by Mark Morris
“Probably for the best you can’t,” said Armaan. “’orrible, innit?”
“Waste of money,” repeated Bill.
They’d watched as the winch swung the head clumsily into the egg cup thing, while the artist shouted and waved his arms about, until it was settled and he’d stood back and admired it.
The artist with one name told them it was called Conqueror and that it was looking south-east, to all the bits of the world we’d conquered and spoiled.
“Why?” Bill had asked. “What’s it looking for?”
That had pleased the artist a great deal and he’d crouched down for a minute, with his arms over his head in a way that nearly made them go and get help. But just in time he got up again, and held Bill’s shoulder, which the lads could tell Bill didn’t like one bit, and had said really slowly, like it was the last line in a film or something, “Redemption, mate. It’s looking for our redemption.”
* * *
Danny decided to leave the truck idling, walk round the grass perimeter, and take the barrow. The traffic was heavy and he’d better look as if he was busy in case anyone from the council was passing. He’d thrown the big net in the back, the one with the telescopic expanding handle that Eddie ordered to get dead squirrels out of trees. They’d never found any dead squirrels in trees yet. It was just something Eddie admitted he’d read on his daughter’s Facebook page. But they had it now. And it might be useful.
He put the net in the barrow and set off clockwise round the grass strip.
When he came to the place where they’d found the artist’s car, he stopped and set the barrow down. The years had smoothed away all the deep tyre marks, but Danny, all of them in fact, knew the exact spot where it had been towed from. The gorse was particularly thick behind, and a willow in front that somebody had been daft enough to start coppicing seasons ago, probably Eddie, was now a living basket of shiny impenetrable twigs.
Danny took out a piece of chewing gum and looked out from the roundabout in the direction the car had been facing. From this slightly raised terrain he could see over the top of the traffic roaring round in front of him in an endless stream, to the motorway heading east and the distant, bland landscape beyond. You could see a long way. If there was anything worth looking at.
The police had concluded the artist’s small, cheap car had crashed, because the bumper was so deeply embedded in the high part of the soft grass verge. The passenger door was wide open and they never found the artist.
“Did a proper runner,” Eddie had said.
“Pffft,” said Bill. “Not surprised.”
“Waste of money. Whole thing.”
Danny and Armaan had been there when they towed the car off. Bill said they were going to have to get topsoil in to fix the grass, but Armaan was good at shovelling and raking, so they never did.
Danny had had a chat with the traffic cop watching the truck take the car away. He’d said the petrol tank was completely empty and the battery was dead. Danny thought about that later. A lot.
“Well that’s ripe,” Bill had said when he’d finished reading the local paper.
That was the time after The Public Art Project had been up for a while, and after the artist had crashed, and then done the runner and never come back. After the artist had to talk all the time on the local news, and reply to angry letters in the paper and nasty things on Facebook about why it was good when everyone else thought it was bad. Nobody liked it. Some people said it distracted drivers and it might cause a nasty accident. Other people said it was a waste of money, and it was ugly and stupid when there weren’t enough nurses and the libraries were shutting down. Most people didn’t know what it was supposed to be.
“Whassat then?” Armaan had asked.
“Says he was mental or something.”
“Who?” said Eddie.
“The artist. The Public Art Project.”
“Yeah?” said Armaan.
“PTSD,” said Bill. “Pffft.”
“You wha’?” said Armaan.
Nobody knew what that was, but Eddie said he might have heard it was something to do with the army.
So when the artist crashed and ran away and never came back, because, they all suspected, he was mental after everyone being so unkind about his work that he liked and nobody else did, they waited a while and then the council said they could take The Public Art Project down. On account of nobody liking it.
The egg cup thing and the carved horse head thing inside the egg cup thing were taken away by a big truck from London, and the lads were left to take down the metal post. After that the Blowbarton roundabout only got mentioned on the local news or the newspapers or Facebook because of the tailbacks on the motorway, or if one of the junctions was closed for roadworks.
