Read by Peter Kenny - full podcast here (last story)
“Nervous?” my girlfriend asks, briefly taking her eyes off the road ahead to look at me and smile reassuringly.
“Of course.” I reply. Or at least I try to. Seeking to hide my nerves, I make a real effort to sound calm and overdo it. I end up just making a slight gurgly noise.
“My parents will just adore you,” she declares.
I don’t believe her for a second. “I’ve always been bad with parents, that’s why I said the first time we meet needs to be a quiet affair. Somewhere low-key. Like a Burger King.”
She sighs loudly, “You were not meeting my parents at a Burger King.”
She just shrugs at this, “I told you, we do Valentine’s Day very differently in my village.” The car begins to slow to a stop and she points out the front window, “Like that, for example.”
It’s a roadsign. It informs all drivers passing that they are about to enter the village of Little Mudsham. The sign itself is unremarkable, but what shocks me is what is hanging off it. It’s the large skull of, I think, a horse. And attached to the top of it is a long wooden spike.
“The Skull’s up!” my girlfriend cheers as the car speeds up again, “The fun has officially started.”
*
“Ah, so you’ve seen the Unicorn Skull,” my girlfriend’s father remarks, handing me a whisky, “Must have been quite a shocker, eh boy?”
I gladly take the drink, and throw him a nervous smile. “I was a bit surprised.”
“No doubt!” he blurts out merrily. “And just before you had to meet her frightening old devil of a father, eh?!” He slaps me playfully on the back, but given his strength I spill most of my whisky.
I’d arrived at the parents’ cottage just fifteen minutes before this. It’s true the skull on the sign had shaken me up slightly, but I think I’d still just about got through the first encounter with the mother and father. They’d been incredibly welcoming, and almost too excited to meet me. As the talk turned to planning for the evening’s festivities, the father had sidled up to me and suggested leaving the ladies to get on with it while we retreated to his study for a stiff drink.
Which I’d now spilt. Desperate to move the conversation on, I began a little spiel I had prepared for him, “I assure you that my intentions towards your daughter are entirely honourable and…”
“My boy!” he booms, “What you and my daughter intend to get up to is none of my business. What matters is that she likes you. I mean she did say you were far too keen at first and she’s rated you at a five and half when it comes to the bedroom …”
I drop my whisky glass in shock.
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that.” The father immediately reacts to my discomfort; “My daughter has always been a harsh marker. Last few boyfriends have struggled to make a four. And, of course, you’re in the perfect position to learn about her and consequently up your score. Very few men can be a natural ten like her Sergio was.” At this his eyes seem to glaze over slightly, as if he’s lost in a wistful memory. “Ahh, Sergio …”
I cough loudly, and dad seems to snap back to reality. “Thing is,” he continues, “I didn’t pull you in here to ask you about your intentions concerning my daughter. I thought it might be an idea to bring you up to speed on what we get up to here in Little Mudsham over Valentine’s. It often is a bit of a headscratcher to outsiders.”
“Is it?”
“You ask a fair few of the locals, and they’ll say the whole thing is a proper Pagan event dating back thousands of years. But I’ll be honest, my boy, that’s just hogwash. The main festivities date back to an old Vicar called Frimley Pepperdine. A proper Edwardian gent he was. Also madly in love with the man who ran the post office at the time, one Cyril Ramkins. By all accounts they had a passionate affair, but it soon transpired that Cyril was not interested in being a one man man. Well, that rather broke the heart of old Pepperdine. Went a bit mad, he did, for a while. Constantly spying on Cyril, poisonous letters, fiery sermons – nasty business. But then it seems he had something of an epiphany. That’s when he started arranging Halloween-style festivities but at this time of year. The main object of which was to remind us all that love, despite all its many wonderful virtues, can also be a monstrous emotion, inspiring dark deeds.”
“So we’re celebrating Halloween tonight?” I ask.
“Not really. You see over the decades we’ve rather changed things to create our own rituals so it’s very much its own thing these days. Good Lord, that reminds me of another thing I meant to say. We have an evening parade through the village after sundown tonight, from the village hall to a big bonfire on the green. And, well, we have this character that walks at the very back of the parade. We call him the Stalkerman. He’s like a Valentine’s bogeyman. Really frightens the kiddies.”
“Right …”
“And the thing is, as our guest, we’d really like you do us the honour and be the Stalkerman in tonight’s parade. It’s an odd costume, I’ll admit, but it really is lots of fun and it’ll give you a unique insight into the celebrations.”
“Well …” I hesitate, “I don’t want to disappoint anyone …”
“Capital!” he exclaims delightedly before I can finish. “You’ll be splendid at it, my boy. Unforgettable.”
*
A short while later I find my girlfriend in her old bedroom. She’s pulling out loads of old vinyl from under the bed. “Don’t know if Dad told you,” she begins, “But I’m DJ-ing in the village hall tonight. My theme is all the classic love songs that actually have really unhealthy lyrics.” Suddenly her face lights up. “Result!” she exclaims holding up a copy of Every Breath You Take by The Police.
