If I Stop Believing Will It Stop Being True?

Hello all,

Here is the third short story that I have written for 'Tall Tales', an evening held every two months at the Good Ship in Kilburn. I hope you enjoy it. if you like it, or don't do leave a comment - they're very interesting to read. But you know - nothing personal. Do point others in the direction of these aswell. If they are not read, these poor stories will die.

If I Stop Believing Will It Stop Being True?

Euston Rhodes did not believe in the supernatural. In fact , he barely believed in the natural and spent a large part of his twenties suspecting that kiwi fruit were manufactured, and the little hairs put on after to put people off the scent. He still thinks that sea-horses are animatronic. He may be right.

I’m aware that I skimmed over his name. I’ll say it again. His name was Euston Rhodes. His father, Walter B. Rhodes, insisted on it, not because he was a massive fan of London, but because he was a massive fan of Monopoly, and considered Euston Road to be his ‘lucky square’. It was odd that he should think that, as he had never, ever won a game of Monopoly despite the fact that he played it twice a week without fail, and had invested in a large hardback book entitled ‘How to Definitely Win at Monopoly’, and read it twice, even though it had more spelling mistakes than it would have been thought possible to miss. Including a spelling of the Old Kent Road, that, if read aloud, would sound like he was insulting the elder members of his family tree.

But still - his love for Monopoly continued, and his son was called Euston Rhodes. Except by his best friend Len who insisted on calling him ‘A501’.

Anyway. All this is irrelevant. Euston had decided to buy himself a house. He was finally fed up with his flat in London, largely because its lack of largeness. He once tried to measure his record-breakingly small galley kitchen with a shatterproof metre ruler, only to find that the kitchen was less than a metre wide. So determined was he that he couldn’t possibly have been living in a place where the kitchen was less than a metre wide that he wrestled and squeezed with the inflexible ruler until it became firmly wedged, between the side of the microwave and the laminated picture of a kitten in sunglasses with the legend ‘Lighten Up Dude’ underneath it. Even the sight of the louche kitten couldn’t make Euston ‘Lighten Up’ when he realised that the metre ruler’s claims of shatterproof were not empty words, and he had made his kitchen even harder to get in and out of. After six weeks of being forced to limbo with hot pans, Euston decided to move. And not to a differently small flat in London, but a differently big house, somewhere in the country. Because, as we all know, if you sell a tiny flat in London, you can buy a massive house anywhere outside the M25, and still have enough change left over to buy a Bentley or a Picasso, and lunch. Actually - it turns out that if you sell a tiny flat in London, you can afford to buy a two bedroom terraced cottage in Suffolk. If they are available at an amazingly low price. And there was one that was.

So this is what Euston Rhodes decided to do. He put his Euston Road flat on the market. I realise know that I forgot to mention that his flat was on the A501. It did cause some problems when it came to giving his address to people over the phone, particularly if the people on the other end of the phone were idiots, which they sometimes were :

“Yes, it’s Euston Rhodes, Yes with an ‘s’, Like the colossus. 9, no I’m not German, I’d have said ‘no’ - ‘9’. No, I’m not German. A, no - not ‘pardon’ - ‘a’ - Euston Road. No, not with an ‘s’. No, not like the colossus. No, my name is not Colossus. Tell you what, I’ll email it.”

With the metre ruler eventually shattered by Len, who was surprisingly strong, the Euston Road flat sold very quickly to a man called Paul Mall, who’s father was not a fan of Monopoly, though you’d have been forgiven for thinking this might have been the case, but was in fact a fan of Paul Hogan, the star of Crocodile Dundee 2, and at least one other film.

So, within a matter of weeks, Euston had bought a beautiful 2 bedroom cottage in a tiny village in Suffolk. His cottage was on the quiet main street, and it suited him down to the ground. It is worth mentioning a this point that the village in question was called Euston. And the main street in the village? Well - I’m sure you can guess. It was called ‘High Street’.

By the way, there is definitely a village in Suffolk called Euston. You can check it and everything.

Anyway. Again. About a thousand years ago I mentioned something important. That Euston Rhodes did not believe in the supernatural. But this belief in lack of belief was pushed to the limits the moment he moved in to the cottage in Suffolk.

The cottage was a little run down, and had been empty for some years. So Euston set about redecorating the place and did his best to ignore the massive things that clearly needed replacing. Like the ancient and deadly wiring. And the roof. But he could very quickly make this house a home with paintbrushes, a wobbly stepladder and a healthy disregard for sugar soap and masking tape. After all - it was only he who had to look at the scrappy edges.

Soon the sitting room, with large windows looking out on the high street, was spick and span and cosy, the chimney swept, and a fire set in the grate. The kitchen, though old fashioned, cleaned up a treat, and was well over a metre wide. In fact, it was about four metres wide, which to Euston seemed like a tennis court.

He then stripped the carpet from the stairs to reveal the wood, but left the beige carpet on the landing. He sanded the boards as much as he could be bothered, which was about half as much as he should have done, and painted them a beautiful glossy black from bottom to top. He stood at the top of the landing, and stared at the shiny black river tumbling downwards from his feet, proud of himself, and his move, and his decisions and his new kitchen and staircase and everything.

It was then he realised that the paint would take at least eight hours to dry, and in the meantime he was stuck upstairs. It was at this moment of realisation that he heard the unmistakable sound of breaking glass behind him. Turning around he saw a small blue bottle, apparently made of extremely fine glass. He bent down to inspect it, and was struck by a powerful smell of lemons. It was most peculiar. It was not a bottle he recognised. The landing was entirely empty. There was nowhere for the bottle to fall from, no shelf, no cabinet. But Euston was not one for thinking far fetched thoughts, and so assumed that it had simply fallen out of a cupboard in one of the bedrooms, one of the ones he had not yet emptied, rolled into the landing and promptly smashed itself. He cleaned up the bits and went into the bedroom he had decided to call the master bedroom. He threw the bits of glass in the bin, and lay down on the bed. And shivered.