Danny had thought a lot more, and for a long time after, about why the artist’s car had no petrol and a flat battery. It wasn’t until long after they’d first started noticing The Dark Thing that he worked out why that might be. But by that time the police weren’t interested in a minor car crash years ago on a busy roundabout without CCTV, and a mental artist who’d run away.
* * *
There was never an argument about who noticed The Dark Thing first. That was because it was something nobody liked to talk about much. Danny thought it was Bill, because he’d come back all pale and strange that time he’d gone back to get a strimmer someone had left. But then Bill would have said it was Armaan, who wouldn’t speak for a whole day after he’d been sent, late afternoon in February, to prune some branches catching the tops of high-sided vehicles. But they’d all seen it, one time or another. At least, they’d sort of seen it. It was like when you get one of those floater things in your eye. That can happen in the growing season, if you don’t wear your safety glasses when you mow. You move your eye to see the thing in your eye and it just moves too. So you see it but you don’t. Well that was what The Dark Thing was like.
“Like a shark shape movin’ under a boat,” said Armaan, the one time he’d talked about it, not meeting their eyes.
“Seen a shark then?” said Bill with interest.
“Nah. Seen ’em on them telly wildlife programmes.”
But they knew what he meant. If you tried to look straight at it, it moved with your eye and all you saw was nothing at all.
That should have been fine. Not doing any harm, was it? Just a thing that was there but you couldn’t look right at. Trouble was that you knew it was looking at you. And you could feel it wasn’t looking in a nice way.
“Best left,” Eddie had said. When he came back one day, rattled. That’s all he would say.
But now Danny was here. He hadn’t left it. He’d thought about it for too long. The estate. What might happen if The Dark Thing didn’t just watch any more. And so here he was. With his net. For taking dead squirrels out of trees.
Someone changing lanes honked at someone else. He jumped.
* * *
Danny entered the main thicket by way of the hazels. No thorns. Easier to push through, though still tricky. Even for a cloudy day it was darker in the undergrowth than he’d expected. The high leaf canopy shut out the sky altogether and the bushes below were tightly entwined. Even the constant roar of traffic was muffled in here, like the noise of a street from a curtained basement. As he moved slowly and carefully towards the centre of the roundabout he tutted as the net kept snagging on things.
He had a plan of sorts now. Not a very clever one. But a plan. Danny was going to sit against a tree in the middle, a place where he knew he could still see the hazards of the truck flickering through the leaves. Then he would wait, with the net, and see what happened. The big sycamore right in the centre, slightly raised, was in full leaf. He headed for that.
There was all sorts in here. People these days just rolled down their windows and chucked out any old thing.
“Pigs, ain’t they?” Eddie had said once, while they cleared up the central reservation near the station.
“Pffft,�
�� Bill had replied, as he picked up half a bra with the long-handled grabber and dropped it into a plastic bin bag.
Blowbarton was as bad. Danny stepped over crushed cans and polystyrene cartons. Crisp packets and bottles. And as he moved deeper towards the middle, all the way in between the normal rubbish were bones. Lots of them. Small skulls and broken pieces. You didn’t get them on the central reservations. Not that he’d seen anyway.
It gets hungry, he thought. Just as well these roundabouts are full of things to eat. The lads had always liked knowing that. Their secret. Your average driver speeds past and never has half a clue about the wildlife living in these wooded islands, right in the middle of an ocean of traffic, where no human ever treads. It’s why the foxes brave the lethal motorways to get to them. Plenty of mice and voles and rabbits living secretly and quietly in their leafy safe haven.
He reached the tree, put down the net, cleared a spot on the ground against the trunk and sat down. It was sandy. Almost completely sand, in fact. Under the leaf mould. That was odd. If you’d taken a vote from the lads about the pH of the Blowbarton soil, most would have guessed clay.
“That border outside the library,” Eddie had said once, back in the day when they were working out what to plant.
“Yeah?” said Bill.
“Too acid. Needs azaleas.”
“Pfft,” Bill said.
“Tellin’ ya,” said Eddie and then he sulked.
