by David Pinner
In the graveyard, Vince pushed himself away from the stone cross where he was sitting. And he was so deeply in his own world, he didn’t realise that Bob and Dave had been talking about him. Feverishly he was still struggling to hold back the images of what he lusted to do to Lulu, which were constantly bombarding his imagination. But despite all his efforts, he failed. And within the depths of his tormented psyche, he knew that the witch was manipulating him. Yet however hard he tried to hold Gwynne’s occult powers at bay, she seared through all his defensive barriers as she continued to manipulate his mind and his emotions.
In a frenzied attempt to ward off Gwynne’s latest psychic-assault, defiantly Vince punched his fist in the dark. Then he urged his reluctant feet to make their way through the graveyard. In his desperation to free himself from his malevolent tormentor, Vince failed to notice that he’d left his bicycle leaning against the churchyard wall.
Now, intent on freeing himself from all the sexually-sadistic images, which were swirling around inside his skull, the postman stumbled around graves and headstones, banging his bruised shins and knees against jutting tombs. When he reached the far side of the graveyard, he lugged his severely-bruised limbs over the wall into the field. Then he staggered onwards towards his goal.
*
Twenty-five minutes later, Vincent found himself on his hands and knees in Lulu’s frost-rimmed back garden. In the darkness, he crawled towards her garage. With bleary eyes, he looked up, and he saw a cloud shaped like a spectral talon, which was raking its claws across the quarter moon. The next moment Vince felt that his own fingers were transmogrifying themselves into claws. Inwardly he cursed the witch, although he was impotent to withstand her power as his talons gouged into the freezing soil. Then he crawled away from Lulu’s garage, and he stalked towards her woodshed like a predatory wolf.
In Lulu’s kitchen, the electric bulb blinked on. Its light lit up her garage and a large segment of her garden.
Swiftly Vince slithered lizard-like behind a straggly beech hedge, which was still covered in bronze-coloured, dead leaves.
A moment later, the kitchen door opened, and Lulu appeared in the doorway. Despite the cold, she was in a short silk skirt and a figure-hugging, pink blouse, and she seemed distracted and dejected. Momentarily she gazed up into the night firmament, while the cloud’s talons were releasing their hold on the moon. And as it was the new moon, much of its sphere was scarcely discernible, so its radiant crescent did little to cheer Lulu’s spirits.
I know, I know I’m failing You, she brooded as she continued to peer up at the lunar segment. But I am so world-weary that now I just long for an eternal sleep…
Sighing disconsolately, Lulu crossed to the woodshed. With the aid of the kitchen light, she seized a large log from the woodpile, and she threw the log into a plastic wood-trundler, which she intended to wheel back to her fire. She was selecting another log, when she heard a snuffling sound behind her. She sensed it was a human intruder. Intuitively she weaved to her left, and she lashed out with the log that she was clutching.
But Vince was too quick for her, and he ducked underneath her swishing weapon. Then he pushed her back violently against the side of the shed. With a vulpine howl, he clawed the buttons off her blouse, partially exposing her breasts. He grappled his talons into the tresses of her hair, and he rammed his ravening mouth against hers.
At the same moment, Paul launched himself out of the shadows, and he karate-chopped the flat of his hand down on the nape of the postman’s neck. Then the writer wrenched Vince’s head away from Lulu’s face, and he drove his knee into the base of the postman’s spine. Screeching with pain, Vince crumpled to his knees. In response, Paul kicked him in the ribs, and the writer was about to ram his foot into his cowed adversary’s crotch, when Lulu shouted; ‘No! No! No!’
Determinedly she stepped between them.
‘Lulu, let me finish this pervert off, for Chrissakes,’ Paul roared.
‘No, now you’ve knocked him to the ground, Paul, enough’s enough. Well, just look at Vincent,’ Lulu insisted, pulling her buttonless-blouse over her exposed breasts. ‘Surely you can see that the poor devil is completely out of it.’
With his fists clenched, Paul peered down at Vince, who was now curled up on the flattened grass in a foetal position. The postman was frothing at the mouth, and whimpering like a bereft child.
