Nicole Kidman stars in: 'The Astronaut Dropped'

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31 March 2008

39. What Kind of Kidman Is This Anyway?

Something moved behind me but I kept on walking.

There was trepidation in me but anger still, and the two took turns at leaning forward then stumbling back, again and again - this staggering inner dance fuelling my physical progress in a dilapidated fashion.

I didn’t have the energy for climbing the Clansman, even the mild foothills were too much for my wasted lungs. I opted instead for the perimeter of Mordan House and its land. First of all it was the gravel that I walked on, and then off down the driveway, then onto a dirt-track with old puddles that skirted round to the back of the house alongside the wall that framed the entire rear of the building. The wall was taller than me and edged with a grass verge. It was also old and misshapen, weeds decked it, and bushes on both sides entangled with the weeds giving it a wild and forlorn appearance.

From time to time I would hear the bushes rustle and this heightened my unease. I had ‘Villette’ with me and clutched it tightly in my left hand, up close against my breast. A quick glance round, a quickening of pace even, before a settling back of mood and temperament as other thoughts took the place of all disquiet.

The main preoccupation was Kidman. How could I have liked her so much! How could I have been such a fan of hers for years! How could I have wanted to be like her! This endlessly posturing freakshow! This empty, yet endless, spectacle!

“Posturing freakshow! Empty spectacle!”

The sound of her voice was behind me yet seemed slightly elevated, and I half-expected to see her hovering in the air like a dead astronaut. But when I looked round, there she was standing on top of the wall, towering above me. I’m not sure what it was that made her appear so frightening and formidable: maybe it was her posture and the way she stood aloft the high wall with such confidence and stature – or maybe it was the blood-red look of anger that shot from her eyes, along her nose and painfully across and into me. Perhaps the tone in her voice – alive and pointed, visceral, unlike anything I’d heard from her before. Whatever it was – one, some or all of these things – I found myself stepping back from her.

“How dare you! How dare you say such things about me! Me! Who am I to you anyway? Tell me! Who am I? Who am I to you, you empty piece of shit!”

I continued to step back as I was scared to turn my back on her. She started to move along the wall, however, in pursuit of me; walking like a lioness, confident and proud, almost floating in her long dress. The trees behind her waved in the breeze as if echoing her anger, and the darkened windows of Mordan House stared on like an attentive, agreeing audience. I felt alone, even nature turned against me.

“Kidman! That’s all I am to you! Kidman! A concept of your making and that you cling to no matter what! And then you tell me that you despise the concept that you yourself created! What is there that’s real about your idea of me that has not been created by you! Strong Kidman! Resilient Kidman! Warm-hearted, generous Kidman! What you demand from me, every day of my life, is to be the empty concept that you want me to be, that you believe you need me to be! I can never get away from it! I struggle to just be Nicole because of your Kidman? The last thing you want is Nicole! You could never handle Nicole! It would be too complicated, too layered, too contradictory! Kidman is all you can handle and then you throw it back at me! You make me into a flat two-dimensional notion and then you slam the book shut on that notion and rubbish it, trash it! Why? Because you can’t be it! You can’t be what you made, what you dream of, so you hurl insults at someone who was never that notion in the first place! Rubbish me? Trash me? I’m not even in the equation! I’m not even here!”

I turned away finally, my head down, my steps fast. Yet I could still hear her words as she progressed along the wall, her voice resounding across the air and through the trees. But we were nearing the end of the wall, she would have to stop at the end or come down to my level. I hastened my steps.

“Who are you without me? I know who I am without you! I’m me! Free of your definition, your straight-jacket, your clumsy, tired, empty, vacuous concept that endlessly tries to drag me out of reality and into your void – your attempts to make me as empty and lifeless and superficial as you are! Without you, I might actually just be me!”

Then she began to call out in a different way, and not to me. To someone else.

“Dead astronaut! Take her! She’s just a curse to me! Take her!”

Walk, Stephanie, walk! Don’t turn around. For God’s sake, Kidman, stop following, stop talking. Leave me alone! My heart raced, my throat was tight like there were fingers inside seizing and constricting.

“Dead astronaut! Take her!”

I could hear her, yet I could now hear my feet again on the ground. I could hear birds, rustling of leaves and branches. Kidman was not all I could hear. But this was not the relief that I had hoped. The moving of the dense branches worried me. I looked up and round as I hurried on, wondering if I might see the astronaut. Had she summoned him? Was he on his way to grab me? Bushes seemed to amble like muscular horrors, tree trunks leaned down and over me with dark menace, the sounds of birds were cackles, delighting in the onset of terror.

Before I knew it, I came out of the woods and found myself … at the front of Mordan House. The clouds were white with just a touch of grey and the house looked characterless, moodless - just another big old building. And I found that my breathing was free and easy, my lungs open and without any discomfort or rasp, or frailty in my muscles. I stood still, closed my eyes for a second and tried to compose myself.

That night, as I sat and tried to knit, with soft music in the background to try and gee-up my mood, all I could hear through the sweeps of orchestral strings and the little clicks of the knitting needles, was Kidman, somewhere upstairs, sobbing loudly and uncontrollably.

And for the first time since she’d tumbled out, or down, or whatever it was, I quite liked her. She was just like me, full of depth and illusion, full to the brim with stuff of life and stuff of death. Just another person full of empty concepts, and with a heart within it all that beat against the limiting parameters of every superficial notion, loudly and uncontrollably. More often than not, in sobs.

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.

08:20 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (6) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal

29 March 2008

38. The Language of a Small Infected Demon

“Plan? What plan?”

I had caught-up with her before I realised what part of the house we were in. We’d travelled down the stairs and I found myself standing outside of the open cellar door while Kidman was inside.

I could see that someone had clearly ransacked the place in pursuit of something. I looked at the computer and, for the first time, I noticed that it was encased in a metal shell for security. It could be switched on and off but it would have been extremely difficult to remove it. Someone trying to gain access to the metal frame was probably the banging sound that I’d heard. I pushed it lightly to see for myself how secure it was and it failed to give at all.

“Interesting,” said Kidman.

I instantly scoffed at what she thought was interesting. “Forget it, Sherlock. Just tell me what your plan is, will you?”

“But this is interesting. This, my sleepy-eyed, bury-your-head-in-the-sand, emotionally-fragile little friend, is a clue!”

I blinked voraciously. I didn’t know what to respond to: the fact that she regarded something as a clue or the fact that she was being so insulting. My indecision caused me to respond as only an emotionally fragile person would: “Clue-gile? I mean, bury my clue? What?”

I looked away, squinted and licked my lips, feeling remarkably uncomfortable, but angry and resentful also. All of a sudden I was again aware of how vulnerable my body felt after the previous night. Inside, I felt like a room stripped of wallpaper; outside, like an old building covered in scaffolding. Kidman, on the other hand, looked like she was made of stone, each gesture precise and exquisite, every surface smooth and resplendent.

When she turned her gaze on me, she at first said nothing – there was no need, her entire look was comprised of ENP. Resentfully, I realised then that she was right, sometimes ENP is all you need. No other gesture is required, no words need be employed.

My irritation grew and I became a little agitated. “Quit that ENP crap, will you!”

She didn’t stop though, merely relaxed the ENP for an instant and then realigned its properties towards me with even greater force. “It doesn’t mean anything, you know! It just looks stupid!”

She held it. Boy, did she hold it! It was magnificent! How I despised her! Despised her? Did I? I aimed for calmness, but only reached quiet incandescence: “Thank you, Kidman. I think I get it.”

Then she dropped the pose as if it was just a hankie. “Fine,” she said. “Do you want to hear about this clue?”

I did, but I didn’t. All I wanted to do was grab my hair and pull it ever so hard, in one place and then another. She knew it, but knew also that I would listen. She’d ENP-ed all the fight right out of me! Oh, she knew it alright!

“The only filing cabinet that has been open and emptied contained files for the letters ‘MNO’ – no other letters. Other drawers have been opened, but the files that have been scattered all belong to those letters.”

“So what the person was looking for was one of the files that related to someone whose surname begins with one of those letters!”

“Yes! Although there’s no guarantee that this has anything to do with the dead astronaut! But it’s all we have to go on.”

Kidman was sitting up on one of the filing cabinets now and swinging her legs, her face all insipid and glowing, childlike and unperturbed. I knew how I would look in comparison: ransacked, violated, internal files scattered, and little parts of me pummelled by an anonymous assailant. And probably I had some essence at the centre of my look that gave the impression that something had been taken from me, but you weren’t entirely sure what. All of a sudden I wanted to get out of the cellar and I turned to leave, arms folded defensively, my bare arms suddenly feeling chilled.

“Well, we can bear it in mind,” I muttered. “And, when you want to tell me your plan then I’ll be upstairs.”

“Upstairs? I thought you’d feel at home in the cellar! Especially in this cellar!” She knew what I’d been thinking and she was relishing the opportunity to exploit my weakness. Her legs started to kick more forcefully and her head was slightly angled towards me in a put-on look of bafflement.

