Old Castle Gardens
Summer 1994
George had seen the creature for the first time when he was eight years old. Childhood had not been a happy time for him but he did feel safe at home and he would sometimes clamber out onto the roof and lie on the solid sandstone border between his house and next door’s. It was on one of these nights, safe from the world by the height, and safe from his parents and siblings by the fact none of them were fit enough to climb up and into the attic, far less come out through the small hatch and onto the roof.
The absence of stairs to the attic was no obstacle to George whose only talent was his innate athleticism and strength. So the attic space and roof had become a refuge from a seriously overcrowded house.
George’s athleticism, though, had, inadvertently, become the cause of his feud with the old woman across the road. To get into the house he would seldom miss a chance to climb the drainpipe by the front door and then slip carefully across the bay window of his bedroom to the far side window that had a broken lock. He did it all the time, and the neighbors knew he did it, but one time the old witch had called the police, despite knowing perfectly well who he was. She had been considerably less observant when, six months later, they were actually burglarized for real while away on holiday.
The neighbor’s clear love of mischief, and her clearer disinterest in being a good neighbor, meant that the night the creature slipped in through her open front window, George was less than motivated to clamber back into the house and phone the police. He watched, heart rate a little elevated, as a brief scream was followed by a couple of distant thumps, and then the creature slipping out through the window and scampering along the short street, across a main road, and then into a work yard and, finally, onto the overgrown railway embankment and gone.
George felt a genuine sense of satisfaction as he told the police officer that he had seen exactly the same as the dead neighbor had when their house had been burglarized, nothing. For a while he took to tying himself to a stanchion in the attic in case he came to the attention of the prowling fairytale creatures who would emerge from the railway embankment and do what they did. Several unexplained deaths later George realized that, whatever was going on, the creatures prowling after dark, and after people had settled in for the night, were only going for the bad people in the two blocks that were the extent of his life at that time.
The woman round the corner in the tenement building, the one who had told lies about him and others, fell from her rear window as George watched. The old lady across the road and down the narrow lane, the one who punctured any footballs that landed in her garden, died in her sleep, the police said, but George had seen an ape like thing swing in through an open upstairs room the night before the area was crawling with police and medics.
That woman’s neighbor, the one who liked to torment anyone climbing into his garden to recover footballs, with threats of the police, was found face down in his garden. Whatever he had caught that night had stopped his heart dead. George had watched the whole thing and found it immensely satisfying. Unlike school and family life, there clearly was a world of balance out there. In some corners of creation bad people had bad things happen to them.
The years passed, his siblings moved out (not that he missed any of them) and, finally, his parents ended up in care facilities. George was on his own in the house. His family may have been idiots, but none of them were cynical enough to press for selling off their parents’ assets. Having someone in the house and taking care of it suited them perfectly. But, for all George’s situation had improved, the same could not be said for the dwellers on the railway embankment.
Whatever they were they were physical, and they were not keen on being seen. Through George’s childhood this was not a problem, as security was hardly an issue. Generally speaking there would be someone about any house, but, as the years passed, and both parents working became more common, alarms started appearing. George was particularly irritated by one that had been installed in a small factory unit behind his house. From day one it did not work, to such an extent that staff would close up on a Friday night with its bell screaming, and would leave it until Monday morning. Laws clamping down on this sort of nonsense were over a decade away.
For all the failings of early generation alarm systems the creatures from the embankment were increasingly faced with devices warning resident that they were there, or, as the years passed, demonstrating that they had been there. George was no tech expert but he could see the direction things were traveling in.
He was also seeing that the world he was living in was probably the world he was bound to live in, and he didn’t want to become the disagreeable old woman who burst footballs, or the idiot next door who enjoyed tormenting children, or the busybody who saw every innocent action and turned it sinister while becoming conveniently blind when any genuine issues were brewing.
George wanted to be a good neighbor, but to both the people next door and the people on the embankment. To do this he had to get up onto the embankment and speak with them. An effortless job when he was a child. Not so easy when the work yard closed and the tenement next to it installed a secured entry system.
