From The Soil (Part 1 of 2)

Sometimes, I’m a quiet old man shuffling along the street on my way to collect the morning paper. I wear a dirty overcoat, too heavy for the clement spring weather, and nod at passersby who can’t quite recall my name. The sprightly greeting of “Morning” passes between us, implied, unspoken. 

Other times, I’m younger, holding court in a pub which has horseshoes on the wall, cracking jokes with sharp edges. They gather closer, the drinkers, drawn to my table by a loud, confident voice and the promise of more. 

I can be a teacher too, a woman living in a large, well-kept house in the nice part of town, wearing long layered dresses of greens and blues, always speaking in breezy, whimsical tones of “the arts” - a plural and elevated thing I never define. I am a good teacher, admired by my peers and students alike. Sometimes, when I get the children alone, I whisper secrets they should not know. 

They call me Albion. I came from the soil.

I am your hidden spirit, a deity for a small island, never in the spotlight or up on stage. You won’t find me in the headlines or the drivel they put on TV.  I don’t pontificate from the despatch box and my writings have never been published. Fame is unnecessary when power can be exercised (and exorcised) from the shadows.

I walk among you, one of you, part of you and I ferment. 

For the few that know of my existence, my name is whispered in the presence of shrines. They gather in grimy halls and ill-lit basements to ponder images which approximate to my true form. They read from texts translated from translations first uttered in tongues not spoken since stone circles pockmarked the land. Their societies are so secret, so rigidly closed, most do not know of the other’s existence. They gather in Andover and Tring, Grimsby and Deal, always on the borders of counties, in the lost places between the lines drawn on maps.

My faithful practice their religion the old way, much older than you can imagine. But times change, and even they must adapt, protect what is sacred.

In 2003, a teenager, a child really, began to write a blog he called “Hope and Glory.” The boy had learned of me at gatherings in Warwickshire, taken along by a father who’d sworn him to secrecy. Infected by the modern desire to share all experiences, the boy uploaded three excitable posts about a God or a daemon (he wasn’t sure which) who held the essence of a nation, the embodiment of Britain’s dark heart. In the final post he included a surreptitiously taken photo of a ritual, a grainy too-close image of naked flesh addressing a hideous statuette. In quick time, his work was discovered and taken down.

At my subtle urgings, both the offender and his father were hung from a tree on the edge of their town, bodies flayed to red mush.

These days, a photograph of their swinging, dripping corpses is shown to the faithful on 6th September, the day of their execution, a reminder that discretion is a virtue to be held aloft, above all others.

They call me Albion. I came from the soil.

Today, I’m a businessman travelling the arteries of this great nation. A real British businessman, I mean, the kind who speaks with the confidence of a privileged life, the progeny of a wealthy family and an expensive education. My suit is pressed and tailored  to measure. My car is a monstrous saloon, the latest model, well beyond the means of those crumpled sales drones with whom I share the middle and fast lanes of the motorway.

I stop off at a Shell to purchase petrol and a snack.

Making my payment, I search the eyes of the youth on the other side of the glass. Even with the barrier between us, I see the truth of her life. She will never achieve anything of consequence, never even try to chase her dreams, and will die from complications during routine surgery 10 or 12 years from now, leaving behind nothing but sadness and regret. All of this is written in her features, her bulbous cheeks and the drooping corners of her mouth, in a script that only I can read.

I smile at her, a broad satisfied grin. She shifts from side to side, sensing something about me, recognising I am more than a man in a tailored suit.

The card machine beeps three times. The word “Error” appears on the screen.

“Your card didn’t work,” she says, suddenly pleased, smug at the apparent shift in status. “Try another?”

I stand square to the counter, grip the counter-top and stare into her eyes, reaching further inside. I search for the thread. Everyone has a thread. I imagine it as a slither of twine at the base of the neck, poking out of the skin. If you can find it and pull it, the thread will keep on coming, the layers of that person will fall away, all their goodness and pride, every shred of confidence, compassion and kindness, until all that’s left is fear and loathing. I can always find the thread. When I need to, I pull it.

“Your mother,” I say, “Her name is Jean or Gina, right?”

The girl’s mouth drops open.

I nod. “Yes, that’s it. Jean with a J. Do you want her to get cancer? A really painful type, pancreatic or in the lungs?”

Her cow-like face crumples. The pain and wonder in her eyes such a beautiful and fragile thing. “No.” she says, “Please, no.”

“I can make that happen. You know I can.”

“I don’t...”

“I’m not going to pay for my petrol, am I, Jessica?”

Jessica is crying now. Her whole body jerking up and down. “No,” the word smothered by her blubbering. “Please don’t hurt my mum.”

She is looking down, defeated, praying for me to leave.  

I press my face against the glass. The translucent reflection of my pink cheeks and Cheshire-cat grin overlay her terrified features. When I speak again, a mist blots out both our faces.

“They call me Albion.” I whisper, “I came from the soil.”

I hear a delicious spitter-splattering coming from her side of the glass as her bladder empties onto the linoleum floor.