‘Oh come on, Lulu,’ Paul insisted. ‘The very least we can do is to call the police, so they can throw this sick maniac into a cell. Then they can get some shrink to section him.’
‘Forgive me, Lulu, please forgive me,’ Vince pleaded, with spittle drooling down his chin as he hugged his knees against his bruised chest.
‘Don’t listen to him, Lulu. Townley’s full of perverted shit.’
‘Vincent hasn’t done this of his own free will, Paul. He’s been goaded into doing it,’ Lulu countered, bending over the cowering postman.
‘Don’t go near him!’
‘Oh God, Lulu, I’m so appalled by what I… well, by what I tried to do to you. You see, I’ve always adored you,’ Vince whispered as he dragged his fingers over his mouth to wipe away the drool. ‘But then last Wednesday night, for the first time for weeks, you never came to me in my dreams. And you haven’t come to me since then, so…’ he trailed off, sucking his swollen tongue.
‘It’s alright, Vincent, I believe you. But now you’d best get up, and go home.’
‘He’s not going anywhere ‘till he’s got some handcuffs on him!’ Paul rasped.
In tacit agreement, Vince nodded, and he continued to lie on the freezing grass, abjectly hugging his knees against his chest because he was still fearful that Paul would kick him, and beat him again.
‘It’s Gwynne Spark, who forced me to do this to you, Lulu,’ Vince said in his contrite defence, while Lulu continued to stand over him protectively. ‘You see, just now… well, she made me think that I was some kind of… well, some kind of werewolf. ‘Fact now I’m sure that from last Wednesday night onwards, it was Gwynne, who prevented me from seeing you, in my dreams. Yes, and the witch did this, so she could…well, so she could manipulate my mind and my feelings ‘cause she wants me to do the most dreadful things to you. And that’s why she’s using me.’
‘I know,’ Lulu nodded, moving away from him towards her open door. ‘Wreaking havoc does seem to be very much Gwynne Spark’s perpetual modus operandi.’
‘There’s certainly a lot of truth in that, Lulu,’ Paul agreed as he joined Lulu by the doorway. ‘But then Spark has always been an interfering, bloody-minded witch. And that’s why someone should put a stop to her once and for all!’
‘Paul, it’s hardly surprising that Gwynne behaves the way she does. Especially as she has never recovered from the loss of her two daughters,’ Lulu said, shivering as she pulled her torn blouse more tightly over her breasts. ‘You see, when your nearest and dearest are murdered, like Gwynne’s daughters were, then the horror and tragedy remains with you forever.’
‘I still say the witch needs stopping. And she needs stopping permanently,’ Paul insisted.
‘So speaks the ever-devout Christian-Puritan,’ Lulu countered with a weary smile. ‘And as you are always shadowing my every movement, Paul, in your case, it is safe to say that; “Once a Puritan always a voyeur”.’
Then she walked into the house. She was about to close the door, when Paul pushed his way past her, and he strode into the kitchen.
‘Get out of here,’ she commanded, plucking at his sleeve.
‘I can’t, Lulu. My godawful headache’s absolutely destroying me,’ pleaded Paul, massaging his furrowed forehead with his fingers. ‘So the very least you can do, is you can help me to get rid of the fire in my head. Please. I beg you!’
Desolately he leant back against the sink.
‘Look, Lulu, I’m not asking that much of you. Considering that…well, in the last six hours, it’s twice now that I’ve saved you from being seriously hurt,’ Paul sai
d, shaking his head in consternation. ‘’Fact I still don’t understand why you won’t allow me to turn Townley over to the Police. Well, Lulu, at the very least, you shouldn’t’ve stopped me beating the crap out of that bastard. ‘Cause it’s the only way that I can ensure that Townley leaves you alone. As for that vicious witch…’
‘Alright, alright, Paul, I will help you with your headache,’ Lulu interrupted, overriding his tirade as she moved to close the backdoor. ‘But that is all I will do for you.’
Then with her hand on the doorknob, she turned to him, and she laughed as she pointed through the still-open doorway.
‘What’s so bloody funny, Lulu?’
‘Our werewolf has disappeared into thin air,’ she said, gesturing at her empty, moonlit garden. ‘But then poor, tormented Vincent is an extremely sad case, so I do fear for him.’