Now my irritation was firing-up. Perhaps it was the flayed and dissected nature of my nerves that produced it. Oh, no, hold on, it was the deathly ache in all my limbs, an ache that weighted them so heavily I could almost feel cold water – or maybe ‘passed’ water -rising over me to consume me luridly, poisonously – yes, that was the cause. Or … could it be … yes, just maybe … that’s it! The reason struck me! It was because I hated her! So totally. So absolutely. And with a delicious evil and spite at its core. I think it lay within the place inside where I felt something had been stolen, almost as if it was occupying a space illegally, uncouth hands holding up a damaged ceiling, in place of the strong, keen pillars that the structure called for. Something diseased was squatting deep down inside me. I recalled the words of Mrs Ormsley’s friend: it was a long way inside for a demon to go just for a pee!

My language in replying to her became the language of a small infected, crippled demon who was finding his way up and out inside – “Up and out inside,” the small demon cackled, ‘”Up and out inside, that’s where I’m going.” I couldn’t stop him. I just couldn’t. Seeing Kidman, the demon thought it recognised one of its own kind and spat.

“You disgusting, infected little presence, Kidman! Get out of my life! Get out! You repel me! You horror! You plague of a presence! You’re bile in my life, you’re a scourge! How dare you talk to me and treat me the way that you do! Just get your repulsive, insulting fucking knives out of my fucking life! Woman? You’re no woman, Kidman! You’re just a set of horrible dirty stabbing knives! Get out, damn it, get out!”

It was my voice, but how unlike me. I could see myself speaking the words, yet I felt connected to myself by some chord that projected me above myself. All those feelings, however, were with me, travelling through the chord and passing toxins into my head. My lips had saliva on them and I could feel a bit of spit on my chin, but my mouth was utterly dry. I felt my hands and my chin shaking with nervousness and anger and self-hatred.

I knew how Kidman would respond. I knew her presence. I awaited the silent ENP stance. But, oh, how wrong I was!

I noticed that her head was facing down, down at her dangling feet; they were no longer kicking about frivolously, instead they were entirely still.

There was a silence between us. For the first time, it was one of ignorance on my part; the first time I felt that I didn’t understand what was going on with her. It was eerie. Perplexing. Worrying.

Slowly she raised her head and looked at me. No elevated quizzical eyebrows, no dagger-like nose, no plush and protruded puppies. Instead, darkness. Wrath. Steely anger. Not like mine. Hers was fearsomely focused and portentous. This was a new Kidman and I didn’t like it.

I decided to get away from her as quickly as possible. “As I said, I’ll be upstairs.” The statement was kind of thrown at her feet, with a pathetic little flight and a pathetic little landing – in fact, the statement was more thrown at my own feet than Kidman’s. I didn’t care though and I hurried up the stairs. No sound from Kidman. No movement from the cellar.

I decided to go for a short walk, get some fresh air and clear my head. Clear my nerves. Clear out of the house and leave it to Kidman! As I moved towards the front door, there was still no sound from the cellar, just a cold, hard sense, an inscrutable presence like an enormous oil slick of dark thought.

I left the house as quickly as I could, scared to look back.

What had just happened to my Kidman? What had I done to her?

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.

11:20 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal

28 March 2008

37. Delusional Authors All

“Get up!”

It's a rusty kind of day. Something has got into my joints and I'm creaking and ineffectual, every movement is a grind and I feel bits of me grating and flaking. That's what the other night has done to me. Mentally, I'm all dizzy, thoughts just slide out of my head and nothing seems able to grip them. Physically, I'm all slowed-down and dilapidated. As I say: rusty. Crush and recycle me. It's all I'm good for.

“When are you going to get up!”

I know that it's largely because my system doesn't want to consider what happened to me the other night. There's only so much that can be handled by me, or any human being, at any one time - I want peace, tranquility, space for reparation and reformation. No boats will be rocked by me today. Boats will love the sea today and feel it to be their friend.

“You are such a waste of space, Steph Fey! Get up! Show some stomach! Show some fight!”

“I can’t get up! I don’t want to get up!”

This blogging experience. I’ve been thinking a little about this blogging experience. While my head’s under the covers and while Kidman hovers, paces and witter’s on.

“That’s not important. Getting up, that’s what’s important!”

What is it I’m doing by blogging? Some kind of electronic message in a bottle, yes - but more than that. Is it about some absolute truth of our times presented to someone and everyone, or more an eternal facade with the appearance of truth about it, presented to others who also love the lie more than the truth? Yes, what is any of this? Eternal truth or despicable lie? Who knows? Surely not us authors of these so-called blogs, not us - delusional authors all, that's who we are. Fooling ourselves; fooling each other.

“Oh, you boring cow! Who cares? Get up, dull bitch! Get up! That’s all that matters!”

Delusional authors all. But I won't rock that boat today either. Liars are safe on the sea today. Even liars will love the sea today! I can’t hold the thought anyway. I can’t hold the idea to see it though. It’s slipped away already, whatever it was that I meant, whatever it was I was thinking of.

“Oh, budge up! If you’re going to be so achingly dull then I’m off to sleep too! Oh, please don’t stop, mummy, please talk complete tedious shit some more!”

Bloody Kidman! Will she ever leave me in peace! She’s climbing into the bed now!

“Will you leave me alone? I don’t want to get up! I don’t want you annoying me! Go and run away again like you did last night! I’m exhausted! My chest and my head feel like I’m poisoned and I need to be left alone, please! Go and read the case-notes again, or something. Please, Kidman! Pretty-please sod off.”

“Case-notes. Pointless. I’m done with those. Delusional authors all, every last one of them!”

Oh. What happened there? I couldn’t quite believe it. She was actually getting out of the bed now. Now I could sleep! I could rest now. Now, some delicious emptiness to just rest and heal!

“I’m more interested in my plan. My plan is the thing now.” And she was gone, off  into the little corridor. The Yale lock turned and then she was out into the main hallway.

Plan? What plan?

I found myself to be screaming after her as loudly as I could: “Damn you, Kidman! Damn you! Plan? What plan?”

I know she heard me. I know she wasn’t that far away. But what did she say in reply?  “What? Sorry! I can’t hear you!”

I sat up in bed and thought. Suddenly I had the energy to sit up! And suddenly I found I could think! Should I get up? Should I? Could I?

Plan? What could Kidman’s plan possibly be?

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.

09:20 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal

27 March 2008

36. The Intruder

There it was again. Feet. I’m sure it was feet. Shoes. Yes, it was probably the sound of feet in shoes. Not my own, of course. And not Kidman’s.

This time, however, there was no daylight, not even moonlight. I had felt it coming on, a kind of premonition of fear. Although nothing untoward had occurred earlier in the day when I’d ventured out into the hallway, an underlying anxiety had smouldered away inside, a little sickly and raw feeling, like a fragile coating over everything, like a little virus coming-on. As darkness quickly muscled daylight out of the equation, my uncertainty grew, but as a peripheral thing at first, hanging over me, before burrowing down inside.

The sound had fallen on the wooden floor somewhere further down the main hallway. Had the sound travelled down the flight of stairs to the cellar perhaps? Possibly. I thought briefly of shouting out, warning the intruder that I was there – but the thought died away remarkably quickly like a whispered vowel-sound would if sounded within a gale. That kind of buxom, sassy challenge wasn’t for me! Paint my face black and lean me against an ashtray, making like an old, extinguished match, was more my style! Putting a pen on my head and pretending to be a fancy pen-holder, that would suit me better! Or opening up a book in both hands and standing as still as a lectern! Perhaps open my mouth wide, raise my arms, and pretend I’m a sex doll! Hell, I’d rather lick my arse in a corner, playing the part of the house’s resident pet golden retriever! Or even standing in the corner with pee down my leg and pretending I’m a modern art installation! Yep, even that was preferable!

I looked at Kidman and Kidman looked at me. Quite quickly I realised that she’d be no help at all. I think it was the fact that she again decided to bury her head in the comfy chair and extend her arse upwards that gave the game away!

From inside a small flowery cushion where her face was hidden I heard her muffled voice: “Hake high had-hice! Hetend hoo hon’t hear hany-hing!”

“Some lot of use you are!” I snarled in a vitriolic whisper.

“Hank-hoo. Hood huck! Hool heed hit!”

I was on my own again, and again inching towards the door. Again I looked at those feeble and precarious screws that kept the lock within the door. I was tempted to rest my head against the door to hear better, but what if there was someone outside and a forceful kick or shove suddenly struck the door? It might give in a moment and injure me. Instead, I hovered on tip-toe somewhere close beside it, ear cocked and head craned, a lock of hair in my hand and due pressure applied for nerves’ sake.

Then I remembered. I’d left the door of the archive room open in the hope that some of the dust might decide to make a bold bid for freedom! If the intruder was heading down to the cellar then they would be able to get access to everything that was in there! But, if this was some burglar, what would they want with old files? Maybe the computer though might interest them!

All of a sudden the sounds beyond the door became more confident, less furtive and surreptitious, more violent and frustrated even. There was banging and clattering - the sound of filing cabinet drawers being opened and slammed shut, of papers being strewn, of objects being barged and toppled.

I could hear breathing in amongst it all – rapid, agitated. I stepped back from the door and gradually, as the sounds increased, the steps I took became larger. I found myself standing beside a light-switch and I automatically flicked it off and plunged myself into darkness that I hoped would conceal my presence. Only the light in the sitting-room where Kidman was remained.

