I could never believe the end of this
story. It was told to me three days after the events leading up to the end had
happened. I believed that the previous occurrences took place before the
inevitable end happened because I was there. I saw all of them take place; I
even played my own part in this little tale, it was just the twist. The twist
was the one thing I never saw and couldn't believe. I was a stubborn 13 year
old boy at the time and my lack of belief pretty much ended a friendship.
It was summer in 1994. One of my best
friends, Elvis Lewis (yes that was his first name, his father was a massive fan
of the king) had just moved house. They had finally gotten out of their tiny
flat and somehow got hold of an old council house on the estate where I lived.
The estate that I lived on was in the shadow of the block of flats but it
didn’t matter; my friend was now only a couple of doors down from me instead of
thirty floors up. We had begun spending this summer around each others’
respective domiciles as the weather had been terrible. We had amused ourselves
by playing Super Nintendo games to death. Every game each of us owned, we
played and completed. We were becoming bored.
One Thursday afternoon we saw another boy
from the estate walking down the road. This boy was only one year older than us
but he had been caught in the sweaty, clammy grip of puberty. He had acne
populating his cheeks and chin, long greasy blond hair, a flannel shirt, torn
jeans and Doctor Martin boots. Kids had many names for him: Grunger; Dyke;
Tramp; Queer; Hippy; Greaser; but myself and Elvis new him by the name of Nigel
Fenton. Nigel Fenton was picked on by the kids who were spending their days
listening to the music of rave, populated by such artists as DJ Sy or DJ Druid;
and he was worshipped by the kids who were listening to Nirvana, Guns N Roses
and Pearl Jam. He had insisted that his name was ‘Soundwave’ at 12 and by
thirteen could already play ten chords on a cheap old acoustic guitar. No one
called him Soundwave though. It was either the insults or the standard name of
Nigel.
Elvis and I were standing on the corner
crunching on blue ice that had been sold to us under the guise of ‘Mr Snow’. It
was a long ice pole that was dyed a variety of bright chemically colours, and
though the day was not particularly hot, and the sun had been fighting with the
clouds like a small man at a rock concert trying to get a view of the stage,
Elvis had insisted on buying a range of these poles. I was eating a blue one
and Elvis was eating a green one when Nigel walked by. We called out his name
and he looked out from under his slick of blond hair and clumped his way over
to us. We offered him a red flavoured ice pole and he took it. We began talking
with him and he said that he had been on holiday with his parents to Cornwall
I cannot tell a lie. I started it. I raised
my melting ice pole and pointed it towards this beast and said ‘Look! It’s
Julia!’ Elvis turned and looked and so did Nigel. First it started with just
cat calling her name. She ignored it. Then it became sarcastic wolf whistling,
at which she threw a few dozen choice hand gestures our way, the finally Nigel
shouted a long string of obscenities that described in glorious teenage detail
what sexual practices he would do to her mum and what Julia let her dad do to
her. This was the final straw. Julia’s mother was dead and her father was a
raging alcoholic. Julia slowly turned and stared at our triumvirate. The clouds
started to cheer and rain started to fall. Julia started moving towards us. It
was like a train picking up speed. We turned and ran towards the safety of
Elvis’ parent’s house.
We made it inside and started laughing,
blue, red and green tongues lolling out of our stained mouths. We all walked
into the living room festooned with King Memorabilia and looked out of the main
window (hidden behind the net curtain). She was there. Julia was just standing
in the middle of the street. The rain was coming down in sheets, plastering her
lifeless hair to her streaked black and white face. Make up was running and she
was there. Staring. Through the double glazing, through the safety of the
translucent net curtain, through me and Elvis right to Nigel, who was sitting
on the sofa scratching his belly. There was trouble in the air. Nigel saw that
myself and Elvis had not left the window and made his way there. He stuck his
head under the net curtain and saw her. The strange sight obviously did not
shake Nigel as it did us; for he flung open the windows and over the white
noise of the rain hitting tarmac shouted another string of choice phrases her
way. She smiled as he said them and told him to come outside. Nigel shut the
window and uneasily sat back down. We started questioning him about why he did
that. He said he didn’t know. We started wondering how long she was going to be
out there for. We began checking in ten minute intervals.
