Falling Over (5 page)

Some local kids disappeared, and while there was no actual connection that could be made to the ‘temple’, the locals found it hard not to make a connection in their minds. But still, it had been just a
house
, with no alarm and with no one in it after nightfall. Best of all, due to the resentment it had caused in the community the local police weren’t going to care if it was broken into. They weren’t going to investigate too hard. It had almost seemed
too
easy. Even the question of where to sell ‘religious’ artefacts in an almost godless (and penniless) estate had been answered within a couple of days: bizarrely, unrealistically, someone’s brother worked in a museum in London and was known to pilfer things from the backrooms when they weren’t on public display. So he had the contacts; he gave them the name of a fence. In the pub that night, Sean and Tom had agreed to give it a go – they would break in, steal what they could, and head straight down to London to meet the fence. It would be a long, long drive and they would have to take shifts; but an easy drive at that, for the route was basically a straight line south, and the navigation needed was minimal.

They were coming into the outskirts of the outskirts of London now, and the traffic had slowed due to the rain that had come lashing in sideways, allowing Tom to relax somewhat at the slower pace, despite the reduced visibility. His memory of the inside of the temple was fading, and he could forget somewhat that it was a real life place, which he had entered. Into which he had trespassed. He glanced around and saw Sean was asleep again, although his friend’s sleep didn’t look peaceful. Tom wondered if Sean was having the same kind of dreams he was, and what that would mean if it was true...

Tom cursed – he had just driven past the turning that they wanted, because he’d been so wrapped up in his paranoid daydreams. He considered waking Sean, but he decided that it wasn’t anything to be worried by – there was bound to be another chance to make a right turn soon.

~

“Any chance of a lift?” the fat man said, and despite the raised last syllable (along with a thick eyebrow) it wasn’t a question, not really. He tried to frame a negative reply, but his head was already nodding, dog-like and obedient. He felt his lips part and his mouth draw breath – his lungs swelled and he knew he was about to speak; he had one last chance to refuse this but instead he heard himself say,

“Sure. Where’re you going?” His friend in the driving seat said something similar. The American man smiled, his teeth somehow glinting despite the overcast day. His glasses were giant circles of reflected light across his flabby face. He told them where he wanted them to go. They both felt terrified, felt the urge to open the doors and bolt from the car – but the desire turned to nothing in their nerves, and they just sat there.

“That’s where we’re going,” he heard himself saying, as if amazed by the coincidence of his desires and their destination.

“Yeah, get in!” his friend said, hands shaking and eyes terrified.

And the fat man did.

~

Sean awoke, having slept nearly twenty minutes this time. His back was aching from lying on the awkward back seat and his head felt fragile as well, as if he’d been drinking. Without getting up, he reached for and lit another cigarette, tossing his dead match to join its companions between the over exposed breasts of the
Razzle
centrefold, who was apparently called Rochelle. Sean felt he’d first seen Rochelle years ago, as if he’d been in the backseat of a car with her for a lifetime. For some reason he turned the page, but there she was again, in a grimly predictable pose. Sean sighed, massaged the side of his head, and struggled to sit up.

“You know I think these girls... Where the fuck are we?” Outside should have been the busy central London road that would take them all the way to their destination, not the dreary rows of houses of some north of the river estate. The shabby dwellings slouched against each other in their poverty; one in every five windows was boarded up. They passed under an old bridge, the graffiti on the walls like the decoration of a ghost train. When they came out the other side, tower blocks obscured any horizon, and the rows of the estate continued as if uninterrupted. It was, Sean thought, just like where they had come from.

“I don’t know!” Tom said. “I missed the turning and then... I tried to... I thought there would be another... but when I tried it wasn’t
right
, I stopped to ask someone and he said... but what he said didn’t make
sense!
And I’m lost and...”

“Shit!” Sean said, “Shit, shit! If we’re late... this guy isn’t going to hang around forever waiting for us you know!”