Whoever was downstairs in the archive room was becoming increasingly frantic. The familiar, nameable sounds were suddenly replaced by something like heavy, metallic banging that resounded through the house. I clutched my ears and I think I gasped – I’m not sure, I might have. The sound was raucous and unselfconscious, something akin to an ancient army beating shields as it advanced. I placed my hand on my chest. My breathing was becoming noisier. A slight wheezing sound was beginning to manifest and I felt myself edge into a corner at the back of the short corridor, angled sideways, while trying desperately to calm myself in order to soothe and regulate my breathing.

Then, without warning, the hammering sound stopped. The only audible sound was me – in-out, in-out, like small bellows working madly. Silence returned beyond my rooms. In fact, not even the previous sound of footsteps could be heard. Through the darkness, I could see light from the main hallway like simple, thin neon strips coming through the edges of the door-frame. A deft and gentle click-sound, and the light in the hall beyond was extinguished. I gasped, I’m sure. Through the doorway to the sitting-room I could see a part of Kidman’s dress but nothing else. My hands were shaking and my heartbeat was like a numbing, persistent pain. And, in that little corner of the corridor, I sank down to my knees and tried to make myself smaller and smaller, as my breathing turned to a rasp, my mouth open and gasping.

A creak. Right outside of the door. A tiny rattle. The door handle gripped on the outside. Then, all of a sudden, I could see light – not much, but milky white and coming under the door from the bottom left-hand corner. There was a gasp from outside the door and from what appeared to be a male voice. Then a sudden intake of breath and a kind of gurgle. The light increased slightly. Was it a torch? Had someone else arrived outside? Then there was a kind of sharp moan and the scuffle of feet. The scuffle turned into running, down the hallway and then across the gravel outside of the house. Who could this be now? Had one demon left, only to be replaced by a fiercer one?

Then it struck me just who was outside the door: the astronaut. The light under the door moved around, dimming then intensifying. My breathing was worsening. I was gasping, trying to squeeze the air in and out of me, but I couldn’t move to get an inhaler. I was transfixed, terrified - then terrified even more as I heard a new sound, like the scraping of a glove against the door. Slow, strained but desperate and determined.

Almost from nowhere, Kidman! She was in the doorway, the light turning her into a mere hint and blush of shadows. She had grabbed a handful of her dress and was moving her body away from me and back into the sitting-room. “Take my advice, sweetheart!” she said. “Pee on his electrics and run like a bastard! See ya!”

I extended my hand towards her for help but I was unable to speak. It would have done no good though. She continued turning away and ran back into the sitting-room and out of sight. The scraping continued, rhythmic, cloying and eerily hypnotic.

Just as I expected the clawing to intensify, the light suddenly disappeared. A different silence surrounded me. The unmistakable silence of aftermath.

The intruder was gone and the astronaut was gone. I knew it instantly. I moved towards the kitchen area – that was where my inhaler was located. But I could only move by slowly crawling on the floor. I hadn’t the energy for anything more. I found the inhaler, it shook in my hands as I continued to tremble, I used it and then I cried as I felt instant relief for my breathing, as well as my fear abating.

I didn’t sleep in my bed that night – last night – I slept in my hallway instead, in the little corner that I had earlier squeezed myself into, and with a kitchen knife and a hammer at my side.

And no sign of Kidman at all. Nothing.

What can I possibly have opened in opening that archive room? How could I have been so foolish! This isn’t me! Philip was right. I’m nothing! Like he said: I’m a small ball and I should just let other people bounce me.

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.

09:00 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal

26 March 2008

35. How to Listen with Your Arse

“Did you hear something?”

Kidman said nothing. Sometimes Kidman says nothing, and this was one of those times.

“Hey, Kidman!” I always call her Kidman, never Nicole. “Kidman! Did you hear anything just now?”

Still Kidman said nothing. She was present in the room, for sure. In fact, she was sitting in the only really good seat in the suite of rooms; it had a comfy base that never hardened and a back that sloped up above the height of your head so you could doze off in it, and it was just wide enough for legs to be tucked-up. She was all lazy and luxurious looking, and she was studying one of the case-files and refusing to raise her head from the document.

“Is there a Kidman in the room? If so, did the Kidman hear anything? Anything at all?”

“If you heard something then ignore it, that’s what I say.”

“Are you saying that you did hear something?”

“I’m saying that I didn’t hear anything because if I heard something then I decided, successfully, to ignore it.”

“Ah! So, you don’t hear with your ears then, when you’ve decided to ignore something? You listen with some other part of your body, perhaps? You arse, perhaps!”

Without looking at me she wriggled her arse on the chair.

Typical Kidman sophistry! The kind that had bugged me since she arrived, alongside her use of Glaswegian terms without any attempt at an accent, her sexual references, her belittling attitude, her blasted ENP! This was not the Kidman that I understood, but it was the Kidman that I found myself imagining and the one that I secreted. Secreted? Spilled? Jeez, what verb, what verb!

“Anyway, how can I ignore it?” I asked. “This is why I’m here: to look after this place. That’s my job. Shelter and bills paid, and in return the owner gets high-level security from moi! So, what do you think you heard that you also think you ignored?”

“Only two ‘nopes’, three ‘nothings’ and one ‘absolute bugger all’. You?”

I exhaled loudly and with clear irritation in the sound. She was a hard and impervious bitch this Kidman of mine! She did annoy me so, this bloody annoying Kidman that had slithered out of my pores. Slithered?

I closed over the lid of the laptop and listened. There was a silence that seemed to reverberate and throb slightly in my ears. I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d heard or what the words would be to describe it – a scuffle, a fall, a tumble, a scrape-cum-bump-cum-slide. My mind couldn’t organise itself to make sense of what it had heard, and had since allowed a feeling of uncertainty to scramble like little war planes.

This was daylight, however, so my trepidation was not as it would be at night. With Kidman staying put, I tip-toed out of the room alone and inched along the short corridor towards the door to my suite of rooms. As you know, the door has a lock on it – just a Yale though, not like the fortified door to the cellar. I was unsure about the strength of the squinty screws that looked all wangled and coerced into the wood. I listened, trying desperately not to make a sound, and then moved to open the door. I kept saying to myself: it’s daylight; it’s not appropriate to have the same level of fear when it’s daylight.

All of a sudden, Kidman: “If you heard something then ignore it, that’s my advice to you!”

She shouted this statement from the sitting-room and probably while still sitting in the comfy chair. I whispered back as loudly as I could - lest someone on the other side should hear me - and in an exasperated and argumentative tone: “It’s still daylight! You don’t have the same level of fear when it’s daylight!”

Almost instantly I thought that this was a pointless thing to say. Especially pointless to whisper! Anyway, was my level of fear at all relevant?

Before I knew it, the door was open. Was that me who did that? I looked down at my hands for reassurance and I saw them holding the door. Relief! It was me! Then I was outside and in the hallway, small roundish shadows scattered about but with strong rectangles of light dominating the walls and floor. Mostly though everything was just grey. On the ceiling, grey shadows and greyish shine struggled for dominance; it was a silent tussle, but it was that kind of silence that’s almost audible, like it’s riddled with termites that are secretly eating away at it. How did I get out into the hallway? Did I walk? Or was I shoved? I looked down at my legs and saw them move. Phew! Relief! I was the cause again!

The nothingness of the hallway was almost overwhelming. Even Kidman calling out would have been preferable - even an inane insult from her, even a little caustic attack! Also, I found that I almost wanted to hear the sound again that I thought I’d heard, just to relieve me of silence’s invisible tremors and the way they made every sense and every bit of nonsense inside me shudder! And just so that I hadn’t put the fighter pilots of fear into the air for nothing!

Then I realised that something must have changed outside. A cloud must have given up its resistance or struck a bargain and allowed more sunlight to tumble down like boulders - there was an immediate landslide of warm sunlight that came down and into the entire hallway. It was almost celestial – certainly it was providential. Sunlight’s spell was cast, and I wondered what the reason for my uncertainty had been.

I shrugged my shoulders; no longer tense. I turned back in sprightly fashion; no longer reactionary. I skipped back to my suite of rooms; no longer inching along like a jittery doe.

I nonchalantly slammed the door shut behind me and returned to where Kidman was. My face was a picture of contentment, relief and a little touch of pride at what I perceived to be my own bravery. I could almost see my face from outside of me, all alive and unburdened. Then I grimaced. Kidman had stood up from the chair and was resting her arms on it, her arse elevated and pointing towards me.

“What exactly are you doing?”

“Listening,” she said.

It was my turn to say nothing.

The problem was this, however: I was pretty sure that I’d heard something. My mind couldn’t recall or reconstruct what I’d heard, but it wasn’t one of the normal sounds of this house. Those sounds, I know. This sound had been different.

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.

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25 March 2008

34. Cold Cases

Kidman’s been quiet, but so too have I. Yesterday was entirely occupied with looking over these files. I would sit back in various places: out in the back garden beside where I’d grown that feeble patch of plants, in my rooms beside the window with the moonlight streaming in, lying on a blanket at the foot of the Clansman and with the woodland trees sheltering me from the cold breeze. I would read a file, then I’d pass it to Kidman and she would read it. It was the first time since her arrival that we’d sat in some kind of harmony, both focused on the same task at hand.

