Folk Horror

“I don’t want to go.”

“Then don’t go.”

“I have to go.”

Marc Holdstock was moaning like a little kid over his bucket of fried chicken. He had reluctantly accepted Ros’s invitation to a scary Halloween experience with her friends. It was now the day before and he was getting cold feet.

“Why do you have to go?” Sasha was trying to be reasonable but she was getting fed up with the whinging.

“She came with us to Hull Fair. Now it’s my turn to go over there.”

By ‘over there’ they all knew he meant East Hull. He’d have to miss a Halloween party at Jake Lupasco’s house. Instead of getting drunk with his friends he’d be with her friends, over there.

“What’s the plan?”

“Ros and her mates want to hang around some graveyard at midnight. There’s some ritual they want to do.”

“It could be fun.”

“You haven’t met her friends. They think they’re it because they’re older than me and doing A Levels or whatever at college.” He said the word ‘college’ with a sneer and a head wobble. “They don’t like me ’cos I’m an outsider. The boys totally don’t like me ’cos they fancy Ros. It’ll be cold and we’ll be standing around shivering, shining torches up onto our faces and going whoooo like kids. It’ll be crap.”

“Then come to my party instead,” Jake said who wanted Marc there with his usual generous lager contribution.

“I really can’t. I owe her, I promised her and she dared me.”

“She dared you?”

“She told me it would be scary. She said ‘let’s see how hard you Skins really are.’ What else could I do?”

His friends all nodded sympathetically. It was Monday, 30^th October and the five core members of the Hull Skins were in the KFC on Beverley Road. It was the half term holiday and they had spent most of the afternoon in town with the newer recruits. They now numbered a round dozen and there was no longer any question about them being a gang. When they were all together in uniform they looked distinctly menacing. Only this afternoon they’d come across a wedding party walking in the opposite direction in the underpass below Myton Bridge. The Skins had countered expectations by shouting their echoing congratulations to the newly wedded couple.

They were all in Year 11 and look older than last we met them. Jake had grown sideburns and had no trouble getting served in pubs and off licences. Piercings had multiplied. Despite school policy they were all tattooed. In the restaurant they had taken off their coats and jackets and rolled up their sleeves to show them off. The KFC was one of their favourite places now Ray’s Place had inexplicably shut. One of the newer members of the gang, another teenager off the estate, worked there and turned a blind eye to the sneaked-in lager.

“On Friday we’ll have been going out for five months.” Marc was noticeably proud of this achievement and the others understood. Ros was a very pretty girl and clever too. She’d done exceptionally well in her GCSEs with A and A* grades. (The exception was History in which she scraped a C. Her mother blamed Marc but it was more the fault of the rave Ros’d taken him to on their first date.) The Skins did have their reservations. She refused to cut her hair and rarely came out with the gang. She had bought Doc Martens but they suspected this was to wind up her mum.

Fliss and Jake, Joe and Sasha were still going out and the foursome spent a lot of time together. The urbexing had stopped now Marc was otherwise occupied with Ros and they had run out of ideas for the graffiti.

Sasha and Joe left the others to it and headed home. As soon as they were outside and lit up Joe had something to confide.

“My grandfather chowed at me yesterday. Mam had put him up to it but they’re both worried about me.”

Sasha put her arm around him. She knew how much the old man meant to Joe.

“They think we’re getting too serious, too young and then there’s the gang and what happened the other week.”

Joe’s mum had been called into school for a meeting with the Head. There had been an incident involving Joe in what was fancifully called ‘the learning environment.’ Joe had shown one of his rare but legendary flashes of temper. He had ‘lost it’ in class. The Head had insinuated that Joe’s mother had lost any control over her boy and she had hit the roof.

“Todd was asking for it,” said Sasha and not for the first time. “He was a complete idiot for saying that thing about your dad.”

“But the kicking…”

Ah, yes, the kicking. It had all got a bit out of hand. Joe had been suspended for the week before the holiday and his mother felt humiliated every time she saw him sitting around the house. She blamed Sasha for leading her boy astray and for the whole skinhead thing. This, of course, had brought Joe and Sasha closer together.

They look close now as they turn up Fountain Road. Sasha still has her arm around him. She wears a toffee-coloured sheepskin coat she got off eBay. He is in a donkey jacket. Even among the Hull Skins the couple’s attachment to 1960s vintage skinhead clothing separated them from the others.

For the time being they are more welcome at Sasha’s mum’s in Cresswell Close and that is where they’re going now to plan their Halloween.

 

At Halloween, when the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead is at its thinnest, Marc was full of foreboding. The walk along Clough Road and the crossing of the river at Stoneferry was even more depressing in the dark. He’d never liked Halloween much, even as a kid. He couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. He wished he was in Jake’s house having a laugh.

In Garden Village he saw groups of young children going door to door trick-or-treating, always with at least one parent in tow. The smell of a bonfire hung in the air.

He reached Ros’s house on May Tree Avenue and rapped loudly on the door. The porch light came on. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his flight jacket and looked belligerent.

Mrs Kilpatrick opened the door with her usual scowl. By this point, nearly five months into his relationship with her daughter, she made no attempt to disguise her distaste. On his walk over Marc had rehearsed a joke on the lines of ‘at Halloween shouldn’t it be the person who knocks on the door who has the scariest face?’ but lost his courage and instead found himself blurting:

“Oh, hullo, Mrs Kilpatrick, happy Halloween.”

“Happy Halloween?”

Marc was saved from answering by the arrival of Ros at the door.