“Oh who cares about the fence!” Tom cried. “What about the fat guy?” As he said this he wasn’t concentrating, and there was the chastisement of a car horn, furious about something. In the rain, Sean couldn’t even see the other car, or what it was they had done wrong.

“Would you shut up about him! The fat guy is just a figment of your retarded imagination!”

But the damage had been done – Sean couldn’t stop himself thinking of the fat man, hearing his strange foreign voice, remembering the words he had spoken... – some of the words, at least.

The inside of the ‘temple’ had freaked Sean out, for the relics and religious ornaments had coexisted with other relics, relics of the normal and quotidian life that had apparently been lived here once. He had expected one back room to contain all the creepy stuff, not for it to be scattered haphazardly like catalogue knick-knacks on the tops of the TV and mantelpiece; not for the hideous murals to be draped from walls decorated with Eighties wallpaper; not for the ancient books to be stood up in the kitchen like they contained recipes. It was like seeing two things at once, one reality superimposed atop a second one, and his eyes seemed to itch as they attempted to decipher the puzzle. Sean and Tom had come with torches and this made things worse, for details of the temple kept emerging from the gloom as they turned their beams towards them: candlesticks, miniature statues, fluttering murals on the walls depicting impossible creatures: some showing combinations of existing animals such as rats and snakes, leeches and lizards. But others were beyond description, creatures formed from the usual stuff of tentacles, scales and hair, but in distorted and impractical forms it seemed impossible anyone could ever have conceived of. The worst thing about these idols had been the suggestion of sentience, somehow the very way they had been carved or painted implied a deranged and patient intelligence. Sean had tried hard not to look; tried harder to stop Tom jerking around and shining his torch at them every twenty seconds, convinced that they’d moved. Was the boy a liability? he’d thought. Had it been a mistake to bring him? They had both been sweating as they had hastily filled their bags with anything that looked valuable – but how were you supposed to tell, Sean thought, when it all looked like stuff from a poor B-movie? He found himself shoving it all in, trying hard not to look at the carvings and pictures, trying hard not to read the writing as the old and blasphemous books fell open in his hand... He would have felt more at ease robbing a
real
church for the imagery there would have been less disturbing...

When he had filled the first bag Sean ran out to the car, which was parked round the back of some garages. He’d seen Tom hadn’t wanted to be left alone, but his friend was being slow filling up his bag, and Sean hadn’t wanted to linger. Out in the cool night air Sean breathed a heavy sigh – from outside it was just a cramped ex-Council house like all the rest of them on the estate, and it seemed impossible to think of all the stuff he had seen inside. It seemed too small. He put his bag in the boot of the white family car, then got in and switched on the engine. But after another five minutes Tom still hadn’t returned. Sean cursed – what was taking so long? They should have been in and out! He was angry, but there was an underlying feeling of panic that he didn’t act on: if he had done he would have driven out of there alone.

Then Tom had rushed out of the temple (or house, or whatever the fuck it was) yelling and waving his arms. He had run to the car and got in the back, and shouted at Sean to go, while craning his neck to look behind him. He had been making enough noise to wake the entire street.

“Shut up!” Sean had whispered.

“Go Sean! Please!”

“What the hell’s wrong?”

But all Tom seemed able to reply was:

“Fat man! I saw... the fat man!”

“What fat man? What the hell are you talking about?”

“The fat man! From Arkansas!”

At that moment Sean had made the decision never to do anything like this with Tom again – he understood why being in a place like that, where the trappings of everyday life didn’t seem to sit sensibly next to the carved monstrosities and inverted religious symbols, where you weren’t able to decide which aspect of your vision was false... Sean understood why a place like
that
could screw up your imagination. His own imagination had been screwed up, imagining the idols moving and the books falling open of their own volition... But Tom was seemingly unable to distinguish between what went on in his head and what was
real
; and where had this thing about a fat man come from? And he was obviously so upset he’d forgotten the
reason
they’d been there in the first place.

