The Safety Dance
Justin
Cawthorne
Smashwords
Edition
Copyright 2012 Justin Cawthorne
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other titles by Justin Cawthorne at Smashwords.com
for @charp – because this is all his fault, mostly
and with thanks to @superflange who was there for me
when I needed someone to do violence to a cassette tape
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The Safety Dance
by Justin Cawthorne
“What the fuck is this?!”
Crispin looked up at Gloria in puzzlement. She was standing over him, holding the present he had just given her between the finger and thumb of one hand as if it was potentially contagious: her other hand rested indignantly upon her hip. Crispin thought it was quite obvious what she was holding in her hand and, in his experience, Gloria didn’t usually need a great deal of help with the obvious. This was the main source of his puzzlement. He supposed fleetingly that she could be referring to something else: perhaps something that she wasn’t holding directly in front of his face; or something that was taking place behind him; or maybe even something that was currently going on entirely inside her head. However, since Crispin wasn’t able to read her mind (although he had genuinely tried on many occasions) he had no real way of knowing if she was, in fact, talking about something else or not.
So, when Gloria asked him, in a tone usually reserved for dealing with the legal department: “What the fuck is this?” Crispin really only had one answer to give her:
“It’s a cassette tape.”
This time she rolled her eyes at him, which was still quite some distance from the reaction he had hoped to inspire when he’d recorded the mix tape for her. “I can see it’s a tape, Crisp, I can see that. It’s even written here on the side just in case I had any niggling doubts about it. But do you know what year this is? It’s 2011! It’s the year after we made contact. Who the hell plays tapes any more?”
“... I do,” replied Crispin, honestly perplexed. “Did you want to borrow my Walkman...?”
Gloria arched her eyebrows so high Crispin briefly wondered if she was going to be able to keep her eyeballs inside her face. “Your Walkman? You have a Walkman - a tape Walkman? Shit, did you miss the nineties completely?”
Crispin shook his head vigorously. “No way. I had a MiniDisc player once. And I saw The Matrix.”
She sighed and shook her head in bewilderment. “Fine. Fine. Okay, let me borrow the Walkman. If it means I don’t have to listen to Miriam talking about her husband’s piles I’ll listen to anything.”
He pulled the Walkman out of his rucksack and handed it over. Gloria stared at it for a second, still shaking her head, then walked off.
“Cheers, Crisp.”
Crispin returned to his work. He had five more spreadsheets to print out. Once that was done he could start writing the new fees onto them and calculate the totals. Then all he needed to do was copy the updated figures onto the spreadsheets on the computer and that would probably bring him right up to lunch time. Out of all the systems he had developed to help him through his daily work schedule this was probably his most efficient.
Except for when it got interrupted.
He had just started writing numbers onto the first printout when Gloria stormed back over to him. She threw the Walkman down on his desk and thrust her palms out in outraged astonishment.
“Again, Crisp, again I have to ask you: what the fuck is this?!”
This time Crispin really wasn’t sure what to say. “Er... a mix tape? Didn’t we already - ?”
She leaned down. “No - no, it’s not. It’s not a fucking mix tape. The point of a mix tape, Crisp, is that it actually has a mix of music on it - different music, different songs, that’s why they call it a mix. This tape has one song on it. One song. It’s the shitting Safety Dance. That’s not a mix tape - that’s a... I don’t know what it is - it’s an embolism on magnetic media, that’s what it is.”
“Did you listen to the whole thing?”
“No, no I didn’t listen to the whole thing. Do you know why I didn’t? Because even I can’t listen to a whole C90 cassette tape in less than five minutes.”
Crispin stared down at his desk for a minute: “It’s a good s-”
“It’s a shit song, Crisp. It’s the Safety Dance. It’s shit.”
“I like it...” he said quietly.
Gloria raised her eyes to the ceiling, then spoke to him to again. Although Crispin didn’t realise it at the time, it was taking her full reserve of patience - which was also often the one thing that prevented her super glueing certain members of the legal department to their office chairs - not to reach out and throttle him (indeed, it was no coincidence that, later that day, certain members of the legal department would find something particularly unpleasant lurking in their coffee.)
“Look, just tell me you put some other songs on it. I’ll go and listen to the tape if it’ll make you happy but I’m not going to go and listen to The Safety Dance twenty times... not if you don’t want me stabbing someone by the end of the day.”
“I was going to put some other songs on it, but I didn’t see the point, and I didn’t want to leave the rest of the tape blank...”
That finally earned him a quick cuff around the ear. “So you filled a whole tape with The Safety Dance? One whole tape with just one sodding song? Shit, Crisp, if I didn’t know you better I’d be calling the men in white coats right about now.”
He shrugged. “I just like that song.”
Gloria threw her hands up, as if to disown the whole affair. “It’s fine, Crisp, whatever floats your boat. Just, you know what - don’t give this to anyone else, okay? Not ever. Don’t even tell anyone it exists. No one: not a single person. Especially not anyone here.”
“Sure. Okay.”
She gave him one last look, something between affection and pity, then walked off again.
It’s a curious facet of human nature that nearly every person on the planet thinks they know at least one thing that no other person on the planet knows (and if anyone else on the planet did know it then they probably wouldn’t understand it properly anyway). In Crispin’s case he was utterly convinced that there was a secret, hidden message in The Safety Dance and, furthermore, that he was the only person who was even remotely aware of this. This was at once eminently frustrating and deeply satisfying to him. It was satisfying because he was now a member of that elite group of everyone else on the planet who knew something that no one else did, but frustrating because he, obviously, couldn’t tell anyone - and if he did he had a pretty good idea no one would believe him anyway (which left him in the precarious position of being the sole person on the planet who knew something that no one else on the planet actually wanted to know).
