Alex Marks's Blog

Here's a very short story, which reflects back on some of my own experiences. Let me know what you think of it.

The woman - young, but strangely swollen and moving slowly - came to a halt at the bus stop. She swayed back to study the display of on-coming buses, sighed, and settled down to wait. She was coming back from one of her trips to the hospital. Fortunately, her treatment was drawing to a close, and so she would soon be spared these thrice-weekly visits, and she hoped she would quickly forget the wipe-down chairs in pastel green, the smell of the corridors, the agony of the needle probing ruthlessly for a vein in the back of her fist. Unconsciously, she rubbed one hand over the other, a sympathetic gesture from one limb to its fellow, made below the level of thought.
The treatment might be finishing, but there was no talk of her having been cured. That was a c-word not mentioned at all by the medical staff, and certainly not by herself. Her friends, though, her family, all happily bandied it about; it was a given, surely, that after the surgery, and after all these cycles of drugs, that the cancer was gone, banished forevermore, an inevitable conclusion like collecting three tokens from the newspaper and getting a free begonia. She leaned, tired, on the post of the bus stop. She knew better, of course, and so did the nurses and those ever-changing registrars. There was no cure, there wasn’t even proof that in her specific case the cancer had gone away. And if it had – well, there it waited, on the fringes of her mind, in the corners of every cell, just biding its time. A tiger in the undergrowth it lay, sleepy and passive for now, but who knew what unfathomable calculation of its own would lead it once again to show its teeth.
That was one of the problems of being a person with cancer, she reflected, closing her eyes and letting the light of a clear, early-Spring afternoon soak through their pallid lids in a wash of gold. Nobody wanted to hear bad news, or rather, nobody wanted to admit that sometimes cancer just killed you, no matter how many treatments you had, or how sunny you kept your attitude. People wanted to see the plucky, cheerful patient, not the exhausted, frightened, ravaged person who staggered from appointment to appointment, just wanting to endure. A man and a woman strolled past, and stared openly at her moon face and her bald head. She turned half away, and studied the pattern of tool marks on the golden stones in the wall behind her, waiting until the couple had moved on before looking round.
She often felt that perhaps she was in fact dead, that the cancer had really carried out its threat and taken her life. In this chain of half-dreamed thoughts, somehow no-one had noticed that she had died and continued to enforce treatments on her slowly-rotting frame. Or perhaps, like Lazarus, she had died and been returned to life as this half-person, not quite here and not quite elsewhere, a solid shade or a embodied ghost. Why did the skeleton not go to the ball, her ruined memory suddenly suggested, because he had no body to go with. Ha, ha. The post was cold, and she moved, shifting to the other shoulder. An old lady sitting on the bus stop’s narrow bench eyed her warily, but didn’t move.
Yes, perhaps Lazarus was the right analogy, she continued to herself. Brought back from the dead, not because he wanted to be, but because his family wept and cried and begged Jesus to do it. And the man himself? Alive, but forbidden ever to speak in case he reveal to those around him the reality of what lay beyond the grave. She felt like that. She couldn’t tell people how the chemo was dissolving her, unravelling her cells, making her a stranger in her own body; she couldn’t say, in case one day they needed chemo too and were swayed by her words to refuse its violent, drastic, last-ditch treatment. She couldn’t speak, instead she joined Lazarus in mutely looking on.

She turned to gaze up at the endless blue above the line of the buildings opposite. There was something else that she found it impossible to say to those around her: an understanding that had lain hidden in her soul, a secret line of code programed in and now revealed by the IF THEN of her weakened state. The world - that strong, fast, loud, fat, physical world - was thin, terribly thin, the merest whisper of ice on a darkened pond. All around she felt the translucency of the real, and beyond it – even she didn’t know. But there was a beyond, there was a something else, there was a place where if she didn’t hang on, if the treatment didn’t work, if she wasn’t lucky or plucky or cheerful enough, she would slip away to like an escaping balloon flitting into the afternoon sky.
Above her, she felt something change. Like plates moving smoothly across one another, like lenses focussing, she felt a transparency come into being high over her head. She looked up, and she could feel that someone was looking down, smiling down, reaching down, and her own thoughts spiralled up and up and she said in her mind:
‘Hello, Mum,’
And the gears revolved, and the gap closed over, and the bus came along the street and, moving slowly, she climbed aboard and went away.

No, this isn't the title of another ghost story; instead it's the feeling of returning to the first draft of my novel, which I completed in August.

