increasingly like a balloon, and one afternoon, Billy decided that he would be no worse off on his own.

When he took Bella back to Jaybird, the greasy kid shook his head. “I ain’t paying for damaged goods,” he snapped.

“You can have her for free,” Billy said.

Billy stood as though shackled after handing Bella back to the kid. Her gaze was so dispirited, when the kid put her back on the shelf, that she seemed like a trusting dog who had been surrendered to a pound. He agonized over something to say to her, a tribute to cushion his grief. “At least, we had Nassau,” he blurted, but Bella just stared into space.

*

That afternoon, Billy yielded to habit and returned to Flakey Jake’s, but the barroom now looked so gloomy, so prohibitive and dark, that he felt as though he had ducked into a cave to evade the judgment of God. Joshua was sitting at their usual table, nursing a glass of beer, but even the sight of his lifelong friend did not cheer Billy up.

After buying them a full pitcher, Billy topped off Joshua’s beer.

“Where ya been all month?” Joshua said. “Did ya get lucky at the dance?”

Billy mentioned the heavenly woman with whom he had broken up. Of course, he did not tell Joshua that she was an inflatable doll; instead, he described her ethereal beauty and her generous resolve to support him when he called himself an elevated soul.

“You make her sound like an angel,” said Joshua as Billy started to fill his own glass. “But if she tried to change ya, it was wrong of her to do that.”

Billy remembered how lost Bella looked when he left her in the shop, how her frozen arms stretched toward him, how she gaped as though calling him back. The memory was so enduring, and so beyond repair, that his hands shook as though they were palsied and he overpoured his beer.

“Let’s talk no more about her,” he griped as the puddle soaked his pants. “At least, she was right about one thing. I like to complain too much.”

“Blow Up Bella” was previously published in the journal “A Thin Slice of Anxiety”.

James Hanna is a retired probation officer and a former fiction editor. Due to his background, the criminal element figures strongly in much of his writing. James’ stories have appeared in over thirty journals, including Sixfold, Crack the Spine, and The Literary Review. His books, all of which have won awards, are available on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/-/es/James-Hanna/e/B00WNH356Y?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

If you would like to be part of The Chamber Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. If you like more mainstream fiction and poetry with a rural setting and addressing rural themes, you may also want to check out Rural Fiction Magazine. 

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It was a gleeful rainy night. Water in front, water behind, water on the right, and water on the left. More than a tranquil summer storm, it looked like the background of the universal flood. It was raining with anger, as if divine ire had decided to wash away all the sins of humanity in an instant. It was raining with a roar, in a silent pouring scream that seemed to envelop the world. It was raining like I could not recall ever seeing it rain. And I thought out loud: “Shit, look how much it’s raining.”

I had always loved sitting in a soft armchair, in front of the fireplace, watching the raindrops through the opaque glass of a window. But now the armchair was the seat of an old Panda car held together by adhesive tape and prayers, there was no fireplace, and I was starting to get edgy. While I concluded that the most suitable soundtrack for the occasion would have been “Singing in the Rain” celebrated by The Cure, I turned off the radio – which no longer picked up anything – and I paid more attention to the revs of the motor, since the Panda’s electrical system was never that great of a masterpiece. At the first raindrop, in fact, the dashboard had gone off and, in the faint reddish light of the lit cigarette, I could see the fuel indicator go crazy and jump beyond full tank. The current had to travel from the battery to the candles and the lights, and I dared not imagine how long and full of dangers that journey could be. Not to mention the actual risk of wetting cap and the like.

I slowed down, unable to even see the roadside. I lit another Amadis and reflected on whether to stop or not, to wait for the storm to calm down. After all, driving blind was not the best solution, but I had never been able to wait for a situation to resolve itself, doing nothing to screw it up further. I had always preferred to run toward the problem rather than wait for it to reach me, and on that occasion, I didn’t want to be outdone. Reckless, as usual. I began to nervously whistle “Singing in the Rain,” just to play it off, trying in vain for a dark intonation.

To be honest, I was driving along a remote hillside street that I liked very little. I would have challenged the devil himself just to get out of it as soon as possible. It was dark, winding and desolate. In short, one of those streets on which the protagonists of the B series horror movies end up right before something bad happens to them. A street so disturbing that at night – and with the rain, too – not even Batman would pass through it.

A puddle the size of Lake Garda and the engine started sobbing; it seemed to run only on three cylinders.

“One down,” I whispered. “Fuck.”

And I remembered a boy who had tried the theoretical driving test on my same day, failing to pass the written test and having to fall back on the oral. He was stranded on an answer about the engine, so the examiner, as usual, had then thoroughly investigated.

“What is the radiator water for?” he had asked the boy.

“To extinguish the spark plugs,” the boy had replied.

Perhaps more power would have been useful. I turned off the rear window heater and lingered for a few moments on the lever of the front windshield wipers, which by now was no longer of any use, such was the amount of water pouring onto the windshield. I gently lifted the windshield wiper lever, I could not see anything anymore, I lowered it a little less gently.

But how could I have considered going to say goodbye to Sergio, before he left for the holidays, in that goddamn place in the ass-end of nowhere in which he lived?!

A puddle the size of Loch Ness and a jolt, stronger than the others.

“Two down,” I muttered. “Fuck, fuck!”

I put out the cigarette, only half consumed, and mechanically lit another one. Cold sweat ran down my spine. “Okay, I will stop and wait,” I resigned myself. “I will warm up the engine and maybe stay quiet until it…” All the dashboard lights came on and the dull hum of the fan stopped keeping me company. “…stops raining.” A few second and the windshield was covered with an impassable halo. “Oh shit.”

With the help of a hand, my gaze tried to break through the misted glass but was not pleased with the first thing it could see. The dark shape, the braking, the steering. The 180. The engine went out and the lit cigarette fell on my seat between my legs; I managed to recover it, with a sigh of relief, before it could do damage. I looked all around: the dark shape, if there ever was one, was nowhere to be seen.

“Someone loves me up there,” I whispered, watching the reddish light of the cigarette flicker between my fingers. “Sister, you’re the only thing that hasn’t gone out in here,” I muttered a moment before smothering it in the ashtray. “For solidarity.”

No engine, no lights. I tried in vain to restart everything, but it was like trying to resurrect a dead person, and that was not my area of expertise.

I opened the door, got out of the car and was immediately soaked. I noticed with astonishment that there was no asphalt under my feet, but gravel: I had entered some courtyard, judging by the open space that welcomed me. In the wet night, I thought I caught sight of a wall: how I had managed to slip in there, God only knew. I opened the hood door, looking for an umbrella I was sure I had left there. I lowered it again, peevishly; I was wrong.

Unable to tell where I had come from, I advanced in the dark, in the pouring rain, in any direction. Where there is a courtyard, usually, there is also a house and I would have found it, at the cost of going around in circles for hours. Or for days.

I slipped a soggy Amadis from the package in my jacket pocket and carried it to my mouth; the fury of the rain broke it in two, leaving me only the filter. My nerves had definitely gone quite up.

“Enough!” I shouted. “Where is the olive branch?”

A dim light lit up before me. I ran forward and found myself in front of a building, a window through which a shadow holding a candle pointed to something on the right.

I found the door, opened it, and entered.

#

“The house is isolated: no light, no telephone, nothing at all. The good news is I have a decent supply of candles.”

My host was a petite brunette in her thirties. Her black eyes radiated heat and the context of her body gave an impression of innocence and fragility; it made you desire to take care of her. Instead, it was she who was taking care of me.

“My car is also isolated,” I said.

She smiled, a sweet smile that invited you to life and made you important.

“We haven’t introduced ourselves yet. I am Elisabetta,” she said, holding out her right hand in a strong, warm grasp.

“I am Stefano.”

