Trollheart

It's over in seconds, though it seems hours, days. I remain kneeling by the water, my chest heaving as I take a deep drink. The water of the stream is by no means drinkable, a fact hammered home by the rather unsettling sight of a Coke can drifting by with a used condom wrapped around it. I may be sick after this. I may be very sick. But that doesn't matter. At least, I'm alive. I swirl the dirty water around in my mouth – careful not to swallow – cooling it down, trying to mitigate the effects of the smoke I've swallowed, and then I spit it out and take what seems like my first breath in hours. The air sears through me, hot and vital, and I feel my head swimming. I manage to stagger to my feet just in time to avoid making the metaphor literal for my body. I can't swim, and I feel that, though the water is not that deep, if I fell in these cops would just let me drown. They're busy.

He is coming.

Back on my feet, I reach into my pocket and with the fury of one betrayed, crumple up the packet of smokes and toss its corpse into the stream, all remaining eighteen inmates rejoining their traitorous comrades, and with a certain dark satisfaction I watch it sail slowly away.

Perhaps it's for the best. Time I gave up anyway.

Assuming there is time left.

He is coming.

V: Outside the box

Once my breathing has normalised and my heart rate has climbed down from the kind of pace that makes me want to think in terms of ambulances, I slowly retrace my steps back up the long road that leads up the hill. For some reason, I think of Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain, almost at the top, only for it to roll back and he has to start all over again. Why do I think of this? What have I done that merits such punishment? Perhaps somewhere deep down, I know I have crossed a line (if unintentionally), broken a taboo and entered a sacred place, an area forbidden to we mere mortals. Other than the guardians of that place, though even the cops don't go into the fairground, but merely patrol, or guard, the entrance. No kids allowed in there now. They never were, of course, but it's a lot easier to ignore DO NOT ENTER signs when there aren't armed guards on the -

Armed?

Yes, yes. Something sparks in my memory and I recall seeing the unmistakable glint of steel behind one of the cops' hi-vis, and a dark shape disturbing the line of that of another. Armed? Have the police around here ever been armed? And what are they armed against? Whoever or whatever it is that's due to come through from the mouth of the ghost train? Surely not. The smallest child here will tell you that bullets will be no use against Him. I have no idea why I know that, but I do. He cannot be stopped by our weapons. There is no stopping Him.

He is coming.

And anyway, they're not here to try to stop Him: they're preparing for His arrival. They are welcoming Him, waiting for Him. Praying for Him? No, the guns are to be used, I have to assume, to deter anyone from entering the sacred area. I recall with a shudder the shaded face of the cop when I inadvertently blundered across their barrier. We can do this the hard way or the easy way, Sir. I realise now how hard that alternative could have been, and I have no doubt in my mind whatever that if that cop, or any of the cops, thought I posed a danger, thought I would somehow try to prevent His coming (as if anyone could! How do I know that?) they would shoot me. And they would shoot to kill. Despite what I have just gone through with my packet of Major Extra Tar, I suddenly feel an almost compulsive need for a smoke.

But my cigarettes are lazily punting down the stream, sodden and useless, and let's not forget: they tried to kill me. Oh yes, it might sound like I just went mad and had some sort of bad hallucination, but I know the truth. It happened. Impossible, crazy as it may seem, it happened. I know it. I feel it in my bones, which are now shivering both from the fright and from the sudden immersion of my face in the freezing waters of the stream which saved my life. I know it happened, and though I still find myself gasping for a cigarette, I will not go back to Benny's newsagents. The newspapers are waiting there. The black, inky, depthless, bottomless, star-spanning, cold and evil photographs that are not photographs are there, and they want me. I will not let them have me. I will fight. I will never read another newspaper.

He is coming.

My trek up the road seems to take ages, but luckily for me, unlike Sisyphus I am not damned to repeat this climb forever, never reaching the summit, and I gain the top just in time to stare into the flat, emotionless eyes of old Josiah Bennett.

He does not speak, he does not even register my presence, but I can see, though logic would deny the evidence of my eyes and tell me I am hallucinating (again) that it is he. I recognise the old battered hat he wore everywhere, a very distinctive style, not available here. Not available in Europe at all. He once said his grand-daughter brought it home for him from Malaysia. I have no idea whether that's true or not but it's definitely the same hat, and there aren't two like that this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

I recognise his gait. He always had a gammy leg, the result of shrapnel he picked up in El Alamein, he claimed. Again, I don't know if that is true, and it really doesn't matter, but it certainly gave him as distinctive a walk as his hat, a sort of shuffling, scuttling gait, like that of a crab. He doesn't have a walking stick – never used one; hated the things. His clothes look a little the worse for wear, and I am mildly surprised, as Mr. Bennett was always very fastidious about how he dressed, always well turned out. Possibly came from his time in the army, if the tales he told are true. Again, not important.

There is, however, something here I should be considering, something that is important. I can't think of it. Something is distracting me. On old Mr. Bennett's hat, there appears to be movement. I can't see what it is, but it looks alive. Perhaps he passed under a tree and a caterpillar dropped onto his hat? What is it I'm supposed to remember about him? It's very important. It didn't seem so, when I remember I mentioned it earlier. Something about menus and ninjas, and people selling Sky TV...

Oh yes. Of course. That's it. How could I forget that?

Josiah Bennett is dead.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018