“OK, Mum, we’re off. See you later but don’t wait up.” Making their way down the garden path Marc was disappointed she wasn’t wearing her bovver boots and was zipped up in an undistinguished puffer jacket. The plan was to pick up her friends on the way to a pub and to that end they walked down Laburnum Avenue and knocked on a couple of doors. Two boys were waiting for them by St. Columba’s at the corner with Holderness Road. On Southcoates Lane they piled into The Ravenser, a pub Marc had never seen before or even heard of.

“What’s a Ravenser?” he whispered to Ros.

“A sunken town, lost to the Humber,” she said with, he thought, some impatience.

“Oh, yeah, yeah.”

They occupied a corner table and settled down for a session. A couple more friends joined them. A fellow student from Wilberforce was serving behind the bar. Some of the girls in the group had been with Ros that night in Spiders when they’d met but Marc didn’t know them any better now than he had then. He laughed along with the jokes but felt out of his depth. Ros sat next to him and their knees touched but tonight she seemed strangely detached. He had an awful premonition that he was about to be dumped. When it was his round the student barman asked him for some i.d. This turned out to be ‘top banter’ but Marc was badly rattled.

Sometime after eleven, with some cajoling, they left the pub. Marc was used to strong lagers but felt surprisingly drunk. He blamed the sudden emergence into the fresh air but he found it hard to concentrate as Ros outlined the myth of Bubblegum Boy, whose grave was tonight’s destination. Ros gave him a stick of gum with the warning that he must not swallow it or “the ghost of Bubblegum Boy will drag you down to Hell”. Ros’s friends seemed to find this very funny.

The intention was to safely ‘raise’ Bubblegum Boy using a ritual one of Ros’s friends had been told by her Nan, half-remembered from her own schooldays. She was now in a retirement home but, it was insisted, in no way did this invalidate the rite.

They crossed the railway bridge on Southcoates Lane. Marc looked at the huge towers of the wind turbines at the Siemen’s plant on the old Alexandra Dock pointing at the sky.

On Hedon Road they passed the prison before approaching the cemetery gates with the black Victorian lodge. They climbed over the low wall. Marc felt increasingly uneasy and his legs wobbled beneath him. Inside the necropolis a road led from the gates in a straight line before curving round to the right.

“It’s a big cemetery,” Ros told him. “But our grave is just over there, almost by the prison wall.” She pointed ahead and to the right. “The road carries on to the far end of the cemetery where there’s the old crematorium and this weird grotto of plaques and urns.”

Marc found it hard to take in what she was saying. He was too busy looking about him. The road was lined with mature trees to form an avenue. The cemetery was well cared for and hadn’t been allowed to get overgrown like some Marc had seen (and partied in) but there were still a lot of bushes and trees interspersed singly and in clumps among the graves. The headstones and monuments were scattered around seemingly randomly, except for those lining the road. None were particularly grand. It might have been a pleasant spot on a sunny autumn afternoon but now it was cold and forbidding.

They walked up the road while one boy hummed the Funeral March. Their presence set the rooks cawing; otherwise there was still a hiss of traffic from the dual carriageway behind them. It got quieter and darker the further they got from Hedon Road. Marc though he saw a light moving through the trees but guessed he was imagining things.

Some yards after they had turned the corner Ros indicated it was time to leave the road. In some manner he couldn’t explain Marc had a foreboding this was a bad idea.

Nevertheless, they were soon all standing around the grave of Alfie Middleton aka the Bubblegum Boy of urban legend. Lanterns containing tea lights were lit and placed in a circle around it and cans of lager distributed.

The grave was only metres from a metal fence. Behind that was the high brick wall of the prison. Their shadows were thrown up against it.

Once there had been a statue of the dead schoolboy. Whether it had been cursed with marbles for eyes it was now impossible to tell for only the legs remained. On the small plinth below was an inscription and below that were two words: Mamma’s Bairn. This might be the focus of one of those urban myths but it was also a monument to a grieving mother’s son.

The carving of the legs was not of the best workmanship but in the flickering light of the candles the stone appeared white, almost luminous. Marc wondered what had happened to the rest of it. Had the tradition of schoolchildren daring one another to approach it given the statue an almost pagan significance which had led some zealot to deliberately smash it?

Everyone but Marc cracked open their lagers and took drink. He didn’t feel like he needed any more. He felt an unreasonable pang of fear; the shapeless dread of the unknown.

From somewhere a church clock struck midnight. Marc saw his companions pulling on scary masks.

“Where’s yours?” someone asked him. It was one of the girls but now wearing an ancient face.

“Nobody said anything about masks.”

“Duh. It’s Halloween,” she said as if he was stupid and he felt stupid, befuddled. What was he doing here?

He never saw anyone make a signal to start the ritual but start it did. He was the only one who didn’t know it. The others were all chanting something in unison and it wasn’t English. Their voices were harsh and cut through the night air. Their ritualistic gestures were also synchronised as if this strange Sabbat had been celebrated many times before. Swaying as one and in a curious manner the masked supplicants touched their eyes and lips and hair. Marc was part of the circle around the graven image of a dead child’s legs but was utterly excluded. If he swayed it was because he was drunk. He felt lonely and unwanted. He was a stranger who had blundered into the wrong tribe.

As if to cheer him up someone clapped him hard on his back and he swallowed his gum. From what he recalled of Ros’s story he knew this was a Bad Thing.

That was when he saw something moving beyond their circle. It was coming nearer. As it approached the ring of lanterns he could see it was a child. It was wearing short trousers and a blazer and a school cap. But the most terrifying thing about the boy was his blank face and his eyes which caught the candlelight as if they were made of glass.

