Episode 9

Previously…

“Did you know that the walls fell when you were born?” She looks deep into the past. “They all came tumblin’ down. Just like in Jericho. That’s how the snakes got in.”

He just looks at her. She sighs and shakes her head.

“I don’t know what it means,” she says. “It’s an omen, but I don’t know what it means.” She looks at the horizon. “We must wait.”

They wait.

“I love you,” he says simply.

“I know,” she smiles, and lapses into silence again.

“Do you want to come and see the salt pans?”

“I can’t. I can’t leave here. I can’t go outside the gates.”

“Then why can I?”

“You’re different.”

He thinks about this for a while.

“I must go.” He picks up his rock of salt and wanders off towards the dimly lit gate.

 And now...

“Hi mom,” she could feel the soft voice tugging her back to consciousness. With a jerk she sat upright. But it wasn’t Joshua’s voice. It was Beulah. Her body flooded with disappointment.

“How is it going?” asked her husband in a whisper, leaning over her and indicating to the bed with his eyes.

Clara was suddenly very tearful and couldn’t trust herself to speak. She just shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. Beulah bit her lip in sympathy.

“You need some sleep. You need to come home and get some rest,” said Samuel.

“No! I’m not leaving him. What if he wakes up?” she whispers loudly.

“Clara, you can’t go on like this. Look at you. Why don’t you just come home, have a sleep and a bath and…”

“No!” She was adamant…nearly hysterical. Her face was drawn and haggard.

Samuel paused for a while, and then began again softly.

“He’ll be fine. The hospital will let us know if there is any change. You can’t keep this up indefinitely you know. You’ll be no good to him if you break down.” Slowly he was starting to get to her. She looked away as if she didn’t want to be convinced.

“What if he wakes up and I’m not here?”

“The nurses are here. He’ll be fine. We can’t just let everything fall to pieces. What kind of a home will he have to come back to?”

‘Good one, dad,’ thought Beulah. She knew how stubborn her mother could be when it came to Joshua. Samuel was skating on very thin ice here.

“I…” he paused, unsure whether to carry on with the sentence. “I have phoned my sister…”

Clara’s eyes flew wide open.

“What?” she shouted out loud.

Samuel’s big hands were making futile fluttering gestures in her direction, trying to keep her calm. He carried on quickly, still speaking in hushed tones.

“We just can’t cope by ourselves. I’ve missed too much work and there’s no-one to cook or to do the laundry, so I phoned my sister and asked her over.”

“OVER MY DEAD BODY!”

“Clara…we can’t manage. It would be no trouble to her…”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t…she…” but she gagged on her next few words…speechless with rage. She couldn’t believe the audacity of the man; the sheer callousness and disregard for her feelings…especially at a time like this.

“Mom, dad’s right. It will be okay…”

To Clara it felt like a snake had been loosed in her house. This was bad news. She had to pull herself together. Suddenly she was ice cold and wide awake.

“Have you forgotten what happened last time…?” she said to Samuel.

“It won’t happen again. It wasn’t what you thought anyway.”

“It bloody was what I thought, you just couldn’t see it. Typical man.”

“Maybe so, but we can’t go on like this. You left me no choice.”

“I left you no choice? I left you no choice? This is all your fault; the two of you.”

“Don’t be silly…”

“Don’t you dare call me silly or crazy or anything, do you hear. This is because you and Beulah can’t stop fighting. This is because you’re always shouting at my boy and bullying him until he’s in tears. You drove Joshua to this. He’s a sensitive boy but you……..”

She wanted to go on; oh how she wanted to go on. There was a decades worth of bottled-up emotions waiting to explode, but this wasn’t the time. Now she needed to have her wits about her. Alice was coming. At the thought of her, Clara could feel a little worm of fear creep into her stomach.

Alice was a crazy woman – to put it in a nutshell. But like all crazy people, she was devious, scheming and manipulative. Alice loved her brother (in the worst, creepiest possible way) and she hated Clara with all the venom that her little green heart could muster. Alice was a clever, conniving little fox; and the simple, uncomplicated, bunny-loving Clara, no match for her whiles. When Alice came to stay, she would goad and provoke poor Clara until she would finally lose it altogether and blow her top. Alice never missed a chance to slide in her underhanded insults and innuendoes; little criticisms and not-so-helpful observations, all out of Samuel’s hearing range. No matter how Clara tried to fight back or turn a deaf ear, Alice would somehow manage to transform her into a screaming harpy. Nearly everyday Clara would make a shouting spectacle of herself in some way or other; and Alice would be quiet, calm and collected, gently intimating that Clara was imagining things and professing to be concerned for her nerves and her mental stability. Samuel didn’t see any of this. He loved his baby sister and if any of her faults were pointed out, he would just excuse them as innocent foibles. Clara hated the thought of her coming to stay in her house again.

