Read by Lois Tucker
Terri tied back her hair, and slid a heavy jacket on over the top of her scruffies. It was time to trail Ben down to the corner shop. This was how a wet Wednesday went during the school holidays when Terri needed cigarettes.
The boy didn’t want to go, wriggling while Terri fitted his wellies, truculent as a puppy straining at the leash. In the shop itself – only a matter of yards away, but an epic journey on days like this – Ben drifted over to the stand featuring the cheapo toys, bizarre plastic confections in garish blue, orange and neon pink.
Terri first saw the Magic Slate as a flash of pink in the boy’s hands, a rude flare on the periphery of her vision. She remembered something similar from when she was a girl: a flexible plastic sheet, tinged purple, running to searing laser gun pink at the edges. You used a pink stylus to draw pictures on the surface of the sheet, before peeling it back from the cardboard backing to erase it.
She recognised the blank look on Ben’s face as he turned it over in his hands: concentration. Any distraction for the boy was a blessing. She bought the Magic Slate for him.
Back in the house, Ben fell to his artwork, scrawling dinosaurs, robots and other creatures across the glowing surface while Terri carried out some chores.
As she smoked a cigarette by the open patio door, she could see her son reflected in the glass; knelt on the chair, face held close to his work, his long blond hair trailing towards the shiny acrylic surface. Such tranquil concentration was rare for the boy.
“You all right, Ben?” she called out.
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“You want a juice?”
“No thank you.”
Astonished by the sudden outbreak of manners, Terri padded over to the table to see what he was drawing.
It was a face. The eyes were shaped like rugby balls, far too large for its head. Tiny dots signified the pupils. Hair was added in stiff spines, jutting out punkishly from the top of the head. What disturbed Terri most was the mouth. At first it seemed like a jagged mountain range, or a crop of bristly Scots pines. When she looked closer, she saw that it was a meshwork of fine lines, giving the impression of needle teeth.
Ben was drawing something beneath this mouth that might have been flailing arms. Then his eyes shifted beneath the fringe, and he dropped the pink stylus, tearing the sheet off its plastic backing. The face, and everything else on the plastic surface, disappeared.
Terri frowned. “What was it you were drawing?”
“Nothing.”
“It looked really good. Who was it?”
The boy shrugged. He began to draw again, a set of sine waves undulating across the purple plain.
“You don’t have to hide things from me,” she said, in a softer voice.
“It was Mazimdas.”
“Who? Mazimdas? Is that someone off LaserCats?”
The boy giggled. “No.”
“Is it someone out of a TV show? Ninja Masters?”
“No, definitely not.”
“Is he a ghost?”
The boy brightened. “He might be a ghost...”
“Oh, I see.”
She had crossed over to the sink to pour a glass of water when Ben said: “He’s coming.”
“Who is?”
“Mazimdas. He’s coming.”
“Is he a friend or something?”
“Not really a friend.”
“Is this like when you told me about Jim and Max at the nursery? Remember? Before you started school? And I spoke to Mrs Turner and she told me that there wasn’t really a Jim and Max?”
The boy did not reply.
“Ben? Are you listening?”
He sighed. “No. Not like Jim and Max. Mazimdas is coming. Today.”
“What for?”
“For us.” The boy peeled back the sheet, then smoothed it over.
“Who is Mazimdas?” Terri crossed over to the table, standing in front of him. “Look at me when I am speaking to you, Ben.”
The boy looked up, and smiled. “He likes you. He really, really likes you. More than dad does, I think.”
“I think I’ll be having a word with your dad. I think he’s been letting you watch nasty films again.”
“It’s not a film,” Ben said. “Look, I’ll show you.” He lifted the slate towards Terri.
She took the slate from him. “It’s empty.”
“No it isn’t. Look.” The boy tapped the slate with the plastic stylus.
There was something on the slate, something indistinct. Two long, thin blobs, about five or six inches apart. The image had some kind of resonance, something she couldn’t quite connect with.
“That’s an air bubble or something.” She lifted the pinkish sheet off the flat white cardboard backing, and ran her hands over the sheer surface. “These things never last long, you know. I had one when I was a girl. They stop sticking to the cardboard.”
“It’s not a bubble, mum. Put the sheet back on.” Ben pulled the sheet taut and smoothed it down. The two blobs were still there, but they seemed to have grown slightly longer. “You see it?”
“I’m not seeing anything. Silly boy.”
“He’s getting closer. You’ll see him soon.”
“That’s enough now.” She put the slate back onto the table. The boy picked it up, and began to draw two long oval eyes once more. “I’ll show you what he looks like. I’ll draw his face properly.”
“Is this someone you’ve met? A man, or a teacher?”
“Nope.”
Terri crossed to the patio and closed the door, locking it tight and tugging on the handle for good measure. The rain continued to patter the windowpane, heavier now. She placed her hands on the window and peered out into the garden. Nothing unusual; grass too long, summer toys piled up against the shed in a vibrant chaos of red and yellow, a sharp contrast to the downpour.
She drew back, and then her heart began to beat faster. Not because of something outside the window, but because of the rapidly evaporating shape her hand had left on the glass.
She returned to the kitchen table, where Ben was tracing a spiral pattern inside one of the long oval eyes. Overcome by a sudden creeping sense of disgust, she snatched the sheet away.