Closer it came and the dismal chanting ceased. In silence the circle broke apart and Marc was left facing the ghastly apparition. It now spoke and its words were directly addressed to him: “Chew, chew, chewing gum. That’s what brought me to my grave” and it pointed down at the earth in which it was interred.

The others ran off shrieking into the night but Marc just stood there. He had no more locomotive power than the two broken legs atop the plinth.

Bubblegum Boy’s eyes blazed brightly but this was because the whole area was suddenly flooded with light. The source of the illumination was behind Marc and appeared to be descending. Bubblegum Boy, looking more solid in the glare, ran off after the others. Marc was completely alone. Slowly he turned to look for the cause of the dazzling light…

 

Science Fiction

Dream suits, a genre transformation machine, an alternative reality where the British Empire never ended; wasn’t it always going to come down to this?

So, Sci-Fi it is and here we are in space. We were in space even when we were in Hull but now we’re in outer space which, as everyone knows, is the most exciting kind of space.

And we are looking down (or up, or sideways, whatever) at a triform spacecraft. At first glance it might look like three identical ships docked together but it is one.

Millennia before the German bio-engineers and chemists at BASF came up with dream suits; the same genre-resistant ‘fabric’ (for want of a better word) had been fashioned into this spacecraft allowing it to ride the quantum reality currents that sweep the multiverse.

The three beings whose ship this was were far in advance of the Institut’s experiments in genre manipulation. To them ‘genre’ was only one way of labelling and interpreting ‘reality’ and they knew many others. Each entity occupied one triangular wing of the spaceship where they floated in a sphere of nutrient jelly. This normally gave them complete protection as they travelled between dimensions but they had hit some turbulence. As one mind the three entities had deaccelerated to find the cause of the problem. Their ship was now stationary in the same dimensional plane as Hull but in a different galaxy.

They called themselves the three Guardians.

Now, it is a strange thing but in any ‘reality’ or dimension or universe there are always creatures or artificial intelligences who think of themselves as guardians. The nature of the thing needing guarding changes but their patronising and superior attitude to everybody else does not.

The Guardians communicated with each other directly through the material of the ship thus eliminating any interference from a competing reality. Their trialogue can be rendered thus:

• That amount of turbulence is almost unprecedented.
• It could threaten the entire stability of the multiverse.
• Which we are pledged to maintain.
• Scanning for irregularities.
• Probing for other inter-dimensional travellers.
• Checking internal systems for possible damage.
• We have located a source for the turbulence: a very primitive reality transformer on a planet in a nearby galaxy.
• And it has brought into play the Great Disrupter.
• Damage report completed. All systems are fully operational. Upgrading weapon systems for possible contact with the Great Disrupter…

The Great Disrupter was a cyborg, half a living organism and half a machine. The two halves were so fully integrated they functioned as a whole but it is helpful if we think of him as a creature of biology protected by a mechanical shell, an exoskeleton in the form of a ship. This ship, like the triform craft of the Guardians, could navigate freely between genres and other sign systems. His sensors, too, had detected ripples in this dimension and brought him into orbit around a rather undistinguished planet in an equally undistinguished galaxy. Like the three Guardians the Great Disrupter was transgeneric. He could flit easily between genres and as such we have already met him, dressed genre appropriately, as the Chief, Cap’n, the Colonel and the Halfen Lord. He gets around.

The cyborg did not think of himself as a disrupter. His own myth of himself was that he was the creator of the multiverse. (Although bringing something into being when there was once nothing could be the ultimate disruption.) Thus, his desire to control all reality was merely reasserting the status quo of Day One. He saw himself as the Guardian and if any civilisation started to experiment with reality manipulation he would turn up and subvert it to his own ends.

The three Guardians had battled the Great Disrupter (not its real name) many times across the multiverse and had never managed to defeat him. In one reality they had nearly cornered him but at the last second he had slipped into another dimension.

• The Great Disrupter is in orbit around a planet named on the charts as Waco. He is in the same galaxy as the reality generator.
• The reality generator has been precisely located to another planet in that nebula. It is in a centre of high population density calling itself Hull. It is surrounded by sentient hominids. We should not attempt to destroy it at this range for fear of great loss of life.
• It has already been the target of an unsuccessful attack by the forces of the Great Disrupter.
• The reality generator has broken. It has gone rogue.
• Shall we set a course for Hull or Waco?
• Or simply manipulate the reality of this reality ourselves?
• We can override their reality generator from here.
• We have proxies in this reality?
• We have proxies everywhere.
• Override the machine. Choose a hybrid of many genres to keep all our options open.

The three Guardians could never resist a good old genre mash-up and their re-imaginings fused in the space between the inner pods before being beamed straight to Earth, Hull and the British Extracting Co. Ltd. silo.

 

Hybrid

…and Marc was in time to see the flying disc come to a rest at the height of the tree tops. From its base shone three powerful beams of light. One shone down on Marc as he stood by the grave. One picked out Bubblegum Boy who had stopped running and now stood meekly looking up, the marble-eyed mask dangling from one hand. The third was tracking Ros and her friends as they continued to run for Hedon Road. They had been joined by two boys Marc had never seen before.

Before he could get a good look at the strange craft suspended in the night sky the three searchlights blinked out. The cemetery was plunged back into darkness. The candles around the grave seemed hopelessly inadequate after the light show from the UFO.

When his eyes had adjusted to the night he could see no sign of the otherworldly craft. Instead he saw two figures walking towards him from the cemetery road. When they stepped within range of the lantern light he recognised Sasha in the get-up she always wore for parties.

“What are you doing here?” he asked before noticing her companion, a plump boy of about twelve who was wearing nothing but a domino mask and pants. Marc decided to ignore him. He had enough to think about. “Did you see that? Was that, like, a flying saucer?” he asked before the lights around the grave magically flared up and he could see much better.

