by Tobias Wade
“Never heard of it,” someone else muttered, but I nodded encouragingly.
“I have,” I said. “It’s a good one.”
June suddenly realized that she was now responsible for telling the story, and clammed up. Between you and me, she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, and she probably wouldn’t have understood what that meant had I said that to her face. She was artless, pretty and almost devoid of personality, but that suited the rest of us just fine. She was a welcome respite, a pocket of calm in a circle of larger than life characters.
I looked around at all the faces gathered, faces that shifted continuously as the shadows of flames licked across their features, and wondered, honestly, why we kept having these reunions. Every year it was the same: a flurry of emails and texts, a last minute decision, finding space at whichever campsite wasn’t already booked. The arrival, the hugs, the jollity, the sizing each other up after a year of not seeing each other.
We enjoyed the first few hours, but a whole weekend camping always turned out to be too much. We grated on each other. We knew which buttons to press, understood all too well each other’s personal idiosyncrasies, tics and foibles, and had no qualms about using that knowledge whenever we could to gain the upper hand. Was it habit that drew us together, year after year? Or a stupid sense of duty? A misguided loyalty that no one enjoyed feeling, but everyone felt bound by? Either way, it was as predictable as a Sunday before a Monday: we’d arrive, full of false cheer, and leave without casting a backward glance.
Before that, there would always be a trek, upon which we would always argue over the map, get lost, and get rained on. Every year, without fail. Sometimes the rain would coincide with us getting lost, as if to add insult to injury.
Then the drinking would start, and a campfire would be built. The men would collect wood, talk about “green sticks” and “tinder” and “kindling” as if they knew what they were talking about. The women would cobble together some sort of canned supper: soup, or bean stew, or tinned fruit. I would always pretend to enjoy it, whilst quietly putting away as much alcohol as I could to make the situation socially bearable.
And then someone would start telling stories.
Maybe this was the reason I still came to these abominable weekends: for the stories. Or maybe I was a sadist, and I secretly enjoyed torturing myself by being in close proximity to a group of increasingly obnoxious human beings who all still referred to each other as “friends”.
Or maybe, just maybe, there was another reason.
Whatever it was, I was here once again, another year older, another year wiser, and my ears were cocked, ready to receive.
“Well go on then,” said Max, not unkindly. He and June had been a thing for a while, although I never really got why. He’d constantly cheated on her behind her back, and yet couldn’t seem to ever let her go completely, as if, despite not really wanting her himself, he didn’t want anyone else to have her either. He’d string her along for a week or two, find someone new, forget all about her until he found himself single again, then re-ignite the relationship. I could only assume it was ego at play: I have fucked this woman, ergo no other man may fuck her.
She chewed nervously on a strand of mousy blonde hair, and tried to remember the story.
“I don’t know,” she said hesitantly, fervently wishing she’d never spoken up. “I can’t remember the whole thing. But there’s this couple, and... for some reason... there’s this severed hand. Which is alive. And it, you know, follows them around.”
“Cool.” Louise stubbed her fag out on the floor and immediately began rolling another one. I could literally smell her lungs necrotizing inside her ribcage.
June gathered some confidence from this, and sat up a little straighter.
“One night, they are lying in bed, and they wake up suddenly. They can hear something crawling and thumping up the stairs. Then there’s a knock on the bedroom door, and when the husband gets up to open it, the hand crawls inside, just, you know, like, dragging its bloody wrist stump across the floor.” June mimed the scene using her own arm, and shuddered. “Then it jumps at the woman and strangles her. Someone told me that one when I was a kid, and I had nightmares about it for years.”
I smiled, and gazed at the fire.
It was a pitiful thing, this campfire, poorly stacked, no real space for air to flow beneath the logs that had been haphazardly dumped into the earthen pit instead of arranged in a wigwam shape that would have burned longer and brighter. It gave out just enough heat to keep the cool night air at bay, and crackled and snapped lazily, little sparks flying up into the dark sky, panicked fireflies racing away from a blazing death.
