The End Of The Street

Jeff Watson hated Glasgow City Centre. Once it had been a vibrant place, filled with all sorts of shops, bars, cinemas, concert halls and a diverse variety of people but now, it seemed to be stagnating, rotting, perhaps even dying. The stench that breathed up from the sewers was foetid, the streets seemed filled with beggars and junkies, the shops closed and their doorways filled with rubbish and sleeping bags collected by the increasing number of homeless beggars. The shops that still existed seemed themselves as impoverished as the doorway dwelling poor. It was a dull grey bruise of a place, as if someone had turned down the colour saturation to be barely above a stark monochrome.

He passed empty burger bar after empty burger bar, the rows of pound shops, shoe shops and sportswear shops, avoiding the obese and slovenly citizens, charity guilt mongers and living advertisers.

“Excuse me sir, do you mind if I ask who your mobile phone network is?” One grinning ginger lad in a suit asked.

“Yes I do, fuck right off you nosey bastard.” he said, storming past the young man.

He had one destination, The council offices on John Street, where he had an appointment, a long overdue appointment at that. As he turned off Argyle Street, to head up Glassford Street, he was accosted by a scrawny, leathery old man who merely held his hand out and said, “got any spare change Mister?”

Jeff noticed he was missing his ring finger and felt a pang of pity, but not enough for him to shell over some cash to the poor bastard. He shook his head, shrugged and said “No, sorry mate.”

Ingram Street was quieter, probably because the designer clothes shops were out of most of the city dwellers price range, existing only to serve the fashion conscious young and those who had too much money. Before long he was on John Street, which seemed like a street from a century beforehand. Above the door was the City's crest, “Let Glasgow Flourish” emblazoned at the bottom, which he thought ironic, since they seemed to be letting the whole place erode.

He went in to the council offices, where a disinterested young woman seemed annoyed that he'd interrupted her chewing gum and checking her mobile phone. She honked some vague directions through her nose and waved a finger up the end of a corridor which looked like it was decorated back in the 1960's. Jeff followed the directions and eventually came to a doorway which seemed to be the right room, “Street Planning”, on a little wooden plaque on the door. He knocked on the door and was asked to enter.

The young man, Steve Morrison looked frustrated, tired and ready to tear his already thinning blond hair out. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I'm Jeff Watson, I wrote to you regarding the Lamp-post at the end of Burnend Road?”

Morrison nodded. “Ah yes. Right. You said it needed replaced.”

“Aye. I don't mean it's not working though, it works fine, its just its a really old lamp-post, you know the green ones with the orange lights? All the rest of the street are new and white. It looks out of place.”

“I see.” Morrison answered. He got up from his desk to look at the map of the city pinned to the yellowing wall, with paint chipping off showing the plaster beneath. The map seemed quite complex. “Burnend Road, that's in umm…”

“Small road with cottages, near Grimry, facing Howdendale Park.”

Morrison traced directions with the index finger of his left hand and repeated the name of the road a few times but seemed to be having difficulty. Jeff got up and walked over to help him. As he looked for Grimry district he found the hill on which it was situated and the circle of streets that rounded the hill. He found the road and pointed to it. “There you are.”

“Thanks.” Morrison said. “So which lamp-post is it?”

“Right at the end, there, next to McLellan Avenue.” Jeff said, tapping the map.

“Ah, great. Let me get the files up on the computer then.” Morrison said.

He sat back down and started typing on the keyboard. A couple of moments later he stopped, read the screen and said “It says here that the light poles were replaced in 2009.”

“That's right, all of them but the one at the end.” Jeff said. “I've been trying to get it changed for about three years.”

“I only started two months ago, let me check the records.” Morrison said, nodding. He started typing again and after a minute or two said “Did you know those lamp-posts were listed?”

“No, I didn't, how can a lamp-post be listed?” Jeff asked but Morrison was still reading.

“Ah there we go. They're first generation, antiques really, the whole district is surrounded by them.” Morrison said before getting back up from his seat. With a pencil he marked the map with small crosses. “There, there, there, there and there.”

Jeff noticed they circled the hill upon which Grimry was built. “Hmm, so can it be replaced, it really lowers the tone of the neighbourhood.”

Morrison shrugged and replied. “I'm not sure, I think I might have to put in a petition to the City Elders.”

“Could you?”

“Sure. I'm not promising anything but I'll certainly see what I can do.” Morrison said cheerily.

“Great, that would be great.” Jeff said, relieved.

Morrison smiled and nodded. “No problem. Anything else?”

“No, that was it really.”

“Well, thanks for coming in.” Morrison said.

He escorted Jeff the full four feet to the door and as he was about to leave they shook hands. Jeff noticed he was missing his pinkie and thought it an odd coincidence that this was the second person he'd met within an hour who was missing a finger.

