Driven by wild panic, he stumbled in potholes and slipped on patches of loose stones on the broken tarmac. Towering trees and sinister hedges slid past in a blur of movement and menace, whilst gates and stiles beckoned innocently towards malign fields and predatory paths.
He stopped, panting for breath, and heard a menacing roar echoing between the dark hedges, distant but getting quickly closer. Another beast, thirsty for his blood! He leapt onto the verge and scrabbled desperately to get through the hedge as the monster veered into sight—and then tore past, ignoring him. A woman inside stared blankly ahead, oblivious to the turmoil she had caused.
For it was a car, an ordinary domestic car. Trembling with relief, he stepped back into the road with as much dignity as he could muster and started brushing loose twigs and leaves from his jacket. It was then that he saw that there had been a witness to his mistake.
The little girl watched silently as he approached. Although he was trying to look as nonchalant as possible, he could feel his cheeks burning in a blatant act of betrayal. She was standing in the driveway of a white bungalow which was set well back from the road in well-trimmed gardens, with two cars parked in front of the house. Her ginger hair was gathered into two fuzzy bunches and she wore a frilly pink dress.
'Hello,' he said with exaggerated good cheer. The girl watched him blankly and did not return his smile.
'Um—there was something in the hedge, something I wanted to look at.' Still she just stared.
'You don't think I was scared of the car, do you?' he said with a little laugh. No response.
'I mean, a car—what's to be scared of, eh?' he continued, displaying his sangfroid with a shrug.
'My name is Peony,' she said, 'What's your name?'
Then she gave him a hard stare, clutching her Barbie doll close to her chest. He opened his mouth to answer—but nothing happened.
'You don't know who you are,' she said.
'Of course I do!'
But when he tried again, still nothing came. He grinned sheepishly, half-hoping she would enlighten him.
'You're silly,' she said, in a matter-of-fact voice.
'That's not fair! I am not silly!'
'You are silly. You're silly because you don't know who you are.'
'I do know who I am,' he said, trying to sound emphatic.
She looked at him suspiciously.
'I'm—I'm—,' he stuttered.
She turned away with a haughty toss of her bunches. Then something popped into his mind, appearing from nowhere like a magician's rabbit.
'I'm Loofah!' he cried.
She turned back, frowning with doubt.
'Yes, that's who I am,' he went on, with growing confidence, 'Loofah!'
'That's a silly name. Like a bath sponge,' she said firmly, 'Anyway, I know who you are—you're The Seeker.'
'The Seeker? What does that—?'
'Hold Chantelle,' she interrupted, holding out the doll. It was Loofah who now looked blank, stunned with confusion.
'Hold Chantelle!' she commanded. And then added, in a softer tone, 'You can play with her if you like.'
'Thank you,' he said, taking the proffered doll, 'But I don't know how to—' she turned and walked purposefully across the lawn to her swing '—play with dolls,' he trailed, into the empty air.
The girl started swinging, humming to herself and kicking out her legs to gain height. The Seeker: what on earth did she mean by that? Hi-tech missiles came to mind, and mid-60s singing group. Then Loofah remembered his tee-shirt—that baleful garment which seemed to be playing a uncomfortably prominent role in events—and the enigmatic logo she must have read.
Something tickled his hand, a movement. He looked down at the doll. And it looked at him, with huge china-blue eyes. Then, smiling lasciviously with a flutter of spider-like eyelashes, it wriggled its tiny plastic buttocks against his palm.
'Ooh, big boy,' it said in a sultry squeak, and with tiny hands pushed his finger up to touch its breasts.
'What—?'
'Take me, I'm yours,' it simpered, pulling up the hem of its absurdly short dress.
'Look, I don't think—.'
It wriggled again, purring and taking hold of its skimpy white knickers in its minuscule hands.
'Please, don't do that.'
It smiled and started to ease the knickers down over long anorexic legs of orange plastic.
'Stop!' Loofah grabbed at its hand, but it pulled free, wriggling angrily and again grabbing for its panties.
