The Man Who Ate His Computer E-Book

Maya McLaughlin

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Fanciful Lore: Stories for LOCKDOWN

From dark Caribbean tales of Obeah to Flanders Fields and from a day in the life of a not-so-young German sex-worker to a man who, quite simply ate his computer: Fanciful Lore: Stories for LOCKDOWN are just that; a collection of bizarre, wacky, funny, sorrowful, tragic and strange tales spanning the globe and transmitting via screen from my brain to yours – perfect if you’re looking for something different to read during this weirdest of times…. and these are different all right…

Leseprobe

Maya McLaughlin

The Man Who Ate His Computer

and other tales to digest...

These stories are fiction. That is they are not true. Therefore they have no bearing on historical events or on individuals, living or dead. So don’t sue me. Dedicated to the Reader (that's you)BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Obeahman (Barbados Jan 1960)

He watched the long shaft of sunlight fall across the room like a Zulu’s spear.  The noise of the hut coming to life pulled his mind fully from the mystical embrace of slumber and lazily he swung his legs out of the bed. He listened a while to the strident tones of his wife ordering her children around.  ‘Man cain’ git no peace.’

With the children dispatched to their various chores and his wife gone to clean other folk’s houses, the place became silent once more.  He sighed like a man sorely tried and dipped a wooden ladle into the calabash of fresh water his wife brought up from the stream every morning and drank deeply of its cool sweetness.  Replacing the ladle he moved across to the battered stove to see if the coffeepot was still warm.  Then he noticed it.  Lying unobtrusively and half-hidden by the grubby gingham skirt the cooker wore.  Tentatively he stretched out a hand before pulling it back and shuddering.  He knew what it was.  ‘She hex me.’

He threw on his clothes and stepped out into the harsh noontime brightness.  At this time of day with all the able-bodied men in the fields, the women labouring at their endless jobs and the children either in the schoolhouse or helping their parents, the village was quiet with only the old ones and babies around.  He ran fly, sullen, jet-black eyes along the row of huts allowing them to rest on the very last one which housed the Obeahman.  He sent vicious darts of anger to both his wife and the shaman.  ‘Whyn’t she ta’k to me? She coulda come to me firs’.’

Because he was used to lying to both others and himself, his mind put aside all the times she had approached him; a problem with one of the children, lack of money – she was always complaining too.  She was tired, she was ill, her eyes hurt, her back hurt.  Lucky for her she had a man who was patient.  Never once had he hit her – well not properly anyway. Leastways not the way you’d hit a man but she bruised easy although sometimes he’d swear she doctored them bruises right up so’s they looked worse.  And instead of hiding herself away until they faded, the woman was brazen, parading herself around the village with the marks he’d put on her freely on show.  ‘Shameless.’ She was a good worker though, he’d give her that.  But he wasn’t so bad, not like she painted it.  Didn’t he always put food on the table whenever he won at cards and didn’t he never, ever hit her unless she deserved it?  ‘Aint no reason fo’ hex.’  She’d gone too far this time. 

He went back inside and squatted down, studying the fetish lying there on the kitchen floor.  It was wrapped up in a tight ball of grass and delicately laced with cobwebs.   What was in there?  His hair?  He ran a hand across his skull looking for a bald spot where she could have shaved off his hair in the night.  Nail clippings?  He studied his hands and feet carefully.  Hadn’t she clipped his nails for him only a few nights before?  He pushed his face as close as he dared but the bundle offered no clue and he could not risk empowering the hex further by laying his hands upon it. What if he ignored it?  Would the hex disappear?  ‘Hex be hex,’ he decided and since the thing was hidden he wasn’t expected to find it so from that he understood it didn’t matter if he noticed it or not.  Hex be hex. His sly brain cartwheeled around in his head.  He had to see the Obeahman and convince him to take the curse away.  He took a deep breath and stepped into the sunlight again.

‘Hex cain' nevah be took ‘way,’ the shaman said ‘but it can be returned to him who sent it.’

‘Or she.’