“Where’s the bag, Tom?” Sean said.

“I must have... when the fat... when... the fat man!”

“Where the fuck’s the
bag?
”

Tom flinched at Sean’s anger.

“I dropped it! When the fat man came!”

Sean looked away, furious, trying to stop the shaking, trying to make the decision that he knew was the correct one: that it wasn’t worth the risk of going back. If the stuff from the temple was worth anything then they already had enough to sell; and if it was all fake then it didn’t matter how much they had. But he thought of the things he’d seen Tom put in his bag, glittering in his memory as if candle-lit, as if this were a real temple, with its treasures priceless...

“I’m going back for it.”

“Sean, don’t...” Tom whined, like a kid, still on the verge of tears. “What about... don’t leave me! The fat man!”

Sean got out of the car, almost slamming the door with his anger until he remembered the situation. He ran back into the house (through the back door they’d forced earlier) and into its disjointed vision, the focus of his sight flicking between the flock wallpaper and the twisting shapes within its pattern. He stooped to pick up the holdall Tom had dropped in the front room, and even though it was dark he sensed a darker shadow falling over him. He cried out; he looked up.

“Hello,” the fat man said, in an American accent.

He had been immense, every part of him bloated with what seemed a
deliberate
fatness, and not like someone who’d simply let himself go. Even his round glasses (in which Sean could see his stooped reflection) had seemed too big, like car headlights. His skin had been very red and shiny, very smooth as if it had been stretched tight and become sore. The fat man had no hair; his head had curved and gleamed. But it wasn’t the physical details that had so scared Sean, but the same sense of itchy double-vision, the sense that what he was seeing was not the whole reality, but merely a gloss, a hasty camouflage.

Sean had wanted to run, but he hadn’t been able to move a muscle. He had just remained bent over the loot, staring at the fat man and listening to his words: the fat man had spoken lightly, as though Sean was a stranger and this was just idle chatter at a bus stop. But his mouth had grinned with hidden meanings, and the words had nonetheless filled Sean with dread.

“I come from Arkansas, as you call it now. It was wild and vast and barren and empty then, you can’t imagine. So empty, so different from now, when everywhere is filled with maggots like you, insignificant nothings. It would be tolerable if you knew your place, but when you trespass... do you know what happens to those who trespass?”

And after that Sean could remember nothing... except the vague idea that the most terrible thing that happened to those who trespassed against the fat man wasn’t just that they died... or even how they died... but what happened to them
after
they died.

He told Tom none of this. After all, it had all been nonsense, there had been
no
fat man, how could there have been? If he had been anything other than a hallucination then Sean would never have been allowed out of the temple with the second bag. The fat man would simply have overpowered him or called the police. And since that hadn’t happened surely that proved there had been no one there? And even if there had been, it could only have been a man, not anything else his imagination had read into the experience. It could only have been a man, and what could the fat bastard do to them now? As if in answer his mind flinched from the image of metal and glass slicing through him as the car hit the ground and crumpled...

He came back to the present; or rather, let what he could see take precedence over what he could picture. The back of the car felt claustrophobic, as did the maze of streets outside, the houses of the estate seemingly too close and leaning in. Tom was no longer pretending to hide his anxiety as he drove – his breathing was fast and shallow, his hands were clamped to the wheel as if it were trying to turn without him willing it.

“We’re lost,” he yelled. “I don’t know where I am and everything looks the same! We’ve got to get out of here Sean, we’ve got to escape! But I don’t know which way, there aren’t any signs, it’s all the same...”

“Concentrate on the road!” Sean yelled back; he pulled out the final cigarette from his packet.

“Would you stop fuckin’ smoking!” Tom shouted, looking over his shoulder at Sean and almost swerving into the oncoming lane. With a cry Sean flung the fag down on the floor and stamped on it violently.

“There, that helps does it?” he said loudly. “Fucking pull over, let me drive.” He wanted to be behind the wheel, to be in control.