'No!' Pushing its hands away, he tried to pull the hem of the dress down. The doll struggled furiously, opening its legs.
'What are you doing to Chantelle's dress?'
Loofah looked up. Peony was standing directly in front of him.
'Nothing, nothing at all,' he said, trying to force the plastic legs closed. The doll squeaked in distress.
'You're hurting her!' It squeaked more loudly. 'What are you doing? What are you doing?' cried the girl.
'Nothing. Really. Here, you can have her back—take her.'
Loofah held out the doll. It was whimpering now, with its dress rucked up and its knickers half-way down its plastic thighs. The girl's eyes widened with horror.
'It wasn't me,' he began, 'It was her…'
The girl began to cry, backing away from him. He stepped forward, holding out the whimpering doll.
'Daddy!' the girl shouted and turned to run.
'No, please, come back,' he said, 'It's alright, I haven't done anything.'
As she fled up the drive a man appeared round the side of the house, carrying a set of electric hedge clippers.
'Oh my God,' muttered Loofah, backing towards the road.
'She Who Looks Both Ways.' The squeaked words clicked into his consciousness.
'Uh?' he said, holding up the doll.
'You must find her,' it squeaked. Then, with a lascivious leer, it pushed his thumb under the hem of its crumpled skirt. Loofah looked up; the girl was standing next to the parked cars, sobbing her heart out, and the man with the clippers was storming down the drive towards him. With a curse, he dropped the doll onto the grass verge and ran.
The pistons of his legs pumped furiously against the tarmac. The man was behind him, closing quickly. He ran faster, straining every fibre of his being.
And yet he was hardly moving; the hedgerow crawled past a leaf at a time and the tarmac slid under him in languorous slow motion. He was suspended in a clear syrup, fighting against the inertia of the viscous liquid—and he could already feel the teeth of the hedge clippers tearing through the leather of his jacket, biting into the skin of his shoulders. Every muscle strained to breaking point and his lungs screamed for mercy. He gazed up the endless tunnel of road and hedgerow, and all was still, like a picture. Motionless now, he was held—helpless—in an invisible spider's web of stalled time.
It was hopeless, he was doomed. Chest heaving and staggering with exhaustion, he stopped struggling and turned to face his fate.
But there was no righteous father's fist to meet him, no avenging garden implement to rip into his bowels. The driveway was far behind him, a tiny gap in the distant bank of hedgerow, and there was nobody following. He laughed with sudden relief, panting hard and hot with the exertion of his escape. An ascending roar from behind announced the approach of another car. As he stumbled onto the verge it hurled itself past, a metal angel of Hell, all flashing steel and glinting paint-work, belched fumes and gratuitous aggression.
It then that he realised why he was hot—his jacket was done up to his throat. As he stepped back onto the tarmac, he undid the zip and opened the front, cooled by the breeze through the thin cotton of his tee-shirt.
What a nasty little girl, though, trying to make out that he didn't know who he was. Loofah. A name to be proud of: so distinguished, so elegant, so… imaginative. Not like Peony—fancy being named after some silly garden flower! Or Chantelle—an Essex doll's name if ever there was one.
It was odd, though, very odd. The doll had talked about a woman looking two ways, as had the little schoolgirl spaniel. Who was this strange creature? he wondered. A circus act, or perhaps the unfortunate result of some genetic experiment. Or possibly she was something to do with a road safety campaign, although wasn't he a bit old for that sort of thing?
'Coo-ee!' A elderly lady was standing by a gate in a white picket fence, smiling and waving across at him.
'What a lovely day!' she called. With cotton-wool hair and a floral print dress, she beamed dizzy kindness through Mary Whitehouse spectacles.
'Delightful, isn't it?' said Loofah, crossing the road, 'Could you tell me, am I right for the village?'
'I've just put the kettle on,' was the reply, 'Can I offer you a cup of tea?'
'I'd better not, actually. I have to get to the village, fairly quickly I think.'
But she was already ambling slowly up her garden path. He hesitated for a moment, worrying in a foggy sort of a way about continuing his journey, and then followed, drawn by her simple niceness, so refreshing after the woman in the wood and nasty little Peony.
