Trollheart

Few people around here are bothered too much about music, and those that do either get their intake from whatever pap is playing on the radio these days, or they're jazz aficionados, rigidly fixed in their opinion that there is no other music than the one they listen to. Some of the kids on the street listen to death metal, but that's a little too loud for me. Keith and I are the only ones to share an interest in, and appreciation of, the music of New Jersey's favourite son.

“Still on for the gig?” I ask. I feel I should say something, and now that my memory has been jogged, I remember we have tickets. We've been looking forward to it for months, and it's been one of the main topics of conversation when we meet.

Keith sucks in his cheeks, shakes his head. “Not so sure that's a good idea, old pal,” he confides. “Not when He's coming, you know?”

I stare at him blankly. “Who?” I ask. He looks at me at first as if I am insane, and then his face splits in a wide grin and he winks.

“Ah, nearly had me there, Rob me old son!” he chortles. “Who indeed? No but seriously,” and here his face does take on a more serious aspect, “I know we spent a lot on the tickets, but you understand, don't you?”

I say I do, even though I don't. What the hell is he talking about? When who comes? His initial reaction when I showed incomprehension about who this is though, takes me a little aback and I'm loath to give him further excuse to suspect. Suspect what? Am I trying to conceal something from him? Here is some music… He nods, happy that we are in agreement. He yawns again. “I'll see if I can sell 'em on,” he promises, again with another knowing wink adding “though I doubt if anyone around here will want to miss it when He comes either.” Again I nod, not a clue.

“Sell 'em on ebay?” I venture. He shrugs.

“Disconnected the internet,” he tells me flatly, and before I can ask why, “Ain't gonna need it no more, not once He comes.”

He's been going on about this mysterious “he” at such length now, making it obvious that he expects me to know this mystery man, that I honestly can't raise any further doubts in him by asking who “he” is. So I return his shrug and say “Yeah, maybe it's for the best.” It's as non-committal as I can get without giving anything away.

He nods, knuckles his eyes and remarks “Man, these late nights are killing me! Think I'd better take a nap before I have to go on shift.” He grins self-deprecatingly. “Listen to me! Forty-three this year and I'm acting like I was ninety! A nap, huh?” But despite his levity, he again covers his face as a long yawn stretches it, shrugs and with a somewhat apologetic look disappears up his garden path, his door closing and leaving me somewhat nonplussed, standing in the street.

So confused am I that I actually take a step backwards, almost knocking over Fiona Hutchinson, who is, as usual, out on her bike. She has barely been off that thing since she got it as a surprise Christmas present last year, from parents who could hardly afford it; I'd heard she even kept it in her bedroom so that she could reach out at night and touch it while she slept. No doubt it was in her dreams too.

“Hey!” she exclaims, in exactly the same voice a woman would if you hit into her pram and she feared for the safety of her child. “Watch the bike, Mister Charles!”

“Sorry,” I mumble, only half aware of what I'm doing, or saying. Keith's enigmatic words, somehow imbued with a tone of cheerful menace and desperation, like the smile of a man as he goes to the gallows, trying to be brave, still ring inside my head. I don't see her do it, but I get the feeling Fiona smiles at me tolerantly.

“Never mind,” she tells me. “Everything will be all right once He comes. See ya, Mister Charles!”

And with that, she's gone, humming happily as she rides off down the path. My head hurts even worse, pounding like someone inside it is trying to break out using a sledgehammer. I watch her pass me, notice the bike suddenly wobble, the little hand coming up to her mouth as she too yawns, and for a moment I think she might fall, and I take a half-step in her direction. But then she rises up in the saddle, pushes her feet down on the pedals and quickly disappears down the street.

I remain where I am, almost frozen in place, my head beginning to feel hot. She had said the same thing as Keith. Who are they talking about? Have I missed something? Have I been so long cooped up inside my house with these odd men, these cockroaches, skittering through my home that I have been unaware that some major celebrity or important figure is due to visit our little town? But who would be bothered? I decide to buy a newspaper. If there is some portentous visit on the horizon, surely it will be in the papers?

