The August Featured Writer is Richard Hill

You can email Richard at: richard.hill537@ntlworld.com

GETTING IT WRITE

by Richard Hill

Written for his friend Ramsey Campbell

He realised, as he swung past a swerving cab, that hers was the only voice he now trusted. He had trusted Joanne, trusted Paul, trusted Alan, his agent. Now Cantrell was alone in the night with the soothing, confident voice of the satnav, the voice of someone who had never lied to him, telling him to turn left at the next set of lights.

He was leaving the familiar streets of the City centre behind him, the dull gold of its street lights bleeding into the dark night above it as he drove deeper into the tangle of backstreets behind the docks, and the woman’s calm words led him further away from the known.

Cantrell thought again about the past months, about how he had been moving away without knowing it, how Joanne had been moving away from him, moving into Paul’s arms. And about Alan, his best friend for as long as he could remember, who had known and had said nothing. Anger rose like bile in his throat and Andy pushed it back, trying to push back his grief and pain, to pull his mind back to the reading ahead. He thought it was a reading, but the woman from the library had been annoyingly vague about what was expected of him.

Cantrell hated vagueness, hated driving through the night through the backstreets of the City, hated how quickly and easily his life had fallen away from him. He wanted to be back in his study.

Glancing down at the bag of notes and handouts on the passenger seat beside him, Cantrell realised that he hadn’t put the carton of books in the boot of the car. Autographing and selling them to the class might have added enough to his fee to make the evening worthwhile, and he’d forgotten to bring them. He remembered making a selection and packing them into a cardboard box but that was it. Perhaps they were still in his study, or maybe he had left them on the pavement outside the flat.

"Now turn left," came the voice from the dashboard.

"Great. But can you remember what I did with the fucking books? Fat lot of use you are."

Now he was talking to the SatNav. Cantrell wanted to turn around and go home but he allowed the computer woman’s hypnotic voice to carry him forward through the darkness.

Everything was falling apart, slipping out of focus, like the intimation of some illness, he seemed to be falling out of himself, and Cantrell feared that if he disobeyed the soft certainty of the voice inside the car, he would never get back, never regain himself.

"Straight on for three hundred yards. You have reached your destination."

And there it was, the Bradbury Annexe, announcing itself in white letters on a blue board above the battered door of what looked like a derelict Victorian chapel, slumped in the darkness, two of its tall windows boarded up like patched eyes. The only vehicle parked nearby was a rusting van with the words ‘Sunshine Club’ faded into its side.

"Thanks for getting me here – I think." Cantrell muttered to the SatNav. "Let’s hope you get me back home again."

Parking behind the van, he lugged his bag out of the car and walked up the steps to the scarred and faded door of the chapel and pressed the cheap plastic bell push. It was starting to rain, the scratching of the falling drops on the boarded up windows sounding louder than it should in the empty darkness.

When the door was at last yanked open Cantrell stepped back in surprise. A tall, bulky man stared down at him.

"You’re too late! It’s started. You can’t come in!"

For a moment Cantrell was tempted to leave, to climb back into the car and go home to a glass of rioja and a DVD, but the man reminded him too much of all the official bullies he had ever had to deal with. The man looked like an ex-policeman, or a bouncer, with his shabby black suit and his greasy tie.

Cantrell smiled up at him. "What’s started?"

The man mirrored his false smile. "The writers’ group. Eight PM every other Wednesday."

He stepped back slightly; pointing to a hand-written poster pinned to a notice board on the wall beside him. "See! It says Do It Write Writers’ Group. Guest Speaker Andrew Cantrell, author and broadcaster. Eight PM Wednesday. Eight PM it says, and it’s now," he waved a ham like arm under Cantrell’s nose, "almost seven minutes past eight, so you’re out of luck mate. It’s started."

Cantrell felt the sadness which had held him tight for so long being washed away in a wave of anger. "Actually – mate – it hasn’t started yet. And it hasn’t started because I’m Andrew Cantrell, author and broadcaster and currently getting very pissed off. And I can’t see it starting without me being there, can you?"

The man at the door grudgingly let Cantrell into the building and led him down its the musty hallway, muttering over his shoulder as he led him down a flight of stairs. "Why didn’t you say who you were in the first place? You don’t look like an author."

Cantrell’s anger turned into amusement as he imagined describing this officious fool to Joanne. Barred from my own gig, he would say, by the Hunchback of Daisy Road Chapel.

