The Man Who Could Make Worlds, Chapters Four to Six

Chapter Four

Billy followed Rex down the stairs, though not in darkness this time. And, inevitably, the cat followed. Billy learned his name was Marius.

There were no pictures hanging in the hallway, or anywhere else in the house. There was a calendar hanging in the downstairs hallway. For October, it showed a blood-red sun descending over an autumnal landscape. Billy got the impression it was there for stricly practical reasons. A few dates had been circled.

In the hallway, there were more bookcases, once again rising almost to the ceiling. When he saw that Billy cocked his head sideways to read the spines, Rex stopped.

“I wrote these books, too”, he said, pulling a thick volume in navy-blue binding from a middle shelf. “I’m not just Rex Cunningham, you know”.

“No?” asked Billy. After Rex’s behaviour upstairs, he was almost frightened to say a word.

“No”, said Rex, and from his tight smile, Billy could say he enjoyed explaining this. “I’m also Morgan Archer, and Nelson Freeman, and Dexter Armstrong.” He handed Billy the volume. “This is one I wrote as Dexter Armstrong.”

Billy’s pulse had quickened as he took the book—more Rex Cunningham books that he didn’t even know about!—but the wild hope within him died when he read the title.

“The…The See-ux Wars: A History”, he read aloud.

“It’s pronounced Soo”, said Rex Cunnigham, frowning. “Don’t they teach you history in school anymore?”

“Yes”, said Billy, frightened of not answering. “Just not—“

“Just not the Sioux wars, evidently”, said Rex, taking the book from Billy’s hands and slotting it back into its place, as though he had decided the boy didn’t deserve to see it after all. “No, it’s not just make-your-own-adventure stories that I write. I write military history as Dexter Armstrong. I write marine history—that’s about boats and ships—as Nelson Freeman. And when I’m Morgan Archer, I write about the occult.”

“What—what is the occult?” asked Billy.

“Magic, boy, magic”, said Rex. “Guess how many books I’ve written?”

Billy knew instantly to make a low guess. If he guessed more than the old man had written, he could hardly act surprised if it was less—and it was plain as a newspaper headline that Rex Cunningham wanted him to be surprised.

“Fifty?” asked Billy. He knew that twenty-seven books had been written under the name Rex Cunningham. Billy owned them all.

“Not even close”, said the writer, with evident pride. “I’ve written over four hundred books, Master Reynolds. Four hundred and four, to be exact.”

Billy tried to look suitably gobsmacked. He stared at the old man, widening his eyes. “Four hundred? How is that possible?”

Rex shrugged, nonchalantly. “I write, Master Reynolds”, he said. “That’s what I do. Ever since my wife died forty years ago, I’ve been utterly alone in the world. I don’t bother the world, and the world doesn’t bother me. I sit in front of my typewriter and I write all day.”

“And read”, said Billy, looking around the hallway with its hundreds—maybe even thousands—of books. “You must read a lot too.”

Rex Cunningham shrugged again. “I used to”, he said. “I have read all these books, more or less. But for many years now—well, I don’t have time for much reading. There are too many books to write. Too many books to write.”

There was a knock on the front door. For a moment, Billy felt surprised to be reminded that there was a world outside this house.

Marius hissed.

“More intrusive children”, said Rex Cunningham. “They’re always spying on me, the whole year round. They want to know what the old recluse is doing. Goodness knows what stories they’ve concocted. Unless their imaginations have been completely wiped away by television and computer games and they’re incapable of imagining anything.”

There was another knock, and a pause, and then another.

“If it was only the children,” said Rex, staring at the door with an offended look, “I might let them in. It’s the parents I can’t endure. I can’t bear their chatter. Do you watch television?”

The question was so unexpected that Billy stared at the old man in bewilderment.

“Well, yes or no?” asked Rex, in a sharper voice.

“No”, said Billy. And then, frightened that the lie would seem too blatant: “I mean, yes. Not much, though. Barely at all.”

Even this was a lie. Before he’d discovered the books of Rex Cunningham, Billy had often spent whole Saturday mornings and afternoons watching television. Whole school evenings, too, putting off the moment when he had to do homework until after the next programme.

“Hmph”, said Rex, raising his right hand to his chin and stroking it with his thin, nicotine-stained fingers. “I suppose you won’t find a man, woman or child who doesn’t watch the accursed contraption anymore. I remember the first time I saw television. It was in a shop window in Birmingham, a little after the War, and it was showing some—some kind of variety show, I believe. I hated it from the moment I saw it, but I never guessed the effect it would have. Worse than an atomic bomb, if you ask me.”

There was another knock at the door, and Marius hissed again—louder this time.

“To blazes with them!, cried Rex, glaring at the door. “Let us adjourn to the kitchen, my young friend, away from these interlopers.”

Billy only knew the word interlopers from Rex Cunningham books. In fact, Rex Cunningham books had sent him to the dictionary a lot, and that was a part of why he liked them. He liked dictionaries. Sometimes he would read them just for the pleasure of it.

Words were amazing things, he thought. What were they except marks on paper? And yet, they could conjure up anything—space rockets, haunted houses, galaxies, centuries of history, mermaids, anything.

Sometimes he would come across a word that he liked so much that he would whisper it again and again, feeling it had some magical power; alabaster, zodiac, galvanize, pentangle, Olympiad.

Words were magical. That’s what he couldn’t help thinking.

“Through here, my young guest”, said Rex, giving a little ironic bow and opening the cream-coloured kitchen door. The hinge creaked a little as he opened it.

It was the largest, most high-ceilinged kitchen Billy had ever seen—you could easily hold a party of thirty people in it-- and it seemed even larger because there was so little furniture in it. The kitchen table was huge, as though it was designed for a party. Twenty people could probably have sat around it. But there were only four chairs—tall, carved, dark wooden chairs—neatly arranged, one each side.

The lino underneath was a green and white checker pattern, and it was so clean that it gleamed. A rather old-fashioned looking cooker was installed in the corner of the room, and the black marble-effect sideboard beside it gleamed as well. Along the walls ran cupboards with frosted glass panes in front. The white, basic-looking fridge, bare of fridge magents, looked tiny in the enormous room. Its hum barely made a dent in the kitchen’s silence.

Venetian blinds hung on the windows and the panes of the back door, closed so that there was no view of the outside world. Now and again, they glowed different colours as the fireworks continued to explode outside.

“I have a lady who cooks and cleans for me”, said Rex. “It took me a while to find one that wouldn’t snoop around and wouldn’t interrupt me when I was working. I wonder if you’ve ever met a lady—- as opposed to a mere woman-- in your whole life, Master Cunningham? They used to be quite plentiful, I assure you.”

Billy wasn’t sure what to say to this. He wondered if he should have been insulted for his mother’s sake. He pictured how she danced and sang when she was drunk, and somehow he couldn’t feel cross at Rex’s words.

“Do people still drink tea?”, asked Rex, drawing two mugs from a tree that stood beside the kitchen sink. There were only two mugs on the tree, and Billy guessed that there weren’t any more cups in the house. Both were plain white.

“Sure”, said Billy.

“I can’t keep up with the fashions” said Rex, opening a drawer. “All the books I ever seem to see in bookshops these days are cookery books. Or gardening books. Or books about sport. People getting fatter and fatter, and when they’re eating their burgers and chips they watch football and tennis and swimming. If they have a death-wish, I don’t really blame them. I’m not sure what they have to live for, when I look at their way of life.”

The author’s back was turned to him now, as he made the tea. Billy watched him, surprised at how small and bent he looked from behind.

“You think that’s a terrible thing to say, no doubt”, said Rex, still not turning around. A low whistle began to come from the kettle.

“No”, said Billy.

Rex turned around, and there was a sharp light in his eyes.

“I’ll thank you not to humour me, young sir”, he said. He rolled the final r, and cocked one of his eyebrows. “Are you a sycophant?”

“A…a what?”, asked Billy, more nervous by the second.

“A sycophant”, said Rex, smiling and speaking the word more slowly. “A yes-man. A toady. A lickspittle. Someone who doesn’t have the gumption to stick up for himself and his beliefs.”

Billy suspected this was exactly what he was—- he never argued with anybody if he could avoid it—- but he said, “No. I’m not a sycophant.”

“You’d better not be”, said Rex, narrowing his eyes, as though he was examining Billy closer. “Because if you were, I would have made a terrible mistake.”

The whistling of the kettle turned to a shrill piping, and Rex turned his back to Billy again. He had no idea what Rex meant, but it made him uneasy.

He heard the sound of water tinkling as it entered the mugs, the ringing of a spoon against their edges. It all sounded ridiculously loud in that huge kitchen. “Milk?”, said Rex. “I can’t offer you sugar as I don’t have any.”

