There’s no Escaping the Voice
It’s just a story about escaping from hell…. or not!
The clouds have taken on their Halloween faces…see there, a pig floating amid the afternoon azure…a clown doing acrobatics…a child’s balloon…and look…look there…the angel of literature. In her hand a wand, bringing back those perfect days…days flown through on the words of Lowry and Lewis, Carrol, L’Engle and Rowling…and there she stands, wand in hand…where do you want to fly to today?
It’s lunchtime and I’m starving! My mate Dan, he’s a right slob, but that’s okay, coz he’s funny with it. Ian Schofield is another slob but he ain’t funny at all. Tonight, three of us are going trick or treating, which’ll be fun. Well, it would be if Sally Watkins weren’t coming. Year after year it’s the same old thing. Guy Faulkes is much better, with the spuds and all, but that’s nearly a week away. It’ll be okay I suppose, Sally Watkins will dress as a witch, Dan will be Spiderman, Alan Harrison will come as a Matrix character and all the rest, ‘cept maybe for Sally, will be one of the Harry Potter characters.
Predictable, that’s what it is. I’m just wondering what I can do to change things, you know, spice the whole thing up, make it go with a bit of a whiz, when Dan elbows me in the side. He raises a sandwich filled hand in the direction of an old man walking, dressed in a threadbare black overcoat, a stick in one hand and a pocket bulging with the other.
Having all gathered at the cemetery gate, Dan raises a sandwich filled arm.
“Look — that’s him, that’s the guy who’s been to hell!” He whispers, mouth full of bread and heck knows what else. I find it best to humor him.
‘Really!’ I gasp, “…been to hell, wow, that’s some trip. People don’t normally come back from there, Dan.”
“I know, creepy, eh? They say that’s how he got all those scars on his face.”
“No way!” I say, but it’s as much as I can do to sound excited. I’m really thinking, ‘as if’.
“Yep — I saw him prowling round the cemetery last night — probably looking for his own grave.”
“Shut up, Sally, that’s dead creepy,” Alan whines.
We sit quietly feeding our faces, legs swinging, thinking about the man who has been to hell.
“How so?” I think to ask, thousand island dressing seeping down my chin.
“Ugh?” Alan grunts. Unable to construct a word with jam and bread sticking to the roof of his mouth.
“How so — you know, Dan? How so you know he’s been to hell?” I ask, scraping a finger along my chin and licking a blob of dressing off the end.
“Coz I heard dad talking to Mr. Gilbert, next door, they were talking loud. I heard dad say the old man has been to hell and back.”
“Gilby?” I said, teasing him.
“No, dope — him,” Dan points half of his jam filled sarnie across the park to where the old man has stopped to feed the ducks. “After what Sally said, you know, him prowling round the dead folk, and all, well, I just think he’s pretty damn scary.”
“Probably his old lady is buried there,” I say.
“You think? — she said he seemed to be looking for something special,” says Dan.
“He’s an old guy, he can’t remember where they buried her. You’re both nuts.”
“You think so, Harry?”
“Yeh — I think so , whacko!”
“What’s with the scars then, eh? Tell me that.”
“Thousands of people have scars — look,” I say, rolling up my trouser leg and showing mine. “Hell of a fall, must have been doing a ton on my bike.”
“Wow, nasty!”
“Nothing to it, hey, look,” I point across the park and upward. It’s the raucous sound of a thousand crows, the sky thick with them as they cast a shadow over the old man. He seems oblivious and continues to throw bread. The shadow moves away as the crows take to the trees. All becomes quiet again.
Dan can’t control his disbelief.
‘Wow! — did you ever see movie, The Birds? Told you, didn’t I, evil people always has crows round’em. That sure is one evil old man, uh?”
“That was seagulls, you jerk! Grow up! Com’on, class will be restarting.”
In the darkest place, somewhere beyond space, in a black hole, a voice booms across a stone walled chamber.
“Where is he, tell me now.”
The voice answering is as feeble as champagne bubbles. “He escaped, sir. I have two flocks looking for him as we speak.”