When the fire died down I would rebuild it, properly, and the thing would burn brightly until the dawn. I shook my head: three men and four women present, myself not included, and not a single one of them could build a fire for shit. What was the world coming to? What would these people do if there was a global event, an apocalypse? Would they be able to feed themselves, build shelter, keep themselves warm?
I shook my head again, a tiny gesture, but Anna, who was sitting across from me, spotted it and latched onto it, as was her way.
Secretly I called her Anna-tagonistic, which I thought was rather clever. The nickname also happened to be accurate. Because antagonistic she was, right from the first moment she met a person. If ever anyone’s status in the group was to be challenged or called into question, she was the one to do it. She was bullish yet educated, swore profusely yet had an elegant bearing, and was possessed of a deeply ingrained sense of superiority that carried her through life and leant her an aura of entitlement that was hard to argue with. Her wit and her tongue were both sharp. I had learned from bitter experience over the years that it could be hard to stand up to her.
I bristled as her eyes, glinting with miniature reflections of the flames, met mine.
“What’s your story, then?” she barked, mistaking my smile for a sneer, and casually chewing on a fingernail in an effort to distract the others from her bossy tone.
“Well…”
I hesitated, swigging at my beer and marveling as the cool, gentle fizz washed over my tongue. Nothing beats a cold, sweating bottle of lager next to a campfire. Nothing.
The beer fortified me. “Actually, why don’t you go first?” I threw the gauntlet back at her, but she calmly shook her head.
“Oh no,” she said, her voice suddenly reasonable and her expression demure. “I’ll be the first to admit that I’m useless at this sort of thing. Never had much interest in fairy stories or urban legends.” A small smile now played at her lips. It was a condescending smile, but no one else seemed to notice. They never did: collective blindness, for as long as I could remember.
I shrugged, sighing and breaking eye contact, bored of her games and the poisonous subtext that lurked beneath everything she said.
Then, I noticed her feet. I saw that, absurdly, she was wearing slippers on them.
I paused in disbelief.
Slippers.
Actual, real, furry fucking slippers.
With bunny ears on them.
At a campsite.
In the middle of the fucking woods.
I started to chuckle, studied my beer bottle, and realized it was nearly empty. I raised it up as a signal to Keiran, who was sat closest to the cooler box we’d loaded with booze.
“Fine,” I acquiesced, in good humor once again. “I’ll need another one of these, though, to wet my whistle first.”
“Why do you always talk like you’re from the nineteenth century?” Max said, grinning at me from across the fire. I ignored him.
Keiran heaved himself out of his fold-up camp chair, lunged at the cooler, grabbed a beer and performed his party trick of popping the beer cap off with the heel of his hand. It spun across the circle, and somehow landed right in the fire. He bowed as we applauded: it was a good party trick, I had to give him that.
&nbs
p; He handed me the beer. “Next time I’ll do it with my teeth,” he said, sincerely. I believed him. I’d seen him do it before, seen him use it to pick up women. It was a neat trick, but boy, did it get boring after the millionth time. I rolled my eyes and motioned for him to sit down. He was stealing my show.
“As it happens,” I said, letting more deliciously cold lager slide down my throat first, “I do have a good campfire tale. It’s about a woman called…” I scrunched my face up and hummed, making a show of coming up with a good name for the leading lady.
There were impatient rumblings around the fire, and someone muttered something that sounded like “Get on with it!”.
“Ellie. My story is about a woman called Ellie,” I decided out loud, although of course, I’d already known what her name was.
Now it was Anna’s turn to roll her eyes. “Great,” she said flatly, crossing her legs and flaunting her feet with those ridiculous, offensive slippers on. I had a sudden thought: had she put them on deliberately, just to piss me off? It’s the sort of thing she would do.
“Ellie’s obviously feeling like she’s not been the center of attention enough this evening.” Anna looked at me with a pitying expression.
