The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller (3 page)

(Another pause as he stares at me, almost daring me to say anything.
I don’t respond at first, not understanding. He continues.)

“Ah mean, like, it was
fast
, man, like ah could see troo it for like, a second, then
brap
, it’s there totally, and ah’m all ’ot again innit, and it’s dere, but it’s just fuckin’, just …”

(His eyes are wide, his expression manic, looking into space with his hands splayed as he sees it again.)

“… bing!
DERE.
Outta fuckin’
nowhere.
And ah’m looking at this fuckin’ stone thing dat’s just fuckin’ poofed, appeared like, and ah’m lookin’ and
no-one’s noticed
, and ah just … ah just …”

(He searches for the words.)

“… ah fuckin’ … man …”

(There is a long pause as he almost visibly deflates, shaking his head. I think he is starting to feel sorry for himself. When he continues, I think that he has forgotten who he is talking to, this adult stranger with a Dictaphone, an adult who thinks he might just be interviewing a smackhead. I almost turn it off and put it away. Later, I will know that he would have been genuinely traumatised by seeing the impossible, the materialisation of a solid physical object out of thin air, and was simply having an emotional release. But now, I just think he’s off his tits. I carry on recording anyway.)

“… I just, like … ah dunno … ah just started fuckin’ … like…shouting, or somethin’, and then ah can’t fuckin’ breathe an’ ah’m shakin’ and ah fall on ma arse, but ah’m still shoutin’ an’ pointin’ at it, ’cos … ’cos … it shouldn’t fuckin’ BE dere, y’know? An’ then ah fuckin’ honk up a bit, and other people are comin’ over an’ ah’m tryin’ to tell ’em but den dey’s walkin’ away quick, but den dat old woman come over an’ she’s shoutin’ too like AH SAW IT AH SAW IT TOO and some people are stayin’ and some are fuckin’ off and some fuckin’ pricks are laughin’ … but it’s still fuckin’ right dere and then ah go all … like, fucked, like whoaoahah …”

(He puts his arms out and mimes being dizzy.)

“An’ ah have to just fuckin’ sit down a sec and then ah can hear people talkin’ about it an’ deres more people, and some of ’um are talking about me and dat woman is shoutin’ ’er fuckin’ ’ead off man, she sounds fuckin’ … fucked, an’ ah can hear people saying it’s a statue, it’s a fuckin’ …”

(He waves his hand, searching for the word. “Sculpture?” I say, offering it up.)

“Yeah, scupter.
Dat. And I’m like, it’s not a fuckin’ scupter! An’ ah stand up and start fuckin’ shoutin’ an’ that, an’ ah’m fuckin’ shoutin’ at ’em for ages, then ah just … ah fuck off out of it.”

(There’s a long pause, and a faint sound as the cigarette is flicked away into the gutter. “So the woman saw this too?” I say.)

“Musta done.
She said the same stuff. ‘Ohhhh, it was see troo and then it fuckin’ popped up …’”

(I mentally register this statement in particular, as it is the first time I feel some real confusion. The woman had looked too well-dressed to be a crazy person jumping on the bandwagon. She’d looked like a teacher, or someone’s Mum. Another long pause, as he stands looking back at the crowd, shaking his head. I don’t speak either, rather bewildered at this point as to what the hell is going on. He suddenly speaks.)

“Right, fuck it, the end. Safe.”

(He turns to leave, finished just like that, and holds out his knuckles for me to put mine against. I do so. “Are you all right?” I ask. He responds without turning around, still hurriedly walking away and not even looking at the crowd.)

“Yeah, safe, man.
Safe.”

***

I stood there for a moment, watching him go, and starting to think that maybe this really was some kind of annoying performance piece. I turned back to the crowd, looking for the woman and thinking that I’d try and have a word with her as well, maybe get a few crowd reactions for an opinion piece or something, but I suddenly realised that the woman couldn’t be heard anymore. That was when the first of the police cars arrived. They didn’t have the sirens or lights going; they just quietly turned up, presumably to check that there wasn’t some kind of trouble occurring, or maybe brought there by somebody reporting the shouters. Either way, they’d arrived, and so I headed back over to the source of the hubbub. I don’t really remember what I was thinking at this point; I was more intrigued than anything else, I think. I certainly didn’t believe what the chav had just been saying, but it was all interesting regardless.

As I was walking over, everyone in the crowd suddenly let out cries of varying volumes—there were several screams—and jumped back a foot or two. I stopped walking and started running. So did the police.

I reached the crowd about as quickly as the cops did, and snuck in with them, following in their wake as they pushed to the front whilst asking people politely to back up and let them through. I was looking at the Stone Man and the crowd, trying to see what the hell had happened to make everyone jump at once like that. Most people were now giggling nervously, embarrassed at their reaction, but I couldn’t tell what they had reacted to; a quick inspection of the Stone Man didn’t give anything away. As far as I could tell, nothing was any different. The police were talking to some people at the opposite side of the inner circle, too far away for me to hear, so I tried to pick up on the conversations of people around me. I didn’t get any clues at first.

God, feel my heart!

I was like, oh shit!

You elbowed me in the ribs when you jumped!

I was just about to ask the couple to my right what had happened, when I suddenly saw the evidence for myself; I’d been wrong. There
was
a difference to the Stone Man.