“Yeah well, your Dad has talked me into being tonight’s Stalkerman.”
This makes her even more delighted than finding the record. “Darling! That’s brilliant.” She races over and gives me a huge hug. I wrap my arms around her but all I can think about is the five and a half score her Dad mentioned. But when I open my mouth to ask about it my brain swerves away at the last second and what actually comes out is, “Your Dad said you reckoned I was too keen at first.”
Staying in my arms, she pulls away slightly and looks right at me, “Well, you were. You were pretty full on.”
“But that was just because, you know, I really, really like you.”
“Darling, I know. But early on that behaviour felt like a demand for something. It can be scary,” she says, stiffening a bit. “That’s one of the reasons we have tonight. To illuminate when love can be scary and hopefully consign those fears to the ash heap. Now we really have to get going to the village hall. I need to set up and you need to get into costume.”
She motions at the large box of records, and I pick them up and lug them down to the car. The short drive across the village is fascinating. Everyone seems out and about. Adults dressed as tastefully sexy Hammer creatures. And children everywhere doing whatever they want. “Kids are allowed to be as annoying as possible this evening,” my girlfriend explains, “To serve as another warning of the terrifying consequences of love.”
Most striking of all is the giant mural covering the village hall. At first sight, it’s a very classical image of Eros in action, firing his arrows of love. But then I notice the poor souls that the arrows are striking. It’s like scenes from the goriest of video nasties, their faces and bodies torn open by the arrows, blood and internal organs flying everywhere in an orgy of destruction.
“That’s the original classic design,” my girlfriend remarks upon seeing the mural, “Drawn by this crazy Reverend for the first ever Valloween. Recently they’ve tried to update it with more modern horrible imagery. Last year it was scenes from Love, Actually. But I’m glad they’ve brought back the traditional one, feels festive.”
Inside, the village hall is even busier than outside, and word has clearly got around that I’ve agreed to be the Stalkerman. People keep coming up to me to shake me by the hand and tell me how good it is to have a proper traditional Stalkerman celebration. The event seems to get to a few of them: they’re almost crying as they talk to me. I’m beginning to be unsettled by all the attention. I mean, it’s just a character.
Finally my girlfriend leads me to a small room in the village hall where they keep the costume.
“Ta-da!” she declares, motioning to the outfit.
“Bloody hell!” I respond, jumping back in shock. It’s quite a look. Monstrous and very pagan. One half hairy faun, other half BBC Light entertainer from the Seventies.
Then I spot something else curious “Why is it brand new?” I ask.
“Oh, we need a new one every year,” my girlfriend explains casually. “After the party tonight, we won’t re-use it.”
That strikes me as weird, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. Instead I start putting the costume on, all the while trying to work out why I’m starting to feel so unsettled.
“Darling, tell you what, remember those ridiculously expensive necklace you bought me for our second date? Why don’t you wear it with the costume? I mean, you couldn’t really afford it and it was really awkward when you gave it to me. That’s one moment I’d love to consign to the fire.”
My heart stops when she says “fire”. Suddenly it’s as if all my neurons are connecting the dots – the pagan bonfire, the dark monstrous side of love, the brand new costume – in a split second it all comes together and makes a horrible form of sense.
“You’re not … you’re not going to burn me tonight, are you? In, like, a Wicker Heart?”
There’s a long pause. My girlfriend is looking right at me. Her eyes narrow, her smile vanishes. Finally she whispers, “Who told you?”
“Oh God, JESUS CHRIST NO!”
I lose it. I tear at the costume, while simultaneously trying to race for the door. The result is that I trip over, landing in a hairy Mr Tumnus heap.
“For pity’s sake!” my girlfriend giggles helplessly, “I was joking!”
I’m still hyperventilating and can’t reply. She comes over and helps me up, still laughing.
“We aren’t going to burn you, you dear sweet moron. I know this all seems a bit weird and pagan but honestly it’s harmless. We all get drunk, do embarrassing dancing and well, just have a village celebration. And if it does teach you anything about us, it would be that if any Pagan God or Gods came here and told us to burn someone alive as a demonstration of our love and devotion, we, as a community, would turn round and tell them to fuck right off.”
She kisses me gently on the cheek and whispers “I’ve boasted to all my old schoolfriends that I’m taking the handsome guy playing the Stalkerman this year home with me later – so get that costume on, get out there, and act like the filthiest, scariest, most heavy-breathing, bunny-boiling perv you can imagine and make them all envious.”
I bloody love this woman.
(c) Alan Graham, 2019
Alan Graham studied "Creative Writing" and "Economics" at UEA and is still unsure which discipline relies on make-believe the most. More of his stores can be found at www.alangrahamwords.com
Peter Kenny has worked for: A&BC, The Royal Shakespeare Co. and The BBC Radio Drama Co. An award winning recorder of audio-books, he’s read over 100 titles: everything from Iain M. Banks, Neil Gaiman, and Andrzej Sapkowski to Jonas Jonasson and Paul O'Grady “... from the sublime to the cor blimey!” Visit www.peterkenny.com
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