“Escaped? You dare to tell me he Escaped?” The draught of the voice feeds the flames of the voice’s fire and yellow licks up the walls.
The poor creature cowers, shrinking under the weight of the voice pressing down on him. The far universe shakes as reinforced galactic doors leading to hollow spaces, resonate with the sound of Evil.
“Is this not Hell, you tattered flesh crawling cretin? Dead people don’t escape. Where is he… tell me now or die with your flesh burning!”
The creature quivers out a sound that is inaudible.
“Speak up, you pathetic pile of sores.” The million-year-old voice slithers toward the recoiling creature. “Tell me where he is — NOW!”
The broken spirit remains rooted to the spot with fear.
“He.. he… went back, sir.” Was its shameful response.
“Back! No one goes back! The man was destined for Heaven, and we stole him, pulled him into the hollows, and you…you let him escape!”
The iron grated windows that look out on mysterious sniffs and snorts, shake under the power of the voices’ penetrating anger. Groans of trepidation escape the cretin as a feeling of imminent doom slams against his bony chest, like a door blasting shut in a hurricane.
“T…two… two flocks have f… found him, s..sir. We’ve begun the p..pr..process of having him ree…reeeca…recalled.”
As the voice nears, the voice becomes a jawline pitted with green suede teeth and extrudes from its rotting flesh two arms that grab hold of the shivering cretin, splashing the air helplessly, “Escaped… no one escapes from hell!” and the voice hurls the grotesque servant into the fire. One sharp crack of explodes cretin as his flesh sizzles to ashes and detonates in a fountain of sparks.
The voice swallows back his teeth and slides his arms back into a lava hot flesh, slams open the door and disappears into the meadows of never-ending darkness, leaving behind a trail of slick congealed red.
They had all dared each other to come to the cemetery, being it was the spookiest place they could think of for Halloween, especially with the dry October leaves crunching under foot and a pale moon rising with a blood-red ominousness and seen in the bare branches of trees.
In the town, it is a night of brightness, coughs, groans, mutters, whispers, all making their way to people's homes. Horny beasts, superheroes, twisted funny kids all making an effort to be horrifying, something that should come naturally to most of them, mum says.
Spiderman is heading right at me.
“Hi Dan.”
“Who’s that?” Asks Dan.
“Me, Harry.”
“Wow — you look exactly like the dead guy!”
“Yep — I’m the dead guy.”
“Neat, how did you do that?”
“Mum let me have dad’s old coat, after a bit of a warning not to let anything happen to it. I told her I was going to wear it the whole time, so she agreed. Like my stick?”
“Fantastic…how did you get those scars?”
“Mum made’em up on me, cool, eh?”
“I didn’t know it was you at all.”
“That’s the idea — dope!”
“You knew who I was.”
“You told me at lunchtime, idiot.”
“Oh… yeh…I did. No one will guess who you are — fantastic, and scary, too.”
“Thanks — you seen the others?”
“Not yet, it’s still fifteen minutes to our agreed time.”
“Okay, I’m going in, I’ll scare the hell out of them.”
“You’re going in…. alone?”
“Shut up, Dan. It’s full of dead folks. What’s to worry about? Don’t tell them who I am, okay?”
Bruce Clark is trying to remember who he is, something about his life.
He feels entirely alone. Bruce spends his time sitting on rotten wooden benches, or huddled in a church corner, cradling himself in doorways, no-one knowing or understanding him. He is waiting for memories to be restored.
Washing through eternity, the Voice comes to those who deserve it. It is deserving to those who have led a life of creating catastrophe. The Voice resides in this place, forming filthy friendships with the demons and ghouls of those who were once of the human spirit.
It is the darkest of all things and once seen, once a lifeless eye casts a glance in that destructive human spirit, a cretin that thing will become. Living in a place where there is no December, where fingers grow fingernails sharp enough to tear skin from elephant hides. It is a place of pity and disaster.
Behind the school shed, still dripping flesh and blood, the Voice of Evil finds a cold damp spot to await the midnight. It seethes anger and hatred and is filled with the cries of those already consumed. It is a climate of polar temperatures, lightnings and thunders, rising and rolling on dark clouds. It stays shriveled up behind the school shed, looking for what shade and moisture it can find, far away from laughter and smiles, waiting for one old man.