What had yet to occur to Crispin was the realisation that, for there to be a secret message hidden within the bars of The Safety Dance, someone else must have put it there. Which, if course, meant that someone else knew about the ‘secret’ message, which meant that it wasn’t all that secret anyway. Even worse, if someone had put a ‘secret’ message in a song that had been heard by millions of people across the planet over the span of the last twenty years, then it wasn’t really all that well hidden either.
Luckily, for his peace of mind, very little of this had occurred to Crispin as he walked home that evening, in the rain, listening to his C90 mix tape of The Safety Dance. He held his umbrella protectively to one side; the rain hadn’t stopped in days and he didn’t want to risk his Walkman getting wet.
He was still struggling to understand why Gloria hadn’t liked the mix tape. If it had been another song then, maybe... but The Safety Dance was different, it was different in every way: it even told him why Gloria didn’t want to listen to the tape: “...because your friends don’t dance...”
He didn’t mind, they were friends after all: it was precisely because they were friends that he had wanted to share his music with her. She had even invited him out for a drink after work, perhaps to make up for not listening to his tape, but all he’d been able to think about was getting his headphones on and listening to the song again. And even he understood how that might look a little odd while sitting in the pub.
He just couldn’t stop listening to the song. He had first heard it a month ago (of course, he had heard it before then, but he had never really heard it). It was catchy, infectiously so. The way the bass riff climbed up and then down again, the fresh buzz of the synthesiser, the multi-layered lyrics: it was all so compelling. The first time he had heard it he had listened to it again immediately afterwards. And then again. After a while he just hadn’t been able to get it out of his head. He thought if he kept listening to it then it would fade eventually, but it hadn’t happened. Still, he continued listening to it, obsessively so.
Then, last week, something strange had happened. He had been listening to the song and, just for a few brief moments, the real world had faded (left far behind?) and something had flashed into his head: an image, or maybe a thought. It went by so fast he hadn’t been able to work out what it was. It happened again a few times after that and suddenly he realised what was going on.
There was a message hidden in the song: the song was telling him something.
Since that revelation he had barely stopped listening to the song. He knew there was something in there, a message that only he could decipher. If he could work it out it could be even bigger than that bible code business - after all, almost everyone had heard The Safety Dance, but how many people had ever bought a bible?
At that moment he happened to look up and stopped dead in his tracks.
A dwarf was walking right towards him. A dwarf - just like in the video. He was so startled it was all he could do to remove his headphones and simply stare. As the dwarf walked by he looked sideways at Crispin but didn’t stop. A moment later he stepped onto a bus and was gone.
Crispin smiled. A dwarf had just walked past him while he was listening to The Safety Dance: It could only mean he was right. Happy now, he put his headphones back on and walked the rest of the way home.
The next evening Crispin waited by that same bus stop for the dwarf to appear again. It had been a long wait: he had already listened to his Safety Dance tape once all the way through and was about to flip it over when he saw the small man coming towards him. He jumped to his feet, holding his hand out.
Then he thought about it and sat back down again.
The dwarf stared at him warily.
“Hello, I’m Crispin!”
“I’m happy for you,” the man replied, ignoring Crispin’s hand.
Crispin laughed nervously. “Happy! Just like in Snow White...”
“Listen, mate, I may be short, but I can still give you a good one in the bollocks,” he responded sourly.
“Ok, I’m sorry about that. I just wanted to talk to you.”
The dwarf’s shoulders seemed to slump, just a bit.
Crispin thought hard. “Maybe I could... buy you a drink?”
He considered this.
“How about if I pay you - I’ll give you money,” Crispin added.
Now the dwarf looked angrily at him. “Hey! I don’t do any of that funny stuff. You can go somewhere else to get your kicks!”
Crispin shook his head. “No! No, that’s not - honest, I just want to talk to you, I don’t want to... to... do anything...”
“How much?” the dwarf asked.
“What?” Crispin was puzzled.
“You said you’d pay me: how much?”
“Oh.” Crispin searched through his pockets, finally fishing out a few ragged notes. “I’ve got twenty quid - more, probably, if you’re not bothered about the beer.”
The dwarf considered for a moment, looking up the road to see if any buses were coming. Finally he said: “Fine, give me the twenty. And I’ll take you up on the pint too.”
Five minutes later they were safely installed in the The Crown. The dwarf had a pint and Crispin, not being a big drinker, had stuck to a half. Crispin had noticed the barman chuckling when he placed his order, but as hard as he tried he couldn’t work out what was funny about saying: “A pint and a half, please.”
He was still mulling this over when he remembered that he had company. His new friend was saying nothing, just drinking his pint and glaring randomly around the pub.
“My name’s Crispin, by the way,” said Crispin, trying to start off the conversation
‘Yeah, I know.”
“So what’s your name then?”
The dwarf took a long drink from his pint, studied Crispin for a moment, then replied: “Actually I don’t think I want to give you my name. You can call me whatever you like.”
“Can I call you Bilbo?”
The man almost choked on his beer. “No!”
“How about Bill?”
“Still no.”
Crispin thought for a moment. “That bloke from the Austin Powers films, what was his -”
The dwarf put down his beer. “Forget it. Just call me Pete - my name’s Pete, ok?”
“Ok. Nice to meet you, Pete. My name’s Crispin.”
“You already told me your name. Twice.”
“Oh.”
Pete carried on drinking his beer and made no attempt to carry on the conversation. Crispin wondered what to say next. He was running out of time: Pete had drunk more than half his beer and Crispin had already handed over the rest of his spare cash, leaving nothing for a second round.
“Do you like The Safety Dance?” he eventually asked.
Pete stopped drinking and eyed Crispin coldly across the top of his pint glass. “What?”
