Falling Over

by James Everington

  “Sure. Where’re you going?” His friend in the driving seat said something similar. The American man smiled, his teeth somehow glinting despite the overcast day. His glasses were giant circles of reflected light across his flabby face. He told them where he wanted them to go. They both felt terrified, felt the urge to open the doors and bolt from the car – but the desire turned to nothing in their nerves, and they just sat there.

  “That’s where we’re going,” he heard himself saying, as if amazed by the coincidence of his desires and their destination.

  “Yeah, get in!” his friend said, hands shaking and eyes terrified.

  And the fat man did.

  ~

  Sean awoke, having slept nearly twenty minutes this time. His back was aching from lying on the awkward back seat and his head felt fragile as well, as if he’d been drinking. Without getting up, he reached for and lit another cigarette, tossing his dead match to join its companions between the over exposed breasts of the Razzle centrefold, who was apparently called Rochelle. Sean felt he’d first seen Rochelle years ago, as if he’d been in the backseat of a car with her for a lifetime. For some reason he turned the page, but there she was again, in a grimly predictable pose. Sean sighed, massaged the side of his head, and struggled to sit up.

  “You know I think these girls... Where the fuck are we?” Outside should have been the busy central London road that would take them all the way to their destination, not the dreary rows of houses of some north of the river estate. The shabby dwellings slouched against each other in their poverty; one in every five windows was boarded up. They passed under an old bridge, the graffiti on the walls like the decoration of a ghost train. When they came out the other side, tower blocks obscured any horizon, and the rows of the estate continued as if uninterrupted. It was, Sean thought, just like where they had come from.

  “I don’t know!” Tom said. “I missed the turning and then... I tried to... I thought there would be another... but when I tried it wasn’t right, I stopped to ask someone and he said... but what he said didn’t make sense! And I’m lost and...”

  “Shit!” Sean said, “Shit, shit! If we’re late... this guy isn’t going to hang around forever waiting for us you know!”

  “Oh who cares about the fence!” Tom cried. “What about the fat guy?” As he said this he wasn’t concentrating, and there was the chastisement of a car horn, furious about something. In the rain, Sean couldn’t even see the other car, or what it was they had done wrong.

  “Would you shut up about him! The fat guy is just a figment of your retarded imagination!”

  But the damage had been done – Sean couldn’t stop himself thinking of the fat man, hearing his strange foreign voice, remembering the words he had spoken... – some of the words, at least.

  The inside of the ‘temple’ had freaked Sean out, for the relics and religious ornaments had coexisted with other relics, relics of the normal and quotidian life that had apparently been lived here once. He had expected one back room to contain all the creepy stuff, not for it to be scattered haphazardly like catalogue knick-knacks on the tops of the TV and mantelpiece; not for the hideous murals to be draped from walls decorated with Eighties wallpaper; not for the ancient books to be stood up in the kitchen like they contained recipes. It was like seeing two things at once, one reality superimposed atop a second one, and his eyes seemed to itch as they attempted to decipher the puzzle. Sean and Tom had come with torches and this made things worse, for details of the temple kept emerging from the gloom as they turned their beams towards them: candlesticks, miniature statues, fluttering murals on the walls depicting impossible creatures: some showing combinations of existing animals such as rats and snakes, leeches and lizards. But others were beyond description, creatures formed from the usual stuff of tentacles, scales and hair, but in distorted and impractical forms it seemed impossible anyone could ever have conceived of. The worst thing about these idols had been the suggestion of sentience, somehow the very way they had been carved or painted implied a deranged and patient intelligence. Sean had tried hard not to look; tried harder to stop Tom jerking around and shining his torch at them every twenty seconds, convinced that they’d moved. Was the boy a liability? he’d thought. Had it been a mistake to bring him? They had both been sweating as they had hastily filled their bags with anything that looked valuable – but how were you supposed to tell, Sean thought, when it all looked like stuff from a poor B-movie? He found himself shoving it all in, trying hard not to look at the carvings and pictures, trying hard not to read the writing as the old and blasphemous books fell open in his hand... He would have felt more at ease robbing a real church for the imagery there would have been less disturbing...

  When he had filled the first bag Sean ran out to the car, which was parked round the back of some garages. He’d seen Tom hadn’t wanted to be left alone, but his friend was being slow filling up his bag, and Sean hadn’t wanted to linger. Out in the cool night air Sean breathed a heavy sigh – from outside it was just a cramped ex-Council house like all the rest of them on the estate, and it seemed impossible to think of all the stuff he had seen inside. It seemed too small. He put his bag in the boot of the white family car, then got in and switched on the engine. But after another five minutes Tom still hadn’t returned. Sean cursed – what was taking so long? They should have been in and out! He was angry, but there was an underlying feeling of panic that he didn’t act on: if he had done he would have driven out of there alone.

  Then Tom had rushed out of the temple (or house, or whatever the fuck it was) yelling and waving his arms. He had run to the car and got in the back, and shouted at Sean to go, while craning his neck to look behind him. He had been making enough noise to wake the entire street.

  “Shut up!” Sean had whispered.

  “Go Sean! Please!”

  “What the hell’s wrong?”