He was satisfied, to an extent, as he walked out the offices, back through the grey filthy town centre and into his car. He hoped Morrison would get something done, the lamp-post, to him, was a symptom of the degeneration of the city.

Soon he was back out of the necrotic remains of the City and back on the rather pleasant Burnend Road. It was a long curved road with rows upon rows of identical semi-detached homes on either side. Each of the houses was still clad in pebble-dash, each had the same UPVC double glazing, the same three square metres of grass, tarmac driveways and hedges that walled the houses off from the street outside. Jeff lived at number 35 and could, if he stretched his head out of the top floor bedroom window, see right up and down the street, could see the ugly lamp-post with its heavy iron green pole, dim glowing orange light which set it apart from all the others.

His wife, Anne told him he was obsessed, that it didn't matter and that it added a little character to an otherwise unremarkable street. This did not help Jeff one iota, since he saw it as a blight to the otherwise perfect street. Still, he reasoned, he'd said his piece and hoped Morrison would do his best to get it changed. If anything the thing belonged in a museum somewhere, not a modern urban street. Jeff tried to let his annoyance go, waiting for the day the council would respond.

A few months later he found himself awake one stifling hot night, he decided to open his bedroom window, to let in some cool air. Normally this would do the trick but there seemed to be little air circulating outside that wasn't suffocated by an oppressive humidity. Yawning, he went downstairs and sat on the front step in his pyjamas. He was barefoot, hoping that the ground would be cold enough to decrease his temperature, but found little satisfaction from the stones and damp grass. He lit a cigarette, a habit he'd whittled down from thirty a day to one every so often and walked around his front garden trying somehow to cool himself down. There was a stench hanging in the air, another putrid gasp from the stinking sewers. The street was eerily quiet at such an ungodly hour but he was sure he could almost make out someone whispering. He walked to the entrance of his driveway and looked up and down the street, there were no people there but the noise was now more distinct. A crackling electric buzzing coming from right down the end of the street, from the lamp-post, from that lamp-post. This was emphasised by the dim orange light flickering on and off until, with a sizzling pop, it went out. Jeff sighed, exhaling the last of his cigarette and then flicking it out into the gutter on the street. The end of the street was now dark but only for a moment.

With another heavy high-pitched crackling noise the light burst back on, it startled Jeff for a moment, but he was more frightened by the figure that stood directly underneath it. The weak orange light was not enough to illuminate the dark indistinct figure but Jeff thought from the outline that it belonged to a woman. Slowly the figure raised a hand and then equally as slowly waved to Jeff. He felt a chill run down his back, it was a moment of extreme creepiness made all the worse by a flicker from the bulb of the street-light and the vanishing of the same figure. He did not step out to investigate, he walked briskly back into his home and made sure the door was locked tight before he returned to his bed.

He was perturbed by the event though his sleep was not affected. It took until the following morning before it really began to gnaw at him. He described what happened to Anne who shrugged claiming he'd probably dreamt the whole thing. Jeff was angered by her lack of belief but kept it to himself, realising he'd probably have said the same thing to her if she'd made a similar claim. He went to work, still bothered by the weird female figure, still catching flashes of that unsettling moment in his mind's eye. Somewhere along his pondering he wondered if he had seen a ghost but dismissed this immediately, he was a rationalist after all and had no time for all the supernatural mumbo-jumbo that others swallowed whole. To Jeff, if you believed in things without any evidence, you could believe in anything, absolutely anything, you were told. Nothing was so absurd or bizarre as to be off the table. Jeff was also aware that tragically, this was the situation most people found themselves in. He wasn't going to fall into that trap. Yet it lingered there, a vague wraith of an idea haunting the periphery of his thought.

As the work-day continued he tried as hard as he could to dismiss this thought and the visual memory of the event that inevitably popped into his mind with it. Try as he might, it kept eroding the walls of his consciousness, seeping through, reminding him that it was not normal. He tried to come up with other potential explanations, a trick of the light, of the eyes, of the mind. He tried to convince himself he'd seen a drunk or a drug addict but those explanations were as lacking in satisfaction to him as the idea that he'd seen some unearthly spirit. Finally he concluded he did not have enough information to come to any sort of conclusion and by the time he left work for the evening he'd almost convinced himself that Anne was right and the whole thing had been a dream after all, it was just to uncanny to be real.

Just to be sure, he stayed up that night. It was another oppressively muggy evening anyway so Jeff found it no problem to sit in his front room watching late night T.V. and occasionally peeking out of his front door and looking up towards the end of the street. He found himself getting tired around half past two in the morning and was going to go to bed, deciding that he'd imagined the whole thing after all. Still, he had to be certain and so he stepped out into his garden and had one last look.

