Falling Over

by James Everington

  There was a screeching sound and he looked up and saw that a bus had stopped to let him cross. The driver’s face seemed to alternate between generosity and hate as he made a get-on-with-it gesture. The manager stepped off the lip of the curb gingerly, like he was tight-rope walking across a drop. He was aware of the growling bus to his right, aware that if it was a trick and the bus suddenly moved forward he wouldn’t have time to react. He knew the idea was ridiculous but he started to run anyway – into the other lane, which he had temporarily forgotten was there – cars screeched and honked and seemed to miss him by inches as he suddenly appeared from behind the bus. He was shaking when he got to the other side of the road – he felt like he was going to be sick.

  He turned around; on the other side of the traffic he saw the boy, who was trying to cross, but kept having to pull back because the flow of cars refused to pause. When the boy saw the manager looking at him his expression turned urgent, almost eager. The manager watched the boy try to cross again, saw Jay Neuworth’s face shout something at him, but the words were lost in the sound of the traffic. “I’ll fire you!” the manager shouted, his voice shrill. “I’ll call the agency and...”

  The manger jerked away from the roadside awkwardly, feeling a stitch on one side dig into him. He ran up one side of the street. There was an opening into another alleyway, and he ducked into it, feeling slightly comforted by its cramped, dark confines. But he had to keep running, because he felt that because he was no longer in the office, because of the strange parallel-world decisions he had made that evening, then no rules applied anymore, and the thing coming after him would have no restraints. There was a contrary urge in him to stop and explain; but he had no idea what he should say to Jay, and two weeks compulsive brooding had not given him an answer. He fled deeper into the alleyways.

  ~

  He thought he would be safe after sunset, but it was dark when it got him.

  He was walking up a quiet street in an unsavoury area, which ran parallel to the main road and was lined with adult bookstores, chippies, and pubs that most never dared drink in. He couldn’t run anymore, he was too tired, instead he moved in a quick and painful shuffle. He wasn’t sure if anything was still behind him – when he turned to see his eyes could only penetrate so far into the night. Everything was blurred and wouldn’t come together. His hands had unconsciously unclipped his work ID card from his belt and were turning it over and over.

  When he next looked up, someone was in front of him.

  His first thought was one of relief, despite the edge of light on the knife that the figure held in its hand. This was just a person, not Jay Neuworth or anything like him. He studied the man’s face – pale, with short cropped hair, a piddling little mustache. The man appeared to be shaking slightly in agitation – his knife blade wavered in and out of the light. The man was staring at him with eyes that looked doped, duped...

  The familiar sensation hit him when he looked at the man’s eyes – another world seemed to step out from behind the one he was seeing. The slack, bored look of malevolence was familiar, and so were the lazy steps that the figure took towards him.

  “C’mon, are you deaf? Give your wallet!” The voice was Jay Neuworth’s, despite the differences in pitch and timbre. “Now!” There was a gesture with the knife; light flashed.

  The manager opened his mouth to protest – this didn’t seem quite right. Why had there been an insinuating presence behind him these last few weeks, if Jay had just been planning to step out in front of him, crudely waving a knife? “No,” he said, “no.” Something wasn’t correct.

  That slack face tightened for a second, the gaze grew alert as if suspecting a trick. “What you on about man?” But then there was a relapse, the return of stoned malevolence. “Just gimme your wallet!”

  “No,” the manager repeated. “You fell. You can’t just stab me...” The manager’s voice was stronger, because he was convinced that this didn’t fit with what should happen.

  He heard a noise of impatience. “The fuck I can’t.” The world tilted, like he was back in a tall building moving with the high wind. Maybe he was. The world was at right-angles to where it should be in his vision – he was aware of distant pain. He kicked his legs trying to get away, as he saw Jay Neuworth bend over him, hands eager.

