by Adam Colton
Conundrum
By Adam Colton
A collection of dark takes from deepest Kent
Originally published in paperback by United Press Ltd. as 'Seven Dreams of Reality' (2009) and 'The Kent-erbury Tales' (2012).
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Cover Design by Adam Colton
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Table of Contents
The Dream Machine
Voices From the Frying Pan
The Observer
Vision of a Village at Dawn
The Second Coming
Concert for Andrea
Alternative Creation Story
Changing Fortunes
Snakes Alive!
Return of The Dream Machine
The Last Prayer
To The Lighthouse
Alternative Apocalypse Story
River Cruise To Reality
About Adam Colton
Preface
England's oldest county provides the backdrop as lives are turned upside down in the most unlikely settings. The characters wrestle with their sanity, as they make astonishing discoveries about themselves. Their world is never what it seems. Is anything they experience even real?
The stories gradually fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle until even the reader and the author himself are drawn into the dilemmas.
The tales were originally released as 'Seven Dreams of Reality' and 'The Kent-erbury Tales.' Some are expanded; others are modified; one is brand new. Let your mind wander and enjoy these mysterious tales from deepest Kent.
The Dream Machine
Vincent Smithfield had always had the opinion that dreams were of considerably greater interest than reality.
“He would say that,” people always murmured to themselves as he extolled the virtues of another restless night’s sleep to his audience at the bar of his local pub, “All he does is paint picture frames for a living.”
There was more going on in Vincent’s basement than his struggling business, but as nobody ever ventured down there, nobody ever knew.
And so one day, he found himself standing beside a white-board, waving a marker pen around randomly at a room full of academics and newspaper reporters. He had hired out the town hall in the Kentish country town of Tenterden to announce his invention to the world and the audience of curious but sceptical locals were now seated with an aisle down the middle, waiting to hear what emerged from Vincent's mouth, and more importantly, from his invention.
“Dreams are a product of a chemical called MDMA,” he announced proudly, “This substance occurs naturally in the warts on the backs of toads,” [carefully timed pause] “…although I have never had the urge to lick a toad before.”
He had no idea if any of this was true; it was just something somebody had said to him in conversation when he was hiking around Scotland many years ago. Given the lack of laughter from his audience he wished he had omitted this dubious 'fact.'
Still, his words were of little importance; it was the machine that people had come to see.
The ‘science’ had something to do with being wired up to electrodes which monitored a person’s brain patterns during sleep. During a period of REM or ‘dream sleep,’ the probes would activate the recording device which would then create a digitally simulated approximation of what was happening in the subject’s mind.
In a soundproofed room behind, his Uncle Bert was obliviously snoozing away, having followed the simple instructions to stay awake for 24 hours prior to the experiment. For taking part in this ‘wanton lunacy’ he would be rewarded with a pint of Scragglewort ale whenever he walked into the local pub for the next six months. It seemed a reasonable repayment.
Proudly turning on the overhead projector, Vincent looked down at his computer screen and made a few arcane movements with the mouse. Then suddenly, up flashed an image of a church surrounded by daffodils.
The film was clearly the view of somebody walking along a stony footpath towards a church door. Vincent didn't recognise this church as anywhere local. The sound of birds and church bells now wafted around the room. Particularly prominent in this bucolic soundtrack was the wonderfully unimaginative call of the wood pigeon. Or was it a ring-necked dove? Vincent never was quite sure.
On the screen an elderly gent’s hand reached for the large, black, metal handle. Giving a twist and a yank, the door opened with a creak; inside was something unexpected – the interior of the little Romney Marsh pub where Vincent and his Uncle would spend their evenings – a haven of winter warmth in a barren, empty landscape of flat, open fields. The area had a colourful history of smuggling, and pubs such as this would have been a hive of illicit activity in days gone by. In modern times the pub was still a rustic looking place with a blazing log fire and the feel of being in somebody's front room, a small one at that. But something was very strange about this – there was a tree growing out of the floor in the corner of the room, with four children sitting around it on small chairs.
Vincent recognised this tree as one up in the public woodlands on the hills that surrounded The Marsh. This tree was unique because many lovers had carved their initials into the trunk over the decades. His Uncle Bert had always told him about when he left his own mark on the bark in the 60s, but he would never say who he had been there with, as it was prior to him meeting Auntie Mary. Determined to uncover his uncle's mystery accomplice, Vincent had once systematically wandered every path in the Hamstreet Woods nature reserve until he managed to track down the tree, but all he could make out was 'B.S. 4...' - the initials below were now indecipherable, but as the tree had made it into Uncle Bert's dream, it obviously had some lingering significance buried deep within his subconscious.