Bill made them plant lavender. It all died. Eddie was pleased. Since then they always dug in peat or dug in lime. But who planted in sand? Nobody planted in sand. Some chumps they must have been, those who planted up Blowbarton all those years ago. Still, thought Danny. Worked. Didn’t it? Look at the growth. He’d mention sand to Bill when he got back. Maybe it would help over at those five-a-side pitches, where nothing decent would grow in the beds at the entrance.
There were a lot more bones in the sand beneath the leaves here. Tiny things. Delicate like toothpicks. Danny ran his fingers through the fine grains, sand like you’d expect on one of those Caribbean beaches. And all the little bones peppered through it like shells on a beach. Then he just sat and waited.
It wasn’t a bad day. Not too cold. Not too warm. Been dry for weeks, so not damp. And no wind to speak of. He looked around. If it wasn’t for The Dark Thing, he thought, you could live in here. It was quite nice. So hidden. So secret. The orange hazard lights flashed on and off far away through the tiny gaps in the undergrowth, and Danny thought he should take some pictures. To show the lads he’d been right into the centre. Show he’d meant it.
He put his hand in his jacket pocket to fetch out his mobile. It wasn’t there. It was still in the truck. On the seat if he remembered. He tutted, and took out some more chewing gum instead. No matter. It would be good to work in here again, he thought. Once he’d shifted The Dark Thing and it was safe. His eye roamed over the bushes needing trimming, and the trees needing pollarding. And then he looked at the other things on the ground.
There was a shoe. They found shoes all the time. Usually trainers. They could never work out why. This was an unusual shoe though. More of a boot. Dirty and half buried in leaves, you could still make out it had once been bright blue and shiny. Red laces. Like something a student would wear, thought Danny. Or an artist. He took the net, pulled out the telescopic handle and gingerly poked at the crepe sole.
In the canopy a breeze stirred the leaves and Danny looked up. It wasn’t a car transporter. It was here in the middle. The tree quivering above him.
It was The Dark Thing. He could feel it looking.
Danny thought about what to do next. He knew where it was, because it was all dark at the very far edge of where his left eye would reach. Maybe if he kept his eyes forward but moved his head.
He tried that. It moved at the same speed and was still as dark. Maybe even darker.
Then he thought he might try closing his eyes, moving his head to where he thought it was and then opening them really fast.
Trouble was Danny’s heart was beating very fast now, because he was scared. He didn’t want to close his eyes. What he wanted to do was to get up and run away. But he was here to do a job. He was here to shift The Dark Thing and that was that. So he glanced across at the comforting flicker of the hazard lights through the leaves, then swallowed hard and closed his eyes. He shifted his head a few inches to the left and then opened them again. A shape moved. Much too fast to see. But a shape.
This is a good plan, thought Danny. He shifted slightly against the tree, because he’d sunk a way into the fine sand a little and it was uncomfortable. The Dark Thing was to his right this time. His heart was still beating loud and hard in his ears, but he closed his eyes again. I’ll wait longer this time, he thought. He turned his head and counted to five. He opened his eyes.
It was a very odd shape. Danny wondered if that was because it was closer now or because he had surprised it. But as it whipped out of his vision, like a fly-fishing line from a river, it left behind an impression this time. Big, like an animal, but in a distorted human shape. With much too big a head. Like a horse. Or a bit of a horse. Or something. It was a horrible shape.
He looked down at the net and wondered if a device for getting dead squirrels out of trees was big enough to throw over something you couldn’t see and was bigger than a person and half a horse. And something too frightening to look at.
He shifted again and glanced down. His legs were covered in sand now and trying to move them was difficult. He pushed himself up with one arm, but it just made them sink in deeper. Danny was starting to panic. The Dark Thing was still watching him. He knew it was. It was very black indeed to his right now, and the shadow it made was filling his vision save for the part that could still see the orange hazard lights blinking through the trees.
The shoe that he’d been looking at when The Dark Thing came, was still lying in front of him. It bothered him. Danny pushed out the net handle again and gave it another poke. This time he jabbed it hard enough to turn it over. Sticking out the top of the boot was a bone. It looked like a leg bone.