If there was one feature of developing technology that irritated George by its utter pointlessness, it was secured door entry systems. In theory they were fine, in practice there was always at least one occupant of an eight-apartment block who would just hit OPEN when they heard a buzzer.
All of this said, the tenement close was the simplest way up and onto the embankment that George knew, from a careful study of maps, was a vast triangle of wilderness, crisscrossed by railway lines. It was one of only a few abandoned spaces left in a rapidly developing city. Nervously aware that he couldn’t rely on gaining entry he was, nevertheless, rehearsed and prepared, Someone clicked.
“Parcel for 2/1.”
“Come on in. It’s two up.”
And that was that. He walked through and into the back court, and squeezed through a rusted railing. As he climbed the steep embankment he heard a knock on a window behind him, staccato and loud. He looked back, and realized that, although the woman only lived a hundred yards from his house, she was on a housing block that had no connection with his. He looked her in the eye, did nothing, and then turned away and climbed the embankment. She could call the police, but it was all landlines then, and, by the time they showed up, he could be anywhere.
George entered the wilderness between the railways and it was huge. Completely surrounded by busy main roads, it might as well have been the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert. As children, he and his friends had sought out every empty place they could find to play but they had avoided this area because of the complex crisscross of railway lines. It might be devoid of adults, but keeping out of sight of train drivers and passengers was a harder proposition.
There was enough light from distant street lamps and house windows to allow him to walk carefully over the uneven ground and sleepers. The madness of what he was doing was slowly sinking in and fear was replacing the simple determination to get up and over the embankment. He had been so fixated on how he was going to get here that he had forgotten to consider what he was going to do or say when he got here.
He realized suddenly that he was going to need his wits and some spontaneity as a huge figure rose from the dark ground and filled the hazy light of the sky. Behind him he heard more movement. In the distance, behind the creature in front, he saw one of the occasional night service trains approaching. As its headlights grew closer the figure turned and George saw a head like a vulture, only much bigger. It spun back and glared at him, eyes a luminous yellow.
“Copy me!” It hissed and squatted slightly, one arm raised into the air, head tucked down on its chest. George did likewise, presuming their companion behind him was also assuming a stupid position. The train trundled past. George looked out of the corner of his eyes and spotted a few passengers but none were paying much attention to the darkness outside their carriage.
When the area was silent again they stood. The vulture headed creature followed the train with its eyes and then looked at George.
“An old trick. In poor or confused light just assume an odd shape. Most of the time people will assume you’re a bush or a tree.” It leaned in until its beak was almost touching George’s nose. “You’re the fellow from the middle house across the main road.”
It pointed and George looked across. Sure enough, a few hundred yards away he could clearly see his house, a single light on in the hall to persuade would be burglars that someone was home. The attempt at security looked as pitiful to him now as it undoubtedly would to any burglar.
“We have watched you watching us. What do you want?”
What did he want? He thought for a moment as the creature behind him came round and into view. This one was smaller, hairier, perhaps the one who had scared the puncturer of footballs to death. He was scared but he realized that what he wanted right now was to know what these things were, how they lived, and how they were going to deal with the cameras that were going up everywhere, and the security doors, and shops opening 24 hours a day.
“Well?” growled the hairy one.
“I want to invite you into my home, assuming there aren’t hundreds of you.”
The vulture creature shook its head. “There are not many of us. Thank you for your invitation, but first please come to our home. My name is Pendarves, this is Ferris.”
As they turned and began walking George replied, “I’m George.”
He followed them along a rail track, unable to match his steps to the distance between the sleepers, and, after ten minutes onto, of all things, a tennis court. The net hung loosely and the grass had long since been consumed by a crust of dry moss. In front of the ruined club house a fire blazed and a bizarre group of creatures sat around.
“I believe this was once a club for rail workers. No one ever comes any more. It suits us well.”