These files contain sorry tales. Tales of women abused at the hands of their partners - sometimes by family members - to the point where an escape into a protective cocoon that hides their identity was the only course left for them to take. Identity hidden, yes. Faces concealed, yes. But the scars on show on the fabric of the air of this world left forever. Sorry tales, but tales that are coldly and analytically told - I suppose that’s social work files for you (although I don’t know if these files have been written by social workers or not): professionally aloof, responsibly removed. You might find it curious, but I appreciate the dispassionate tone of the documents. And I understand completely that I feel this way.

The files – I plundered seven of them from the archive room – detail names, previous home addresses, key dates relating to arrival at the refuge and medicals and interviews, the ages of the women, doctors’ names, then page after page of information taken from interviews, plus psychological reports in scribbled hands, then photocopies of pieces of art (poems, short stories, paintings) created by the abused woman and with scribbled comments on the backs or in margins. And, of course, the medical records themselves. Only some of the papers are typed-up from the scribbled hands – the refuge must have been significantly behind at times in its administration. The batch of files that I took were, incidentally, from the ‘C’ filing cabinet: Cargill, Carmichael, Carr, Chester, Crane, Cummings and Cuthbert. They span the years from 2002 to 2006. Where are these women now? Two of the files are closed: Carr and Cummings – but there is just a leaving date; no particulars about the things that matter. Once again, all cold and analytical. The women have gone – that is all the files care about. Bureaucratically speaking, one out, another one in. One file closed, another one opened.

There are so many files in the cellar that I will need to think of a strategy to access them in a meaningful way. There are way too many files to work my way through them all. I will need to try and find something that I’m looking for that might be a clue to the astronaut. What that strategy will be I don’t know, because I don’t know what it is that I’m looking for. If I could find the password to the computer, then I could carry out searches – well, perhaps I could. Not sure what I would search for, but that would surely isolate some possible locations of needles in this haystack of paper and dust. Well, perhaps.

Kidman and I talk about it. We talk about a strategy. We talk about what it might be that we are looking for. She feels that we need another clue in order to help us to try and have a way of looking on these files meaningfully. On their own, they are nothing but records; we need something to turn them into something that has meaning. We have questions, but which question, if answered, will allow other questions to be answered?

We mull this over while in my main room. All of a sudden, I realise that I’m standing at the window and looking out without fear or trepidation; I’m not expecting to see something hover over the tree-line. He has gone. No matter what is made of the answers to the questions, at least the astronaut has gone.

Hold on, there’s a sound in the corridor. Not sure what it is. Signing off. Better investigate. Ah, the life of an investigator! Probably nothing. Save as draft? No, publish now.

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.

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23 March 2008

33. Feeling Just Like Will Young

This house knows how it feels to be me. It has seen everything that I’ve seen. Perhaps more. What did Kidman say? Metaphors are fundamentally real?

Like me, the house is quite squishy and squidgy in places, but there again quite hard in some places too. Also, there are pockets, just rooms in some cases, that just don’t feel like anything, whereas others are very definite in character. Not hard or soft, just characterful. The cellar was one such place that emanated character, even through the locked door.

We both stood outside and the sense of character was like some dense and complicated fog, where lights can be seen through the fog, and hints of object and notional shapes can be made-out, but the whole impression retains an overall mystery. What would be on the other side? An old bike probably or a step-ladder! A busted sofa or a lawnmower! Or some warped serial killer's secret stash of severed bums! I know it may seem sad, I know it may seem sick, but I hoped it would be the latter.

How would that make Kidman feel if it was something banal and insignificant! How would that make me feel?

I brought the key up to the lock with enormous trepidation, lest it shouldn’t fit. It went in – yes, but would it turn? It turned! I’d found it! What joy, what a sense of achievement! What a grand, though dusty and creaky, opening, of something physical but also of something inside! Take that, Philip! See what I’m capable of? Fruitful investigation!

If you are anyone out there who is imagining my sense of delight, then picture me throwing my red mane back proudly and with a fiery look in my eyes and with a couple of inches added to my overall height! Kidman, that’s what I look like! Nicole freakin’ Kidman!

Now don’t get carried away! I turned and she appeared to almost be within fog herself, illuminated but sketchy. Eyebrows elevated like they were both shields and spears; nose raised and aligned like a warning finger to the world; puppies with a certain pious piquant, both touchable and untouchable. As I took in this pose and felt, momentarily, nothing like Kidman after all, I’m sure I saw a plume of fog cup one of her breasts before quickly curling away. Well, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity if you’re fog!

The door was heavier than I’d expected. When I'd turned the key in the lock I’d felt it unlock in several places and realised that it was a pretty sturdy door. Within the darkness there was a light-switch close to the door – thankfully, it worked! The first thing I looked at was this great door that I’d opened. I could see that the lock was a strong one, but also that a metal strut at its edge was badly scraped as if someone had tried to force it open at some point. Perhaps when everyone was leaving the commune the key couldn’t be found and someone tried to force the lock in order to remove the contents? Well, they failed, of course!

And the contents themselves? An archive. Countless shelves and filing cabinets. All of them bulging with paperwork. But also there was a computer. I switched it on but it required a password to open the files. Meanwhile, Kidman looked around in the filing cabinets, leafing through the contents, mumbling to herself.

The room also contained a curious upright lamp with an orangey floral pattern and tassels on the shade. It was the another source of light in the room and Kidman switched it on to look more closely at the contents of the files. When she did so, I realised how dusty the room was! Dust might as well be asbestos or plutonium to me – I’m the Karen Silkwood of Dust! Hose me down and scrub me raw if that stuff gets anywhere near me! My chest attempts to fly out of my body like a frightened bird at the first scent of a dust particle anywhere near me, as you’ll well know by now if you’ve been keeping up with this tale.

Kidman suddenly let out a little yelp. “This wasn’t a commune, Steph! It was a refuge! For battered women. A commune wouldn’t keep files like these – not even tax returns if it was a commune! These are case files. A refuge – who would’ve guessed it, eh!”

I grunted a reply. Tiny grunt, really. Ever so, ever so small. I think my hand went up to my face and self-consciously touched a small mark that was there. I decided that, rather than stay there for too long, I would take a handful of files and make my way back up to my rooms.

“Are you listening, Steph?”

‘No’ would have been my answer if I’d answered. But I didn’t bother to say anything. Yes, I heard her, but, like her, the words were beside me, not a part of me. I was thinking of something else: of my little victory. I know, I know: an ever so, ever so small victory. But it felt like Waterloo, Trafalgar, Dunkirk, the first series of ‘Pop Idol’ when Will Young won it from the clutches of Gareth Gates! Unexpected and against the odds, that was all that mattered.

“Something tells me you’re not listening!”

Oh, and another thing, Phillip: I’m still breathing! Ah, luxurious air! Ah, luxurious lungs! Ah, luxurious life!

“Hello! Kidman! Still over here! Still talking. Still talking over here!”

Ah, the luxury of ignoring a world famous actress who demands that you listen to her ramblings, when you’ve decided that you don’t want to and that you won’t! Ah, luxury!

“Want to see my lady cupboard?”

I turned and walked out of the attic, folders under my arm, and with an ever so, ever so small smile of satisfaction on my face.

“For free!”

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.

 

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22 March 2008

32. Questions Questions Questions

“What was this house before?”

“Uh. Some kind of commune, I think. These kind of ‘back to nature’ types had the lease, but then it expired and the owner didn’t renew it. Actually I think the guy who owns it now bought it quite recently and waited until the lease expired. Something like that.”

“Some kind of commune? So you don’t really know.”

“I suppose not.”

“Hm. And why do these three rooms of your's have a lock on them? Why are they self-contained? All the rest of the house seems like individual rooms, but this one is more of a suite, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“So, there’s a cellar that’s locked – the only locked room in the house – then there’s an attic that, you say, you’re too scared to go into. Although that’s not locked.”

“Yep. That’s about it.”

“Why is that? And what is a ghost anyway?”

“Oh. Good question, I suppose. I guess I don’t really know. The impression of something dead retained in the place where it lived? And died? Something like that.”

“If that’s right, how can an astronaut in a space-suit haunt land that doesn’t require a space-suit?”

“Ah, now that question I have asked myself! Although I don’t know the answer.”

“How many astronauts have died in space? How many have died on the ground? I take it Scotland doesn’t have a programme of space exploration, so it’s unlikely that an astronaut could have died here!”

“No, no space programme. As for the number that have died in space – or on the ground – I really couldn’t say. Could that be a clue?”

“Keep looking for the key! You’re no good at asking questions.”

“Right. Right.”

“This song, ‘Catch a Falling Star’ – why is that relevant to this house?”

“Nope. I don’t know the answer to that either.”

“When was the last time you had cock in your cock-hole?”

“Don’t call it a cock-hole! That’s so horrible!”

“Okay, when was the last time you had cock in your ‘lady cupboard’?”

“I don’t know!”

