UPSTAIRS
I’m a bit worried that this is about half a story, but here goes.
H. G. Wells had always wanted to be a writer. I guess it’s important at this point to stress that I am not talking about that H. G. Wells, but a different one. One you don’t know. And he always wanted to be writer.
Cause, you know. He knew all that stuff about writers that everyone thinks. You know, that’ they’re really handsome and admired by everyone. You know, that they can just like hold an audience in the palm of their hands, and like everyone in the room really looks up to them, and maybe gives them you know, like spare tenners.
You know, all that stuff that everyone knows about writers? That they dress really well, and even though they’re going a bit bald, they still basically look really good cause they can carry it off. You know. All that stuff about writers that everyone says. You know?
Anyway. H.G. Wells did not become a writer. Well, that one did, obviously, but this one didn’t. I realise that this is confusing. On reflection, I could have chosen a name that wasn’t already a writer, and made this whole bit, you know, easier.
But you know what they say about writers. They basically make really good decisions all the time vis-a-vis all of the writing and whatnot, even if all the evidence points to the contrary.
Well. H. G. Wells. Do you know what? I’m going to call him by his first name. Umm. H. Umm. Hadrian. If you’re wondering why he was christened Hadrian, you need look no further than his father who was a builder by trade, and was thus a big fan of walls. His middle name is...Gaydrian. I have no idea why his mother insisted that his middle name be ‘Gaydrian’, but perhaps she wasn’t keen on the idea of grandchildren, and thought a gentle nudge in the right direction was a good idea.
No. Hadrian Gaydrian Wells did not become a writer. He got a normal job. The kind of job that writers have to really research properly so that they don’t sound like their characters work in a nonsense job and their creator is entirely divorced from real life. Hadrian was an office under-cleric for a company called Bonkington and Son and Son, which made piltroons for the Paradeemax industry. The industry that is largely concerned with the manufacture and use of Paradeemaxes. Paradeemaxum. You get the point.
But Hadrian Gaydrian Wells as we meet him for the first time, is moving into a new flat. Well. Not a new flat. The ground floor of a large old victorian terrace, with a communal staircase and front door that he shared with the flat upstairs.
Hadrian had looked at hundreds of flats before choosing this one, if by hundreds you mean three, and by choosing, you mean settled for. During the short search Hadrian had quietly lost the will to live. He had been instructed to imagine his potential flats with his possessions in. He definitely owned a loaf of bread, and half a jar of Marmite, so he imagined these in the quiet ground floor flat, in the quiet house in the quiet road, and was basically satisfied.
The house seemed quite well looked after. New gutters. The number of the house painted on the side of the wheelie bin. All the classy things. As he moved in his loaf of bread and a third of a jar of Marmite some workmen were there repairing some of the brickwork at the front of the house. Hadrian said hello to the workmen, and hoped that he didn’t sound like he wasn’t the kind of man who wasn’t comfortable talking to workmen. He offered them some marmite sandwiches, which they accepted. So the eventual moving in business was pretty light work.
The thing that was quite interesting about Hadrian was the fact that he had OCD. He had been told this by someone who was ‘doing a course on it’ at a party after he had spent some time arranging the cucumber batons into a damp grid. Obviously having the OCD is supposed to be a bad thing, but Hadrian took to it with relish, and before long he was flicking the light switches on and off, and throwing soap away after only one use, and lining everything up, checking things and counting things. Yes. All the counting. Counting was a good one. Counting and measuring.
Six windows on the front of the house. His ceilings were eight feet high. Twelve cupboard handles in the kitchen. Eighteen steps in the staircase in the communal hall leading up to the first floor each of those eight inches high. 23 maltesers, 22, 21, 20, 19 maltesers, 18, then 17, 16, 15, I‘m sure you get the general idea. Hadrian liked maltesers.
The good thing about the OCD was that it gave Hadrian something to do while he waited for iplayer to buffer which it did a lot.
Over the next few weeks, Hadrian settled in, and bought himself such luxuries as a bed and a chair, and his little flat became a home. With eight foot high ceilings. And five doors.
And just after that the trouble started. Hadrian was woken, in the middle of the night, by his upstairs neighbour, whom he had naturally never met. He was stomping around on the floor so heavily it put Hadrian in mind of a giant killing ants while trying on a pari of massive clogs made of dark matter. He stamped up and down, and up and down. This was peculiar. He had never heard a peep from him, or her, before. And when the stomping stopped, the dragging began.