The front garden was as neat as a new pin, with a billiard table lawn and tidy beds of flowers, their colours and patterns glowing and flowing in the sunlight. The house was of ancient brick with a red-tiled roof, and clematis and honeysuckle twisted and coiled around the solid timber porch.
'Do make yourself at home,' the old lady said, pushing open the front door and beckoning Loofah in ahead of her.
'I really shouldn't stop.' As he walked through the porch, a tendril of honeysuckle lashed viciously at his throat.
'Come through to the kitchen while I make the tea.'
The hall was an oasis of pleasantness, with rose patterned wallpaper and a faint scent of lavender and cleanness in the cool, still air. He noticed a mirror mounted in a gold-painted wrought metal frame and a pot of dried flowers on a decorative glass shelf.
'Oh, just look at him,' said the old lady as she passed the staircase, beaming a shaft of pure love at a fluffy ginger cat curled up on the fourth step. Wanting to be polite, Loofah forced a fond smile.
'You're a cat lover. I can tell, you know.' The cat watched him with green-eyed indifference. 'Why not say hello while I get the tea?'
As he leaned over to stroke the cat, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. And then looked again. It seemed to be him—there were his glasses and his tee-shirt—but his face was not as he remembered it. The death-white skin was wrinkled like old parchment, the eyes were ogling and bloodshot, filled with malicious lust, and the nose was swollen and veined with excess.
The sybaritic lips parted in horror—was this vision of loathsome depravity really him? And even as he looked, the image was degenerating further, the nose growing in rubicund bulbosity and the foul mouth twisting into a debauched leer, with warts and chancres sprouting like weeds. A dull sickness crawled through his brain. He watched, stunned, as he decayed in front of his own eyes, rotted out from inside by the corruption of his putrid, stinking soul…
A sudden flash of pain cut through his horror-trance—Loofah snatched his hand away as the cat raked its claws through his skin.
'Get your filthy paw off me, you fucking piece of shit,' it hissed, eyes glowing with a pale green venom.
'I can see you two are getting along like old friends,' the old lady said, standing in the kitchen doorway, 'If only they could talk, eh?'
'I think maybe I should be getting along,' said Loofah, clutching his injured hand.
'Would you mind just giving me a hand with the tray? I'm not as nimble as I used to be.'
'Actually—' he began, but she had already turned away.
Entering the kitchen was like stepping into the sky: white walls, blue painted cupboards with white porcelain knobs, blue and white floor tiles. His hostess stood by the fridge, taking biscuits from a willow patterned tin and laying them carefully around the rim of a plate.
'Could you pour the water into the pot?' she said, 'The kettle's just boiled.'
An old-fashioned hob kettle, shining like polished chrome, stood on a gas ring with wisps of steam forming intricate patterns in the air around its spout. Beside this, a round blue tea-pot waited expectantly on the scrubbed pine work surface, three crisp tea-bags nestling in its dark depths.
'I do like a cup of tea and a nice little chat, don't you?' the old lady said, 'People these days are always rushing around, no time for anything.'
Loofah reached over to lift the kettle from the hob. But as he touched the wooden handle, a jet of steam spat from the spout, scalding his wrist. He pulled his hand away with a cry and the kettle sneered with delight, a glint of malice in its mirrored shine.
'Of course it was different in my day, we had time for each other then. How are you doing with that tea?'
'Um…'
'Got to let it brew properly. We don't want it all weak and wan, do we?'
He reached for the kettle again. It spat another jet but this time he was on his guard. He snatched his hand away—and a drawer at his waist shot open, crashing into his hip bone with a thud of pain and a clutter of cutlery.
'Looking for teaspoons? Next drawer along.'
The first drawer snapped closed and the second opened, revealing a tray of silver teaspoons that glinted like treasure. Reaching in to take one, he realised his mistake a split second too late; the drawer slammed shut, trapping his fingers.
'Mind you,' his hostess continued, taking blue china cups from the cupboard above the fridge, 'I've always been the neighbourly type.'