Two hours later she was till there. The
rain was till lashing down and Elvis’ parents still had not returned home. We
were all feeling on edge. We didn’t know what to do. This girl was not giving
up and when the power went out on the street that was when the witch rumour
began to creep into our young, teenage heads. At first everything in the house
stopped. The TV went blank and the fridge stopped regulating its temperature.
There was silence. All we could hear was the rain not giving up its barrage on
the streets and houses of the estate and also (though it seems stupid now)
Julia’s breathing. She had gradually moved closer to the window until her face
was just staring in. It looked like it was melting. We had tried to pretend it
wasn’t there but every now and then one of us would sneak a glimpse and see
this dilapidated teenage girl’s face staring, dead eyed and corpse like into
the blur of the living room.
Now just a quick break to either remind
people of what goes on in the minds of teenage boys or to explain what goes on.
Not much. There is generally crippling guilt about things you do privately or
things you have done. The odd thought process on how to get drunk or feel some
girls’ breasts; or how to get the high score on a new computer game. That. Is.
It. It is a strange mix of still being a child and yet wanting to start more
adult activities. Often you have completely irrational and nonsensical plans
that have formed in your head and you carry them out, not really thinking about
the consequences. These happen throughout a teenage boy’s life. One such plan
occurred in Elvis’ living room about how to save Nigel; for it was he that she
wanted.
It seemed to make complete sense at the
time. We had begun talking of the rumours of her being a witch like boys round
a campfire. Many stories came up. She had killed her own mother with a spell
and punished her father by making him an alcoholic with another spell. Friend’s
of friends were mentioned and their run ins with her and the strange things
that had happened to them, like a pet suddenly dieing or an injury suddenly
happening to said friend of friend. We needed a plan and we needed one quick to
save Nigel. She had begun tapping on the window within the last ten minutes and
we could hear a muffled sound leaking through the rain, window and curtain that
said ‘Soundwave’.
We moved into the kitchen to follow through
with our plan. We began to hack off Nigel’s hair. We first tentatively grabbed
hold of the greasy rag and held it like a pony tail. We snipped our way through
it and the piece came off in one big chunk. We carried on cutting Elvis and I
were trying our best now not to laugh. The terror of Julia had vanished as we
became embroiled in our new task. Nigel I think was maybe crying, but I was
never sure.
Once we had cut his hair we then entered
the second part of our plan. We went into Elvis’ brother’s Aaron’s room. We
dressed Nigel in some of Aaron’s ill fitting clothes. The point of our plan was
to make Nigel as unlike Nigel as possible so he would be able to walk past
Julia un-noticed. He was standing in the hallway with short hair and the stain
of the early nineties culture, the shell suit. I glanced at the window and saw
that the shape of Julia had gone. This was Nigel’s big chance. With myself
stationed at the living room window and Elvis by the front door Nigel ran as
soon as the door was open. I watched him scatter himself across the street
looking everywhere at once and at nothing. That was when I saw her. I banged on
the window and screamed. Elvis relayed the message from the rapidly closing
front door out into the no longer empty street to Nigel. He saw her and ran.
She chased after him a few steps and stopped. Nigel carried on running. Julia
only slowed down to her usual lumbering steps and walked off round the corner
in the rain and out of sight.
Three days later with the day’s events
already fading into memory and myself and Elvis already assuming that it was
Nigel Fenton who was scared, not us, we saw the new Nigel with a freshly shorn
head. He told us that on his run home he saw Julia standing on every street
corner laughing and holding the remains of his pony tail in her hand. We laughed
and said that he was just scared and that it was all nonsense. He protested and
then we picked on him. He went off and soon I never saw him again. He just
drifted into the background of school life like so many others. The story made
its way around and more people openly mocked him. Soon he stopped coming to school. Julia still
came and we often saw her though she acted like the day had never happened.
Though no one believed Nigel’s story more people avoided Julia and no one said
a word to her.
Apparently soon after, Elvis was walking
along the corridor and as Julia brushed past him she placed something in his
hand. It was a lock of blond hair. They paused and looked at each other for the
most fleeting of moments and then she carried on down the corridor head held
low and though they must have only looked at each other for two maybe three
seconds Elvis sticks by what he now claims he saw. She smiled. She definitely
smiled.