“Milk. Please. Thank you,” said Billy.

“Sit down, Master Cunningham”, said Rex, stepping towards the fridge. “And stop shuffling your feet and panting like that. I’m not going to behead you any time soon.”

Billy stepped towards the kitchen table. Rex had only switched one light on as they entered and the kitchen was half in shadow. From underneath the table, Billy saw the glint of Marius’s eyes. The beast was still watching him. Every moment, Billy was concious of their green and unblinking glow.

Billy pulled out a chair and began to sat down on it. Then the thought struck him that it was at the head of the table and Rex was probably used to sitting there. He pushed it back into place and walked around to one of the table’s sides, pulling out the chair there and gingerishly lowering himself into it. He wondered if anyone had sat here before.

From beneath the table, he could hear the purring of Marius. It was a threatening sort of purring, he thought.

“Tell me, Master Reynolds”, said Rex, as he walked towards the table, a mug in each hand. “What future do you see for yourself?”

Billy hated this question more than he could say. He was disappointed that Rex Cunningham would even ask it.

“I don’t really think about it”, he said.

Rex placed the mug of milky tea in front of Billy, put his own mug of black tea in the place that Billy had just vacated, pulled out a chair, and sat down. He rested his elbows on the wood, joined his hands above them, and leaned towards Billy. The table was so huge, that there was two or three feet between the old man and the boy. But the stare in Rex’s eyes was so intense, the distance seemed nothing at all.

“I don’t blame you”, said Rex. “I don’t blame you one little bit.”

Billy’s disappointment evaporated at those words. He couldn’t imagine any other adult saying that. Whatever Rex was—at least he wasn’t ordinary.

“I wouldn’t think of my future if I was a boy your age”, he went on, his lips thinning with disdain. “What a prospect! Another few years of school, being drip-fed a diet of babyish lessons, political correctness, watered-down history, goodness knows what else. Then what? College? University? Sociology and feminism and Marxism and being taught to question everything when you’ve never been taught to learn anything in the first place? Being taught to rebel, when you’ve never been taught loyalty? And then, working life. A desk in a cubicle in an office block somewhere, a house in some ugly suburb, a car, a garden, a family who’ll give you grey hairs in middle age, all of them screaming for the latest products advertised on the television and having emotional scenes every few days. Is that what you want?”

Billy spent so much time wondering if he’d ever get a job, at anything, that he could easily have answered yes. But he just answered, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”, asked Rex, raising his eyebrows. “You don’t know? What on earth do you know? What would you like, Billy?”

Billy could see he was going to have to answer this one, so he said, “Well, I don’t want to work in an office but---“

“Oh, for goodness sake”, said Rex Cunningham, thumping the table with his fist so that both mugs of tea shook. For a moment—only a moment—he looked furious. “I’m not your career guidance counsellor, boy. I’m not talking about work. I’m not talking about earning a living. I mean, what would you like?”

The old man looked hungry now, almost like a vampire about to bite.

“I don’t know what you mean”, said Billy. “What—“

He expected Rex to thump the table again, but this time he only sighed. “What you’d like”, he repeated. “If everything was possible. If anything was possible. Forget schoool. Forget jobs. Forget college. Forget money and houses and the ads on the television. If you could do anything, anything at all, what would you like to do? Quick.”

The last word was spoken so sharply, so impatiently, that Billy had answered before he knew it—and he would never understand what made him answer like he did

“To fly”, he said. “That’s what I’d really like.”

Rex smiled. To Billy’s intense relief, it was a pleased smile. A very pleased smile.

“Good”, said the old man, rubbing his thumbs together. “Very good. Go on.”

“I don’t mean like flying in a plane—“

“Of course not”, said Rex. “I understood that at once. You mean, flying like a bird.”

“Yes”, said Billy. “I think about it when I’m walking to school. I think about how—“

“You think about how you could just run forward, getting faster and faster, and then begin to run over the ground instead of on it, and rise higher and higher, until you were higher than the houses, and then until you were higher than the apartment blocks and the tallest trees, and higher and higher until your school was a tiny square underneath you, looking no bigger than a postage stamp.”

Billy nodded, even though he’d imagined it different to that. In his fantasy, once his feet left the ground, he never looked at his school again.

Rex’s eyes were bright with excitement now. He reached his hand across to Billy, as though to clutch his arm. But they were too far apart and the hand simply came down on the table, it fingers clenched.

“What would you say”, said the old man, “if I told you that was possible? That you could do it right now?”

Chapter Five

There was a long, deep silence. Even the fireworks outside had stopped, as though the world was listening.

Rex Cunningham was staring at Billy more intensely than anyone had ever stared at him before. It was very frightening. There was a wide smile on his face, and his lips twitched a little with excitement.

But it was obvious he wasn’t joking. Even Billy, who never knew when people were making fun of him, could tell that. He’d never seen anyone look so serious in his whole life.

He suddenly wished he’d told his parents, or somebody, that he’d come here. Who knew what this guy would do? But then, he thought he’d been pretty safe. He was a writer, for goodness’ sake. He had a publisher. His boos were sold in shops. Writers didn’t go around murdering people.

Or did they? Just because Billy had never heard of that happening…

“You disappoint me, my young friend”, said Rex, his smile slowly fading. “I thought you were different. I thought you would be a little more broad-minded. A little more open to life’s possibilities. And instead, you just gawk at me.”

Billy took a step backwards, without even meaning to. Rex noticed, and laughed. It was a harsh laugh, sarcastic laugh.

“You want to go?”, asked the old man, shaking his head slowly. “Why don’t you go, then? I won’t stop you.”

Billy stood there, gazing at the old man, unable to speak or move. Even the humming of the fridge seemed to have stopped.

The old man coughed—it was a dry, difficult cough—and rose from the table, his head bowed. All of a sudden, he looked very old and very weary.

“Go”, he said. “Go back to your family. Go back to school and timetables and pop music and credit cards and general election campaigns. That’s probably where you belong after all.”

Billy felt a hot flush of shame. This wasn’t how he imagined this visit going. In his fantasies, he’d become friends with Rex Harrison. His trips to Dublin became regular events. He even imagined helping him to write books as he grew older.

And now he was being ordered out of his house.

“Please”, he said. The voice that he heard coming out his own mouth was the voice of a sulky, whingy little boy. “I didn’t mean to—“

“What’s that?”, asked Rex, in a flat voice.

“I didn’t mean to offend you”, said Billy. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay.”

Rex coughed again, but this time, it sounded like a deliberate cough. A surprised cough. “What, stay with an old man who’s losing his marbles?”

“I don’t think that”, said Bily, quickly.

“An old man who imagines crazy things?”, asked Rex, sardonically. He was smoothing out the folds in his dressing gown now, and his eyes avoided Billy’s.

“I believe you”, said Billy. “It was just a shock, that’s all.”

“I wonder”, said Rex, looking up suddenly. There was a dreamy look in his eyes, a look Billy hadn’t seen in them until now. For a moment, he looked twenty or thirty years younger. “I wonder if you could really believe? If the muscles of your imagination are that supple, that strong?”

Billy forced himself to keep looking into Rex’s eyes. Of course he didn’t believe this old man could make him fly. But he would play along. He would pretend to believe him.

There was another knock at the front door. Rex didn’t even seem to have heard it this time. He seemed to be trying to read Billy’s soul.

Then he seemed to snap out of the spell, gave Billy a mysterious—even playful—smile, and turned on his heel. It was a sudden, sharp movement and it reminded Billy of the military parades he’d seen on television and in films. He wondered if Rex had been in the army once, long ago—if he’d even fought in a war.

Something brushed off Billy’s ankle, and he jumped.

He looked down. Of course, it was Marius. In the semi-darkness of the poorly-lit kitchen, he looked like a living shadow, even so close. For once, his eyes weren’t fixed on Billy—they weren’t even visible, which Billy found a relief. The cat was rubbing itself against his legs, its tail curled upwards in contentment.

So Marius, it seemed, had accepted that he wasn’t an enemy. Well, that was something. It made Billy feel a little less uneasy.

“Here”, said Rex, stepping back towards Billy. He was holding something in his hand. In the gloom of the kitchen, it took Billy a few moments to make out what it was.

A tea-towel. A particularly grubby, old-looking tea-towel.

“I don’t know if children still play children’s games, in this Age of Electricity”, Rex said, crinkling his nose and pursing his lips with distaste. Billy was already getting use to that particular expression. “Have you ever heard of a game called Blind Man’s Bluff?”

“Of course I’ve heard of it”, said Billy, once he’d realised that Rex’s question was a serious one.