#

“I’m sorry I can’t help you. I don’t have a car. I took refuge up here to escape the hectic city life and ended up turning this house into a hermitage. The only contacts I have with the outside world are my publisher, to whom I send the stories I write, and the van that delivers food and necessities. I am sorry, but you ended up in the wrong place.”

“You say? I don’t think so. Suffice it to say that I owe you my life: you saved me from a principle of drowning.”

She laughed again.

“I’m afraid I’m the one who should thank you instead,” she whispered. “Although I love solitude, this rain is melancholic and seems bound to last forever. A little company will do me good.”

“Do you live here alone?”

“Not anymore.”

#

It was like a dream, an infinite instant, unrepeatable and always the same. I stopped counting the days after the first, and time lost its meaning. I wasn’t waiting for anything anymore and nothing was waiting for me; my life had ceased to be that long and gruelling wait for someone who is perpetually late. It didn’t matter if, beyond the impassable layer of water that separated us, the rest of the world still existed. Nothing mattered except me and her.

“I love you, Elisabetta.”

“I love you, Stefano.”

Love came for both of us, and it was like never having loved before. It seemed that our two souls had once been one and that now, after long wandering, they were finally reunited. We were complete. And happy.

“I love reading your stories.”

“It is much nicer to write them, now that they are for you.”

Food supplies abounded so that, despite being isolated, we needed nothing.

“Damn, I quit smoking!” I realized one day, who knows when, as I noticed my jacket resting in the armchair where I had left it the day I arrived. “I had been trying for years. Elisabetta, I quit smoking!”

“You don’t need it anymore: you have me.”

“Do you mean that I’ll soon stop drinking and eating?”

“Maybe.”

And time kept passing, or perhaps there was no time at all? Who knows. Day and night no longer existed, nothing in the surrounding world could reach us, nothing could filter through to us and nothing else besides us counted anyway.

I went to the window and watched it. 

“The rain…”

#

“Elisabetta?”

“Tell me.”

“Which position could we do tonight?”

“The lotus flower whipped by the wind.”

“What would it be?”

“First of all, you have to go out and look for a lotus flower.”

#

I found myself more and more often – if it makes sense to use this term in a timeless life – to my surprise, scrutinizing the nothingness beyond our world. I was complete, what else could I wish for? I was satisfied, happy. Always.

“Always.”

#

Elisabetta understood. She cried. She spoke.

“If you want to leave, you won’t be able to return.”

That was when I realized. Or, perhaps, I accepted a truth that I already knew.

“I know.”

“Isn’t all this enough for you?”

“I am a man, Elisabetta. I am a man. I will never have peace: this is my damnation.”

A quick kiss, no other word. I grabbed my jacket from the armchair and left, the door closed behind me and I was outside. A couple of steps and I was already soaked. Another pair and I had already turned toward the house, toward Elisabetta.

“You knew it, Stefano. You have made your choice.”

No light, no building; nothing at all. Only water.

Water.

Water.

Holy water, perhaps.

I turned back on myself and moved forward. A few steps and I saw the dark shape, a few more and I could make out a big tree against which my old Panda was resting, tired. All that remained was a meagre tangle of sheets, the cockpit could no longer be distinguished from the rest of the car. Nobody could have come out alive.

“Yeah…”

I slipped a wet Amadis out of the package in the pocket of my jacket, took it to my mouth and walked slowly, in the rain, toward the rain.

Loredano Cafaro lives in the hills of Turin, Italy, with his wife and their two sons. In the little free time left to him by his work as a computer scientist, every now and then he imagines stories. Sometimes he writes them down. You can find him at https://loredanocafaro.com.

If you would like to be part of The Chamber Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. If you like more mainstream fiction and poetry with a rural setting and addressing rural themes, you may also want to check out Rural Fiction Magazine. 

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“Hey, tits, how’s it hanging? Both of them, I mean.”

It never occurred to Gabrielle at the time that everyone on the planet was here for a reason, and yes, that even included assholes like Marcus Stoll. During most of study period he had done nothing but lounge at his desk with his dirty-blond hair falling into his eyes, drumming his chewed stub of a pencil on the desk, and making no secret of staring at her chest while she tried to focus on her Sociology essay, aptly titled “Crime and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.”

“You know,” she said, keeping her tone as cold as possible, “You really should give this a read. It might help you in later life.”

Marcus only laughed, a sudden and blunt croak. Nope, there was probably no helping him.

Simon used to say that Marcus liked her, but because he was so emotionally stunted he didn’t know how to show it so he said shitty things to her instead. Gabrielle wasn’t sure, though she often wondered if there was any truth to Simon’s theory.

“You made any new friends yet?” Marcus asked. Gabrielle didn’t need to see the smirk, it was right there in his tone.

She wished Simon was there, sitting beside her, preparing to back her up when she told Marcus to piss off. “Piss off,” she said.

“Hey, I’m just trying to look out for you.”

She refused to glance up from her notebook. The nib of her pen created a vicious smudge of ink across the last word she wrote. Soft denim hissed gently as Marcus slid across one space to sit beside her, in Simon’s old chair. Nobody had sat there since. Marcus smelled like weed and cheap deodorant. He dipped his head so he could speak to her without others hearing.

“I bet you get a lot of attention from guys. But you know, they’re only after one thing, right?”

“Oh? And what are you after?” she said, prickles winding up her back.

Marcus fiddled with the corner edge of her textbook, ruffing up the pages. “I just want to make sure you have a friend to lean on. You know, after all that McCullough stuff.”

Heat flushed through her. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“I know he was your buddy. Maybe he was more than that—who am I to say? McCullough—what was it, Simon?—yeah, he seemed all right.”

Gabrielle was pretty sure Marcus and Simon never exchanged a friendly word. She wondered if Marcus ever exchanged friendly words with anyone.

“So was he your boyfriend?” he asked.

Was this his odd way of trying to make conversation? Up until now, he had only ever teased Gabrielle about the size of her boobs. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no,” she said between gritted teeth. “He was my best friend.” The best friend anyone could dare to hope for.

“Aw man, I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.” Marcus tapped his fingertips on the table. “It’s just rough, is all. How he killed himself—”

Now Gabrielle snapped around to glare at him. “You shut your mouth. Where have you been getting your information?”

“Hey, it’s just been going around.” Marcus idly rubbed his pointed chin where a fine ghost of stubble pushed through. His eyes usually had a dark and lazy quality to them, as if he wasn’t engaged in whatever was happening, but at that moment they were bright and alert, gauging her reactions. He just wanted to get a rise out of her, Gabrielle was sure.

“Well you should check your facts before talking crap,” she said, gathering her books.

“Aw, come on, I’m just trying to make friends with you.” Marcus pressed his hand against her elbow as she shoved her books into her bag. “Don’t be like that. Come on, tits.”

Asshole, she wanted to snap. Bastard. But her throat was too tight and she couldn’t speak another word. She brushed past the back of his chair, her bag knocking him in the shoulder. Trust the rumour mill to make up some horrid story about Simon. Suicide couldn’t be further from the truth. She bet they had all been in each other’s DMs about it, spreading lies until the lies became real for everyone at school who didn’t know how Simon died.

Gabrielle didn’t think twice about skipping her next class.

#

The tangled, overgrown garden was tucked near the back of the allotments, the one spot that had never been claimed because it was so much smaller than the others although the landowner charged just as much. None of the other allotment owners seemed to mind Gabrielle and Simon using it to hang out, study after school, or watch movies on the tablet with their headphones on. They especially didn’t mind when they eventually began to grow plants—which had been Simon’s idea, on account of him having green fingers, on account of his dad being a landscape artist.

Unlike him, Gabrielle always struggled to keep things alive. She tugged a few weeds out of the dry soil, wishing for more of the little yellow buds that speckled the strange vine-like creepers that covered their patch like veins, though unsure of what they were or how to grow more.

“I’ll make it really easy for you, Gabs. Like, literally give you the easiest plants to take care of. Trust me, a hamster could grow these.”

“What are they?”