  But all Tom seemed able to reply was:

  “Fat man! I saw... the fat man!”

  “What fat man? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The fat man! From Arkansas!”

  At that moment Sean had made the decision never to do anything like this with Tom again – he understood why being in a place like that, where the trappings of everyday life didn’t seem to sit sensibly next to the carved monstrosities and inverted religious symbols, where you weren’t able to decide which aspect of your vision was false... Sean understood why a place like that could screw up your imagination. His own imagination had been screwed up, imagining the idols moving and the books falling open of their own volition... But Tom was seemingly unable to distinguish between what went on in his head and what was real; and where had this thing about a fat man come from? And he was obviously so upset he’d forgotten the reason they’d been there in the first place.

  “Where’s the bag, Tom?” Sean said.

  “I must have... when the fat... when... the fat man!”

  “Where the fuck’s the bag?”

  Tom flinched at Sean’s anger.

  “I dropped it! When the fat man came!”

  Sean looked away, furious, trying to stop the shaking, trying to make the decision that he knew was the correct one: that it wasn’t worth the risk of going back. If the stuff from the temple was worth anything then they already had enough to sell; and if it was all fake then it didn’t matter how much they had. But he thought of the things he’d seen Tom put in his bag, glittering in his memory as if candle-lit, as if this were a real temple, with its treasures priceless...

  “I’m going back for it.”

  “Sean, don’t...” Tom whined, like a kid, still on the verge of tears. “What about... don’t leave me! The fat man!”

  Sean got out of the car, almost slamming the door with his anger until he remembered the situation. He ran back into the house (through the back door they’d forced earlier) and into its disjointed vision, the focus of his sight flicking between the flock wallpaper and the twisting shapes within its pattern. He s
tooped to pick up the holdall Tom had dropped in the front room, and even though it was dark he sensed a darker shadow falling over him. He cried out; he looked up.

  “Hello,” the fat man said, in an American accent.

  He had been immense, every part of him bloated with what seemed a deliberate fatness, and not like someone who’d simply let himself go. Even his round glasses (in which Sean could see his stooped reflection) had seemed too big, like car headlights. His skin had been very red and shiny, very smooth as if it had been stretched tight and become sore. The fat man had no hair; his head had curved and gleamed. But it wasn’t the physical details that had so scared Sean, but the same sense of itchy double-vision, the sense that what he was seeing was not the whole reality, but merely a gloss, a hasty camouflage.

  Sean had wanted to run, but he hadn’t been able to move a muscle. He had just remained bent over the loot, staring at the fat man and listening to his words: the fat man had spoken lightly, as though Sean was a stranger and this was just idle chatter at a bus stop. But his mouth had grinned with hidden meanings, and the words had nonetheless filled Sean with dread.

  “I come from Arkansas, as you call it now. It was wild and vast and barren and empty then, you can’t imagine. So empty, so different from now, when everywhere is filled with maggots like you, insignificant nothings. It would be tolerable if you knew your place, but when you trespass... do you know what happens to those who trespass?”

  And after that Sean could remember nothing... except the vague idea that the most terrible thing that happened to those who trespassed against the fat man wasn’t just that they died... or even how they died... but what happened to them after they died.

  He told Tom none of this. After all, it had all been nonsense, there had been no fat man, how could there have been? If he had been anything other than a hallucination then Sean would never have been allowed out of the temple with the second bag. The fat man would simply have overpowered him or called the police. And since that hadn’t happened surely that proved there had been no one there? And even if there had been, it could only have been a man, not anything else his imagination had read into the experience. It could only have been a man, and what could the fat bastard do to them now? As if in answer his mind flinched from the image of metal and glass slicing through him as the car hit the ground and crumpled...

  He came back to the present; or rather, let what he could see take precedence over what he could picture. The back of the car felt claustrophobic, as did the maze of streets outside, the houses of the estate seemingly too close and leaning in. Tom was no longer pretending to hide his anxiety as he drove – his breathing was fast and shallow, his hands were clamped to the wheel as if it were trying to turn without him willing it.

  “We’re lost,” he yelled. “I don’t know where I am and everything looks the same! We’ve got to get out of here Sean, we’ve got to escape! But I don’t know which way, there aren’t any signs, it’s all the same...”

  “Concentrate on the road!” Sean yelled back; he pulled out the final cigarette from his packet.

  “Would you stop fuckin’ smoking!” Tom shouted, looking over his shoulder at Sean and almost swerving into the oncoming lane. With a cry Sean flung the fag down on the floor and stamped on it violently.

  “There, that helps does it?” he said loudly. “Fucking pull over, let me drive.” He wanted to be behind the wheel, to be in control.

  There was a pause, during which Tom’s panic subsided – he kept on driving but the only sound was the ragged way in which they were both breathing. Outside, the same shops went past as before, the same houses – or so it seemed.

  “Sean?” Tom said finally, sniffing as he spoke.

  “Yeah?”

  “You did have those dreams didn’t you.”

  “Sort of... yeah, sort of,” Sean said.

  “And you did see... see...”

  “The fat man. Yes, I did.”

  “Oh God!” Tom shouted, his calm fading again.