There was some music playing in the background which sounded positively mediaeval, all flutes and the like with a pounding yet indecipherable beat underneath. This again was strange as there was never music in their local.
Vincent gazed at the faces in the audience which were now devoid of all expression, totally engrossed in the ‘movie’ that his uncle had unwittingly prepared for them.
A female voice then addressed the dreamer, “Where’s Juliette?”
Juliette, who everybody correctly assumed to be the barmaid, had gone to a bingo hall in Blackpool. Given that the pub, and so presumably the church, and definitely the hall where the presentation was taking place, were all in the county of Kent, it seemed pretty unlikely that anybody would get a drink this evening.
There was a hypnotic quality about the combinations of sounds and images, especially the incessant bar-room hubbub. Having analysed his own dreams since childhood, Vincent knew that these sounds would still be buzzing around his uncle’s head when he came to.
Just then there was an almighty crash; the dark brown roots of the tree were rising up out of the ground. The floor was giving way and the flagstones were now juxtaposed at the kinds of angles you would encounter in one of those crooked houses in a kiddies’ fairground. It was clearly impossible to stay on two feet and a pair of aging, hairy hands reached forward to grab hold of one of the aging, hairy, upwardly mobile roots. This person was clearly being lifted off the ground and was hanging on for dear life. The noise emanating from the speakers around the room was a deafening rushing sound, like being trapped inside your own
head with the blood rushing around interminably. The audience shuffled uncomfortably in their chairs as the claustrophobic feel of the ‘dream’ began to get just a little too vivid for comfort.
The view on the screen was now of a church with its rows of wooden pews as though being viewed from the rafters. And what’s more, Bert was losing his grip, whilst the dream’s grip on the viewers was becoming increasingly strong.
His hands were slipping and finally relinquished their grasp on the gnarled oak’s roots.
On the screen were shots of stained glass windows flashing past at delirious angles. A feeling of impending doom washed over all who watched. The fall seemed to go on forever, until…
The screen went blank and a collective sigh issued from Vincent’s congregation, the tension being alleviated with his intentionally humorous comment that Uncle Bert had just awoken with a ‘spasmodic jerk.’ Ironically, this was a rather derogatory term that the elderly chap had used to describe his nephew when he was first invited to take part in the experiment. Poetic justice you could say, now that the machine was a proven success.
Quite what the practical uses of a ‘dream capture synthesiser’ would be was another question entirely. There was always the possibility that a suspicious spouse could use it to catch a partner dreaming of somebody else, but attaching a series of wires and electrodes to a sleeping husband or wife without waking them could be tricky, and as Vincent knew, dreams should not be taken literally.
So the machine sat idle in Vincent’s basement for a while, and the local press ran a series of stories on what they had seen, with a general bent towards proving Mr Smithfield to be some kind of befuddled eccentric. Of course, the inventor had now taken to sleeping in the basement, wired up to the infernal device, which so far hadn’t yielded anything more interesting than eight hours of electrostatic fuzz. Why did it record Uncle Bert’s night-time preambles so faithfully yet fail to pick up anything since? – Not even that dream about the budgie that was actually a snake with feathers on!
Vincent knew that obsessionality wasn’t healthy, so one morning after checking the machine for recordings that clearly weren’t there, he packed a bag and pedalled to his nearest railway station which was a good five miles from his home. Such was the price of living in a rural idyll. A quote he had used at a recent presentation had reminded him of his days hiking the Caledonian landscape with nothing more than a rucksack and a friend with a head full of crazy ideas. It was time to revisit those paths, to rediscover the thoughts the pair of them had dropped along the way, in hope of some inspiration.
With bike chained up, Vincent breezed into the quiet booking office at Ham Street (he had no idea why the village name was spelt with two words when it was a station and one when it was a woodland). It was a pleasant country station which looked more like a house, with a veranda around the entrance to the platform. Vincent knew the ticket seller well, and as he walked in he announced, “This is a bit of a random one, but I want to go to Inverness.”
“Inverness?” replied the assistant incredulously, “I don't sell many of those.”
“Yes, on the first possible train please.”
After a few taps had been made on a computer keyboard the assistant looked up and announced, “Well if you catch the next one, you've got four changes and you'll get there by early evening.”
“OK, how much is that as an open return?”
“A hundred and seventy six pounds altogether. That's a saver return.”
“Saver?” spluttered Vincent, “Do most of your customers have to remortgage their houses to buy their train tickets?”
“Just the ones who go to Inverness!” replied the assistant, wryly.
“Look, I'll take it. I'm going away for a few days – a little hiking trip to try and chill myself out a bit,” declared Vincent.