The old man seemed to be waiting for him to say more, so he went on: “One kid has something tied over his eyes. And the other kids spin him around. And then he has to catch them, without being able to see.”

(As a matter of fact, it was one of the only kids’ games that Billy actually enjoyed. He hated musical chairs, and he hated tag, and he hated hide and seek. They always got out of hand, and the loud kids ended up making fun of him.

But he liked Blind Man’s Bluff. It wasn’t so much for the game itself—that was as boring as most kids’ games. But having the blind around your eyes...he liked that. It turned an ordinary room into a mysterious world of darkness and whispers, and when you went around the room trying to catch the others, you could swear it was a completely different room. Nothing seemed in the same place. It was like magic.)

“Well, then”, said Rex Cunningham, opening out the tea-towel in his two hands. “Let’s play Blind Man’s Bluff. Come here”.

Billy stepped towards Rex, trying not to seem nervous. A moment later, the old man was tying the tea-towel around his eyes. It was damp, and it smelled of old vegetables.

“Except this is Blind Man’s Bluff with a difference”, said Rex, and Billy could hear amusement in his voice. All he could see was darkness, and the little splashes of colours that dance in front of your eyes when something is pressing on them, as the tea-towel was pressing on Billy’s eyes now.

“What do you mean?”, asked Billy, who was finding it very difficult not to show his nerves now.

“Well, this is a simple version of the game”, said Rex Cunningham. “In this one, I spin you around three times and then I take the blindfold off. Not very complicated, is it?”

“No”, said Billy, feeling confused as well as nervous now. Rex had already started to spin him around. He could hear the old man muttering something under his breath, but he couldn’t make out the words. They seemed to be coming from a long, long way away—although that was a ridiculous idea.

Rex spinned Billy around again, and again. Billy couldn’t tell if he was facing the same direction he’d been facing before the spinning.

“Now!”, he heard Rex say, and this time his voice definitely seemed to be coming from far away—it echoed, like somebody speaking through a loudspeaker. “Take it off!”

Feeling a bit ridiculous, Billy reached up and, with a bit of difficulty, untied the blindfold that Rex had made from a tea-towel.

And life, as he knew it, was over forever.

Chapter Six

The kitchen had disappeared. Number 244, Belvedere Street had disappeared. Halloween night had disappeared.

The shadowy kitchen had been replaced by bright sunlight, sunlight that surprised and dazzled Billy’s eyes. For a few moments, he couldn’t make out anything but a blaze of brightness.

Then, slowly, the scene around him began to come into focus. Blue sky, light breeze, the sound of waves, the screech of seagulls, the smell of salt and seaweed on the air. He was beside the ocean.

He was far too astonished to feel fear, or to wonder if he had been hypnotised, or to ask himself whether he was going insane. All he could do was take in the sights and sounds and smells around him.

When he realized that the sound of the waves was coming from below him, he knew exactly where he was.

He was standing on the edge of the cliffs at Morristown, the seaside his mother used to take him to, after they had been visiting her aunt. They would get ice-creams at an ice-cream van in the village nearby and walk here when Billy was tired she would bring him in her arms.

He always remembered how blue the sky was, here. He could never remember seeing so blue, so perfect. It looked as though it was made out of some kind of coloured glass.

A wave of joy passed over him, and, incredibly—if only for a moment—he forgot all about the kitchen, all about Belvedere Street, all about Rex Cunningham. The times his mother had brought him here were probably the happiest moments of his life. For some reason he could never have explained, he’d felt completely and utterly safe here, even when his mother walked him to the rails at the side of the cliff and they looked down into the sea a hundred feet below.

“And though thy soul sail miles and miles beyond”, she would recite (more to herself than to him), “Still, miles beyond those miles, there is more sea.”

Miles beyond those miles there is more sea. He didn’t know what poem those words came from, or who had written it, but he’d always remembered them and they filled him with a wild excitement. The waves stretched as far as his eye could see, right to the horizon, and further beyond it than he could even imagine. Hundreds and hundreds of miles. Hundreds of miles where there were no streets, or supermarkets, or office blocks, or concrete, or cars. No teachers or school bullies, none of the dangerous-looking people that he saw on buses and hanging around outside shops. Just limitless ocean.

And he liked the idea of a soul swimming. A soul wouldn’t have to breathe air, would it? It could go all the way down, to the dark places of the ocean where all kinds of marvellous creatures lived…

Then Billy remembered Rex Harrison, and he said aloud, “Where are you?”

“I’m here”, said Rex.

Once again, the voice seemed to come from very far away—from out of the sky. It sounded different, too- deeper and somehow more grand. Almost like the voice of a god.

“Where?”, asked Billy, looking around. There was no sign of the village from here, except for a church spire just visible above the trees that surrounded him on all sides. Below him, the dark sands of the beach stretched as far as his eye could see, with only a few houses lying on the horizon, so distant they were little more than specks of colour. And, beyond the sands, the grey sea stretched on forever.

“Here”, said Rex. “You can’t see me or touch me, but I’m here.”

“I don’t understand”, said Billy. “How did I get here?”

There was a pause; and then what Billy thought at first was the whooshing of wind, before he realised it was the sound of laughter.

“Blind Man’s Bluff”, said the voice in the air. Rex’s voice. “You got here through Blind Man’s Bluff.”

“But how can this be October?”, asked Billy, staring up into the perfect blueness of the sky.

“Why does it have to be October?”, asked Rex.

It all seemed perfectly real to Billy. Not like a dream, or a hallucination—whatever a hallucination felt like, he was sure it wasn’t this. The ground felt knobby and uneven under his shoes. There were a few thrown-away crisp packets lying beside the railings. His legs felt tired, just like he remembered his legs feeling tired when he’d walked here with his mother.

The biggest surprise was that he didn’t even feel surprised. A voice inside him was telling him the whole situation was ridiculous, incredible. But it was a distant voice—like his mother’s when she was trying to wake him up in the mornings.

“What am I supposed to do?”, asked Billy, still looking around, and half-expecting to see himself at the age of four or five, appearing through the trees hand-in-hand with his mother.

“What you came here to do”, said the voice from the sky. “Fly.”

At the those words, Billy shivered—from excitement as well as fear. Fly? It was impossible. But how could he think anything was impossible now?

“How?”, he asked, looking at the railing that was only twenty steps away.

“Just do it”, said Rex. “Like you always imagined doing it. Do it now, or you’ll never do it.”

Billy tried to imagine running towards the railing, leaping over it, and ascending into the air, up towards that blue, blue sky. But somehow, he couldn’t. He didn’t move.

“Quickly”, said Rex, and there was such eagerness in his voice that Billy took a step forward, without even thinking about it. “Do it now or this will all disappear and I won’t be able to bring you back. Ever. Do you want to miss your chance? Do you want to spend the rest of your life wondering what it would be like to fly?”

“No”, said Billy, feeling panicky. He wanted to fly so badly he could feel it in his bones like an ache. But how did you run over the edge of a cliff?

And then, at that moment, he felt someone shoving him in the back, shoving him forward. He would have fallen over if he didn’t take another few steps forward.

He turned around. There was nobody there, but he was still being pushed forward. He couldn’t stop or he would go flat on his face.

A few more steps would take him to the railings. He cried out, “STOP!”, but in his heart, he wanted to keep going.

When he was only a few feet away from the edge of the cliff, he rushed forward so quickly that he could no longer feel the pressure on his back, and he jumped.

The sensation of going over the edge was like nothing he had ever experienced before.

But he didn’t fly. As soon as he was over the edge, he began to plummet towards the waves and the rocks below him..

He was so shocked that he didn’t even feel fear. He just felt frozen.

“Fly”, said the voice from the sky. “Fly, for goodness sake! You know how!”

Billy closed his eyes, and put all his willpower into flying. He flapped his arms in the air and shook his legs but he was still hurtling towards the rocks—

He screamed in terror, expecting to crash into the rocks below any second. But second after second after second passed, and—

He opened his eyes. The rocks were still below him, but they were getting smaller now.

He was moving upwards, not downwards. He was actually, truly flying.

He let out a whoop of sheer triumph and delight. It seemed to fill the gloriously blue sky. He imagined it echoing off the faraway mountains.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”, asked Rex.

Billy tried to reply, but he couldn’t. Panic grabbed him again. His mouth—there was something wrong with his mouth, there was something wrong with his entire body…

He lowered his head to look at himself, and his horror doubled when he saw that his body had been changed. For a moment, all he could see was a mass of grey-white, glowing in the sunlight. Oh my God, what was it? It wasn’t human, or anything like human…

“It’s a seagull, Master Reynolds”, came the voice from the sky. It still sounded like the voice of a god, but now it was an amused god. “I mean, you’re a seagull. Don’t try to talk. You’ll just—“

It was too late, because Billy had already tried. Instead of words, a monstrous shriek came out of him, like the wail of a banshee. Billy had never heard anything like it—it certainly didn’t sound like a mere seagull’s squawk to him.