“Morning Rob,” says Benny, the old newsagent. I almost point out to him that it's afternoon, but then remember that to Benny Summers, it's always morning. It isn't that he doesn't know the correct time of day, he just always uses “Good morning” as a salutation, and people have got used to it. “Bit chilly out there today, huh?” I nod, grunting, hardly acknowledging his presence. I'm pawing through the newspapers, looking for some evidence of this unnamed celebrity who is due to visit, when a cold chill runs down my back. Two cold chills. Three.

First, as I peruse the sheaf of papers on the stand I hear the unmistakable sound of a yawn, followed by a thump and then a loud snoring. Glancing up, I see that Benny has fallen asleep, his big head resting peacefully on the remains of the sandwich he had been eating as I entered, his eyes closed. For a moment I am torn between going to him to see if he is all right (I assume he hasn't suffered a heart attack or anything, as I can hear the gentle snoring) and trying to confirm what my eyes are telling me about the newspapers. My gaze is drawn back to them, as I try to work out what I'm seeing.

Every single headline, and every byline on every single paper says exactly the same.

On the Herald, the headline blares HE IS COMING!
The front of the Bugle screams HE IS COMING!
The entire first page of the Standard is given over to the proclamation HE IS COMING!

Even the less salubrious publications speak of the same thing. The News of the World displays a garish picture of a very well endowed young lady, alongside the words HE IS COMING, while the Mirror has a similarly endowed girl bending over and smiling. Printed directly below the curve of her buttocks are the words HE IS COMING.

And that's not all. Every other line on every paper I pick up has the same words, repeated over and over again, in a seemingly nonsensical repetition that covers the entire page:
He is coming. He is coming. He is coming. He is coming.

There are no photographs accompanying the text, only large square or rectangular shapes of black, as if someone has carefully cut out sections of the newspaper. But they aren't just blank shapes. As I look at them, my gaze drawn towards their innate weirdness, I feel a rush of fear. I know that if I were to allow my finger, which is incredulously tracing down the neat lines of script made up of those three words, armies of hostile letters that seem bent on destroying me, to touch the black un-photograph it would sink into it. I know that. I know it without knowing how I know. Pain screams in my temples, sears my eyes, constricts my neck. I think I may faint, but I don’t. Something will not let me. Like some vast, deep well or the pull of a neutron star that drags everything towards it by the force of its incalculable gravitational attraction, till not even light can escape its embrace and is trapped within its core forever, the dark spaces leech at me, pull at me, invite me in. I feel my face move closer to the page. Closer. Closer.

My nose is almost touching one now, along which lines of text march, battle-hardened troops wending their weary war to war, advising me that He is coming. I know that if my skin touches the black square I will be lost, sucked in, absorbed, trapped forever in whatever dark hell lies beyond. I must not touch it.

And yet I cannot resist the pull, the darkness like a beckoning finger you know you should not – must not follow, yet you do anyway because you have no free will of your own. The square of darkness is expanding now, filling my vision, blocking out all other sight and sound. Even the incessant repetitive lines of text have blurred into indistinct shapes now, and then faded away altogether as I stare at the black hole my world has suddenly become, unable to fight as I am inexorably dragged towards it, through it, into it...

“Harumph! Wussat?”

The sudden sound breaks the spell, and I drop the newspaper from nerveless fingers, gasping, fighting for breath as it falls facedown on the ground, the sports section now looking up at me, nothing running across its surface but those three words. There are no black photographs though, or if there are they are hidden by the fold of the paper as it had fallen, and I consciously avert my eyes from any of the others, forcing my head to snap up with such force it hurts, and turning my eyes in the direction of the sound, the sound that has broken the spell, the sound that has saved me.

“Wow! Sorry about that!” grins old Benny, smiling sheepishly as he deftly removes a slice of processed ham from his cheek and drops it fastidiously into the bin behind the counter. “Musta dozed off there for a minute.”

For a moment, I don't know where I am. The ground, which had seemed to be slipping out from beneath me a moment ago, reasserts its presence and suddenly my body feels very heavy. I almost crash to one knee, but force a thin smile as I shakily move away from the newspaper rack and towards the recently woken Benny. He frowns at me. “Not takin' your paper, Rob?”

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018