“No,” said the girl. Despite the mask he could see now this wasn’t Sasha. “It was an illusion.” She had a Japanese accent but her English was flawless.

The boy spoke up. In the better light Marc could see his was bright pink and his costume (such as it was) was baby blue.

“This is Illusory Girl,” the boy said. “The real one and I’m Bubblegum Boy, the real one. She creates illusions like the one you’ve just seen and I can do this.”

He stretched one arm until it had coiled itself around Marc’s body. It extended further until it reached up and drummed its fingers on the top of his shaven head.

Marc was speechless but he caught Illusory Girl’s look of exasperation.

“Look,” she said. “Is there somewhere we can talk? Somewhere a bit warmer?”

Even when Bubblegum Boy had released him it took a moment for Marc to get his head in gear, but then he realised he knew just the place.

“Hey, do you two fancy a party?”

“A party party?” asked Bubblegum Boy.

Marc grinned. “Absolutely.”

 

Outside the cemetery gates Illusory Girl created the illusion of a taxi. It was a Tokyo taxi because that was all she knew. It was green and orange with an odd-shaped light on the roof. The doors opened and closed automatically and all the writing was in an oriental script. The driver wore white gloves and a chauffeur’s cap. He was clearly Japanese and yet he understood Marc’s directions and seemed perfectly at home in Hull traffic. Marc marvelled at the authenticity of the illusion. He had seen the vehicle wink into being and yet he could feel the car seat beneath him. The flying saucer had looked completely real too. So, for that matter, did the two superheroes next to him.

“What happened back there?” he asked.

“Your friends,” Illusory Girl paused to give emphasis to the word. “They were playing a mean trick on you. They dressed up a little kid to scare you. Did you see their two associates filming you from the bushes?”

“Was Ros in on it?”

“I couldn’t say.” He got the feeling this was a diplomatic answer. And they spiked my drink, he thought.

“We came in that illusion of a flying disc. Which was kinda cool,” put in Bubblegum Boy.

“Where from?”

“Tokyo, Electric Town. Say, are you a soldier? You sure look like a soldier.”

“I’m a skinhead, er, Bubblegum Boy. So why were you in a flying saucer over Hedon Road Cemetery at exactly the right time to help me?”

“We are on a mission,” said the boy but now they had reached the roundabout on Mount Pleasant and Marc had to resume giving directions.

 

By the time they got to Jake’s house and collapsed the taxi illusion it was after half past twelve. Some guests had gone home and some were incapacitated. Despite the cold there were still some smokers in the garden. Two boys were playing on Jake’s games console. There was drinking, flirting, dancing and gagging about. In short, this was exactly the kind of party party Marc had promised his rescuers. The guests were amazed at the arrival of another Illusory Girl. This one even had a companion who was bright pink and could bounce around and stretch himself.

The party was vastly improved by the addition of Marc and his two new friends. Illusory Girl didn’t need to create any illusions; Bubblegum Boy had enough party tricks for both of them. Everybody liked his ability to extend his arm and fetch them a beer from the kitchen without leaving the living room. Marc popped home and returned with more lagers. He dodged any questions about his Halloween over there. Illusory Girl could be whatever she wanted the skinheads and their friends to think they wanted her to be: the perfect party guest. Even those who had been starting to fade got their second wind.

Sasha did not feel put out that someone had come dressed the same as her. A rapport was established when each adopted the signature move of Illusory Girl and approached each other, both pointing at their masks. It took a while before Sasha accepted she was in the presence of the real Illusory Girl who she’d previously thought of as a character in an anime. Marc had to describe the UFO and taxi illusions but it was Bubblegum Boy’s impossible antics which really convinced her. Then she wanted to know more. In particular Sasha wanted an answer to the questions thrown up by her early research into the Illusory Girl anime series: what were the three forces that helped the superhero battle crime on the streets of Tokyo?

Illusory Girl drew Sasha away from Bubblegum Boy. (She needn’t have bothered. Bubblegum Boy’s attention was elsewhere. He was making a move on Courtney Lupasco, and what a move.)

“This is a secret, OK, even from my protégé sidekick? But seeing as you are my cosplay twin…”

Sasha made the mime as if her mouth was a zip and zipped it up.

“The three forces are my guardians,” Illusory Girl continues. “They are monks, adepts and they live in a hidden valley in the Himalayas. It is called Shambhala or Shangri-La. They gave me my superpower and guidance when I ask for it. They can levitate and… Why are you flapping your arms about like that?” for Sasha was getting excited.

“I’ve met them, back in May,” she said. “Tibetan monks, as you say, and they were levitating, which was really cool. But they said they were looking for Shambhala and they’d found it, here in Hull.”

Illusory Girl flopped into a nearby armchair. She looked around her but the Tigers memorabilia seemed to mean nothing to her. She appeared lost in thought.

“Maybe, she said eventually. “Maybe in some strange way that makes sense. Normally I summon them in a secret room in my superhero lair, but this time – and for the first time ever – they summoned me. They gave me and Bubblegum Boy this preliminary mission. We were to get to Hedon Road Cemetery in East Hull, United Kingdom, for midnight on 31^st October. We were to help a teenager in trouble and he would lead us to our mission proper.”

“Marc was in trouble?”

Illusory Girl ignored the question. She continued:

“So, Hull does seem to be at the centre of things.”

“And your real mission has yet to begin.”

Illusory Girl stood up and changed the subject. “Why did you choose me for your cosplay?”