But already his horror was ebbing away—what was there to be horrified about, anyway? What was wrong with this body?

“Forget about being Billy Reynolds for now”, he heard a voice saying, and it took him a moment to remember it was the voice of Rex Cunningham, that he was standing in Rex Cunningham’s house. “Exult in being a bird of the air. Reach for the sky. Go!”.

And at that, Billy—or the deepest part of Billy’s mind, the part that had no name or history or doubts about the possibility of flying—climbed towards the sun.

It was so warm. It was like taking a bath in sunlight. He felt the sun was drawing him like some enormous magnet.

He shrieked again, this time for purest joy. He had never felt so happy—not on Christmas morning, not on a surprise day off school, never. He’d been waiting for this moment all his life, and all his life had been nothing but a preparation for it...

How could anyone bear to live on the ground? What was the worse prison compared to the prison all men lived in, the prison of not being able to fly?

And then Billy—who had already forgotten all about being Billy—forgot all about men and human beings, and let go of human thoughts, and lost himself in the limitless realm of the air.

It was hours later (though he had lost all awareness of time) when he heard a voice from the sky saying: “Master Reynolds! Master Reynolds!”.But he didn’t recognise his name, or even the words.

There was a blinding light...

...and once again he was standing in Rex Cunnigham’s kitchen, the smell of the tea-towel (which Rex was holding in his hands) still in his nostrils. The room seemed a hundred times darker than before, after the brilliant light of the sky above Morristown.

“Oh, my young friend”, Rex Cunningham was saying. His voice had become softer, more respectful—less like a teacher’s voice when he was talking to a schoolchild. “You have a special gift. Quite unlike anything I’ve seen before.”

“When can I go back?”, asked Billy. Being dragged from the pure ecstasy of flight was like getting out of a warm bed on a school morning in January. Mutiplied by a thousand.

Rex chuckled, and a mew came from Marius, who was sitting at his feet. Crazily, it sounded like the cat was chuckling, too.

“Patience, my little prodigy”, said Rex. “There are marvels far greater than that in store for you. Far greater.”

“I don’t want something greater”, said Billy, promptly. He would never answered back like this, in ordinary life. But this was a long, long way from ordinary life. “I just want to fly again.”

“That is the great crime, my young friend”, said the old man. The wrinkles on his face grew deeper and and longer as he frowned. It was a thoughtful frown, like the frown of a teacher coming to an especially important and difficult part in a lesson. “The great crime of not wanting more.”

There was a long pause. Billy heard some children laughing hysterically, beyond the house’s back garden. He thought Rex Cunningham was waiting for him to say something, so he said, “I don’t want to be greedy.”

“Not all greed is bad”, said Rex. He was looking past Billy now, as though he was talking to a classroom of students. “There’s a greed for knowledge. There’s a greed for life. The problem with the modern world isn’t that it’s greedy. It’s that it’s not greedy for the right things.”

“What do you mean?”

“All those millions out there”, said Rex, raising his eyes even further as though he was seeing through the walls of his own house. “For all their holiday homes and colour televisions and mobile phones, they don’t ask for enough. That’s their problem. Of course, I’m not talking about things. I’m not talking about life. Adventure...wisdom...amazement!”.

Rex’s voice had risen with every word, so that the “amazement” was almost a shout. The hands that were holding the ends of the tea-towel had clenched into fists. His lip was trembling, and his head was raised, as though he was looking at something up.

And his face....there was an expression on his face that Billy could only call noble. It was the kind of look he imagined on the face of Moses or Abraham Lincoln, or Winston Churchill when he was delivering one of his famous speeches. Suddenly, Billy felt sure that Rex Cunningham was truly a great man—the kind of men you usually see in oil portraits and read about in history books.

Then there was another knock on the front door, and the noble expression disappeared from Rex’s face, replaced by one of pure exasperation. He actually gritted his teeth (which Billy noticed were white and in perfect condition).

“Next year, I’ll put a sign up”, he said. “If I’m still around next year.”

The casual way he said the last words shocked Billy. Rex saw the reaction on Billy’s face.

“Oh, yes”, said the great author, “It’s by no means certain that I will be alive next Halloween. My time is running out, Master Reynolds. I may look hale and hearty—I’ve kept in good condition all my life—but the machine is breaking down inside.” He thumped his own chest, softly. There was no sadness on his face or in his voice. He might have talking about a vacuum cleaner that was about to break down. “And there’s nobody to inherit what I leave behind-- not just money, though there’s a heap of that. No, there’s something else to pass on, something much more important.” He paused, and now he did look a little melancholy. “You might even say it’s my whole kingdom.”

Billy didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He couldn’t even look at Rex. His eyes had fallen to the floor, and his cheeks were hot. He had no idea what he was trying to say.

And then, out of nowhere, tears began to slide down his cheeks. He couldn’t have said whether it was sadness, or stress, or excitement, or embarrassment, or a mixture of all of them. Maybe it was just all the fierce emotions of the night finally catching up with him. He didn’t even care what Rex would think anymore. The tears came faster and faster, and his shoulders were shaking with their force.

He expected the old man to put his hand on his shoulder, or to bark at him, or to mutter soothing words. But there was nothing.

A few minutes later, when the tears had finally run out, he looked up at his hero. Rex was simply watching him, and the expression on his face was the last Billy would have expected to see. It was surprise—maybe even wonder. He looked as though he had never seen somebody crying before.

“Here”, said Rex, handing Billy the tea-towel again. “Wipe your face with that. It’s time for dinner. You must be hungry by now.”

Contrarianism, its Pleasures and Perils (1)

Contrarianism, it seems to me, is an important and deep topic, and I've long intended to write something about it.

As one might expect from my being drawn to the subject in the first place, I am a dyed-in-the-wool contrarian. I have always been a contrarian, at least as far back as I can remember. I've always been drawn to ideas (and causes, and institutions, and works of art) that are unpopular, or neglected, or even derided.

Of course, we are all contrarians to some degree. Everybody tends to warm to an underdog, to kick against convention, to enjoy startling other people and confounding expectations, and so forth. It's a deeply human characteristic, and explains why writers like Aldous Huxley strike such a chord with books like Brave New World.

On the other hand, we are all conformists much more than we are contrarians. (I suspect that's a very good thing.) Even the most outrageous misfit is mostly a conformist. We send birthday cards, respect the dead, shake hands, wear clothes, nod our heads to say 'yes' and shake our heads to say 'no', eschew casual violence, forbear from lying down on the street, use money, brush our hair, avoid staring at other people, and follow the norm in a million other ways, too numerous to count. This is especially striking when we read about punk rockers or bohemian artists or visionary business leaders or famous eccentrics, and feel surprised (or at least, I feel surprised) to learn that they watch Coronation Street or play golf, or have corn flakes for breakfast. The real surprise is how normal most people are. Outside of a mental institution, even the weirdest person you know does many more ordinary things than strange things.

So really, the only difference between a contrarian and a conformist is that a contrarian is a tiny bit less of a conformist, and a tiny bit more of a contrarian.

Contarianism takes different forms. I think an important distinction is the distinction between contrarianism of belief and contrarianism of behaviour.

Somebody who decides to walk around in the street in a bathrobe is not really putting forward a proposition, or a theory, except perhaps the implied theory that it's a good idea to walk around in the street wearing a bathrobe. His action could be interpreted in a hundred different ways, and we could react to it by rolling our eyes or by smiling or by ignoring him.

On the other hand, the contrarianism of belief is making a definite claim about the way things are, or the way things should be, that is open to argument and denial. I suppose this kind of contrarianism is more vulnerable to attack than the contrarianism of behaviour because there is usually a good reason that a mainstream view about any matter of fact exists. Most people believe that smoking is bad for you because all the evidence seems to point that way.

Of course, we are on less solid ground when we go from matters of scientific of historical fact to questions of ethics, aesthetics, philosophy, politics, and so forth. The proposition, for instance, that selfishness is good is an unpopular one but it doesn't seem as easily dismissed as the proposition that smoking isn't bad for you. It also seems to be a common belief these days that there is not necessarily any objective truth when it comes to matters ethical, philosophical, aesthetic, or spiritual. This is what Catholics often (and rightly) attack as "the dictatorship of relativism", although I think that we sometimes conflate two different claims-- the one claim that there is no objective truth in these matters, and the other claim that there is an objective truth but that it's unknowable and unprovable, or that it's the sort of truth that every man and woman must adjudicate on (not choose) for him or herself.

