Falling Over

by James Everington

  He didn’t sleep, and so when in the dark early morning a van pulled up outside the shop, it still felt like it was the day before.

  Two men got out of the van, and looked around, peered through the windows of the shop, banged on the door. One of them cursed and looked at his watch, the other shrugged and started taking tied up bundles of newspapers from the back of the van and leaving them on the pavement. Hot off the presses; Joel could practically smell them. Another car pulled up, and a flustered looking man got out, already talking. The first two men shook their heads, gestured at the parcels of newspapers on the street, and got back in the van. The third man swore half-heartedly at the van as it pulled off, then went and unlocked the shop’s front door. Struggling, he picked up one of the bundles of newspapers and carried it slowly into the shop. He was gone a number of minutes before he returned for the next one, and Joel held his breath as he watched from over the wall. By the time he came back a third time the man looked tired, and already had a fag on the go. He slowly took another bundle of papers inside, and when he was out of sight in the shop Joel leapt over the wall of the park, ran across the street, and tried to pull a paper from the remaining pile. He knew it didn’t matter which title it was anymore, they were all the same. The papers were tightly bound together with some kind of plastic strips, and Joel felt scared in case the third man came back out of the newsagent and caught him in his act of transgression. He managed to worm one of the papers free, and he started to sprint back towards the park again, but the noise of a large group of people deterred him – probably just drunk lads coming home late, he told himself, but better not to find out. Instead he ran down the side of the shop, and turned round the back of it – there were two commercial skips there, filled to overflowing with old newspapers, sheets of which were scattered and trod into the pavement of this small space. Some were banded up neatly, as if yesterday’s news could be sold two for one; some were yellowed and fluttered sickly on the ground. Joel hunched down between the two large skips, ignoring the uncomfortable press of the metal against his back. It was still pre-dawn, still the previous night really, but there was just enough light to read the newspaper he had stolen. The date on the top of each page gave him an odd little feeling of excitement, like he was reading about future events before they had actually happened.

  The first page obviously wasn’t the one he wanted, for the story was a lurid and sensationalist murder – as far as Joel could make out someone had been practically torn apart with no rhyme or reason. All the usual tabloid condemnations were offered: MONSTERS, MOB JUSTICE – but Joel felt these words were so clichéd as to be half-hearted, as if they didn’t really believe in the strong language they were using. Between the lines was a distinct excitement, heightened by the photograph which took up almost two thirds of the page – a non-descript, day-lit crime scene that could have been anywhere – some back alley somewhere.

  But he was wasting time – Joel skimmed through the paper looking for his likeness; for the why and wherefore of his crimes that justified his picture being printed and the mob at his door. He couldn’t see anything; he felt a curious mixture of relief and disappointment. Maybe it had finished, maybe the press had given up on whatever its little moral crusade had been, maybe his face would appear no more. But it was hard to believe, for there had yet to be an explanation; skipping the lurid front-page Joel started to read the paper more carefully, just to make sure.

  The sun was starting to rise, but it wasn’t getting lighter – Joel didn’t sense the shadows that fell across him as he read, still looking for his answer. He was reading the paper in a ‘corridor’ between the two large skips (each taller than he was) and the brick wall of the newsagent. At the front of this corridor the people approached silently and waited as their numbers slowly built up.

  Eventually, Joel was alerted and turned his head – the crowd blocked the way out, blurred and monstrous in his vision. He looked the other way – at the end of his corridor the wall of the shop took a right-angle, blocking him off. He scrambled to his feet, but there was nowhere to go.

  He looked at the crowd’s faces, at their tensed postures, and it was like Ian catching him in the act of trespass again: the way that they stood in the ‘doorway’ and blocked his escape, the feeling that if he tried to shove his way through then the violence simmering in their thoughts would become a reality. But the sheer number of them made it different too, the way the crowd seemed one body with one will, unconcerned with any petty doubts of its individual members. Ian had been uncertain of his right to inflict violence; the crowd felt no such ambiguity.

  Were these the same people who’d been outside his house, or different? They didn’t make a move yet, and more people arrived and started pushing at the back. None of this is fair! Joel thought; just why me? He tried to talk to them, but he didn’t know what to say other than this obviously couldn’t be happening, that he was in the wrong place, or wrong time. He paced back and forth in his trap, feeling condemned. They were shadow shapes of human beings, grunting incomprehensibly – but they were normal looking people at the same time, hugging themselves or stamping their feet to keep themselves warm in the early morning chill. Joel continued to try to talk to them, started to shout at them, but they didn’t seem to understand, and the noise made them displeased, and they responded in words of their own that Joel couldn’t comprehend.