  ~

  It wasn’t like waking up and realising it was a dream. There was no simple transition from one state to another, instead there was a movement back and forth, a swaying from one view of the night to another as he staggered home, the path rising and falling like a fairground ride; neon lights and pub names doubled meanings in front of him, far away people crashed into him or propositioned him. His fingers were pressed tightly against the knife wound – which might just have been a pain in his side from drinking too much. Had his drink been spiked? He remembered the new boy Jay handing him a pint and grinning with uncharacteristic alertness as he had sipped it, and he had vowed to sack him at the first opportunity... But he also remembered fleeing the bar sober, having not had a drink, and the invisible pursuit through the alleys, and the cold feeling of the knife just below his ribs... He steered a course between these two sets of memories, based on a amalgamation between them, which maybe wasn’t right. His head seemed to ache with effort.

  No one was following him, there was no presence behind him anymore. No, he felt like the presence was somewhere in front of him now, and in his unfocussed, reeling way he plunged towards it. Looking up, there were a myriad of lights above him, rotating on an axis that he couldn’t see, and the sight made him dizzy and his steps faltered...

  And then he was in his bed, and all he was thinking about was the horrible way that that boy, Jay Neuworth, had fallen from the top of the building...; then he rolled the wrong way and felt a convulsive pain in his side. He vomited over the side of the bed, and passed out or fell asleep again. When he awoke the world still lurched between clarity and hangover; between sick guilt and the pain from his wound.

  He knew that he wasn’t going into work and that he should call in sick, but he turned onto his good side and closed his eyes instead, desperate for a respite from the way the world slid from one state to another before his nauseous eyes.

  ~

  It was two weeks afterwards when he returned. He told himself that he wouldn’t look up, wouldn’t continue to look for someone who wasn’t there. He ducked his head and shielded his eyes as he approached the grey office block. His swipe-card no longer worked, but one of the security guards recognised him and let him in. But then he said “Know where you’re going sonny?” so maybe he wasn’t recognised. “Yes,” he said, “twelfth floor,” and he plunged into the lift.

  The empty lift shook as it climbed upwards. He looked at its paper-thin metal walls and imagined them fading away, so that he could see the drop that he was slowing being raised above. He thought of the wind outside his office, the cool air, the rattling fragile windows.

  He stepped out the lift onto the twelfth floor, his mind curiously blank. There was nothing sensed behind him, that was all gone now. He wondered just what Jay Neuworth had been feeling, what terrors and vertigo, but such thoughts were no good now. He lowered his head. He walked towards his office, ignoring the glances from unknown temps. The ‘new boy’ was no longer there; or at least, there was no one there with Jay’s appearance anymore. The manager wasn’t surprised. The idea of some doppelganger, some revenant, had fallen away like a mirage in a world that had returned to being clear and steady and...

  He opened the door to his office, and saw one of the sub-managers sitting behind his desk. The light from the windows behind stung the manager’s eyes – someone had removed the blinds, and rearranged the furniture.

  “Christ,” the sub-manager said, “you’re supposed to be...” The manager stepped forward angrily, feeling confused by the way the familiar room looked completely different. The feeling of double-vision came back and he almost raised his fists; but he stopped as the door behind him opened
. The hair on the back of his neck pinpricked and he felt the last two weeks drop away. He felt sick and tearful again. The boy’s note had cited harassment and bullying at work; people who didn’t even know his name threatening to fire him. But surely he had done nothing wrong, he had barely even spoken...

  The manager took a step backwards, jerkily. His manager was behind him. “Ah,” she said. “Didn’t you get our letter? How did your swipe-card work, it should have been deactivated...” The company had a policy of making people easy to sack, from his manager’s staff downwards.

  He wanted this double-vision that felt like blindness to end; he wanted the guilt even though he had done nothing wrong to end. The door was still open behind him, and in another world he no doubt left through it... He felt a rush of cold air, felt the tall building sway and rattle. The windows shook with the wind. He felt gentle, almost inviting hands on his back. In front of him was a rectangular gleam of cold clear light – the windows had always seemed fragile, never more so. There was a very tiny increase in pressure. He took one step forward, a second, then lurched to a third. Almost a run... He felt his legs tense in preparation, and he lowered his head to expose his neck.