George looked over to his right and caught a couple of distant flashes of car lights. The location was good but it was never going to stay out of sight forever. The crowd looking at him now, some with open hostility, most with passive curiosity, were safe for the moment. He looked behind him at the dark space they had come through. It occurred to him that it was only a matter of time before housing was built here.
He turned back and accepted Pendarves’s invitation to join the group at the fire. He now knew what he wanted. He wanted to warn this dangerous looking crowd of nightmares that it was actually they who were the ones in danger.
He sat down and accepted a bowl of some strong-smelling ale.
“You are in danger. I am here to help if I can.”
There were a couple of derisory snorts, a brief laugh, but they listened and, despite an ongoing worry about their intentions, they remained welcoming.
Summer 2019
The sun was rising as George pottered about the house, preparing for his day’s work. He tiptoed down the spiral staircase he had had put in years before when the vast basement area had been renovated. He moved from camp bed to camp bed counting the number of sleeping monsters. 17, everyone was home and sleeping as the day got brighter.
Pendarves stirred and looked at him as he returned to the stairs.
“Making sure we’re all tucked in?” it whispered.
George smiled. “You know how I worry. I’ll be out for a few hours. New cameras have been put up on the bridges you use to move from the old piece of wasteland up towards the park.”
Pendarves nodded and yawned. “I wish you would let us just tear them down.”
George began to climb the stairs. “I’ve managed to keep you off camera for nearly thirty years. Just do what you’re told beak-face.”
He slid a small set of ladders into the back of his white van and drove the short distance to the stretch of road where three rail bridges crossed over. This was where he had first sat and drunk with Pendarves all those years before, but the old tennis court and club house was long gone, replaced by hundreds of expensive apartments and called Old Castle Gardens. The old path up to the clubhouse was still there and he had broken the gate’s lock a couple of days earlier. If it hadn’t been noticed then he could get in. If it had been then it was doubtful it would have been fixed so soon.
He pulled on a high visibility vest and balanced the ladders on his shoulder. If he was caught on camera or by a passing police patrol he would look like a rail worker going about his business. If questioned he had some forged documents and letters referring to routine maintenance up on the bridges.
At the top of the path he studied the new cameras on the first bridge. About nine feet up, each pointing along one of the tracks. It was 5am and the rail network would not start up for another hour. He moved quickly but carefully. There was no alternative to approaching one camera face on but it was unlikely anyone was monitoring at this time in the morning. He placed the ladders against the pole, clambered up and sprayed a couple of lines of black car paint onto the lens. He then stuck a protest note across the paint, ‘1984 was a warning, not a blueprint.’ Then across the tracks to the other camera, followed by the other two bridges.
Less than fifteen minutes later he pulled the broken gate closed behind him, replaced the ladders in the car and drove back to his silent home. The creatures were asleep and he had another day ahead locating new cameras and plotting routes for them to move and hunt around this part of the city.
He made a cup of tea and settled at his desk. He had predicted a lot of the changes that had happened over the past thirty years, but even now he was bewildered by the sheer pace of it all and the extent of surveillance intrusion. There was probably only one thing that he had gotten wrong, and it had worked nicely for the monsters in the basement. The rail network had never moved to an all-night service, so they still had the rails and a fair amount of empty land to move about after dark. The rest of the city was virtually impossible now, and the streets hardly worth considering.
He opened up a street map on his laptop, another innovation he could hardly have imagined in 1994. The route to his sister’s home had been opened by his act of ‘protest’ this morning, but the intersection that had to be crossed to secretly reach his brother’s place had suddenly been covered by a traffic camera and two security cameras at the nearby supermarket.
Terrifying experiences some years before had persuaded both brother and sister to drop the issue of selling the family home, even after their parents had passed away. Neither would go into much detail about them but George knew that people’s minds change, even after a scare. Keeping surveillance free routes open to his siblings’ homes seemed like a sensible precaution.
It would never do for him or his guests to find themselves homeless. But for now, just what was he going to do about the cameras at that intersection?