“Just for a short while, until Joshua wakes up…she’s…we can’t just leave Beulah alone in the house. At least she’ll have someone there.”

Clara knew he was right. But she would have to keep a close eye on Alice or else she’d be plotting to have her in the Looney Bin in no time.

“Alright, alright. But I warn you, the least sign of trouble…”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Yeah. Like you ‘took care of it’ last time.”

“Nothing happened. And I’ve spoken to her. She knows that kind of behaviour is not acceptable in our house.”

“That kind of behaviour is not acceptable ANYWHERE! Where the hell were you two raised?”

Beulah was watching this exchange with a bemused interest. She was intrigued, to say the least. They had never spoken so freely about such a delicate issue in front of her before. That was because they’d actually forgotten she was there. To tell the truth, she had retreated somewhat out of their eye line so as not to be conspicuous, a habit most children learn early on.

She remembered the last time Aunt Alice came to stay with them when her mom had had to go to that ‘rest home’ for a few weeks. She remembered the shouting and slamming of doors when her mom had finally come home unexpectedly in the middle of the night, and Aunt Alice had had to leave in a hurry. If she was coming to stay again then things were looking up. Life was about to get a whole lot more interesting.

Clara turned away from her husband. What the hell did it matter really? Joshua was her only concern…and right now all she was interested in was getting a bath and some clean clothes, and coming straight back here. Quickly she began collecting up her things and nearly ran into the old cleaning woman who had come into the room, trailing her trolley behind her.

“Oh I’m sorry,” said Clara. “I didn’t see you there.”

“That’s alright dear. No bones broken. You just take your time.”

“I’ll be going home for a while,” she said to the woman, because she felt she was the one to tell. She also just needed to talk, to tell someone about her decision so she could hear it in her own ears.

“That’s alright dear. You just tell the nurse on the way out…but I’m on duty all night, so don’t you worry. I’ll keep an eye on him,” said the kindly old woman.

“I’ll look after him," she said again to herself as Clara walked out the door.

*

That night there is a light out in the desert and the boy stands inside the gate, staring out at it, wondering if it is one of those devil dancers coming back. In a twinkling, the old woman is at his side.

“What is it?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

They watch the light dance above the desert sands, coming closer and closer. Soon they can pick out a man on a camel, with a lantern hanging from his saddle. It must be a man. No woman would be crazy enough to venture out there.

“Greetings,” he says when he finally comes to a stop outside the gates. There is no reply. The boy and the old woman wait. The camel rattles her harness and barks at the rider. She is tired and thirsty, having run far to get here, the water reserves in her hump nearly depleted. Without waiting she lurches backwards and kneels down in the sand. The rider jumps off and walks towards the old woman and the boy. He stops and stares at the two with inscrutable eyes before delivering his curt missive.

“She is coming,” he says. “We must leave at once.”

The old woman looks down sadly, and nods. The boy notices this.

“Where are we going?” he asks, loathe to leave his place at the gate – his home.

“To the Silvern Sanctuary,” says the rider.

“But that is many, many miles away. Too long a journey for such a small boy,” pleads the old woman.

“Nevertheless. We must go. It is the only safe place for him. I will accompany him.”

“I will come too,” she says, with a slight twinge of regret for her brittle old bones. Worse than that, she knows that this will probably be the last journey she ever makes, for it is a long way and often travellers do not reach their destination.

“As you wish. But if you slow us down the boy will suffer.”

The boy looks at the old woman, not quite understanding what is going on.

“Who is this man? Do you know him?”

“Yes I know him. He is The Messenger. And he brings bad news.”

“He said ‘she is coming’. Who is she, and what does she want?”

“She is the demon huntress – the soul searcher – and she is looking for you.”

Episode 8

 

 

 

Previously…

“Hey Mitke you moron, get out of the way.”

Joshua puts his hand out and steadies himself against the gatepost. For a moment his eyes blur as a pulsing darkness begins closing in on him, as if his reality is running away from him. It has been happening a lot lately…this strange dizziness.

“You either come in or you go out but you’re blocking the path.”

