You heard of the Bleckker Estate? You must’ve done. Everyone knows it. Mind, not many talk about it, but that’s the Bleckker for you. It’s known. There’s a language of silence, see. A knowledge that transmits without words. You know the Bleckker. You know it the way you know when the creak on the stairs isn’t just the house settling or when you walk into an empty room that’s not so empty. Lizard brain stuff this is. Creeps and chills wisdom. You know the Bleckker. Everyone does.
Big ugly concrete tower block it is. Slab-like and ridged with these outer walkway’s that run on each floor like runnels of shadow. There’s this square patch of scrubland in front of it. Was meant to be a play park when there were plans to fling up more towers on the other three sides of the patch. But after Bleckker One went up no one dared build another. They knew, you see, even them hoity-toity architect types. They knew what they’d done and they ran from it.
Bleckker casts a long shadow. Bleeds them it does. The grass grows on the patch, certainly. It grows high enough to whisper in the shadows. Grows high enough to swallow the trollies and fridges tossed in there. It grows green and grey. It grows thistles and blackberries. Nasty, sour little bunches of berries that splat on the concrete siding like dollops of blood. The birds don’t eat them. The magpies and blackbirds fly right on passed. There was on owl once, someone told me. It didn’t last long.
I suppose you could call Bleckker an oasis. Sitting out there all on its own at the arse end of Creekstone Road. Just a tower and its green. Lots of space to spread its shadow. There’s no graffiti on the walls of Bleckker. And what with the grass hiding so much, it could almost be called tidy. Mind, you’d have to be pretty stupid to call Bleckker anything ‘cept evil. But it takes all sorts to make a world, don’t it?
You’re probably thinking, alright that’s all fine and spooky-like, excellent scene-setting and all that, but what’s actually going on there? Why get all het up about some Sixties tower block and an overgrown green, eh? There’s real problems happening in the world, you might say. Give us the tea or shut up already.
That’s fair. That is. No one’s making you listen to me. Evil comes in lots of different shapes and sizes. Some are flashier than others. But predation, see. That’s subtle. The predator needs to lie down with the lamb in this day and age. The parasite needs a certain symbiosis with its host to survive. For a while at least. What does symbiosis mean? Look it up. It’ll improve your mind. Where was I? Yes. I was talking about the subtle predator, nibbling at life’s edges, wasn’t I? Well, there was none better at people-nibbling than Mr. Armand. Him what lived – in a fashion – on the Bleckker’s thirteenth floor. Kept his curtains drawn during the day and only slunk out his door at night. Don’t know him? You will when I’m done. Trust me. The lizard brain knows when the hunter is near. Got a shiver, there? Well, it’s a cold, dark night.
Anyway. I’m not telling you about Mr. Armand, yet. He can wait his turn. They were all like him anyway. Them that lived on the Bleckker Estate. And those that weren’t were damned. You see, Bleckker’s a place for the damned. They don’t know it. The damned never do. That’s sort of the point. Lying down with the lion never works well for the lamb.
Anywhoo. You’re distracting me. I’m trying to explain something important. The thing you’ve got to understand about Bleckker is that there’s no understanding Bleckker. Bleckker’s an instinct. It’s a reaction. The shiver when someone walks over your grave. Bleckker’s the reason you throw a pinch of spilled salt over your shoulder. Bleckker’s the reminder that you don’t own the night.
You’re probably thinking Bleckker don’t sound like a good place to raise a family. You’d be right. But there were some that grew up there. The Bleckker kids. Well. There’s all sorts in a world, aren’t there, and some of them are monsters. Bleckker bred them. With twists in their brains and fey light in their eyes. You’ve probably seen the Bleckker kids ‘round town. They’re the ones you cross the street to avoid while trying to act like you wanted to do that anyway. I know what you’re thinking. You’re very transparent. You’re thinking, big deal, more anti-social yobbos. Whoop-de-do. You get them everywhere. Nothing special about that.
Well, no, there isn’t. But where are you getting the idea evil’s special? Evil’s a disease. It’s boredom gone toxic. It’s rage corkscrewed into despair and spat out as some oik gobbing in your face. But other times, it’s something else. Sometimes it’s the Bleckker kids. They’re all shadows; hollow spaces where hope and promise should be. Silhouette people who breathe entropy. The rot that eats society. Bleckker kids will eat your souls.