It was no longer bent forward. It had straightened up, and its head was now tipped backwards towards the sky. The arms seemed to be held out at a slightly wider angle than before as well. Everyone must have jumped when it switched position, but were simply excited now that it was perfectly still; already the police were smiling again and talking to the people, most of whom were now looking amused and expectant, phones out once more. It seemed that the general consensus was that this was definitely some kind of unusual, intentional show, and everyone was waiting for whatever was going to happen next.

I, however, kept seeing the teacherish woman in my mind as she leant on the Stone Man, as she struck at it. I hadn’t seen any movement from it in the slightest. There was clearly real
weight
to the Stone Man, real solidity. I couldn’t see any hinge or break in the rough stone surface, any point of articulation. So how the hell had it now straightened up like that? I looked around for the teacherish woman; she appeared to have left, just like her chav counterpart. One of the police was on his radio, sounding as though he was calling in more officers or support of some kind—there were still people turning up to see what was going on—but he looked more amused than anything. I decided to stick around. I wasn’t massively hungry yet, the temperature was just nice now in the late afternoon, and there looked like there would be further developments.

As the next hour passed, police barriers arrived, along with two more officers who good-naturedly spread the now four-hundred-strong crowd back a few feet—receiving a chorus of playful boos as a result—and set up a low retractable tape barrier at a radius of about eight feet from the Stone Man. A gentleman from the council turned up at one point, asked the police a few questions, and then moved back to the outside of the crowd, where he remained on his phone for the rest of the time that I was there. It filtered back through the crowd that he was trying to find out who was responsible for it, if they had a permit, and so on. Eventually, he apparently moved on to trying to sort out its removal.

I’d gotten a few bits of audio from the people around me, a lot of them all too eager to talk into the Dictaphone, describing how it had suddenly moved without a sound (the silence of it was confirmed by all of them, which again struck a chord with me. How could something with so much weight move silently? Unless the teacher woman had been an excellent mime) and a few opinions (
I think it’s representing the death of Coventry’s industry/I think it’s a marketing stunt/I think it’s shit
) but was starting to grow a bit bored, to be honest. Rich Bell wasn’t answering his phone either, so all I had image-wise were a few shots I’d managed to grab on the digital camera that I kept in my bag; my phone’s own camera was far too primitive. Most of the new people that had turned up had hung around for a while, and, not having seen it move in the first place, didn’t have the level of invested intrigue to make them stick around. Eventually, hunger and boredom would draw them towards their homes. Even those who had been there all along were starting to look at their watches and think about dinner.

I couldn’t blame them. I would have liked to have sacked it off myself by then, if not for the fact that the teacher woman’s story corroborated the impossible account of the chav … it made me think twice, or at least give me enough desire for an explanation to warrant me staying longer. My stomach rumbled, and I began to think about where the nearest chippy was that I could dash to—even though it meant I would lose my place at the front of the crowd—when the temperature suddenly dropped by about twenty degrees.

Everyone there suddenly started chattering, and looking at the sky, even though the sun above was still blazing down. It was
freezing
, impossibly cold under that still-blue sky, and I was more covered than most of the other people due to my jeans. I hate to think how cold the summer-dressed people there would have been. Goose bumps covered my entire body, and I saw couples and friends suddenly and instinctively huddling together for warmth, some laughing, some looking confused. Even the cops shared a concerned look. I found myself remembering what the chav had said about the cold, how the temperature around him had inexplicably dropped, and suddenly I had a brief flash of belief;
he was right.
I tried to remind myself that this was the age of people like David Blaine, street performers who prided themselves on their ability to freak people out by making them believe the impossible, and took a deep breath. I noticed that my heart rate had still picked up dramatically, though.

Then the cold suddenly cut off just as quickly, and almost unnoticed in the moment of relief—everyone around me breathed an audible sigh and started to laugh, delighted that the heat was back again—the Stone Man took two steps forward and stopped.

Everyone who was directly in front of it, albeit eight feet away, shrieked and leapt backwards. One or two people at the back fell over. The steps had not been quick, or slow; they were about normal walking pace. The Stone Man had come to a stop with its feet side by side, like it had only meant to take two steps and no more. It was now completely still again, and nervously giggling people had already started to step back into their original position. The police inside the barrier had backed away, but one had already gathered his wits and was politely taking charge, telling people to calm down. The council man was impotently demanding to be let back through the crowd, but no one was paying any attention.

Then the Stone Man began to walk.

***

Time to crack open the mini Jim Beam here, I think. I don’t really like it, but then I’m not mad on half of these, and I’ve decided to polish them all off. Bollocks to it. I’m even tempted to turn on the TV and watch it all live for myself; I can pretty much hear everything from next door’s TV anyway. In fact, let me turn it back on so I can properly describe it to you.

There. Not much has changed since I started this. There’s the lake, there’s the barrier, there’s the vehicle blockade beyond that. That barrier must be, what ... three or four hundred metres in diameter? Pretty pointless, really, but I guess it’s just to mark out the extra-restricted area. The soldiers are only there now to stop any approaching people from interfering, should any idiots try to get inside the barrier, but that would just be a precaution. The evacuation would have begun some time ago, and hell, it wouldn’t have taken long. There’s hardly anybody left in Coventry now anyway, except maybe on the outskirts, but I guess they’re taking no chances. There’s also the
very
slim chance—to their minds—that someone might get through, someone who might be … you know. Needing to be put down, for obvious reasons. Slim odds, as I say, but they have to take that precaution. That would be a turn up, eh?