Because the temperature had noticeably dropped. Even though there was fire crackling away downstairs, and the heating was on. The room was cold.

And when he went to stand up. He was actually going to check on the stair paint. I mean - It says eight hours, but it might be fine after 25 minutes, mightn’t it - when he went to stand up, he found that he couldn’t. At least, not without a great deal of effort. There was a resistance. Like trying to push your hand into putty, except of course there was nothing there. He felt pressure on his hands, his legs, his shoulder, the side of his face. Now and again a sensation like, and this is how he thought of it, chilled smoked salmon slices being pulled across his cheek.

Tiredness of course. Tiredness and paint fumes. That was it. That was why it was hard to get up. That was why his head felt heavy. That was why, now and again his vision went blurry, as if suddenly glimpsed through a smeary window.

It didn’t cross his mind as to why a beautiful two bedroomed cottage in a picturesque village in Suffolk was available at such a low price. Or why it had stood empty for so long.

Because to anyone else it would be clear. Euston’s Euston house was haunted.

With great effort, Euston pushed himself up from the bed and staggered into the room, feeling as if he had forgotten how to balance himself. He shivered again, and grabbed the radiator. It was burning hot. Overcome with too many sensations at once he whipped his hand away, stumbled backwards into the room, knocking a box marked ‘Games’ flying from the dressing table. The contents included a Monopoly set which opened and scattered tiny cars and shoes and hats, and tiny red and green buildings, and showered pastel coloured money all over the bedroom floor. He noted but ignored the fact that some of the tiny red and green buildings hovered too long in the air before hitting the floorboards. Because the air was thicker than it should have been.

Not feeling well enough to tidy up, Euston grasped the wall, and demanded that it stay still. He stared at his own reflection. In a mirror obviously. He stared at his own reflection and willed everything to suddenly be all right again. Like the first signs of a toothache, it might just all go away, mightn’t it? He stared and stared at his own face until all the various parts of it became abstract. He found the very idea of focussing on it peculiar and wrong, in the same way that a word becomes nonsensical if you repeat it over and over again. But still he stared at himself. And continued staring when his vision started to cloud over. Misting in from the outside like a vignette. Creeping further and further towards the centre of his eyes. He found that he couldn’t focus anymore. He shook his head to make it go away, but it didn’t.

He felt a creeping pressure around his waist, snaking sausages of cold pressure creeping around his ribs and under his armpits, meeting at the back and squeezing.

Indigestion, he thought, perhaps they really meant the best before date on the pork pie. It was just having an adverse effect on him. Squeezing him. Then he realised that this was exactly what Ebenezer Scrooge thought, whilst being visited by ghosts, so he put the though out of his head, and decided it was a heart attack. Or Scurvy. He certainly didn’t eat anywhere near enough limes.

HIs mind racing, Euston wriggled free of the too thick air, but blundered around the room. The space was still unfamiliar, and his vision still murky and impenetrable.

Shaking his head, which now felt like it was full of night, he hazarded a squint. He found that the image of his face in the mirror had been burned into his eyes like the green trails that follow a camera flash. He saw his own face floating in the air.

It was at this point that he thought. ‘Hang the bloody stair paint - I’ll give it another coat tomorrow’.

Euston made for the landing, feeling like he was leaving a trail of himself in the hot and cold air, and grabbed the wooden newel cap at the top of the stairs to steady himself.

Again, he felt the gelid sensation creep around his ribs, and press against his chest. He shook himself free again, stamping his feet to clear his head, to clear his body. His left foot found the underside of the Monopoly board, which had been flung clear of the bedroom and onto the landing floor.

The shiny playing surface moved swiftly on the beige landing carpet and took Euston with it. The back of his head smashed meatily against the wall, sounded like a toddler stepping on a bag of Rice Krispies. He grasped at the air desperate for a hand hold. He found nothing, but noted in the fraction of a second that it took to do so that it felt like draping his hands through a puddle.

He tipped backwards, and thumped his back on the newly painted stairs, and emitted a further crunch as his body pivoted and slumped against the greasy blackness. Euston tumbled down and down, the life jetting from him with every bump and grisly thump until he landed on the bottom, covered in sticky black streaks, and a ruined Monopoly board. Euston Rhodes was dead. As no one took in this information, and a little green monopoly banknote landed on the Euston Road square. His father’s lucky square.

The profound sceptic was surprised to wake up a few moments later in what can only be described as an afterlife. The thing that was Euston Rhodes was asked his name by an unseen creature to which the thing that was Euston Rhodes was silent for a moment before replying ‘A501 I think.’.

A501 learnt that the afterlife consists of myriad decisions. What would A501 like to do. A501 thought for a moment again and tried to piece together what his life had been before, and could only see the briefest of images. All he knew was that the thing he had been had died too soon.

“I should like to save my life, if I may”.

“You may. What is the last thing you remember of this life?”

“A long black shining tongue reaching out in front of me. Him.”

“Then that is where you shall go to.”

“I can travel in time?”

“I don’t understand the question. By the way - have you tried your welcome hamper?”

A501 looked down and saw a little wicker hamper where his feet would have been on where the floor would have been. He took a small fine blue bottle of homemade lemonade and did what he did instead of swallowing the liquid inside.

“I shall go to who I was, and hug him and squeeze him to make it all right. I shall stop him from falling into the black river.”

“Then go.”

And with that A501 disappeared. Back to our world. To save Euston Rhodes’ life.