Simon Clark - The Fall

‘Well, no… not exactly.’ Nicole ran her fingers through her blonde hair (perhaps as a prelude to tugging it out in frustration). ‘She told me we’re booked in for the Tuesday the 23 rd.’

Lee shook his head, bewildered. ‘The 23 rd? Today’s the 23 rd. So what’s the problem?’

‘No. That’s what’s so bizarre. The receptionist insists—’

Behind him the coach driver sounded his horn impatiently. When Lee glanced back, the man was using his fingers to mime people walking off the coach. Lee shook his head.

Nicole continued, one hand still holding onto her blonde hair. ‘The receptionist insisted that today is the 22 nd.’

‘Monday?’

‘Yes.’

‘Impossible.’

Sue gave an emphatic shrug. ‘Well, I say it’s Tuesday.’

‘Me, too.’ Lee pulled the cloak higher up his shoulder; the thing was a dead weight on his back. ‘Yesterday – Monday – we were in Whitby.’

‘Only the receptionist and the hotel manager tell us that today is Monday. Either they’ve gone mad, or it’s us.’

Ryan rubbed his plump cheeks with both hands. ‘Oh, shit. I knew we shouldn’t have smoked that dope. We shouldn’t, we shouldn’t…’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Nicole snapped uncharitably.

‘Oh, come on.’ Lee said. ‘It can’t be the dope. You’d have to smoke a whole bush of the stuff to lose a day like that.’

‘Bad dope,’ Ryan suggested.

‘Bad dope, my foot. We all say it’s Tuesday. Agreed?’

They all nodded, and Lee was once more struck by the absurdity of it all. The sight they must have made – a blonde girl in a gorilla suit, Dracula and Laurel and Hardy standing on a York pavement bustling with shoppers – trying to convince each other that it was a Tuesday and not a Monday.

Again the coach driver sounded his horn. This time he jerked a thumb back at the passengers. They were staring out of the window at their reps, obviously keen to unpack, shower and hit the city’s tourist hot spots.

‘Damn him,’ Nicole hissed. ‘Can’t he be patient for one minute?’

‘Who’s going to tell the clients?’ Ryan cried, looking woeful in his Oliver Hardy suit and bowler. ‘They’re going to tear us another set of arseholes, aren’t they?’

‘Tell them what?’ Nicole’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘That they haven’t got a hotel? Or that somewhere on the road we took a wrong turn and ended up here on a Monday, not a Tuesday.’

‘It’s the dope,’ Ryan whined. ‘I said we shouldn’t have smoked it. I’m not used to it. This is a bad trip we’re having. We need to lie down and drink plenty of—’

‘Look, just take it easy,’ Lee told him. ‘Everyone, stay cool. We all know it’s a Tuesday. Okay?’

They nodded.

‘So, if we know it, then it must be the hotel that’s mistaken—’

‘But I’ve just stood and argued it all out with them.’ Nicole wound her fingers in her hair. Lee watched in fascination, expecting her to start tearing out great golden handfuls. ‘The receptionist told me it’s Monday. Then the manager told me it’s Monday. They even showed me the diary.’

‘They’re the ones who are mistaken,’ Lee insisted. ‘Look, there’s a newsagent. I’ll go buy today’s newspaper, then we’ll march back in there and shove it under their idiot noses. Okay?’

They all let out sighs of relief as they realised this would be the solution to their problem.

Lee fished some coins from the pockets of his tight Dracula trousers. ‘Just wait here.’ The driver honked again. ‘Ryan. Tell him that we’ve had a problem and we’ll be unloading our people in the next five minutes.’

Ryan gave such a sharp nod that his plump cheeks wobbled.

‘Good man,’ Lee told him, smiling. ‘Right, I’ll be back in a minute.’

Lee ran across the road, dodging a motorbike and an open-top tourist bus. A young kid pulled at his mother’s hand and yelled, ‘Look! There’s Batman!’

Lee wished again that he didn’t have to wear the absurd Dracula cape that billowed behind him as he ran. The thing already had holes ripped in it where he’d caught it on bushes, fences and God knew what else.

Steeling himself against curious stares and jibes, he ducked into the shop, bought the first daily newspaper he put his hands on and came back out onto the pavement.

Sue in her Stan Laurel costume and Nicole in the gorilla suit, with her blonde hair tumbling lusciously down the fake black fur, stood across the road, arms tightly folded.

But at last he had the answer to all their troubles clutched in his hands. Already he was imagining walking into the hotel and holding up the newspaper with all the righteous majesty of Moses revealing the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel and saying, ‘There. Tuesday ! It says so in thick black letters on every page.’

Half-way across the road Lee couldn’t resist looking at the newspaper. There, below the paper’s name, the Daily Mail , was the day and the date.

Monday.

He stared at it in a kind of bug-eyed amazement. Monday?

So the newspapers have got the day wrong too , was the thought that went instantly whirling round inside Lee’s head.

He flicked through the pages, believing in his heart of hearts that some typesetter had mistakenly keyed in the wrong date before the newspaper presses had started rolling late on Monday night. But no. Monday. Monday. Monday, 22 ndJune. The day and date headed every page.

He looked up from the paper to his two colleagues on the pavement, wondering how he was going to tell them that by some crazy fluke they’d all forgotten what day it was.

But he was never going to get the chance.

At that moment a petrol tanker hammered along the road behind him. The bow-wave of air pressure pushed him forward.

The next second a tremendous pull yanked him back off his feet. At the same time there was the sensation that his head was being torn from his neck.

The sky flew somewhere under his feet; a bellowing roar filled his ears. Then he was lying on his back.

Only he was still moving.

The road surface slid under him, buffeting the air from his lungs. He felt no pain, only astonishment that such a thing was happening to him.

It took him only a moment to realise what had happened. The truck had caught his cape as it had thundered by.

Now he was being dragged, head first, beneath the massive silver cylinder of the petrol tanker.

He managed to turn his head to look to the front of the truck. Past the criss-cross bars of the truck’s subframe he saw the twin rear wheels of the tractor unit. The cape had somehow caught itself on the mudguard.

If he didn’t release the cape from around his neck he knew he’d either be strangled or have the flesh scraped from his back by the road’s abrasive surface.

But Lee’s fatal error was that he didn’t think through the consequences of simply releasing the cape’s catch from around his neck.

And not for a moment did he envisage what would happen if he stopped dead while the truck kept on rolling.

He was acting on instinct. The instinct to get that choking collar from around his neck.

His fingers scrabbled at the button on the collar, trying to push it through the looped piece of cord.

The truck rumbled like thunder.

With a peculiar detachment he marvelled that he could see the legs of shoppers blurring by.

At last the button slipped out through the loop.

Snap!

Suddenly the cloak had gone. He slid to a stop on his back.

The bottom of the truck kept on moving above him. That was when he realised his big mistake.

Although he still lay on his back in the road, his head jerked up in time to see the twin rear tyres of the truck slamming against the road towards him.