End
Summer 1994
George had seen the creature for the first time when he was eight years old. Childhood had not been a happy time for him but he did feel safe at home and he would sometimes clamber out onto the roof and lie on the solid sandstone border between his house and next door’s. It was on one of these nights, safe from the world by the height, and safe from his parents and siblings by the fact none of them were fit enough to climb up and into the attic, far less come out through the small hatch and onto the roof.
The absence of stairs to the attic was no obstacle to George whose only talent was his innate athleticism and strength. So the attic space and roof had become a refuge from a seriously overcrowded house.
George’s athleticism, though, had, inadvertently, become the cause of his feud with the old woman across the road. To get into the house he would seldom miss a chance to climb the drainpipe by the front door and then slip carefully across the bay window of his bedroom to the far side window that had a broken lock. He did it all the time, and the neighbors knew he did it, but one time the old witch had called the police, despite knowing perfectly well who he was. She had been considerably less observant when, six months later, they were actually burglarized for real while away on holiday.
The neighbor’s clear love of mischief, and her clearer disinterest in being a good neighbor, meant that the night the creature slipped in through her open front window, George was less than motivated to clamber back into the house and phone the police. He watched, heart rate a little elevated, as a brief scream was followed by a couple of distant thumps, and then the creature slipping out through the window and scampering along the short street, across a main road, and then into a work yard and, finally, onto the overgrown railway embankment and gone.
George felt a genuine sense of satisfaction as he told the police officer that he had seen exactly the same as the dead neighbor had when their house had been burglarized, nothing. For a while he took to tying himself to a stanchion in the attic in case he came to the attention of the prowling fairytale creatures who would emerge from the railway embankment and do what they did. Several unexplained deaths later George realized that, whatever was going on, the creatures prowling after dark, and after people had settled in for the night, were only going for the bad people in the two blocks that were the extent of his life at that time.
The woman round the corner in the tenement building, the one who had told lies about him and others, fell from her rear window as George watched. The old lady across the road and down the narrow lane, the one who punctured any footballs that landed in her garden, died in her sleep, the police said, but George had seen an ape like thing swing in through an open upstairs room the night before the area was crawling with police and medics.
That woman’s neighbor, the one who liked to torment anyone climbing into his garden to recover footballs, with threats of the police, was found face down in his garden. Whatever he had caught that night had stopped his heart dead. George had watched the whole thing and found it immensely satisfying. Unlike school and family life, there clearly was a world of balance out there. In some corners of creation bad people had bad things happen to them.
The years passed, his siblings moved out (not that he missed any of them) and, finally, his parents ended up in care facilities. George was on his own in the house. His family may have been idiots, but none of them were cynical enough to press for selling off their parents’ assets. Having someone in the house and taking care of it suited them perfectly. But, for all George’s situation had improved, the same could not be said for the dwellers on the railway embankment.
Whatever they were they were physical, and they were not keen on being seen. Through George’s childhood this was not a problem, as security was hardly an issue. Generally speaking there would be someone about any house, but, as the years passed, and both parents working became more common, alarms started appearing. George was particularly irritated by one that had been installed in a small factory unit behind his house. From day one it did not work, to such an extent that staff would close up on a Friday night with its bell screaming, and would leave it until Monday morning. Laws clamping down on this sort of nonsense were over a decade away.
For all the failings of early generation alarm systems the creatures from the embankment were increasingly faced with devices warning resident that they were there, or, as the years passed, demonstrating that they had been there. George was no tech expert but he could see the direction things were traveling in.
He was also seeing that the world he was living in was probably the world he was bound to live in, and he didn’t want to become the disagreeable old woman who burst footballs, or the idiot next door who enjoyed tormenting children, or the busybody who saw every innocent action and turned it sinister while becoming conveniently blind when any genuine issues were brewing.
George wanted to be a good neighbor, but to both the people next door and the people on the embankment. To do this he had to get up onto the embankment and speak with them. An effortless job when he was a child. Not so easy when the work yard closed and the tenement next to it installed a secured entry system.