“A great costume, obviously, and I wanted to be a superhero that wasn’t well known over here. Sorry about that. I thought it was completely my own decision but it turns out I’d seen my friend Joe drawing you in class and it must have subconsciously stuck in my mind. I didn’t know there was an actual Illusory Girl.”

“I can be whatever I make you think you want me to be.”

“Yeah. By the way your English is perfect.”

“Another illusion.”

They rejoined the party which was still in full swing despite the hour. By this time costumes had suffered, face paint had smudged and accessories lost. With the exception of the Illusory Girls it was no longer possible to tell what people were supposed to be. Joe had started out as a passable undead zombie but now just looked ill. Bubblegum Boy was still showing off to Courtney Lupasco.

It was four o’clock in the morning when there was a loud knocking on the door. It had to be loud to be heard over the music.

“That’ll be the neighbours,” said Jake with resignation. But when he opened the front door there were three men on the path. One was Joe’s grandad and the others were the two Frenchmen they’d met when urbexing a derelict workshop. One they’d rescued from a mob baying for his blood; the other was the one he’d called to help him. He had the same briefcase with him now. They were dressed rather oddly, even for Halloween.

“Is Sasha here, Sasha Spence?” asked Pierre Brodeur looking no less worried than when the mob had been after him. Jake, a bit drunk, brought Illusory Girl to the door by mistake.

“Sasha, the situation is completely out of control. We think you are the only one who can help us. You started it; can you help us stop it?”

“Bubblegum Boy, we’re needed,” said Illusory Girl over her shoulder.

“Aw, get lost willya, can’t ya see I’m busy?”

 

The party broke up. The remaining skins began a desultory form of tidying up. Illusory Girl gave Bubblegum Boy a pep talk. Miss Lupasco went reluctantly upstairs to bed. Joe and his grandad went into the kitchen to make sobering coffees.

“Monsieur Brodeur,” Kev told his grandson, “couldn’t find Sasha at home. Her mother suggested your house. She rang your mum who didn’t know where you were either and she phoned me thinking I knew your mates better than she did. I came out to help. You better call your mum, Joe, she’s worried.”

“I will, grandad, but what do these French blokes want with Sasha?”

“I don’t know.”

Joe reassured his mother and coffees were distributed. Soon they were all gathered in the living room: two superheroes, two representatives of the Institut Baudrillard, five skinheads and an OAP. Pierre Brodeur began his plea for help with an attempt at an explanation:

“Some of you have shown interest in the old silo on the other bank of the river near here. Once you even tried to get inside.”

The Hull Skins exchanged glances.

“We’re from that silo. We are the Institut Baudrillard and we have a brand new invention: a machine which can change the way people interpret signs by controlling the genre…”

“Wait a second, lad,” Joe’s grandfather interrupted using his best let’s-be-sensible voice. “Genre is a way of classifying films and books, not real life.”

Pierre wished his genre expert Heinz Hasenkamp was here but he was back at the silo, in his chair, blowing bubbles and struggling with twelve piece jigsaws. He tried to answer the old man:

“Such distinctions are misleading. Our brains make sense of the world around us by comparing the input from our senses with ideas we have already built up about our environment from our upbringing, experiences and culture, including books and films.

“Example: you are walking through the park. You see a squirrel. You don’t think ‘what the hell is that? Is it dangerous?’ You probably first encountered a squirrel when you were very young and it was pointed out to you in such a way as to suggest it was harmless. You notice it runs away from you. You learn the word for it. Later you pick up myths about squirrels: they are thrifty. Maybe red ones are better than grey ones. These are the received ideas from our culture and they raise expectations of squirrels. Stories also must raise and meet our expectations. This is done through genre. We change the genre and we change the codes and conventions that govern the interpretation of signs. In ‘Zombie’ the squirrel isn’t so predictable after all. In ‘Fantasy’ it can talk. In…”

“But a squirrel isn’t a sign,” interrupted Fliss.

“Everything is a sign.”

“I’m not a sign.”

“You are a collection of signs: a text. Your haircut, tattoos, boots and your accent are all visual signifiers for a Hull Skin.”

Joe’s grandad cut in: “Why would you want to change the way people interpret signs?”

Pierre sighed. “We started off wanting to challenge the cultural imperialism of the USA. Bring down the money men lurking behind the Hollywood sign. We’re like the Anti-Disney.”

“And later?”

“The machine broke. We think it was this young lady’s fault.” He turned to the two Illusory Girls.” Not intentionally but when you choose to dress as Illusory Girl you set up a feedback loop that affected our machine and it started selecting its own genres.

“You last saw me when the machine had chosen the ‘Monster’ genre. You rescued me from a mob who thought I was a monster. It changed the way they and I read signs. It’s that powerful. Since then we’ve had many changes of genre. We had ‘War’ and there were many deaths. Then ‘Folk Horror’, which mercifully didn’t affect us.”

“What’s ‘Folk Horror’?”

“The conventional narrative involves the arrival of a stranger in a tight-knit community. Probably too tight-knit: a tribe, maybe, or a secret cult. There will be myths and rituals followed by a sacrifice.”

Marc looked distinctly uncomfortable. Illusory Girl glanced at him sympathetically.

“The machine then chose ‘Science Fiction’ but only briefly. This morning it switched to ‘Hybrid’.”

“What’s that?”

“Multiple genres. You know Harry Potter, right? Well that’s a hybrid of the fantasy genre with an old-fashioned boarding-school story. Unusual and very successful.”

“There’s romance and comedy in it too,” pointed out Fliss who was a fan.

“That’s what makes hybrids so dangerous – there could be anything in the mix. We mustn’t go through ‘War’ again or worse: a hybrid of ‘War’ and ‘Extreme Body Horror’.”