As she closed the door, Paul gazed at her in disbelief. He was perturbed by her sympathetic sentiments.
Pointedly ignoring him, Lulu picked up her woollen cardigan from the back of a kitchen chair, and she thrust her arms into the sleeves. While she was buttoning her cardigan over her torn blouse, without moving Paul gestured vaguely at her bosom.
‘I won’t try anything, Lulu,’ he said in a placating tone. ‘I really won’t.’
‘Yes, I know you won’t try anything untoward tonight,’ she agreed. ‘But I pray that the Goddess will help me, because I sense that the time is fast approaching, Paul, when things will be very different on another night,’ she added, with concern in her aquamarine eyes.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. So will you, please…well, please just massage my head, Lulu? And get rid of my fucking headache!’
‘That…I will do for you. Then you must promise me that you will go home.’
‘I promise.’
*
Three quarters of an hour later, the lone figure of Vince, with a swathe of mildewed sacking around his shoulders, stood on the edge of the frost-whitened cliff. Below him, there was the hypnotic sound of the sea. Resolutely the postman re-adjusted the sacking that he had taken from Lulu’s woodshed, until he was certain that the sacking was hanging around his shoulders like a bedraggled cloak. Then, either side of him, he stretched out his arms, to their full extent. In his imagination, he transformed himself into a tattered crucifix, and for a long while, he stood like one of the thieves’ crosses on Golgotha.
*
With an exhausted expression on her face, Lulu sat half-asleep, by her dying fire. Temporarily she had cured Paul of his headache. In return, the writer had fulfilled his promise, and he had gone home and left her to her own devices, so now Lulu was preparing to go to bed.
Suddenly she leant forward, and she stared intently into the fire’s embers as a flame, which was shaped like a cross, flared up the chimney. Then in the irridescent heart of the flame, she saw the cloaked, human cruciform-figure of the postman, who was standing, poised on the edge of the cliff. Intuitively she knew that Vince was about to jump over the cliff, where he would dash himself to death on the jagged rocks below.
Lulu leapt to her feet, and she pointed her forefinger at Vincent’s outstretched arms.
As if in response to her imperious gesture, instantly the night shadows cloaked the postman’s maniacal eyes, while his crucified silhouette continued to glimmer on the clifftop like a midnight sun.
Simultaneously Lulu had a brief mental-flash, which was filled with the image of Dr Morris, who was the only physician in Thorn Village. She noted that the doctor was also staring intently into his fire in his Georgian house, which was on the far side of the village.
Then Lulu refocused on Vince’s turbulent form, swathed in his sack-cloak. Then the postman, who was continuing to emulate a cross, teetered precariously towards the edge of the cliff.
As she gazed at Vincent, the postman’s tormented and wavering image began to blur, and then, abruptly, his image faded…
*
After nodding acquiescently, Vincent obeyed the tireless waves below him, which were commanding him to spread out the folds of his cloak like the wings of a giant bat.
With dark elation in his eyes, the postman urged his feet to the very edge of the cliff. As he prepared to launch himself into the starlit empyrean, his mind was in such a labyrinthine turmoil, he believed that he had acquired the supernatural powers of a vampire. Indeed, Vince sensed that if he flapped his cloaked pinions, he could fly off into space, so he could join the wheeling flocks of osprey and gannets. Then he would accompany the seabirds, and together they would glide across the furthest ocean…to his midnight castle, where he would find the ending of his world.
So now he knew that he must spread his wings…and fly...
18
Seven weeks later, on Tuesday afternoon, 28th December, 1999.
Christmas was over, so the Millennium was only half-a-week away. However, during the coming four days, the village of Thorn and its inhabitants were about to experience things that would change their world forever.
On the edge of the village, in Paul’s dilapidated Victorian house, no one, save the writer, heard his computer-keys rattling out his latest children’s story.
Then his imagination failed him, and his story floundered. But as Paul switched off his computer, there was no one to witness his cursing lips. And when he gazed ardently at the enticing, porcelain figurine of the naked Venus on his mantelpiece, no one observed his besotted features.