“It’s a hit song from the -”
“I know what it is. Why are you asking me if I like it?”
Crispin shrugged uncomfortably. “Well... because... in the video they’ve-”
Pete drained his glass and stood up sharply. “Because they’ve got a dwarf in it?”
“Yes. I wondered if you might know him...”
Without another word Pete turned and headed straight out of the door.
“See you later then!” Crispin called out.
“So what would you do then?” Gloria asked him.
Crispin had never really been able to understand why Gloria was friends with him. Certainly he had spoken to many other women in his time, but very few of them seemed to want to stay around him for very long; sometimes no more than a minute or two at the most. When he first met Gloria he hadn’t said any of the things you were supposed to say to women: he hadn’t asked her on a date; he hadn’t complimented her on the size of her breasts; and he hadn’t taken the time to enquire if the plumber was doing his monthly rounds (whatever that meant). As Gloria had continued to talk to him over time none those things had ever come up in conversation. Furthermore, a very tiny, almost inconsequentially quiet voice inside of Crispin suggested that if he ever did say any of those things to Gloria then she probably wouldn’t want to be friends with him any more.
Unfortunately this was one of those occasions when one of the other voices in his head had spoken at exactly the same time that Gloria had spoken to him. He knew this because she was looking at him in that expectant way she did when she expected him to say something, usually in response to something that she had said just a second or two earlier.
And of course Crispin had absolutely no idea what to say.
“So what would you do?” Gloria asked him again.
Even with this generous hint, Crispin still didn’t know what to say. He thought hard. Gloria had been talking to him during lunch, something to do with a date she’d been on. At one point she had referred to the man as an ‘inbreed’, but Crispin had instead heard ‘imbecile’ and from that moment on he’d had ‘... and I can act like an imbecile...’ stuck on constant rotation inside his head. It had led him to wonder if he’d ever see Pete again and, if he did, how many pints of beer and pockets of loose change it would take to get him to to talk to him again. With all that calculation going on inside his head the tale of Gloria’s disastrous date hadn’t stood a chance.
But if she realised that then he was going to be in really big trouble.
“Um, well, I...” he began, instantly realising that forming a clear sentence while simultaneously developing a foolproof escape plan was a feat of multitasking that vastly exceeded his abilities.
Luckily, at that point Gloria interrupted him: “Oh, what am I doing even asking you? You haven’t been on a date since... come to think of it, when was the last time you got laid?”
“Um...”
“Fuck, what am I saying. It’s none of my business.”
“Okay.”
Gloria took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and looked directly at him. “You know, fuck it: bastard can take a walk, that’s all. Like I’m going to put up with that sort of shit.”
Crispin nodded. “Yeah, totally. You definitely shouldn’t see him again. That tosser.”
Gloria patted him on the arm. “Thanks, mate. Knew I could count on you, you’re such a good listener.”
“Any time...”
She checked her watch. “Tell you what, this one’s on me. I’ll go pay - you better get your brolly ready, looks like we might need to do a runner back to the office!”
Gloria got up and went back inside the cafe. Crispin studied the weather from the safety of the covered area they were seated under. The rain was lighter today, but just as ceaseless as it had been yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before -
Then from the corner of his eye he noticed someone crossing the road just ahead of the cafe. It was Pete, but he was going the wrong way: hurrying over to the other side.
“PETE!” Crispin called out, as loudly as he could manage. “HEY, LITTLE PETER!”
Pete stopped in mid-stride, turning sharply around. He had just long enough to shoot Crispin a furious glare before a 4WD slammed into him from the left. Brakes squealing, the car slammed him into the tarmac and continued inexorably forward, rolling over him in a horrible parody of Harrison Ford’s famous stunt from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. By the time Crispin had raced to the other side of the road Pete had emerged from the rear end of the car and was sprawled, broken and bleeding, in the middle of the road.
“Pete! Shit! Are you alright...?”
Pete struggled to focus on him, his lips attempting to form one last word.
“What, Pete? What? Tell me!”
Finally Pete managed to raise his head a few millimetres, look squarely at Crispin and gasp: “... you... bastard!”
Then, with a horrible crack, his head fell back onto the tarmac.
Crispin stared down at Pete’s body, utterly distraught. Then, slowly, he stood up and looked suspiciously around the crowd that had gathered.
Suddenly Gloria was by his side: “Crisp, fuck! I thought you’d been hit by a car. What’s going on?”
“They got Pete...” he said to her in a hushed tone.
She look around in alarm. “Who’s Pete?”
Crispin pointed down to Pete. Gloria stared at the corpse. “Shit! What happened to him?”
“It’s ok, he’s a dwarf: he’s meant to be that short” Crispin explained, still eyeing up the people around him.
“That’s not what the fuck I meant!”
“Oh. He got hit by a car. A really big one. I saw the whole thing.”
Gloria stared at him. “Hang on - did you say they got him?”
Crispin took Gloria by the arm and started leading her away.
“Wait a minute,” she protested. “You can’t leave: you’re a witness!”
“Just stay calm,” Crispin urged, tightening his grip.
He walked as fast as he could, trying to get them both away from the road, away from the accident, away from all the people. “It’s not safe to stay there,” he explained breathlessly as they marched. “They just got Pete. Don’t you see? I could be next!.
Gloria pulled her arm free. “Wait. Stop!”
She stopped, forcing Crispin to stop as well.
“Okay,” Gloria continued. “Now, what the fuck are you talking about? Who’s out to get you?”
Crispin weighed up the pros and cons, and decided it was time to tell her everything: “It’s the song - there’s a message in it, some sort of secret code - “
Gloria held up her hand, stopping him in mid-sentence. “Wait! What song? Are you talking about the fucking Safety Dance again?”