His schoolfellows stream around him in their rush to get home and play, but he is glued to the spot. At first he feels light headed and faint, and then something wells up inside of him, like a thousand ghosts all trying to get out at once, and the world falls over on its side.

 And now...

The soft hiss of oxygen seeped into the quiet ward. It was after midnight before the last medications had been dispensed and the lights finally switched off. Clara sat quietly in a chair next to Joshua’s bed and watched him breathe slowly in and out. He’d been like this, still and unmoving, for five days now. Samuel and Beulah had gone home after the first few hours and had come back during visiting hours. They weren’t allowed to stay all the time but wild horses wouldn’t have dragged Clara from her son’s bedside.

Far away down the corridor she heard a bleeping noise and the rustle of hurrying footsteps as some invisible nurses tended to a patient in need in a ward nearby – but Joshua remained quiet and unchanged, pale and thin beneath the white covers. He’d always been a sensitive child, something his father was always trying to rectify. Always trying to toughen him up…and look what happened. She had to bite down on that train of thought before it got out of hand. No good blaming Samuel. It was just as much her fault. She was sure she was being punished for her little foray into the extramarital zone the other day. The doctors had no explanation for it. Scans showed nothing wrong with him; heart, head and all his other organs seem to be working fine. They even did an EEG but his brain function was absolutely normal. The doctors had no idea. Some mysterious power had struck him down. They said he could wake up in the next ten minutes…or he might never wake again. Some said he couldn’t hear anything, others said he was listening all the time, just unable to respond. Knowing this, she had spoken to him non-stop for the first few hours until she eventually ran out of things to say and memories to recount. Then she went and bought a few novels from the hospital kiosk and read to him through the night.

Eventually though, his lack of response wore her down and she just sat quietly by his side, waiting for him to return…crying softly to herself. By now she was exhausted, constantly fighting to stay awake in case he returned. She let her eyes rest for a while and leaned back in the chair.

“Oh. Hello dear. I didn't know there was anyone here.”

Clara opened her eyes to find an old lady, dressed in hospital uniform, standing in front of her.

“Hello,” said Clara.

“I've come to do his room,” she said, indicating her trolley with various dusters, mops and spray bottles standing by her side.

“Oh,” said Clara. The thought flashed through her mind that the lady was a bit old to still be working…but these days, anything goes she supposed.

“No, don’t get up. I won’t be long. You won’t even notice me, dear,” she said and smiled at Clara. “You just sit there by your boy. Better still, close your eyes and get some rest. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

‘Thank God for kindly old ladies,’ thought Clara. “Thank you. I think I will.”

Clara leant back in her chair and closed her eyes again.

*

The boy at the gate looks out into the desert night; flames glimmer in the darkness behind him, lighting up the rubble strewn roadways of the broken city. Somewhere in the shadows is the woman.

He relieves himself against one of the great chunks of granite that had once been a proud pillar. The pillars have been broken for as long as he can remember and the great gates have never been closed. The boy feels like he has lived there forever…and yet it also feels new and strange. He knows he has always lived at the gate. Well, not at the gate, but close by, in the tower.

Magically the tower is still balancing upright on the half toppled wall away to his right. According to the old lady, people used to sing from the tower, but no-one remembers the songs anymore. The people, what is left of them, are too afraid of calling the desert dancers again. He’s never seen one, but he’s heard about them. They had come in answer to the city’s prayers for help from a plague of snakes. The sand-dervishes, holy men, had come out of the desert and were let in the gates. These beings of light had come into a city of darkness and the people had gone mad. They hadn’t been ready for them. Having lived in ignorance for so long, tied to their old ways…they literally blew their minds.

The beings of light, believing they were rescuing the people, swept through the city, spreading a terrible fearfulness amongst them. Friend became suspicious of friend, neighbour attacked neighbour, and family members lay in wait for each other. Soon nearly everyone was dead and the city a wasteland. Word must have got out because no-one ever came that way anymore, and those that remained kept to themselves. They were called ‘the lonely ones’.

He always keeps an eye out for the desert dancers on his frequent forays into the wilderness, looking for snakes and scorpions to salt and dry. He loves the salt flats just outside the gates…wadis of white crystals, glittering in the sun. He is always chewing on a piece of salt rock as he wanders around. Even now, sitting in the darkness of the gate…waiting for her – his lips wrinkled by the salt - like hers. But hers were wrinkled from old age.