If there was one feature of developing technology that irritated George by its utter pointlessness, it was secured door entry systems. In theory they were fine, in practice there was always at least one occupant of an eight-apartment block who would just hit OPEN when they heard a buzzer.
All of this said, the tenement close was the simplest way up and onto the embankment that George knew, from a careful study of maps, was a vast triangle of wilderness, crisscrossed by railway lines. It was one of only a few abandoned spaces left in a rapidly developing city. Nervously aware that he couldn’t rely on gaining entry he was, nevertheless, rehearsed and prepared, Someone clicked.
“Parcel for 2/1.”
“Come on in. It’s two up.”
And that was that. He walked through and into the back court, and squeezed through a rusted railing. As he climbed the steep embankment he heard a knock on a window behind him, staccato and loud. He looked back, and realized that, although the woman only lived a hundred yards from his house, she was on a housing block that had no connection with his. He looked her in the eye, did nothing, and then turned away and climbed the embankment. She could call the police, but it was all landlines then, and, by the time they showed up, he could be anywhere.
George entered the wilderness between the railways and it was huge. Completely surrounded by busy main roads, it might as well have been the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert. As children, he and his friends had sought out every empty place they could find to play but they had avoided this area because of the complex crisscross of railway lines. It might be devoid of adults, but keeping out of sight of train drivers and passengers was a harder proposition.
There was enough light from distant street lamps and house windows to allow him to walk carefully over the uneven ground and sleepers. The madness of what he was doing was slowly sinking in and fear was replacing the simple determination to get up and over the embankment. He had been so fixated on how he was going to get here that he had forgotten to consider what he was going to do or say when he got here.
He realized suddenly that he was going to need his wits and some spontaneity as a huge figure rose from the dark ground and filled the hazy light of the sky. Behind him he heard more movement. In the distance, behind the creature in front, he saw one of the occasional night service trains approaching. As its headlights grew closer the figure turned and George saw a head like a vulture, only much bigger. It spun back and glared at him, eyes a luminous yellow.
“Copy me!” It hissed and squatted slightly, one arm raised into the air, head tucked down on its chest. George did likewise, presuming their companion behind him was also assuming a stupid position. The train trundled past. George looked out of the corner of his eyes and spotted a few passengers but none were paying much attention to the darkness outside their carriage.
When the area was silent again they stood. The vulture headed creature followed the train with its eyes and then looked at George.
“An old trick. In poor or confused light just assume an odd shape. Most of the time people will assume you’re a bush or a tree.” It leaned in until its beak was almost touching George’s nose. “You’re the fellow from the middle house across the main road.”
It pointed and George looked across. Sure enough, a few hundred yards away he could clearly see his house, a single light on in the hall to persuade would be burglars that someone was home. The attempt at security looked as pitiful to him now as it undoubtedly would to any burglar.
“We have watched you watching us. What do you want?”
What did he want? He thought for a moment as the creature behind him came round and into view. This one was smaller, hairier, perhaps the one who had scared the puncturer of footballs to death. He was scared but he realized that what he wanted right now was to know what these things were, how they lived, and how they were going to deal with the cameras that were going up everywhere, and the security doors, and shops opening 24 hours a day.
“Well?” growled the hairy one.
“I want to invite you into my home, assuming there aren’t hundreds of you.”
The vulture creature shook its head. “There are not many of us. Thank you for your invitation, but first please come to our home. My name is Pendarves, this is Ferris.”
As they turned and began walking George replied, “I’m George.”
He followed them along a rail track, unable to match his steps to the distance between the sleepers, and, after ten minutes onto, of all things, a tennis court. The net hung loosely and the grass had long since been consumed by a crust of dry moss. In front of the ruined club house a fire blazed and a bizarre group of creatures sat around.
“I believe this was once a club for rail workers. No one ever comes any more. It suits us well.”