At the end of the street was a council van, two workers in high visibility jackets were leaning against it and having a smoke. Jeff wondered if they were there to fix the light, perhaps someone else had complained or had heard the worrisome electrical buzzing emanating from it. While it seemed an unreasonable hour to start such repairs he considered that it may well be the best time for them to do so, when the traffic was at it's quietest. He thought that they at least would take one look at the old lamp-post and report back to their superiors that it needed replaced. He gave a satisfied sigh, knowing he could finally get to bed and put all of the nonsense behind him. One of the men flicked his cigarette end onto the ground and stamped on it and then opened the side door of the green van and from it pulled out a small wooden box and something wrapped in cloth. He handed the box to his colleague and unwrapped the object. Even in the dull light and at that distance, Jeff could see it was a bell. The council worker with the box placed it on the ground, inside the centre of the beam of weak orange light. The other with the bell rang it twice. They waited a few seconds and then both fled rapidly into the vehicle and sped off.

This was none of his business and he knew such weird behaviour was not something he should involve himself in, but he couldn't help it, his curiosity got the better of him. So slowly, cagily, he walked out of his garden and down the empty silent street to the anomalous street-light and the odd wooden box. The box wasn't very large, about a foot by eight inches and about four inches deep. The wood was dark but unvarnished as if the thing had been put together hastily. It also had an obvious lid which he removed after lifting the box.

He almost dropped it when he saw what was inside, almost gasped, almost shrieked. It was full of severed fingers, wrinkled old person fingers, fingers with rings still attached, white fingers, black fingers, brown fingers, tiny baby fingers, each of which looked as if it had been freshly severed with bolt cutters or some similar device. The sight was an atrocity and so Jeff replaced the lid quickly and then still holding the box thought what his next move would be. Like most reasonable people would, he decided to call the police.

He placed the box on his kitchen table, woke up Anne, to explain what he'd found. She was groggy and disbelieving and despite him imploring her not to open the box while they waited for the police, she did. Her disbelief turned to grave concern and the two of them sat in the kitchen, staring at the safely lidded box of horrors. For the longest time neither spoke, they just stared at the box, occasionally giving a disconcerted glance at each other. It was Anne who spoke first commenting on the scratching noise coming from the front door. Jeff had heard it but had tried to ignore it, hoping it was his imagination. When it was confirmed by Anne his heart began to race along with his thoughts.

The sound was not the rapid impatient scratching of an animal, but slow long and deliberate. Anne's look told him she wished him to investigate, he wanted to do no such thing, to sit there, wait, praying it would leave, hoping the police would turn up and catch whomever or whatever in the act. He suspected it to be the figure he'd seen the previous night, a suspicion he assumed to be fact. He did not want to go and open the door and had no desire to confront whatever was behind it. Nevertheless he was the man of the house and had obligations to his wife beyond the current social fashions. He got up and left the kitchen.

In the hall the scratching sounded like someone was taking a rake to his front door. Jeff slowly walked down the three yards to his front door, and with each step he became more frightened and the heavy scraping noise sounded louder, deeper as if what was waiting behind it was trying to dig its way through. About two feet from the door the sound stopped and Jeff's instant relief was doubled when he saw the blue and red stroboscopic flashing of the lights of the police car. The sound of its tyres grumbling across his gravel was one of the most comforting sound he'd ever said and he pulled open the door to see two young officers exit the vehicle. One was a burly looking young man, the other a small thin woman so frail, he questioned to himself what use she could ever be as law enforcement, she looked like a sickly sparrow that could have been snapped in half by a strong breeze. Even so, he was still glad to see both of them and the two officers, who looked like they were being put out by this nocturnal visit, both stuck on their caps as he welcomed them in.

Jeff stuttered an explanation as he lead them through the hall to the kitchen where the grim evidence still lay upon the table. He could tell they disbelieved him at first, though they listened with patience and made suitable noises of concern. It was when he opened the lid of the box, at which both sets of police officer's eyes widened, that the questions began. Jeff explained again, about the light, about the mysterious figure, the council workers, even the scratching at the door, which the police then asked him to show them.

There were thick great scratches on the door, heavy grooves where the paint and wood had been torn away as if something was trying to dig its way through. The officers seemed confused, perplexed by the whole situation and suggested, strongly suggested, he come down to the station to make a statement. Jeff was tired and stressed but he agreed and soon the police officers removed the foul box of severed fingers and he was driven to the local police station.

Jeff was escorted to a small interview room, a grey box with heavy blinds which were too large for the window obscured behind it. After being given a coffee in a plastic cup he sat there alone for what seemed to him like an hour or so before a plain clothes police officer came into the room looking at some papers. The man was in his mid fifties and his cheap grey suit reeked of stale cigarettes. He asked Jeff his name “for the record” and then sat down and asked him some questions. Most of these involved Jeff repeating the same information he'd already given the officers in his home but the police officer wanted more details, descriptions of the council workers, why he was so curious, why he picked the box up, did he ever suspect it might have been council property and such like. Jeff felt there was a slightly accusatory tone to the questions and had to stifle his own impatience. As he scribbled down notes, Jeff noticed the officer had an index finger missing, which made Jeff feel queasy.

