Simon Clark - The Fall

‘Those jerk-off bastards are everywhere. They trashed the camp, so I came here to find you lot. Who’s blondie?’

‘The lady is Nicole. She is one of us now; dispossessed; a wanderer; a—’

‘Spare me the fucking poetry.’

Nicole found herself staring at the stranger so hard her eyes felt as though they were going to rip from their sockets and fly at his face.

Her first thought was: he’s black .

But as he walked towards her, scything through the nettles with a stick, she changed her mind.

Not black.

But he’s been sprayed with some black liquid, possibly engine oil.

His face was covered with black lumps. Around the size of her little fingernail, they were a shiny black. And they were moving. The man’s face was seething with them. It was like looking into an ants’ nest or a… a…

Beehive.

She caught her breath.

The three (four, rather, if you included the face that bulged from William’s stomach) spoke quickly together; this was evidently a meeting of men in crisis. As Nicole listened, bemused, making neither head nor tail of any of it, she also found she couldn’t tear her eyes from the man they called Grimwood.

At least, that was, she couldn’t tear her eyes from that face.

Oh, what a face, what a face…

That face was the centre of her universe now. Nothing else existed. Every shred of her attention was locked hard upon it.

Oh, dear God… His face was alive with bees. She saw that now. Dozens and dozens of bees – living, squirming bees, with orange and black striped bodies, shiny black legs, glossy heads, quivering antennae and those rounded insect eyes.

Why don’t the bees fly away?

Why doesn’t he wash them off?

Why don’t they sting him to death?

The questions buzzed with an insectile ferocity of their own.

The bees covered the man’s face as completely as a mask.

They even filled one of his orbits, leaving a sticky white slit that was a mere ruin of an eye.

‘You’ve got a yellow streak up your back, you piece of shit,’ the one she now knew as Bullwitt sneered from William’s stomach. ‘Why did you let them smash up our camp? I bet they took all the food, didn’t they, Mr Bumble? And Mr Bumble stood there and let it shitting well happen. Isn’t that right, Mr Bumble?’

‘No, that isn’t right,’ Grimwood snarled. ‘And stop calling me Mr Bumble.’

‘Mr Bumble, Mr Bumble, Mr—’

‘Shut it!’ Instantly a hum sounded. Wide-eyed with amazement, Nicole realised it was the bees. The bees were buzzing angrily. Somehow their insectile emotions were synchronising mysteriously with those of their human host.

Nicole saw the man’s face even become blurred, as if a thin grey smoke had drifted in front of it. She realised the effect was caused by the sudden beating of the bees’ wings. They beat in fury as Grimwood himself snarled in fury. ‘It wasn’t like before, Bullwitt. It wasn’t just a couple of Bluebeards trying to whip a can of beans or a packet of bleedin’ fags. This time there were dozens of them. They were armed to the teeth. We had to run for our lives – for our fucking lives! – and I’m telling you, never ever call me Mr Bumble again.’

‘Why?’ Bullwitt asked from William’s stomach. ‘Are you afraid I’m going to come out of here and fight you?’

‘For two pins I’d cut you out of there and kick your bloody head through every piece of shit I could find.’

‘Temper, temper,’ Bullwitt chuckled. ‘After all, you don’t want to come out in hives, do you now?’

‘I’ll kill you one day. I promise!’

‘Oh, buzz off.’

‘Be quiet, Bullwitt, please .’

‘But he—’

‘I said quiet .’ William pulled the cloak back over the face, muffling the voice.

‘Don’t listen to Bullwitt,’ William said soothingly. ‘He’s bitter and frustrated.’

Nicole turned from the bird-faced man to the bee-faced man. Just for a second it felt as if her skull had caved in under pressure of the bizarre images she was seeing. It wouldn’t have taken much to send her screaming back to the others in the car park.

But for the moment , she told herself, my duty lies here. These men know something. They might be able to help us.

She tuned in to what William was saying. ‘Is anyone from our camp hurt?’

‘Kylie was clubbed. Caught her here in the mouth.’

‘But she escaped?’

‘Oh aye, got clean away, but she’s well pissed off at losing her front two teeth.’

‘Where have they gone now?’

‘They’re all leaving this time. They’re pissed off, as you can imagine. All our food’s gone; blankets, tents; that big box of cigars that Dixie got. All gone.’

‘Bastards,’ came a muffled voice from beneath the cloak.

The bird wing fluttered from the side of the man’s head. ‘Can’t we all just split up and go home?’ His eyes were large and sad-looking. ‘I mean, just go back to our own times?’

‘Looking like this?’ Grimwood pointed to his own beehive face. ‘I can hardly see myself walking into the Casterton Social and Welfare club for an afternoon’s snooker with a mush like this, can you?’

The birdman shook his head and dropped his eyes to the ground. Even the blackbird head looked down in sympathy.

‘Take heart, Mr Saunders.’ William laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. Nicole was touched to see it was a genuine gesture of affection. ‘We’ve sworn to be brothers now. You have joined a new family, each one of us similarly blighted.’ He squeezed the shoulder and smiled. ‘Divinely blighted, we say. Together we shall survive and prosper and make new homes for ourselves. And look.’ He nodded to Nicole. ‘We have a new sister. Her beauty and her intelligence will enrich our family.’

‘A new sister?’ Nicole shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow.’

William tilted his head to one side and looked at her, smiling. It was almost a secret smile as if he was just about to spring a surprise birthday present on her. ‘Didn’t I make myself clear to you, dear lady? I’m sorry, I do not speak plainly enough, tatter-tongue that I am.’

‘Make yourself clear about what?’

‘My dear lady,’ he told her gently, ‘you are one of us now.’

She looked from the man with the face in his stomach, to the man with the bird in his face, then to the man with bees embedded in the skin of his face and throat.

She shook her head. ‘Oh no,’ she said in a disbelieving whisper. ‘I’m not one of you .’

‘But you are,’ William said, smiling pleasantly as if not wanting to frighten her. ‘You are divinely blighted. But that’s no handicap, you can—’

‘No!’ her voice sharpened. ‘I’m nothing like you. You were fused into other animals during a time-leap. Look at me…’ She stood before them holding out her long tanned arms; she lifted a leg, each in turn. They stretched down from the lycra cycling shorts, long, lean, golden-coloured. ‘Just look. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

There’s nothing wrong with me.

As she spoke that sentence her voice rose in pitch, ending with a tremor as the first sensation of fear twitched her stomach muscles.

‘Please…’ William’s kind smile didn’t falter; his eyes were as compassionate as a saint’s. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. But if I may be so bold?’

Gently he reached out towards her, his movements slow so as not to alarm her. Lightly pinching the neck of her T-shirt between his finger and thumb, he began to ease it down from her throat so as to expose her shoulder.

Alarmed, she was ready to pull away.