Glitch (Part Two)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

April arrived promptly at two thirty. She was a dainty, rather pretty woman of around Norton's age or maybe slightly younger (Norton was thirty eight), and she was wearing jeans and a tie-dye t shirt, which surprised him because he was expecting a frumpy old dear. He showed her into the front room and made a pot of tea, and as he was sitting down she asked him what he was smiling at. “Oh, it's nothing, really,” he said. “As I've probably told you, I'm the Head of Fine Art at Wolverhampton University, which explains the tacky paintings on every available piece of wall.”

“Yes, I was admiring your work, you're very talented.”

“Thanks. I've just had a phone call from Harry Janes, the senior caretaker – Mr. Punch, some of the students call him, because of his rather prominent features. He was in a proper tizzy because some comedian has unscrewed the nameplate from my office door and replaced my name, Norton Hosking, with an alternative one. Morton Tinnedpeas, they've put, which is a whole lot more complimentary than their last effort - a few weeks back the cheeky buggers changed it to Norman Horsering while I was in a meeting, and a visitor from the External Examinations Board asked one of my staff where he could find Mr. Horsering.”

“Cheeky buggers indeed; I teach in a primary school in Saltley, Birmingham, and my pupils are bad enough.”

“The students are a decent crowd most of the time,” Norton said, watching Scrimbly's materialisation on the hearth rug out of the corner of his eye – the creature's tail was lifted and he was cleaning his bottom. “They're a bit boisterous sometimes, especially when they've been on the razzle.”

“Are you aware that an entity has just materialised on your hearth rug?”

“Really? What does it look like?”

“You are aware, I can tell, but you're checking my credentials to find out whether or not I'm a charlatan. I've never seen anything like it in my life. It's a fluffy pale yellow creature maybe a little bigger than a cat, it has little knobs on its head like budding antlers and huge, silvery eyes like a fish. It's licking its bum. Oh, and it's name is Scrimbly.”

“Amazing! At least I know that I'm not headed for the funny farm. I can't tell you how relieved I am, April, it's been hell since we moved into this house. No one believes what I've witnessed here, not even my missus – she's gone to stay at her mothers with the kids until I sell the house and see a psychiatrist, neither of which I feel particularly inclined to do. Actually there's more to it than that, our marriage was struggling long before we came here. I may be wrong, but I suspect that she has another man, the guilt is painted all over her face..... I like this house, I just need to understand what's going on here, and I need to find a way to control if not actually put a stop to the more extreme activities.”

“Scrimbly! Scrimbly! Scrimbly!” the little apparition squealed, running around in circles, then it slowly sank into the floor as if the floorboards had been replaced by a pool of dense liquid.

“Scrimbly is here most of the time,” Norton continued, “but occasionally he's absent for a day or so. I think he likes this place better than his own world; he sleeps on my bed most nights, he's quite affectionate and he's no trouble at all except when he falls asleep in doorways and I fall over him. It's strange, he's perfectly solid most of the time, you can stroke him and feel his warmth, but at other times he's sort of flimsy, only half here, if you know what I mean. As far as I know he doesn't eat or drink - not here, anyway.”

“This is a very frantic place,” April said, sipping her tea and looking around the room. “You have a lot of spirits passing through. I say spirits for want of a better word, a lot of them aren't spirits at all, they seem to be physical or at least partially physical entities. It's like a junction of several busy thoroughfares, it's like a motorway service station on a Summer Bank Holiday. But there's something odd. I don't sense any human spirits or terrestrial animal spirits. Actually there are a few passing through, I can smell their tracks, believe it or not, but they don't stick around for long, I guess it's too unruly for their liking. Scrimbly and his kin are from elsewhere, I have no idea where..... God, this is an exciting place, it's buzzing with activity, and I've never witnessed anything quite like it before. May I have a walk around the property?”

“Yes, feel free. Do you want me to show you around?”

“If you must, but I'd prefer to go alone, I need to focus my attention, which I won't be able to do if I'm talking to you. I want to explore the garden too, if you don't mind.”

“Go wherever you wish, I don't have any skeletons in my cupboards. Not that I can remember, anyway. I'll sit here and read the papers.”

*************************

April wandered around for well over an hour, and Norton was beginning to wonder what she was up to. She had a quick look upstairs, but she spent most of her time flitting from room to room on the ground floor, focusing on the back room and the kitchen, and she spent a while in the garden strolling up and down and standing in deep thought. “You have some very odd visitors,” she said when she returned and sat on the sofa. “I saw a group of creatures in the kitchen and later in the garden that look like gooseberries, only they were around four feet tall, and I really don't know what to make of them.”

“I see them quite often. Unlike some of my visitors they can't speak, they don't speak in my presence, anyway. They chatter amongst themselves like monkeys, and sometimes they make a shrill noise and scuttle around in a panic. That usually means that the centipedes are coming, and the gooseberries vanish instantly - they're shit scared of those things.”

“Yes, you told me about the whistling centipedes in one of your emails, but I haven't seen one yet. I've been looking for focal points of the mighty streams of energy surging through this place, and there are several – there's a very strong hub in the kitchen, another in here, one just over halfway down the garden by the big pine tree and a few weaker examples dotted around the house. That's most unusual, there's usually just one window, or portal as some people call them, and if you know what you're doing it's not too difficult to close it off if that's what the owner of the property wants, which is usually the case. The windows in and around this house are very potent, though, and I'm not sure if I'm capable of sealing them..... Most of the entities are fairly harmless, but I've sensed a fair few that are potentially dangerous, and we need to get rid of them pronto.”

“I've had a few nasty experiences since we moved into the house. We had a cross collie called Sonia when we moved in, but after a couple of days of non-stop whining and barking she jumped over the fence at the bottom of the garden and scarpered, and we haven't seen her since. I've told you all this before, April, haven't I?”

“Yes, but it won't hurt to refresh my memory.”

“While we were settling in a tall, thin, insubstantial thing that looked like a clown kept invading my dreams, and when I awoke I could still sense its presence, but I never actually saw it while I was conscious. The clown uttered some pretty nasty things, I'm telling you. It was generally accompanied by swarms of flies, fat black beetles and appalling odours that vanished after a while, but apparently only I could register them. I had a shiver run down my spine every time it came, but thankfully it went away after a few days. Another time a naked fat woman appeared in the back room while I was alone in the house, only she wasn't quite human - she was covered in big scales like a pangolin, and she had piercing yellow eyes. I literally shat myself when I saw her, I screamed my head off. The thing laughed at me and called me a pussy, and then it vanished, and I haven't seen it since. Oh, and there was a shapeless something like a big luminous slug that haunted the place recently, but I think it's gone now. Whenever that appeared it filled me with a dark, creeping dread that I couldn't shift for days, like it was poisoning my mind or something.”

“Occult literature refers to such beings by many names, but my favourite is 'wanderers of the wastes'. They can only appear in window areas, but it's sometimes possible to block them, so to speak. You say you don't mind the harmless beings?”

“No, I don't mind them at all, I've gradually gotten used to them. Especially Scrimbly, he's a darling, and I've grown quite attached to him.”

“I want to make an attempt to shift your more unwelcome visitors, then, and with a bit of luck I may be able to enlist the help of the innocuous ones. Some of them are bright and worldly-wise - or otherworldly-wise, I should say.....”

“Right. I'll make some more tea, then.”