“Succulents. Look, they’re kind of small and prickly-looking but they’re nice at heart. A bit like you.”

“Shut up.”

She wished she could hear Simon’s deep and hearty laughter, just one more time. It would have cheered her up after her encounter with Marcus Stoll and put her at ease about people making up rumours about her best friend. Then again, if Simon was there to ease her worries, there wouldn’t be any rumours about him.

But their garden served another, more secretive purpose, one that only they knew. It had been Gabrielle’s idea, based on a folk tale in a TV show she watched when she was younger.

Take a really bad day, a Marcus Stoll kind of day, a day where you failed a test or, in Gabrielle’s case, a day where you’ve got horrible period cramps and just want to curl up and not. Gabrielle and Simon dug holes between the plants on those days, small in diameter but as deep as they could go with their basic tools.

Then they yelled into the earth, as long and loud as they could, pouring out all of their anger and pain and exhaustion until they felt better. As soon as they were done, they filled the holes in and planted something in their place.

Let’s leave something nice, Simon once said. We don’t want to poison the garden by accident.

Gabrielle stood at the allotment edge, the gardening gloves her grandmother leant her suddenly feeling too big for her hands and the trowel too small to make an impact on the dried, early-summer dirt. Part of her wanted to plunge the trowel into the ground and stab and stab and stab, but Simon had loved this little patch of earth and it didn’t feel right.

It was theirs.

Well, hers now, she supposed.

She shoved her curls out of her face and knelt, picking a random spot and starting to dig out a hole. Maybe, once she had screamed down into it, she would plant something. Simon always said it was better to grow something nice in place of a weed.

She was only a few inches into the dig when a breeze swept across the allotment, far colder than any June breeze had a right to be. On that burst of frigid air came a whisper, soft and sibilant. Gabrielle sat back on her heels and looked around. All the other allotment plots were quiet, not another gardener in sight.

Another strong gust of chill air shuddered across her skin and she dropped the trowel, one of her oversized gloves slipping from her hand. “Hello?” If this was some perv’s idea of a joke she was going to be mad. She’d heard her parents talking about an old local who liked to sit in hedges and watch the traffic, but creeping on a girl on her own just minding her business and digging a scream hole was beyond weird.

Nothing moved.

Gabs.

“Holy sssssshi—” She forgot the trowel and shoved herself backward on the dirt as something fluttered in the air before her, pale and filmy like smoke. Then, the disembodied voice again.

You didn’t seriously just fall over in the middle of the horror movie, did you? God, how cliche can you get?

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be Simon’s voice—Simon was dead. But there it was, that familiar tone, always loaded with his gentle sarcasm.

Gabrielle knew grief did strange things to a person. Her counsellor had told her as much during their past sessions. But hallucinating? Nobody had explicitly mentioned that.

Um, hello? This is your friendly dead best friend. Earth to Gabs, do you read me?

The voice was not quite a voice, although Gabrielle heard it clear as a rushing river. Simon’s voice, in her head and her chest and all around her. “Si?” she whispered, as the pale wispy smoke shape grew bigger.

Yo.

“Oh my God, it’s really you? I can’t even…”

Yeah. So, guess I died then. That’s a shame.

“This isn’t real,” Gabrielle said, more to herself.

OK, whatever you say. But could you still help me? It’s cold here and too quiet. I want to come back. I miss you. Would you believe me if I said I kind of miss school?

“No,” she said almost without thinking. She began shuffling backward on her butt, away from the twisting ghostly figure.

I know this is a lot—

“This is so more than just a lot.”

—right, but… Gabs. There’s a way. A way for me to come back.

“That doesn’t sound right.” Neither did chatting with the ghost of her dead friend, but there you go. Gabrielle was pretty sure she was having a breakdown of some sort. “None of this is right. I think I’ve cracked.”

You and me both, mate. Try being the dead one in this scenario.

She let out an incredulous, involuntary burst of laughter. It sounded so loud and alien among the silent plants. Had it really been that long since she’d laughed?

It was his humour, for sure. That breeze again, chill and whispering, freezing the tears Gabrielle didn’t even realise streaked her face.

Gabs, I need your help. Even if you don’t believe this is real, would you do this for me anyway?

How could she say no to even the hallucination of Simon, the boy she had known since they were little, the boy who always had her back, who would’ve done anything for her?

“What… what do you need me to do?”

It’s easy, I swear. We just need something to exchange. Some hair or a fingernail or something. Nothing major, I promise. But it can’t be yours. It needs to be—look, just relax and I’ll tell you everything.

As the sun began to set, Simon—ghost, hallucination, whatever he was—outlined the plan.

#

Marcus Stoll caught up with her near the lockers the next day. Gabrielle didn’t notice him approach through the crowds passing between lessons, until he noisily leaned a shoulder against the locker next to hers. One earbud was jammed in his left ear, the other dangling on its wire against his tarnished belt buckle. The hems of his jeans were frayed.

“What’s up, tits. Is that a new shirt?”

“What do you want?” Gabrielle sighed. She needed to play this carefully, although she had a feeling it wouldn’t be too difficult, based on pretty much all of their encounters to date. “And my name is Gabrielle, not tits.”

A tangle of students snickered nearby. Gabrielle’s shoulders tightened but she continued fussing at nothing-in-particular in her locker.

“OK, OK, Gabrieeellllle,” Marcus said. She heard his smirk rather than saw it. He seemed to like an audience and she wondered why since his father was the town drunk and his mother was… well, nobody knew where Mrs Stoll was these days. Sometimes Gabrielle felt bad for him, but then he’d go and open his mouth. “But you can’t blame me for noticing. They’re… impressive.”

She turned and smacked him on the arm, only lightly, hoping it was the right move.

“Whoa, you know I’m teasing, right? Like I don’t really mean any bad. You should be proud anyway. Most of your friends are still flat. Hey,” he leaned in. “You free tonight?”

There it was.

Only now Gabrielle craned her neck to stare up at him. “Why?”

“Wondered if you wanted to go to the beach. My uncle’s staying with my dad and he leant me his car. It’s a banger but should get us to the coast.”

“Tempting,” Gabrielle said slowly.

“C’mon, you’ll adore me once you get to know me. You just need to give me a chance.” It almost sounded believable, if it wasn’t for the way his eyes flicked downward. Was eye contact really that hard? She was also pretty sure she knew what chance he was after.

Gabrielle remembered Simon’s wispy, pale form. There’s a way. A way for me to come back. The way Simon had laid it out that evening on the allotment sounded simple enough. “Hm. All right. But not the beach. I’ve got a better place.”

He lifted one unruly eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

She just needed to get a bit of his hair, or some small memento from a living person, even if it meant letting him in close. How hard could that be? Let him think she wanted to kiss, then just yank it out. He’d probably swear, call her a bitch, might even shove her. Who cared? This wasn’t about her. It was about Simon.

“Yeah. Here.” She tore a scrap of paper out of her notebook and scrawled the directions. “We can meet here. It’ll be quiet.”

Marcus scanned the paper. “Really? Isn’t that where old people go and hug trees or some shit?”

“It’ll be empty,” she clarified. “Seven o’clock. I need to go home for a bit first and drop off my school stuff.”

“Sweet. Yeah, OK. I’ll bring a smoke. My brother got hold of this great weed, really sticky and strong.”

Gabrielle lifted a shoulder, not willing to agree to anything but not wanting to put him off. A bitter taste rose up in her throat and she swallowed it back.

“Or we can just chill, you know, whatever.” Seriously, he might be convincing if he could just maintain eye contact.

“Yes, whatever,” she said.

Marcus laughed and tossed back his hair. “Whatever gets you off. But let me get stoned first, ‘K?” He shoved himself from the lockers and disappeared into the crowded hallway.

Painfully aware that some of their classmates had stopped chatting so that they could listen to the exchange, Gabrielle turned back to her open locker, wanting to crawl inside it. No doubt the rumour mill would pick up pace again, not to mention the things Marcus would say about her once he realised she was not up for sex.