Sometimes it's hard to say that a belief really is a claim about "how things are". Let's take the example of optimism and pessimism. If a man says he is an optimist, will he be universally understood as making a claim about how things are? Is he necessarily saying that life is beautiful and that the world is a wonderful place? Possibly, but he might also be making a statement about his own temperament, regardless of what the world is like. Or he might be making a claim that it's better for humans to be optimistic for the psychological or practical benefits.

I don't think there can be any absolute distinction between the contrarianism of behaviour and the contrarianism of belief. Most behaviour implies some belief, and most belief can be interpreted as a form of behaviour, or a call to action-- for instance, the belief of an optimist or a pessimist.

As well as this, something that should be borne in mind when we think about contrarianism is that not every theory of "how things are" aspires to be universal or absolute. Very often we have a theory that only applies to a particular moment or a particular situation. For instance, a contrarian might decide to stop watching television completely, not because he thinks that television is necessarily a bad thing or that everybody should stop watching it, but merely as a gesture, a protest, a perception that television is, as things stand, too embedded in our lives. He hopes that his counter-example will be a healthy tonic. This is an instance of both the contrarianism of belief and the contrarianism of behaviour.

The reader may think I am making heavy weather of these preliminaries, but I am trying to anticipate the strongest objection to contrarianism-- that is, that an argument, or a custom, or a sensibility, or anything else that a contrarian might want to challenge, is no more likely to be wrong or bad or stupid because it is popular. The question of its popularity is irrelevant, the anti-contrarian says; the question is whether it's true, or good, or wise. Address that, the anti-contrarian says, in exasperation.

But all truth is not of the order, "Is there more or less than five pounds in my pocket?", or "Is Helsinki the capital of Iceland?". Some truths are a matter of degree. "Are the sexes different?" "Were the Victorians narrow-minded?". "Does man need variety in his life?". "Is competition good?". "Is pleasure good?" Obviously, these questions would be hard to answer, in any satisfying sense, with a "yes" or a "no". For instance, competition is a good thing, but some cultures might have too much of this truth and some cultures too little.

And this is where the contrarian comes in-- not necessarily opposing the majority just for the sake of it, or as an expression of his contrarianism. A contrarian might be opposing the majority view because it is the majority view, and also happen to be right. In fact, he might be right because he is opposing the majority view-- because he is a corrective, or a tonic, or an antidote.

Well, I've only taken my coat off to this topic, and this post is already a long one. I think I will have to make this a series. (There is actually very little written about contrarianism. Don't take my word for it, have a look for yourself. And surely it is a topic deserving of some attention.)

The Man Who Could Make Worlds, Chapters One to Three

"What happened to A Hundred Nightmares?" Every day I get emails from readers asking me this question.

OK, that's not true. In fact, I've never received such an email. But I am conscious that I was publishing horror stories from my collection of a hundred short-short horror stories up until a few months ago, and they were getting a fairly good reception, when suddenly...they stopped.

It was a few different factors, but the problem now is that they are on a laptop that suddenly has no internet connection. I don't know why. I've had my techno-proficient little brother look at the laptop and he doesn't know either-- which means that it's an insoluble mystery. So I am going to copy them onto a USB key, when I get round to it...

As for The Bard's Apprentice, the kids' fantasy novel I was serializing here that was mildly popular, I have to admit I still haven't proof-read it to see if any more characters appear out of nowhere (as one reader kindly pointed out to me!).

But here are the opening chapters of the most recent novel I wrote, The Man Who Could Make Worlds, which I found in an attachment in my gmail. I think of it as a fantasy for teenagers (no, not that kind of fantasy-- there's none of that).

If you're looking for a suitable Ash Wednesday penance-- here it is!

I may post the rest or not. It depends-- on whether anyone likes it, on whether I manage to delete it accidentally, on the dodgy geopolitical situation, on whether I am called to jury service, etc. etc. Here it is. Lower the lights, Betty! Mobile phones off! You there at the back, stop whispering! The Man Who Could Make Worlds!

Chapter One

The zombie and the vampire sat down in the seats opposite Billy. Billy just stared out the window, hoping desperately that they’d leave him alone.

He never would have guessed the train to Dublin would be so busy on a Halloween. Not that Billy knew very much about parties. He’d never been to a Halloween party; he’d never been to any party, come to think of it.

He peered at the reflection of his fellow passengers in the glass of the window. The night was descending, so that the windows were already more like mirrors than anything else.

He could see that the zombie and the vampire were both in their late teens. The vampire was a she-vampire and the zombie was a boy. They were holding hands, and every few moments they would break into kissing. Normally, Billy couldn’t stand being around people who were kissing. But at least when they were wrapped up in each other, they were ignoring him.

He was nervous. He had never been so far away from home as this, and his mother thought he was staying with his friend Adam.

Billy had never even been in Adam’s house. But Adam was the closest thing he had to a friend, so he couldn’t think of any better story for his mother.

“You look better as a vampire than a human being, you know”, said the zombie boy, staring at his girlfriend.

She made a rude finger gesture at him. Her fingernails were painted black, and some of them had red paint running from them, as though they were bleeding.

“Charming behaviour for a lady”, said the zombie boy.

Billy squirmed in his seat. He’d never even been alone on a train before. He’d been on trains with his mother, and with his class in school—and that was a nightmare—but never alone.

Fifteen years old, and never on a train on his own. He would never have admitted it to anyone. It had taken him two weeks to save the money for the ticket.

“I think being a zombie suits you”, said the girl. “I think you should stay like that.”

“What, so I can blend in with your family?”, asked the boy.

Billy always wondered how people thought of answers like that so quickly. Even if he had the courage to make a smart-aleck reply like that, he’d never think of it. His mind just went blank.

He fingered the book that he had crammed into his jacket pocket. The Neverending Nightmare. It was his favourite. Just touching it, just feeling its familiar pages and binding—right down to the creases and dog ears— comforted him.

The zombie boy leaned towards the girl and they began to kiss again. Billy sat there squirming, hoping they would break up after a few seconds. But they didn’t. They just became more passionate.

Why did they have to sit beside him, anyway?

He took out The Neverending Nightmare, and examined the photo on the back cover.

He’d looked at the photo hundreds of times. It showed Rex Cunnigham, the author, staring out into space. It was the only photo Billy had been able to find of Rex Cunnigham, and he’d looked everywhere.

The photo was at least fifteen years old—it was on the back of A Thousand Miles From Rescue, the oldest Rex Cunningham book he owned. And the picture showed him as an old man even then, with grey hair and wrinkles around the eyes. What would he look like now?

Well, Billy would find out soon. Within three hours, as a matter of fact.

He looked at his watch again. He had checked it every few minutes since the train left Limerick. He didn’t know whether he wanted time to speed up or slow down.

He was going to meet Rex Cunningham. After almost two years of being utterly addicted to his books.

The zombie and the vampire were kissing more passionately than ever. Billy raised The Neverending Nightmare, reading the paragraph on the first page—it was the same first paragraph in every Rex Cunnigham book, and the first of his words he’d ever read, but even after all this time they never failed to thrill him;

Welcome to a whole new world…a world waiting for you to bring it to life.

Between the pages of this book, you will find marvels and perils, comrades and foes, dreams and nightmares. With the turn of the next page a tale begins…a tale that could take you anywhere…and the tale is yours to make.

Strength may fail, allies may betray you, but wisdom is a true friend. May wisdom go with you…into a new horizon.

Billy was turning the page when he felt the book snatched from his hands.

He looked up. The zombie was holding it up in his hands, looking at it with a mixture of suspicion and disdain.

“Give the kid his book back”, said the vampire, although she was smiling.

“You’re the one always saying I should read more”, said the zombie, who had begun to flick through the pages of the book.

The girl looked at Billy. The smile was still on her face, but he could see shame in her eyes.

“I’m just grabbing me some lit-er-a-ture”, said the boy, who was wearing a big grin now. He was obviously enjoying himself.

“Don’t be such a creep, Scott”, said the girl.

“Hallowe’en is the time for creeps”, said Scott.

For all his nervousness—nervousness that almost made him feel sick—Billy couldn’t help feeling a little pleased that someone was reading one of his Rex Cunningham books. He couldn’t even get his mother or his uncle to look at them. But the teenager seemed genuinely interested.

“It isn’t even a real book”, said Scott, after a few more moments. “It’s one of those books you play. What’s wrong, buddy, can’t you read a real book?”

“It is a real book”, said Billy, reaching out for it. He was surprised at the firmness of his own voice. He had expected it to tremble. Heck, he was surprised he’d said anything at all.