Unlike my first book, White Light , which I wrote whilst very slowly recovering from cancer (and which took five long years to complete), I polished off my first draft of Shift Ten, my new novel, in six blistering months. On getting to this stage, I set it aside, well pleased, and concentrated on getting my ghost story collection, Queen Mary's Stair and Other Stories, ready for its pre-Hallowe'en launch (hint: you can buy it here).

After all that distraction, it was therefore a slightly disconcerting experience to return to the novel, and to remind myself of its characters, twists and turns, and its strange flavour of ghostly sci-fi. Part of me was thinking: hey, but didn't I finish this? And so it was with some reluctance that I went back to my desk.

But now, just a few days later, my mind is filled with the scents and sounds of my future Oxford, and my characters are telling me all sorts of interesting things that may, or may not, ever make it into the finished book. I am relieved to be back, and relieved to be relieved.

I'm hoping to finish this and any subsequent drafts over the next few months and to publish the finished novel in Spring 2017. I'll keep you all posted. But in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy returning to the friends I last saw in the summer.

I got the idea of writing a book of ghost stories when I was on holiday in June. I'd been reading a book about British homes, and witch tokens had been mentioned as often being found in nooks and crannies of old houses. My imagination leapt into action, and 'The Buckled Shoe' came into being.

Since then I've added more stories: about hideous professors, haunted staircases and the ghostly remains of elderly ladies. Over 1000 people took part in my giveaway for this collection, and the book is now live on Kindle and in paperback.

If you've added 'Queen Mary's Stair and Other Stories' to your to-read list, why not get your copy now? After all, winter's coming, the nights are drawing in, and Hallowe'en is just around the corner...

Staircases are funny places, aren't they? Neither one thing nor another, neither here nor there. Any UK readers of this blog post may remember a particularly terrifying staircase incident in the 1980 TV series, 'Sapphire and Steel'. I, certainly, never looked at them the same after that (nor old photos, either).

Years ago I heard the owner of a stately home in England describe how an ancestor had imported a Tudor staircase from a building where Mary, Queen of Scots, had once stayed. And she'd come too, walking up and down the stairs in spectral form.

So that got me wondering: what would happen if she escaped from the staircase, and started wandering round the rest of the house?

If you've started to wonder about that too, then read my short story 'Queen Mary's Stair'. It's free at the moment on Amazon, and is only 99p (or 99c) after that. Take a look here and maybe you'll find yourself completing the rhyme:
I wish, I wish, she'd go away.

It's strange where inspiration can come from: this week I was reading a history of the British house and learnt about the tradition of putting a shoe into the rafters to ward off witches. That got me thinking, and this story is the result...

You can read the first part of the spooky tale here, and follow the link to my blog for the rest. Enjoy.

The Buckled Shoe

'I've come to see Tom', the nurse at the desk gave Andy a dubious look. 'I’ve got a letter from his mother, giving permission for me to see him.' He handed over the handwritten note, and she spent a long time examining it, as if to find a reason to ignore it. But Hilary's wishes were very clear: the staff were to allow him, Tom's oldest friend, to visit him at the private psychiatric hospital where he now resided.

'I'll have to get Dr Chambers', she said at last, and left him sitting in the bland magnolia reception area for a long twenty minutes, before eventually returning and inviting him to go through a tall, Edwardian door into what he assumed was Dr Chambers' office. A greying man in a shirt and bow tie (no white coat, he noted) stood behind the desk, gazing out of the long window into the rhododendrons outside. He turned and they shook hands.

'Thank you for coming, Andy,' he said. 'I understand that you've been away?'

'Yes, I've been travelling in Australia.’

‘And you’ve heard that Tom has been – taken ill?’

The younger man nodded. ‘Tom and I were in fairly regular contact by email until about three months ago when I had had a serious car accident and was in hospital for seven weeks. During that time I had no access to anything other than a telephone, and apart from calls to my parents, that not much. By the time I had recovered enough to return home, and signed back into my email account, Tom was already here.' He shifted his weight slightly off his bad leg. 'What's been happening? I read his emails but...'

'Yes, his emails,' said the doctor, heavily. 'Well, Tom's mother has asked me to be honest with you. He's had a very sudden, but complete psychotic break. We’re still not sure what caused it – as to timing, it appears to have been triggered by something that happened just after his last email to you. Despite our administration of appropriate medications he continues to experience delusions.' Chambers paused, and saw Andy's horrified expression. 'Do you know whether he was taking any drugs?'

'No, not that I know of,' he admitted. 'Why?'