She would just deal with those rumours, and it wasn’t like there was a lot of time left before the school year was out and then she’d be done with it all and go to uni where nobody knew who she was or what she’d been through. The plan was to go to the same uni as Simon, and now they could make that dream a reality.

This was for a good cause, the best cause, she reminded herself. It would fix everything.

#

A tight ball of prickles sat in her stomach. It had been there all day and it wouldn’t go away. Gabrielle got to the allotments first just before seven, weaving through the narrow walkways. The change was noticeable before she even reached the boundaries of their plot, and the smell…

The garden bloated with something like life, though it wasn’t the life she remembered Simon cultivating. Fly orchids spiralled up in strange helixes, different from the photos Simon had shown her the day they originally planted them. The delicate dancing girls she had planted with their soft petal arms were pushed down, pinned under the violent arch of sharp red leaves. The parasitic underground hydnora africana gave off a familiar, sickly-sweet and cloying scent, its red flowers worming up through the soil with their hungry mouths gaping open. Fat, moist-looking vines netted the ground, spewing out hundreds of those little yellow buds that seemed to scuttle like insects. Colours oozed together into uncanny spectrums that Gabrielle couldn’t quite wrap her head around.

Weird. It had never looked like this before. It had never made her feel like this before: slightly nauseous. She took a step backward.

“Si?”

A chill breeze lifted her hair from her neck, drying the sweat on her skin. The reassurance was all she needed and she released a breath.

“I’ve got someone. You’re probably not going to like it, but… anyway. It’s Marcus Stoll.”

That cold breeze again, sharper this time. Oh well, it was too late to change it now. Plus, she was sure that if there was a huge part of her eager to see Marcus freak the hell out, there would be a huge part of Simon eager to see it too.

Gabrielle thought she saw the glimmer of something near the hedge at the rim of their allotment, just for a moment. “So how does this work, exactly?” she asked.

But Simon didn’t reply or appear.

Dirt crunched beneath a heavy foot behind her. Gabrielle spun around.

“Holy shit, tits—I mean, Gabrielle.” Marcus stepped off the path and headed toward her, wrinkling his nose and waving his hand in front of his face. “This place stinks.” A thin joint was hooked behind one ear and his eyes were bright with anticipation for something she had no intention of giving him.

“You’ll get used to it,” Gabrielle said. “I told you it was quiet.”

“Yeah.” Marcus didn’t sound too sure. “Quiet and creepy as fuck.”

Here goes. Gabrielle held out her hand.

“Is this like a fetish or something?” Nevertheless, Marcus stepped into the garden to meet her. She was sure to put on her tightest t-shirt after school. “Whatever. It’s not about the venue, right? It’s all about the show.”

Gabrielle grabbed his sleeve and pulled him in close. Marcus stumbled, his feet catching in the vines, and they tumbled together to the ground.

“Hey—” He no longer sounded so self-assured. Beyond them, a grey shadow rose up and loomed above them in the still summer air. It was like time ground to a halt, no distant cars passing through town on the main road, no birdsong, nothing.

Gabrielle grabbed the collar of Marcus’s shirt and kissed him, crushing her mouth against his. Before she knew it his tongue was inside, sliding against her too fast and too forcefully to be pleasant. He tasted of weed and his nose was cold at the tip. She reminded herself that this was a good cause. Just a few strands of hair, Simon had said. Gabrielle reached up to tangle her fingers through Marcus’s dark-blond strands, finding them surprisingly soft.

Through the wet sucking of Marcus’s lips, the air hung heavy with that sickly-sweet scent and Gabrielle finally placed it.

It was rot.

She began to pull back, thinking she might throw up, the prickles churning in her stomach, but Marcus grasped her hard and held her still. A solid rise nudged against her thigh, straining against his jeans.

Just grab the hair, just grab the hair. But her arms were trapped by Marcus’s grip.

“Si!” she tried to scream, but the sound died in her throat.

Something slick and cool snaked around her leg. Gabrielle jerked and their chins struck. “Wait.” She heard her own voice as a distant alarm; her ears started to ring. For a moment Marcus froze, too.

“What?” he said. Then, “Wait. What the hell is that?”

Finally he released her. As Gabrielle scooted backward across the dirt, thorns latched onto her clothes, biting her skin beneath.

 She looked over to where Marcus lay. Thick purple, pulsing tendrils wrapped around his legs, rising up past his knees. Tiny thistles burst from the yellow buds and clung to him, and he let out a guttural noise, something between a cry and a curse.

“Tits—Gab—!” he shrieked. “What the hell is this? Is this some kind of—oh, Jesus.”

The vines crept higher, twisting up around his thighs, thickening, lengthening, shining with a dark sap-like goop that stained Marcus’s threadbare jeans. The roots tightened around him. Marcus scrabbled with his hands, dragging lines of dirt but getting nowhere.

Gabrielle covered her mouth with her hand. She looked for Simon’s ghost and found it crouched at the edge of the garden, its pale, nebulous arms dug deep into the earth, its head inclined toward the struggling, shrieking Marcus.

“Si, stop. This wasn’t part of the plan!” Gabrielle cried. “What are you doing?”

Marcus gave up trying to drag himself to the edge of the garden, and waved his arms at her as if he expected her to grab him and help pull him free. But Gabrielle couldn’t move. The rise at the front of his jeans had abated. More tendrils sipped up out of the soil, hiking up great clods of earth, breaking flower heads. The tendrils wrapped around Marcus’s arms and stomach, and up, and up, snaking across his exposed throat, slimy trails glistening on his skin. When the vine tip entered his mouth, he let out a noise more vulnerable than anything Gabrielle had heard before in her life.

This isn’t right, what is Si doing? Yet she knew there was no stopping it. The garden—it was too hungry. Simon was too hungry.

A scream burbled up from the pit of Marcus, from somewhere deep inside that Gabrielle didn’t know existed. It was a child’s wet scream. But the garden ate his cries, and the vines visibly tightened around his throat.

“Si!” Gabrielle’s limbs suddenly gave and she shot forward, trying to pry the vines from Marcus’s neck. “Si, stop this!”

As she spoke, the earth shuddered and began to peel, dusty dry soil rolling back away from Marcus. He was sinking. The garden was eating him alive and Gabrielle couldn’t tear the vines from his neck. The garden pulled Marcus down, soil gaping to accommodate him; first his feet, his scuffed and faded Chuck Taylors vanishing beneath the dirt, then his legs. Dirt and the vine sap streaked his belly where his t-shirt had ridden up. His chest heaved with unspent cries, the vine in his mouth so thick now that no sound could escape.

Tears poured down Gabrielle’s cheeks.

I did this.

And—

Simon lied.

And—

But Simon would never lie to me.

And—

This can’t be happening.

But it was. Shoulder-deep in the soil, Marcus finally lost consciousness. The vine in his throat, bloated and black, pulsed slowly like a heartbeat. Gabrielle shut her eyes as he sank deeper, and all she was left with was the sounds.

Shuffle. Slurp. Rip. Ssschlop.

#

Gabrielle didn’t know how long she lay motionless among the plants, eyelids squeezed tight, mouth pursed against the screams that twisted in her throat like vines.

“Yo.”

She didn’t want to open her eyes. The garden had grown still and silent. She felt dry, still roots pressing into her back. The thump of her pulse sounded loud, blood-rush like thunder in her ears.

A single bird cawed long and low somewhere nearby, a keening, melancholy sound.

Gabrielle dared to look.

Simon crawled to a sitting position, wobbled back and forth, and then slowly rose to his feet on shaky, stick-thin legs. Mud caked his naked body. He smiled a smile that was almost Simon’s, but not quite.

“See, Gabs.” His voice just a husk of what it once was. Soil fell from between cracked lips. “I told you everything would work out. Easy.”

