Reality Bites

by Clark, Simon

  “Not me,” said Ramsay. He raised his voice as he eased the pick-up into higher gear and gunned the engine. “Talking crap for three hours straight just to fill time? No way. I’d rather be dead than a pundit.”

  Anna was starting to feel the effects of the adrenaline draining away, leaving her tired, her head buzzing with disparate thoughts. Her stomach felt empty, nagging to be filled.

  Her thoughts turned first to the ambush and then to Strutton and how she had died. It occurred to Anna that the WNN cam-drone must have had a view of the marksman on the jamming station roof. Could Schlatter have warned them either time? Or did the potential of increased ratings mean that the programme director didn’t mind accepting a hefty family payout to secure an on-camera death or three? Just what was a life worth to someone like him?

  This contract, she told herself, would pay for that q-jump. If Davidson was quitting, there was no reason to stay on Earth.

  Sshe definitely had to get out of television before it killed her.

  Wormwood Chris Amies

  "We need an adventure," said Diogenes McCann. We were in McCann's small but comfortable flat on the North End Road, where he had lived for decades. He'd moved there because the area was cheap as chips, but since then it had gentrified around him to the point where people would say "you must be loaded" when he told them where he lived.

  He hardly needed to say it. My friend was restless. He needed another expedition, something to take him up to the high peaks or off up a river in Belize like last time. More than that, he needed to make a film.

  "Do you not think, young Robin, that it is worth a punt? I was wandering about the north of the Borough the other day and guess what I spotted."

  "Someone with a job?" I said. "You get a thousand points for that. More if they have a proper job, one you can name in one word. Doctor. Teacher. Plumber. Not 'recruitment consultant' or 'graphic designer'."

  "You kiss your mother with that mouth?" McCann said. "No, I saw Wormwood Hospital. Closed, shuttered and very desolate. Why do you think there are so many mental patients roaming around the Broadway? Because in the nineties they closed Wormwood down. You know the rumours."

  "Which rumours?" I said. "They say bad things happened there. Abuse, deaths covered up, that kind of thing. I think it's more than rumours. One day it'll all come out like kicking an anthill. Smoothness over complexity equals horror."

  "Ghosts," said McCann. "The damned place is riddled with ghosts, and not surprising given what you've just said. So all we need is the unholy trinity - celebs, booze, and a couple of cameras -and we're on our way."

  I was sure he'd left out a stage, but then McCann always had an eye for a film. Dubious pisshead and worse he might be, but he could make a pretty movie.

  "We could," he said, "get Channel 4 interested. Or one of the other channels that nobody ever watches because they all have YouPlayer and all that. Then take the thing out of copyright if it's any good, shove it onto the Net and let it go viral. You know people at the Council, don't you? Talk to them and see if we can take Wormwood over for a few days."

  "I like that," I said. "I shall start calling in the morning."

  Next morning I was up at eight, started work after several coffees, and by the evening I had assembled a cast. They were Z-listers, but they all liked a drink and had an interest in weird stuff. There was Kimberley Fudge, television baker and connoisseur of fine wines. I mostly remembered her for a piece in which she told of having seen her poor dead mum's ghost in the supermarket.

  Matthew Pryce, gardening show presenter turned bon vivant and self-declared skeptic. He was determined to be on the show if only to prove that the weird stuff didn't exist.

  Felicity Ringmain, married at different times to two different footballers but I couldn't remember which ones.

  Felicity's dancing partner on Bop Till You Drop, Raymard Zorg, best known for his Pointless Good Looks and appearing in a soap opera or two.

  Linda Khan, former actress, businesswoman, and Big Brother contestant. She had started her working life telling fortunes in a tent by Richmond Bridge.

  And Birdie Collins. For anyone who was around and watching telly, say, twenty years ago, he needed no more introduction. Recently he'd slipped into oblivion, but not so far that he didn't say 'yes' when asked.

  And then there was Wormwood Hospital itself.