'In this type of case, where the patient becomes so ill so quickly, an episode of drug taking often turns out to be the last straw to perhaps an already fragile mind.'

He waved the young man out of the office and they went back into the corridor and through a secure, key-coded door. Beyond, the corridor, still bright, still magnolia, seemed different. It took Andy a moment to realise that everything was smoothed: no sharp corners, no ligature points. A long photomural of a beautiful garden in midsummer took up one wall, which seemed particularly cruel in this place of confinement.

Chambers paused outside a plain door. The younger man looked at him apprehensively.

'You'll have to take off your shoes,' said the psychiatrist.

Read more on my blog

While my mind has been running on all things spooky with my new book, I thought I'd put down this little ghost story that has been in my mind for several years. In fact (and rather appropriately), it came to me in a dream... I hope you like it.

The Undertakers

I had been up all night, staring at the computer screen. Letter by painful letter, I’d pecked out the content of the email that I was finally sending to Charlotte, all those miles away. Each full stop felt like a tiny nail in the coffin of our relationship, and by the time I’d pressed ‘send’, I was drained and spent, a bloodless husk, all hope sucked out of me. And so ended five years of my life. I looked at the clock: three thirty a.m. The window was a reflecting square of black, catching me pale and pensive, seated at the desk I’d probably been sitting at too long during those five years. On impulse I jumped up, grabbed my jacket, and left the flat.

Three thirty is a time when the world is dead. The night has crystallised the city into silence, and the morning seems nothing more than a cruel dream that will never come true. I walked down the wide, empty pavements, stepping in and out of the cones of orange sodium light, and shoved my hands into my pockets. What a pointless waste everything was. Without Charlotte, what was I going to do now?

Inevitably, the bright square of light from the window of the all-night caff drew me in. I stopped outside its steamy glass, and then pushed open the door and blinked at the fluorescents for a second before walking up the counter. A tired woman in an apron waved me away.

‘Just sit down, love. I’ll be over in a sec.’

I sat at a yellow-topped table facing the window, and when the waitress shambled over, ordered tea and toast. She nodded, and shuffled off to speak to an unseen figure in the kitchen.

‘Can I tell you something?’ the voice, almost in my ear, made me jump out of my chair. I swivelled round and saw a small man leaning across from the next table.

‘Shit!’ I glared at him, and he smiled apologetically, but made no move to back away. ‘What is it?’

‘Sorry, it just seems to good a chance to pass up, if you don’t mind.’

The woman wandered over with my mug and plate of buttery toast, and didn’t cast a glance at my neighbour. I took a sip, burnt my tongue, and relented a bit.

‘What’s the problem?’ The man shuffled his chair over to mine, and smiled again. I looked at him properly. He had seemed small, but now I saw he was just stooped, and that and the tightly-buttoned black overcoat and heavy scarf gave him a curiously old-fashioned air. He eyed my toast and licked his lips. ‘Want some?’ I offered.

His face quirked into a broader smile, and he shook his head. ‘If you would be so good, my friend, as to hear my story?’ he asked, and I saw a flash of something in his eyes that I couldn’t place. Was it anxiety? Or humour? Either way, the warmth of the café and the comfort of the food had combined to make me relax. Let him talk. What could be the harm? I thought.

‘Go on, then.’ I said.

He shuffled a bit closer again and a scent of mothballs and something rank fluttered into my nose, quenching my appetite at a stroke. But he was speaking now, and there was no stopping him.

‘My name, sir, is Malcolm Raymond Robinson.’ If he’d been wearing a hat, he’d have doffed it, I thought, mentally shaking my head. ‘I’m from just up the road, lived there all my life. I work in a shop, a hardware shop, nails and buckets, you know the sort of gear. Not a very adventurous person, perhaps, just a regular type of chap – read the paper, do the garden, like a pint occasionally.’ He drew breath, his gaze turning inward, caught in his own story. ‘About two weeks ago I was walking home from the pub, I’d had a few,’ he threw me a glance, ‘but I wasn’t too bad and my feet know the way, alright, so I know I was on my street. But as I came up to my house I thought I’d got lost after all because there was an undertaker’s carriage parked outside the door.’ I turned my head. ‘You know, one of those old-fashioned ones with black horses with feathers on their heads,’ his pale hand twirled above his own bald crown in emphatic description. I nodded, and he carried on. ‘Well, as you can suppose I thought something terrible had happened while I was out, that my wife or my children had…’ He swallowed. ‘But then everyone knows I drink in the Red Lion and someone would have run to tell me, I was sure. Anyway, I hurried over and then I saw there was an undertaker sitting up at the front.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked him, all out of breath, ‘Who has died?’