“That’s why we are asking for your help Miss Spence,” Charles Renard took over. “We were hoping you would come with us back to the Institut dressed as Illusory Girl and that might stop the feedback and bring the machine back under our control.”

“Or better still,” said Pierre. “Shut it down entirely. We are willing to abandon the whole project.”

“That sounds like a good decision,” said Joe’s grandad. “Always best not to monkey around in people’s brain-boxes.”

Joe leant across to Sasha. “What do you think?”

“I’ll do it,” she said “but we’d have a better chance if we took the real Illusory Girl and her superhero sidekick Bubblegum Boy with us.”

There followed some moments of confusion as the Frenchmen struggled to come to terms with this revelation and everyone else clamoured to join the mission.

When everyone had stopped talking over everybody else it became clear that they all wanted to accompany the two men back to their Institut. Charles Renard opened his briefcase and removed eight dream suit applicators. They all had to strip for the suits to be sprayed on but modesty (and secret identities) was preserved by one of Illusory Girl’s illusions.

 

Half an hour later and the illusion of a stretch limo purred to a stop outside the main entrance of the British Extracting Co. Ltd. silo. The first to step out was Pierre Brodeur. Unsure of the nature of the hybrid he had played the odds with his genre appropriate wardrobe and wore a sensible suit from Slater’s. Only the stovepipe hat struck a jarring note. Next out was Charles Renard in his ill-chosen Western duds. He was followed by Joe’s grandad in his winter coat; it was a cold dawn on this November morning. The two Illusory Girls came next and Bubblegum Boy in his distinctive mask and pants. The other four teenagers had changed into skinhead uniform.

The front door was opened by Demi Leather. If she was surprised by the group Pierre had assembled she didn’t show it. She ushered them inside pausing briefly to catch the limo blink out of existence.

The interior of the silo was pitch black.

“All our electricity’s gone,” Demi told them.

Illusory Girl filled the silo with the illusion of sunlight. The vast bulk of the battered and scarred machine was revealed. Only one rickety gantry now linked it to a balcony; the rest lay smashed and broken on the floor. Broken glass and masonry had been roughly collected into piles. The balconies themselves were buckled and incomplete.

Slowly, one by one, the inhabitants of the Institut Baudrillard emerged blinking into the light from where they’d tried to sleep. Some had laid down in the rec. room on the ground floor but most came out of the old offices and dorms and stood on the remnants of the balconies looking down at them. They seemed too traumatised to react to their odd visitors.

“War?” said Joe’s grandad.

Pierre nodded. “But it wasn’t the fighting that did this to them. We hid for that. It was the clearing up.”

The newcomers looked around them at the wreckage. There didn’t seem to be much evidence of cleaning up but then they noticed the bullet holes, the singe marks and the smears of blood.

“We had no casualties, as such, apart from Heinz,” said Demi. She led them around the corner of the machine where they found a man in a rocking chair. He was smiling, rocking back and forth. “He has no language. He will regain it but it will take some time. He was present throughout the assault; under a pile of … anyway, he was lucky.”

Heinz had not stopped rocking and smiling, rocking and smiling. He did not look particularly lucky.

Illusory Girl transformed the silo with the illusion of warmth.

“I think some breakfast will be in order,” she said.

After a while the entire Institut assembled in the rec. room where they sat on illusory benches to eat an illusory meal.

“Has this meal any actual nutritional value?” asked a rather suspicious Gerwine Huber.

Illusory Girl tapped the side of her nose with her index finger.

 

After breakfast Theorist Brodeur called a meeting in the conference room. All the visitors were invited and Demi. They were joined by Doktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften Wolff, the Institut’s Head of Tech. The top boffin was looking flustered, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his lab coat to stop them fidgeting.

“We have been trying for months to shut down the machine,” he explained to the motley crew in front of him. “But when we built it we included certain failsafes to prevent it being neutralised by hostile forces und now we can’t deactivate it either. It has its own power supply und is impregnable to attack, even by a crack combat squad, as we have all too recently seen.”

Demi Leather spoke up: “We can’t open it up and get at the workings. We only managed to get into a small section of the base to hide…”

“But not into the machine itself,” Pierre interrupted her. He was anxious to divert any talk away from the chamber they had laboriously dug out under the machine. What that room now contained was best kept from their guests.

Fliss coughed theatrically and everyone looked at her.

“If the Rebel Alliance could find a tiny flaw in the Death Star you should be able to find a way to switch off your own machine.”

The Head of Tech hung his head as he accepted the teenager’s rebuke.

“Because we can’t get inside we hoped Sasha-as-Illusory Girl might be able to do something. I know it sounds desperate…”

“Because we are desperate,” added Demi.

“But we have brought you the real Illusory Girl,” said Sasha. “Maybe that feedback loop you talked about is now working for you.”

Illusory Girl looked excited. “I can create the illusion of an entrance and you can get inside…”

“That won’t work. It’ll still be only an illusion to us.” Ever since she’d seen the limo disappear and been introduced to Illusory Girl Demi Leather had been thinking about the nature of her superpower. She was also the only member of the Institut who had bothered to watch the anime.

“Are there any holes in the exterior of the machine?” asked Bubblegum Boy of the Doktor-Ingenieur.

“There are very tiny gaps between the keys on the keyboard used for inputting genre selection.”

“Because I can do this.” Bubblegum Boy stretched out his arm until it was as thin as a needle. “And I can do it with my whole body and get inside and do what needs to be done.”

Everybody got very excited about this but Illusory Girl whispered to her protégé: “Are you sure you can do this?”

“Finish a mission that you can’t?”

“No, but have you ever tried to do anything this, er, thin before?”