Gritting his teeth against the agony, Loofah wrenched at the handle with his free hand. The drawer started chewing, grinding his fingers against the edge of the work surface. With blood spurting from under his nails and searing jolts of pain firing up his arm, one by one his knuckle bones were cracked and crumbled to gravel.
'"Open house" my Billy used to call it—people popping in and out all day long.'
With a final, desperate effort he managed to haul the drawer open and pull his hand free. Blind with pain, he clutched his ruined fingers while the drawers—three of them in a row—grinned at him, mocking his agony.
'Ready for pouring, is it?' the old lady said, crossing to the cooker, 'Oh, you've not made it yet!'
She smiled him an understanding smile. 'You men. All the same, aren't you? Don't know one end of a kitchen from the other.'
As she took the kettle from the hob, there was a roar behind him. Loofah spun round. The washing machine was shaking with insane wrath, murder blazing from its control dial and powder slot, and from the spinning fury of its window. It lurched at him with a savage metal growl and he staggered backwards, nearly falling into the fanged jaws of the dish washer, which snapped closed, missing him by inches.
'Be ready in a couple of minutes,' the old lady said, putting the lid on the tea-pot.
'Actually, I really must be—'
But he was interrupted by a low, gurgling growl from the washing machine. Its spinning had now slowed and through the round glass he could see its contents: purple loops of bruised intestine, torn shreds of liver, a spongy lobe of lung, all churning in a soup of blood, urine and gut fluid.
'Oh look, there's the washing just finished. I'd better hang it out before I sit down.' She pressed the machine's door-catch. 'Got to get the best of this glorious drying weather, haven't we?'
Loofah watched with rigid fascination as the door swung open and out flowed… two sheets, a pillow case, and a pale yellow bath towel.
The back garden was as prim and proper as the front: barbered lawns, colour-splashed flower beds and perfectly coiffured shrubs, all enclosed by a protective wall of beech trees whose every green leaf had been polished to a glossy shine. Loofah examined his hand, pulling fingers and flexing joints. Feeling somewhat cheated, he still couldn't quite accept that the drawer's torture had left no permanent mark.
'I couldn't be doing with one of those new tumble dryers,' the old lady said, 'Nothing like proper fresh air. You can't beat Mother Nature, as my Billy used to say.'
She was pegging out the flapping sheets on an old fashioned clothes-line stretched between two posts and supported in the middle by a notched pole. The tea-tray lay waiting for them on a white painted iron table on the patio. Loofah was quietly dreading his tea; would it poison him or make do with slicing his mouth open with a razor-sharp cup rim?
'You and my Billy would have got on like a house on fire. He always liked a man to talk to, did my Billy. Mind you—.' But she was interrupted by the determined ring of a telephone from the open French windows.
'I'd better get that,' she said, 'I'm expecting a call from my daughter Margaret. She phones me every day, you know. Still remembers her old mother, not like some these days.'
Half way across the lawn she turned. 'Could you be a dear and hang out the last two sheets?' she called, 'Then we can have our tea.'
The sheets in question—one pink, one yellow—lay damply in the plastic basket while the rest of the laundry flapped gaily in the breeze like a of a flotilla of small yachts in full sail. Loofah backed away, shaking his head.
'Actually, I'm not very good with washing,' he began. But she was too far away and didn't hear.
For a few moments he kept his distance, peering anxiously into the basket and waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Two little sheets, he thought, two harmless little sheets. He took some wooden pegs from the tin and gingerly picked up a fold of yellow cotton. Still nothing: no teeth, no claws, just damp cloth. And so, opening it out, he threw the sheet over the line and pushed on the pegs. No problem. Loofah smiled to himself; he was getting too jumpy, he thought, letting himself get rattled by a bit of mischievous domestic hardware.
As he threw the second sheet over the line, the wet material suddenly billowed out—it could have been caught by the wind—and slapped over his face, turning the world damp pink. Fumbling blindly, he managed to get one peg on the line. The wet cotton was now wrapped around his throat and as he tried to pull it away, it tightened. He let go—but the material tightened further. A thrill of panic shivered through the damp pinkness.