  A gloomy gothic pile, now mouldering away in the northern part of the borough, surrounded

  by open grassland gone wild. The Hospital last closed its doors to patients in 1990, by which time

  the stories about it were already many and varied. Plans to redevelop it or demolish it came and

  went about one every two years, but kept failing. Unexpected downturns in the market, would-be

  developers done for fraud, mysterious disappearances; Wormwood was keeping its mysteries to

  itself. I spent an hour on the phone to Borough Councillor Shumila Dent - we went back years, she

  and I - before I persuaded her to give the Borough's all clear to use the place. We would use the

  main hall for the main session and people could sleep - if they were ever able to sleep again - in the

  wards.

  "On your own head be it," she said. "And if you're not careful, it will be." "We'll be careful," I said.

  I suspected it wouldn't be enough. But who could resist it – a feast in a haunted house?

  Grey gothic towers, corbels, turrets, a wilfully asymmetric facade and a central tower topped with a spire that reached up into the low, grey clouds. Inside, the Wormwood was no nicer – long cream and green-painted corridors, a high-ceilinged central hall, and the overpowering smell of dust and damp. It felt as though it had been abandoned far longer than twenty-odd years, even with the crews bringing in lighting and our electricians rebooting the power supply and declaring it safe. The catering vans drew up in rows. The sound and lighting rigs were to be operated remotely from a van on site.

  Even then I thought I could hear the echo of screams from tormented throats. But it wasn't that, it was Kimberley Fudge making her merry way through the main doors. Dressed in a long cream-coloured coat over a short bottle-green dress, bare-legged, and carrying a huge tasselled beige leather bag. She was blonder than last time I saw her (on Bunfight!, about five years ago) and it suited her. She was accompanied by Matthew Pryce who was wearing a russetorange suit and a grey shirt and looking cowed.

  Of the others there was no sign.

  "Darling!" Kimberley Fudge exclaimed and tottered over to Diogenes McCann. "When does the fun start?"

  "When you get here," McCann countered.

  "I expect we're still waiting for Linda and that horrid little man," Kimberley said. "Do tell me why you invited him?"

  "He was available," I said.

  "Oh, er, Robbie," she said.

  "Robin," I corrected her unwisely.

  "Robin. So we'll have two birdies here then, you and Birdie Collins. Everyone knows about him, darling. I hope poor Linda hasn't had to share a ride with him." She turned back to Pryce.

  "Go and get the rest of my stuff out of the car," she told him. He went. I looked between him and her, speculating inwardly.

  The crew brought in food and drink. Lots of drink. Lots of food for the cook-off, but especially drink. Wines, lagers, ales, ciders.

  "No spirits?" I remarked.

  "No," said Diogenes. "Oh ha ha, very funny. You'll see."

  Ringmain and Zorg turned up in a taxi and took themselves off to a corner to get pissed and have a row.

  As evening began to fall, Diogenes McCann began to feel uneasy. No Birdie Collins, and Linda was not answering her phone. Even the camera crew were starting to get nervous, but that was less about the non-arrivals and more about the reputation of Wormwood Hospital. Some of these guys had trekked in the green hell of the Upper Wangtarara and had to bargain for their lives with tribespeople who were quite happy to kill them for being Not From Around Here. The Wormwood, though they d
idn't admit it, freaked them.

  After a clear day the sky in the west had become dull and grey. Beneath it the lights of the streets and the urban motorways which cross this part of the capital seemed dulled, as if immersed at the bottom of the sea.

  The leaden sky was lit fitfully by the orange and crimson streaks of sunset. "Let's get filming," said Diogenes finally. "Crews cost time. What do crews cost?" "Time," I said. "Money."

  Rain began to lash the windows and in the main hall of Wormwood Hospital - where many, many years ago patients had, I had heard, been strapped to their beds - we sat, fearfully already, watching the shadows. The camera operators were dark figures behind cameras and lights. The stage lights didn't make the shadows in the corners any more inviting.

  "This isn't very nice, really, is it?" said Kimberley. "I mean, perhaps the others were scared to turn up." She reached for her glass of wine. "I hope you know what we're doing."

  "Kimberley," Diogenes said, "perhaps you'd like to say a few words about why we're here."