Crispin nodded eagerly. “There’s something hidden in the song. I know it and someone out there knows that I know it. That dwarf - Pete - I was only talking to him about it last night. He was too scared to even discuss the song with me. Left the pub as soon as I brought it up. Don’t you see: he knew something and they didn’t want him talking to me. He knew they’d come after him if he talked.”
“What the fuck...?”
“I know! I don’t expect you to believe everything... I don’t even know completely what’s going on yet myself, but if I can just work it all out - ”
Gloria shook her head. “Wait a minute, listen. Think about it: if you're the one who’s on the verge of discovering something, why ... why didn't they just kill you and silence you?”
"Because I don't know anything. Yet. They’ve got nothing to gain by killing me."
"That doesn’t make any sense!"
"None of this makes any sense!"
Gloria looked at him: “Crispin? Honey? I think you’re in serious trouble here, you need -”
“I know I’m in trouble!” he interrupted. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. And if I don’t work this out soon I’m going to end up like Pete!”
“That wasn’t what I - ”
“I need to go back to the start, I need to go back to where they made The Safety Dance.”
“You mean the recording studio?”
“No, of course not. I mean where they made the video. It’s the missing link. The missing piece of the puzzle. There must be a reason they filmed it where they did, there has to be a clue...”
In spite of everything Gloria found herself starting to get drawn in. “Really? So where did they film it?”
Crispin shook his head. “I have no idea...”
At that moment Gloria realised she was getting a really bad headache. “So you want to go somewhere and you have no idea where it is or what it’s called - or anything about it, probably. How the fuck do you expect to get there?
“Do you even have the slightest fucking clue where it is?”
“Books on eastern Europe?” the librarian repeated, looking at him stonily.
Crispin nodded eagerly. “That’s right. I need to try and work out where somewhere is. If you can find me some books on Eastern Europe, with pictures, I thought I might be able to spot what I need.”
The librarian took a moment to think about what Crispin might actually need and made a mental note of the imagery for future use. One of his least favourite kinds of people were the kind of people who claimed that the digital age had long ago brought about the death of the printed book and therefore wouldn’t be found dead in a library. His other least favourite kinds of people were the kind of people who were still too bone idle (or genetically stupid) to take full advantage of the digital age to find out what it was they needed to know and were therefore to be found in libraries with irritating regularity. This latest customer clearly fitted into the last category, as well as a few other categories of imbecile he had yet to devise a suitable torture for.
And unfortunately the imbecile was still waiting for an answer.
“I’m a librarian, not a personal assistant,” the librarian explained helpfully. “If you want books I can show you the right shelf, but it’s up to you to find what you need.”
Crispin smiled and nodded again. “Okay.”
Watching Crispin carefully, the librarian pointed to an aisle a few metres to his left. “What you need - well I can only guess at what you need - but you might wish to start with Geography and Travel over there. You’ll find Europe on shelf 914...”
“Right.” Crispin’s gaze followed the man’s finger, but he made no attempt to move.
The librarian sighed bitterly. “So, have you actually ever been to a library before?”
Crispin shook his head. “No, not really. Not a real one.”
The librarian envisaged piercing Crispin’s skull with red hot pokers, then started to wonder if it would actually be less painful to do it to himself. In the end he simply replied: “Look, it’s really very simple: we have lots of shelves; we have lots of books on the shelves; you look through the books, you look inside the books, and that is how you find what you are looking for. You know what the key to the whole process is?”
“Shelves?”
“No. I’ll give you a hint. The hint is it’s the ‘looking’ bit, typically via the use of your own eyes.”
“Okay. So, look, if I needed to find books that are about Eastern Europe and also about 1980s songs? How do I do that?”
The librarian stared at him, wondering how quickly he might be able to order a set of pokers and a portable furnace on the internet. “This is a library, not sodding Google! Don’t you understand anything?!” he finally answered.
Crispin shifted nervously on his feet, looking fearfully towards the Geography and Travel section. Finally, his rage defused, the librarian sighed and walked around from behind his desk.
“Come on then, I’ll help you find your books...”
Gloria looked at the random sprawl of books scattered across Crispin’s desk. Alongside a quantity of travel books she could see a volume on European history and a Rolling Stone Yearbook. She considered walking away, but once again her curiosity got the better of her.
“What on earth are you doing?”
Crispin looked up, startled. He’d been so engrossed in his books he hadn’t even noticed her standing there. “I’m trying to work out where they filmed The Safety Dance. The answer has to be in here... somewhere.”
Gloria picked up a book at random and checked the front cover. “The Rough Guide To Switzerland? What makes you think they filmed it in Switzerland?”
“There’s a girl, in the video, she’s dressed up like that one from the story. You know, with the hills and the … hair ...”
“The Sound of Music?”
“No! Oh maybe... is there a little girl in that, living in the Swiss Alps?”
“You mean Heidi?”
Crispin nodded. “Yes that’s it. Heidi, from the Sound Of Music. There’s someone in the video dressed just like her. They must have filmed the video in Europe somewhere...”
“I see. Well, it’s lucky you’ve already got it narrowed down so well.”
“... or maybe it’s Transylvania, like those Hammer films...”
Gloria cast her eyes across the pile of books one more time. “Crisp, honey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you just use the fucking internet like any normal human being?”
He looked at her with a strange expression of cunning on his face. “Because if I’m going to work this out I need to think and act like just someone from the 1980s - and they didn’t have the internet in the 1980s.”
For a moment Gloria was surprised to discover that she was actually completely speechless. Instead she leaned over and started typing on Crispin’s keyboard.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, then: “Ok, look.”
Crispin looked.
“If there really was some sort of Safety Dance conspiracy it would be all over the internet, which means it would be all over Google,” Gloria explained. “But there’s nothing on Google, nothing at all...”