Jennifer Oliver (she/her) is a writer, gamer and illustrator based in the UK. She writes stories set in the fantasy, sci-fi and horror genres aimed at both adults and young adults. Her stories have been published in Kaleidotrope and Youth Imagination Magazine. Visit her website at jenniferoliverwriter.com.

If you would like to be part of The Chamber Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. If you like more mainstream fiction and poetry with a rural setting and addressing rural themes, you may also want to check out Rural Fiction Magazine. 

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Photo by Pedro Ribeiro Simoes, unaltered, shared under Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic

The pressure built in Leslie’s head as he clenched his jaw, pressed his teeth so hard together his gums ached. The white coffee cup with its green logo rattled about in his grip, spilling droplets of hot black over the back of his hand. He ignored the prickling heat of it, marched toward his office on Pitlair’s dreary high street.

His phone had gone all night. A prick of a client got his personal number, pleading that he couldn’t live without access to his kids.

Leslie couldn’t abide the weak. Everyone who came to him for legal counsel had the same lowlife problems. Didn’t try hard enough at school. World’s against them from the start. Blah, blah, blah. When he sat opposite them, all he wanted to do was scream, tell them to work harder, screw the nut.

The morning autumn light started heating up the dusty concrete. As he approached the cave-like alcove to get into his office, he set his hand into the back pocket of his chinos, brought out his keys. He was always the first here. It was his name above the door, after all. Leslie Bowers, Your Solicitor for Crime and Family Law. It was written in gold. People flocked to gold in this miserable part of Scotland.

He dropped his keys that clattered to the hard ground. Someone was bundled up in sleeping bags outside his office. Her liquor and sweat stench filled the shadowy space.

“Get up,” he said.

“Wha?” said a meek, shivery voice.

The way the bundle of shiny sleeping bags shifted made him think of a pulsing maggot – a maggot he wanted to stomp on. How dare they mar the image of his place of work by sleeping here.

He flicked off the plastic lid of his cup, threw the remaining coffee at the sleeping thing. The bitter steam of it hit his nostrils as he waited for her to jerk about, scream out a complaint. She only shifted, giving him a puzzled, hazed look over the top of her sleeping bag.

“Get away from my shop, you absolute waste of oxygen,” he said, stepping closer. “What were you thinking, eh? Shift it.”

“I… I’m awful sorry. I wasn’t thinking and—”

“You lot never think. That’s your problem. Just expect everyone else to look after you. And then it’s one thoughtless act after another. Then you wonder why you end up on the street?” His voice seemed to build and rebound in the small space as he sucked in a breath. “Aw, diddums? What’s wrong? You gonna cry? Your folks no longer agreeing to fork over their hard earned cash to support your habit?”

“Calm it, mister. Jeez, I—”

“They stop agreeing to give you hand outs, thinking they could save you? Thinking that maybe this time you’ll screw the nut, go back to nursing at college and work your way into a decent person? Cause you had every chance. Every single chance we gave you, and…” His shoulders slumped. “You should go now. Don’t come back. And tell that to all your chums.”

She didn’t look him in the eye as she collected her stuff, shuffled away.

He picked up his keys, went to open the door. The small alcove grew darker. The breeze cut off. Silence fell. The itch of someone’s burning attention dotted his back.

“Didn’t mean to go off on one,” he said over his shoulder. “But, this is my—”

The leaden reek of the air made him close his mouth. The air changed, made the hairs on the crown of his head shift as if a static balloon was held above him. 

Slow nightmare sludge lodged in his throat when he turned.

A slab of a man stood in the entrance to the alcove, blocking most of the morning’s light. His broad jaw was caked with dirt and flakes of dried skin. A tattered army jacket hung off his huge shoulders.

It was the eyes that struck Leslie like a physical blow. The golden, swirling irises were ringed by bloodshot lighting bolts. Those eyes were ancient and all-knowing.

“Leslie.”

The voice was barely a whisper, yet it burned at the centre of Leslie’s brain.

“Y-Yes?”

“Leslie.”

He felt as if his soul was being ripped apart and put back together again, atom by atom.

The man raised a dirty, knobbly finger, pointing at Leslie’s chest.

“Leslie,” the man said with ghostly urgency.

“W-Was that woman your friend? Didn’t mean to go off on her like that. She looked—”

Leslie stopped the thought by pushing the fingernail of his thumb into the side of his index finger. A red line of blood welled, complained at the cool air.

The man turned like a boulder shifting. Without looking back, he moved up the high street and out of sight.

#

Leslie went about his morning, unable to shake the image of the man’s sad eyes. The feeling that something awful was about to happen coiled in his gut, waiting. Whenever Martha came into his office, he’d flinch, drop papers, spill coffee.

His phone chirped in his pocket and he nearly fell off his cheap office chair. The message was from an unknown number, but he knew who it was.

Got your number saved big bro. That wife got you givin up the golf yet? Anyhoo… I need help. Big time. Dont ignor me like lasttime.

He chucked the phone. It clomped atop his wooden desk. He got up, stared out a small window that looked down at the high street from the second floor.

Anna was at him again for money. It infuriated him how they came from the same house, the same skint family, but he was able to screw the nut, save, work hard, make something of himself. Anna didn’t have that in her. She sent their mum to an early grave with grey worry. Falling in with the wrong people. Leaving home. Drugs. Money issues.

He stood so close to the window, cold radiated from the glass on his forehead. Was there always that many homeless people roaming the high street? Every shop entrance, every alleyway he could see, littered with human garbage. Was Anna among them?

The homeless people glared up at him as one, as if sensing his hate.

He felt the urge to open the window, scream down at them all to go die somewhere hidden. No one would miss them. What purpose did they serve by hanging on?

“Martha?” he called through to his assistant in the other office. “Cancel my day, would you? I’m… I’m done.”

Outside, the salt and pastry of sausage rolls from the bakers mingled with dusty concrete. Leslie clutched at his tweed jacket, trying to keep the cold out. As soon as he’d stepped out of his office, he felt their eyes settle on him. From each shadowed shop entrance, each alleyway, they watched. Where were they all coming from? No one else seemed to notice, just bustled about their day.

Any faster and he’d be jogging, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to be with his wife, safe in the confines of the home they’d built. Their slice of heaven.

As he passed the homeless figures, they stood, shuffled after him like a collection of zombies. There were so many figures forming behind him that shoppers had to slalom through the crowd.

Dread grew in his bones. Each set of eyes burrowed into his back, made him want to stop and scream at them, tell them to—

He crashed into something immovable. When his knee hit the pavement, he let out a strangled yelp. The sun flared above the towering figure. Every instinct told him to get up, flee, escape the horde circling him.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Leslie pushed himself to his feet, patting the street dust from his chinos. He tried to meet the eye of a regular shopper who just ducked his head, moved around the growing crowd. “They’ve got me trapped. Hey! Don’t you see me? I’m Leslie Bowers. I’m one of you. Help me.”

“Leslie.”

His name dusted out of the figure, blotting out the sun. That voice made Leslie’s knees weak. Made the blood in the lower half of his face turn to ice.

“Who are you?” said Leslie.

“They call me the Keeper. This is your chance to make amends. Heal the pain from your venom words.”

A grunted assent trickled through the crowd. They were so close he could feel their collective body heat. The odour of their unwashed skin. Their desperation.

Leslie turned, spat his shaky anger at the shifting mass. “How many people have been put through hell because of your refusal to work? How many of your folks bailed you out time and time again? Look at yourselves. You couldn’t make it back to the real world, even if you wanted to. No one to blame but yourself. You never listen. Never listen, no matter how hard I tried.”

“Apologise,” Keeper hissed, sorrow aching in his golden eyes.

Leslie aimed his fury at the big man. “You can all circle me like a bunch of tattered druids all you want, but it doesn’t change the problem. And that problem is you. All of you are a stain. Think if I killed you now, the police would do anything? They’d pat me on the back for killing you… you… non-people.”