“I’m ready for this Illusory Girl. So, Herr Doktor, what will I find when I get inside?”

The Doktor-Ingenieur visibly brightened. He was on firmer ground: his area of expertise. He was genuinely proud of what he and his team had built.

“Immediately inside the outer casing are the circuits, wires und cables connecting up the disparate elements of the machine. We have borrowed a technical term from English to describe this layer. We call it the gubbins.” He smiled at his little joke and due to its poor response, he hurried on. “There is the power source – don’t go near that – und the motherboard which controls everything. The main workings of the machine are the matrices, the grids if you prefer. One is horizontal und the other is vertical.” He gestured with his hands. “They are large screens of energy und take up most of the inside of the machine to allow full movement.

“The horizontal plane controls the paradigmatic choices und the vertical plane the syntagms. The two grids move and interact with each other according to the genre selected. This will be the most dangerous part of your mission, Bubblegum Boy, these moving matrices.”

“How so?”

“We are in ‘Hybrid’ so there will be more than one genre und that means quick switches between paradigms und syntagms. The grids will move very fast (schnell, schnell, you understand me?) und if you get caught between them you will be mince.” Here his mime was even more graphic. “You must negotiate your way through these moving grids to get to your motherboard.”

“And what do I do then?”

“Destroy it any way you can. This is no time for finesse.”

“So: outer wall, gubbins, moving grids, motherboard. Got it.”

“Bubblegum Boy, can I have a word?”

“Sure thing, Illusory Girl.”

She took him on one side, out of earshot of the others.

“You realise if you succeed in shutting down the machine we will lose our superpowers?”

“Huh?”

“We will no longer be in the ‘Superhero’ genre as part of a hybrid genre mash-up. We will probably revert to our everyday identities back in Tokyo.”

Bubblegum Boy thought about this.

“And will you still be my friend?”

“Yes.”

“Then we must shut down the machine anyway, for everybody’s sakes.” She could have kissed him but instead just smiled.

“Good call, Bubblegum Boy.”

 

Illusory Girl accompanied Bubblegum Boy across the makeshift gantry to the machine. They walked with care. The gangway didn’t look too safe and it was a long drop to the floor of the silo. At the other end the monitor still read ‘Hybrid’. Below it was the keyboard.

“You’re sure about this, Bubblegum Boy?”

“Perfectly sure.” He indicated a small gap between two of the keys. “I can do this.”

Bubblegum Boy began the process of making his entire body as thin as wire so as to pass through the tiny aperture. He began with his index finger followed by his hand, arm and shoulder. He insinuated himself between A and Z.

This was the biggest test he had ever faced. His superpower did not let him down. However, there were serious unforeseen consequences. He could stretch bones, skin, muscle and all his organs but his lungs when stretched needle-thin could no longer take in air. He had to make do with the breath he had taken before his intrusion into the machine. Similarly, when his eyes were elongated out of shape, they could no longer function and he couldn’t see where he was going. His sense of touch told him when the last part of him (a big toe) was through the keyboard and into the gubbins.

He tried to expand but was still constrained in a small space. He couldn’t breathe or see and began to panic. All he could do was follow the line of least resistance and slither through gaps in the circuitry trying to find the room to expand. Bubblegum Boy began to wonder if he’d bitten off more than he could chew.

Back on the outside Illusory Girl watched her protégé make his bizarre incursion. She felt very proud of him but she didn’t know what was happening on the inside.

Blind and desperately short of breath Bubblegum Boy only had his sense of touch to guide him on his journey through the gubbins. The swags and coils of cables and wires wouldn’t allow him enough room to swell back to his normal shape. Finally he found a conduit which led to the interior space of the machine where he could plump out his chest and head to breath and see.

Immediately he had to press himself back against the wiring as one of the grids flew past his face. This was the vertical syntagmatic plane Herr Doktor had warned him about. It was a mesh of glowing red lines of pure energy. When it made a connection with the blue horizontal net there was a shower of sparks.

(And, Bubblegum Boy thought, out there people without dream suits would be experiencing another combination of genres. Maybe they were all riding in Hansom cabs wearing deerstalkers and smoking meerschaum pipes. And the Tokyo schoolboy thought it wasn’t only the Americans who exported their culture.)

The space in which he found himself was cuboid. The two grids almost fitted precisely within the space leaving only a small gap for Bubblegum Boy to occupy safely.

However complex the structure of the matrices might be (what kind of energy were they made of?) their method of moving within the space seemed straightforwardly mechanical. Each matrix had a pivot at each side which could ride up and down or left and right on rails mounted on the outside of the gubbins. The grids could tilt too as he found out when one suddenly did just that right in front of him making him dizzy and disorientated. As far as he could make out the intervals between movements were completely random.

He was still getting his breath back but his eyes had recovered and he could see the motherboard below him. It was a printed circuit board the size of three tatami mats. In the centre of the board were three triangular chips, each with a circular protrusion and an ‘arm’ extending from one point so as to nearly reach the others. It was the same as Illusory Girl’s superhero logo emblazoned on her chest. But how could one sign have so many meanings?

He had to get down there but it was too far for him to jump. He would have to use his stretching power again. He could hold onto the nearest bunch of cables and lower himself to the floor, all the time keeping within the narrow gap of safety.

So, Bubblegum Boy began his perilous descent. He grasped a swag of wiring with both hands and stretched his legs. This time he wasn’t going to stretch his head or chest. Gradually he lowered legs further and further towards the floor of the machine. Once one of the grids whistled so close to him that he froze in panic, but he hadn’t been touched.

