The Spinetinglers Anthology 2010

by Неизвестный

  But he couldn’t actually sleep, his mind was bubbling over even though his body was wrecked for another day. He looked at his fingers, swollen and wounded – blood and dirt smeared across the pale skin and bandages. They hurt, but not in a way that bothered him, more in a way that felt like accomplishment. Overnight they’d be treated, freshly washed and wrapped pristinely, and in the morning – despite the worn skin and broken fingernails – they’d feel great and ready for work.

  He thought of the outside world, of what existed beyond his four white walls, what awaited him when this was over. Were there people out there ready to squeeze and kiss him? Loved ones glad to see him again? As the hours passed he tried to think of his mother, what she must look like – but there was nothing. Was there a lover? Someone who was going to hold him better than anyone else? Were there any kids who’d be delighted to see their beloved Daddy? He wanted to be touched, to see other people, hear them laugh and cheer. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t remember them at that moment, he was sure when he saw them he’d know who they were and how much he loved them.

  That night he actually dreamt, dreams which were not just white. They were fragments of images – places he couldn’t remember but which looked real, people at a distance who surely meant something to him. There was nothing distinct, nothing he could cling to – but still they made him feel good. These were his memories, they were what he’d done until now, who he was before he entered this white room. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t quite make them out, if they lingered at the periphery of his mind – they were there and before long they’d make sense to him. It would all be completely clear.

  He ignored his food and started to work straight away. Quickly he removed that loose brick, then dug in to scrape out the final crumbs of cement around the second brick. His bandages – pristine as he started – were soon grey and showing the bruises and cuts below. But he whistled, sang, laughed to himself – his unfettered excitement actually making him shake. The cement crumbled quickly and the brick started to loosen. He wrenched it back, but it was still just held in place. He jammed his fingers in, his whole hand, wrestling with it, loosening it, working himself free. Finally it gave with a crack, and he pulled it from the wall.

  With tears in his eyes he dropped the brick and stared at the hole. This was it, he’d done it, completed his task. Trembling he pushed his head through the gap and looked around, it was still totally black – but that didn’t upset him, there was a floor he could feel, a place to go. He pushed his arms through and rested them down, then he squeezed his shoulders through, and had enough leverage to rest his face there. It felt cold on his cheek.

  He followed with his belly and then his hips, his legs, his feet. That white room abandoned forever. His laughter was hysterical as he lay on his back, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. Then there was a click, a whirr and he raised his head startled. The lights switched on in the new room and he saw it around him.

  There were white walls, a white floor, white ceiling. There was a heavy white door, a white bed with clean white sheets and a white pillow. In the corner was a white toilet and sink. He was lying next to a white desk and a white chair.

  And back from where he’d come, was an identical hole leading to another secure white room.

  His screams echoed through the whole block of white cells.

  The Inspector and the Piper

  By Steven Deighan

  Just over six hundred years, the Inspector thought as he flicked through the newspaper. And now, you’re back.

  Jeopardising what little time he had left to salvage his career (his social and home lives had gone almost entirely because of this case), Inspector Barnes looked up from his place at the table and out to the bright street. The cafe’s door was wide open, like a Cheshire cat grinning, and he could see the mix of boys and girls outside, spinning, like twirling tops that couldn’t stop. They laughed gaily. And, presumably, they laughed daily.

  Enough with the rhymes! The Inspector baulked at himself. He’d read Robert Browning’s Pied Piper poem so many times in his youth – too many times – and it was becoming him: his words, his thoughts his being. He wanted to shut the verses out, but they played in his head constantly like a CD that was stuck in the disk drawer, playing the same lines over and over.

  The Pied Piper. The Pied Piper.

  After the first spate of disappearances in the new town, he had remembered the poem, although it was not in any way initially linked to them. A missing child was a missing child, and under no circumstances had this poem related to that. But, there had been something else, just last week. Something unusual, from which the Inspector had determined his assumption, satisfied his curiosity.

  The rats.

  Like something from a horror novel, they had besieged the town square in a mass furry carpet: black ones, grey ones, lean ones – much like Browning’s poem described. The townspeople had shrieked and run in every direction; not a common sight in the twenty-first Century, though bewildering and strange and terrifying all the same. No matter what the pet stores said, people would always be afraid of rats.

  But, an even bigger fear had crept upon them now. A fear which held no offer of a bargain, had not even all those centuries ago. Times change, and often, people change with them, but when things get older they begin to rot and lose their worth. They become modern living skeletons breathing in noxious air; over-filled bucket bins on the street corners instead of a solitary, gleaming lamppost. Like some sore hiccup from the past, Inspector Barnes was convinced the Pied Piper himself had returned.

  ***

  It was a little after two in the afternoon when he saw the man outside. The light didn’t catch him generously; he was tall, thin-ish and gaunt. But what caught the policeman’s attention to him was that the man looked real old. A long red and yellow coat with a flowing, frayed tail described a flamboyant nature, and the Inspector was certain this was his man. All fifteen verses of him.