  "Oh yes. Hi," she said to camera. "Welcome to Wormwood Hospital. We are here to drink, eat and look for ghosts. In a haunted house. Do ghosts eat? Maybe we'll find out."

  "Matthew?"

  "I don't believe it," said Pryce. "My nan used to talk about duppies, back in the islands – just to scare us kids if you ask me. Never said she actually saw one."

  Diogenes McCann gave me a significant look.

  "Let us crack on with the feasting and ghosting, my girls and boys," he said. "You can't have a spectre without a feast. Well you can, but it isn't as good. Not as good for you, that is. With plenty to drink we will counter the ill effects."

  Kimberley had of course been the consultant vis a vis the nosh. And I for one welcomed the onslaught of emails complaining about the waste of 'taxpayers' money' (when not a public penny had been spent upon it) when the viewers saw the tables laid out with good honest food and drink. Especially drink. I only regretted that we would almost certainly not be able to sell it to the United States networks. Funny that. Much as I like the US of A, they were fine with people wandering about with guns ready to blast their neighbours into eternity but you couldn't show them knocking back the Montrachet.

  "You say, 'no ill effects'," Matt Pryce said. "What ill effects could there be?"

  "Ah my boy," said Diogenes, "by the time you can see the ghost it is already too late. They disrupt your brain and body. Only if you're drunk they have no real effect."

  "So you say," said Matt Pryce. "You do realise it's all–"

  His next words were drowned out by a massive clap of thunder at the same time as a flash of lightning lit up the gloomy hall.

  When my eyes recovered from the flash, I saw four human figures at the end of the hall. In a line, or a loose group, the sort where you aren't sure if they really are together or just happen to be in the same place. They were thin, pale, dressed in grey shapeless clothing.

  "Nice trick," said Matthew. A clattering of feet and I thought of a ghostly horse stampeding through a meadow, but it was just Ringmain and Zorg bottling it.

  "A trick?" said Diogenes. The four were closer now, walking as though they had not done so for a long time. "I can assure you it is no trick."

  They walk as though they had been long buried, I thought. A chill ran through me. How cold it was in the Wormwood. The warming dishes were still putting out heat but

  "They want heat," said Kim. She held out her full wineglass and drained half of it. "They've been cold for a long time. Poor things."

  Closer now they still looked human but the eyes were full of fear. They walked slowly towards the tables laid out with food. Kim snatched up a chicken leg and held it out to one of the pale figures as if bargaining for her life. But it ignored the proffered food.

  "Hello," she said. "What's your name?" I was reminded of someone trying to pacify a dog of unknown temperament. At the back of my mind I recalled a picture of Kim, or someone like her, in her bucolic country home with her dogs. That was before the increasingly drink-fuelled TV appearances and a smash in her beloved orange sports car, which she survived but her career didn't.

  The figure - male, nearly bald but looking no more than thirty years old - said nothing. He opened a mouth full of stained teeth but no sound came out.

  I thought I could see something moving under the skin of his throat: something dark and malign.

  "Kim," Matt Pryce said, "Keep away from them."

  "They're lonely," Kim said. "Like me. They want to play. 'Sides, I'm pissed enough for it not to matter. You boys" - she addressed us all - "keep drinking, yeah? The others will be here soon."

  The other pale figures - not what she meant, I was sure, but they were approaching. One, a shaven-headed woman, suddenly pulled down the front of her dress to reveal small dark-nippled breasts and beneath their surface, something dark and shadowy, questing and working about.

  And beyond these pale walkers there were others, coming from the other doors around the hall.

  "Ghosts?" said Matt Pryce. "I don't believe it."

  "Well you can believe the ghost of my old mum," said Kim Fudge. "I saw her clear as day. And if you say I'm lying, well."

  The first ghost had stripped off his few clothes and I could see the shadows moving under his skin, just as they were under the skin of the woman. I watched them move, mesmerised.

  Diogenes grabbed me.

  "Look away," he said and spun me round to face the table of food. My head revolved slightly slower than the rest of me and I staggered against it, fell down. Diogenes picked me up without a word.

  "Maybe they aren't hungry," Kim said.