  The crowd continued to grow, the ones at the back who couldn’t see pushing forwards so that those at the front were forced forward into the corridor – Joel looked into their faces and saw they were still reluctant to be the ones who actually started it, but they kept getting pushed further and further and so lent further legitimacy to what was going to happen. Joel was still shouting at them, no longer begging an explanation, but just to be let go. He saw nothing new in their faces, just the same myopic righteousness. A man was pushed to the front of the crowd – it looked like the drunk before, or like Ian, but Joel realised that the similarity was just his mind’s final attempt to find order in what was happening. The man had been shoved into Joel, and he pushed him to get some room; Joel nearly slipped on the ripped sheets of newspaper underfoot. Someone else moved up alongside the man, was pressed forward right against Joel, pulling at Joel’s ill-fitting coat to keep herself from falling over. He instinctively pushed her away, but more of the crowd were already pressing in behind her and she had nowhere to go. She pushed him backwards; his shoulder slammed against the metal skip, and he slipped. Trying to regain his feet, he reached out for something to keep himself upright; but his hand only found the body of someone else who was off balance because they were being pushed from behind, and this person shoved him away so that his head banged against the brick wall, and he fell. People moved forward so that they were practically standing on him; he covered his head with his arms on the floor. He knew that he was screaming, and that his screams sounded incomprehensible. Legs brushed against him, softly, then stumbled against him, then kicked him. There was another kick, and then another, either side of him now; hands reached to haul him up only to cast him down again. He heard the shout of the people at the back of the crowd, impatient to push forward for their share. He tasted blood, the taste sharp behind his closed eyes. More blows, one slamming into his head and simultaneously slamming it into the brick wall. Joel wished he could lose consciousness, for his terrified thoughts were useless, there was no way to stop what was happening, for it had already occurred. He opened his eyes one last time, saw the dark shapes looming over him, but saw too how the sunlight lit up the corridor he was trapped in, made its dimensions and appearance familiar – it looked like some back alley, that could have been anywhere...

  He had been wrong to flick forward, he realised.

  He was front-page news, after all.

  Epilogue:

  A Dream about Robert Aickman

  Last night, I dreamt I was in a bookshop. All the books were on rotating carousels; they were square and very thin with covers seemingly made of
canvas or some sort of woven fabric. They only displayed the author’s name on the front, not any titles, and to tell who the book was by you had to run your fingers over the embossed writing like Braille.

  ~

  I was turning the carousel looking through the books and I wondered why there weren’t any by Robert Aickman. As soon as I thought this, the carousel (which turned of its own accord) presented a book to me; I traced Aickman’s name on the cover and then opened it.

  ~

  All the pages were folded into each like the leaves of a map, but a thousand times more complicated and intricately layered. As I unfolded more and more pages I held them up to the light, and the paper was tough but almost see through, like an insect’s wing. Each page spawned more and more pages. The next might have writing in all the alphabets of the world, or diagrams that drew themselves, or colourful illustrations like the Book Of Kells, or brand new periodic tables, or anatomical drawings of imaginary creatures.

  ~

  I looked around the bookshop, and all the other people there had similar books open, their open pages unfolding and connecting like paper streamers between us. Everyone was smiling and everyone was reading, and I knew I’d never be able to shut the book that was opening and opening in my hands.

  Author Notes

  Here are some notes on the stories, for those that want them. Those of you who’d prefer to avert their eyes, I won’t be offended – I’ll thank you for reading this far and let you get on with your lives.

  Everyone else, here we go...

  Falling Over

  This story was originally written for Penny Dreadnought – a loose collective consisting of myself, Alan Ryker, Iain Rowan, and Aaron Polson, who occasionally publish themed anthologies of weird fiction. Falling Over was in the second volume called Descartes’ Demon – an anthology of horror stories on the theme of ‘epistemic doubt’.

  ‘Epistemic’ just means how we know things, and really there’s only one way – through our senses. Which can deceive us. Or be deceived. Scary, no? And fertile soil from which to grow horror stories. Implicitly or explicitly, I think a lot of the best weird fiction is about doubt and about the paranoia that doubt can turn into. A lot of mine are, anyway.

  Oh and I’ve always wanted to write a ‘pod-people’ story, despite the fact that like the central character in this story I’ve never actually read The Body Snatchers.

  There’s a lot of falling imagery in the stories in this book, so that’s why I picked the title of this one as the overall title for the collection.

  Fate, Destiny, And A Fat Man From Arkansas

  This is the oldest story in the collection, and I guess the most straight-forward horror story here. There’s a smidgen of Lovecraft, bolted onto the age-old idea of trespassers being punished... The horror that underpins it all however is the idea of being trapped in a series of events that can’t be stopped; of being dragged to an unenviable end despite foreknowledge and one’s own wishes...

  I’ve no idea where the idea of having the fat man come from Arkansas came from; I think I just like the sound of the word.

  Haunted

  This was originally written for the first anthology published by Cruentus Libri Press, the premise for which was beautifully simple. Called 100 Horrors, the book was to feature one hundred horror authors each with a horror story one hundred words long or less.

  My contribution was Haunted and, if you count the title, it is exactly one hundred words long. Yes, I am a show off.

  And yes, the main character is called Eleanor in homage to the greatest haunted house story of them all...

  New Boy

  Another falling story...

  I used to work in a building very much like the one described in this story, although obviously the tale itself is complete fiction. I worked on the tenth floor and had a desk next to the windows, from where I could see the city. I spent a lot of time bored and staring out at the view but nothing as exciting as seeing a person fall past ever happened. However a bad job with a good view is a spur to the imagination, and sometime during that period the idea for this story came to me.