“Why do they say ‘Not Yet’ all the time, in that neighbouring town of yours? Not yet. Not yet. No, not yet!”

“What? I don’t know. What relevance has that got?”

“I’m asking the questions – you’ve obviously asked yourself no questions, so dinnae you start asking the questions now.”

“Oh, well! Thank you!”

“When was the last time you did some Spring cleaning in your lady cupboard?”

“Enough! That’ll do. Okay?”

“You dinnae know! You dinnae know! You dinnae know much, Stephanie Fey!”

“I’m here because I asked questions, remember.”

“Oh, that! Is that what you think? That you left because you were asking questions? About the kind of world you were living in. What’s that mark on your face, Stephanie Fey? Where did you get that? I don’t ever hear you mentioning that.”

“You know where I got it. Now shut up, or I may have to resort to kicking you in your blasted lady cupboard, okay!”

Silence, for a change. Kidman looking haughty and me grimacing in my tight-faced way. I was rummaging around in a cupboard at the time that she started this incessant questioning. No, not a lady one! Plain, ordinary cupboard. But it was something of an impossible task to find this key – the house was huge, so many rooms, so much junk, so many possibilities. I continued looking even as Kidman started again.

We ended up looking in arbitrary places, and not looking systematically. After all, we couldn’t exactly pull apart an already pulled-apart house; there would be some places more likely to hold the key than others. Well, a strategy was required and that was what we came up with - although, it did still appear pretty arbitrary when we actually came to do it! This conversation – one of many that had centred on Kidman giving me a hard time and me taking it – occurred in a room that looked like one of the house’s standard bedrooms, almost like a hotel room for down-and-outs. We had looked through many of these, and this just looked like another one of many. Old bed, old chest of drawers, old wardrobe, old cupboard built into the wall. Old, old, old!

“You are a typical product of your time, but you think you’re not, you think you’re here to get away from a society that you no longer understand, but you understand nothing. And you ask yourself nothing. You get haunted, terrorised, and all you do is try to survive it. You don’t ask what you’re trying to survive, your place in it all…”

“Kidman! Look at this.” I waved something up in front of her face.

“…You call everything a metaphor and then you hide away inside of it. Hide away, trying to breathe, trying to stay alive in a pointless life …”

“Hello. Kidman! See this!” And I dangled it again.

“… Who cares that it’s pointless. Unless you care, unless you start looking for the answers, then you are what’s pointless …”

“Kidman!”

“… You are what the universe disnae need. You are the problem. And not it.”

“Kidman!”

“Oh, what! Can’t you see I’m ranting, can’t you leave a bod alone when it’s ranting!”

Again, more insistently, I dangled the key I’d found in the cupboard, right under her eyebrows, right in front of her nose, and right above her puppies.

“That’s not a key. That’s a widget.”

“Widget? It’s not a widget! What’s a widget? This is a key!”

“It’s a widget. For a tractor. It helps to keep the wheels on. Looks a bit like a key, granted.”

“It’s a freakin’ key, Kidman! And I found it! So quit ranting!”

She quit ranting. I turned away and started to head for the cellar. It was a key. But no guarantee it was the right key. Not that I was going to tell Kidman that!

“Where are you going?”

“More questions. Where do you think, O Great Questioner?”

Of course she followed me. She wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to find an answer to at least one of the questions.

But she couldn’t resist a last shot:

“I don’t know why you’re bothering. You don’t own a tractor!”

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title.

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21 March 2008

31. I Visit General Proximity

The next morning I awoke cautiously, slowly, sluggishly. Cautiously, in case I prompted some peculiar event in my head by a sudden exertion of mind or body; slowly, because I wanted time to think and listen, but also so that anyone beyond my bed might think that I hadn’t quite awoken - but also because I was unsure if I wanted to wake-up at all; sluggishly, because I was mentally and emotionally exhausted – even my senses were frazzled, almost seared by too many impressions of a nature that could not be understood. I kept my head under the covers for so long, tilting in and out of sleep like a boat on rough waters; listening, sensing, and then dipping back down into a cold exhausted sea of numbing disquiet.

Was she there? I heard nothing. Was it there? Nothing. Was she a thing or a someone, anyway? Gradually I moved my head out from the covers and looked around. Nothing at all. Or should that be no-one at all?

I knew straightaway that I had to get out of Mordan House and regroup inside. And as quickly as possible. I don’t think I’ve ever dressed so quickly. I didn’t care what I wore, so long as the items covered me. There were colours and fabrics of different shapes and textures; some artefacts clashed viciously and began to battle to the death, some cringed at the contact of the others and hissed and snarled at each other. I, for my part, gave it no thought – while at the same time aware that I was giving it no thought! – and headed out of the front door, car key in hand. No looking back, or sideways, or up. Down was the only direction for me. My limited vision didn’t fail; the car appeared before me, I got in and started the engine.

One last look at the house. One last look? Why did I do that? I’d been doing so well! So incredibly well! I was so close to getting away from the ghosts of Mordan House for a time. Why break a good habit and look back at the blasted house?

And there she was. Kidman. Standing on the door-step and waving at me. Same look, same dress. No different really from the previous night. I must have looked stunned. Later, she told me I’d looked at her as if a man had just put his cock in my ear.

She called out to me.

“Steph! Listen: If you face any problems, remember three things - eyebrows, nose, puppies!”

When she said this she pointed to the first two anatomical items, then jutted out the third in almost military fashion.

“Always remember the ENP! They’re the Kidman rules, don’t you know!”

As I drove away, I saw her repeating the ritual, this time without words, and not even looking at me. She was totally immersed in the distinctive world of the Kidmania Theme Park! Not here at all. In the rear-view mirror I saw her repeating her mantra as my car entered an alleyway of tall, overhanging trees, that seemed, for a while, to protect me from all things unnatural.

There was only really one place to go: into town to visit my old friend General Proximity! Who else in the world does this kind of thing? Hangs out around people just to be loosely, generally, where other people are. No real consideration for who they are or what they’re about. What sadness. What desperation. But, at the same time, how fundamentally, beautifully human to feel this way – to have this need.

I watched the people of this town from the proximity of a café window. From the inside, how still and uneventful we humans can appear to be to ourselves, how wound-down and how dreadfully near to stopping. But look at us from the outside and we all appear so full, so incessant, so charged-up. Over-wound humanity, eternally and loudly ticking. General Proximity is a good teacher, he reminds the jaded veterans of what’s really going on inside of us all: bustle, noise, clamour - eternally rolling wheels of stone, the sound of their turning booming across every landscape.

Some, however, boom more loudly than others.

“That’s the woman there who’s a vagrant – lives in a car and is in love with my James!”

Ormsley! My nemesis! Another freak with garrulous eyebrows! As if Kidman wasn’t enough! I immediately bristled at the sound of her voice and the knowledge that she was talking about me.

Her voice came from the door of the café. I hadn’t seen her enter. From the corner of my eye I could see that she had entered with a much older lady, diminutive and hunched, and with an angled poise about her that makes the entire body look like an ear trumpet that’s trying to hear the world around it.

I didn’t turn round. I daren’t. I could hear the older woman making murmuring sounds of agreement and dismay at Mrs Ormsley’s description of me.

All of a sudden, an idea formed in my head and it was lovely; I had made my mind up and it wasn’t for changing. I would leave Mordan House – to get away from myself and the Kidman inside of me and the dead astronaut too - but, before I left, if Mrs Ormsley spoke to me again, then I would hit her. Hard. Right across the face. And with a fist clenched. And not the way women usually clench a fist: with the thumb sticking right-up and all the fingers looking like they’ve been caught in some piece of industrial machinery, and with the clear indication that what they actually plan to do is hit you with their wrists! No, a proper punch. Well, dammit, as best as I could muster!

Mrs Ormsley continued: “I’ve heard also that she squats in Mordan House.”

“Squats?” said the older lady. “That’s a long way to go just for a pee!”

“No, squats. You know, lives there illegally!”

The older woman replied: “Ah, yes. Illegally.”

I prepared myself for the words that would surely come, close at my ear and unmistakeably directed at me. So direct that there would be nothing that I could do but welly her, lay into her with my handy fists, clock her a hard one, perhaps in the gut, perhaps to her middle-aged woman’s highly susceptible glass jaw. I felt my fists tighten into spindly balls of hard fire. Okay, they were more like welts of irritation - but I suspected that I could do some real damage with these little baby hammers!

“Hello, luvvie!” she said insipidly. At the same time, I felt an insistent couple of taps on my shoulder. I was amazed at how quickly I reeled around in my seat; eyebrows, nose and puppies aligned threateningly in true Kidman fashion – only to be stopped instantly from laying into the little old bitch by a sight I hadn’t expected.

“How are you today?”

Smack her, Stephanie! Do her right there where she stands! I can hear you, dear reader, I can hear you. But you don’t understand …

“Uh, fine. Thank you. And, uh, how are you?” I replied.

Fine? Thank you? Nail her. Flatten her. Get stuck in right now with the little baby hammers! No, it’s not like that, anymore, reader. You see …

“Oh, dear! You look as if fashion crept up on you during the night and shot you!”

“Um, yes. I dressed rather quickly this morning.”