When his feet touched the floor he let go of his handhold and lowered the rest of him to catch up with his feet and regain his normal size. Now he began to belly crawl across the floor and onto the motherboard.

He dare not raise his head but he knew the rough direction in which he must go. It took less than a minute before he was lying right in front of the three central chips. He was sure he had only to remove them from the circuitry and his mission would be over.

With his fingernails he prised the first one from the board. He threw it as far as possible from its source. The second chip followed but as soon as he’d jettisoned it the matrices above him started to move. Both planes seemed to zero in on him as if a last failsafe device had been triggered. The horizontal grid plunged downwards as if to crush him.

His life depended on speed. He stretched his arms and dug out the last chip from its housing. The grids slowed and juddered to a stop. Both were only centimetres from his head but all the light had gone from them. With no movement from the matrices and no crackle of sparks he could hear cheering from outside. Before he could savour his moment of triumph he was back in his bedroom at home in Tokyo.

 

 

 

Pierre, Demi, Kev and the Hull Skins were aware of two things. First: Illusory Girl gave them a thumbs-up sign and then disappeared. In her sudden absence they could see the monitor at the end of the gantry and it was blank. None of the lights and dials was working. Second: there was a loud clank from below them as a hidden inspection hatch fell open; an automatic response to the total breakdown of the system. A spontaneous cheer broke out which echoed around the walls of the British Extracting Co. Ltd. silo.

 

The Skins followed Demi, Pierre and Joe’s grandad through the hatch. No one wanted to be left out. They didn’t know what to expect. With all this talk of genre maybe they expected an Aladdin’s cave or Pharaoh’s tomb or broken-into bank vault or smuggler’s cave or super-villain’s nerve centre. But the machine was dead. All they found was a dark space. They had to use the torches in their phones to pick out the two grids Herr Doktor had told them about. There was no sign of Bubblegum Boy. Sasha pulled off her domino mask and blue wig.

“That appears to be that.”

But Joe’s torch had illuminated something fixed to one of the tracks running up the wall of gubbins. It was a plaque. He moved closer to read it and the others followed. It read:

 

This genre generator has been constructed with the generous

 financial support of the Right Worshipful Company

 (est. 1715)

 

And there was their sign, proudly displayed.

“That’s the same insignia as Illusory Girl,” said Sasha. “What do you make of that?”

Joe’s grandfather laughed. “Why, it’s a joke.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a joke. There were a lot of them going about when I was a lad. Like this. Let’s have a bit of light over here.”

He took a pen and a notepad from his jacket pocket and in the light of their torches drew this:

“And then you say ‘what’s that?’ and the other kid says ‘I don’t know’ and you say ‘four Mexicans pissing down a grate, see? That’s their sombreros. Your sign is another joke. It’s three highwaymen smoking clay pipes in a pub.”

“Highwaymen?”

“Yes or some other eighteenth century blokes in tricorn hats and there’s their pipes and the pub table, see?”

 

We shall leave them there puzzling over the writing on the wall and slip effortlessly into the future. After other UK Cities of Culture have come and gone; after the Great Disrupter and the Guardians have moved on to play their games in other realities; we are left in this one.

Imagine, if you will, a future generation of urbexers. They break into the British Extracting Co. Ltd. silo which still dominates this rather derelict bank of the river. (Plans for the redevelopment of the River Hull Corridor came to naught, again.) They find the very old building contains a huge black cube of metal, pitted and scarred. It is inert and looks as if it has been for some time. If they are really unlucky they find a loose panel at the foot of the dead machine. Within it is a hidden room. Behind a secret door they find rough hewn steps leading down. They are unable to resist; they are urbexers. They push open a creaking iron door. Inside is a damp cellar with earthen walls. It is full of corpses. They are long dead but decomposition has been slowed by body armour. Those men who removed their respirators can be recognised as human by their exposed mandibles but the helmets and NVGs still make the others look alien. Our urbexers run from the chamber of death but the word is out and the mystery of the missing squadron has been finally solved.

At this time, many years hence, our Hull Skins are no longer urbexers. For that matter they are no longer Hull Skins. They have grown their hair and experimented with new styles. They do not all even live in Hull anymore.

Pierre Brodeur and his family do. They were the only members of the ill-fated Institut to stay. They have a nice house and are fully integrated into the city that has been their host for so long. Most evenings M. Brodeur can still be found in the Old English Gentleman with a pint in his hand. His ex-colleagues returned to their home countries. Madame Leather started a new tech business in Rouen. Jean Flaneau works for a top fashion house in Paris. Heinz Hasenkamp, fully recovered, now designs 3D jigsaw puzzles for Ravensburger. People say his vocabulary is so wide he must have swallowed a dictionary (both German – English and English – German).

 

That was a voiceover.

The voiceover accompanied the action with a kind of commentary.

Did you wonder whose voice was providing the voiceover? It could have been provided by one of the main characters. Perhaps by Sasha or one of the other survivors looking back at this formative period in their life from an unspecified future? It could be the voice of one of the dead looking back over the events leading to their death and haunting the narrative thereafter? Perhaps Feyderbrand or Gary or the boss of Prototech? There are almost too many suspects.

What if (bear with me) the voice was that of the machine itself? Unknown to its manufacturers the genre transformer had become imbued with sentience? The Artificial Intelligence turned against its makers creating problems across a range of genres and commenting on them all the time?

You may think the most likely source of the voiceover was the author acting as an omnipotent all-seeing god (not her real name)? Or you might consider Barthes was right about the death of the author and you made the text your own? Isn’t it the reader who produces the meaning and the voiceover was merely one sign among many?

Perhaps the voiceover can be whatever it makes you think you want it to be?

Enough said.