Simon Clark - The Fall

‘Oh, why does everything have to happen to me?’ he panted under his breath as he ran.

‘This is another fine mess…’ he began to tell himself before suddenly snapping, ‘Shut up, you idiot, shut up… Don’t let them catch you. Christ, I don’t want to get hurt… I don’t want…’ That was when he turned a corner and ran into his old friend Lee Burton.

Nicole Wagner looked down from the tree at the man.

He lay flat on his back in the grass and stared back at her. A Red Admiral butterfly sat on a dock leaf by his head, warming its wings in the sunlight. Doves called softly to each other in the woods above the lip of the quarry.

To all intents and purposes the man, Bostock, was her jailer now.

She knew that the moment she climbed down from the tree he would pounce on her and beat her head to the colour of raw mutton.

The quarry was deserted. Even the rabbits had fled the commotion when she had leapt from the top of the rock face and into the tree. Nevertheless, every few minutes she carefully stood up on the branch to look out across the quarry towards the river in the hope someone would be strolling by. She saw no-one. She was certain no-one would hear if she shouted.

The man below her (who was probably deranged, she told herself) smiled benignly, as his wife’s blood and brains slowly dried on his otherwise white polo shirt. She found it hard to look away from those brown stains because, she realised, if she wasn’t very careful her own blood would contribute additional patterning to the shirt.

So she sat there in her big black shaggy ape suit and watched the sun sink slowly towards the horizon.

And she wondered what he would do when darkness at last fell.

Sam Baker left the car in which Jud lay back, his head against the seat, looking all but overwhelmed. Zita appeared composed and had given Sam a little reassuring wave when he’d glanced back.

Hell, so this is 1978 , Sam told himself. To be precise, this is 23 rdJune 1978. He’d seen the date on newspapers slotted into racks outside a newsagent’s.

And this was a world full of people dressed in muddy brown clothes. Men wore Tom Jones hairstyles with hefty sideburns. They seemed noticeably plumper, too; their faces looked particularly rounded and full. He paused, pretending to look into a shop window, but really he was studying the reflection of those passing by. And he realised he was actually experiencing something close to shock at seeing so many teenage girls smoking. Already he was seeing different patterns of human behaviour even though they’d scrolled back only 20 years through time. In the 1990s there had been a growing gut feeling that smoking in public was becoming something mildly distasteful, like chewing gum in church or wearing a swimsuit in a shopping street: it certainly wasn’t illegal or shockingly ill-mannered, but it just wasn’t seen as ‘the done thing’.

Sam lingered a little longer. Suddenly, in close up, the faces of 1970s people fascinated him. Women wore pale blue eye-shadow that gave their faces a different look. Hairstyles were over-neat in a fussy kind of way. Young men wore flares and wide ties. Although punk fashions must be just around the corner as far as time was concerned, they hadn’t arrived yet in this Northern backwater.

As he stood watching the reflection of people passing by in the big plate-glass window he saw another reflection. And he realised someone was staring at him.

He turned his head slightly and saw it was the tramp Jud had referred to as Dirty Harry. He was a thin man with curly ginger hair and a beard. He was dressed in workman’s orange overalls and Wellington boots that were turned down at the top so they looked like rough-and-ready ankle boots. In one bony hand he gripped the neck of a bottle of cider.

Sam guessed the man must have been in his mid-forties. But what was most surprising was that the tramp stared hard at Sam’s face as if recognising a long-lost friend.

Dirty Harry took a couple of unsteady paces towards Sam. He raised the bottle, uncurled one filthy finger from the neck, then pointed a fingernail that was brown with nicotine – or something worse – at Sam. He made a jabbing motion with the finger, trying to put a name to the face.

Sam gave the man a nod that was definitely cautious, non-committal, then he began to walk away. Like most people, the last thing Sam wanted was to be buttonholed by the town nutcase.

Then Dirty Harry spoke to Sam. It was as if he’d kept the words bottled up for years; suddenly they burst from his lips in a rush. ‘See, wretched little man, how the delights of carnal lust cover up the terror of the coming damnation! Before your heart can burn with the love of Christ – the love of Christ! – it will have to get rid of its appetite for all passing vanity, whatever – whatever… A mind on fire with the spirit of Christ finds its sole nourishment in its love of eternity…’

With a very weak smile, Sam broke eye contact with the mad tramp and began to walk away. Others in the street barely gave Dirty Harry a glance. Perhaps to make eye contact was an invitation to the man to harangue you. ‘Love of eternity, and its gladness in joyful song. The heart that has turned to fire – turned to fire! – embraces nothing of the world, but strives always to pierce heaven.’

Dirty Harry hurried to stand in front of Sam, blocking his way. The man’s eyes blazed.

‘I’m sorry, I haven’t got any change,’ Sam lied. But then he wondered if it would have been wiser to pass the man a few coins, then hurry on.

‘I know your face. I know it, I know it…’ The tramp spoke in a low voice that was full of awe, as if he’d just met some famous rock star. ‘I know it.’

‘I’m sorry, I think you must be mistaken. I don’t live—’

‘You don’t live at all! Wretched little man, hiding from the terror of the coming damnation – no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I didn’t want to, but – but I am alight with the flame of heavenly vision and – and no, no.’ Suddenly he looked ashamed of himself and his voice dropped. ‘My apologies, sir. My tongue escapes me sometimes. Too many times. No, wait… I wanted to tell you something of great importance. Huge importance.’ His eyes suddenly clouded. ‘Only I forget; I have a memory that runs round and round the mulberry bush and won’t allow me to catch up. But aren’t there many with such a problem? Many, many are the same.’ He looked up, his eyes suddenly brightening. ‘Did I tell you, sir? That I am many. I am indeed numerous. I am beyond counting. A line of me would stretch from Casterton to the gates of Constantinople itself. Now… I’m sorry… I had something to tell you… something very important…very, very… oh dear, oh dear.’ With his free hand Dirty Harry pushed his fingers jerkily through his beard as if he’d find the words in there; the filthy fingernails probed and pushed through the knots of ginger hair.

Sam eased himself around the man and began walking quickly away; even so, the smell of the man, an unwashed-hair smell, had already lodged itself in his nostrils.

Behind him the man still stood in his orange overalls, cider bottle in one hand, the other hand fumbling through his beard as he muttered to himself, as if trying to recall a message he’d once learnt verbatim long ago.

Sam saw a shop just ahead where he could buy the soft drinks.

He’d almost brushed aside his encounter with Dirty Harry when he heard a shout behind him. Glancing back, he saw the man’s face light up with pleasure. ‘I remember,’ he called after Sam. ‘I remember. You’ve got to get away from it; you’ve got get away from the Watchett Hole. If you don’t, you’re all going to die. Did you hear that? All going to die!’