Contents
A Monstrous Place
~Tales From Between~
~Chapter One~
~Chapter Two~
~Chapter Three~
~Chapter Four~
~Chapter Five~
~Chapter Six~
~Chapter Seven~
~Chapter Eight~
~Chapter Nine~
~Chapter Ten~
~Chapter Eleven~
~Chapter Twelve~
~Chapter Thirteen~
~Chapter Fourteen~
~Chapter Fifteen~
~Chapter Sixteen~
~Chapter Seventeen~
~Chapter Eighteen~
~Chapter Nineteen~
~Chapter Twenty~
~Chapter Twenty-One~
~Chapter Twenty-Two~
A Monstrous Place
By
Matthew Stott
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Copyright © 2015 by Matthew Stott. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
Cover by: Phil Poole
First published by Fenric Books
~Tales From Between~
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Things live between awake and asleep.
In the moment after your eyes grow too heavy to stay open, but before the dreams take you.
Some of the creatures that live Between are nice.
A great many are not.
~Chapter One~
He was awoken in the dead of night by somebody calling his name.
‘Billy Tyler.’
He muttered, half-opened one eye, then rolled over.
‘Hello, Billy Tyler.’
Billy grumbled and rubbed at his sleep encrusted eyes with the heel of one hand, his mouth dry, as he propped himself up on his elbow and peered blurrily into the darkness.
‘Billy Tyler, it’s me.’
The voice was familiar and yet not quite right in some way. Like someone doing an impression that was a little bit off.
‘Listen, Billy Tyler.’
‘Who’s that...? Dad...?’ He sat upright now, his eyes a little more used to the gloom of the room, but there was nothing to see other than the familiar vague shapes of his bedroom furniture.
‘Hello, Billy Tyler.’
No, it sounded nothing like his Dad. Who was it? Why was the voice itching at his memory and yet he couldn’t place it? The almost familiar voice wasn’t coming from within the room. Even though the voice sounded as though it was being whispered calmly into his ear, he was sure that it was actually coming from downstairs.
‘Are you there, Billy Tyler?’
‘I said who’s that? I’m trying to sleep.’ He tried to place the voice. It buzzed at him, teasing.
‘I’m here, Billy Tyler.’
‘I have to go to school tomorrow, I need my sleep, I’ve got double maths. I’m not very good at maths so I need to be at my best.’
‘I’m here, Billy Tyler.’
He pulled back the duvet and placed his bare feet onto the carpet, toes wriggling. He pushed on his Doctor Who slippers and padded quietly towards the door, opening it a crack.
‘Down here, Billy Tyler.’
He wanted to stop, to shut the door and go back to bed, but the voice seemed to be physically pulling him forward. ‘I’m probably dreaming anyway,’ he said aloud, as though to reassure himself and stop the knot in his stomach from tightening further. ‘That’s it,’ he laughed. ‘Just a silly old dream.’
‘Down here, Billy Tyler.’
It certainly felt like a dream. Dreams felt completely real and completely unreal at the same time, and this definitely felt like that. Like walking through a sharply focussed fog. He reached the top of the stairs and peered down warily into an impenetrable wall of black. ‘Down where? Where about?’
‘Down here, Billy Tyler.’
‘I don’t want to go down there. I think I want to stay up here. I mean, I know this is a dream, it’s a silly scary dream and I know that of course, I’m not stupid, but I still think that I would really like to get back into bed and not at all go down there.’
Silence.
The front door must have been open because he could feel cold tendrils of outside air snaking up the stairs and coiling around his ankles, trying to pull his reluctant feet forward. Billy wanted to resist. He really wanted to resist.
‘Down here, Billy Tyler, down here.’
He stepped forward. And down.
Step by step.
Carefully.
Slowly.
Step by step went Billy Tyler.
He was now unable to even turn his head back to where he had come from, his eyes fixed forward and unseeing in the inky blackness. Finally he reached the bottom. The front door was indeed open a sliver, the moonlight weaving weakly within allowing some vision. His teeth chattered at the night-cool air.
‘Out here now. Out here, Billy Tyler.’
Hand shaking, he reached out towards the front door and pulled it open, the wind shaking his pyjamas, toes curling under his feet inside his slippers.
‘Step out now, Billy Tyler. Step out now.’
‘I shouldn’t go out,’ he said. ‘I really shouldn’t.’
‘Step out now. Step out now, Billy Tyler.’
Billy remained in the open doorway, body shivering. On the path before him stood his older brother, Andrew. He could see that his brother’s feet were bare, water pooling around the soles.
There was an undefined quality about him, a blurriness to some of his features. It had been a long time since he had seen his big brother, who had died six years ago whilst on holiday. He’d run out into the sea, all excited and shouting and full of life, and then—in the blink of an eye—no one had been able to see him. Dad had run in, others too, desperately searching, diving down again and again and calling his name, but they could see no sign of him. The water had claimed him.
Andrew’s body had finally washed up two days later and five miles down the coast. An old woman walking her dog had come across him. His skin blue, breath gone. Billy’s memory of his brother had gone soft around the edges over time. He’d been so small when he knew him. His sharpest memories were of Andrew’s hair, his whistle, the way he ran and laughed. The rest had slid further away, or else were lost entirely.