  "Not hungry for your food," said Diogenes, who was putting it away. "It's the worms …" he broke off. The distinct sound of a car arriving, pulling up. A clattering sound came from the entrance.

  "They're here," Kim said mournfully.

  "They're still here," I pointed out.

  "No," she said. "Not them," indicating the pale figures, "Them."

  And they were. The doors slammed open with a cheerful cry of:

  "Can't anyone get no bloomin' 'elp round 'ere?"

  Standing exactly five feet tall – she had herself measured at the National Physical Laboratory once a year – and with a mane of dyed red hair to match her temperament, Linda Khan was in town. She'd been my least likely cert for the gig but the one I most wanted to say 'yes', and she did.

  Linda was cheerily drunk and pushed the wheelchair in front of her on a weaving track towards us, with scarce a glance at the white ghostly figures now pulsing with dark threads.

  We weren't looking at them either for now, but at the wheelchair's occupant. Dressed in a dove-grey jacket and pale trousers, with a green paisley neckerchief over a dark blue shirt, his hair brilliantined within inches of its life, sat a man who had been part of our televisual lives for decades, less so recently it was true, but during the seventies and eighties he was everywhere. A member of the comedy duo "Cyril and Birdie" with Cyril Tombs, he was best known for "Watch the Birdie," his ITV stand-up / chat / impro show which ran from 1974 until 1998. I ran this info through my mind and noted that although "Watch the Birdie" seemed to have been on for as long as Planet Earth had existed, it only spanned one complete decade, the 1980s. This struck me as curious. I had another drink and tried to ignore the white figures which were standing just outside the pool of light that the lighting crew had conjured over the tiny, beautiful Linda Khan and the apparently wheelchair-bound Birdie Collins.

  "You're such a good person, Linda," Diogenes said. "Helping Mr Collins like that."

  "Ah, drink," said Collins, reaching out towards the table. "I haven't had a drink for a week. Parched, I am. When are you going to let me get up?"

  He looked up at Linda Khan.

  "I've no idea what you're playing at, young lady–" he said.

  "'Young'," said Linda. "I like that. Carry on."

  " – but I demand you let me out of this chair."

  He pluck
ed at the blanket over his knees, which slithered away to reveal leather straps covering his legs and tying them to the wheelchair.

  "Not just yet," said Kim Fudge.

  "Well, could I have a drink?" said Collins. He looked around him and swallowed hard.

  "What the fuck," he said, "are they?"

  "You know what," said Linda. "In some cases you may even know who. I think you've been here before, haven't you?"

  "No idea," said Collins. "Give me a fucking drink. I like a twelve-year-old scotch, me."

  "I've heard," Kim said, "that's not all you like when it's twelve years old."

  "What can you mean?" said Collins.

  The white figures had started to edge forward into the pool of light. I remembered what Diogenes had said about alcohol mitigating the effects. We had all imbibed, but Birdie Collins was stone cold sober.

  "Oh, I mean girls," said Kim. "And boys. You weren't fussed, were you, Birdie? That's what 'birdie' means, in gay slang. A young boy ripe for the roasting. Like young Matthew here was."

  "I don't remember him," said Collins, squinting up at Matt Pryce as the camera closed in on him.

  "That's very convenient," said Kim. "Considering it was here. Wasn't it, Matt?"

  "It was," Matt said. "Upstairs, in the back dorm. Wasn't just me either. You used to troll in here and take your pick. I even heard you did it with the janitor's dog."

  Collins spluttered.

  "Not the dog," he said. "Not that bloody dog again. It wouldn't … "

  "And me and my cousin Lucy," Linda said, "when we were on I Predict. Which you'll say you don't remember either, won't you? I got away but Lucy had to spend the night. She won't say too much about it but I can guess. She was fourteen.

  "It's why 'Watch the Birdie' was taken off the air, wasn't it? You groped the wrong little girl or little boy, some producer's child perhaps? They couldn't have you arrested – too big a name for that – but they could cancel your show."

  Collins was past blustering. Instead he was staring at the naked figures that nudged forward into the light. The shadows under their skin were now still, and more visible.