  The Time Of Their Lives

  The idea for this one came whilst reading the story The Break by Terry Lamsley – from the first few pages I was trying guess where the story was going. I didn’t guess correctly at all (Lamsley is too good a writer for that) but The Time Of Their Lives grew from one of those wide of the mark guesses. It took on its own life so that in the end it doesn’t share much with The Break apart from being set in a somewhat odd hotel and having a young protagonist. Bizarrely, when I came to edit it for this collection, it reminded me of Roald Dahl’s The Witches more than anything else.

  I was on holiday in the Cotswolds at the time, so that’s why the story is set there. It’s a truly lovely part of the world – and as a horror writer I take that as a challenge.

  The Man Dogs Hated

  A slightly baffling one this, I admit, even to me. The words came to me, and I wrote them down, and tidied up the sentence structure and other boring things where it was needed. Sometimes your only conscious involvement in it all seems to be just getting the thing fixed on paper before the words fade. Oh I could tell you it’s a story about conformity and the theme of the scapegoat, but that’s only because I’ve read it a few times, not because I wrote it.

  I quite like dogs, but I’m a cat person myself.

  Sick Leave

  Quite obviously, this is about the fear of death. More specifically, how we turn a blind eye to our upcoming deaths; how we readily speculate about what good things might happen to us in the future but hardly ever about the one bad thing that is definitely going to happen to us.

  I’ve noticed before that children sometimes seem, from our adult perspective, morbidly interested in death. As if they, unlike us, still haven’t quite got their heads round it and managed to put it from their minds.

  Drones

  This was written for The Sirens Call magazine, who were looking for stories based on the theme of ‘horror from the point of view of the observer’.

  The observer – that’s interesting, I thought, but I haven’t got any stories that fit right now, and the deadline is in a few days so I haven’t time to come up with anything... Ah well.

  Around this time I’d also been turning over a vague idea in my head about a story featuring a soldier in a modern day war, who did little but stare at computer screens all day like any other office worker. And about what he might see on those screens that wasn’t strictly speaking there. Now you’d think my conscious mind would have been smart enough to think: Computer screens? From the point of view of the observer? There’s a connection there..! but no. But my subconscious, which is obviously the brains of the outfit, must have made the connection overnight, for the next morning I awoke with this in my head.

  Not just the idea for Drones mind you, but the whole shebang: the plot, the lead character’s voice, the first lines, the last lines... This has happened to me only occasionally; when it does the story seems very fragile, like a soap bubble, and I know I have to get it written down as quickly as I can before it bursts. So I went straight downstairs, boiled the kettle, and wrote the first draft in a couple of hours.

  The next day I attempted to decipher my cramped and frantic handwriting, and wrote out a second draft; the day after that it was typed up and sent off to the good folks at The Sirens Call who accepted it, bless them.

  Public Interest Story

  The British tabloid press are a national fucking disgrace. Small-minded, bigoted deceivers; phone-hacking, police-bribing, corrupt bastards, blatantly serving the interests of the rich and amoral whilst pretending to speak for the public.

  And we lap it up.

  The original version of this story was written before the News Of The World phone hacking scandal came to light. If it had been a too literal a tale of press persecution I probably would have had to bin it when that story broke, because there’s no way my imagination cou
ld have outdone the actual reality of how the Murdoch press operated.

  Fortunately my take on tabloid scaremongering is a more Kafkaesque, surreal trip into modern day damnation, so I still think it holds up – although who knows what press scandals and corruption unknown to me now will have been uncovered by the time you are reading this?

  As well as the tabloid angle, this is also a story about crowds of course, about mob-rule. Out of all of my stories it’s probably the one that scares me the most. Human beings are the scariest monsters of course, and something about the idea of being trampled to death by a group of people so far gone into group-think that I can’t even reason with them anymore scares the hell out of me.

  Epilogue: A Dream About Robert Aickman

  This one came to me exactly as the title suggests: in a dream. Events are exactly as they occurred in that dream, to the best of my waking knowledge.

  It seemed a suitable note to end on, for what is writing for if not the sharing of dreams?

  You can find out more about my other books and general goings on at www.jameseverington.blogspot.co.uk.

  About the author

  Keith Brooke's first novel, Keepers of the Peace, appeared in 1990, since when he has published six more adult novels, six collections, and over 60 short stories. For ten years from 1997 he ran the web-based SF, fantasy and horror showcase infinity plus, featuring the work of around 100 top genre authors, including Michael Moorcock, Stephen Baxter, Connie Willis, Gene Wolfe, Vonda McIntyre and Jack Vance. In 2010 infinity plus was relaunched as an ebook imprint.

  His novel Genetopia was published by Pyr in February 2006 and was their first title to receive a starred review in Publishers Weekly; The Accord, published by Solaris in 2009, received another starred PW review and was optioned for film. His latest novel, The Unlikely World of Faraway Frankie, came out from Newcon Press in April 2010. His next novel is alt.human, due from Solaris in 2012.