Scott brushed Billy’s hand away as though it was a twig, without even looking up. Some of the green make-up on his hand rubbed onto the skin of Billy’s hand. The make-up was cold to the touch.

“Listen to this, Lauren”, he said. “The Unfatmable One is the legend that haunts these woods. They say his presence is most powerful at the winter solstice. Travellers will not pass—“

“Unfathomable”, said Billy.

Scott looked up at him, irritated. Lauren laughed.

“Oh, you’re a smart-ass, are you?”, he asked. “You know, books like these are made for guys like you. You look as though you could hardly open a carton of milk without spraining something.”

“You’re not exactly Arnold Schwarzennegger yourself”, said his girlriend.

“Well, I never read this sort of trash”, said Scott, who was still leafing through the pages. “I prefer real life to fantasies.”

“That’s why you play all those computer games, is it?”, asked Lauren. Billy wished she’d stop mocking her boyfriend. She was just going to provoke him, and he’d be the one that got punished.

“Computer games exercise the reflexes”, said Scott. “And the brain. This stuff is just…sad. It’s for people who live in a dream world.” He put on a deep voice, like the voiceover in a movie trailer. “To dig up the casket, turn to 332. To keep searching the graveyard, turn to 102. To return to the village, turn to 144.”

Lauren giggled.

“To get a job, turn to 150”, said Scott. “To get a social life, turn to 160. To stop being a nerd, put the book down and get out of the house.”

Lauren laughed again, putting her hand over her mouth and lowering her head.

A firework in the sky outside. It threw green and red light onto Scott and Lauren’s faces, making them seem even more otherworldly.

“Give me it back”, said Billy, stretching out his arm, his hand open. Now his voice did tremble.

“Give it back to him, you moron”, said Lauren. “It’s his own business what he wants to read.”

“I’ll give it back to him, I’ll give it back to him”, said Scott. “I just want to explore this unique literary masterpiece…hello, what’s this?”

Panic shot through Billy. Scott had taken a small page of purple notepaper from the book. It was Billy’s most precious possession in the world; he’d forgotten all about it.

“You’re not going to read his letters”, said Lauren. “Stop it.”

Scott put on the same deep voice he’d put on before, and began to read from the letter:

“Dear Mr Reynolds (or may I call you Master Reynolds?).”

Lauren giggled at this, and Scott—encouraged-- went on, his voice even deeper now.

"I think you just might be my greatest fan. Most people have never even heard of me. Even those who have read my books don’t usually remember my name.

I’m glad that The Neverending Nightmare and The Wildest of the West are your favourite of my books. They are amongst my favourites, too, although The Marvellous Map is my favourite of all. Nobody seems to agree though!"

Lauren looked at Billy. Her eyes were a little wider. “The guy who wrote those books wrote you a letter? That’s cool.”

It was cool. Billy thought it was the coolest thing that had ever happened in his life.

“Please don’t interrupt”, said Scott, still in the comically deep voice. He went on reading from the letter. “You ask many interesting questions about my books. In fact, I don’t think any of my readers has shown such perceptiveness. I would like to meet you.”

“He invited you to meet him?”, asked Lauren, who was looking at Billy with a kind of wonder now. “That’s even cooler!”

“Yeah, really cool”, said Scott. “A nerd goes to visit a writer of saddo fantasy books. It’s a moment in history. Now shut up, I haven’t finished the letter. Listen: “There is no need to make an appointment, simply come to the above address at any time and knock on the door. I spend all my time writing, writing, writing. I have no social engagements.” The teenage zombie looked up, with a mock-solemn face. “Why am I not surprised by that? You’ll end up like him, nerdy-boy.”

“Is that where you’re going now? To meet this writer?”, asked Lauren.

Billy nodded. He was embarrassed and he was proud at the same time. Yes, he was going to meet Rex Cunningham.

“Bit late to be going to meet him, isn’t it?”, asked Scott, looking up from the letter and raising an eyebrow. “Why didn’t you go in the daytime?”

Billy shrugged. He’d thought about waiting until Saturday morning, but he just couldn’t. Not another whole night. He’d gone home, had his dinner, put on some new clothes and hurried to the train station for the next train to Dublin. Rex—- he thought of him as Rex—- had written any time, hadn’t he?

Rex would understand. He felt they already knew each other. Rex wouldn’t mind if he turned up in the middle of the night. Billy just knew.

“Well, I think it’s brilliant”, said Lauren. With cat-like speed, she snatched the letter from Scott’s hands, and held it out to Billy. He took it from her, light with gratitude. “I hope you enjoy it.”

“I wouldn’t go if I were you”, said Scott. He seemed sour from having had the letter taken from him. “Big mistake, dude. Big mistake. You’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of reading books about superheroes and damsels in distress and…and…and broadswords, and getting sadder and lonelier and wimpier and more of a nerd every day. Walk in his door and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

“Don’t mind him”, said Lauren. “Just think, in a few hours you’ll be meeting your favourite writer! In a few hours from now you’ll be in his house!”.

She was almost glowing with enthusiasm now. The idea had captured her imagination.

But Billy was feeling a little sick. He had barely slept last night. He was full of excitement, and nerves, and worry that Rex Cunnigham would turn out to be a disappointment, or that he’d be annoyed when he saw that Billy was just a skinny kid a few months from his teens.

And he was a little bit—frightened. He couldn’t exactly say why. It was something about Rex Cunningham’s books. Sometimes, reading them, they seemed so real….

Chapter Two

The sky was alive with fireworks. Billy had never seen, never heard anything like it. The town he lived in had fireworks on Halloween night, to be sure. Some of them were pretty spectacular, too. But they weren’t exploding all the time. There had hardly been a second, in the last hour, when he hadn’t heard the boom, fizzle, shriek or crackle of a firework. Magical blooms of a dozen livid colours flowered in the air.

There were bonfires, too, in gardens and field and street corners. Some of them were so high that they lit up the windows of high-rise apartments. It was mostly teenagers standing around them; and like Scott on the train, many of them seemed to be drunk already. Some of them were dressed up; there were a lot of superheroes, as well as monsters.

Billy would have felt more nervous, except that there were plenty of adults around, too—parents bringing their kids trick-or-treating. That’s an American thing, Billy’s father always complained. We’ll be having proms and Little Leagues and Thanksgiving parties soon.

American or not, Billy was thankful for the little gangs of children and parents going from door to door tonight. He looked at the kids, dressed up as cowboys and fairy princesses and Jedi knights and characters he just about recognised from the TV. He’d never dressed up for Halloween as a kid. He’d never had anywhere to go, for one thing—why dress up just to stay at home?

But all of these things were just distractions, just something to keep his mind off the overwhelming fact that Rex Cunningham lived on this street. He’d stared at the address on the letter; 244 Belvedere Street. He’d spent a lot of time imagining what kind of street it might be. He’d imagined a long stretch of detached houses, most of them hardly visible behind enormous gardens. He’d imagined a very ordinary, suburban street of three bedroom houses. He’d imagined a penthouse apartment.

In fact, he’d imagined everything except what it turned out to be; a wide street of red-brick houses, many of them bearing the brass name-plates of dentists and doctors. The gardens were well-tended, and the living rooms he could glimpse through curtains were like the living rooms he saw on TV—paintings on the walls, bookcases, the green glow of large aquariums. Most of the houses had names; St. Kevin’s, Chez Nous, Mountain View, Harmony. They were decorated for Halloween; plastic skeletons hung on doors, glowing pumpkins smirked from windows, and on one house, a huge spider and its web was draped across most of the front.

He’d been walking for three hours—he kept getting lost, and it didn’t help that he was frightened of opening out his map. That was a sure way of getting mugged, everybody told him.

And what Lauren had said kept coming back to him. Why didn’t he leave in until the day time? Rex Cunningham had written “any time” in his letter; but that was just something people said without really meaning it literally. Why did he think Rex Cunnigham was different?

Well, he knew the answer to that one. Rex Cunningham had to be different. He had to understand a fourteen-year-old’s excitement at meeting his hero. Because Billy knew Rex Cunningham, and he couldn’t bear being wrong about him. Rex Cunningham would understand. He had to understand.

The numbers were coming closer now. Two-hundred and twenty, 222, 224…and now he thought he must be beyond nerves, because he wasn’t feeling sick like he should have been. He felt a kind of numbness spreading through his soul, as though some kind power on high had given him an anaesthetic. Not that he felt indifferent; he was still more excited than he had ever been in his entire life. But all of the anxiety and fear seemed to be seeping away. It was as though he was watching himself, or reading about himself in a story.

Two hundred and thirty-eight, 240, 244…and here he was.