The assistant looked surprised, “Oh, I thought things were going well for you. I saw your piece in the newspaper.”
“Huh, you mean 'eccentric framer's latest invention' in inverted commas? The truth is I'm just having difficulties getting the machine perfected, and these sarcastic articles are putting pressure on me to prove them wrong, but stuff like this takes time, right?”
“Well, you can have up to a month away on this ticket. Just make sure you return off-peak by that date there,” said the assistant, pointing to the ticket, “After then it's void.”
With that the inventor inserted his credit card into the machine, tapped in his PIN number, took his tickets and wandered out onto the platform, inhaling the fresh air as though he was already deep in the Scottish mountains, in spite of merely looking across at a new housing estate.
The journey was something of an epic, and by the time Vincent arrived at the Caledonia Lodge, it was dark. Having dropped his bag onto the bed in his room, the inventor settled himself at the cosy bar downstairs. Vincent sat with his pint of ale observing the typically Scottish things on the wall such as tartan scarfs, a sporran, etc. Then a voice piped up from the bar-stool next to him, in a strong Scottish accent; “You're not from round here, are you?”
“How can you tell?” ventured Vincent.
“Your accent. You're from down south.”
“Indeed,” said Vincent, “I guess you'd call me a Southern softie.”
“Ah, come on man,” came the reply, “The name's Maurice, but you can call me Jock. Most southerners do.” Vincent's new acquaintance stuck out his hand and they shook.
“My name's Vincent,” reciprocated the inventor.
“So, are you on holiday?” inquired Maurice.
“No, I'm just doing a bit of walking, getting a breath of fresh air, you know? I was up here many years ago, hiking with a friend, so I'm revisiting our route.”
“Ah, we get a lot of city workers up here getting away from it all. You're a banker or something I bet?”
Vincent looked almost indignant, “No, I'm not nearly as corrupt as that; I'm a pic... er... an inventor.”
“Oh,” said the Scotsman, surprised, “We don't get many of them up here.”
“How about Alexander Graham Bell? John Loudon McAdam? James Watt? The bloke who invented the bike?” teased Vincent.
“Ah, you're good!” laughed the Scotsman, “Well, you know what I mean – these days, ya know.”
Vincent looked serious all of a sudden. “I don't think there are many inventors these days. Most of us have been trained not to think, not to ask questions – it's OK to be creative when you're a child, and the teachers will even encourage it, but once you've grown up they'll tell you to be quiet, and then they'll try to stuff you into a pigeonhole, and if you're a nice and obedient doggy you get some of this stuff,” he said, rattling the loose change in his pocket.
“Ah come on man, it's not so bad when you can exchange it for this stuff,” said the Scotsman, swirling the whisky in his glass and downing the remainder, “So what have you invented?”
“Well, nothing really yet,” said Vincent shyly, “I'm interested in dreams. I'm trying to record them on a computer.”
Maurice looked seriously and then broke into a laugh before singing a couplet from John Lennon's Imagine: “People say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.” The barmaid, who had been ignoring them both, looked up from the other side of the bar as a friendly warning to keep the noise down. The Scotsman then turned back to Vincent and quietly inquired, “You're winding me up, right?”
“No, I'm serious,” said Vincent, pulling out a folded newspaper cutting from his jacket pocket, “I'm here to get away from all this!” He pointed at the headline 'Dream or Reality? Local Eccentric's Latest Invention.'
“Eccentric' – look at that! The whole article is just a Mickey-take, yet the reporter who wrote this actually saw my invention working. Seriously, I had to bribe my Uncle with a pint every pub-night for six months to get him to be a guinea pig for that experiment.”
Maurice thoughtfully responded, “It's always the same with anything new. First they'll disbelieve you, then they'll
rip it out of you for a bit and then, if you're really onto something, they'll attack you, because they can't stand somebody doing something they didn't think of, let alone making money from it. Nobody likes change, especially if they're doing pretty well out of keeping things the way they are.”
“Yeah, a bit like those bankers,” vented Vincent, turning his wrath against the bastions of the system, “Their system crashes, we pour in billions to get it going again and then they resist all efforts to change it. No wonder they're all coming up here to spend their millions.”
“Oh aye, you're not wrong there,” chuckled Maurice, “Well, I'm going up to me room. I'm shattered. I'll probably see you at breakfast. Make sure they don't skimp on the haggis. You'll need that if you're going walking in them mountains.”
The pair said a friendly 'goodnight' and as Maurice left the bar he called out to the barmaid, “Goodnight Juliette.”
'Juliette?' thought Vincent, recalling his uncle's dream, 'Too much coincidence.'