There was one time, back in the day, when they’d found something terrible.
Armaan had shifted all the dead wood and unused sacks of manure from up against the chicken wire behind the medical centre.
“You wanna come ’ere!” he’d shouted in quite a high voice for a man. Armaan never shouted.
They’d all come. There was a leg sticking out from under a tarpaulin. It was in dirty trousers, and had a sock. But no shoe.
“’at’s not looking good,” said Bill.
They sent for help. Turned out it was a person. Who’d died. A methadone user who the people at the medical centre knew. The lads had to answer some questions from the police that came, but then they took the body away and nobody mentioned it again. It wasn’t even in the paper. Bill had checked for a few days.
Danny looked at the bone in the boot and wondered if this would be in the paper when people knew. He thought it probably would.
He looked down and realised that he was nearly up to his waist in the sand now. He couldn’t move his legs at all. It seemed like everything around him was growing very dark indeed.
Danny knew then what was going to happen. The Dark Thing was just waiting.
A plan would have been a good idea, thought Danny. After all, he knew what had happened to the artist’s car. The petrol tank was dry because it had run out keeping the hazards going. And then the battery would have run out after that. Just like what was going to happen to Danny’s truck. The orange light would stop. The campfire would go out.
There was no point in shouting. And no phone. So he thought for a minute. His fags and lighter were in his top pocket. Danny fumbled and found the lighter. There’s a bit of luck, he thought. Could have been in his trousers and they were under sand now. Out of reach.
He pulled a few dry twigs towards him and made a little pile. The deadfall was dry as tinder under here.
Be
fore he lit it, he could feel The Dark Thing quiver. That made him happy. Was it fear or fury? He hoped it was both. He hoped that even if it didn’t die, because maybe it was very old and couldn’t, that it would go back to wherever it came from and carry on hiding from campfires, waiting in the dark for desert people to make mistakes.
This new plan was a gamble all right. But then only metres away, hundreds and hundreds of drivers were passing by every hour. Hundreds. One would stop to help. Maybe not the people who threw bottles and cans and trainers out of their windows, or honked at folk when they pulled up onto the verge. But maybe a kind truck driver. Or a lady coming back from the shops. Maybe even a firefighter off duty. You never knew. Someone would stop. Someone would come and help. And then it would be all over.
He flicked the lighter and put the flame to the pile of kindling. It caught like a dream and he fed it with dry leaves and more twigs until it was quite the blaze, crackling and hissing. He waited until he was sure it was nice and hot and then gently nudged the fire into the deadfall, watching as it spread rapidly up into the dead grey branches of the willow. Then Danny closed his eyes.
* * *
“Wha’s it say then?” said Eddie.
“Pffft,” said Bill, putting the paper down. “You don’ wanna know.”
Armaan got up to put the kettle on.
“They never get nothin’ right, them journalists,” said Bill. “Money for old rope.”
“Wha’?” said Eddie.
“Bein’ a journalist.”
“Yeah,” said Armaan.
He washed the teaspoons, because it was his turn.
THE HOUSE OF THE HEAD
by Josh Malerman
In the winter of 1974, Elvie May, six years old at the time, witnessed a haunting so jarring that, well into adulthood, it never entirely faded from the frontispiece of her mind. It didn’t affect her directly in that neither she nor her family was the object of the ghost story. Though the haunting did take place inside her house. A second house. Her dollhouse. Pink and white, sprawling and ornate, the home was much nicer than the Mays’ larger home that harbored it. And, to scale, those who lived within the dollhouse (Elvie’s people, she’d say) had much more room to move about than Elvie and her parents did in theirs. The sizes of the nuclear families were the same; three people total in each: mom, dad, child. Elvie had her parents just like Ethan had his. For this, she related greatly to the brown-haired boy who called the dollhouse home. Both families even owned a dog, and both dogs (the big one, Elvie’s Jack Russell, and the little one, Ethan’s Great Dane) played vital roles in the outcome of the haunting in the winter of 1974.