  He stood up after closing the newspaper, watching the man outside in the park make his way to a solitary bench. Shaky legs walked the tall man over to the wooden seat, where he lowered himself and took position facing the cafe. The Inspector too, walked with unsteadiness, a breath-taking stroll that brought revelations, out of the shaded cafe and into a sunlit street with buskers and playful children. He noticed that he was starting to get nervous, and the threat of actually finding out who the guy was beginning to dawn on him. In all his years as a cop, it was now he sweated the most.

  The ‘Piper’ remained facing the cafe, but the Inspector was sure that the mysterious musician’s eyes were on him, watching. If it were true, the ‘Piper’ didn’t look like he could force a run, so the policeman’s task was all the easier. Apprehension, arrest – he had him now.

  “Good day, sir,” said Inspector Barnes as he walked over to the other end of the bench. He sat down on the warm wood. It was smooth under him.

  The man turned his head slightly, smiled crookedly. He had aged blue eyes shallow enough to swallow a stare, perhaps also to entrance; there was nothing sinister about him, Barnes considered. Couldn’t have been. But . . .

  “G’day to you, too,” was the reply, sweet and accentuated.

  It’s him! It’s him! Barnes cried inside, barely able to hide his excitement. Has to be! The coat, the eyes!

  The sun was shifting momentarily; the looming clock-tower shadow befell them like an approaching, slow giant. Barnes had unfolded his paper and was reading it again; skimming through it, really. His attention was secretly concreted on the Piper.

  “Good a second time round?” Asked the man.

  The Inspector looked up. “Sorry?”

  The man nodded downward. “Your newspaper?”

  “Oh, yes. Sometimes, I don’t take it all in. Have to re-read it.”

  “I used to be like that myself,” said the Piper. “Doing things doubly. You’re right, it means taking in what you missed the first time.”

&nbs
p; The Inspector smiled politely, daring himself to ask the man’s identity. He thought if he was going to do it right, he might as well start with a formal introduction: handshake.

  “I’m Craig,” he introduced, “Craig Barnes.”

  The Piper took his hand. The touch from the older man was querying to the Inspector, whom doubted whether the old man had touched him at all. His handshake was abrupt, swift . . . ghostly. From a distance, it might’ve looked as though the Inspector was reaching across for something – or nothing.

  The Piper didn’t speak.

  “Do you have a name?”

  The Piper simply looked on.

  “It is you, isn’t it?” Said Barnes, straight to it.

  The Piper turned to him, again smiling in that crooked fashion. He slid his hand inside his coat and pulled something out that solidified the Inspector’s boiling supposition:

  The pipe.

  “I last played this in thirteen hundred seventy six,” the Piper began. “Baghdad.”

  Barnes remembered the poem.

  “I know who you are,” said the Piper, holding the long pipe in his hand delicately. “I’ve read about you in the papers. You’ve been stalking me.”

  “Wait, I -”

  “And I know what you want. You want to know if I’m responsible for the disappearances.”

  The Inspector lowered his head. He caught sight of the pipe in the Piper’s hands; it was cane, with three precisely-placed holes similar to a tabor. Whatever enchanting sounds it had played in its past, it had found a calm in its silence now. Only the soft wind crept through it, beckoning a faint phwooo as it blew.

  “First of all, I actually think it’s crazy that you exist at all,” said the Inspector, grasping the reality of things. “Furthermore, you’d be almost seven hundred years old!”

  “And not a day more!” laughed the Piper. He stopped after a few seconds. A coughing fit neared. “But, I feel it, Inspector. Every day that goes by.”

  Inspector Barnes looked away. “Do you know?” he asked. “Where they are?”

  A concerned look spread over the Piper’s face. “Are you still not intrigued as to my being, Inspector Barnes? Isn’t that why you tracked me down?”

  Inspector Barnes spared a moment to think. “The locals heard some kind of flute on many of the nights. As a kid, I was crazy about you, about the poem. I used to imagine you were real. I think also . . . I was frightened.”

  “That I could take you away?”

  “Yeah.”

  “‘Hmpf!’ That’s why adults say, ‘They’re only fairytales.’ I suppose, some of us are.”

  “I’m not implying that you’re to blame. I mean, who would believe me?!”

  A smirk from the Piper, followed by: “You’re right.”

  “Then help me.”

  The Piper rolled his eyes down to the instrument. ‘Inspector Barnes, I’ve played this magnificent artefact – relic, perhaps – on many occasions. I’ve lured all of Nature’s wondrous and fearful beasts out of the path of Man, who has taken it upon himself to rule this earth. In my lifetime, I have earned and I have lost.’

  “What are you saying?”

  “That poem... told very little of me. It was clear of my intentions in Hamelin; I rid that poor town of the rats, drowning them all for a payment that was easily affordable. But, they took advantage of that, of me, and they paid a very sorry price.”

  “Where did those children go?”

  “Are you asking, or interrogating?”

  “Sorry,” Barnes replied. “It’s . . . it’s taken its toll on me, this case.”

  “I can understand, really. But, I am not your culprit. What I’m saying, Inspector, is that the remorse I felt for carrying out that deed has followed me for centuries. I tried escaping, living in a land that didn’t age me old, protected by Nature, but all things get older in time, and the grip on sanctuary releases.”