He looked at me, and a coldness spread all the way through me, a coldness and a great feeling of –' he selected his words, ‘desolation. Like there was no light, no hope, not any more. I told myself it was simple fear, that’s all, and looked up at the man for his answer. He seemed very tall, sat up there, and the horses were standing very quiet, like, not stamping their feet or anything.’

‘What did he say?’ I couldn’t help but ask the question. He nodded at me, as if this was the right thing to do.

‘He looked down at me, from all the way up there, and he said: ‘We’ve come a little early, sir, just a little early,’ and with that he flicked the reigns and those silent horses sprang into motion, and they was off down the street and round the corner before I could say knife.’ The little man shook his head, and leaned in, voice dropping. I was faintly aware of the hiss of the espresso machine and the slap of the magazine pages the waitress was turning, but it was all far away, lost behind the voice of this strange character, telling his strange story. ‘Anyway, I hurried inside as you can imagine but – thank the Lord – my wife and all my children were fine, in high health and spirits, and over the next few days I began to think that perhaps it was the undertaker who had been drunk, and not me!’ He sat back and laughed, and the sound chilled me. ‘But then, and you see, sir, this is the part that has really disturbed me, then a few nights later I was feeling tired and didn’t want to bother with the Red Lion, and so sat at home in the parlour with a bottle of Mild. It was cold, unseasonably, I thought, and as the wife was busy upstairs I lit the gas fire and settled into my armchair, and, well, after a few minutes I fell quite asleep. And even though I was asleep I thought the fire must have gone out as the cold was seeping into my bones, and pressing down on me, and in the end it woke me up – but I found I wasn’t sitting in my chair, but lying down.’ His face puckered at the memory. ‘I struggled to sit up and I saw that I wasn’t even at home, but I was in the street, sitting up in a coffin.’ His eyes met mine and the fear was bright in them. ‘A coffin! And all around me were these undertakers, carrying the coffin along, and they seemed very tall and distant, their faces all – calm, like. Well, I started shouting, make no mistake! ‘Stop! Stop!’ and for a long while it didn’t seem they would stop but in the end the tallest one, who I saw was the man I’d spoken to from the carriage, he looked down at me and said: 'We’ve come a little early, sir, just a little early,’ and with that I found myself sitting on the road in the middle of our street in all the wet, with no-one about at all.’ I stared at him, and he nodded, and began to collect up gloves and a hat from beside his table as if somehow he’d done what he’d meant to do and could now leave.

‘But what happened? Who were they?’ I said, grabbing at his sleeve, which released another powerful waft of mothballs and that under scent of – decay, I realised with a jolt. The little man was standing now, and he didn’t seem little any more.

‘Well, sir, of course after that I didn’t want to fall asleep – oh ho, no! I didn’t want to fall asleep at all! Every time my eyes closed, no matter whether I was sitting up or lying in my bed, each and every time I felt that coldness start to clutch at me, close in on me, and I would jump up and walk about and try to wake up.’ He stopped, and slowly placed onto his head a tall, black hat. A long knot of black crepe hung down from the brim, and draped itself down the back of his coat. He stooped down, and I felt the weight of his hand pressing into my shoulder as he whispered to me: ‘But you can’t stay awake for ever, can you, sir?’

My eye flicked to the misty window, and I saw my own reflection, wide-eyed and ghostly, but only mine. In my ear I heard his voice chuckling: ‘I’ll see you again, sir, I’ve just come a little early, just a little early’.

And then I was alone, and the warmth of the café faded away, curdling into a terrible, aching cold…

After publishing my first book, White Light, I wanted to set myself a new challenge. I love sci fi, and I love ghost stories, so hey presto! My new book, already well underway, is a disturbing paranormal thriller set in a future world.

In the next few weeks I will be posting up a few excerpts to whet your appetites for the full novel. For the moment, here's the first couple of lines:

"JP set the gramophone going, and we wheeled it on the old pram under the broken arch of Magdalen College. The Flower Duet soared into the peach and orange sky, and I looked up to see a flight of swallows arc through the blueing dusk and twist and whirl in and through the empty windows and out again from the gaping roof. In the quiet, the purr of the river seemed loud, and I felt very aware of the sounds of our wary steps over the tumbled golden stones. Within the embrace of the buildings darkness dropped suddenly over us, and Caro snapped on the lantern, making sharp shadows jump from every arch and window sill, and casting the shapes of open doorways in solid black."