‘Or she,’ the Obeahman agreed ‘except I aint nevah put no hex on you and your wife aint nevah ask it.’

‘You lying!’ he trembled, feeling a cold sweat prickle uncomfortably across his warm body.

The Obeahman ended the conversation by retreating into the darkness of his hut.

He left the hut with real fear now lodged in his belly.  Was the Obeahman telling the truth?  He remained outside the shaman’s hut because he had no idea what else he could do. He offered money – more coin than she could ever have paid – but the Obeahman’s silence continued.  He offered his one good milking cow, his goat and half a year’s profit from his wife’s vegetable garden, but the heavy silence prevailed.  In desperation he offered Msoto, his eldest daughter, but the Obeahman did not change his mind.  ‘Go home fool,’ he’d said.

The fetish lay innocently on the floor and he wondered if it had the power to see him, to watch him and to know exactly when it’s power was going to kill him?  He ran out of the hut and away from the village towards the town where he knew she’d be working.  If he’d been thinking rationally he’d have known he never did listen to her chatterings long enough to know which house she’d be cleaning that day, but his mind was most irrational.   Obeah gets you that way.

Unused to exertion, he was forced to slow his pace but the sweat still poured out of his body, from every orifice it flowed freely, his tongue was dry as dust and his heart hammered in his scrawny chest.  Then his head began to spin, faster it went and pulsating weirdly out of synch with his heart and he veered off the dirt track road into the wide-open field.  His eyes saw yellow all around and his breathing came ragged and laboured.  He lay face down in the coarse patchy scrub and a fierce stabbing pain made him clutch at his heart. He let his breath go slowly, trying to ease both panic and pain but the pain stabbed at him harder and the woolly yellow mist thickened before his eyes.  Then the mist separated, became two distinctive shapes which loomed threateningly before him; more hideous than he could ever imagine and he tried shut them out with his eyes.  Too late, he remembered the frail human eyelid is no match for Obeah mist and his fly, lazy eyes froze open in their final horror.

It was dusk by the time she got home.  She sat down heavily on a stool in the small kitchen, her mind busy wondering what would fill their bellies tonight.  She caught sight of something poking out from underneath the stove.  She flicked a foot at it but it didn’t move.  Easing her tired bones downwards she squatted on the floor and pulled out a clump of dirty dried grass.  ‘Msoto,’ she called ‘you bin lettin’ dat goat git inside again?’

Obeahman II (Barbados, Feb 1961)

Despite the way he was with her she missed him.  Although living with him was like living on a knife-edge, she missed him.  When they found his body, what was left of it after the hyenas and vultures filled their bellies, she’d taken him home and prepared his remains for burial with her own hands.  She would let no one near him and even when her children were driven from the hut by the smell of their father’s rotting carcass she took no heed.  She washed the dirt and dried blood from what remained of his flesh and carefully pasted the scant ribbons of skin back on to his bones with a mixture of water, flour and an egg.  She examined her work carefully.  There were huge gaps of missing flesh and in truth he no longer looked like a man at all but like a raw lump of putrid meat fit only to be flung to the scavengers outside.

However he looked he was her man and he had loved her in his fashion.  She ran a hand over the few wisps of hair which stuck stubbornly to the skin she’d pressed in place on his scalp - and she had loved him too. They’d had their fights and he wasn’t slow to raise his hand, her mind too quick and honest to fool herself.  Almost lovingly she caressed the yellowing bruise on her neck, his last gift to her.  But all in all and whatever he was he didn’t deserve to die like that.  No one did.  Frowning, she gave the body a final examination before taking the sheet from their bed and binding him in it.  She folded the linen carefully around him and a primal groan rose up in her breast when she pulled the top down to cover his face.

‘Papa was no lovin’ man,’ Msoto said gently pulling her mother away from the body that once housed her father.   ‘Don’ cry no mo’ Mama.  We be a’right.’

She nodded.  She would carry on her cleaning jobs in the town, and Msoto would tend the garden selling the vegetables they grew there and looking after the younger ones.  But then wasn’t that always how it has been?  Now he was gone what would really change? She cast a long, languid eye across the empty bed.