  There was a feeling of cold air, and everything seemed to coalesce in one direction. Somewhere far above or below him, an alarm screeched. So this is what it felt like, he thought. So this is what I do deserve, after all.

  The Time Of Their Lives

  Vince thought he was the only kid staying at the hotel, until he saw the girl at breakfast. Normally he wouldn’t have made eye contact, for he was a naturally shy boy and she looked a year or two older than him. And she was a girl. But twenty-four hours of seeing nothing but grown up faces (and wrinkly ones, at that) made him reckless and he risked a smile, a little wave.

  The girl smiled too, but nervously, and she didn’t pause in the chewing of a strand of her long hair. She was sitting at a table in the corner of the hotel dining room, with a shrunken looking old lady who had one crooked hand laid possessively on the girl’s knee. Vince noticed they both had a congealed and completely uneaten fried breakfast in front of them, before his own grandma pulled his hand and led him to a free table. From his seat Vince couldn’t see the girl anymore. His grandfather was hovering, dithering behind him.

  “Alfred sit down!” his grandma snapped tiredly. Vince’s granddad did so. He looked around.

  “Where are we?” he said. He glanced at Vince suspiciously, but didn’t say anything else. Vince’s grandma made a sound halfway between a tut and a sigh.

  A waiter appeared, fresh faced and grinning, as if tending a room full of cantankerous old people was just how he liked to start his morning. Vince ordered the full English (because his parents weren’t here to tell him no) as did his grandfather. They both wolfed it down when it came, although his granddad looked a little surprised at its arrival. His grandma stirred a spoon through her figs and cereal, stained her lips with tomato juice. She was ill in some unspecified way that Vince didn’t understand, and he’d been told to make allowances for her.

  After he’d finished, Vince started to fidget – the quiet, stealthy sound of all the old people eating around him made him feel unsettled; the occasional shout by a loud voice into a deaf ear made him jump. The hotel’s dining room, with its blotchy wallpaper and shabby carpet looked old; it smelt old, as if the same old meals just kept getting reheated and served again, because none of the old-timers actually ate them...

  The young waiter stood aside to let them pass as they left, but he didn’t smile or even look at Vince (who was after all closest to the waiter’s age) but only at his grandparents. He had a greasy face, Vince noticed, as if he’d applied some kind of ointment minutes before. He said something to his grandma about “the evening’s entertainments” but Vince wasn’t really listening (what entertainment would there be in a dump like this anyway?) because he was looking for the girl. But she was gone; her breakfast was still untouched, and as the waiter went to collect the plates his grandma laughed nervously at something he’d just said, and his grandfather loudly complained that he didn’t understand who that man was.

  ~

  Vince’s mum and dad had seemed nervous when they had proposed that he go on holiday with his grandparents; Vince had been nervous too, for he’d heard them arguing about it the night before, when they’d thought he’d been asleep. Their angry voices had woken him, and he’d sneaked to the top of the stairs to listen.

  He didn’t know why all the shouting; he’d been on holiday with granddad and grandma before, so why shouldn’t he again? But his Mum (they were her parents; both his grandparents on his father’s side had died before he’d been old enough to remember them) started crying. Vince couldn’t tell what she was saying but his father’s next words were uncertain and had lost their conviction.

  “It’s too much,” he said, “for a boy of Vince’s age... For Vince.”

  The next morning, while his Mum was packing his case, his Dad had made sure Vince had his mobile number and whispered to him: “Promise to call if anything happens to your granddad or grandma.”