In a trance-like state, Paul crossed over to the statuette’s seductive form. Like a votive, he murmured to Venus’ fulsome breasts; ‘Lulu, Lulu, Lulu.’ But the figurine remained immune to his rapture, while her porcelain smile continued to mock his unrequited loins. Instantaneously his habitual headache stoked up the manic flames inside his skull until their roaring overwhelmed him.
‘She is mine! Lulu has to be mine. She can only be mine,’ Paul screamed, falling back against his desk, and almost knocking his laptop onto the floor.
With trembling hands, he retrieved his computer, and he pushed it safely onto the middle of his desk. Then he grabbed Venus from the mantelpiece, and he hurled her across his study. The porcelain figurine shattered against the faded-flowered wallpaper by the door. After he had scrunched the shards of porcelain under his frenzied feet, he surged out into the hallway.
He wrenched open the cupboard door under the stairs, and he kicked his old Hoover to one side until it clattered down amongst the cupboard’s assortment of brushes. Then from behind his raincoats, he pulled out a short-handled whip, comprising of four leather thongs, with knots bulging along each of the thongs.
‘What kind of Christian am I?’ he demanded, after kicking the cupboard door shut. Then he swished his leather-thonged whip against his upper arm as he rasped; ‘Well, there’s one certain way to find out. I must abase myself, and do penance for my habitual lust and anger.’
Purposefully, he moved down the hall, and opened the door leading to the basement. With the whip over his shoulder, he ran down the stairs into his basement.
Momentarily there was silence in the house. This was broken by a distinctive, swishing sound, which was followed by a gasp. At regular intervals, there was more swishing, and each swish was punctuated by another muffled yelp. Finally there was a clatter as the discarded whip was thrown onto the stone floor of the basement. Again a brief silence ensued. Then the silence was broken by the sound of violent and prolonged hammering.
After twenty minutes of metal banging on metal, and metal being hammered into protesting wood, there was another short silence. With an echoing clunk, the hammer was thrown down onto the concrete floor, and Paul’s echoing feet charged back up the basement steps.
When he re-emerged from behind the door, the writer’s forehead was beaded with sweat. After painfully tugging off his bloodstained shirt, Paul ran upstairs to the bathroom, exposing his flushed and bruised shoulderblades, while dribbles of blood slithered down his spine.
*
Despite t
he painful sensation of his sweatshirt constantly rubbing against his recently-flagellated back, Paul was feeling infinitely better in himself as he completed his afternoon three-mile-run to Idlethorpe Village.
‘Lulu is an alluring and a very frustrating siren,’ he mumbled to himself while he raced up towards the wrought-iron gates of Open Grange Manor on the outskirts of Idlethorpe. ‘But, God help me, Lulu is still right. I must learn to love my godawful enemies.’
Five minutes later, the December sun was bathing the Cromwellian edifice of Open Grange Manor in a roseate light.
Inside the Manor’s gardens, the twilit shadows of the two men seemed to stretch forever across the vast lawn.
‘Yes, Paul, but after the way you kicked and thumped me – like you did on the beach, and in Lulu’s garden – well, I still can’t understand why the hell you have bothered to come here, to see me now?’
‘The Lord Jesus Christ said; ‘Love your enemies’, Vince, so that’s why I have come here to Open Grange Manor. You see, I want to try to do that - with you.’
‘Paul, but it’s still taken you the best part of six fucking weeks to come round to the idea of you ‘loving’ me, right?’
‘Right. And now it’s my turn for a question.’
‘OK. If you must.’
Paul hesitated.
‘So what’s your question, Paul?’
‘Well, Vince…well, what exactly made you come and stay here at Open Grange Manor?’
‘I came here for much the same reason that you went into Rehab,’ Vince replied, looking steadily at Paul.
‘But you don’t have a drink problem, do you?’ the writer countered.
‘No, I don’t,’ Vince agreed, shielding his eyes against the molten glare of the setting sun. ‘But like you, Paul, I have – what they call – an addictive personality.’
‘So…what are you addicted to?’
‘To fits of…well, of almost madness. And when that happens, it really terrifies me,’ Vincent said as he rubbed his dazzled eyes feverishly, before moving off into the shadow of a towering chestnut tree.