What do we want? Little baby hammers! When do we want them? Now! No, reader. I can’t. I can’t possibly. It’s all gone wrong!

“Behind some anaemic bush just before a police car drove by with a searchlight on? Yes, that’ll get you to throw just about anything on quickly for another mad-cap scramble across the hills, eh! Especially in your precarious social position! You’re like the woman in ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ – but you’re nowhere near the Clyde!”

I didn’t reply. I was too busy staring. Staring at the woolly scarf around her neck. The subtlety of tones, the straightness of its edges, the perfection of its length. She must have seen me looking.

Did she just put them away? The little baby hammers? Did she really just put them away?

“Oh, the scarf! Yes, I hear you helped James to make it for me! That was so very kind. Very kind.” She fiddled with it and cocked her head about like a vain budgie perched at a mirror in its cage. 

Then she sniffed it. “Still the slightest scent of something like over-ripe badger’s arse, when the sun’s high in the sky and it’s eaten some dodgy berries for breakfast! But I’m sure that won’t stay forever!” She giggled fakely as if at a garden party.

The little old lady had sidled up to us by this time and was nodding her head. “Oh, aye, badger’s arse! That’s what I said!” Then she pointed at herself purposefully. “And I should know!” And then she fell back into listening with everything from her ears to her feet.

There were other things said. Little compliments tempered by little insults. One eyebrow stuff, then the other eyebrow stuff. You know the Ormsley script by now. But all I could think of was that James had received my scarf and had liked it enough to pass it on to his aunt! He’d held it! He’d liked it! He’d given it as a present!

So, here I was, finding once again that my plans to leave this part of Scotland had been scuppered. But my confidence in myself was damaged, almost beyond easy repair. If I was to win the affections of James then I needed my self back again. And not my empty self. A replete, sumptuous, exotic, shining self, full of diamonds, pearls and all manner of other scintillating baubles!

One possible path occurred to me: if I could find one clue to tell me that Kidman was right about the mystery of the dead astronaut, then I might begin to recover. If I found the key to the cellar, and found something in there that was useful to the mystery, then maybe I would begin to affect a return from the outside of the great City of Madness. This was the methodology I hit upon to turn away from Madness before the doors opened and invited me in with a long grasping hook. And to begin to construct an attractive self that James might love. Yes. Love. Love was very much in my mind, and fizzing though my entire body more deliciously than something illegal.

Huh. Blog would have been better with a slap!

<Yes, reader. I hear you. Just forget about the slap, will you. It didn’t happen. Okay?>

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title. 

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20 March 2008

30. Metaphors Are Fundamentally Real

I stopped spinning, having gasped out loud and nearly lost my balance. There she was, sitting at the bottom of the stairs. I could have screamed. I could have run. To quote Popeye Joe, one of my occasional commentators on this blog, it was “Kidman, man, Kidman”!

“What?

“But –!

“How?”

“What am I? But this can’t be? How did I get here? Are these the questions you’re asking? Sentences would suit you, Steph. All this clipped shit just disnae.”

I shook my head exasperatedly. “Disney? What about Disney? What? Walt Disney?”

“No. Disnae! Isn’t that what they say in Glasgow, Scotland? You know, it stands for ‘I don’t know’ or ‘it doesn’t’ or something. ‘It disnae work’, ‘She disnae like it’, ‘Hey, she’s Nicole Kidman! That disnae figure!’ From now on, Walt Disney will be referred to by me as Walt Doesn’t!”

It would have been one thing just to have the presence. Unloquacious, unassuming, spectral, trying hard to communicate but failing. This verbal bombardment made the apparition all the harder to deal with. I use the word ‘apparition’, yet there was nothing other-worldly about this Kidman. She was flesh and blood. Rhythm. Poise. Gravitas. Edge. Flair. Spark. I’d describe her for you, but she very quickly did that for herself.

“Hold on. Try not to speak for just a couple of seconds and let me clear-up one thing. Are you, or have you ever been, or, could you possibly be …”

“Kidman, man, Kidman! Right here. Oh, come on, it’s unmistakeable! Look! The angular, dynamic eyebrows, arched for both sensuality and inquisitiveness. The long, cinematic nose - looks from my eyes just slide down it and leap off out of the celluloid and into theatres across the world. My magnanimous titties: not too big that I look like I keep small dogs inside my bra, but not too small that I have to SPEAK LOUDER OR WAVE MY ARMS ABOUT A LOT so that men notice me. Oh, and the hair: sumptuous, silky, twirls that’ll make you dizzy if you try to follow them with your eye, and a sweepy swooshiness that has been described by the supermarket tabloids as ‘sweeshiness’. Dramatic height, don’t forget the dramatic height! Just enough to make short men dream of snogging my navel, but enough to make tall men feel that they’ve met a woman they can really wrestle with in the bedroom! And I love to wrestle the big lads! It’s me all right. Kidman!”

She had stood up from the stairs by this time and I could see how extraordinary she was. Slender and imperious, yet there was something disarmingly gentle, soothingly authoritative about her. No matter what she asked, you’d do it – but not before you licked her hand and swished your tail against her leg! I’d often imagined what she looked like in real life, but Jeez Louise, she looked just great in imaginary life! Pardon? What? What did I just write then?

She could sense my consternation. “I know what you’re thinking, Steph. I know you must be confused.” Thank God, she understood! Maybe she could enlighten me about all of this and help me to understand! “You’re wondering how I keep my bum so small and tight when I lead such a hectic life! Easy! I do this move!” And she demonstrated something involving squats and clenches and something inappropriate that she did with her fists.

She wore a dress that wasn’t from any movie I’d seen her in, as she bobbed up and down I could see that -

“No, no, darling. Let me describe it. You’ll balls it up no end, if I let you depict this classic number for your readers!”

And then she spoke, word after word after word. So many words to say that it was a long dress of a light salmony kind of colour, not too vicious for her red hair, and that it draped all the way down to her ankles, and that it was tight around her wrists and with a lowish neckline. Lastly, it looked as if it would not be too susceptible to wrinkles – great for long haul flights when it gets a little cool during the night. Oops, one last thing, it was gorgeous! And with the tiniest little trim on the hem, so slight you’d hardly notice it. Yes, she used so many words to say what could easily be said in a couple! Sorry, I should have said that there were no belt-loops and that there was the merest hint of a gather at the shoulders, just enough to ensure that it looked classy as well as functional. Did I mention that it was a kind of light salmon colour?

“Why are you here? This isn’t right. You’re supposed to play me in the movie, not bug me all the way through the story that inspires the movie! Who’s going to play me now that you’ve shown up?”

She shrugged. “There’s always Julianne Moore! Lindsay Lohan?”

I was already walking away by now and hoping that she wouldn’t follow. Where was my mind now? Where had I gone? Why was I here? What place was this, that looked so real and yet where the air seemed so drunk on fable? Damn! I could still hear her voice echoing down the corridor after me.

“Gerri Halliwell without make-up? Fergie with a glandular disorder in her arse? How about a fat Tilda Swinton? Oh, I know: Wilma from The Flintstones! With psoriasis!”

It was just lack of sleep. Knitting-fever! A well known condition. There are write-ups in medical journals all the time!

Suddenly I heard the tone in her voice change.

“You know, Steph, you gave up very quickly on solving the mystery of the dead astronaut. Very quickly indeed. That shows lack of character, Steph. Something I don’t suffer from. No, I dinnae suffer from that. Dinnae equals ‘I don’t know’, don’t you know. Did you ever actually live in Glasgow? My character, however, is lumpy with facet and nuance – like other people’s cellulite! That’s what they say about me – ‘That Kidman! Lumpy with facet and nuance, so she is!’ You might say I’m brillianto! Pure deadly brillianto!”

I stopped and turned to face her. I didnae – sorry, DIDN’T - move towards her, so now there were two voices echoing down the hall. “Mystery? There’s nothing to solve. It’s all been in my head. Like you! You just dropped out and I need to put you back in somehow! It’s all just a metaphor or something.”

“Oh, a metaphor! Well, of course, everything’s that! But that disnae mean that it’s not true, that it’s not real. Gonnae no tell me that you dinnae understand a basic truth like that! That disnae cut it with me, doll!”

I struggled to understand all of this. An Imaginary Nicole Kidman - using the colourful language of the Glaswegian vernacular - was demanding that I investigate the mystery of a dead astronaut haunting an old house in Scotland. Demanding that I investigate! Should I? Could I? What would she do if I told her that I just didnae want to? That I couldnae find the energy. Or the backbone. I found the energy though to turn and keep walking, even if my pace had slowed down.

She said: “Isn’t it lovely how Glaswegians call each other ‘doll’? They must love each other very much to be so sweet to one another! Uh, one question for you, Steph: where do you think the key to the cellar could be?”

I stopped in my tracks, but I still didn’t turn round to face her. The cellar. Yes, the cellar! The cellar with the locked door!

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title. 

09:40 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal

19 March 2008

29. Untitled 3

I’m American. But sometimes I have to remind myself of that fact. Although others are quick to.

I don’t parade my national identity in any outward way that I know of. Loudness and brashness are not part of how I engage with people; when I speak aloud it is not as if the world around me is very small but the people in it are all far away.

