Fish Face

You may be familiar with the story ‘The Office Goth,’ which was posted online last year on a well-known writing website. Well Lorraine Denning, the author of that piece, stole my title and subject matter as we both worked together for a while in the early ‘eighties in a local government office, which was known by its employees as ‘The Factory.’ This was before she left to go to her beloved job in the solicitor’s office that she wrote so accurately about. We both worked with a girl at the time, who ; surprise , surprise, we called ‘The Office Goth’, unbeknown to her, and yes, she strongly resembled the titular character in the story, but what the hell, I am not one to hold grudges, life’s is too short for that.

I am not getting any younger, so I thought it was time I got around to writing the collection of short ghost/horror stories, I promised myself for years I would write before I become a ghost myself. I started writing in the 1990’s, but other things always got in the way, work for instance, family also. I should have prioritized things better but that was a criticism that was always levelled at me in my work staff reports, like I cared in the workplace and outside it!

Anyway, I wrote a cracking tale back in my office days, at least I think so about an ogre which formed itself from recycled office materials and roamed about ‘The Factory,’ killing some of the staff. It did not reach the heights of publication, but gave me great satisfaction at the time, as I had nominated certain unpleasant colleagues for potential demise by my creation! My colleagues at ‘The Factory’ thought of me as a dreamer in my early days, I suppose I was young, so there was maybe valid reason for this, but as I grew older, and became senior workwise, as well as in age, I was seen as a bit of a storyteller, with my old tales of ‘what happened back in the day’ , of forgotten so -called ‘characters’ and embroidered version of events from yesteryear, the parties and drunken nights out on the town and the rumours that accompanied them. ‘Write these stories down’ someone once said to me, which was encouraging, so I think this ramble may amount to a story once its finished, and if it works out, I have another one which is about the poltergeist that walked the corridors and offices of ‘The Factory’ years ago, and yet another one about a haunted room, which I heard from another old colleague from the time.

I always fancied myself as a pub raconteur and have a plethora of stories about the people I encountered workwise in those days, the weird and strange folk and the odd supernatural, happening, and of course, the occasional strands of mayhem.

That  early working life in the ‘The Factory’, I collected fines  payments from the public, or the ‘punters’ as we called them, for minor offences , nothing major league,  and Friday being payday, the fine paying public flocked to pay in their legions, weirdos all, some maybe drunk , some just plain obnoxious, some maybe just glad to have money .This was before the days of drug addled folk staggering the streets of the city, back then, alcohol was the drug of choice of most folk , drugs seemed to be the preserve of ne’er do wells, and not something that was a real issue in our city.  On Fridays pay ‘packets’ were the order of the day, a small envelope on which the week’s salary might be written in ballpoint pen, the Internet had not yet been invented, and everything was written or typed on printed sheets, or in ledgers, computers were very much a thing of the future in those days, and receipts for payment were written on carbon paper, so our records had a ‘copy’ of the figure for the dreaded cashing up at the end of the day, which involved an electric, or battery operated calculator, rather than the pressing a key or clicking a ‘mouse’,  as it might be now.

Wow, how have things changed!

Anyway, I digress as I always do, but then you have guessed that by now.

I was a huge fan of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, I suppose I still am, his writing influenced my early scribblings, which I plan to publish online, under a ‘pen-name,’ ( maybe that should be a ‘keyboard name’),  which I have not yet decided upon.

Living in the Northeast of Scotland, when the Fishing Industry was still big business, we often got people coming in from the fish factories to pay their fines on Pay Day. They always reeked of fish, and came along in their work boiler suits, they were always fairly pleasant, just paying up, and chattering loudly about going for ‘a pint’ after this, a pint’ of course rarely, if ever, meant just one. You would go for ‘a pint ‘after work, and find yourself staggering up Union Street, the city’s main drag, at midnight, the worst for wear, but that is another story for another day.

Anyway, one man stands out from the crowd of the ‘Friday Folk’, we called him ‘Fish Face’, at my advanced age, I can’t for the life of me recall his real name, but he was so called because he resembled a fish, honestly, his eyes were large, and he gulped for breath from a small mouth, his skin was flaky , like he maybe had psoriasis or eczema of something similar, but the skin on his hands resembled scales in a certain light, you would see that at the counter when he paid up. He spoke to us in an Aberdeen accent and paid his fines regularly. I had recently re-read the H.P. Lovecraft story about the place where a race of people who resembled fish resided, I think the word ‘ichthyoid’ was used in description. I longed to find out about this similarity to the story, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’ so I started asking around local pubs and talking to old characters or worthies, as we called them. I was only twenty, so I was often sent away with a flea in my ear and told not to meddle with stuff I did not know anything about. I became intrigued, I wanted to know more. There was one guy who was always eager to impart his knowledge, Old Mitchell the Storyteller, they called him in the pubs at the east end of our city. He was what you would call a folklorist these days. He knew a lot about the weirder aspects of the place, and he was an ordinary bloke, no weird clothes or anything. This was the days of ‘goth’ music, so there were a lot of weird black clad folk going about, just like in my story’ the Office Goth.’ I was in the Royal Athenaeum after work, where I was told Old Mitchell held court most nights, after a few pints of lager, he would tell his tall tales, which I was sure had more than a grain of truth to them, in return for more drink. He was a reliable source for gossip about local folk as well as local folklore from years gone by.

Old Mitchell was not that old, about late ‘fifties or so, a wee bit older, he was balding with a wee grey beard and always wore a grey tweed jacket which had seen better days. Buy him a drink and he will tell you a tale, as legend had it.

My meeting with Mitchell ‘bore fruit’ as I had often heard older folk say. He told me that ‘Fish Face’ might have been the last of a group of people who had lived south of our city, in a coastal village that was apparently ‘washed away’ in a storm in the 1970s. He actually said that he had heard it compared to ‘Innsmouth,’ in the Lovecraft story which intrigued me. He then started a drunken ramble about ‘The Great Orm in Loch Ness, mermaids selkies and fish walking on land, which I think was related to ‘Fish Face’s’ origins, but it seemed to degenerate into incoherence once his whisky had taken hold.

I pondered this as I trudged home from the Royal Athenaeum, having ‘discussed’ ‘Fish Face’ with Mitchell, I guess it would be one of these mysteries authors like Colin Wilson wrote about, I could do my own book in that line! (Note to self: You are getting a wee bit too pretentious here).

I switched on my Walkman as I walked through McCombie’s Court, along St Nicholas Street, and uphill towards home, I still lived with my parents, and they would no doubt comment that I had been drinking, and what had I been up to until this time.

I wound the cassette on from Frank Zappa’s ‘Tinseltown Rebellion’ to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s ‘Chitlins Con Carne,’ which was a great piece of bluesy guitar for a long walk home.

Mitchell hadn’t solved the mystery of ‘Fish Face’, but had given me a few ideas which I could use for future stories, there were a few spooky things he mentioned about buildings in our city, so I would give that some thought, meantime ‘Fish Face’ was just like a character from Lovecraft or other horror author, and oddly he never appeared back at ‘The Factory’, his fine was still unpaid, and he was ‘whereabouts unknown’, he seemed to have just disappeared into thin air, maybe back to his origins, a potential Atlantis type place?

It would make for a good story; I could tell you some day!

Tales from the Factory- Fish Face -by Grant Wilson