‘Hello, Andrew,’ said Billy to his dead brother.
Andrew smiled, or tried to smile. Parts of his face smiled, but others stayed as they were, unable to complete the expression. Like he had forgotten how Andrew smiling actually looked.
‘Hello, little brother. Oh how I have missed you. Would you like to come outside and play?’
He already knew he was going to step outside, step towards his impossible brother. He was sure this was a bad idea, but couldn’t turn back now, however much he might want to.
Billy stepped out of the house and onto the path.
Andrew opened his mouth, wider and wider and wider still, until it seemed like his whole head was a blackened hole full of teeth.
‘I d
on’t think this really actually is a silly dream at all.’
Billy Tyler wasn’t at school the next day.
Or the day after that.
Or ever again.
~Chapter Two~
Molly Brown was small and thin for her age; like a bundle of old sticks someone had placed a tatty dress on. Her thick, bushy hair stuck this way and that in tangled eruptions of curls, and appeared to be attempting to escape in all directions at once.
‘Why can’t I just stay here and be home schooled?’ said Molly one morning, sullenly prodding at her cereal as though trying to provoke it.
‘Because you just can’t,’ said Mum, who was used to this line of questioning by now. ‘Everyone goes to school.’
‘Well you don’t,’ Molly pointed out.
‘Well no, but I’m an adult, and I have to do something even worse than school. I have to go to an office and type numbers into a computer all day.’ Molly’s Mum made a ‘yuck’ face, and smiled.
‘Well fine! But if on the way to school I get murdered, killed, lost, kidnapped, hit by a bus, or set on fire by lightning, then just know it’s all completely your fault!’
‘Okay then,’ said Mum, smiling. ‘Now hurry up with your breakfast, you’ll be late.’
Molly wasn’t really scared of getting murdered or lost or hit by a bus. In fact, she was about as brave as the bravest person you could think of; she just didn’t like having to go to school. The teachers were always more interested in telling her things they wanted her to learn, rather than things she actually wanted to know. For example, in Geography, Mr Handley was quick to talk on, and on, and boringly on about ox-bow lakes and erosion, but if Molly dared raise a hand to ask which country had the most dragons, she’d be met with a withering stare and told to stop messing around.
The house Molly lived in was ancient, and perhaps even older than that, or at least it seemed so to a girl Molly’s age. Every footstep was greeted by the sharply grumbled complaints of floorboards. Windy nights brought the whole place alive with creaks and groans, as though it were a wooden ship being tossed about the ocean as it searched for safe passage. Molly was certain the house was haunted. There was no way something so old could not be chock full of ghouls, but so far, sadly, none had emerged to try and spook her. Not a single, solitary sighting. Not even when she crept about stealthily at night and leapt suddenly into empty rooms to take a spook by surprise as it went about its ghostly business.
Molly had lived in the house her whole life, or at least the whole of her life that she could clearly remember. The house had originally belonged to her Gran, with Mum and Molly moving in to look after her when she grew too old to be alone but refused to go into any sort of old people’s home. ‘Oh Molly, they’re so insufferably dull, the old; I couldn’t possibly spend my final days surrounded by them; I’d go loopy! Well; loopier!’ Gran would shriek, laughing. And of course she didn’t need to go anywhere. This was and would remain her home, and they’d looked after her, kept her company, kept her laughing, and enjoyed every moment. Now she was gone, almost a year ago, and so only Molly and Mum lived there.
Molly had never really known her Dad. He’d died when she was little more than a baby. All she had were her Mum’s stories and a few old photographs. Often he was looking away, or the image was smeared by a sudden, sharp movement, as though he were actively trying to remain elusive. She wished she had some sort of memory of him that she could roll around in her mind, but no. Nothing.
‘He was a good man.’ So said her Mum. ‘Always helping those that needed it. even if they didn’t know they needed it. Funny, too. Always smiling.’
‘Funny how?’ Molly would ask. ‘He told jokes?’
‘Sometimes. Well. No. Not really. He was just funny. He’d make you laugh when you were a baby. He’d pull faces and cross his eyes and waggle his tongue and you’d laugh big, toothless, gummy laughs and grab hold of your feet so you rocked back and forth.’
Molly wasn’t sure that even as a baby the sight of someone crossing their eyes would make her laugh to the degree her Mum suggested, but she supposed she’d have to take her word for it. The idea that he made people laugh pleased her anyway. That he’d made people happy.
Mr Adams lived next door, in the house to the left, depending on which way you looked at it. He was a proud and rotund man with a bushy moustache and trousers pulled up high over his bulging but brick solid stomach. ‘Good woman, your Grandmother,’ Mr Adams would bark at Molly. ‘Good woman, good woman; not altogether up there, if you know what I mean,’ he would say, tapping a red sausage finger to his temple. ‘Wonderful, but mad as a box of frogs left out in the Saharan sun. Ah! The Sahara! Now I’ve some tall tales to tell about that scorched place!’