Leslie had never been in a fight all his life. He prayed the jackals surrounding him wouldn’t pounce.

The molten gold swirl of Keeper’s hurt eyes kept his attention. He was under a telescope, being judged by something not quite human.

Street dirt scraped under Keeper’s boots, making a sound like sandpaper as he stepped aside.

“T-Thank you,” said Leslie, marching past.

“Don’t forget,” Keeper called. “This is the path you chose. We’ll see you on the other side of things.”

The other side of things? The words stewed inside Leslie’s head as he paced down the narrow high street.

Figures still watched from each doorway. Eyes followed him like still paintings in old houses. When Leslie gathered the courage to look at one of them, his vision seemed to blur.

“What’s happening to me?” he said, blinking the dizzy sensation away.

He panicked, almost tripped over his clumsy feet when he ran into an alleyway that looked empty. He shoved his back against the pebbly wall so hard it hurt.

Anna’s sallow face came to him as he gathered his breath, eyed the entrance, prayed the homeless didn’t follow him here.

“Are you with them, sis?” he said. “After all we tried to do for you, is this where you ended up?”

He swivelled his head about, ignoring the ammonia tang of pish that wanted to shove its fingers up his nostrils. He’d gotten himself in a bad situation here. They could box him in, chase him down from either end of this shadow encased alley.

Three figures danced about at the other end of the walkway and doom settled about Leslie’s shoulders like a cloak.

Relief giggled out of his chest as he saw it was just three teenage boys mucking about. They shoved, tried to trip each other up, swore. They burst with life in their white trainers, rows of clean teeth.

A greeting was about to bubble its way from Leslie’s mouth when they set on him. Quick as hyenas, they knocked him to the ground. 

“Hey!” Leslie shouted. “You can’t—”

His front teeth ached as they shoved his head into the hard concrete. One kicked at his head. One sat on his back. One rummaged in his back pocket, taking his wallet, his keys.

“Stop! Help!” he called out.

An agony like a lightning strike in his back blotted out all thought, made him seethe in a breath. An electric chill spread from his lower back, jarring up his spine into his brain.

The one sitting on him slipped the knife into Leslie’s back again and again.

He tried to shout, but all that came out was a pathetic whine. Fiery blood trickled down his sides, collected in the broken concrete below.

“Stickered him right good,” one boy hooted.

“The red, the red.”

“You’re pure dead, man. Like, dead dead. For realsies.”

The knife silvered in and out of him as the hyenas cackled and danced around him, taking turns.

When they skittered away like they’d done no more than drop an empty crisp packet, Leslie summoned the last of his strength, army crawled to where the alley met the high street.

The weak sunlight marking the street danced over him, prickled his skin.

An elderly lady shuffled closer, leaned down to look at Leslie’s quivering form, sighed. She got out her phone, pushed buttons, told emergency services about ‘rascals that had wired in about someone’.

When she was done, she leaned down again, clucked her tongue, then walked on as if the whole thing had been an affront to her day.

Leslie tried to lift his head. The tendons in his neck shook with the effort of it. As the darkness crept in around his vision, he saw her. Anna. His sister standing among the collected non-people watching his demise. Her eyes were filled with longing.

He wanted to call her name, wanted to say he was sorry.

The darkness came. 

#

Leslie sat bolt upright, sucked in great gulps of air. He patted himself down. There was no blood. The phantom pain of the stab wounds ebbed away to nothing. He hadn’t died. He was still on the high street. Had he made the whole thing up?

The pain the knife caused had been all consuming. The ghost of it clouded his thoughts.

He stared at the sleeping bag he was wrapped up in. Unreality washed over him as he stared up from where he sat. He was in a dark alcove. Wrapped in a sleeping bag. Smelled like he’d gone three weeks without a drop of water on his face.

He kicked the sweaty sleeping bag off, stood. He was in the entrance of Greggs the baker. Pitlair high street was dark and dead.

A heavy anorak hung limp and stinking as rotten skin over his shoulders. The dirt wouldn’t come out of his crusted jeans, no matter how hard he hit it. He reeked like a soppy food bag left out too long on the kitchen counter.

“What is this?” he said to himself.

He walked out into the open, eyeing the closed, barricaded shops. Dark pinpricks like stars gazed at him from shadows, following him. The non-people watched.

Keeper’s booming voice stopped him. “Don’t panic.”

Leslie turned, looked up at the figure who’d just appeared out of nowhere. Despite it being dark, gold constellations swirled in his sad eyes.

“W-What’s happening?” said Leslie, staring his strange, baggy clothes.

“This is the other side of things.”

“You did this to me? Had those kids knock me out, and then you… what? Stole my clothes? This your idea of a joke?”

He waited for Keeper to say something, anything, but he just stared at him with his shadow haunted eyes.

“I’ll get the police down here and firebomb all you bastards.”

“You belong with us now.”

Leslie had never run so fast. Through Pitlair and into the nice, quiet part of Balekerin where he lived with his wife, Teresa. He laid a hand against the wall next to the front door, caught his breath. Behind him, he saw old Mrs. Rutger peek out from behind her blinds. When he waved at her, she shot back into the room like he’d just levelled a shotgun.

He turned his attention to the front door. Walk in. Scoop Teresa into a big squish. Plant her with a kiss like they were in their twenties. Then a scalding shower. Scrub the dirt away until his skin was scratched and red. 

He smelled the homely aroma of his wife’s bolognese seep through the door before noticing it was open a crack. He pushed the door open, let the smell fill his heart. Teresa’s cooking made this house a home. Without it, his world would be thin and grey.

“Teresa?” he called. “It’s me. I… I had some issues. Don’t be judging me for the stench, alright? I’ll just grab a quick shower, if—”

Something solid and invisible kept him outside. He pressed a hand against it, pushed with all his might.

“What the…”

It felt like he laid his hand on a block of ice. The cold got into his bones, made him shiver.

“T? You there? I can’t get in.”

She hummed gently to herself, holding the handle of a large pot of steaming pasta. When she saw him at the door, she shrieked, let go of the pot, stepped away. The pot clanged, spilling spaghetti and whitened water over the wooden floor.

“I’m calling the police,” she said. “You get away now.”

“Teresa, it’s me. It’s—”

She stepped over the pasta, marched toward him, slammed the door closed. Locks clicked into place. He’d never seen such a look of terror on her face. Like she was one step away from heart failure.

“Honey, it’s me.” Leslie knocked on the door. “I’ve had such a strange day. You need to help me. Teresa? You there?”

“Police on their way.” Her voice drifted through the heavy door. “We don’t take to your kind here. Leave.”

All the neighbours were curtain twitching as he turned around. He wanted to scream that he belonged here. That his name was Leslie. He was one of them.

The sound of his wife sobbing in fright was what made him move along.

Back to the full dark high street. He slumped to the cold floor by the door to his practice, put his head in his hands. “What am I going to do?”

“One of us.”

Leslie’s head jerked up so fast his neck twinged with pain. “You!” He got to his feet. “You did this to me.”

The giant figure of Keeper stood over the entrance like a stone about to block him in.

The baritone rumble of his voice bothered at Leslie’s stomach. “You did this to yourself.”

“You’ve cast some kind of dirty spell.”

“You’re on the other side of things now.”

“How dare you take it all from me? My wife. She didn’t even recognise me. Stop this game right now.”

“We play no game. This is trapped. Payment, you might say.”

“You’re making no sense. How is this even possible?”

“Kill yourself. Maybe then, you’ll see.”

The suggestion turned Leslie’s blood cold, made the hand tugging at his hair pause midway. “What?”

“One of us.”

“W-Why are there so many of you?” Behind Keeper, he saw the twinkling eyes of many as they gathered like a collection of quiet ghosts. “Where did you all come from?”

“We are the trapped ones. We were human, once.”

“Once?”

“End yourself. It is necessary.”