We’re a cursed people, in so many respects. And it’s not something that can be escaped. Curses follow you wherever you go; in our case, all the way to Iraq, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and to the gates of every embassy in every country in the world.

Whether I like it or not, I carry the curse with me, too. I see it in other’s eyes. They can smell the curse upon me as soon as they hear my voice. I see it in the tiny recoil of their muscles; the facial pores that visibly slam shut against my nation’s particular toxin; the eyelids that turn down like great clanking shutters; the internal rebellion that rises and topples common sense in an instant. This fog of preconception masks and befuddles us both. I can’t be seen or heard; they can’t see or hear me.

It’s as well then that, in so many ways, we’re an empty people. Nobody sees inside us, so it’s as well that there’s nothing much there other than commercialism, empty statements about freedom, and a hanging on to physical symbols of identity and status.

It cuts the other way also. The bravura of being American will never allow us to really look inside ourselves to see truth. We try to make truth where it cannot be made: in how we shape, adulterate and transform the world around us. We see no soul in this world around us that we trammel and mould, because we have no soul other than the flat image of one that we seek to make real. We pursue perfection that we wish to exist only in what the eye can see.

So there’s another element where I can never be anything other than an American. I’m always in a land that’s alien, one that will never quite be home.

For me, being in another land emphasises this. Scotland isn’t home either. Never really could be. The only home is inside. So Americans are lost. Cursed to look for salvation where it doesn’t exist. Creating endless damage and hurt because we attempt to build perfection upon a foundation that will never accept it, that can do nothing but reject the lie.

And this is oh so clear to me when I’m in a land that’s blessed – blessed because it knows itself quietly and without gaudy drama or trampling ambition. The people of our land aspire to carry our mountains, our trees, our rivers, to other lands and watch them take root there. This land gives birth to people who are entirely of this land. The best ideal is to simply be, and this country called Scotland simply is. The people here are like the land’s mountains: there’s a strength, but also a confidence that doesn’t need to be proved or demonstrated, yet if you respect the mountains then they will show you respect in return. It’s a sweet bargain, and an identity not based upon dreams of paradise, of promised lands, of heaven on Earth.

Why am I thinking about all of this now? Well, there’s an Australian in the house now, for a start!

"Oh, me! You’re thinking about me! In a wayward kind of sense, for sure! But, yes. You Americans live in a land founded upon unreal expectations, our nation started out from low expectations, from making the best of a bad lot. So we’re comfortable. We’re free to accept life or to improve life. The choice is ours."

I wish I was you.

"Unlucky you that you’re not! But lucky you to dream such a noble dream!"

I wish. I wish. I wish.

"Can you get back to your story now? Tell it from when I first appeared! You haven’t concluded that bit yet. It’s not called ‘Nicole Kidman stars in: The Astronaut Dropped’ for nothing, you know!"

Okay. Enter Nicole Kidman, to help unravel the mystery of the ghost of the dead astronaut. Camera. Lights. Action!

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title. 

11:10 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal

18 March 2008

28. Kidman, Man, Kidman!

There was something else in Mordan House now. Some other presence. I wasn’t sure what it was though. I couldn’t quite think about it because it wasn’t quite there. There was nothing really to go on. No real clues, just something peripheral and vague.

Thankfully, I had something more definite to think about. Captain Stink turned up today to sort out the electricity’s fluctuating whirliness, the droppy-outiness of its sparkular bits, the flighty ohms. In a way, I could have done without his presence, but also I think I needed it. No, it wasn’t his smell that was the house’s new presence! And it wasn’t his smell that I needed! Lord, no! What are you, reader, pure damn mental or something? No, I felt that I needed the human contact. Or, in this case, human proximity. How sad is that! I crave human love and affection, I crave for my life to attach to the sinews of another’s soul and therein glow; I settle instead for general proximity to humans! The general localisation of one human being to another will do for me! What a sad, sad, incomplete bitch I’ve turned into!

So, to get the hit and rush I needed, I stood at the front door and watched the Stinky Deity, the Lord of the Flies, unloading things from his van. He had another man with him to help with the job. I quickly detected and identified his particular variant of heavy odour: caramelised diarrhoea of unwell goat! Ah, yes! The first I saw of this little pongy helper was his head buried inside the open bonnet of the van, while Le Grand Dieu Smelly was in the rear unloading and clanking great metal objects, all looking like tools for some giant’s dental examination. From both of them, I breathed in a tremendous malcontent of smells, a cornucopia of disquieting stenches. Well, it was human. Just!

Even their van appeared to stink. Its wheels had the harsh odour of old socks in damp shoes; from the open bonnet I could smell something of powerful halitosis, years of gum-infestation and the reek of germ-ridden tongue; from the rear doors there was a scent like dried-out elephant dung, an infected ear and yeast; around the little latch for the petrol nozzle there was something sticky and yellowy like antibiotic-fragranced urine tinged with something potently rancid like old cock perhaps. And around the van’s exterior there was mud clogging its pores and giving rise to a smell akin to contaminated, age-old grannie sweat embedded in a jaded vest. But, aside from all of that, it was quite a nice little van really!

The fact that King Smell of Smellvania had been, in some way, fraternising with my mother, no longer concerned me. He was just a typical human being – just another person giving in to the persuasive charms of the fawning old cow and her snooping. Or should that be grazing? The whole affair stank – but, in this situation, that was nothing new for me.

I was also tired, and focusing on their little pungent endeavours helped to keep me awake. They were like a couple of jars of smelling salts wafting me awake with every move they made. The reason for my tiredness was that I’d been up until very late – it was almost 4 o’clock before I had got to bed the previous night. All through that time I could sense something in Mordan House. Something pacing about, skulking, looking over my shoulder at me and generally loitering. Another snooper! Ah, yes, that’s exactly what my life needs! And another invisible one at that!

For the rest of the afternoon I was a slow-moving ball in a pinball machine, being bounced around by their movements, energies and smells. As they moved, I moved. As they sat down, I sat down. As one moved towards a door, I moved into a doorway. As another stepped away, I repositioned myself a little closer. It was a day-long process controlled by the dynamics of ricochet and magnetism. I knew it was all quite pathetic, but I didn’t really care.

We didn’t talk much either. I think they were thankful for this. We gravitated around the idea at first, but then all collectively gave up, and we just got on with things in silence. From time to time the Smell Meister would mutter an instruction to the Smell Meister’s Apprentice and then that would be that for a time. And that’s how the Smell Meister, the Smell Meister’s Apprentice, and the Unsmelly Hanger-On of the Smellies (uh, me!), got through the afternoon in a miserable, pitiable sort of way.

Give it to him.

Stop. Who said that? The sweet voice tumbled down from the stairwell and slithered up to me like a melodious snake. What? Give him what?

You know what. Give it to him, Steph.

I looked at Prince Stinky of Stinkitania, and I knew instantly what the voice was telling me to do, although I didn’t know who or what it belonged to.

As I peered up the stairwell, a shadow loomed down, large, rectangular and non-specific. Just an ordinary shadow in many ways, but with a kind of sensibility to it. I peered into it, trying to discern shape. I couldn’t though. Just blackness shimmering slightly within blackness. 

Then one of the Stink Twins flicked a switch and the lights in the house went on, the one at the top of the stairs too. In the place where the shadow had stood there was nothing but the ordinary sight of wood and wall. Then the other of the Stink Twins tried it. Then they each tried it again and again. Each time, I looked again at the darkness up there, waiting to see if something revealed itself. And then it was clear that the men’s work was all done, and it was time for them to go. They gathered together their outsized dental instruments and I realised that my energy was about to have to break from theirs. The pinball game was over.

Give it to him. Do it!

I tugged a lock of hair. I tugged it so hard that the Sultan of Stench looked round at me quizzically. I brushed my hair with my hand and then fidgeted with my fingers and my foot burrowed into the floorboard beneath me. Then I ran - quickly into the living room - grabbed something from the table near the window – turned – skidded a bit – accelerated - and ran back to where the Manky Major was - now – I could see - heading out through the front door.

Give it to him now! Go on! Go! On! Yes! Yes!

“Stop!” He did. I noticed that his stench turned back to face me a second before he did. “Uh, I was wondering if you know a guy called James in the neighbouring town…” I said.

I tried to think of ways to describe James that a man would understand. I knew how I wanted to describe him: “You know, James! he has fingers that live on in your head long after they’ve moved in reality; his hair has a calmness about it and a simplicity and its sheen is dark but with something of cherry about it; his nose is straight but not long, it’s a nose you can trust, you’d stake your life’s savings, your soul even, on that nose! His chest sits a little back from the world, but you know that the rest of him doesn’t. When he moves his head, your soul aches a little with the force of it! His eyes are the colour of sand. His mouth is forceful like a small lion’s. James! You must know him now!”

Instead I opted for: “He … wears a brown jacket with roundish buttons. He … has … black shoes. Very black! Uh, he …”

“James? Johnston? Janey Ormsley’s nephew.”

Ormsley! Her again! “Yes, that will be him. James Johnston, yes.”

I felt that there was some shadow at my shoulder, almost breathing on me. I wanted to turn and shoo it away.