“Hey!” Ben cried.
“Just a minute. I want to check something.”
She cleared the slate, then replaced it. The two blobs were still there, except much larger. She brought the edge of her hands up against the blobs. If they corresponded to the edge of another set of hands, then they were freakishly large.
Ten dots had appeared just above the two blobs. By the side of the blobs, two long archways appeared, right about where the meat of the thumb joint would be.
Terri shivered and checked the slate over, front and back. She held it up so that the light played across the flat surfaces, showing off any possible lumps and contours in the material or its cardboard backing. There were none.
Ben giggled, taking the slate back. “It won’t be long. Look.”
He began to pull the sheet back and forth, as fast as he could. The image grew more distinct with every impact, a psychedelic flip-book animation. It was unmistakably a pair of hands, pressed against the inside of the Magic Slate. Except that where the edge of the fingers should be, there were triangular notches that could have been scored by long, twisted fingernails. Or claws.
“He’s almost here.”
Terri snatched the Magic Slate off the boy. “Give me that! Stupid thing.”
Ben dropped the stylus. “You’ll be sorry.”
“Oh, will I? I think I’ll keep a hold of this.”
“He says you don’t have to be scared. He only wants to play.”
“Stop that.” Terri’s voice quivered. Stretching on her tip-toes, she placed the Magic Slate on top of the kitchen cupboard.
“It’s no use,” the boy said. “He’s seen you now. He’s on his way.”
“Enough silliness. Go through to the living room.”
“But I want to see him.”
“I said, go through!”
The boy sighed and stomped out of the kitchen.
Once he was gone, Terri lifted the Magic Slate off the top of the kitchen cupboard. When she saw what was on it, she gasped.
It was definitely a pair of hands, though they were bigger than any person’s – bigger even than Joel’s, with his construction-calloused fingertips and oven-glove palms. The fingers were obscenely long, razor-tipped, and ready to clutch and rend.
Terri crossed to the kitchen sink, fishing in her pockets for her cigarette lighter. She averted her eyes from the Magic Slate as the flame tickled the edges before catching light. The pink plastic wrinkled, bunched up and imploded with a feline hiss, and black smoke curled up from the edge of the cardboard backing. She held it until the heat flicked the edges of her fingers, then dropped the ashes into the sink.
Ben ran through with the triggering of the smoke alarm. Terri, waving a dishcloth underneath the detector, said: “It’s okay honey, mummy’s just had an accident. Go on through to the sitting room. I’ll make you a milkshake and a cheese and pickle sandwich if you like.”
“You burned the Slate!”
“I’m sorry Ben. Mummy’s a klutz – I was lighting a cigarette, and it caught fire. It’s very dangerous. Don’t worry - I can get you a new one, though. Or – hey, have you ever heard of Etch-a-Sketch?”
The boy’s shoulders jerked in frustration, and he tore at his own neck with his fingers.
“I liked the Magic Slate!”
“I know you did, honey. Hey… what are you scratching at?”
Ben tried to shy away, but she pulled back the edges of his pullover. “Looks like a heat rash you’ve got there. Why don’t you take this jumper off and put on a t-shirt?”
Then she noticed that the rash was on both sides of Ben’s neck. Two long, thin blobs, like the outer edge of two immense hands.
*
A few hours later, Joel pressed the central locking fob, and his car beeped once. Normally, this sound led to Ben’s head disturbing the drapes in the front room, but not today.
“Rainy day,” Joel sang, considering the sodden garden toys, “dream all day…”
Inside, Joel hung up his coat and unlaced his shoes, stretching his toes on the wooden flooring before shuffling into the front room.
“All right kiddo?” he called out.
No response.
“Terri?” He sighed. “You’ve left the TV on, love. What a waste of electricity.”
He crossed over to the coffee table, where Ben’s drawing pad, pens and pencils were scattered across the surface. Joel grunted and began to gather the pens. Then he saw what was sketched on the pad.
One figure had long, curly hair, with a set of bulging eyes peering through the fringe. It looked disconcertingly like Terri, but the clear blue eyes were grotesquely rendered. She looked terror-stricken. Beside her was a boy with a long blond fringe, his mouth downturned and bright blue tears dripping down the face in ever-decreasing drops.
Above both of these figures, a long-armed, spiky-haired figure with needle teeth wrapped two immense clawed hands around both Terri and Ben.
“Good lord,” Joel snorted. “That looks nothing like me at all.” He went into the kitchen and clicked on the kettle. It looked like they’d gone to the shop. They’d be back soon.
(c) Pat Black, 2015
The Magic Slate was first published as a runner up in the Emerald Street Ghost Story Competition 2015. A slightly shorter version is reproduced here by kind permission of Emerald Street.
Pat Black is a journalist and author from Glasgow, now living in Yorkshire. When he's not driving his wife to distraction with all the typing, he can often be found worrying livestock in the Lake District. His short stories have won prizes including the Daily Telegraph's Ghost Stories competition.
Lois Tucker (left) is an actress and creative, interested in consciousness, communication and adding to our enjoyment of life here on this spinning ball of rock, hurtling through spacetime. Likes: singing at the top of her voice; throwing fierce shapes on the dancefloor; diving head first into a project; making you laugh. www.loistucker.net
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