And then, sudden as a missed step, he felt the realisation of his loss, and his anger at the man thumping ahead of him down the stairs filled him again. "I think you mean 'Why didn’t I say who I am' since I’m the still Andrew Cantrell. And what exactly are authors supposed to look like?

"Y’wah?" the caretaker snorted and turned left along a corridor and down yet another flight of stairs.

"What is this?" Cantrell said. "An amateur production of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth?" But the man ignored him.

The corridor was airless, smelling of damp and the sweetness of decay. Ahead of them, almost at its end Cantrell could hear waves of laughter from one of the rooms. The caretaker stopped at its door and yanked it open, taking Cantrell by the arm and almost pushing him inside.

"I found him. He was late!"

The room was even more hot and airless than the corridor, smelling of sweat and tobacco and the same clutching odour of decay. It was small and over-lit by a low strip light. A dozen or so people sitting on battered metal chairs turned their heads toward him, and the thin pinch faced woman who had been facing them stepped forward to take his hand, looking past him. "Thank you, Mr. Fartree, we’re ready for him now."

One of the audience sniggered. Cantrell smiled at the woman, wondering whether they were an audience or a class.

"Mrs. Fig. Good to meet you at last. I’m sorry I’m a little late."

A fat woman in a stained cardigan laughed. "He’s a fool! He thinks she’s called Fig!"

"A fig in a poke!" someone said, and a pool of laughter spread across the room.

The woman, still holding his hand, smiled. "I’m sorry about this shower of reprobates; they’re in a giggly mood tonight. Mrs. Fee is right, though, I’m not Mrs Fig; she’s from the library. I’m Helen Black. I’m just a volunteer at the Annexe."

Since he had clearly been landed with a comedy audience, Cantrell tried to think of an un-laboured pun about going to Helen Black, but the woman released his hand and, slipping her coat from the back of her chair and pulling it on, quickly stepped to the door.

"Enjoy yourselves, you lot. And don’t make too much noise. Goodbye, Mr. Cantrell. Mr. Fartree will lock up when it’s time."

Before Cantrell could speak, the door closed firmly in his face and Helen Black had gone, leaving him no idea what the group was about or what was expected of him. Over the years, he had learned to cope with amateurs and their mismanagement, but for the pittance he was being paid for the evening he certainly wasn’t going to put up with rudeness too. Tomorrow he would track down the elusive Mrs. Fig and tell her just what he thought of her library’s ‘Flagship Cultural Outreach Programme.’ There wasn’t even a table for him to put his papers on.

Cantrell stepped over to the empty chair at the front of the crowded room. It was so closely packed that he almost had to push his way to the front of the room to face the group who had noisily and grudgingly scraped their chairs to one side to let him pass, and then immediately moved back, even closer together and, it seemed to Cantrell, further forward, so that, when he finally managed to sit down facing them, his knees almost touch those of the young man sitting opposite him. The young man was a large and overweight, sprawling in his chair, with a shaven head. He was wearing dark glasses and a stained t-shirt bearing the faded logo Enjoy Soylent Green.

"I’m sorry to have kept you waiting," Cantrell said. "I hope that your journey here and a slight delay prove worthwhile. I’m afraid that I know very little about your group and your activities."

"Would it not have been a good idea to find out about us before you addressed us tonight? Surely preparation is the secret of success." The speaker was a skeletally thin old woman on his right, who sat to attention, clutching a white stick.

Cantrell realised that she was top of his list of people not to have in a group like this; an opinionated ex-schoolteacher, if his guess was right. She was a pedant who was used to being the only one in any group who had to be listened to.

And then Cantrell noticed that the Asian woman sitting beside her also held a white stick and, as he scanned the semi-circle of closed eyes and dark glasses surrounding him, realised that all of them were blind.

He damned and double damned the elusive Mrs. Fig and Helen bloody Black for not forewarning him.

"Why’s he stopped talking?" a man in a tight cardigan said. "Cat got his tongue?"

"I’m sorry," Cantrell said, desperately trying to improvise. "I was only called in at the last minute."

"He’s lying!" the teacher said. "We were all told about his visit weeks ago. And Fartree told me that there’s a poster about it at the main entrance." She sniffed loudly. "And for all his faults, Fartree isn’t a liar."

"Come along, Helen, we should make our guest welcome and not fret over a little confusion."
The speaker was a small, dapper man in a blue suit, a dead dandelion drooping from his buttonhole.

