Cry "SWAN!" And Run

[Typhus]

Edited August 17, 2008 by Typhus

[Lochie_old]

Freaking suspenseful!

 

I love the whole layout, the text was a bit harder to read but none the less it had me on the edge of my seat.

[Typhus]

Freaking suspenseful!

 

I love the whole layout, the text was a bit harder to read but none the less it had me on the edge of my seat.

Thanks Phusion, I put a lot of effort into this. I thought about making it a straight story but found that the letter forat was the only way it worked. And as I was writing a letter I thought "Why not go the whoe hog and make a page up?"

Yeah, C&S' is a fictional magazine in my stories and is often derided by the characters. I thought it would be good to incorporate it into this short story.

Is there anything that could be improved?

[Lochie_old]

Maybe some more description of the cell? I can't copy and paste anything so its hard, but the layout is killer anyway .

[Typhus]

Maybe some more description of the cell? I can't copy and paste anything so its hard, but the layout is killer anyway .

Oh, sorry.

Here's the story in a simple text form:

 

Cry “SWAN!” And Run!

 

Dear editor,

I’ve been an avid reader of C&S’ World of Weird for almost ten years. I’ve looked over all the grim tales and ghost sightings and although they’ve always been entertaining to me I took them with a pinch of salt. I pride myself on being a realist and urban legends are in the same category as fairy tales and organised religion – total nonsense.

But despite these misgivings I’ve always respected this magazine for publishing stories that, although fantastic, are suitably believable so that they still send a shiver down the spine on occasion. So it was with complete scorn that I read Tammy French’s letter in last months issue. (“BEWARE THE CAGED SWANMAN!” Issue #180 – ed)

The idea that some sort of deranged mutant was lurking in an old police station was just too much for me to handle. I’m a doctor and I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what is and is not genetically possible, I’ve got friends in the profession who’ve dealt with odd cases but something like this is not simply “odd”. It’s in the same category as the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

I had to go there, I knew that much. Luckily my wife is the understanding sort and has long since been resigned to my obsessive ways. We purchased one of those cheap disposable cameras, left the children with my parents and set off during the weekend.

 

I don’t need to tell you just how small Longing is, apart from the fishermen and a few shopkeepers it’s almost deserted. They rely on nearby Ratting for medical facilities or police attention. It’s a spooky place, so tiny and filled with a cluster of empty houses, either boarded up or with the doors and windows wide open, as though whoever left really wanted to get out of there in a hurry.

But if I thought that was bad it was nothing compared to the police station mentioned in Miss. French’s letter. It’s a small square building, the red brickwork is crumbling away and overgrown with weeds. In Bimmel you’d expect something like this to be covered in graffiti but it’s eerily clean, even the vandals have forgotten this place.

 

When we went inside we had no problems seeing everything, it was a sunny Saturday morning and there were no ominous black clouds or sudden bursts of rain to distract us. It was all rather pleasant actually. There was a simple wooden desk littered with papers, a filing cabinet sat beside it, the drawers opened and the flimsy metal dented in several places. Some of the documents there, detailing petty crimes, were dated as recently as 1996. It was just like the houses, things had been left there, no one thought to transfer the paperwork or office equipment. A mug of tea was still left on the desk, although by now it was a great deal furrier than when the policeman had taken his last sip.

Apart from this small office area there was little else to see here, open cells and a door leading to the cellar. We strolled through there, got a few pictures and had a look in the empty rooms where the prisoners have been held.

There was nothing dramatic here, simply animal droppings, well made beds, a small shoe hanging off a door handle and a lot of mud and dust that had gathered over all these lonely years of inactivity. So far the trip was proving everything I initially thought, that it was a foolish story and had absolutely no truth to it.

But then my wife was pointing at the floor, squinting to get a better look.

It was footprints, a pair of dirty, bare feet leaving their mark as they trudged into the cellar.

 

I opened the door to the lower regions of the police station and upon doing so felt a sudden rush of air hit my face, it smelt completely foul. The kind of aroma that usually radiated from a poorly dressed wound, something stale and dripping.

I was moderately disturbed by these developments but concocted answers for each new question. The footprints belonged to the same man who had left his shoe on the door handle and the smell? “Probably faulty plumbing or an unflushed toilet,” I told myself.

I looked into the cellar and saw a flight of metal stairs that drained down into the blackness, they were covered in moss and thrived with the scuttling of thousands of ants.

There was no light down there, no windows and no working electricity, which meant that as we navigated our way into the lower regions of the police station we were totally reliant on the small torch we had.

At any moment it felt like the stairs would collapse beneath our weight, they creaked painfully and swayed ever so slightly as we ventured further in. From the single beam of light I saw that the footprints continued on each step, walking in a clumsy stagger instead of a straight line.

When our feet touched solid ground we both breathed a sigh of relief but there was very little to be cheery about, there was an oppressive atmosphere to the cellar, you felt at once completely surrounded and totally alone. It was not an emotion I relished.

I moved the torch around slowly, trying to take in all the details, grey walls streaked with slime and scum, a felled broom beset by cobwebs, sinewy meat laying in random heaps on the floor and a discoloured mattress, crumpled, stained and clearly slept in.

My wife was busy taking pictures but my I felt the torch quiver and shake in my hand.

Someone, or something, was living there.

 

“What is it? What’s wrong?” My wife asked me before she noticed what I was looking at. We both discussed in hushed tones why it was there. Was it just a case of fly-tipping? Someone had an old mattress and found a convenient place to dump it? Maybe a drunk or a drug addict had been squatting in here? Could it have been moved to the cellar from one of the cells? Or was it where the Swanman slumbered?

The Swanman.

I didn’t like to use the name, it was absurd. My understanding, from what Miss. French wrote, is that the mythical beast was kept here for some years. A pregnant woman walked into the station, in the midst of giving birth. They couldn’t wait for an ambulance and she had the baby in one of the cells.

The catch being, as you may know, that the child was not normal. It was a monster, it had a mans body but the head of a swan. The mother died without ever revealing what happened and the policemen were left with this freak.

So they kept him locked up in a cage, out of sight but not out of earshot and every night his hissing and growling woke up the sleeping prisoners.

And that was the tale of the Swanman. I had scoffed at it time and time again but now I was here, in an unlit and putrid den, staring at a mattress that someone had probably been sleeping on, all my doubts and jeers had died in my throat.

I cast a quick glance around my feet and saw grubby handprints, but their shape was unnatural and perverse, only three stubby, webbed fingers. They were everywhere, like a man was crawling on all fours like a beast.

At that point did the scales fall away from my eyes? Did I recant my disbelief and proclaim that the Swanman of Longing was as real as the trees and the clouds? No. All I felt was a desire to leave, to run, to get out of the darkness and back into the light.

I was being watched, I was sure of it, unfriendly eyes were sizing up the two of us, a tongue was lashing out, dreaming of some fresh meat.

And although it was probably my mind playing tricks on me I swear I could hear a faint hissing sound pulsing from somewhere behind me. The sharp threat from a frightened bird.

We got out of there in a hurry, I can tell you that. How we navigated our way back up the stairs I’ll never know but in just a few minutes we were standing outside the police station again, out of breath and silently asking ourselves what the hell just happened.

We got in our car and drove back to Bimmel without a word.

 

Dr. T. Bolton. The Shades, Bimmel