The dragging of furniture up and down the floor, dragging what sounded like hugely heavy bits of bed or sofa across the floor.
And when the dragging stopped the scratching began. The scratching was quietest of all, but the most penetrating, scratching and scrabbling and scrabbling and scratching. It screeked and scrunched and scraped and scrippled and sckreeked on and on.
He couldn’t understand it. Why this sudden change in his formerly quiet upstairs neighbour?
He thrust his head under the pillow, and with some effort got back to sleep.
He vowed that if this happened again, he would definitely say something. Or at least, get cross about it and say nothing but feel righteously indignant.
It did happen again.
And again.
And again.
Night after night of stomping and dragging and stomping and dragging and stomping and dragging and scrippling.
Hadrian Gaydrian Wells was getting no sleep at all, and his work in the Paradeemax industry was suffering as a result.
He finally decided to address the issue.
At 2.32 a.m. on a Thursday night, in the midst of a particularly vigorous stomping and scraping session Hadrian went up the eighteen stairs and, taking a deep breath, knocked on the first floor door.
At that moment, the noises stopped.
He waited.
Then a male voice called out.
“Come in. It’s not locked.’
Confused, frightened and a little bit empowered, Hadrian twisted the doorknob and pushed.
The door opened, and he was met with a sight that confused him.
The flat upstairs was very different to his. He stepped straight out into one very large room. Wooden floors. Open plan. A neat kitchen at on side. Hand rails on all the walls. A large LCD TV mounted on the wall. In the middle was a large bed. And in the bed was a man.
‘Hello.’
Said the man in the bed. But he didn’t get up.
‘Hello’ said Hadrian. ‘I’m H.G. Wells’.
‘Oh.’ said the man. ‘Is this a dream?’.
‘No. Sorry. I can see how that might have been confusing. My name’s Hadrian. I live downstairs. I’m sorry to come up so late, but I couldn’t go on any longer without saying something. I’ve not been able to sleep.’
‘I’ve noticed.’ said the man.
‘I’m Jules, by the way. Jules Fern.’.
‘Jules Verne?’
‘No. Jules Fern, like bracken. It’s less confusing than your name by quite a long way.’
‘Yes. Yes. Um. Listen. It’s all the noise’. Hadrian continued. ‘All the dragging of furniture, and, um...’
He looked around at the almost entirely furniture free space in front of him.
‘All the stomping around.’.
The man sat up in bed, he was wearing a light blue T-shirt. He looked at Hadrian.
‘And what is your explanation, Hadrian?’.
Hadrian was staggered. ‘What’s my explanation? What’s your explanation? Why so much noise. Why all the stamping around.’.
Jules pulled back the crisp white duvet to reveal two things that weren’t there. Namely his legs. Hadrian remembered another count he’d done. One stairlift.
‘I haven’t been stamping around. You’ve been stamping around.’
There was a silence for a moment.
‘Well. I’m stumped’. Said Hadrian. And he was.
‘Me too.’ Said Jules, waggling them. He was stumped aswell, but in two ways.
That’s the kind of clever thing writers do.
So the mystery remained. And the noises continued. Often, when they couldn’t sleep, Hadrian would make the trip up the eighteen stairs and he and his upstairs neighbour would meet and talk. Mainly about what on earth it could be.
A fortnight later Hadrian did the maths.
18 stairs, eight inches high. 144 inches. His ceiling was 8 feet high. 96 inches. Somewhere the house was hiding 48 inches of space.
A few days later, the workmen returned, and after a round of marmite sandwiches they opened up the floor of the upstairs flat and discovered where the four feet had disappeared to.
In between the two flats was an extra half a storey. Inside the dark and musty little space were piles and piles of dusty broken furniture. PIles and piles of paper, and towards the front wall of the house, the skeletal remains of a man. A very small man. Whoever it was, there was very little left of him. He had been dead for many years. the bones lay crumpled on the floor, large boots covering what was left of the feet. A section of the wall was covered in deep scratches. The patch of newly repaired brickwork.
When all of this was cleared out, the noises stopped, and Hadrian could sleep again. He continued to see his friend upstairs, and neither of them ever said the word ghost. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the dead man. He had saved a few of the papers they had found in the weird little half a flat. Pages and pages of an unfinished novel. The little man had evidently been a writer. Living all his life with Half a story in half a storey.
Hadrian Gaydrian Wells didn’t ever wish he was a writer again. And in years to come he became the best goddamn office under cleric Bonkington and Son and Son had ever seen.
1 comment:
"Gaydrian", hoohoo! I love these.
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