He expected it to look different from the other houses, and it did. For one thing, there was no car in the drive, and the garage had a door that no car could fit through. There were no flowers, just a few shrubs and a lawn that was not overgrown but looked like it hadn’t been mown in a few weeks.

There was thick curtains on the window, but he could see light coming from a room upstairs.

There it stood, solid and real, a house that the postman came to and that had neighbours on either side. Somehow, the thought that Rex Cunningham lived there was even stranger than if he had lived in a hut on the top of some mountain.

As if in a dream, Billy lifted the metal latch of the gate, walked through, and carefully replaced it behind him. Six paces (he was counting, without even thinking about it) took him to the front door. It was painted pea-green, and looked as though it had been given a new coat recently.

He expected an ornamental knocker, a huge brass affair with the face of some mythical beast frowning from it. But it was just an ordinary, U-shaped knocker in the middle of the door.

He lifted it—and, despite his strange tranqulity, his heart was pumping harder—and gave three loud knocks.

He jumped. Somewhere nearby, he heard the demonic shriek of a firework, and a moment later it burst in the sky directly above the house, sending streaks of bright red and green and yellow dripping down the air. From the other side of the street, he heard the gleeful scream of small girls, followed by a chorus of giggling.

He stood there, waiting to hear the sound of old and infirm feet descending down the stairs, muffled by slippers.

Nothing happened, so he knocked again.

Five minutes later, Billy began to panic. What if Rex was out? He said he never went out, but he could hardly have meant it literally. Maybe he was in hospital. Maybe he was visiting his children, or his grandchildren. Maybe he would be gone for the whole weekend.

The thought was almost like a little death to Billy. He couldn’t bear all this excitement, all this anticipation, all this hope to come to nothing. He couldn’t go back to school, homework, his bedroom, and all the routines of his daiy life.

He hadn’t expected he would have to go back to them at all. At least, he expected that, next time he sat down in Mr. Morrison’s maths class, he’d have met Rex Harrison, and everything would be different. It would be a whole new life, somehow.

He told himself there was a light on upstairs, that that meant someone had to be at home. But he remembered what his mother would say on the rare occasions when his family went on an evening out together—“switch a light on upstairs so the burglars won’t know we’re gone.”

There was really no reason to believe he was in anymore. But he stood there anyway.

Wondering whether curtains were being drawn back in the other houses—hopefully the noise of fireworks would be some cover for his repeated knocking—he lifted the knocker. All of a sudden, the desperation within him built to a head, and he put all his weight into the knock.

And again. And again. And again. He wasn’t going to leave any chance Rex Harrison hadn’t heard him.

On the eighth or ninth or tenth knock, he felt the door move.

It was only a little, an inch or so. But it was open a chink now, and he could see into the darkened hallway—though all he could see were differently shaded black shapes, and a little bit of the red-and-blue chequered lino on the floor, lit up by the street lamps.

So the door wasn’t even locked. But surely he couldn’t just…walk in? No, that was impossible. He would try knocking again.

Inside his own mind, he felt a decision being made, almost against his own will.

After another five minutes of rapping at the door—and of looking around his shoulder every two seconds—he pushed the door in further and stepped into the hallway. He forced himself to do it quickly. If he looked hesitant, then anyone looking really would look suspicious.

He was frightened now, and it had nothing—or almost nothing—to do with meeting Rex Cunningham. He was frightened he had set a burglar alarm off. He was frightened of driving home to his parents in a police car.

I must be utterly insane, he thought.

Then he realised two glowing yellow eyes were staring at him, and he cried out in shock. He heard the cry echo in the hall.

A moment later, another noise; the unmistakable mew of a surprised cat.

They stood there staring at each other, the cat and the boy, for a few minutes. Then Billy remembered the door was open. Whatever about breaking into his house, Rex would probably be furious if he let his cat escape.

He turned around, and looked at the street outside. It suddenly seemed like a totally different world, one that had nothing to do with this interior darknes. He paused for a moment, and then pushed the door across. He didn’t mean to push it shut, since it hadn’t been fully closed in the first place. But he heard the click of the lock, and all of a sudden the hallway seemed a hundred times darker and lonelier and more frightening than before.

He stood there, trying not to look in the direction of the cat, wondering how on Earth he had ever found himself in such a situation.

And then he heard something else. It was a soft sound, and when he became aware of it, it seemed to him as though it had been there all along, without him even noticing. Like the hum of a fridge or a radiator, or the sigh of the wind, or the constantly-throbbing warp engines in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

It was a tapping noise. The more he listened to it, the louder it seemed, so that he couldn’t believe he had ever missed it. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

He remembered the lines from The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door…

The lines had made him shiver when he read them in his schoolbook. They made him shiver even more now, standing in a strange and dark house, a hundred miles from home.

But what else was there to do?

He stretched his arms before him, and gingerly took a step forward into the darkness. Before long, he had found the stairs, and taken the first step upwards.

Outside, another firework howled, like a warning.

Chapter Three

The cat accompanied him up the stairs. The house was so silent he could hear, not only its purring, but even the pat of its paws on the uncarpeted stairs. It didn’t follow him, or run ahead of him. Each time he took a step, he heard it keeping pace with him. He clung to the bannisters, keeping his side pressed against them to keep from stepping on the creature—as much from fear of it as from any other consideration.

The tapping from above had stopped. Billy was beginning to wonder if it had come from somewhere else; maybe one of the curious noises that waterpipes make, or maybe the noise of someone hammering in a neighbouring house. He knew from being alone in his own house, how surprisingly far sound could travel. And how creepy it could be when it did.

He couldn’t see anything. It was utterly black.

He kept on climbing the stairs, neither speeding up nor slowing down. He remembered that there were three storeys in these houses; he had reached the second landing already.

As soon as he turned to face the next flight of stairs, he saw light. The outline of a doorframe glowed an orange-yellow that seemed—even though he had only been in the darkness for a minute or two—absurdly bright. It looked like it was hanging in space, since there was nothing else visible around it.

Beside him, the cat gave a low meow. Why did it sound like a warning?

He stopped, staring upwards at the pencil-line of light, wondering if he should just turn around and leave. He didn’t have to open the door.

But somehow, the idea of walking back down the stairs was even more frightening. He’d had one idea in his mind when he came into this house—find that lit-up room—and he clung to it as a capsized man clings to whatever plank or wreckage he can reach.

He ascended the last two flights of stairs, and stepped towards the door. It didn’t even occur to him to knock again. It was obvious, from the silence of the house, that anybody inside would have heard a knock on the front door.

Feeling like a boy steppling over a cliff, he pushed it open. It was much heavier than the doors of his own house—or any other door he was used to—but it swung back with only a slight groan of hinges.

He stepped into the room, and his body seemed to turn into cold marble.

Billy hadn’t expected to see anyone, but there—right in front of them, sitting at a desk with a typewriter, facing towards the window and away from Billy—was Rex Cunningham.

He was wearing a marmalade-coloured dressing grown, and smoking a cigarette. Billy could only see three-quarters of his face, but it was definitely him. He sat on a leather-backed chair, leaning backwards and staring towards the window. He seemed utterly lost in thought; he was as still as a man in a picture, except for the plume of smoke that rose from his cigarette.

His hair—which had seemed grey in the black-and-white author’s photograph Billy had studied so often—was brilliant white. He didn’t seem like an exceptionally old man. The side of the face that was turned to Billy wasn’t especially wrinkled, and the skin didn’t hang from his neck, like it did with so many old men.

The room was lit by a single lamp on the writing desk. It was a small electric lamp, its lampshade decorated with Chinese symbols of some sort. An ash-tray full of ashes and a three-quarters-empty glass of red wine sat beside his typewriter.

Aside from that, there was only one other thing to notice about the room. Books. Books covered every single wall, from ceiling almost to floor. There was a pile of them on the writing desk, on the other side of the typewriter to the glass and ashtray. A sheaf of papers lay on top of the uppermost volume. Along with the bookshelves on the walls, there was a smaller bookcase standing in the corner.

Rex Cunningham sat so still in his chair that Billy was beginning to wonder if he’d had some kind of stroke when he finally leaned forward and began writing again.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap…the long, slender fingers moved over the keys as though they were compelled by some kind of nervous tic. Billy had never seen such fast typing. The man never paused, never even slowed down for a moment.

He finished a page, added it to the top of the sheaf of papers, drew a blank page from the bottom of the sheaf, fed it into the top of his typewriter, and rolled it through the roller at the top of the machine.

Billy had never seen somebody actually type at a typewriter, except in movies and on TV. For a moment, he forgot he was in a house without permission—he even forgot that he was looking at the great Rex Harrison. He just watched this old man’s actions with utter fascination.

Then the cat miaowed again, this time louder than ever before.