It was sometime during the next day that things got rather strange.
The grassy trail was narrow and hemmed in on both sides by brambles. As the warm sunshine beat down, flies darted in and out of the undergrowth. The sound of birdsong was very prominent and clearest of all was the familiar coo of his old friend, the wood pigeon. He humorously mused that the call of this ubiquitous bird was just the same north of the border as back in deepest Kent – it had not the slightest hint of a Scottish accent!
After a hundred yards or so, Vincent came to a decrepit wooden gate surrounded by overhanging bushes. Realising that it would be much simpler to climb over than to attempt to open it, he hauled himself over with ease and emerged from the bushes into what seemed to be a churchyard.
Then suddenly one of those déjà vu moments hit him. The scene before him was strikingly familiar: a stony footpath, daffodils and there, bold as brass in front of him was a church that he thought belonged in Kent. This was insanity. Or was it?
It was his uncle’s dream that he was remembering, not his own. Uncle Bert must have visited the exact spot at some point in his life and conveniently regurgitated the memory in his dream. Yes, that was it.
They say that curiosity killed the cat, and Vincent’s inquisitive nature naturally compelled him to walk up to the large, arched wooden door and try the handle. As he approached, he felt like an actor trapped in a film, carrying out his role as though there were no other options available. His heart was beating so intensely that he thought it was going to pound right out of his chest. Before clasping the handle, he put his ear to the door. He could hear music. Peculiarly, the rhythm of his agitated heartbeat seemed to fit in perfectly with the rhythm of the melody. It sounded like folk music.
Then suddenly, there it was – the exact same mesmerising tune he had heard emanating from the speakers at his presentation; a flute tackling the melody, backed by stringed instruments of some kind, perhaps a harpsichord. How could this be happening? Vincent’s logical mind was being thrown into disarray. Was he losing it?
With a burst of adrenaline, he grabbed the metal hoop with both hands, and making an almost violent twisting motion, he released the catch inside and pushed firmly on the heavy, oak door.
The quartet of young musicians were stunned by this intrusion. They were practicing for a recital of Elizabethan music which would take place in the church that evening, resplendent in full Tudor dress. Now all four of them were staring at Vincent with open mouths. A lady’s footsteps echoed across the flagstone floor of the ancient building with a fast yet determined pace.
As she turned the corner from the central aisle to face the door, she stopped in her tracks, clearly alarmed by the fact that a strange man was staring in an almost menacing way at her four youthful performers. Just what was this fellow’s intention?
Unsure that she could handle this situation, she needed some assistance, so opening her mouth, she firmly addressed the children with a question:
“Where’s Juliette?”
Vincent’s head was spinning and he began to feel quite faint. Was it the woman from the bar in the Caledonia Hotel or was he now stuck inside his uncle's dream?
His eyesight became blurred and he struggled to focus, fixing his eyes on the bright light coming through the stained glass windows. It was as though he had become trapped inside his own mind and a feeling of dread washed over him like a huge tidal wave. He turned to grab hold of the door to steady himself but missed the handle. His hands scraped down the wooden surface, and yes, it appeared to him exactly as that oak tree had done to his uncle in his dream. The sound of blood rushing around his head was immense and time seemed to have slowed to a pace where it felt like it was about to stop completely. Then, bang – his head hit the ground and he was out like a light.
At first Vincent thought he must have fallen out of bed in the night but gradually he remembered the church, the music and a sudden encounter with a cold, flagstone floor. Slowly, it dawned on him; he wasn’t in a place of worship but wrapped up in a duvet in his own basement. He had never been to Scotland, at least not since that walk with his mate twenty years ago.
Sitting upright in the half-light, he carefully extricated himself from the maze of wires that had been attached to his head.
Surely his invention couldn’t work in reverse? For several nights running he had meticulously connected himself up to the device until his head looked as though it had sprouted wires, yet the next day it had recorded nothing. Had it actually put his uncle’s dream into his mind instead? And if so, what a breakthrough that would be – people could experience each other’s dreams as and when they pleased – had Vincent inadvertently opened the door to a new era of virtual reality entertainment? Not forgetting his Uncle Bert’s contribution to the experiment of course.
His Uncle Bert?
Vincent scratched his head. “I haven’t got an Uncle Bert,” he mumbled to himself.
Removing the plethora of wires from his head, Vincent then wandered over to the table, expecting to see the familiar headline that had tormented him with the words 'Dream or Reality? Local Eccentric's Latest 'Invention', but instead it was just an unremarkable feature along the lines of 'Local MP Plants First Tree in New Woodland.'