"Thank you for your uninvited comments, Mr. Quigley, but once more I must remind you not to address me by my Christian name," the teacher said.

"Perhaps we could press on." Cantrell said.

"Are you famous?" A nervous voice said from the back of the room. "'Cuz none of us have ever heard of you."

"Wouldn’t be here if he was famous, would he?" Soylent Green said smugly, folding his arms and smiling.

"Perhaps it might be more useful to begin with if you could tell me a little about yourselves, whether you are all writers, or would be writers, or whether you meet to study the works of other writers."  Cantrell said.

"You’re supposed to be telling us stuff. That’s what you’re here for. We aren’t supposed to be telling us stuff." The voice came from a hunched up figure whose face was luckily lost in the hood of his sweater.

Cantrell reached into his bag and pulled out a folder, taking out a paperback of his short stories and opened it at the first. "Perhaps," he said, "I should read an example of what I wrote. It’s from a collection of mine called The Dark Way Home. It was published last month and is now available in all disreputable bookshops.’

"What exactly does that mean?" the teacher said. "Disreputable bookshops?"

"I believe our guest was joking – to relieve tension of his negative reception, I suspect. Please go on Mr Cantrell."

Cantrell offered up a prayer of thanks to Dandelion Man and began.

"Snakebite. Jessica Ferris believed only in the tangible, in whatever she could see and touch. Whatever the reputation of a place or the legends and stories surrounding it, she accepted only the rational, the concrete, the scientific. As a field investigator for the Sceptic Society...."

Cantrell stopped, listening to the sound of his own voice as though for the first time, familiar but distant, like a long forgotten broadcast heard on a radio. He wondered what Joanne and her lover where doing as he sat reading his own dead words in a strange place surrounded by people he didn’t know and would never see again. He felt as if his life, the forward volition of his life, was slowing to a halt. He was like a ship whose engines had failed, slowly drifting to a halt.

What was the nautical phrase? Losing way, it was called. He was losing way. Finally coming to a full stop. At the end of his sentence. A dead stop. Dead. Losing his way.

"What do you mean, 'Losing your way'? That’s not in the story, is it?"

He hadn't realised he had said it out loud.

"Doesn’t make sense," a woman said, setting off more laughter. "Nothing he says makes sense."

"Please!" Dandelion said "Let him finish."

Cantrell wanted to leave. This wasn’t funny anymore. He would finish the story and wrap the whole thing up. No questions and answers session. He was going. Something brushed against his leg and when he looked up from the page he saw that the group had moved closer, that the semicircle which surrounded him was now almost touching him. He was suddenly very thirsty. And hot. Very hot.

"I wonder if anyone knows where I could get a drink of water?" he asked.

"Mr. Fartree sees to all that," Soylent Green said. "Should’ve sorted that out before you started, shouldn’t you have?" He hunched forward so that his knees almost touched Cantrell’s.

The encroaching group had forced him so far back that when he pushed his chair back from Soylent Green, his chair was almost touching the hot radiator. Cantrell tugged at the zip of his leather jacket. For a moment it snagged, but then, with a sigh of relief he unzipped it and took of his stifling jacket.

"My God, did you hear that!" someone shouted.

"What’s he doing?" the Asian woman asked.

"He’s taking his clothes off!" the teacher cried. "The filthy beast’s taking off his clothes!"

Cantrell felt his voice booming, filling the tiny room, turning the teacher’s florid face white.
"Of course I’m not taking my bloody clothes off. I took my coat off because it’s like a fucking oven in here and I have to unzip the bloody thing to take it off. I suppose you lot have heard of zips haven’t you? Or is the technology to difficult for you! If any of you could actually see, you’d know I wasn’t taking my clothes off! Jesus, why would I take my clothes off?"

The silence made the small room even smaller, and as the room shrank, the silence grew until it pressed against Cantrell like a fifth wall. He had to get away from this terrible place, back to his car and the healing voice which would guide him back home.

Cantrell wasn’t wearing a watch and naturally there was no clock in the room. Eight until nine-thirty was the time agreed with the library and he already felt as if he had been trapped in this airless box for days.

And then, at last, someone spoke. It was a young woman with short black hair. Her blank grey eyes stared at a spot just above him and her soft voice was almost a whisper. "Do you think of a story first and then write it, or when you’re writing it ….?"

Her voice trembled and stopped as Soylent Green scraped his chair even closer to Cantrell and shouted, "He makes it all up as he goes along! He’s not a real writer. That story of his doesn’t make sense."