Think I’m making this up? Standing under a streetlamp watching the world go by, it’s easy to think you know what’s what. You don’t. You’ve forgotten what the old timers knew. You’ve forgotten who owns the night. It’s a lot, I know. Easy to get lost in it. That’s the point. That’s Bleckker’s thing. The creeping shadow throws you in shade. Blinds you. I’ll give you an example. Have you ever seen Lacy Annie?
She hangs out at the bus stop on the corner of Creekstone around midnight. If you’ve ever driven by, you’ll have seen her. I know you’re not the sort, because you’re still alive, but there are those that stop for her, if you know what I mean? Not a good idea. Lacy Annie? She’s one of the lost ones. Who knows where she was going, once. All I know was that one night, Mr. Armand found her.
She’s missing a shoe, is our Annie. Her tights are laddered and not in an artful, pay-through-the-nose-for-the-distressed-look way. Her head hangs wrong, but her hairs still pretty. Blonde. Glows like phosphor in the dark. Some people think she’s goth because she wears a choker round her neck. She isn’t and that’s not jewellery. Get close enough and you’ll see. Bits of it flake and when she whips her head around to stare at you with her saucer eyes bright as streetlamps. Then you’ll understand why her head flops like that. Of course, then you’ll be dead. So, probably, you should just take my word for it.
Actually, I should have mentioned Lacy Annie when I was talking about people-nibbling at the estate. Sorry about that. Bleckker’s a black hole. A despair sink. Difficult to separate out all the ways it will suck you dry.
So anyway, between Lacy Annie and the Bleckker kids, the estate started to get a reputation. Got bad enough that they sent a special constable over there. You know the sort; they wear a sash but aren’t real police. Or maybe they are? Who can tell these days. It’s not like you see police on the beat anymore. You know they don’t even come out for burglaries? Well, that’s probably because they keep losing all their constables in Bleckker’s long grass.
Figured you’d heard about that one. It made the news. Very flashy. Yeah. Without his head and missing his feet. Stuffed in an old fridge. ‘Course I know what happened. I know everything, don’t I? Be pointless telling you this stuff if I didn’t, wouldn’t? I mean, what kind of storyteller goes to this much trouble to be like “Oi, you know about Bleckker?” all mysterious and then doesn’t know anything himself?
What? No. I’m not going to tell you what happened to the special constable. Why? Because you don’t need to know. Some things gain power in the telling and the knowing will leave a hole in your spirit like a cigarette burn. Eat right through you, it will. Just take it from me, losing a head and a pair of feet was the least of what that poor sod had to fear before he died.
Right. Glad we got that settled. So, after the special constable them that are in charge – or think they are – took note. Things had all got a bit much, yeah? Certain people who like to think they know shadows decided that things needed sorting out. Questions were asked, answers demanded. Decisions made.
They started by rounding up the Bleckker kids. Well, how do you think it went? These are walking pits of soulless hunger. ‘Course it went badly. You hear about that children’s home, Greenacre? They sent two of the estate kids there. Yeah. Exactly. Best not to think too hard about it. I know. Like I said. Thinking about it lets the shadows in.
Lacy Annie. Well, they made a good fist of bringing her in. Still botched it badly, mind. But that weren’t all their fault and they did get her to the Crematorium in the end. Burning’s good. Burning works. They’d learn that in the end. But they made one fatal mistake. Them that decide wanted Bleckker dealt with all quiet and hush-hush.
Silly idea. You don’t fight silence with silence and you don’t fight shadows in the dark. Anyone with common sense knows that. Thing is though, you need uncommon sense to fight a shadow and them that have it, they learn to keep to the silence too. Survival reflex. There are them that will burn a witch to please a demon, after all.
So, what do you think they did then? You’re right. That’s exactly what the plonkers did. Went in mob handed, didn’t they? Stormed Bleckker. ‘Course, by that point there weren’t too many people living – and I use the term lightly –on the Bleckker Estate. There was Mr. Ashborn on the ground floor. You may not believe it, but he was almost normal. Ate a lot of rats, which did him no favours, and you don’t want to know what he painted his walls with, but honestly, he weren’t that bad.
You don’t want to know about Celia on the seventh floor. No, really, you don’t. There was a reason she was the only one living on that floor by the end of it all. I imagine it was hard to cope with all that shrieking and wailing. Still, she didn’t go easy. I heard the officers sent to round her up all went deaf. Ruptured eardrums. They were the lucky ones. She spoke to one poor soul. And she spoke true. Grief claimed that one. Dead by her own hand two days later.