Keeper reached into his coat pocket. Pills rattled against plastic as he took out a small bottle. The noise they made was like collected teeth as he set the bottle on the ground between them. When he straightened, there was an aching in his otherworldly eyes.

“Do it,” said Keeper. “End yourself.”

#

Long days went by. None of the real people saw Leslie. He’d phased through to some other dimension, stuck in his place on the high street as life went on. He’d tried his house again and again, never able to get in, even when he smashed the glass on the patio doors. The unseen barrier stopped him.

And all the time, the orange bottle of pills stood where Keeper had left them. It was like they called out to him, begged to smooth their way down his throat, into his gut, cushion him in a chemical embrace.

“No one deserves this,” he said, shivering as he brought his knees closer to his chest.

He tried to throw himself at the mercy of the police when they appeared. They shooed him off like a bothersome fly, never seeming to take in his presence.

Before he knew what he was doing, he unscrewed the lid of the pills, his palm absorbing the juddering pops as he undid the child-proof cap.

It was as if the homeless sensed what was about to happen. They came to watch. The hundreds that massed outside his alcove all had the same sadness in their eyes.

“You come to send me off?” he said, hating how petty he sounded.

He felt the chemical burn roll through him as the drugs took hold. Felt it spreading through his chest with every heart beat. It clamped his jaw. Froze his eyes open. Everything seemed to slow, become more vibrant, pulsating with colour.

“I’m sorry,” he said through clenched teeth. “I… I’m sorry.”

#

He sat bolt upright, wheezing in a panicked lungful of air. His hands reached for the side of him like he’d been pushed underwater and he was resurfacing from somewhere cold. He was alive. Alive. He placed a hand on his chest, relishing the rhythm of his heart.

As he closed his eyes, the familiar scents of slept-in clothes and sweaty sleeping bag flooded his senses. The concrete dirt smell of his skin. The grit filled wind.

He felt the presence of Keeper. The look in his golden eyes was not unkind. Instead of lurking in the doorway, he came into the alcove, ducking his head before sitting cross-legged opposite him.

Panic started bubbling up from Leslie’s gut. He knew then he was in the company of some deity. Some being not of this world.

Keeper nodded his large head sombrely. 

“I… I’m on the other side of things,” said Leslie, the realisation making his blood sludgy in his veins. “Those boys. They killed me, didn’t they? And this…”

He looked at the high street coming to life in the early morning. The gathered others who waited. All eyeing him like they wanted to come hug him. Ease his burden.

This was his purgatory for being such an arsehole, he knew. It was why Keeper’s eyes were filled with tears. They fell silently down his unshaven face, silvered in the meek light that shone into the alcove.

“We come here after a life of regrets,” said Keeper. “It’s our forever place. You see now?”

“Am I trapped?”

“We have each other. And that is all.”

His sister’s face came to him as a tear warmed his cheek. Every argument, every shouting match where he’d told her to screw the nut. That he couldn’t deal with her being a waste. And now, he was doomed to walk the high street unnoticed. His soul trapped.

In the shadowy space beneath the gold letters of the life he’d built, he watched the shoppers go by.

Paul O’Neill is an award-winning short story writer from Fife, Scotland. As an Internal Communications professional, he fights the demon of corporate-speak on a daily basis. His works have been published in Crystal Lake’s Shallow Waters, Eerie River’s It Calls From The Doors anthology, the NoSleep podcast, Scare Street’s Night Terrors series, The Horror Tree, and many other publications. You can find him sharing his love of short stories on twitter @PaulOn1984.

The phone rang just as Steven Becker was finishing up the notes on his previous patient. He never took them during a session; it was a distraction to the therapy and, for some patients, intimidating. He had a sharp enough memory and could recall conversations verbatim when they were fresh in his mind, as they were during his ten minutes between patients.

It was nearing the end of a long day. In the past eight hours, he’d been taunted by a sociopathic teenager, screamed at by a paranoid husband, questioned as to his humanity by a neo-Nazi, and almost vomited on by a female patient who showed up drunk. His final patient for the day, Adam Fiske, was waiting in the next room.

The phone rang again, and he stared at it. He was tired enough to let it go to voice mail, but since he had a few minutes before Adam’s session, and he did take calls when he could, he reached over and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Doctor Becker?” It was a woman’s voice, and it sounded nervous.

“Yes, it is. Can I help you?”

“My name is Carolyn Fiske. My husband is one of your patients. I believe he’s in your waiting room right now.”

“That’s right, I think he is. Do you need to speak with him?”

“God, no!”

It was nearly a scream. It startled him.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Fiske?”

“No. No, I’m not!” The nervousness in her voice had become panicky. “He just called me on his cell phone. He…he told me…” Her next words were garbled, melting into sobs.

“Mrs. Fiske, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t hear you just now.”

She began to wail.

“He said he was going to kill you! And then he was coming home to kill me!”

Steven was speechless. Partly from shock and partly because, of all his patients, the least likely to do, or even say, something like that would be Adam Fiske.

“Were those his exact words?” It was all he could think of.

She didn’t seem to hear him. “Oh, dear God,” she moaned.

“Mrs. Fiske, please try to stay calm. Have you called the police?”

“What!? No, I haven’t called the police! What would they do? Even if I convinced them to go to your office, it would be too late. You’re his shrink, so I called you! You’re supposed to be able to reach him!” She started to cry again. “He really means it. You’ve got to stop him.”

“Mrs. Fiske…”

“I can’t stay here anymore; it’s too scary. I’m sorry to call you like this, Doctor Becker, but I needed to warn you. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. Please be careful; he’s very dangerous. I have to go now.”

The line went dead.

Steven sat at his desk, staring at the phone in his hand. He’d been seeing Adam Fiske for two years now, a diminutive, fifty-three-year-old man whose picture could have been in the dictionary next to the word “unimposing.”

He weighed 130 pounds at most, and what hair he possessed was thin and graying. His mild brown eyes looked out benignly through rimless glasses, and his voice was so soft that, many times, Steven had to ask him to repeat himself.

It never seemed to bother him. In fact, it was hard to get him to express any anger at all in therapy. His main mood was worry. And lately, a lot of that worry had been for his wife.

She became frightened, for no apparent reason. It could be about anything and could happen anytime. She’d been seeing a therapist for six months, but the situation had not improved. Adam felt helpless.

Steven wondered if he’d, just now, heard an example of her problem. That was more likely than Adam actually threatening to kill her, wasn’t it?

And me too, he remembered, with an involuntary chill.

Could she have fantasized it? If so, she’d have to go from an inexplicably fearful woman to someone so delusional, she hears imaginary death threats.

He only knew her as Adam described her, so he didn’t really know her at all. Anything was possible. Including the possibility she was telling the truth.

Three minutes remained until the session. He reached into his desk drawer, took out Adam’s file, and looked through it, trying to find any indication of hostility. Maybe Adam’s helplessness could be masking feelings of resentment. But homicidal rage?

And even if he was, somehow, harboring these violent thoughts, why was Steven included? Last session, they’d talked about Adam’s difficulties in his job as a high school guidance counselor. He and the principal were having a disagreement over a student. After one of Steven’s observations, Adam had said, “You sound just like Carolyn.”

He’d written it down because it was unusual. Was it more than that?

He remembered Greta Horowitz, an early patient of his. She was a forty-eight-year-old housewife who, like Adam, displayed nothing more than common, manageable neuroses. After a session that was otherwise unremarkable, she used his bathroom. An hour later, when his next patient found the bathroom door locked and called out to him, he broke in and discovered her lying on the floor unconscious, with an empty bottle of her daughter’s Valium beside her.

He’d gotten her to the emergency room in time for them to pump her stomach and save her, but that was when he realized, if a patient wanted to hide something badly enough, Steven was powerless. Was Adam Fiske hiding something? Something lethal?

For an irrational moment, he felt the urge to rush to his office door, lock it, and call the police. But every professional instinct said, no.