Dandelion’s face was flushed with excitement. "Perhaps it makes sense in a way that…"

But Soylent Green shouted him down, "And he keeps making fun of us! Telling us about writing’s all about how we see reality from our own unique viewpoint. Like any of us have a viewpoint."

"And boasting about how if any of us could see we would know he wasn’t taking off his clothes," the teacher said, "when I made a perfectly reasonable assumption."

The whole room filled with the noise of braying agreement. "We gave up our time, Mr. Cantrell, to an expert for him to explain his craft to us, not to be patronised and insulted by someone we’ve never heard of; someone who even lacks the common courtesy to arrive on time!"

And then, a lifeboat to a drowning man, the door opened and the hulking figure of the caretaker filled the doorway.

"Time to lock up. Your time’s up Mr. what's your name. Goodnight all. And if you lot make a mess, you’ll have to clean it up. Remember that. No more excuses."

He turned and closed the door behind him without another word and the Cantrell heard him turn the key in the lock.

He could not believe the man’s stupidity, the stupidity of everyone, of the idiots in the class, of Joanne, of himself in loving her. "Fartree! Fartree, you idiot! You’ve locked the door! Of all the stupid, moronic things to do! Let us out, you clown!"

"I don’t think that you should call Mr. Fartree names, Mr. Cantrell," Dandelion said. "He is a volunteer after all. He isn’t paid a penny. A rough diamond, admittedly; but a diamond for all that."

And then the lights went out. "Jesus!" Cantrell shouted. "Now the stupid sod’s turned the fucking lights off."

He heard Dandelion’s voice, louder now and much closer. "I really must ask you to moderate your language, Mr Cantrell. There are ladies present. You are making people angry."

There was no light at all. The caretaker must have turned off every one in the building and here, so deep in the bowels of the old chapel, the darkness to filled the room like black sand, pressing against Cantrell’s open and unseeing eyes.

The voice of the teacher seemed to flutter against Cantrell’s cheek, she was so close. "Mr. Fartree always turns of the lights. Far from being, what did you call him, a moron, he is very conscientious. We don’t need lights after all, do we?"

Soylent Green’s voice was somehow behind Cantrell now, almost as close as the teacher’s. "He didn’t only call Mr. Fartree a moron; he called him a stupid sod too."

Another voice, almost in his ear, "And an idiot!"

Cantrell felt his own voice crack with thirst and panic. "I’m leaving now! I’m leaving right now!"

"If you can find the door," Soylent Green said. And Cantrell felt the spittle from his laughter on his face. He stepped back and felt his heel catch someone’s ankle.

"He kicked me!" a woman shrieked "He just kicked me! I was just standing here, and he kicked me. For no reason." Her voice cracked into tears.

"Don’t you kick Alice!" Soylent Green shouted, now behind Cantrell, who pushed away from his voice and further into the darkness. If he could just reach a wall, he could feel his way to the door.

He started calling out for Fartree, and then he stumbled into what felt like the table, and falling, he crashed into something soft which yelled out. "He punched me! He punched me in the stomach!"

Cantrell recognised the voice of the teacher. Angry and outraged. Not like the woman who waited for him in the car, the one woman whose calm voice never betrayed.

As he fell to the floor, someone hit him, and then they were kicking him, and then there was nothing but their fists and the sharp tearing nails and finally their even sharper teeth.  

Unheard, Cantrell tried to protest, try to plead, but like him, his voice finally died in the darkness.

Richard Hill considers himself as not primarily a horror writer, but just a writer. He has written for radio, TV, and for theatres like The Hampstead Theatre in London and The Everyman Theatre in Liverpool; in fact, he would write for anyone who would give him money for words. He has an MA in Victorian Literature from the University of Liverpool. 

Since Richard was first old enough to make annoying noises, he has played in bands in and around Liverpool. Afterwards, he headed up to the Editorial Office at the University of Liverpool, producing all their magazines and prospectuses, and taught Creative Writing there as well in their English Department.

Richard is currently co-writing a novel with fellow author Louise King about two serial killers. The Horror Zine will present this novel on our News Page as soon as it becomes available for sale.

Richard had a stroke four years ago.It still amazes him that his body hasn’t yet realized that if it does succeed in killing him, he’ll take it with him. Richard had to learn to walk and talk again but, knock on Formica, he’s good now, although now he’s used to one handed typing—which sounds more Zen than it is.