'First tree?' thought Vincent, 'Hmmm, where was the tree in the dream about the church? I didn't experience that bit.'
Wandering over to the kitchen area, Vincent filled the kettle while scratching his head and decided to make a quick phone call as it boiled. The man on the other end was an older man with grey hair and a beard – Vincent's psychologist.
“Hello, it's Vincent here. I need your help.”
“Good morning Vincent, came the reply, “What's troubling you?”
“Well, I'm not sure,” answered the bewildered inventor, “Do you remember the presentation I did the other week?”
“I'm sorry?”
“The presentation – recording dreams and all that?”
The doctor breathed a sigh of frustration and then began, “We've talked about this, haven't we? Are you still taking your medication?”
“Look, I'm very confused,” the inventor continued, “I did a presentation with my Uncle Bert, but I don't have an Uncle Bert, yet whoever it was had a dream and I recorded it on the machine I invented.”
“I'm not sure that your perceptions about the machine are accurate Mr Smithfield,” sighed the doctor, trying not to sound too condescending.
Vincent was piqued; “Look, I was there. It was a church in Scotland. It's a real place. I can show you on a map.”
The therapist was walking on eggshells; “I don't want to alarm you, but do you still remember your last therapy session, when you invited me to witness your invention? You told me about the dream with the church and I came to your house. You showed me the folder on the computer where it was supposed to be, but there was nothing there. Remember?”
“No, you're playing games with me. It was the other folders that were empty.”
“
I'm sorry Mr Smithfield, I don't want to disappoint you, but the invention has never worked. You said yourself that you don't even have an Uncle Bert. Well, there wasn't a presentation either. You are still aware of your condition, aren't you?”
“Condition? Who is this?” said Vincent, suddenly more confused than ever.
“It's Doctor Greenstreet. You called me.”
“Well yes, I called you because you helped me before when I wasn't sure if something was a dream or really happening. It gets very confusing once you start messing around with these things, but now you're just playing games with me.”
“It's all just dreams, Mr Smithfield. The presentation, the machine, your uncle, all of it,” said the doctor as he flicked through a file with the words 'Patient: Vincent Smithfield. Diagnosis: Schizophrenia' in bold lettering at the top of the page.
Vincent's expression suddenly changed into a sly smile; “If that was all a dream, then this is reality – another chance. Reality is going to be much better than the dream. Reality will prove you all wrong. This invention is going to work, and you'll all be eating your words. Look at Van Gogh. They all doubted him. He had to burn his own paintings to keep warm. It took decades for people to catch up with what he was doing, but by then it was too late. This is how it is with most innovations, don't you think?”
Douglas Greenstreet appeared unmoved; “That's an interesting analogy that you often use Mr Smithfield, but I'm afraid that, short of sharing the same Christian name, the similarities between you and the impressionist who cut off his ear end there.”
Vincent had had enough 'grounding' for one morning, so he put down the phone and wandered back to the table. Hitting 'return' on the computer, the Stonehenge desktop appeared with the usual 'bed' icon marked 'Dream Capture' in the top-right corner. Vincent moved the cursor onto the icon and clicked. Inside were the usual folders labelled with dates. He then clicked on the folder with the previous night's date and took a deep breath.
“Let's see what happened last night then,” he muttered to himself, “I'll show these sceptics and cynics.”
Vincent's expression then changed to one of disappointment, for the screen was showing the same static 'snow' as it had done for the previous six weeks, accompanied by the same irritating noise of electronic interference.
“The doctor is right, sighed Vincent, “I'm schizo!”
For six weeks he had been trying to perfect this darned machine. Six weeks of sleeping in the basement; six weeks of waking up and clicking open an empty folder. Enough was enough. This project was lunacy.
He yanked the wires out of the back of the computer so hard that they recoiled like a whip and began angrily stabbing commands into his keyboard that translated as ‘erase hard drive.’ Walking away from the desk, he walked away from his dreams of becoming an inventor, boiled a kettle, and half scalding himself, he made a cup of tea. Milk and two sugars.
Carrying his cup in one hand and an A5-sized picture frame in the other, he walked across to a workbench covered with tins of paint. Picking up a brush he began the therapeutically serene task of transforming a bland piece of wood into something you could hang on your wall. He knew there was a reason he stuck at the job, and this was it.
Perhaps it was just as well that he got too engrossed in his work to notice what was going on behind him. As the computer flicked through all the files it was destroying, the opening frame of a movie appeared for a split second on the screen. And what was this subliminal shot?
A room filled with academics, a white-board, a computer with a plethora of wires hanging out of the back and in the foreground, Vincent’s arm waving a marker pen in the air.