I continued as best I could: “Do you think you’ll see him? I … fixed … this for him. But I don’t know how to contact him or where he lives.”

I stretched out my hand and offered my night’s work to the President of Pong. A full-sized, perfectly-knitted scarf of total woolly beauty. In a plastic bag, of course! What? Want that smelly bastard to touch it and make James think that I haven’t washed since Live Aid? Jeez, he probably already thinks I’m a down-and-out! Do I really want to add the scent of randy cancerous cat’s piss to his already smudged impression of me?

“Sure,” he said. “Drop it off on the way.”

He said it quite simply, without affectation or nuance, as if it was like hammering in one more little nail in a sea of already hammered nails. I was pleased. He didn’t think anything of it. In no time at all he had turned to his van and climbed in beside his malodorous companion. I sighed.

Well done, Steph.

I had done it! I felt fantastic! Fantastic! And so relieved!

Well done! Well! Done!

I smiled down at my shoes and up around at the trees. The Duke of Dirt rolled down his window as I was turning to go back inside Mordan House, and shouted: “Fancy him, do you? Get in there!” And then he laughed, a sick, demented laugh from the bottom of his stinking soul where unwashed pants bob on a sea of spew. His companion laughed also, like a little grimy monkey, and I could see him kissing his own hand vulgarly and demonstrably. Their inane, cheap laughter was the last thing I heard as I slammed the door shut and sped away, the van’s wheels grinding loudly into the gravel and giving a grittiness to their cackles.

I tugged. So hard. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then too many times to count. All I was conscious of was the delicious, caustic sting across my scalp and down into my brain, again and again. Pulling at that hair as if I wanted it all out of my head. My body spinning in the hallway, slightly groaning, turning round and round as I pulled, buffeted now by self-loathing. Inside, under the stinging sensation, I felt anger, embarrassment, and such smallness and fragility of being as only bugs know.

"In heaven’s name, Steph. You’re pulling at that hair like some unselfconscious, frantically masturbating dog on a living room carpet in front of Grannie Myrtle and the twins! What is it you’ve got? Distemper or canker or some such shit?"

I stopped spinning, having gasped aloud and nearly lost my balance. There she was, sitting at the bottom of the stairs. I could have screamed. I could have run. I could have died of fright, but I was too frightened to die and thus leave myself defenceless. To quote Popeye Joe, one of my occasional commentators on this blog, it was “Kidman, man, Kidman”!

Want to read more? Read the whole story by clicking on the first blog called Prelude and start clicking forwards using the tabs above the title. 

08:55 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal

17 March 2008

27. “The Guy Knits! No Wonder You’re Upset!”

Oh! I just remembered something else I’d like to damn: the illusion of momentum that cars give you.

All that spurious broom! and vroom! and nee-ow! and brr-brr-brr! and phwoom! And all the while you’re pretty much stationery inside, but you feel that you’re hurtling forward – and not just physically, but mind and soul and emotions too. And heading towards some destination – inner and outer identities in sync, everything progressing, and that longed-for goal getting nearer all the time, for once. Oh, for once!

For once? What a bloody great deception all of that is! The body moves – there lies, and ends, the momentum. The rest of the stuff is a great big bogus broom-broom, if you ask me! A great phoney phwoom!

There I was, dear reader, hurtling along the country roads away from Mordan House, heading towards the neighbouring town.

Hurtled? What the hell is it you drive again?

Yes, I know I drive a Punto, but can’t you use your imagination?

That’s a lot of imag-!

Jeez, just pretend that it hurtled, will you!

Everything passed by like metaphors for things in life. Bends in the road were internal difficulties to be negotiated skilfully; trees that whizzed by gave me the sense of moving further towards something natural, and away from artifice and show; road signs were intentions spelled-out, clear, definite and achievable; the people I passed – walkers, farmers, labourers – were like real people I’d known, and I was leaving them behind without much thought; pylons and street-lights were those impediments that have towered over me in life, ready to inhibit progress, but I dived in and out of them unnoticed; sheep were my sheepishness …

Oh, I think I know what the bulls were! Your life’s been full of…

…Well, okay, maybe! Maybe you’re right, and maybe the bulls were all my bullshit! And the crows, sitting on fences, were the scavengers in my life, all those people stealing from my soul then taking to the air …

Don’t forget the pigs: the number of times you stuck your fat old head in a trough, and then felt really, really dirty afterwards!

Uh, well, hm.

Anyway, when I arrived in town …

Town? You done with the animals? But you never mentioned cocks! Or rat-catching farmhouse pussies! Do they have beaver in Scotland? You didn’t even say anything about wild tits! Hey, surely you’re not going to forget about the birds and the bees altogether, now that’s just..!

Anyway! When I arrived in town I felt full to the brim with expectation. No, overflowing with the stuff. Expectation everywhere! There are events like this, where every failure, every ridicule, every humiliation, every brutal and agonising bone-snapping fall, drops away as if they were all only ever comprised of nothing. And hope – or rather the belief that this time is already different – seems to illuminate every atom of self and air. Nothing is of the past. None of it even exists. All is now, and now’s ability to tumble forward, creating only golden newness and a golden future. That’s how I felt. The energy – of course, and the nervousness, yes! – was exhilarating. I probably gasped aloud and watched that hot air of mine momentarily warm the faces of complete strangers. Sunlight, burning bright in my stomach, seemed to scorch a multitude of paths through me and out of me. It was wild, golden, tempestuous, and deliciously sore.

I’d missed this so much I could have cried now that I had it back!

What? Missed what?

Hope, silly. A premonition of love, stupid.

Oh, yes. Yes, that.

I knew exactly where I was to meet James – after all, I’d rehearsed it so many times. I parked where I knew I’d park. I walked the path I knew I would walk. I almost took the number of paces I presumed I’d need to get me to the front door of the café. I even walked in the manner that I’d rehearsed – not just in my head but in reality, up and down the ground floor corridor of Mordan House! I saw the door – the colour was the same, the handle in the same place, the ‘Open’ sign bobbed as I knew it would as I opened the door, and a bell rang mildly and daintily as I entered the familiar atmosphere of heat, smells and chatter. Of course I had pictured faces that I knew, sprinkled around the café but in places where I’d seen them before - yet, all of a sudden, the momentary realisation that all was not as I had imagined made me feel a little giddy and a little sick. I knew none of the faces, and everyone was sitting in seats that I had imagined occupied by other people, or had envisaged entirely empty. The waitress was one that I had seen before – all pulse and breath and bloody well walking about and stuff - yet not the one I had conceived. It was all so uncontrolled by my imagination. Entirely free. And the flagrant rebelliousness inherent in all of these gentle, mild, inoffensive and perfunctory little acts felt like an assault. Like a multitude of barely apparent slaps. The littlest of shoves. Teeny tiny attacks upon me. But forcefully received, to the extent that I felt instantly bruised.

How must I have looked? Quesy. A tad feverish even. Certainly a bit on the faint side. It was indeed how I felt. I took a seat. Seat? I took the wrong seat! I faced away from the window. Away from the window! I was supposed to face it! I looked around me furtively and uncertainly. Jeez, I was supposed to have taken Villette out of my bag and been nonchalant and unconcerned, and preoccupied by my own inner blasted bleedin’ life! I fiddled with my fingers. Laced fingers, they were supposed to be! Confident fingers, for Christ’s sake! I left my coat on too, feeling too jarred and too suffocated by indecision to formulate and carry-out the action. On? I left it on? Sweet bloody hell! So what about the blouse, the necklace, the upper-arms, the shape, the colouring, the contrasts, the fabric, the wrists, the bangle, the sheer white cliffs of lovely neck, Stephanie bloody Fey, the slight openness of blouse that revealed the delicate transition from flatness to swell, the whole overwhelming and artistically perfect effect? Jesus, effect, woman, effect! And what else? Ah, yes, I chewed on my bottom lip. Uh, hello! Licked lips, remember! Licked! Flip this bitch over, I give up!

And I did give up too. I don’t recall at all trying to recover my position. I trembled, I dripped away inside – second after second saw more and more substance melt and disappear, wax turned entirely to wane. I felt black inside, but a wash of black, all uneven and patchy, but so obviously all the same woeful and wanting shade.

I guess I needn’t have worried though. James never showed up. Not at any time within three quarters of an hour. Not at any time within two pots of tea and one piece of homemade carrot cake. Not at any time within one chewed lip, one picked nail and a couple of harshly tugged locks of red hair. Golden red hair too! Underneath the hat that I hadn’t found the strength to remove.

Well, little irritating voice? Haven’t you anything to say to all of that?

Yes. The guy knits. And you’re upset about what exactly?

Well. So. Anyway. I finally slipped out of the place. Slipped being the appropriate word. I left more as if something slippery had eased me out of the door without me being able to resist. No decision, just a happening of sorts. As I headed back to my car I saw a shape that I recognised in the distance, walking beside another shape that I didn’t know, and both heading in my direction. There were spots of rain in the air and a blustering wind, so most people had their heads angled towards the pavement. I stopped and held my head high, straight and true, as I recognised the distinct shape of James. He looked like his knitting, and I think this is probably why I loved him. He was colourful, yet subtly so, the colours layered like beds of differently shaded character,