  But nothing had happened, to them or anyone else as far as Vince could tell – by the end of their first full day they’d exhausted the possibilities of the quaint Cotswolds village – the tea rooms, the model village, the ducks on the river. Vince had permission to go off alone as long as it wasn’t far, and he’d found an old arcade machine in the local chippy – its graphics not just worse than those of his games console at home, but worse than the one he’d had before that. Nevertheless he fed ten pence pieces into it, building up extra lives until his grandma came to drag him back to the hotel for dinner.

  He didn’t see the girl, or her grandmother, all day.

  Back at the hotel he went to his room – at first the idea of his own hotel room had been exciting, but that had been another novelty that had lasted less than a day. For a start, he hadn’t realised how much time he’d have to spend in the room, because his grandparents rested so often, and insisted he did the same. And it was an old person’s room – a carpet with the pattern faded out, doilies on the dresser, a painting of a stag not quite straight on the wall. A fly lay stiff on its back on the window sill. And an old, ticking clock that kept Vince from thinking straight. A door connected his room to his grandparents’ – they could unlock it from their side, but there was no key on his.

  The second night, he’d just about got used to the ticking clock when the noise started – it took him a few seconds to identify it as music, for it was muffled and had a scratchy, trebly quality, like it was being played on old-fashioned equipment. And it was old-fashioned music too – Vince didn’t know how old, but it made him think of black and white film of pre-war dances.

  Despite its muffled nature the music was loud, coming from somewhere on the floor below. Vince looked at the gap underneath the connecting door to see if it had woken his grandparents, but there was no light on in their room. They were both somewhat deaf, he remembered, and slept with earplugs in.

  A waltz, Vince thought, a jive, is that what they call this kind of music? Was it meant to be this loud and distorted? He knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep while it was playing.

  He got out of bed and walked across the room in the dark (he didn’t want to risk his grandma seeing a light through the door and knowing he was up). He cautiously opened the room door – outside, the deserted hotel corridor seemed to pulse and shimmy with the music’s beat. He was surprised it didn’t seem to have woken anyone else.

  Making sure he had his room key in his pyjama pocket, Vince quietly shut the door behind him, and cautiously went down the spiral stairs to the lobby. There was no one around, no one complaining at the reception. There weren’t any lights on, and the air was grey as if full of dust; Vince’s friend at school had told him dust was made up of dead people’s atoms, but Vince wasn’t sure if he believed him.

  There was a pause in the music, and Vince thought he heard cheers and appl
ause – even those sounds were scratchy, as if just old recordings. The music started again – was it the same tune, Vince wondered; it all sounded the same to him, old music, but wasn’t it exactly the same tune?

  The music was coming from the back of the hotel lobby, where there was an old carved wooden door, marred with an incongruous plastic Staff Only sign. Vince cautiously moved towards the door and put his ear to it. The music seemed to be simultaneously coming from behind the door and to be muffled by distance, as if the door opened not onto the hotel kitchen or office, but onto a vast, echoing, empty plain, where the same tune repeated itself until devoid of meaning... Vince didn’t dare try the doorknob to see if it was locked or not.

  Stepping away, he noticed two small faces carved into the old wood of the door – Vince had learnt about those faces at school, the theatrical masks of Comedy and Tragedy. These ones were heavily stylised – the weeping face of Tragedy was deeply lined and its open mouth showed one peg-tooth. Comedy was smooth-faced and its mouth was flung open in a manic grin. But Vince didn’t like it so much – the grin seemed too wide, too strained, too full of boisterous and uncontainable desires. Someone who grinned like that might do anything. Comedy also seemed to be weeping, although with laughter, Vince supposed.

  He felt hands on his shoulders and whirled around in the grey darkness...

  The girl he’d seen at breakfast yelped and jumped back. He flinched at the noise, although surely no adult would be able to hear it over the music. They both stared at each other uncertainly for a few seconds. Then the girl beckoned him forward and cupped her hands round his ear to speak to him. She was just wearing a nightdress and her bare arm brushed his.

  “This happens nearly every night,” the girl said into his ear, her breath tickling. “Not last night, when you arrived, but every other night I’ve been here.”