  “You want to be forgiven? Is that it? So the guilt is lifted?”

  The Piper looked upward. The sun was driving westward with every minute, heading to a slow dive on the town’s horizon. “The spirits have forgiven me, but I am not free.”

  “And those children? From the poem?”

  “Spirited away, Inspector. But never harmed.”

  The kids that were dancing around merrily skipped by, and the Piper and the Inspector watched them with hope and wonder.

  “My time is almost at an end, Inspector,” the Piper told him, “and I sense that yours may be, too.”

  The Inspector looked at him, panicking. “My time?”

  “Not your life!” laughed the Piper. “You’re dedicating too much to your work. Leave it awhile. Resign, if you must. You’ll crack up. Who knows what could happen.”

  “I’m on a case, mind. A very serious one. They’re all counting on me.”

  “And you have no means as to solving this case?”

  “I was hoping you could help. You have the experience.”

  “Ah! Hope, Inspector. A petty word that delivers feebly. I am not a monster; sought after by vengeance, was I, that I was forced into hiding long ago. A long time has passed and I am free, but by being unchained I see that this world is still locked in greed, tormented by a maddened hunger. Perhaps I could help. With this.”

  The Piper lifted the pipe to his mouth; it seemed as though it didn’t slide between his lips, but the sweet sound that exited made the children stop and the birds rest in the trees for a few moments. His long fingers moved over the holes effortlessly; the notes he played like a tune from a Disney animation, his ability that of an experienced musician.

  Once he stopped, he placed the pipe in the Inspector’s hands.

  “You keep this. If they heard, they will soon return.”

  “And if they didn’t?”

  “We can’t be naive regarding our decisions, Inspector, no matter how strenuous or heartbreaking they are. We bring upon ourselves the outcomes of our afflictions, choosing to suffer them alone, or with others. That is maybe why Nature herself is distraught and sometimes angry at us. Besides, I brought those rats here, didn’t I?”

  And like the sun, the Piper lifted from his seat and walked steadily westward to disappear over another town horizon.

  George

  By William Jessop

  George peeped into what had once been the saloon bar of The Mitre hotel. He didn’t approve of the changes that were taking place there, and wondered how he was going to fill his time from here on.

  The Mitre had started life as a busy coaching inn during the early eighteenth century and survived even when the railway age blossomed and coaches had ceased to roll in several times a day. The Great North Road still ran through the small market town and local traffic, the carriers carts and the coaches of the gentry; the farmers going to and fro between the larger towns in the area gave the old inn a reasonable clientele.

  When the motoring age dawned, it proved to be a shot in the arm for The Mitre. Business boomed as cars and charabancs once again carried passengers along the road, now newly named the A1.

  George enjoyed his favourite occupation of listening in to the conversations of groups of men who filled the saloon bar. He’d never learned how to read, so apart from looking at pictures in the newspapers that were left lying around, his main source of information on the state of the world was through listening to news discussed in noisy and friendly bar gossip.

  George thought that this was a perfect way to spend his days.

  Of course, as with everything else, all good things eventually came to an end. The volume of traffic was increasing far too much for the road through the town and the decision was taken for the place to be bypassed. Once again the town would become somewhat of a backwater. This time however there wouldn’t be much local traffic and George knew a slump in trade could be disastrous for the old Mitre.

  He listened to all this talk and worried; when he worried, he occasionally relaxed and allowed himself be seen; this wasn’t good. He even
found himself becoming the subject of gossip he loved so much. The saloon bar, after two hundred years of George’s unseen and unreported occupancy, started to get the reputation of being haunted. A barmaid swore that she’d glimpsed the shadowy figure of a youngish man, hair tied back with black ribbon and wearing a blue tail coat with breeches buckled at the knee. An excellent description considering that George had only shown himself for a matter of seconds.

  George first used the saloon bar in the year of Our Lord seventeen eighty four. His indulgent father was a wealthy corn and seed merchant and had never pushed George into either education or work, so he just drifted happily and aimlessly through his early years.

  His generous allowance and good nature made him a welcome member of the saloon bar set and although he rarely drank much more than a gallon or so of the locally brewed small beer, he sometimes exceeded this limit and had to be helped home by his friends. It was on one such occasion that brought George’s untimely end. He choked on a piece of mutton pie he’d helped himself to from a plate being prepared for the passengers of the Newark to Doncaster coach; collapsing while trying to swallow and laugh at the same time.

  The mutton pie didn’t kill him, but the over enthusiastic pounding of his back by friends trying to clear his air passage, unfortunately resulted in a broken neck. George found himself in the unusual position of having to watch his body being carried from the room on the cellar door; easily detachable for use when drunks regularly had to be removed.

  He tried to follow, being curious as to what kind of funeral his family would give him, but found to his surprise he was unable to leave the premises. This didn’t unduly upset him, as he rapidly came to the conclusion that if he was to be an earth bound spirit, he was as well being confined to the old Mitre as anywhere else.