Just go on with the session, he told himself, but be careful.

But be careful of what? He could feel his heart beating as he crossed the room and opened the door.

Adam, wearing a light blue turtleneck, was sitting where he usually sat, on the far side of the waiting room, reading one of the New Yorker magazines Steven kept out for his patients. What was different about the scene was the heavy woolen topcoat, which would ordinarily be hanging on the coatrack. Instead, it was sitting in his lap.

Adam looked up at him.

“Hi there,” he said placidly as he got up from the chair, clutching the coat.

“Hi, Adam, come on in.”

Steven stood in the doorway as Adam, coat in hand, preceded him into the office.

He sat down on the couch and carefully placed the coat next to him. Steven sat in his chair and tried to keep his voice light.

“You expect it to get cold in here?”

“No,” said Adam, quite seriously, “I just didn’t want to leave my coat out in your waiting room.”

“Why is that?”

He shrugged. “I guess, for the first time, it occurred to me that you don’t keep the front door locked. So anyone could come in and take it.”

Steven was bigger and stronger than Adam, and he knew he could subdue him if it came to it, but not if there was a gun in that coat pocket, inches away from his right hand.

“Has anything ever been stolen from here, that you know of?”

“Hey, I hope you don’t think it’s because I don’t trust your office security.” Adam gave him a sheepish grin. “It’s just that I’d feel more comfortable with my coat in here, that’s all.”

Steven maintained an expression of composure as he frantically tried to figure out where to take this. Should he tell him about the phone call? He didn’t think so. Whether it was from instinct or trepidation, he knew he didn’t want to go there, not yet. Better to stay in the here and now.

“I’m wondering,” he said, “why it occurred to you just today that your coat might not be secure in my waiting room.”

For an instant, Adam’s right hand moved toward the coat. Steven’s stomach lurched, but then Adam brought his hand back, joining the other one in his lap.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Steven glanced again at the coat. This had to be the strangest session he’d ever experienced. Talk about subtext…

“Did anything unusual happen to get you thinking that way?”

“I don’t know. Does it bother you that I brought it inside?”

“Not at all. But you seem to feel less safe here today, and I wondered why.”

Adam mumbled something Steven couldn’t make out.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t hear you.”

“I said,” Adam replied in a tight voice that wasn’t any louder, just clearer, “that I think I’m going to be fired.”

He pulled the coat closer, as Steven inwardly tensed. Then he let go of it and began to crack his knuckles.

“Phil Grayson has been sending reports about me to the Board of Ed. I found that out today.”

“Phil Grayson is your principal.”

“Yeah.”

He was looking, not at Steven, but into the space between them.

“What kind of reports?”

“You know what really gets me?” There was a bitter, bemused smile on Adam’s face. “Carolyn, with all her irrational fears, was right about this one. I guess even crazy people can get lucky.”

This was the opportunity, if Steven wanted to take it. Should he? He decided, yes.

“How is Carolyn doing?”

Adam’s eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips, as he often did when he was upset. “Not good, not good at all. I just had a very disturbing phone conversation with her.”

Easy now, easy, Steven told himself. “What was disturbing about it?”

He noticed how Adam’s hands were clenched so tightly in his lap, they were turning white.

“The cell phone reception in your waiting room is lousy, did you know that?” He looked at Steven accusingly. “It kept cutting in and out; it was very annoying.”

“I’m sorry that happened, but what was disturbing about your conversation with Carolyn?”

Adam’s face had become even more pinched, and the sides of his mouth were turned down sharply, something Steven had never seen before.

“I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about what’s going on in here. This isn’t working.”

Steven let it hang there for a moment. “You feel our therapy isn’t accomplishing what you’d like it to?”

“I feel like I’m wasting my time.”

Steven nodded. At some point, every patient said something like this. It usually meant they were on the verge of a breakthrough and were resisting. Steven had always felt quietly thrilled at such moments, but not this time.

“I want it to end,” Adam said. “And I’m going to end it one way or another.”

It felt like an icicle had formed in Steven’s gut.

“One way or another?”

Adam seemed to be fighting an inward battle. He started to speak, then checked himself. His eyes darted wildly about the room.

“I can’t explain it,” he muttered. Then he plunged his hand into the coat pocket.

Before he could think, Steven sprang out of his chair and was on him, grabbing Adam’s wrist and pulling at it, trying to yank his hand out of the pocket. It tore.

“What are you doing?” Adam gasped.

With one final tug, Steven pulled the hand free, tearing the pocket further.

Adam’s hand was empty.

Steven pulled the coat away, throwing Adam to the side. His head came up against the end of the couch as his flailing arm knocked the lamp off the end table.

It fell over as its bulb shattered with an explosive flash against the parquet floor.

Steven ignored it. He reached deep into the coat pocket, his fingers coming up against a folded sheet of paper. He took it out.

It was a list, under the heading: Why I’m Quitting Therapy.

“What’s the matter with you?” Adam cried out.

Steven quickly checked the other pockets, knowing how ridiculous it was. He felt a hot flush come over him, and his face burned with shame. He’d just assaulted his patient. Assaulted his patient!

“I’m so sorry, Adam, please forgive me. I thought you had a gun.”

“A gun?! How could you think…?”

“Are you okay?”

Steven went over to the couch and tried to sit down beside him, but Adam recoiled, moving away.

“I tore your coat pocket,” Steven said, holding out the flap. “I’ll pay for it; I’ll even buy you a new coat. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

Adam moved even further away. “Are you crazy?”

Steven took a deep breath.

“Just before the session, your wife called me. She said you’d just told her you were going to kill me, and then you were coming home to kill her.”

Adam’s mouth fell open.

“What?! Why would she say a thing like that?”

“Here, let me get you some water.”

Steven got up and poured a glass from the pitcher on the side table, struggling to keep his hands from shaking. He gave it to Adam, then sat down again in his chair.

“What did you say to her?”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t know. I was kind of annoyed, and maybe I sounded a little brusque, but I had a lot on my mind because of what I was going to tell you. I didn’t know if I could. That’s why I’d typed it all out. If I lost my nerve, I was just going to let you read it.” He shook his head again.

“She said she’d been feeling sick all day, and she thought she was coming down with the flu. I tried to make a little joke. I said I was going to waste some time with you; then I told her I’d be home to help her out, or something to that effect. That’s when I heard her gasp. She shouted, ‘You’re a monster!’ and hung up.”

Steven considered it.

“Were those your exact words? That you were going to waste some time with me?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it.” He shook his head yet again. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Steven’s eyes took in the broken lamp, the torn coat, and his disheveled, traumatized patient.

“I guess fear has its own logic.”

***

Carolyn Fiske trembled as she huddled under the blankets. She’d told Dr. Becker she was leaving, but she knew she could never do that. The world was a terrifying place, and the prospect of her out there in it, on the run from Adam, was impossible to conceive.

No, she’d done all she could. She’d warned him, and either he’d stop Adam or he wouldn’t. All she could do was wait here, either for the phone call from the police or the sound of the key in the lock, which would mean the end.

During the last few weeks, she’d finally divined Adam’s intentions. He hated her, and he wanted her dead. The phone connection had been poor, cutting in and out, and he had such a soft voice, but there was no doubt in her mind what he’d told her. She could recite it word for word, and she would, if the police asked her to.

“In a few minutes,” he’d said, “I’m going to waste Steven Becker. Then I’m coming home to take care of you.”

She huddled deep inside the blankets and waited for what fate would deliver.

Before turning to fiction writing, Lenny Levine enjoyed a successful 20-year career as a recording studio singer and composer of many jingles, such as McDonald’s, Lipton Tea, and Jeep. His stories have been widely published in literary magazines and journals, and he received a Pushcart Prize nomination for short fiction.

If you would like to be part of The Chamber Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. If you like more mainstream fiction and poetry with a rural setting and addressing rural themes, you may also want to check out Rural Fiction Magazine.

 
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