She had hissed at him when they first met, right in his face. Her teeth were so real, stained with sex and violence. She was…..dangerous, and therefore attractive to a young boy. And she smoked cigarettes. There was a kind of beauty in the way she smoked - even to her nicotine-stained lips and foul breath. He hungered for these things with something akin to desire. Why? He couldn’t say. Maybe because it was real. She was real. She had lived. It showed on every line on her face and body.

Then one of the lonely ones would come, a man, and she would laugh and go off with him. Sometimes he would follow and peek at them from behind the wall as they lay in the dirt, but she knew he was there and carefully drew her cloak over them.

“Hello little worm.”

The cloth she clutches to her chest is coarse. She is slippery and naked underneath. She has obviously been at it, bartering her old bones for something to smoke.

“I got a snake for you,” he says.

“Oh. Is it a big one?” she says and laughs a crazy laugh. But it is only a little laugh because she is kind and respectful of him. “Please come and sit. Thank you for your thoughtfulness,” she says, taking the salted snake from him.

The house has no roof and the walls are all broken…just a threadbare blanket strung across one corner where her bed is. They don’t need a roof because it never rains here anymore. They are sitting on some rubble in the lounge. There is no shelter. It is very hot.

She looks at him. There are tears in her eyes.

“You look just like her,” she says and delicately touches his hair.

“Who?”

“Your mother.”

There is a long silence. They’ve had this conversation before. He can’t remember his mother.

They sit together side by side, strange companions. The old woman twirls her torn lace parasol every now and then, when the flies get too thick. Her soft silence swarms around him like a blanket. They complete each other. When they come together all their anxious thoughts settle down, like the flies, and they feel comfortably at home.

She wraps her rags around her, but they hardly cover anything. He looks at her wrinkled skin in amazement. He’s never seen anything so beautiful.

“Did you know that the walls fell when you were born?” She looks deep into the past. “They all came tumblin’ down. Just like in Jericho. That’s how the snakes got in.”

He just looks at her. She sighs and shakes her head.

“I don’t know what it means,” she says. “It’s an omen, but I don’t know what it means.” She looks at the horizon. “We must wait.”

They wait.

“I love you,” he says simply.

“I know,” she smiles, and lapses into silence again.

“Do you want to come and see the salt pans?”

“I can’t. I can’t leave here. I can’t go outside the gates.”

“Then why can I?”

“You’re different.”

He thinks about this for a while.

“I must go.” He picks up his rock of salt and wanders off towards the dimly lit gate.

Episode 7

Previously…

“They teach us to recognize abuse," says Joshua.

“Abuse? This is abuse? Now a mother’s love is abuse? Shouting is abuse, sure. Calling people names...that’s abuse. Hitting....do I ever hit you? Well, do I?” She watched his little face tremble as he tried to remember what his teacher had told him, trying to defend himself from her barrage of words.

“Oh God I am so sorry.” She burst out when she realized what she was doing. “I’m so sorry my baby.” She hugged him tightly to her, trying to make up for her cruelty. Wracked with guilt, the tears spilt from her eyes.

Joshua waited patiently until she had stopped blubbering; then he said.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m alright. I’m so sorry. I....things....”

How do you tell a twelve-year-old boy what’s happening inside you? Mind you, he seemed more capable of understanding her than she did.

“I’m in a bad place at the moment. Things are....” She paused. “You can stay home from school tomorrow if you let me stroke you.”

 And now...

“Now you be a good boy and pay attention to your teacher.” She fudges with his tie. “There. You look wonderful.”

Oh how the bully-boys just love a smartly turned out mother’s son - and oh how soon his sandwiches are squashed into the ground and his mother’s home-made jam spread all over the quadrangle. But hunger is the least of his worries – schoolwork too. His mind is filled with self defence and survival, and trying not to look conspicuous.

Blue skies, foggy lies, fester pester school drool fool trumpet practice dribble down memory lane, shame, take your punishment like a man. Pell-mell bags and buckles, snotnose and horseplay. And then, of all sounds evil, the school bell rings; tortured cry of education, steel striking at the young nerves, the senseless voice of Authority clamouring Obey, Obey, Obey.

Lessons start. Sit and stare through empty air, Miss Kay comes in. ‘Mrs.’ actually, (though who would marry her?) She is very ugly and has a protruding pudendum; so the boys are always looking at her pussy. Her son is in Joshua’s class. Joshua is often tempted to ask him why his mother’s thing is so big. Surely she knows it sticks out a mile? It draws Joshua’s eyes like a magnet, which irritates the hell out of Miss Kay. But he is unable to resist the lure.

‘Beware the Ides of March’, a hollow voice intones in his ear.