George looked over to his right and caught a couple of distant flashes of car lights. The location was good but it was never going to stay out of sight forever. The crowd looking at him now, some with open hostility, most with passive curiosity, were safe for the moment. He looked behind him at the dark space they had come through. It occurred to him that it was only a matter of time before housing was built here.
He turned back and accepted Pendarves’s invitation to join the group at the fire. He now knew what he wanted. He wanted to warn this dangerous looking crowd of nightmares that it was actually they who were the ones in danger.
He sat down and accepted a bowl of some strong-smelling ale.
“You are in danger. I am here to help if I can.”
There were a couple of derisory snorts, a brief laugh, but they listened and, despite an ongoing worry about their intentions, they remained welcoming.
Summer 2019
The sun was rising as George pottered about the house, preparing for his day’s work. He tiptoed down the spiral staircase he had had put in years before when the vast basement area had been renovated. He moved from camp bed to camp bed counting the number of sleeping monsters. 17, everyone was home and sleeping as the day got brighter.
Pendarves stirred and looked at him as he returned to the stairs.
“Making sure we’re all tucked in?” it whispered.
George smiled. “You know how I worry. I’ll be out for a few hours. New cameras have been put up on the bridges you use to move from the old piece of wasteland up towards the park.”
Pendarves nodded and yawned. “I wish you would let us just tear them down.”
George began to climb the stairs. “I’ve managed to keep you off camera for nearly thirty years. Just do what you’re told beak-face.”
He slid a small set of ladders into the back of his white van and drove the short distance to the stretch of road where three rail bridges crossed over. This was where he had first sat and drunk with Pendarves all those years before, but the old tennis court and club house was long gone, replaced by hundreds of expensive apartments and called Old Castle Gardens. The old path up to the clubhouse was still there and he had broken the gate’s lock a couple of days earlier. If it hadn’t been noticed then he could get in. If it had been then it was doubtful it would have been fixed so soon.
He pulled on a high visibility vest and balanced the ladders on his shoulder. If he was caught on camera or by a passing police patrol he would look like a rail worker going about his business. If questioned he had some forged documents and letters referring to routine maintenance up on the bridges.
At the top of the path he studied the new cameras on the first bridge. About nine feet up, each pointing along one of the tracks. It was 5am and the rail network would not start up for another hour. He moved quickly but carefully. There was no alternative to approaching one camera face on but it was unlikely anyone was monitoring at this time in the morning. He placed the ladders against the pole, clambered up and sprayed a couple of lines of black car paint onto the lens. He then stuck a protest note across the paint, ‘1984 was a warning, not a blueprint.’ Then across the tracks to the other camera, followed by the other two bridges.
Less than fifteen minutes later he pulled the broken gate closed behind him, replaced the ladders in the car and drove back to his silent home. The creatures were asleep and he had another day ahead locating new cameras and plotting routes for them to move and hunt around this part of the city.
He made a cup of tea and settled at his desk. He had predicted a lot of the changes that had happened over the past thirty years, but even now he was bewildered by the sheer pace of it all and the extent of surveillance intrusion. There was probably only one thing that he had gotten wrong, and it had worked nicely for the monsters in the basement. The rail network had never moved to an all-night service, so they still had the rails and a fair amount of empty land to move about after dark. The rest of the city was virtually impossible now, and the streets hardly worth considering.
He opened up a street map on his laptop, another innovation he could hardly have imagined in 1994. The route to his sister’s home had been opened by his act of ‘protest’ this morning, but the intersection that had to be crossed to secretly reach his brother’s place had suddenly been covered by a traffic camera and two security cameras at the nearby supermarket.
Terrifying experiences some years before had persuaded both brother and sister to drop the issue of selling the family home, even after their parents had passed away. Neither would go into much detail about them but George knew that people’s minds change, even after a scare. Keeping surveillance free routes open to his siblings’ homes seemed like a sensible precaution.
It would never do for him or his guests to find themselves homeless. But for now, just what was he going to do about the cameras at that intersection?
End