Rex looked around.

He looked surprised when he saw Billy, but only for a moment. It was the kind of surprised look someone might wear if they ran into a friend in an unexpected place.

Now he could see his full face, Billy saw that Rex looked pretty much the same as he did in his author’s photograph. Thinner, for sure—even a little gaunt—but not much older.

He stood up, and turned around to face Billy. He wasn’t a tall man, like Billy had imagined. He was even shorter than average.

“I didn’t mean to—“, Billy began.

Rex Harrison closed his eyes for a moment, as though in impatience, and raised his palm in the air, like a traffice policeman callling halt.

“Never mind that”, he said. “Never mind all that.”

He had a low voice, but a deep one. It was husky with age, and probably with cigarette-smoking too.

“Billy Reynolds, isn’t it?”, asked Rex.

Billy nodded.

There was silence for a few moment as Rex looked—no, stared—at Billy. As though Billy was a monkey in a zoo, or a portrait on a wall. His pale grey eyes seemed to be taking everything in.

“Good”, said Rex. “Very good. You’re just as I imagined you.”

Billy didn’t reply. What could he say to that?

“Apologies for ignoring you, my young sir”, said Rex. He stretched, as people do after sitting still for too long, and raised his fist to his mouth, covering a yawn. Billy noticed how his veins stood out, purple and thick, on his hand. “This American custom of children banging on doors of a Halloween night has unfortunately caught on here.”

“Trick-or-treating”, said Billy, for the sake of saying something.

Rex made a face, like someone catching scent of something foul. “Whatever they call it. I was ignoring them. You could have knocked all night and I wouldn’t have come down.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you”, said Billy.

Rex waved his hand, impatiently. Billy noticed how big his hands were. “Never mind all that”, he said again. “Never mind all those meaningless phrases. Never mind all the flim-flam. If I had another thousand years to live I wouldn’t have time for all that.”

“I’m sorry”, said Billy.

Rex raised his eyebrows, ironically. “You’re sorry”, he said. “Really and truly, sorry? My boy, you’re fourteen years old. Have you already learned to chatter in that meaningless, vapid manner? Don’t you have a few years left where you simply say what you mean, say it out straight without all these irrelevancies?”

Rex spoke differently from anyone Billy had met. Everybody Billy knew— everybody, even teachers and college-educated people— spoke in fits and starts, pausing to think what they would say next, hesitating over the right word, beginning one sentence without ending the other. They peppered their talk with “like” and “you know” and “kind of”.

Rex didn’t speak like that. Rex spoke smoothly, without interruption, as though the entire sentence had popped into his head in one moment.

Billy stood there, wanting to apologize, knowing he couldn’t, and cursing himself for getting off to such a bad start with the person he admired most in the world.

He noticed that the cat was rubbing himself against Rex’s legs now— but still turning its glowing eyes on Billy every few seconds.

“Well, never mind that”, said Rex. “Let’s go downstairs and get you something to drink. We have a lot to talk about, you and I. A lot more than you might think.”

A Poem by My Cousin

The world is full of mass-produced crap
Made by a Jap
Listening to American rap
Wearing a baseball cap.

My cousin came out with this one day while we were playing each other at Striker!, a soccer-themed computer game. He was going through a phase where he was coming out with lots of impromptu little pieces of doggerel like this. (He was in a band at the time.) Most of them were forgettable, but this one has stuck in my memory. (This one, and a rather pointless couplet: "I knew a girl so sweet and tender/you'd never guess she was a gender bender"). This was at least fifteen years ago.

I find this little quatrain quite profound and haunting, actually. I don't think I've ever read or heard such a powerfully epigrammatic description of a globalized, consumerist world.

(I generally avoid using the c-word that occurs in the first line, as I dislike all scatalogical words, but it can't be avoided here.)

Some Exciting News

Here!

The Wedding at Cana

The mother of God spoke to her son
As the laughter and dancing began to die
Though the feast had hardly just begun,
And the guests began to sigh.
“These people are waiting for something more”
She whispered to him. “These people pine
To drink as they’ve never drunk before—
They have no wine.”

“Oh woman”, the Son of Man replied,
“What is that to me? It is not my hour.”
But his mother still stood there by his side
And spoke a little lower.
“The singing and dancing have almost ceased
And the bride is shame-faced. Oh, son of mine,
The guests have come to the wedding feast
And have no wine.”

And, looking down on his princely face,
She remembered what Simeon prophesied
As he held the child in the holy place:
A sword shall pierce your side.
“Oh blood of my blood” the Virgin said,
“The drink that they want is yours and mine.
They came to see a bridegroom wed
And they have no wine.”

The Maritime Museum, Hull

I didn't leave Ireland until I was well into my twenties. I used to preen myself on this. I agreed with George Bernard Shaw that travel narrows the mind. I thought that finding yourself in a conversation with a travel bore was a fate only a few notches below death by dismemberment. I considered travel writing to be the lowest form of writing, fathoms below the writing of fridge manuals and perfume catalogues. (I still agree with the last part.)

Of course, I was being a twit. It's true that you can travel further in an armchair than on an airplane. It's true that someone who stays at home can know more about the world than any globe-trotter. But none of that means we should decline the opportunity to travel, for whatever it is worth. Just leaving the country doesn't make you a traitor to the beauty of the ordinary and near-at-hand. And travel is an experience unlike any other, after all.

In my late twenties, the clamour from friends and colleagues to "give it a try" became too much to resist. I spent a weekend in London, which was my first foray past the borders of the Republic of Ireland. (I've still never been to Northern Ireland, or the six counties, or whatever you want to call it.) And the next place I tried, after that, was-- Hull.

Some of you may be asking, 'Where's Hull?'. People who know the answer to that question may be asking, 'Why Hull'?

To answer both, Hull is a small city close to the east coast of England. It has the reputation of being one of the dullest and least glamorous places in England. In fact, it was named the worst place to live in Britain during the very week I spent there. As for why I went there-- it was mostly me being a contrarian. But it was also because my admiration of the English poet Philip Larkin was reaching a crescendo at this time, and Larkin had been a librarian at the University of Hull for most of his later life. (Hull was a suitable home for the determinedly stolid and curmudgeonly Larkin. Interestingly, for all its mundanity, Hull has been home to so many renowned poets that it has been called "the most poetic city in England". Perhaps there is a lesson there-- and in the fact that "Slough", a tirade against another soulless city, is actually one of John Betjeman's best poems.)

I travelled alone so it was a rather lonely trip. Whenever I gave not having a travelling companion as an excuse for not travelling, people would say: "Just go anyway." I see now that they were right. Not doing things because you have nobody to do them with is a good way to never have anyone to do anything with. Even if you don't meet anyone at the time, at least going out and doing stuff makes you less inward-looking and gives you something to talk about, stories to tell.

The highlight of my visit was the Maritime Museum, about which I wrote this poem. I loved it. It wasn't one of those new, fancy, multi-media, interactive, obnoxiously clean and bright museums. (Its only "fancy" feature was a recording of a whale song, which was played at regular intervals.) It had the musk of the past. Exhibits stood in rather grimy display cases or hung on walls with typed labels and captions attached. It was pleasantly cluttered. It told the story of Hull's whaling past-- at one time, whaling ships used to make their way from Hull to the Antarctic to fish (is that the word?) for whales, a trip that would take months at time. The trip was also dangerous. At one time, an open-air memorial service was being held in the harbour for the crew of one ship, who had not returned from their voyage, when that very ship sailed back into view. (The crews of these ships seemed to be very religious, with services often being held on board.) The museum also displayed various examples of the art of scrimshaw, which involves carving and sculpting from the bones of whales.

I found this memorial to a vanished past very haunting. Hence the poem, which has had more of an introduction than it deserves. (I wrote far too many sonnets back then. Everybody writes too many sonnets. Too often, a sonnet is a poetic form that people use when they won't take the bother to come up with a form more appropriate to the poem. Sonnets should really just be used for the most introspective, reflective poems.)

The Maritime Museum, Hull

The recorded cry of some dead whale resounds
Over and over again. Rusted harpoons
Hang from the walls. On winter afternoons
Descendants of dead sailors make the rounds
And mouth the names: Diana, Truelove, Swan.
Just syllables now. But children must have thrilled
To hear them, once. They gave renown. They killed.
But even the echo of their glory's gone.

These streets still pay their homage to the sea;
Pubs named for admirals, the Harbour Deck
Of a supermarket. Flotsam in time's wreck.
No-one tells tales of the Swan triumphantly
Returned from Arctic ices. Old, revered,
The Humber crawls, still dreaming of the days
It held the city's anxious, longing gaze
Like a mother no longer needed, no longer feared.