Someone sniggers.

“Who did that?”

“Joshua,” shout half a dozen voices. ‘Et tu Brute’.

“Where is your homework Mitke?” she asks with a tight, controlled voice, knowing what the answer will be. She is their history teacher and has a face like a Roman Centurion.

Joshua opens up a book of blots and smudges, erasures and erosions. There are neat little signatures in the margin, each a careful counterfeit of his father’s handwriting. She is loudly suspicious. The air rings with “Quo Vadis?” – wither are you going young man? (The phrase ‘to jail’ implicit in her tone.)

For Joshua the answer is not so clear cut. He is hemmed in on all sides as it were, squeezed into his uniform and set along a path, hopeless, helpless, cheered and jeered and dragged by the ear to the front of the class, tears and queers and pimples from your fears. She has watched him disregard her words of wisdom for long enough and wants to whip some sense into him.

Pain is such a revelation when it comes…to a high point on a pair of buttocks near you. Rosy cheeks are always a sign of rude health. Whack! Whack! A straight-steering fellow after that, of clear mind and in no doubt as to which side his bread is buttered. A helpful fellow even…for a while.

“And what did you learn in history today?”

He learnt that Julius Caesar didn’t have any friends.

Playtime behind the tennis courts. Watch out for wandering gangs and teachers on patrol.

Someone’s picking on Michael again. He is crying.

“You’re a puke. Why don’t you have a bath, Stinkie?”

Michael is poor, dirt poor. And so is his mother; a birdie little thing. He nearly steps on her when she walks him home.

“Go away, sit over there. You fucking smell awful man.” Michael slinks off with a sniffle and a slither, and settles down in the dust.

“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge hath withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.”

The teacher looks up from his book and runs his eyes over the little heads before him. Forty pairs of eyes stare back at him, devoid of understanding. Oh well, like a farmer in a dry and desolate land, he has no option but to plough on hopelessly, turning over the meagre turf and tilling the sandy soil in preparation for planting.

“I saw pale kings and princes too,

  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci

  Hath thee in thrall!”

“So. What have we here?”

No response.

“Okay. I shall start you off. We have a knight…alone and palely loitering.”

“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!

 So haggard and so woe-begone?”

“What ails our knight? Anyone?”

“He’s in love.”

“Thank you Shirley. And how do you know he’s in love?”

Again no answer.

“Because he is sick and sad…full of woe-ing and wailing. This is how we know he’s in love. He’s got the sighing and pining disease. Is this not so?” he looks around the room.

“And who is he in love with? Anyone? I’ll give you another clue. La Belle Dame sans Merci. Who knows what that means?”

A young hand shoots up into the air, like the delicate stem of a young plant struggling up from its seedling stage to greet the sun of knowledge.

“Yes Simmonds?”

“The lady without mercy”

“The beautiful lady without mercy. And why is she called merciless?” He waits for an answer but none is forthcoming.

“Alright then. Why does The Knight look so haggard and so woe-begone? Adams stop sniggering. Why?”

He looks around the room.

Stillness.

“He is a knight that has failed to conquer his lady-love. He went to do battle with her on the jousting field….and lost. All his armour could not protect him from the wound she inflicted upon him with that one little word. And what was the word? Anyone?” The teacher looks about, mock expectantly.

“The word was ‘no’. She has mercilessly said NO to him. Unthinkable isn’t it; a woman saying no to a man? After all, she is to blame for his desire - simply by being so beautiful. This in turn obligates her to take pity on him and always say…‘yes’.

“But this lady has said ‘no’, and because of this he has suffered a fatal loss of face. She has said ‘no’ and he has taken a monumental blow to his pride and manliness. So much so that he is on the verge of death…thus the sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing. He sighs and seeps for her; he dies and weeps for her but she is not turned. All his promises and exhortations fall like dead leaves upon the cold, rocky shores of her unyielding flesh. Give it a break Adams.

“And yet he is a dashing fellow, brave and bold amongst the best of them. Why does she refuse him? Does anyone know?”

“He is ugly.”

“No indeed, he is dapper and debonair, with a fine devil-may-care air that women find so attractive, God help them.”

“She’s a lesbian.”

Sniggers all round.

“Thank you Adams. No.

“The answer is the same for most women, then or now. She has said ‘NO’ to kids, housework and miscellaneous drudgery. She knows that once the honeymoon is over…this will be her lot.