Oh, now look. You made me go and talk about Celia, didn’t you? I said I wouldn’t too. Oh well. Celia wasn’t so bad. I’m definitely not telling you about Dave on floor eleven. He had a neighbour for dinner. Hadn’t quite finished by the time the squad charged in. Yes. Chew on that one. Probably should have mentioned him along with Mr. Armand and dear old Lacy Annie, shouldn’t I?
Floors ten and twelve were just sad. See, you got to have prey to have predators, don’t you? That’s how the ecosystem works. The squad didn’t find much trouble there. Didn’t find nothing left to save either. Poor little lambs.
Why am I jumping all about and not telling you everything floor to floor, you ask? Well, who are you to tell me how to tell my own story, eh? Truth is, I forgot what goings on they had on floor four. I know there was something grim. Oh, I remember! That was Philip’s floor. He didn’t have a flat number. Why? Well, strictly speaking he didn’t live in Bleckker. Ghosts don’t, you see. Still, I heard he hurled a fire extinguisher the length of the corridor and smashed the head of a takeaway deliveryman so, clearly, he was a bit territorial all the same.
Oh, I know. I agree totally. You’d think a fraction of these stories should have raised an eyebrow before now, right? Murder. Cannibalism. Fly-tipping on the patch. Terrible stuff. But that was Bleckker’s magic, see. It kept things neat and contained and anyone drawn into its orbit was damned already. The rest just didn’t care to notice. Why? ‘Cause that’s what you do, isn’t it? In the dark you blind yourself with light. You listen with your ears, but you don’t hear your instincts screaming. Shivering again, mate? Not to worry. I’m sure it’s nothing but night chills.
Floor five had Gary. Gary was a bit much. Messy. Growled a lot. Didn’t like puddles and had awfully hairy hands. Prone to sudden violent outbursts. Especially when he had his teeth embedded in that bloke’s neck. Why didn’t I count Gary among the people-nibblers, you ask? Well, I’d hardly call him a nibbler, would you? More of a gobbler. A render. Tearer. Gnasher, even. Always hungry, our Gary. No surprise there. The squad was lucky with him. I heard they burned Gary right there on the patch. Stuffed him in a fridge and lit the whole thing up. Oh, how Celia screamed. They had a bit of a thing going on, see.
Anyway, that blaze was a precursor, you could say. An omen of things to come if that’s your fancy. But you’re not interested in omens, are you? If you were you’d have asked me about Audrey on the second floor. She liked dolls. Made them herself. You really don’t want to know what she used to stuff them. She could do things with a chicken that ran the gamut from the wondrous to the profane. Thank you, yes. Gamut is a fancy word. I’m cultured as well as all-knowing. I’m just slumming it this evening. Had a bit of bother at home. That’s why I’m here chatting with you.
Now where was I? Yes. Good old Audrey. She didn’t take much effort to take down but they had trouble with her after. Caused a lot of unexpected misfortune, did Audrey. Then she did a bunk when the armoured van taking her who-knows-where crashed into a tree after jumping two lanes of traffic. But that was Audrey in a nutshell. Stuff like that happened a lot when she was around. I suspect it still does. Misery migrates see, and sometimes a lone spark flies free of a fire. Evil’s right hard to catch, but real easy to spread.
But you’re not interested in the nature of evil, are you? You’ve had about enough of my lyrical waxing, I bet. You want me to talk about Mr. Armand, don’t you, now? You’re fiercely interested, am I right? I’ve whetted your appetite with these other tender morsels and now you’re all but salivating for the main course. What’s that? You think I’m going a bit heavy on the metaphors, do you? Well, never you mind. I just believe in being sporting, is all. You could consider this your final warning. Also, I’m getting thirsty. But no matter. We’ve reached the nub of the issue; the deepest darkness at Bleckker’s beating heart.
Mr. Armand’s thirteenth floor.
Now, Mr. Armand, he was one of the very first to move into the Bleckker Estate, back when the developer still had plans to build a happy little concrete community around the patch. If you’ve been paying attention this should tell you all you need to know about Mr. Armand, but as this is my story, I’m going to tell you more anyway.
Mr. Armand could be described as a reclusive gentleman, but still very much a gentlemen. He preferred the nightlife and did not fraternise with the neighbours. He preferred to bring company home with him. Like our Lacy Annie. Or Lovely Amita who lurked in the stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors. Or Pale Luke who was more of a drifter until he fell off the roof. There are some of the opinion that Philip was once a companion of Mr. Armand. For the record, he was not. Mr. Ashborn on the ground floor, however, was. That one was a bit of an embarrassment, honestly. Lacy Annie, Pale Luke and Lovely Amita? They had some class to their bloodless existence right ‘til the end. But there’s no class in eating rats, is there?