It took three days for her to give up the body for burial and when they tried to lift it the carcass fell to pieces inside the shroud.  She listened to the noise of his jumbling bones as they carried him away.   But life went on.  She had seven children to raise and no man to help her do it.  ‘He nevah he’p an’ways,’ said Msoto, but her mother turned her ears and eyes away.

When he had been dead for a year and his anniversary went unmarked the people of the village became concerned and, as with everything, their fears were taken to the Obeahman who walked along the row of huts to her place with the people following behind.

‘You want him back?’ he said to her.

She nodded.

‘Even the way he was?’

They all knew the Obeahman’s powers were great but this was astonishing even for him.

‘Cain I have him?’ she whispered.

‘Hasta be sho’.  Aint always a good t’ing.’

She didn’t hesitate.  ‘I do.’

‘Mama!’ Msoto cried.

‘Want him any way I cain git him.’

‘Then a’right.’  The Obeahman went away.

She couldn’t sleep that night and when she heard soft snuffling noises coming from the other room she knew her daughter couldn’t sleep either.  She watched the doorway expecting to see him appear in the darkness of night.  His condition didn’t concern her for hadn’t she lived with his body a full three days before they forced her to put him in a hole in the ground?  He was her man and there was no way at all she wouldn’t take him.

Msoto wouldn’t lie down.  How could she rest when she knew the Obeahman would send him back.  Like her mother her eyes too were riveted on the doorway.

Msoto must have fallen asleep eventually for when she opened her eyes it was daylight.  She moved carefully through the sleeping bodies of her siblings and stood outside her mother’s room.  The door was closed although she saw her mother leave it ajar the night before.  ‘Mak’ it easy fo’ yo’ daddy na’,’ she’d said by way of explanation.

Could he really do it?  Could the Obeahman raise the dead?  Msoto didn’t want to find out but she drew in a deep breath bravely and slowly pushed open the door.

The room was unchanged.  The clothes hung on their usual nails, making the same zigzagging shapes they always did across the sunlit floor.  Moving forward Msoto steeled herself to look at the bed.  There was a lump nestling under the blanket.  A singular shape.  She sighed heavily in relief.  The Obeahman’s spell had failed.  Just to make certain she pulled back the rough curtain on the window, in case her father was hiding there.  She even checked in the drawers and her mother’s wicker basket.  Satisfied she went to rouse her mother.

‘Mama wake up –‘she pulled back in horror as her mother’s face, wearing the frozen mask of death, stared unseeingly back.

Obeahman III (Barbados, Nov 1961)

She had to find a husband, a good man who would take care of her brothers and sisters and in return for this she would work hard for him, just as her mother had done all her life.  She’d never give her heart to him though.  Msoto would learn from her mother’s mistake.

She ran her mind across all the eligible young men in the village and when she realised none of them were likely to take her on she widened her search to include older men and widowers, men who would welcome the attentions of a healthy fourteen-year-old wife; men who had enough experience of life to understand that such a prize did not come without appendages.  There was one whom her mind kept returning to:  Igbo.  As old as her father and with twice as many children, Msoto knew it would not be an easy life but she also knew she could not remain in the village alone and without male protection. With this thought singularly spinning in her head she left her brothers and sisters at home and went to the Obeahman.

She stood at his door patiently until he chose to notice her then looked calmly in his eye.  ‘I needs marry an’ quick, Papa.’

The Obeahman nodded his wild nest of woolly greying hair at her.  ‘Who yo’ eye cast ‘pon chil’?’

‘Igbo.’

If the shaman was surprised at her choice he gave no indication of it.  ‘He lookin’?’

‘Do it matta much?’

The Obeahman threw his head back and laughed.  He opened his door further and Msoto stepped into the house.

It was when she was weeding her mother’s vegetable garden that he walked by.  She pounded the hoe rhythmically into the cracked, dry earth and by affecting to ignore his presence, allowed him to view her lithe, black limbs as she worked.   He stood by the edge of her garden.  ‘Greetings, Father,’ she said eventually, and she spoke respectfully her eyes not rising above his chest.