The bent and twisted silhouette of a man walking through the cemetery, the moon shining on his thinning grey hair, October trees shivering and rustling as he walks by, is going nowhere…going somewhere. Far away a great black stove is being prepared for some flesh.
The collar of his coat pulled high on his neck, but its thickess is little comfort against the clear, evil night air.
In a home on the far side of the village, a woman waits, she is sat on the sofa clutching a photograph to her heart, eyes emitting soft flowing rivers.
Two years you’ve been gone, honey. How beautiful it all was she was thinking, and you left us — well, Bruce, what have you got to say for yourself? She fingers the features of his face behind the glass. There’s no answer to her question. She dabs her face with the corner of her apron. I know you adored us, I know that. What happened had to happen, there’s no way you could have stayed away were it not so. Missing in action, presumed dead. You must be dead, Bruce, for I know in my heart you’d find a way back if… she places the photograph back on the sideboard. It’s hopeless to dream…even more hopeless to hope. Time has extinguished both.
The smoldering of lost cries and forbidden prayers waits behind the school shed, evil odor rising to the nostrils of a fat black cat as it flees across a fence and into the branches of a tree. Such murmurs lie deep in the heart of ruin, tears trickling down punished faces, hope plunged, bitterness roused, while anguish, like a vine on the throat, twists in the souls of those it owns. Its blood laughing in its veins, for it knows no-one is sure of escaping its oblivion. No-one…but one man!
The old man shuffles through the school gates, arms wrapped round his chest, dragging a weakened leg. He shivers and moans and mumbles but he knows evil lurks all around him. It destroys his nerves and remorse, like a worm, wriggles in his stomach. Where love is devotion and strength and beauty, evil is no more than living with the damned in hollow spaces outside Heaven. It’s the most sobering of cities. Hell.
The air is filled with odor. It’s damp and sorrowful. My heart is beating up the inside of my chest but I’m not afraid. I might be standing on the edge of the world, but I don’t feel afraid. I want to trust the old man who has been to hell, something in me wants to believe him alive, remove the cobwebs from his eyes and have him speak.
He stands in front of me, beckoning, in a whirlwind of darkness. Yes, I want to believe he’s an angel; a messenger, knowing something of my dad.
A voice of misery rises in a fog. The air is still. A flapping of wings drops me to my knees in fright. The moon glides into a different dimension as shadows form the space I’m standing in. My head is filling with sounds of slaughter, yet he continues to drag himself closer. His arm reaching, finger curling, and his eyes beckoning. He’s here and his face is torment, his mouth dry of words, hair flying in strands, and a heart not opened in too long.
The sound is over me. It’s in the shadow. I’m in the shadow. The old man steps in close, from a moonlight that is lost to me. He reaches, frail, lost, hopeless, a man in a wilderness.
I stand before him, unafraid, fearless in my heart.
“Is it you…is it you, dad?” I ask.
His arms fall about me, fragile, splintered, spoiled flesh, eyes dull.
“Esss” He cries… “Essss’ And tears bubble from the sunken depths and boil on his eyelashes, sparkling in the rosy redness of the moonlight.
I hold him up, pull his coat round him, and find the words.
“I love you, dad,” my words as fragile as crystal on tear-soaked lips.
“I..uvvv oooh, son,” he replies, words cracking with death’s dryness, flesh starting to heal, and the crows departing.
Inside the home, the telephone rings. The woman rushes to answer, as she has for two years, always hoping.
“Hello.” She says.
“Darling, it’s Bruce. I’m coming home…”
The woman falls to the floor, holding the phone, “Is it really you?”
“Yes, my love, it’s really me. I lost my memory, but now I have it all back. Is Harry there?”
“He went out celebrating Halloween, Bruce. I’m worried, he’s not home yet. He will be so happy, my love. We will be a family again.”
In a far-off place the Voice is happy.
“I told you, my new young cretin, no one escapes hell.”
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