“Let me guess,” she continued, “The heroine of your story is called Ellie, she’s about thirty years old, roughly your height, has brown hair the same length as yours and terrible taste in men?” She cocked an eyebrow spitefully at me. I remained unprovoked. Ignoring her attempts to rile me made me feel quite powerful, it turned out.
“Quite right,” I continued, nodding my head and smiling around at everyone as Anna suppressed a scowl. “Terrible taste in men.” I made a point of looking at Max, Keiran and Dan in turn. Each one of them refused to meet my eye. Did they all know about each other? Had they swapped stories about me, compared notes? I felt something ugly stir in the pit of my belly. A friend was only your friend until you took her to bed: then she was no longer your friend, but something to be embarrassed about.
I shook my head ruefully, and kept spinning my tale.
“About ten years ago, Ellie moved from her small village in the country to a big, scary city in the West.
“The move was not good for her. She was young, she lived alone, had no job, money, or friends, and not the smallest clue as to where her life was headed. She had just enough rent money to cover the next few months, and then she would be homeless.”
“What about her family back home?” June may have been stupid, but she had a heart, a fairly kind one at times.
I shook my head. “Home was not an option. Things back there were... untenable.”
Anna yawned. “Sorry, but this story isn’t exactly scaring me.”
I nodded, motioning for her to stop being impatient. I was getting to it.
“Then, two things happened in quick succession. First, Ellie got a job. A good one, enough to pay the bills and leave enough spare to have some fun.”
“And the second thing?” Keiran, like Anna, was tiring of my story. He heaved himself up once more, handed around more beers. I realized my own bottle was empty again. I was five bottles down, and didn’t feel even remotely hazy. I accepted his offering graciously: sixth was a charm.
“Well. The second thing was that Ellie met someone.”
Max cocked an eyebrow salaciously. “Oh yeah? Who?”
“Ellie met the Little Man.”
Louise snorted in amusement, and laughter quickly rippled around the campfire, followed by lewd jokes about my new boyfriend’s small dick.
I barely heard them, lost in thought as I suddenly found myself. Every detail of that first encounter was burned into memory in the most precise detail. For a moment I had second thoughts about carrying on with the story. Why bother? None of them would understand it, appreciate the special relationship the Little Man and I had.
Then I shook myself, aware of multiple sets of eyes on me. I decided to stick to the original pan. I’d better make this good.
“It happened one night not long after she’d gotten her first pay packet. She’d taken it straight down to the local bar, and made a huge, beer-shaped hole in it.
“Then she dragged herself home to her lonely studio apartment above the Indian takeaway, picking up a greasy takeout she ordered from them as she passed the front door. She sat there in her lounge in silence, drunk, with nothing to watch as her TV had packed up and her internet was no longer working. She was too tired and pissed to read, and too maudlin to listen to music.”
I stopped, swallowing a lump that had formed in my throat. Fuck, those had been dark days. I looked about me for any signs of sympathy, but the faces of my friends were unreadable.
“Interesting fact. Did you know that loneliness kills more people now than obesity? I saw that in a newspaper not so long ago. Apparently, social connections are ‘crucial’ to human well-being and survival, and isolation is health hazard.” I could feel an unbearable sadness surging through my veins, and I struggled to keep a lid on it.
June bit her lip and had the good sense to look sorry for me.
“Anyway, there she was, sat there on the floor of her apartment, covered in spots of grease and crumbs and splashes of beer, thinking about how alone she was, when she heard a tiny, insistent knocking at her door.”
“Thank Christ for that,” Anna sighed, predictably. “This is the most uneventful scary story in the history of scary stories.”
“Fuck off, Anna,” I said, bluntly, and enjoyed the look of shock on her outraged face.
“Now, come on Ellie, there’s no need for…” Keiran began, looking at me in disapproval.
I spoke over him.