‘Look me fo’ wife. Plenty chilluns at home,’ he said in return.

Msoto smiled quietly, long fingers of her dirt-covered hand covering her mouth.

Her life was a mirror image of her mother’s except that Igbo was not as demanding of her as her father had been to her mother.  He bothered her infrequently and the marital bed stood largely unused, as he preferred to curl himself tightly in a blanket and sleep on the floor.  Msoto’s body was young and strong and she worked long hours with it digging and planting both her mother’s garden and now her husband’s. She tended all his children, the eldest of whom was only a year younger than she, and in this way she kept a safe roof over the heads of her siblings.

When a full season had passed and she deemed herself ready she went to speak to her husband.  ‘I wan’ a chil’,’ she said.

‘Enough in this house already,’ Igbo replied ‘and I ‘way too old bring another chil’ in dis worl’.’  He underlined his feelings by abandoning the marital bed completely.

‘He won’ give me chil’ Papa and I needs be mama to my own,’ she said to the Obeahman.

Yellow-flecked leonine eyes bored silently into her, stripping bare her soul and he let her into the house.  ‘Him visit dreamtime den his body do wha’ yo’ wan’ it do.’

‘How dis t’ing happen?’ Igbo cried when he noticed her softly swelling body and when she made him no answer he angrily left the house. ‘I wan’ hex her,’ he said to the Obeahman ‘wife belly fill wit’ anodda man chil’.’  When he returned his step was light, his head clear and free and he rolled the small fetish the shaman had given him around in his palm. He placed it hidden in the house, just as the Obeahman said and set off for the fields where he worked until it became too dark to see.

When her time came she took herself away from the village and laid down in the scant shade of a twig-like tree.  She returned in the evening with the child wrapped in a bloody cloth.

‘I kep’ yo’  fam’ly, put food in them belly and aint no complain ‘cause they already livin’ on God’s eart’ but what yo’ done is a bad t’ing, bring a chil’ inna worl’ in deceit,’ he pushed past her roughly and refused to look at the baby in her arms.

‘Help me Papa,’ she said to the Obeahman ‘this chil’ bring nuttin’ but trouble.’

‘Chil’ aint the trouble,’ replied the shaman evenly.

She pressed the bundle into his arms and hurried away and when she returned to the house without the baby her husband made no mention of it.  The pain in her belly began soon after she made the evening meal and, abandoning her food, she crept to her bed and lay down.

He could almost feel the fetish in the house.  It seemed to sing to him from its hiding place and more than once he sneaked away to check on it.  Made up from clandestinely collected and microscopic body parts and bound together with a piece of her dress and incantations, it nestled innocently in the marital bed no longer used.  He knew she’d never find it there.  ‘Do yo’ work,’ he whispered urgently to it ‘tak’ her and she cheatin’ man away.’ Carefully he recited the sacred words the Obeahman had given him and lay down to sleep.

Msoto was in agony now.  The pain travelled relentlessly upwards and coiled around her heart, squeezing it like a vice and she fell back, heart hammering violently in her chest until it hammered no more.

Fear fired him out of his slumber in the dead of night and he sat bolt upright shivering in his blanket.  He saw himself asleep and deep in dreams, entwined in his blanket.  He saw himself unmoving except the one part of him which responded to her silent ministrations.  He heard the secret words she whispered in his ear, words that kept his spirit from returning to his body while she pulled herself astride him… His return to consciousness was fleeting, just long enough for him to know what he’d done before he collapsed on his blanket, and when death hardened the body his face kept its eerie look of surprise.

The Obeahman took the news quite calmly when the ragged group of children appeared at his door stunned and dry-eyed in shock over the unexplainable deaths of their father and young stepmother.

Return to Grace, Kilmarnock, Scotland Nov 1978

I must be getting old because I can’t move as fast as I used to.  It seems to take me forever to do the things I used to do in the blink of an eye, and the cold weather slows me down too.  Some days I have to steel myself just to get up to face another dark December morning.  But I set my mind determinedly because – and this is not something many can say when they get to my age but – someone is relying on me.