Anyway, the squad – what was left of it – all handpicked by those shadow draped decision makers who kept well back from the action – thought they were ready for Mr. Armand. They’d come in daylight. They had silver crucifixes, delicate Stars of David backed with millennia of faith, copies of the Qu’ran in handy dandy fanny packs and canteens of holy water. And of course, ash wood stakes. A lot of them, as it happened. Enough to build a fence. Or kill a vampire a good few times over. They were locked, stocked and ready to rumble, in other words.
They kicked in the door. They ripped down the blood red drapes. They knocked over the Ficus in the corner and found Lacy Annie’s missing shoe under the sofa. They picked the lock on the bedroom door. They trampled native earth into the carpet. They went about looting the wardrobe. One of Mr. Armand’s Italian leather loafers was shot for no discernible reason. Such a waste.
What was that? You detect a distinct shift in my diction, you say? I don’t quite sound myself, you say? Well, how would you know? I’ve yet to introduce myself. Still, well done to you. There’s some sharpness to you after all. It just so happens I’m a long way from my native lands. I’ve picked up a bit of lingo along the way. Helps me fit in. But where was I? Yes. The bedroom.
You need to understand, Mr. Armand’s bedroom was important. Even if it didn’t, in fact, have a bed in it. The room was Mr. Armand’s refuge from the harsh light of day. His inner sanctum. It was where he placed his coffin. I bet you can guess what those jack-booted sods did to that fine bit of craftmanship, can’t you? Too right they smashed it. And they threw the violet pillow out of the window, which, mind you, was no easy feat. Those windows had been nailed shut for years.
Now if you’re clever, you may be thinking so far, so Stoker, but where was Mr. Armand? Was he lurking in the depths of the wardrobe clutching an armadillo? Was he casting a wicked shadow along the walls, while plucking his thumbs? Was he clinging to the ceiling like a giant bat? Or was he forming a body from an assortment of local rodents mind controlled for the purpose so he could fall upon the home invaders in an orgy of bloodshed? Or was he flowing away to safety under the door as a cloud of blood-tinged mist?
The answer to all of that is no. Be sensible. Mr. Armand had done what any sane fellow would do while his neighbours were rounded up and carted away without a warrant and burned to death on the patch below without a by-your-leave. He’d scarpered down the hall as soon as he’d heard boots on the stairs and was hiding in the utility closet.
How do I know all this, you ask, being as I am in fact just an old storyteller standing around in the dark outside a soup kitchen? Well might you ask. See if you can figure out an answer. Give it a good think. Chew on it, as it were, maybe you’ll get a flavour of the truth.
I asked you a question at the beginning of my story. Do you remember? I asked you if you’d heard about the Bleckker. You hadn’t. But what about now? Do you hear that? Sirens. Lots of them. The Bleckker Estate is burning down, you see. That’s what the squad did when they couldn’t find Mr. Armand in his coffin.
Bit anticlimactic, isn’t it? I’m sure you were hoping for a tale of valiant carnage. A battle between good and evil, or at least a good staking. I’m sure those squad members were too. Still, they got over it quickly enough. Especially when they discovered all the fire exits locked and their way out cut off. Ah, you’re saying, but what about those outer walkways, all nicely covered by a concrete portico?
And you’d be right. Our plucky squad of home invaders did make it out of a neighbour’s window onto the walkway. Sadly for them it’s been a murky day. Barely any sun, and the overhang from the roof provides an excellent light block. Still, they might have made it if it wasn’t for the gas explosion in the neighbour’s flat. They really should have cut the gas before storming the place.
Terrible oversight and a great big boom. And of course, what with all the illegal neighbour murdering the squad had got up to on the patch, and it being February – silly-silly – the afternoon had worn into evening by that point. Too bad, such a shame. The flames were pretty though, from a safe distance at the bus stop, mind, and Bleckker One had been a horrible eyesore. Not too many people will be sorry to see it go.
What happened to Mr. Armand, you say? Do you really need to ask? He got away, of course. He always does. I believe I warned you that happens. An errant spark flies free. Disease always spreads. Shadows will run. The night will win. The lambs don’t recognise the lions anymore.
But where are my manners. Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Armand. Mr. Armand. But from the look on your face, you already knew that. I knew you’d get it in the end. And it is, of course, the end. But for now, won’t you join me for a drink?
ALDLIS CHRONICLES 