Crispin pointed at the screen. “There’s one.”
Gloria studied the lone result momentarily. “Yeah, that’s just some guy named Rick - and it’s from 2005 anyway. The internet loves this sort of stuff: If there was a real conspiracy there would be thousands of pages. Thousands.”
“Not if they’d done away with everyone who found out about it,” Crispin theorised.
Gloria sighed heavily and starting typing again. “Okay, try this - Wikipedia knows everything in the whole world, if there’s anything at all on the internet about a conspiracy it’ll be on the Wikipedia page for the Safety Dance and it’s n-”
“WAIT!” Crispin shouted, holding his hands up suddenly.
“Shit! Jesus Christ, Crisp, what? You gave me a fucking heart attack...”
He pointed at the screen, beaming proudly. “Look, right there: ‘video, filmed in West Kingston’. You found it! Kingston. I can get the train to Kingston from Waterloo.”
Gloria regretted correcting him even before she did it. “No, it says Kington - West Kington.”
“Kingston?”
“Kington! No ‘s’. Just Kington.”
“Kington? Well … where’s that then?”
Gloria sucked in a breath between her teeth, which was typically a sign that she was about to do something else she was going to regret. “It’s near Bristol, and you know what? If it’s going to shut you up why don’t you just go there? I’ll buy the damn ticket for you, you take a few days off and you sort this Safety Dance shit out. You’re making a complete arse of yourself - well, more than you usually do at any rate. And if you come back and you’re still talking about that fucking song I’ll - I don’t know what I’ll do, but I tell you it’ll end with me fucking safety dancing on your burnt, battered and beaten remains. Got it?”
Crispin, who had stopped listening at the exact moment she had promised to buy him a train ticket, just smiled broadly at her: “Aw, thanks Gloria - you’re such a good friend.”
The very next day Crispin was walking down the high street of West Kington.
He had never been in the country before, and so far West Kington seemed to be so very much in the country that he was walking in constant fear of getting lost in the woods should he wander more than a few feet from the road. It was true that the woods were, in fact, barely visible from the road, but he had seen enough horror films to know how easy it was to get lost in quiet English villages. The thought didn’t make his visit any more relaxing. Without the comforting sight of a bus stop every few feet, the constant drone of traffic, and the usual range of bad-tempered office workers passing him at all times Crispin was starting to feel very, very out of place.
And yet, at the same time he was trying extremely hard to be both awed and inspired by his surroundings, by the mere thought that he was now walking in the footsteps of the same the artists who had conjured together The Safety Dance all those years ago. For the moment he was doing a very good job of convincing himself that this was an historic time in his life, but there was the constant second voice in his head telling him what he deeply suspected to be the real truth: that West Kington was actually really, really boring.
In fairness to the unsuspecting town, Crispin’s expectations had always been predictably unrealistic. Where he expected to see wooden waterwheels and maypoles he saw hedgerows, cobblestones and artfully aging brickwork; where he expected to see medieval hustle and bustle he instead found peaceful village life; and - most damning of all - where he expected to see busty maidens he instead encountered Aud Simpson, the free bus-pass wielding proprietor of the West Kington General Store.
“Ay, what can I get you, lad?” she asked with a note of gruff caution.
“Do you have any sushi?” Crispin asked.
Aud, who was instantly in the throes of deep loathing for her newest customer, which ensured she would treat him with exactly the same level of regard she offered to all her customers, found herself facing a familiar dilemma: despite owning West Kington’s only general store, and despite relying on the patronage of her fellow residents in order to make her living, she hated it whenever anyone came into her shop. She found it no more pleasing for a customer to enter her store than if they had walked in on her while bathing.
Fortunately, for the sake of her livelihood, Aud was just about smart enough to realise that she needed to be nice to her customers if she expected them to come back and keep paying her money. Less fortunately, this internal conflict between necessity and misanthropy often spilled out into her external monologue.
“Sushi?” she questioned. “No, don’t have any of that … why would anyone ask for sushi...?”
“Okay, how about a sandwich?”
Aud shook her head. “No, no sandwiches. I can sell you some bread and paste if you like ... why don’t you make your own bleedin’ sandwiches anyway?”
“Do you sell any food?”
“Course I sell food, this is a general store.”
“Do you sell burgers?”
“Frozen?”
“No. Cooked.”
Aud shook her head wearily. “Boy thinks he’s walked in at MacDonald’s... no, if it’s cooked food you want you’ll be needing to visit The Lodge. They’ll do you hot food there and a pint to boot.”
Crispin looked lost already. Aud pointed to the door: “Left out of here, keep going, you can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” he said, nodding hesitantly, and wandered to the door.
Just before walking out he stopped, struck by a rare moment of inspiration, and looked closely at Aud in a way which made her recoil slightly.
“You’re quite old,” he told her. “Were you here when they filmed The Safety Dance?”
Aud straightened up, avoiding his eyes for a moment. “I don’t recall.”
Crispin shrugged. “Okay.”
Before he could leave Aud walked over and put her hand on his arm. She stared at him pointedly. “I’ll say you won’t be wanting to go anywhere near the Nurseries.”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “I’m not very interested in gardening.”
After leaving the shop Crispin realised he couldn’t remember if he was supposed to turn left or right. He considered going back inside to ask for directions again, but the old lady was strange and unusual and he decided he didn’t want to talk to her any more.
The only other person he had talked to in West Kington so far had been Nigel, the owner of the B&B Gloria had booked him into. He had been just about the friendliest and most helpful person that Crispin had ever met. Not only was he waiting expectantly by the door when Crispin arrived, but he had carried his bag upstairs and had even unpacked it for him. On reflection, Crispin was starting to think that Nigel had been a little bit strange; not to mention the way that he had kept on asking him if he had any plans for the night. Suddenly Crispin wasn’t so sure if he wanted to go back to his hotel room. He could only hope the other residents of West Kington were relatively normal.