“Have a good day, Jessica.” I say, and turn to the exit.

 

***

Now, I sit in my car, watching the entrance to Keele Services, a set of wide, extravagantly illuminated automatic doors which seem to eat the entering travellers like a gorging mouth.

My arrival in such an inconsequential and transient place is no accident. For weeks now, I’ve sensed another, dreamed of them. And there is something about the soil here, beneath the roads and buildings, which calls to me, pulls me towards it.

This is not the first time. I recall a spinster who tilled the land in the far flung Southwest, long before our nation had a name, back when warring tribes still fought for scraps of land, when so many chieftains were desperate to be my king. She was a mystic, the sort to be called ‘witch’ centuries later. The woman had visions of my true form; knew I would shift my shape to blend with local populations. Worst of all, she was talking, talking, talking – furious diatribes against the corrupting daemon known as Albion. I went to the village as a tinker selling my wares, salted their land by night, made their crops fail, pulled at threads so they took her to the rocks at Crackington and flung her into the ice-cold sea.

I chuckle at the memory of it, spraying specks of Cornish pastie over the dashboard of my car.

There were others too. A midwife from Chichester, a travelling parson called Henslow, the blind twins, Josiah and Orson from the Black Country to name but a few. They come once per century, there or thereabouts, determined to destroy me, driven by a force hostile to the land and my purpose. ‘Love thyself’ is a familiar refrain from these aberrations, ‘love your brothers and sisters’ another. Get the picture?

They are always too weak to trouble me, always too trusting of their compatriots to achieve their goal. This island is a beautiful nest of vicious, terrified souls and it must remain that way.

So, I wait and watch the electric doors of Keele motorway services eating and regurgitating my faceless people. After an hour or two of trance-like concentration, there is a feint but unmistakable cracking deep inside my ear, a familiar sign that memories of dreams are about to overlap with reality. In my sleeping visions, the identities of the malign are always denied to me, their form placed just beyond the camera shot of my mind. But now, I can turn my head and watch their car park up, see the doors open and study the three of them as they exit the vehicle.

The father is a short, bald man with a beard barely deserving of the name. The mother has brown wavy hair and a pinched face. She wears cheap, figure hugging clothes meant for exercise, not travelling. When the two of them meet at the front of the car, they both place a hand on the shoulder of the girl.

It is the child who troubles my dreams, who makes the insides of my ears click and crack. I smile at myself in the car mirror, amused to be amused. It’s never been this way before. Whichever bleeding-heart preacher they sent to attack me, it was always an adult, someone who’d taken many years to reach awareness of my presence.

This is unmistakably a child. 6 or 7 years old. She has her mother’s cheekbones and her father’s rounded nose. Her eyes sparkle with amusement at something he says and the mother rolls her eyes, an indulgent, practiced gesture that makes them all laugh together. They proceed to the gaping jaws of the services, three abreast, the child protected in the middle, hand in hand with her parents.

I climb from the car and follow them inside.

 

***

Even the gas lamps of  yesteryear set me on edge, but the glowing filaments of modern bulbs are even worse. They make my eyes irritable, give me a migraine if I’m forced to endure their humming whiteness for too long. This ‘food hall,’ an encirclement of fast food outlets, arcades and shops selling cheap junk, is so over-lit, I’m already yearning to get out, to find a dense, ancient forest draped in the blackness of night, to bury my face in its soil.

I grimace, clench my teeth and continue after them.

The Hostile and her parents are sauntering ahead, still chattering to each other, bound for the toilets. I buy a coffee and take a table with a sight-line to the doors and pretend to look at the blank screen of my dead phone, tapping at the glass while scanning my surroundings.

Now that I’ve identified my target, I could just follow them home, wait for the child to be alone, and crush her windpipe at the first opportunity. It would be easier than strangling a farmyard chicken. But it is always better to achieve dominance slowly, methodically, pulling on threads. Perhaps there is a teacher at the girl’s school I can speak to, maybe her mother and father are open to persuasion.

Besides, I’ve dreamed of this service station for weeks, been shown every detail of its soulless interior. In recent days, my visions have been accompanied by whispers from the land.

Chosen ground. Chosen ground. Chosen ground, the soil chanted to me.

Intriguing, but more than that, it is a route to understanding. What are they? Where do they come from and why do they seek to change what cannot, must not, be altered?

The family emerge from the toilets all at the same time. There’s a short conversation and the child points across the food hall. After head shaking and shrugs, the father approaches the counter of McDonalds, leaving mother and the child to search for a place to sit. 

The table next to mine is free and they take it. I have no sense the child is aware of me. There are no side glances or awkward attempts not to look at me. I tap tap tap at my phone and sip my coffee. The child, I see from the corner of my eye, has a small soft toy in her hands, a lion. She kisses its forehead and whispers something.

The click-cracking in my eardrums grows louder, then drops away to nothing, like I’ve adjusted to a new altitude.

End of part 1 of 2

Part 2 is here: https://www.abctales.com/story/charlie77/soil-part-2-2