By Charlie Hughes
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 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. I wear 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 station for 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 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 is such a beautiful and fragile thing. “No.” she says.
“Jean would shrivel up,” I say. “The cancer eating her from the inside out.”
“No. Not my mum. Please.”
“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 pasty 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. 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 faint 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. Six or seven 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 emerges 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 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 on 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.
The child looks up at her mum and speaks. “How does all the food get here?” she asks. Her voice is small and saccharine sweet.
“People bring it on lorries,” the mother says. “Big lorries full of treats.”
“Doesn’t the hot food get cold on the way?”
The mother chuckles at this and I join in. I wait for a suspicious glance or a shake of the head, but the mother smiles at me and says, “She’s a curious one.”
“Yeah, mine were the same at that age,” I say, suppressing my plummy, nowheresville accent, aiming for something more midlands, more relatable.
There’s a twitch in the mother’s brow, an aborted frown. I rally.
“Mine are all grown up now. Boy’s at university. Girl’s living the high life in London.” I give a wan smile, and the mother returns it, relaxing a little.
“You miss them?” she asks.
“Everyday. The house is too quiet without them. I wish I’d been home more when they were younger.”
“I’m sure you did all you could and they love you for it.”
I shrug and turn to the girl. “What are you going to be when you grow up?”
She places a finger on her nose, a parody of an adult thinking, as if she’ll forever be held accountable for her answer. She looks to her cuddly toy and then back at me, “A lion,” she says. “A great big lion.”
The mother and I laugh again, but there is something troubling here. This isn’t like the petrol station or all the times before. These two are closed to me, giving nothing away. An unusual sensation which brings with it a curious form of claustrophobia. I look around me at all the travellers going this way and that and wonder if I’m losing my touch. My people, hostile or not, should be an open book.
Time to escalate, bring matters back to my comfort zone.
There is a clatter as my phone tumbles to the floor and comes to a rest next to the child’s foot. I pretend to reach for it, but the girl gets there first, as I knew she would. She picks up the gadget and holds it out to me. I stretch across to take it from her, my forefinger brushing the bare skin of her thumb.
It’s enough, and then, suddenly, it is all too much.
At the moment of contact, the word “No” escapes the mother’s mouth in a high-pitched yelp. I jolt back from the girl as if bitten by a razor-toothed adder. There are several long, pregnant seconds as we stare at each other, all three of us considering the implications of what just happened.
I was not supposed to touch her. They hadn’t planned for that, and they didn’t know what it might reveal to me.
It is not often I’m taken by surprise. Tyler’s revolt, the girl in the match factory and Churchill’s foresight all come to mind. But collective action or political machination can be managed, unpicked over time, twisted back towards the true purpose.
This is different. Somehow, the girl knows everything. She dreams about my history and draws pictures for them. She is their prophesiser, their necromancer. They have gathered, taken knowledge and power from her dreams. They love her, not just this man and woman who call themselves her parents, but many others. They have hidden her from me and grown strong. Worst of all, they knew I would follow them here. It’s what they wanted.
Chosen ground. Not an invitation. A warning.
An unfamiliar sensation blooms in my chest and neck, cold and intrusive. Panic? I look around at the drones who’re supposed to be ignoring us, doping themselves with MSG or shiny plastic acquisitions. Every single one of them is frozen still, staring.
Staring at me.
There is a terrible awareness in their eyes, and I know I cannot reach inside any of them. Like the girl and her mother, they have tucked their threads away.
I turn back to the child, and it is there in her smile: She is their strength, their nexus.
And I know, with total clarity, what I must do. She has to die.
Now.
The prospect of blood and vengeance brings me focus and calm. My heart slows. I feel the sweat cool on my brow. Lunge, stab, escape. I reach inside my jacket and pull the knife.
There are screams from around the food hall. “Do it now!” screeches one. “Stop him!” shouts another.
In my mind, I am already on her, plunging the knife into her body, venting her wrongness. But fate has malfunctioned. Before I can leap, there are rough hands on my shoulders holding me back, pulling me down to the floor. Chairs clatter, scattered by the violence.
“Ropes. Bring the ropes,” comes the call.
More and more hands are on me. One is gouging at my fingers, ripping the knife from my grasp, sending it skidding across the polished plastic floor.
As they maul me, I desperately search around them, through them, looking for a thread, anything to hold onto. The child has shown them how to close their hearts and minds to me, but… but… there is one who is weaker than the rest. I can sense him standing nearby, watching, unable to move, not quite inoculated to my charms.
The horde binds my wrists and ankles with thick cord, shouting and squealing at each other, excited by the culmination of their wicked project. Orders are barked. They have a hierarchy, like an army. This is organised, pre-planned.
But they don’t know about their weak link, a middle-aged man called Jason, who is stood stock still, waiting, watching the chaos of my binding. They think he is one of them, but he doubts himself. My presence has moved his patriotic heart.
Through the multitude of limbs scrambling over me, I catch a glimpse of his eyes.
Yes, there he is.
“Jason,” I say, not in spoken words, but the idea of them, transmitted and received through our beautiful connection. “They’ve tricked you. I am the Truth of our Island. You know this. They want to destroy me, to destroy Albion. You can’t let that happen, can you?”
