Simon Clark - The Fall

And just like in any café rooted in reality, customers came and went, including a tramp with ginger hair and a boiler suit who bought (or cadged for nix) a cup of soup and a hunk of chocolate cake. The next high point involved a man in a security guard’s uniform knocking a bowl of sugar from the table onto his knees and saying, ‘Oops, I thought I was sweet enough already’ – which raised a laugh or two from some of the other clientele and a weary shake of the proprietor’s head as he came from behind the counter with a dustpan and brush.

But nothing weird happened in that dream. The café owner didn’t turn into a huge bat and go flapping slowly away over the rooftops of Casterton. The spotted dick didn’t turn into eyeball pie. Zita was still Zita, a feisty PA with a glossy-auburn plait that was as thick as a ship’s cable.

Sam Baker would have readily bet his best shirt on the fact that the meal in the café was no dream.

But here he was in the amphitheatre with the hot sun streaming down, Zita jotting notes against the equipment inventory, tourists streaming back to the waiting coach and cars.

He looked round, shielding his eyes with his hand against the dazzling sun.

Only something wasn’t quite right.

And everyone knew it.

Other people were standing, looking round at their surroundings as if convinced something was askew but weren’t exactly sure what.

Sam saw half a dozen men scratching their heads as they looked round. A couple of women slipped sunglasses down their noses in order to scrutinise the amphitheatre with their naked eyes, suspecting, perhaps, that the polarised lenses were playing sneaky tricks on them. The body language of everyone there had a kind of ‘Do-you-see-what-I-see?’ message running through it as clearly as a name through seaside rock.

Sam scanned the skies, half-expecting that the audience had seen a spaceship whirling by.

The sky was empty except for a pair of heron gliding by on stiff, extended wings. Even the thunder cloud had gone.

At that moment he heard a gasp.

He looked to his left. Sitting beside him was the guy in the Dracula outfit, complete with white-painted face and red lipstick daubed around his lips for blood.

He made the sound again, a sudden gasp as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He even clutched his belly and doubled up. Gasping, croaking, sobbing, he tugged his knees up to his chest then rolled forward.

He’d probably have somersaulted all the way down to the bottom of the amphitheatre if Sam hadn’t caught him by the cloak.

‘Get it off me!’ the guy screamed hysterically. ‘Get it off me! It’s hurting! It’s—’

His body jerked with convulsions. Sam saw that the man was in agony. But why? Sam couldn’t see anything wrong, unless the guy’s appendix had just exploded somewhere in his gut.

‘ Get it offffff! ’

In that inverted cone of rock with its perfect acoustics the man’s screams were so loud they were as painful as they were shocking.

Everyone turned to stare.

‘Do you know what’s wrong with him?’ Sam asked a chubby man of around 20 dressed as Oliver Hardy. The chubby man stared, sweat running down from beneath his bowler hat.

Sam wrestled the screaming man back onto the bench.

‘Hey, listen to me…’ Sam panted. ‘What’s wrong with your buddy?’

‘Drugs,’ mumbled Oliver Hardy, shocked. ‘Stupid drugs. I said we shouldn’t have… not on an empty stomach. Oh, Jesus…’ Oliver Hardy pushed his fists into his eyes and rubbed like crazy. ‘I’m out of my head, oh Christ, I’m out of my head. I’m hallucinating. Help me …’

Sam watched appalled as the man dressed as Oliver Hardy collapsed sobbing, his arms over his head as if the sky was just about to come tumbling down.

Meanwhile, the guy in the Dracula costume still convulsed in Sam’s arms. ‘He’s fitting,’ Sam called back over his shoulder to Zita, who by this time was on her feet and trying to stop Dracula beating his head on the timber bench-back.

‘He’s not the only one,’ she said in voice that, although calm, was charged with tension. ‘Take a look.’

Sam looked up.

The world had gone crazy. Gut instinct had told him that a few short moments ago. This was the proof.

‘What’s happening, Sam? Why are they doing that?’

Sam followed Zita’s gaze. ‘I don’t know… I really don’t know.’

From dream to nightmare. It had taken only a moment.

People were sitting back down in the amphitheatre seats. (Some standing on the steps sat down on those, too.) They dropped down onto their backsides quickly, almost bruisingly, as if they’d just been hit by a particularly bad piece of news. Even though the sun was hot, many were shivering and either folding their arms tightly across their chests or wrapping their arms around their shoulders.

This wasn’t cold, though, Sam realised: this was shock. The convulsions of the guy in the Dracula cape had all but subsided. Now he was shivering as though someone had dunked him in a vat of iced water.

‘Oh, my God,’ Zita breathed. ‘Is this what they call a situation or what?’

‘Let’s just say the shit’s gone and hit the fan,’ Sam said in something close to a bewildered daze. ‘Only for the life of me I haven’t a clue what shit, or what fan.’

Some of the people were crying – that went for grown men as well as grown women. A woman behind him had stuffed her knuckles into her mouth and was biting hard to stop from screaming out loud. Her eyes had silvered over with tears.

An old man in a baseball cap beside her rocked backwards and forwards, wearing an expression that suggested someone had stuffed half a lemon in his mouth and he didn’t know where to spit.

The only time Sam’d seen something comparable to this was when a bomb had torn through a crowded market place. Not seen at first hand, of course: he’d been editing footage piped in from a satellite link in Asia. There’d been gory shots of torn bodies. Shattered market stalls. A dog’s severed head lying in the gutter. Lots of blood slicking paving slabs, making them look as if they’d been enamelled red. And there had been close-ups of survivors moments after the blast. There were expressions of shock, confusion, fear, horror, even more confusion, and a lot of people just looking at each other as if to ask: ‘ Did this really happen, or did I dream it? ’

He was seeing those same expressions here. Only there had been no blast.

But there was no doubt about it. They’d all just experienced nothing less than a king-sized trauma. And, yes, hell, yes : these people were in shock.

Sam eased the guy in the Dracula cape back gently. ‘How’re you feeling?’

The man straightened and looked down at his stomach as if expecting to see a marching band come right through his flies, playing the theme from Monty Python .

‘Where is it?’ asked the man. Sam couldn’t tell if his face was white with shock beneath that stage make-up caked all over it. But there was something pretty colourless about his voice. As if he’d just experienced full-blooded terror.

‘Where’s what?’ Sam asked gently.

‘The truck, of course. It was right there.’ He touched his stomach. ‘I felt the tyres… Christ, it was awful.’ He looked up at Sam, his eyes strangely glittery and wild-looking. ‘Christ, all that blood. That blood on the road. And people just standing there watching me like I was—’

‘Take it easy,’ Zita said and stroked his shoulder. ‘You must have dreamt it.’

The words ‘You must have dreamt it’ provoked the strongest reaction yet from the girl in the gorilla suit and the girl in the Stan Laurel costume. They’d been staring glassily at their friend in the Dracula cape; now both were stung from their trance. They looked at Zita sharply. Then at each other.