I stare at the wind-blown sleet and the slate-grey sky and it’s tempting to nestle down into the warmth of my own body heat but no, I surface groggily, pull myself together as quickly as these old bones will allow and set off.

Grace McCallum pulled her eyes away from the picture of Frank she kept, well-polished and shining, in the centre of the mantelpiece.  Taken on their last holiday in Blackpool, it depicted a grinning Frank in a silly straw hat with a melting ice cream cone in his hand. She always liked that picture.  It was something about the way Frank’s smiling eyes seemed to follow her around the room, and she often stopped in the middle of her housework to speak a silent word to her husband and if anyone were to tell her she was daft talking to a photograph, Grace would have paid them no heed.  No one could tell her Frank didn’t hear her privately whispered words and sometimes she just spoke to him aloud as if he was still there.  She might tell him how Alice was getting on or something amusing their four-year-old grandson Ronnie said, or perhaps some news from Mrs Harvey their neighbour and on other days Grace just had a good old-fashioned moan - and sometimes she told him how very much she missed him.

Frank might not be there anymore but as long as Grace had his picture she felt he was still with her and watching over her life.  But this particular morning her spirits were low.  Christmas was coming, her first without Frank, and no matter how brave a face she put on, one she was secretly dreading.  Oh, she’d made a show, put up the tree for Ronnie when he visited, pretended to Alice that she was fine, she had cards strung across the walls the way they did every year, but Grace’s heart was not in it.  ‘This year you’re coming to us Mum,’ her daughter Alice had said as far back, Grace recalled, as September. She’d never been able to hide anything from Alice.  ‘It’s only natural you miss Dad, Mum’ she’d said kindly ‘we all do, and especially the first Christmas without him.  You’ll come to us Mum and that’s settled.’

Grace was pleased enough to agree but, living day to day as she did now, she could not imagine Christmas even arriving without Frank there to celebrate it with her.  But already it was December.

I must just stop for a rest.  I’ll just sit here a while until I catch my breath.  Oh, that wind sends shivers right through my bones.  There now, that’s better.  Now I better get on otherwise I’ll be late.

Grace filled the kettle, remembering this time to boil just enough water for one cup.  She was never one for a pot of tea.  A cup was enough for her.  Now Frank, he did like his tea…  Her eyes filled with tears for the umpteenth time that day.  What was wrong with her?  ‘Pull yourself together Grace,’ she told herself angrily.  Must be the time of year, she decided.  She stared bleakly across the garden, Frank’s pride and joy, and another raw memory surfaced as she remembered just how many times she’d chided her husband for letting his dinner grow cold while he dug, weeded and planted in their small plot.  There was no sign now of all the flowers and bulbs he’d planted but she knew they were only sleeping, waiting for spring.  The garden was wintry and bare and the picture it made mirrored the barrenness in her heart.  ‘Oh Frank,’ she sobbed ‘how can I get through it without you?’

I always listen to my inner voice.  You know, the little voice that sometimes speaks to us if we only listen and mine tells me now I haven’t much time.  However bad the weather I have to move on.  I still have a long way to go.

The telephone rang, fourteen times a part of her mind counted but her body remained stoically at the window, looking out at the garden which was once theirs but now was only hers.  A deep, aching sorrow welled up inside her and quietly she wept.

Luckily I have a good sense of direction.  I can see the street now and there’s the house. Another few moments and I’ll be there.

She saw the garden as a blurry mess of browns and greys through her tears but it was as if Grace were rooted to the spot.  Perhaps she should move?  Alice suggested as much a few weeks ago.  ‘There’s too many memories here Mum,’ she explained ‘and you could move somewhere closer to us, I know Ronnie would love it –‘Alice’s well-intended reasons flew over her head.  Alice had lost her Dad but she still had her husband Ron and Ronnie too.  Who did Grace have now?  She shook her greying head sadly.  Alice was right there were too many memories here and yet –

So close now I can ignore the pain in my body, the wind and the lashing rain.  I’m almost home.