He was about to be disappointed.
In the end, as Aud had promised, he found The Lodge without difficulty. He walked in and was greeted by an immediate hush, broken only by someone who continued to talk unwittingly in the corner: “... and I told him to hop on his bicycle and back on down to Jack Lane and - oh ...”
Then there was silence.
Everyone was staring at him. Not knowing what else to do Crispin slowly backed away and went back out of the door. Once outside he took a deep breath.
Then he walked back in again.
Once more there was silence, except this time everyone returned to their conversations after a moment. After a minute it was almost as if Crispin wasn’t even there.
“You’ll be wanting some food then, will you?” the barman shouted over to him over the noise.
“How did you know that?” Crispin shouted back.
The barman rolled his eyes, and beckoned Crispin to come closer. “Aud called on from the shop. Said you were after some city food. I can’t do you none of that, but I can do you a toasted sandwich.”
Then the man leaned closer: “And it won’t be at none of your city prices either, that much I can tell you.”
Crispin nodded conspiratorially. The last sandwich he had eaten had been on the train from London and he would have actually paid the barman any price just to taste something that was merely edible.
Instead he nodded enthusiastically: “Okay, thanks.”
The barman grunted and disappeared into the kitchen without another word.
Crispin realised he was being stared at again, just by one person this time: the man sitting to his left. The man looked away quickly when he realised he had been spotted, but by then it was much too late.
“Hi, I’m Crispin,” beamed Crispin, holding out his hand.
The man looked nervously down at Crispin’s hand, as if it might explode at any moment. He glanced around the rest of the pub for help, but everyone else was busy looking at anything else they could possibly find to look at.
The man sighed. “I’m Pete,” he finally offered, trying to give his pint glass his full attention in the vain hope that this stranger would simply give up.
“I used to have friend called Pete!” Crispin replied happily.
“Oh yeah? What happened to him then?”
“He was walking over the road and a four wheel drive hit him. Then he died.”
Pete glared at him stonily: “Is that meant to be some sort of threat?”
Crispin shook his head. “No, not at all. It was actually sort of sad... and also a little bit gross...”
An old man with half a beard then appeared on his other side. “You wouldn’t be upsetting our young Pete there, would you?” he enquired. “Sensitive soul is our Pete...”
Pete glared at him, then slunk away from the bar.
“I’m Crispin,” offered Crispin.
“I know who you are,” the stranger said. “I was standing right here when you told Pete.”
“Oh.”
“What’s your business then? We don’t get many strangers around these parts.”
“Oh, but what about that bus load of tourists that we had by here that last weekend?” a woman’s voice interrupted from the man’s other side.
“Shut your gobber, Nell!” the man hissed.
“... and then there were those ones from the Heritage Commission - or was it Committee? Mike, do you remember what it was? Was it the Heritage Commission or was it the Heritage Committee? Almost half dozen of them there were - ”
The old man, who was presumably called Mike, turned savagely to the woman. “Put a sock in it, Nell, or I’ll get you one of Barry’s steak and turd pies to do the job!”
“Alright, Mike…” the woman replied sulkily. “No need to be a wanker...”
The man gritted his teeth, clenching his fists, but then turned alarmingly to Crispin, pointing an angry finger directly at his nose. “I said: what are you doing here stranger?”
“Uh, actually you said: what’s my...” Crispin began, then quickly thought better of it. “I’m here because of - have you heard of - I mean, do you remember The Safety Dance?”
“The Safety Dance?!” Mike replied angrily. “No. Never heard of it. Bloody ponces wi’out hats...”
Just then the barman reappeared, holding a paper bag. He handed it to Crispin. “You’d better take this along with you seeing as you’re getting on the wrong side of Mike. Be a shame for you to get hurt so soon - I mean, for you to get hurt - I mean, for you to get into trouble.”
The barman looked nervously over at Mike. “Anyway, here’s your sandwich.”
Crispin took the paper bag.
He looked quizzically at the barman.
The barman looked back.
“What??!” he asked nervously.
“Uh, how much is it?” Crispin asked.
“Oh! Er, fiver should cover it.”
Crispin handed over the cash. “Thanks.”
Then he turned back to Mike: “Nice to meet you, Mike.”
Mike nodded. “Yeah, nice to m- I mean... sod off you city git!”
Crispin simultaneously nodded and shook his head, then left the pub.
Outside it was starting to turn dark. Crispin was just trying to come to terms with the fact that he really didn’t know how to get back to his B&B when he heard a voice coming from the shadows behind him.
“It were them ones from the Heritage Commission,” the voice said. “They’re the ones that gave them the idea.”
Crispin turned and saw that the voice belonged to Pete.
“Pete, what are you doing out here?”
Pete put a finger to his lips, glancing nervously at the pub. “You’re in danger, and not just you, anyone who comes here.”
“Danger?” Crispin whispered. “Then I must be on the right tracks...”
Pete shook his head. “No, you must leave, right now!”
“I can’t leave now - I’ve got a room booked till tomorrow morning.”
“Then you must leave first thing tomorrow. And listen to me,” Pete urged. “Whatever you do: don’t go to the nurseries. Not tonight. Not ever!”
“No, I won’t,” Crispin replied. “I’m not really interested in gardening.”
“Right.”
“Okay.”
Crispin thought for a moment, then: “I don’t suppose you can tell me how to get back to The Waxed Bush Bed & Breakfast can you?”
Pete scanned the road left and right. “Certainly, if you just turn left out of here, then keep going past the church, which should be on your right, keep going about another 200 yards and you’ll be right there.”
Crispin smiled. “Great, thanks!”