After about quarter of an hour of such questions, the interview concluded and the police officer said Jeff could go home and that they'd soon be in touch. He was offered no ride home, despite asking an annoyed officer at reception. The officer suggested he call a taxi before Jeff complained that he had neither a phone or money. The officer magnanimously sighed and called one for him.

Dawn was breaking when Jeff finally arrived home and after a giving short summary of the events to Anne he went to his bed. He slept for a few hours but kept drifting in and out until about 11a.m. he found himself lying awake, somewhat scared and baffled. Anne had left a note to tell him she'd went shopping so he decided to make a cup of hot chocolate to see if it would relax him, perhaps allow him a couple more hours of sleep. In the middle of heating the milk the doorbell rang. He plodded through the hall and answered the door.

There were three men standing on his doorstep each of which he vaguely recognised, two were short, round, with grey hair and were dressed in council workers jackets, the third was wearing a suit. The man in the suit smiled. “Mr Watson? Steve Morrison, City Planning.”

The name slotted the face into place and Jeff nodded. “Ah yes, how are you?”

Morrison didn't answer, he looked annoyed, distressed even. “It's about the lamp-post. Can we come in?”

“Sure.” Jeff said and gestured for them to enter. The three men walked into the house and Jeff closed the door behind them. “Can I get you boys some tea or something.”

“No thanks.” Morrison said. An answer repeated by the two council workers.

Jeff escorted them into the kitchen where he began to pour the pan of warm milk into his mug of chocolate dust.

“So what's up?” He asked.

“Well there's some good news and some bad news.” Morrison started. “The good news is that I spoke to the city elders and after some heavy negotiation, they agreed to remove the lamp-post.”

“Brilliant.” Jeff said, feeling pleased with himself.

“Yes, well… there's been a problem with that.” Morrison sighed.

“Oh, how so?” Jeff inquired, sipping on his hot chocolate.

“You had to interfere didn't you?” Morrison answered accusingly.

“What are you talking about?” Jeff answered, puzzled by Morrison's now aggressive tone.

“The box you stupid shit.” Morrison barked. “They agreed to give up the lamp-post but you took the box, now the City Elders are furious.”

“The box?” Jeff said, knowing exactly what box he meant.

“Don't play stupid. Do you know how much work, how much sacrifice is involved in maintaining a city this size?” Morrison asked.

“Wait a minute, the box that was full of fingers? That box?” Jeff half asked, half protested

“Aye, that box.” growled one of the council workers. “It wis an offering to the Elders.”

Jeff's mind decided to remind him of the dark figure that waved at him, that probably tore chunks out of his door. “Offering?”

The other council worker sighed heavily through his nose. “Enough of this shite. You two haud the fucker doon.”

“What?!” Jeff yelled but the two men were on him before he had a chance to relax.

“Ye don't jist make a deal wae them an' then fuck it up, that way people, lots of people can end up hurt.” Said the man not restraining him. Instead he was opening the back door. “We take and do a lot of shit for you people and there you are just fucking it up for everyone.

The back door swung open. “Wait a minute here...” Jeff started but he stopped when he heard the sounds coming from the back garden, hissing crackling sounds that popped and sizzled like faulty electrical wires, dreadful sounds, familiar sounds.

The man who opened the door pulled out a pair of secateurs from inside his jacket. “The price has to be paid, no-one else to pay it but you.”

Jeff struggled to get free but Morrison and the other man were too strong. The man with the secateurs pulled Jeff's right hand free and he did so, a heavy, meaty smelling shadow appeared in the doorway. With one forceful clip he took Jeff's finger from his hand. Blood shot across his face. Jeff screamed, both with the pain and the image of the horror now scuttling into his kitchen. In broad daylight he could see it. It had skin so old and wizened it looked like bark, matted filthy hair that looked like it had been shampooed with mud, eyes with no irises nor pupils and cracked fang like teeth that leered through a mouth which resembled a rotting wound. It slobbered as it took Jeff's finger.

“One down five to go.” said the man.

The creature, this ancient, living mummified horror crunched and gobbled on Jeff's finger as he screamed and screamed. It moved closer too him, it stank like the sewer system. He knew finally what Morrison had meant by city elders.

“Let Glasgow flourish” it cackled, a rattle wheezing coming through an atrophied throat into his ear just before the council pruned his second finger. With an emaciated claw it stroked his hair as he passed blissfully into unconsciousness.