“To begin with, the knocking was so faint, she thought she might have imagined it. She stood up, and moved over to her door cautiously, wobbling slightly as she was still full of booze. She stopped and waited to see if the knocking would occur again. It did, louder this time, and curiously, it sounded as if it were close to the ground, as if someone incredibly short, or, absurdly, someone who was lying down, were rapping against the door.
“Now, Ellie was cautious, living alone as she did, but she was also curious. And lonely, as we’ve already established. So she waited some more, wondering whether or not to call out, and trying to decide what to do. When the knocking began for a third time, she took a deep breath, unlocked the door, and pulled it open.
“Whereupon the Little Man strode into her apartment, and closed the door behind him.”
There was a more peaceful atmosphere in the camp now, as my audience became reluctantly engrossed in my story.
“The Little Man was just that: a perfectly proportioned, slender, pale, ageless man who stood no more than a foot above the ground.
“To begin with Ellie thought he was a doll, a cleverly animated simulacrum, or animatronic, and not real at all.
“But then he began to move around the apartment, picking things up, putting them down, looking around him, and she knew she was being absurd. The Little Man was as alive and real as she was, and she didn’t have the slightest fucking idea of who he was, or what he was doing there.
“She studied him carefully, trying to decide whether or not to be afraid of him. So far, he’d made no threatening moves towards her, and he’d said nothing to her either. It didn’t take long to figure out why: the Little Man had no mouth.
“On closer inspection it transpired that he also had no ears, and no nose. He did have eyes, of sorts, but they were staring white orbs that looked like ping-pong balls. There were no eyelids, or pupils either. Just these solid, white globes stuck to his otherwise blank face.”
“Cool,” said Louise again, like a moron.
“The Little Man was totally featureless in all other senses of the word. He wore no clothes, and didn’t appear to have any genitals. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent. She could see what looked like his blood moving through the veins beneath the delicate skin—it was blue-black blood, and pumped slowly
, as if he were asleep.
“He had small hands with pearly, smooth fingernails. He was also totally hairless.
“Despite his androgynous appearance, Ellie could tell he was a man, because, despite having no mouth, he eventually spoke to her. Not in the conventional way, but in a much more personal way. His voice popped up inside her head: soft, sibilant, like a snake.
*Hello.*
“Then he sat down cross-legged in front of her.”
I rubbed a hand over my eyes, overcome with emotion for a second. I remembered how he had moved: like an alien thing, in slow motion. He had shifted so fluidly his bones looked molten. His greeting had rolled around inside my mind like an echo in a cave.
“Before Ellie knew what she was doing, her own legs had folded beneath her, and she sank to the floor opposite him.
“The Little Man held out his hand. Ellie took it, and shook it. She asked him who he was.
“I am your friend, he said, and before she knew what was happening, she was crying.
“She’d never really had a proper friend before now.”
“Oh my God, Ellie, we get it!” Anna stood up, angrily. “You had a shitty childhood! You had no friends! Daddy probably beat you with a tire iron when you were eight years old, blah blah blah. We’ve all had stuff happen to us. This story is weak.”
“I want to hear it,” said June, quietly. It may have been her only moment of defiance in the history of our acquaintance, but I was grateful for it.
“Me too.” Surprisingly, this was Max. Was it possible he was feeling guilty? “Stop being such a bitch, Anna.” She shot him a look of pure rage. It was unusual for Max to take sides against her.
Keiran drew forth one more beer. There weren’t many left. He opened it, carefully this time, with no flair or drama, and handed it to me. “I could keep listening,” he said, grudgingly.
I sensed the tide turning in my favor, and thrilled to the feeling.
“The Little Man turned out to be a good friend. He took up residence with Ellie, and lived in the small space under her bed, where it was darkest, because, he said, his eyes hurt in the light and his skin was sensitive to it. When she awoke in the morning, he was there, perched on the end of her bed, waiting for her to move and start the day. When she came home from work, he sat crossed-legged on the living room floor, waiting to greet her, to ask her how she was.
