Graham Joyce Read online

  I never spoke another word to Tania, and she never came near the pylon again. I was terrified the story would get back to my folks I didn't see why exactly, but I had the feeling I'd reap all the blame. But a few days later something happened which overshadowed the entire incident.

  And it happened to Clive.

  One afternoon he and I had been sharing a bottle of Woodpecker. He'd been listening again.

  'Old man Astley's found out.'

  'Eh? How do you know?'

  He looked up at the overhead wires. 'She's been on the phone to the Dog and Trumpet.'

  He was always reporting what he'd 'heard' on the wires. We all knew he was completely cracked, but it was best to ignore him. I changed the subject. I started regaling him with some nonsense I'd heard about a burglar's fingers bitten clean off by an Alsatian, when Clive took it into his head to start climbing the pylon. I didn't think it was a sensible thing to do but it was pointless saying anything.

  'Not a good idea, that.'

  'Why?'

  Climbing the pylon wasn't easy. The inspection ladder didn't start until a height of nine feet - obviously with schoolboys in mind - but that didn't stop Clive. He lifted the door we used as a bench and leaned it against the struts of one of the pylon's legs. Climbing on the struts, he pulled himself to the top of the door, and standing on its top edge he was able to haul himself up to the inspection ladder. He ascended a few rungs and seemed happy to hang there for awhile. I got bored watching him.

  It was late afternoon and the sky had gone a dark, a cobalt shade of blue. I finished off the cider, unzipped my trousers and stuck my dick outside the curtains to empty my bladder. A kind of spasm shot through me before I'd finished, stronger even than those I'd felt before. I ignored it. 'So the burglar,' I was telling Clive, 'knew the key was on a string inside the letter box. So when the owners came home they got into the hallway and found,' I finished pissing, zipped up and turned to complete the story. But my words tailed off, 'two fingers still holding the string...'

  I looked up the inspection ladder to the top of the pylon. I looked at the grey metal struts. I looked everywhere. Clive had vanished.

  'Clive?'

  I checked all around. Then I went outside. I thought he might have jumped down, or fallen. He wasn't there. I went back inside. Then I went outside again.

  Spots of rain started to appear. I looked up at the wires and they seemed to hum contentedly. I waited for a while until the rain came more heavily, and then I went home.

  That night while I lay in bed, I heard the telephone ring. I knew what time it was because I could hear the television signature blaring from the lounge. It was the end of the late night news. Then my mother came upstairs. Had I seen Clive? His mother had phoned. She was worried.

  The next day I was interviewed by a policewoman. I explained we were playing under the pylon. I turned my back and he'd disappeared. She made a note and left.

  A few days later the police were out like blackberries in September. Half the neighbourhood joined in the fine-toothcomb search of the waste ground and the nearby fields. They found nothing. Not a hair from his head.

  While the searches went on, I started to have a recurring nightmare. I'd be back under the pylon, pissing and happily talking away to Clive. Only it wasn't urine coming out, it was painful fat blue and white sparks of electricity. I'd turn to Clive in surprise, who would be descending the inspection ladder wearing fluorescent blue overalls, his face out of view. And his entire body would be rippling with eels of electricity, gold sparks arcing wildly. Then slowly his head would begin to rotate towards me and I'd start screaming; but before I ever got to see his awful face I'd wake up.

  We stopped playing under the pylon after that. No one had to say anything, we just stopped going there. I did go back once, to satisfy my own curiosity. The screens had been ripped away in the failed search, but the nettles bashed down by the police were already springing up again.

  I looked up into the tower of the pylon, and although there was nothing to see, I felt a terrible sense of dread. Then a face appeared over the Nantwich's' fence. It was Olive. She'd seen me looking.

  'Gone,' she said. It was the only word l ever heard her say. 'Gone.'

  Summer came to an end and we went off to our respective schools. I saw Tania once or twice in her straw boater, but she passed me with her nose in the air. Eventually she married a Tory MP. I often wonder if she's happy.

  Inevitably Kev and I stopped hanging around together, but not before there was a murder in the district. The landlord of the Dog and Trumpet was stabbed to death. They never found who did it. Joy moved out of the area when her parents split up. She went to live with her mother.

  Joy went on to become a rock and roll singer. A star. Well, not a star exactly, but I did once see her on Top of the Pops. She had a kind of trade mark, turning her back on the cameras to wiggle her bottom. I felt pleased for her that she'd managed to put the habit to good use.

  Just occasionally I bump into Kev in this pub or that but we never really know what to say to each other. After a while Kev always says, 'Do you remember the time you hypnotised Tania Brown and...' and I always say 'Yes' before he gets to the end of the story. Then we look at the floor for a while until one of us says, 'Anyway, good to see you, all the best.' It's that anyway that gets me.

  Clive Mann is never mentioned.

  Occasionally I make myself walk past the old place. A new group of kids has started playing there, including Kev Duffy's oldest girl. Yesterday as I passed by that way there were no children around because an Electricity Board operative was servicing the pylon. He was halfway up the inspection ladder, and he wore blue overalls exactly like Clive in my dream. It stopped me with a jolt. I had to stare, even though I could sense the man's irritation at being watched.

  Then came that singular, familiar thrum of energy. The maintenance man let his arm drop and turned to face me, challenging me to go away. But I was transfixed. Because it was Clive's face I saw in that man's body. He smiled at me, but tiny white sparks of electricity were leaking from his eyes like tears. Then he made to speak, but all I heard or saw was a fizz of electricity arcing across the metal brace on his teeth. Then he was the maintenance man again, meeting my desolate gaze with an expression of contempt.

  I left hurriedly, and I resolved, after all, not to pass by the pylon again.

 

 

  Under the Pylon, Graham Joyce

 

 

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