  “It doesn’t mean anything!” Sean added quickly, not knowing who he was trying to convince most. “It was just a... a... a group hallucination!” he said, clutching at a phrase he’d read in the papers, about people who had seemed to see two things at once. “The fat guy – he wasn’t real. How can he have been?”

  “He wasn’t real,” Tom said quickly, and Sean realised with an appalled feeling that Tom was crying, and not bothering to hide it from him. “What we saw was just... I don’t know, but it wasn’t him! Not the real him! But he’s still gonna get us and make us drive up that flyover and hit those kids and crash us and then...”

  “Shut up! Shut up about that!”

  “But it’s going to happen! Oh fuck Sean, he’ll get us and it’s all going to happen!”

  “Then don’t stop!” Sean said. “Don’t stop for anything – drive in one direction and let’s get out of here!”

  “It won’t make any difference,” Tom said quietly, but he sped up anyway. From the backseat Sean couldn’t really gauge how fast they were actually going – he felt sick with a motion-sickness not helped by the way the houses seemed to slant as if the air through which he was viewing them was warped. He remember how as kids they’d once walked their bikes up the estate’s steepest hill, called the Drop, how at the top they’d got on their bikes, turned round, and pedalled as hard as they could... He remembered the feeling half-way down that he couldn’t stop now if even if he wanted to, that he’d committed himself to this crazy peer-pressure of speed and that to brake or even to steer now would throw him from the bike. And so he’d hung on half-terrified as the bike had plunged and rattled down the Drop. Now he felt like that, as the white car raced through the built up area, Tom taking corners in a way that felt barely under control. They went through a red light, and Sean instinctively flinched and closed his eyes as he felt the bray of angry traffic swerving to avoid hitting them side-on. But he didn’t shout at Tom to slow down, for the idea seemed inconceivable and just as unsafe – they had to find a way out, keep moving, keep moving... Tom shouted something as he fought with the wheel, and the car mounted the pavement for a few seconds. Sean wasn’t wearing his seat-belt, and he was flung to one side of the car, along with Rochelle and all the other models aping arousal. His head slammed against the door handle and he tasted sudden blood in his mouth as he bit his tongue. His heart hurt from the sheer speed it was beating at, as if willing the car faster and faster... Details of his dreams clouded his head: the riches he had taken, the inward shattering of the windscreen... He wasn’t sure for a few seconds which was real and which wasn’t. He tried to get up, but fell back as the car took another corner without braking. The roar of the motor and the sound of horns outside all seemed very loud, but he could still hear Tom chanting “Oh God, oh God...” under his breath. Bit late to start praying, Sean thought as they hit a straight section of road and Tom pressed down even harder on the accelerator. How fast were they actually going? It still didn’t seem fast enough, even though outside was just a blur. Sean realised he was whimpering too. He struggled upright, half expecting to see a flyover in front of them and the smiling fat man in the passenger seat.

  Instead he saw a long bus pull out blindly in front of them, blocking the road. Tom cried out, stamped on the pedal. The scream of the brakes drowned out Sean’s own. He was thrown off the back seat again, twisting his hand painfully as he tried to break his fall. The car skidded for what seemed a long time; high pitched noises echoed around Sean’s head. Then the car stopped and stalled.

  And then all that happened was the bus driver and his passengers glared at them in fright, and what sounded like a thousand belated car horns were pressed at once. Then the bus drove slowly off, the traffic started to flow around them again. There were no pedestrians, the streets seemed deserted. Sean looked wildly round, just to make sure, but there was no one, no one at all. There was no fat American. The thought struck him all at once as ludicrous – there would be no American tourists in th
is rundown and aggressive estate of outer London. Sean flung back his head and laughed with relief. He heard Tom do the same. The fear that had made them want to go faster and faster fled at the laughter. He leant back against the car seat and let out a long drawn out breath which was like the madness escaping. He closed his eyes.

  There was a tap at the window.

  Sean’s eyes flew open, but even closed they had already sensed the shadow which had fallen over him. A large, hunched form peered in through the passenger window. Sean impotently watched Tom lean over and unwind it. He could tell Tom desperately didn’t want to, could tell by the expression of fright on his face, but reality had doubled and neither Tom’s will nor his own had any interaction with it anymore – his limbs lay still as he commanded them to move. A stream of terrified thoughts flowed through his mind, but he did nothing. The window wound relentlessly down, revealing a huge face, fat hanging off, giant spectacles gleaming. Tom thought he saw the truth of that face for the first time, and when it spoke, it spoke in an American accent.

  “Any chance of a lift?” the fat man said, and despite the raised last syllable, it wasn’t a question.

  Haunted

  Eleanor could almost scream with frustration as she led the investigators round her house. They obviously didn’t believe in the stories of the ghost, despite the history of violence and... murder.

  Eleanor shuddered, and said to them that here was where it happened. But they didn’t listen to a word she said! Here! she said and they barely even glanced in her direction.

  Eleanor did scream as they turned to go. She screamed and the last of the investigators turned back with a frown... But then he shrugged, and shut the door, leaving Eleanor alone in the haunted house.

  New Boy