Just then the front door of the pub slammed open revealing Mike, his face twisted in anger. He glared at Pete: “That’s ENOUGH!” he bellowed furiously. “That’s! Enough!”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Crispin interrupted amiably, “We’d just finished anyway.”
And with that he strolled off, leaving Pete and Mike staring after him.
To his own amazement, Crispin found his way back to the B&B without difficulty. Getting back to his room was less easy: Nigel was already waiting for him in the hallway. He stood up as soon as Crispin walked through the front door.
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting you back already.”
“Neither was I,” Crispin answered happily. “Do you often sit in the hallway like that?”
“No... I mean, yes,” Nigel answered, cryptically.
“It’s just for a minute I thought you were waiting for me.”
“No. Of course not. Why would I be waiting for you? No, I was just ... passing through. I’ll just sit back down”
Nigel sat back down.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Crispin stood there awkwardly for a moment, then took a step towards the stairs, heading for his room.
Nigel stood up again instantly: “But since I happen to have caught you, in passing, like this, perhaps I could tell you a few of the house rules. Firstly: there’s no curfew tonight - I mean, ever! We don’t have a curfew here, never have. You can come and go as you please.”
“So what about that sign outside that says ‘All tenants must be back before 9pm’?”
Nigel grimaced momentarily. “Oh, that... that’s just... hostelry humour. Yes. Bit of an in joke. We like our humour in the business here.”
“Ok. Well, thanks, but I’m not planning to go out -”
Nigel took a step closer. “I see you have a sandwich there. I’m just saying if you wanted to go out after you’ve eaten your sandwich and - oh, not with me, I didn’t mean that! Did you think I meant that?”
Crispin shook his head. “No.”
“Well, if you want to go out - on your own - and then come back again you can just come back, ohhh, any time you like, any time at all. Midnight even.”
“Thank you, but I really -”
Nigel continued regardless: “There’s plenty to do in West Kington, you know. it’s quite the lively little town...”
Crispin thought about this. “Really? Well, I’ve been to the general store and the pub already. What else is there to see?”
Nigel stood frozen for a moment, his smile fixed to his face. “Have you tried the general store?”
“Yes, I just said -”
“And what about the nursery? You have to go to the nursery...”
“Well, I’m not really interested in -”
“Good!” Nigel suddenly interjected. “Because what I actually meant to say is you definitely do not want to be going to the nursery. Whatever you do, don’t go to the nursery”
“No, well I won’t then...”
“Good. But as I said if you want to go out later, anywhere you like, you can. I’ll just leave the door open for you and you can go as you please.”
“You mean come and go as I please?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“No, you just said I could go as I please.”
Nigel stared at the door, then back at Crispin.
“I’m going to go and eat my sandwich,” Crispin said.
“Right then,” Nigel said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Well, good night. Enjoy yourself where ever you go, and it’s been nice knowing you - I mean, meeting you.”
“Thanks.”
Once he was safely in his room Crispin finally unwrapped his sandwich. It was cold, limp and greasy, the cheese had begun to congeal and the toast was now more sweaty than toasty, but it was still a thousand times better than anything he’d eaten on the train. He took one bite and before he knew it the sandwich had been completely devoured. He was so hungry he even licked his fingers until he was sure there was no tasty residue left.
Then he reached into the paper bag, hoping to find a napkin to wipe up with. All he found was a piece of paper, which he put it to one side while he resumed the napkin hunt.
… safety dance ...
If words could literally jump off the page they would have knocked him off his chair. He threw the bag to the floor and grabbed the piece of paper with his greasy hands. On it was printed:
13th Annual The Safety Dance Reunion dance
Tonight: West Kington nursery
No need for a partner - you can leave your friends behind!
Crispin almost choked. The mere mention of The Safety Dance was enough of a shock, but his brain was also having to cope with a sudden and unusual rush of thought processes that ran something like this: the residents of West Kington had been trying to stop him going to the nursery; apparently this was so he wouldn’t stumble across their reunion; obviously this was another part of the conspiracy; clearly he had been completely right to come to West Kington!
All he had to do was get to that reunion dance.
He rushed to the door.
Outside he almost ran into Nigel, this time busily straightening a painting in the corridor.
He turned guiltily to Crispin: “Oh hello, you, I didn’t expect you to, uh, yes, I’m just sorting out this picture here... little bit wonky... yes, there we go that’s it now. All. Straightened. Up. So, you off out then after all?”
Crispin nodded. “Yes, I thought I’d... get some fresh air.”
He noted that Nigel was standing between him and the stairs.
And took a sudden step forward.
Nigel instinctively stepped back.
Crispin took another step.
Nigel, panicking a bit now, stepped aside.
Crispin continued towards the stairs, then stopped as he had a second thought. Second thoughts were a relatively rare phenomenon in Crispin’s head, and the experience was making him a little exhilarated. He was also vaguely aware that, possibly for the first time in his life, he wasn’t actually the most stupid person in the room at that moment. He was trying not to think too hard about that in case he ended up fainting.
However, he had an idea that Nigel might have something he needed.
“You told me to stay away from the nurseries...” Crispin began.
“I did,” Nigel replied, trying very poorly to make it sound like a question.
“So,” Crispin carried on, “If I wanted to stay away from the nurseries... where exactly is it that I should stay away from?”
Nigel began to look scared again. “Er, I’m not sure I... understand?”
“What I mean is: how can I be sure that I don’t wander over to the nurseries by mistake? I wouldn’t want to do that, would I? Go there by accident? So, if you were to tell me exactly where the nurseries is - I mean, are - then I’ll know exactly where not to go, won’t I?”
“Right, yes, of course,” Nigel replied, still looking deeply worried.