“In the old days a woman was considered a man’s property to do with as he pleased and she was obliged to bend over and bite the bullet. Now women have their say and it’s just one big argument after the other….about who’s the boss? Who stay’s at home? Who wears the pants in this house? Who rules the roost? Who has the last word? Who is RIGHT?

“This is where the war begins. In the home…and ends on a lonely hillside where the flowers and trees are all dead and the lovebirds have died, tied together in a cage they have despoiled, and then taught their children to do the same.

“Do you love your brothers and sisters…not in general, I mean practically…every day…in word and deed. Do you love your brothers and your sisters, or do you fight like cats and dogs….or should I say moms and dads?

“Romantic love is a flash in the pan, a precursor to pain and the fires eternal. Real love is….Who can tell me what real love is……..?”

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRINNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG.

And what did you learn today Joshua?

He learnt that some girls do and some don’t.

In science, they learn how to tie little mirrors to their shoelaces and look up the teacher’s skirt while they’re all standing around watching her light a Bunsen burner. No-one sees anything really but they tell each other they did.

In Economics, Prof. Fagin teaches them about Free Enterprise (now you see it, now you don’t; or how to pick a pocket or two), and how to turn worthless rubbish into a fairly decent hedge fund.

In class Enlightenment 1, there is a rumour that the teacher takes drugs; a fact pretty much borne out by his incomprehensible tirades.

“Facts! Facts are sticky little things. Everyone says ‘stick to the facts’. But they are already ‘stuck to the facts’, like flies to flypaper. Once a fact gets hold of you it’s hard to shake the little bugger loose. Science above all, likes sticking to the facts and calling it the truth. Lawyers like lying about the facts and twisting them around, but they are still stuck with them.

“Facts are a fiction. They only exist because you insist that they do. A fact is a fact because someone says it is, and has measured it. But we know how men exaggerate when they measure things. A fact is measured by the eye. But we also know there is more to life than meets the eye.

“How do we see beyond the facts? How can we look beyond the veil into the worlds where reason and logic are turned on their heads? Indeed, there have only been a few brave souls who have entered this strange and terrifying hinterland where common sense doesn’t count for much.

“Beyond the pale, it is called by the Irish. Beyond the ‘pole’ that marks the outer extremity of all things known. Beyond this is the ‘backstage’ of reality, where the magic is made, where fairy tales and nightmares are the norm. Which is why most people do NOT want to go there and do all they can to fill their already busy lives with more and more….facts.

“Facts are the nails in the coffin of mundanity and custom. Facts are the stepping stones across the river of chance. Facts preserve your life. Facts are the embalming fluid of the mind. Facts keep the brain closed and safe, encapsulated in its little bone dome prison, endlessly repeating its little list of formulas like a pagan incantation but with little or no effectiveness.

“It is a fact that you see what you have been taught to see, by the paper people and their computations, pointing with their pencils and saying ‘this is a such and such, and this is a so and so. This is a fact’.

“But what is this preoccupation with facts anyway? What are we actually looking for? Mitke? I ask because you almost had an intelligent expression on your face there for a moment. No? Must’ve been a trick of the light. Anyone?

“The truth. We are searching for the truth of life. And all we do is bundle our erroneous findings into smelly little facts, which everyone passes around and learns off by heart.

“And why can facts not tell us the truth? Well, contrary to popular fiction, the truth is not ‘out there’, in the mud, or in the stars. The truth is in here,” he says, wildly pointing at his rather large, egg-shaped head. His high sloping forehead and Frankenstein haircut lend much credence to his intense utterances, so much so that no one is inclined to question his perspicuity.

“And what is in here is more than a list of facts. In here is…madness, and witchcraft. In here, a fool and his facts are soon parted. In here resides a world incomprehensible to a mind accustomed to the paint-by-numbers approach to life. In here is…..power. In here is…..God.

“I understand that you have not the faintest idea what I’m talking about. But I will say it none the less. One day, when you are older, but sadly not much wiser, you might….but I think not. Never mind. No matter. The only fact we can be sure of is that there are no facts. Now please leave.”

“Hey Mitke you moron, get out of the way.”

Joshua puts his hand out and steadies himself against the gatepost. For a moment his eyes blur as a pulsing darkness begins closing in on him, as if his reality is running away from him. It has been happening a lot lately…this strange dizziness.

“You either come in or you go out but you’re blocking the path.”

His schoolfellows stream around him in their rush to get home and play, but he is glued to the spot. At first he feels light headed and faint, and then something wells up inside of him, like a thousand ghosts all trying to get out at once, and the world falls over on its side.