Like the hungry protoplasm of an oversized amoeba, ballooning clouds of flapping cloth now completely engulfed him, smothering his face and wrapping themselves ever more tightly around his arms and torso. Gasping for air, he pulled at the wet material around his neck as it tried to throttle him, but to no avail; his struggle for breath resulted in little more than a strangled rattle in his throat. As his suffocated lungs cried out in mute agony, panic flared wildly and in mad desperation he grabbed a billow at random, hauling the material to where he thought the line was. But as he brought up a peg, pain stabbed sharply through his thumb. Somehow managing to pull a pink cloud away from his face, he saw that the peg was actually a seagull's head, which ogled him maliciously with its black beady eye while pecking at his fingers with its hard yellow beak.
The pecking hurt, but it goaded rather than deterred. The flaring flame of panic became a focussed jet of white hot anger—was he really going to let a bit of laundry get the better of him? The wet noose around his neck tightened again, then another billow of sheet slapped sharply across his face. Spitting a curse, he snatched it over the line and rammed home the squawking beak.
The battle—a whirling struggle of flapping cotton and snapping beaks—was soon over and he stood back, triumphantly viewing the field of his victory. The laundry fluttered in the breeze, as innocent as a young girl's smile, the only incongruity being the row of seagull heads that glared at him with impotent hatred, their beaks gagged open on the line.
'Get out of my garden!' The old lady was standing behind him on the lawn with her hands on her hips and her face blazing with cold fury.
'I've… er… pegged out the sheets,' said Loofah, lamely.
'I don't want the likes of you touching my sheets,' she spat, advancing menacingly, 'And I don't want the likes of you in my garden. Get out this minute!'
'But—I thought we were going to have tea?'
'You're not drinking my tea, you dirty horrible man. I know all about you now, you can't fool me.'
'I don't understand,' he stammered, backing away.
'Don't you try to play the innocent with me,' she snarled, 'That was Miss Leggett on the phone, from the Company. They've got the measure of you, don't you worry about that.'
'I think there's been a mistake. I don't know any Miss Leggett.'
'Well she knows you. And she wants to see you.'
Loofah stepped backwards as she advanced again, her old face a mask of righteous anger.
'At once!' she added, in a quavering shriek.
He stumbled into the road, hurt and confused, as the old lady stormed back up her garden path. The front door slammed shut with a dreadful finality.
As the shock of his abrupt expulsion subsided, a potent sense of injustice welled up like an oil strike. After being scratched by a foul-mouthed cat, strangled by a sheet, and attacked by half a dozen domestic appliances, he had now been wrongly condemned, in absentia, as some form of moral leper—it was utterly outrageous. Who was this woman Leggett anyway? And what right did she have to go passing judgement on him?
Then, in the midst of his righteous seething, the face from the old lady's mirror winked at him and green saliva trickled over its lascivious, leering lips. Loofah shuddered. No, he wasn't like that, he wasn't like that at all, he thought, nervously fingering his nose. Miss Leggett must have made a mistake, she must be confusing him with someone—. His brain stopped dead. 'I've already told you,' whispered a voice in his head and he shivered with a strange dread.
Something in his hand wriggled through his distraction—he was still holding one of the pegs.
'She Who Is Two, She Who Is Two,' it squawked, fixing him with its black bead of an eye.
'Unh? What about her?'
'You're The Seeker—you must find her!' And with that, it clamped itself viciously around his forefinger.
'Ow! You bloody thing!' Loofah cried, wrenching the peg off and then hurling it—squawking furiously—onto its mistress's front lawn.
As he set off up the road clutching his throbbing finger, he heard a car approach from behind, although this time with an assured purr rather than a bellicose roar. He stepped onto the verge out of its way, but instead of driving past, it pulled up alongside him. It was the emblem on the front door that Loofah noticed first: a victor's laurel wreath embracing a large ornate 'S', all in glittering gold leaf. And below this, in neat official lettering, were the words: 'The Company—Courtesy Vehicle'.