Crispin, who was feeling quite dizzy himself now, leaned against the wall for support. “Okay, I’m glad you understood that.”
“Um, would it help if I gave you a map?” Nigel asked.
“A map of what?”
“A map showing you where the nurseries are, er... is...?”
Crispin nodded eagerly. Nigel reached into his pockets and, after a moment’s scrabbling around, handed Crispin a folded sheet of paper. On it was a map of West Kington with a red circle, drawn in felt tip, around an area labelled ‘West Kington Nurseries’. Also in red felt tip was an arrow pointing towards the nurseries with the warning “Don’t Go Here!” written in bold letters at the other end.
Crispin briefly thought there was something strange about the man having, in his pocket, a map that was specifically designed to tell him exactly how to stay away from the exact place he was interested in. However, he decided not to bring it up.
Suddenly Nigel leapt into action: “Oh! I’m supposed to give - I mean, ask you, er, would you like a cup of tea? Of course you would. Yes. Good. I’ll make you some. A lovely flask of tea. You can take it with you.”
Then he hurried down the stairs.
A few minutes later Crispin was standing by the front door with a flask in his hand, as promised.
“Hot tea!” Nigel announced. “Hot tea and nothing else. We like it strong here in the country, so it might taste different to your city tea, but that’s because we, er, yes, we like it strong here... so remember, it’s just tea - just tea with nothing in it. Except for milk of course. You will drink it, won’t you? It’s chilly out there. You’ll be wanting something to keep you warm inside.”
Crispin, who was thinking of nothing but the impending Safety Dance reunion that he was about to gatecrash, simply nodded and then made his way out into the West Kington night.
The sign didn’t look like much, but just seeing the words on it made him feel giddy:
The Safety Dance Reunion Dance
Hear! Tonight!
He thought it was strange that there was no one else around, and that the sign pointed to a door that was hidden away at the back of the West Kington Nurseries, but Crispin didn’t want anyone to know that he was here anyway so the fact that he was the only person here was already turning out to be quite useful.
He took a last swig of tea from his flask. In the end he had been quite glad that Nigel had insisted he take it: the night had turned chilly and the tea had helped keep him warm during the walk (he had only gotten lost once, but he had managed to retrace his steps back to the B&B and, using the map that time, had found his way to the Nurseries).
The long walk had made him light-headed, he felt almost drunk. It was surely just the excitement and the fact that he had only eaten two sandwiches all day. It’s not like a flask of tea would have made him feel strange, even if it did taste a little unusual just as Nigel had warned.
He wondered whether to head inside, where it might be a bit warmer, or if he should wait and see if anyone else turned up. He could only imagine what might be in there: dwarves, maypoles, busty wenches. Maybe some of the townsfolk who had been involved in the original video shoot would be recreating their past performances. Maybe they’d even reassembled the original members of the band. No! He couldn’t wait.
He opened the door.
Inside it was dark. Darker even than the night outside. Crispin propped the door open with his flask. The door promptly slammed shut, propelling the flask at high velocity back into the night.
Now it wasn’t just dark: it was black. He took a step forward and walked straight into the door, having forgotten that he was facing when it closed. While he was there he tried turning the handle, but quickly found that there wasn’t a handle on that side of the door, not one he could find in the dark anyway. He ran his fingers all around the edges, just to make sure he wasn’t trying to open the wall by mistake, but it was definitely the door.
He was trapped, and he couldn’t shout for help in case any of the townsfolk realised he was there.
He carefully turned around to face what he guessed was the rest of the room and took a few steps forward, holding his arms out in front of him. His foot brushed against something. He reached down to feel what it was - just a pile of sticks wrapped in cloth as far as he could tell. He stood up and took a few more steps, stumbling over another two similar piles as he walked.
Suddenly he heard a loud click from somewhere else in the room.
Then silence once again.
Then, without warning, the opening bars of The Safety Dance came thundering through the room. The very air around him seemed to shake with the sound of it. Piercing flashes came from above, lighting up everything around him in split-second bursts like snapshots in a photo album.
We can dance if we want to...
It was like a disco: a terrifying, nightmarish disco that would even strike dread into the hearts of The Bee Gees. Crispin was paralysed, not knowing whether to try and run in panic or to start dancing.
Because your friends don’t dance...
He looked around and decided to panic.
In the snatches of eye-meltingly bright light that were filling the room he could see what it really was that he had almost tripped over: the place was filled with dead bodies. What he had thought were sticks were actually bones, and the cloth he had felt were the decayed remains of clothing (or flesh?) that still clung to the emaciated corpses.
And there were more than three bodies in the room. Many, many more.
And we can dress real neat from our hands to our feet...
Crispin wanted desperately to run, but there was absolutely nowhere to go. The dance floor was completely enclosed by walls that disappeared far above his head and looked too smooth for any normal person to climb. The ceiling rose high above him. There were no doors, no windows; nothing that might help him escape. He tried to remain calm, to at least try and enjoy the music.
And then the corpses started moving.
We can dance
We can dance
Everything’s under control...
The body nearest to him rose to its feet and started performing an horrific parody of a dance. It jerked in time to the music, flinging its arms about merrily, it’s jaws snapping open and closed as if it were trying to sing along. All around him there were dead bodies rising from the ground, summoned by the music, dancing their eternal dance to tune of The Safety Dance. He felt something touch his shoulder and turned around: one of the skeletons was reaching out for him, beckoning him to join it in its dance. It lunged forward and, to his horror, Crispin saw that it still had a pair of rotten eyeballs lolling uselessly inside around its empty skull.
And then there was nothing but blackness and sweet, merciful silence.
“What do we do with him now?” someone interrupted.
Crispin heard the voice but couldn’t work out where it was coming from.
“Should we kill him?” came a different voice.
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