Jason looks down and places a hand on his temple as if he’s suffering a severe headache.
The others are pulling, stretching my arms and legs outwards so that I am splayed in an X on the ground, a hideous parody of crucifixion. Trapped on my back, I have no choice but to look up, directly into the humming white lights.
But Jason is still there, listening for me, and I appeal to him again. “Do you see the knife at your feet?”
“Yes,” he says, tentative, unsure if I will hear.
“Yes, Jason!” Relief courses through me. I have a grip on him now. “Do you remember when you were a boy? When your father said you would never amount to anything, that you were nothing to him and would never mean anything to anybody?”
“Yes, I remember,” he whimpers.
“She will make sure that he was right. You’ll follow her like a sheep follows a shepherd. Are you a pathetic little lamb, Jason?”
“No,” he says, petulant, offended.
“Or are you a British Man? Are you going to take orders, or give them?”
“I am a British Man,” he says.
“This is your chance to show your father, your chance to have your name written in the annals of our nation’s history. You, the saviour of Albion, the one who protected me from a false prophet and her treacherous brethren.”
“They said you were bad. She said you were bad. That you’ve made us all bad.”
I note his syntax has regressed to childhood mumblings – a sign I am worming through his defences.
“I am neither bad nor good, Jason. I am what this island is and always must be. I am the True Heart. The voice and soul of the soil.”
“I can’t do it,” he says. “There are too many of them.”
“You can. All you have to do is reach down, pick up the knife and stab the girl in the heart.”
I turn my head to the side and see him pick up the blade. None of the traitors are watching him, too busy staring at me or binding the ropes tighter and tighter. The girl is yards away from him. He looks at the knife with bemusement, as if it is some inexplicable artifact.
If Jason is to be my saviour, I need to put some lead in his belly. When I speak next, the words come, not in my voice, but in his father’s, raw and furious: “You don’t have the gumption. Pathetic. Give it to someone with some balls, boy.”
Jason’s face flashes with a white-hot loathing. Wonderful. It’s like I’ve reached inside him and flicked a switch. He moves towards the girl. But as he does so, they tug the final knots tight on my binding and step back, encircling her like bodyguards.
“Wait,” I say. “They’re too close. Place the knife in your back pocket.”
Jason does as I tell him.
The several hundred people inside the food hall are forming a circle around me, and the girl comes to the fore. The child is absent from her eyes now, replaced by something ageless. She smiles and they all smile with her.
“Now is the time.” she says, walking towards me, standing over me.
I whisper to Jason, telling him to come forward, to prepare. And he shuffles in front of the others, not too close, but on the inner perimeter, just a few yards from her.
The girl looks to the people behind my head and nods. I hear footsteps and the clanging of metal. Suddenly, I am drenched with pungent, vaporous petrol poured from canisters. They splash the accelerant all over my face, my extremities and torso, eager to cover every inch of me. I gag and splutter against the suffocating chemical stench.
“What are you doing?” I say to the girl, and I realise I cannot see Jason anymore, that I am losing the connection.
“We’re going to kill you,” she says, all grown up now, the cadence of a wise old woman. No more whispering to lions or wondering about hot dinners. She thinks she’s in total control, that she’s safe from me.
“You can’t kill me. I am Albion,” I say, “I came from the soil.”
I whisper to Jason in the cruel father voice one more time, still hopeful he will be my saviour. “Now. Do it now.”
But he does not appear. The girl is not screaming in agony.
Instead, she comes closer and kneels down next to my head, leaning towards me. I can feel her sweet aberrant breath on my skin. If I could turn my head far enough, I would bite into her face and neck. I would rip arteries with my teeth. But she knows who she is dealing with and stays just far enough away.
I call out to Jason again, but somehow, she has broken my hold on him. He is still somewhere in the room, but no longer in my thrall.
The click-cracking returns, much worse than before. Agony spears into my brain, a paralysing, invasive wrongness.
“Who are you?” I screech at the girl. “What is your name?”
There is a thud, as Jason’s lifeless body collapses to the floor beside me. His throat is cut and blood pulses from the wound.
The girl speaks in my ear, softly, with a chilling assuredness. “They call me Albion,” she says.
“No.”
“Yes. They call me Albion, and I come from the people.”
“The people?”
“Yes,” she says, “You will die here, where you were born. And we will be free, at last.”
She stands, turns and walks away from me, back to her followers. They all turn with her and they move together, towards the exit.
There is the snip of a match behind me. It arcs in the air, almost extinguishing in flight, then blooming again as it catches the fumes.
Flames. Everywhere.
Merciful soil, return me to your embrace.
I am Albion… I am Albion… I am Albion…
* * *
Charlie Hughes writes dark suspense and horror short stories. He lives in London with his wife and two children. His work has been published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Dark, Horror Library anthology series and by Flame Tree Press. Charlie’s stories ‘The Collection’ and ‘The Motley’ were reprinted in volumes 15 and 16 respectively of Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year series. Outside of writing, Charlie enjoys following his beloved Liverpool Football Club and nursing an obsession with indie bands from the ’90s Britpop era.
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