Mr Adams was an ex-military man, ‘I say ‘ex’, but it never leaves you, the training, the discipline, the early mornings, the cold showers, the ten mile hikes, all up here in the grey matter, ingrained. The army doesn’t leave you even when you leave it!’
Mr Adams would raise and salute the British flag in his front garden each morning, loudly singing the national anthem as he did so, medals pinned to his jumper, head right back, mouth wide. ‘Fought in strange lands all over the globe, you know; for Queen and Country! Seen every exotic creature known to man, woman or dog; and plenty more besides, things you won’t see in any encyclopaedia, or on any of your computerised internet. Creatures with the head of a goose, but the body of a fox. Or was it the other way around? Or the opposite of that even?... Yeti! You heard of Yeti, young girl? I had tea with a family of Yeti once when I took a wrong turn during routine manoeuvres in the Alps. Friendly sort, smell musty like clothes that haven’t been allowed to fully dry. Awful tea though! Had to swallow it down for politeness sake.’
The home to the right (depending) housed Mr and Mrs Fisk, an elderly couple who, if she had to guess at it, Molly would say were probably two hundred and seventy years old each. Maybe older. They had both shrunk to the size of children with age, with wispy suggestions of hair scattered atop their puckered, dusty heads. They were always to be found dressed in heavy, thick woollen cardigans and green cord trousers, with checked slippers on their feet, Mr Fisk grasping a gnarled wooden cane that snaked and twisted up to his brown spotted hand with its ragged yellow fingernails.
‘Young Molly, is it? I sees you there, young lady!’ Mrs Fisk would laugh as she tended the front garden and Molly stomped grumpily out of her house on her way to school. ‘Off to school is it? Hm? Good to get knowledge in your brain sponges. Soaks it up like my plants soaks up the yellow sun and you’ll grow up right and proper, sure enough. Yes, sure enough!’
‘What flower is that?’ Molly would ask, pointing out some brightly coloured vegetation in the Fisk’s bountiful garden.
‘Oh, don’t you ask 'er, dear,’ Mr Fisk would cackle, ‘Hasn’t got a clue about proper names and that; me neither, oh no, not us, simple, gentle souls we is, gentle as the sea; we just calls it Simon. Simon the Flower. Oh yes, oh my, we honestly does.’
‘Simon?’ asked Molly.
‘Oh, he looks like a Simon, don’t he? Oh I should say so. And that plant there? That’s Amanda, and that one’s Billy, that there’s Big Jim!’ Mrs Fisk poked and prodded at each flower with a trowel, naming each in turn as Mr Fisk giggled and laughed. ‘And this big bush here, hm? What might you suggests we calls it?’
Molly eyed the large bush that dominated the far corner of the Fisk’s stuffed front garden, ‘Arthur?’
‘Arthur?! That ain’t no Arthur; that’s Fat Sally! Ain’t that so, and correct as well, Mr Fisk?’
‘Oh yes and surely indeed! That’s Fat Sally that is! Fat Sally the bush; hello Fat Sally!’ said Mr Fisk, finding this funnier than it actually was, if you asked Molly.
Gran had never liked Mr and Mrs Fisk, ‘Oh my dear, they are so insufferably dull. All they want to talk about is flowers and biscuits and tea and the old days; I want to talk about today. No, tomorrow! An hour in their company feels like an eterni
ty. Once I feigned a heart attack just to get away. Gripped my arm and staggered out.’ And Gran would relive the moment in mime, Molly laughing.
Gran’s room was still full to bursting with her things, the air thick with her perfumes and powders. Molly would open the solid, heavy wardrobe doors and run her fingers along the row of finely pressed skirts, blouses and jackets; or she might pull out book after book of photo albums, each packed full of the black and white smiling faces of forgotten people. Happy times and places, though a mystery to Molly. She would look at each and make up elaborate stories, imagining the conversations, the jokes, the sounds and smells.
Other times Molly would curl up on Gran’s bed and fall asleep, dreaming of new conversations with her, filling Gran in on the latest goings on. Gran would ooh, and ahh, and laugh at each freshly embellished revelation. When Molly awoke the dream conversations would still feel real, but she knew they were just dreams, and dreams weren’t real.
Molly wouldn’t tell her Mum about these conversations, because even though she was only young, Molly knew enough not to tell grown-ups things that might make you sound mad; that way led to Doctors’ waiting rooms, needles, and questions about ink blots.
In her most recently dreamt conversation, Gran had seemed agitated. She wouldn’t rest, or laugh, or feign interest in Molly’s stories, but instead kept interrupting, as though she wanted to tell her something. She would start to, but then Molly would find it difficult to listen, to hold on to it; it would wisp and dodge and fade, the meaning lost. Molly had awoken feeling slightly worried, which was silly; how could you be worried about a dream?
~Chapter Three~
‘No word on that Billy Tyler laddo, I see, hm?’ said Mr Adams to Molly and her best friend Neil, who were sat together on her front step playing cards.
‘Nope. Word is he’s made his way to Scotland to look for the Loch Ness Monster,’ said Molly.
A Monstrous Place (Tales From Between) Page 1
