He came with the property; like mould in the corner of a damp room or the fat little mouse in your kitchen cabinet. He was the most permanent sort of fixture; an uneasy assemblage of particles that was attached with atomic glue to the asphalt drive attached to my lovely two bed Victorian home. I don’t really know where to start, for the story of the man on my driveway is long and sprawling. I’m only an amateur writer so perhaps it is best to start at the beginning.
I was a young professional, just graduated with a low-paid but aspirational role at an accountancy firm in Glasgow. I was newly single after my girlfriend of five years split up with me, and let me just say I was not ready to mingle. I wanted somewhere peaceful and in a nice neighbourhood to relax. When I saw it on Zoopla, I couldn’t believe my luck; a beautiful red brick Victorian, semi-detached, off street parking and a garage too, all packaged in a lovely, albeit gentrified, street in the East End for well within my limited budget. To say I nearly broke my leg leaping for the phone to call the real-estate agency would be an understatement.
So desperate I was for the property that I made a rookie error. I put in an offer without even stepping foot in the place. In my defence, the housing market is crazy and good deals don’t stick around forever. My offer was accepted and to my surprise there was no chain and the current owners were rather keen to move out quickly. Before I could even think to scope out the place I had the keys in my hand - beautiful big brass things that looked to be from a different era.
I remember that first day at my property as clearly as I remember that drunken night where I lost control of my bowels in front of an entire nightclub - that is to say, I remember it with disturbing clarity. I arrived early in the morning with a suitcase and a rented truck driven by my rather bashful elder brother who had agreed to help me move in exchange for a bottle of expensive rum.
I was confused at first when I saw the old and battered Volkswagen camper sprawled across my beautiful brick-layed drive. It wasn’t like the volkswagen campers you see on pinterest, beautifully restored and pastel, no this one was matte grey and the paint was peeling off in great big swathes. At the edges of the vehicle orange rust spread like mushroom spores. Cardboard was propped up against smashed windows and the tires looked flatter than a can of four day old pepsi.
“Looks like they ain’t moved out yet Mike.” Harry leant out the truck window his cigarette hanging from his mouth, plumes of smoke rose to make little grey clouds above my head. I could see my neighbours peeping out of their windows and could almost hear the creaking of their blinds. I felt as though I was in a theatre performance.
I slowly approached the Volkswagen with uncertainty and I heard a raspy cough. I crooked my head around to the driver’s seat half-expecting to find a set of apologetic home-owners with moving boxes in hand, instead I saw him, Alph.
“Hi there.” He said casually in his gruff voice, as if he was speaking to customer service. I cocked an eyebrow. He was dishevelled, his beard so long he had tied it into a rough little knot that seemed to be matted solid. I could smell him even from five metres away; a putrid mix of cat litter tray and rotten cabbage. He had mysterious eyes, yet I could not quite decide then if they were kind or cruel.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“I’d help you with the boxes but my knees give me some bother.” He shuffled awkwardly. The side door of the camper was slightly ajar and I could see inside, the sheets were brown and stained and rubbish and debris were piled up nearly up to the ceiling of the vehicle. “I live here by the way, the name’s Alph. You got a Mrs, any little ones?”
I shook my head thinking the question was rather odd. “No, no wife or kids. I’m sorry sir but you-”
A look of relief washed across his apprehensive face. It looked as though the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. “Good, no kids, no wife, just perfect.” He interrupted. My ears were getting red and hot.
“You can’t live here - there has to be some sort of mistake - I just bought this property and this is my drive. You have to move your van right now.” I tried to sound as authoritative as I could but puberty hadn’t deepened my voice all that much, I imagined I sounded like a dissatisfied chipmunk.
“No can do sir, no can do. I got squatter’s rights and besides you don’t want me to leave.” He stood up on his wobbly knees and stumbled towards me. The putrid stench of him became so overwhelming that all my anger shrivelled up into disgust. He looked like he needed a walking stick to me, if not a wheelchair. “I got a job to do here sir, I won’t be a bother.”
A job? I thought him a madman. The truth was anything but.
He was right about squatter’s rights. After I’d moved all my stuff into the house and plugged in my computer I set to work googling to find out my options whilst Harry shared a cigarette with my new uncomfortably close neighbour outside with a bemused grin on his devious face. As it turns out it would take some time to vanquish Alph from my drive, the police would have to issue an eviction notice first which could take at a minimum three months. It would have been easier if he had been illegally parked on the street.
“Well you’re stuck with him for now. He’s not so bad, I mean the stench sure but… just been talking to him, he’s Celtic man so it could be worse, could be a Ranger’s fan.” Harry chuckled having reappeared in the kitchen stinking of tobacco.
“Do you think I care what bloody football team he supports?” I hissed. “It’s going to take at least three months to rid myself of him. It’s a hassle, but you’re right. Could be worse.”
I told myself, just three months. When I thought about it harder and considered how cheap the property was, it suddenly felt like no time at all.
As well as calling the police I contacted my real estate agent. The mystery quickly deepened as according to my solicitor the sellers had never reported any trespass in spite of Alph’s claim that he had been there for years. This led me to a very confusing hypothesis that they had let him stay. Maybe they were Christians, you know the sort, the preachy ones that can’t do anything remotely stern for fear of hellfire.
“Howdy neighbour!” Alph accosted me one day when I was leaving for work. He was sat on the step of his camper with a pipe in his mouth. “The police served me an eviction notice this morning. Look I’m not angry with you lad, I know this setup is bizarre, but I come with this property, you’ll come to understand that before the three months is up.”
One night I heard some talking from out on my drive. It was Alph. I creaked open the windows and saw him burning something leafy around the perimeter of my house. He saw me looking and in the dead of that cold night we made slow untrusting eye contact. Sleep did not come easily after that.
Things kept getting stranger. One of the nosey neighbours across the street grabbed me as I walked down the cul-de-sac with a bag of shopping. Her name was Mrs Holland, a little old lady who was as much a fixture on the street as Alph, her house had been passed down through numerous generations of her family.
“How are you settling in deary? Alph isn’t giving you much bother is he?” She mused knowingly. She spoke with poorly concealed whimsy and didn’t give me time to respond. “The neighbourhood watch has been trying to get him out for years but they won’t. He’s a fixture. I hope he’s going easy on you.”
“How long has he been here?” I asked her softly, slowing my pace to walk beside her.
“Oh, fifty years. Give or take. I knew him when he lived in the house dear, he moved in after that archaeologist commited suicide.” She mused.
“A murder - and Alph - He, he lived inside?”
“Oh yes. With his wife, lovely thing. She used to make big muffins the size of loaves of bread. After she was gone, he lost everything, had to sell the house and ended up on the drive in that tatty old van. The house has been a revolving door since, though no one ever manages to get Alph to leave.” She explained with a casual tone. “Now if you don’t mind dear I’ve got a shepherd’s pie in the oven.”
He had lived inside the house with a wife once. The fates of time had conspired and he had ended up on the driveway watching on as other families claimed the house that had once been his. It didn’t make any sense to me. When tragedy strikes you move away, you don’t stay.
Except, sometimes you do.
Not only that but there was the matter of the archaeologist who had killed himself in that very same home. The house that had been my dream was slowly becoming a nightmare.
“I heard you used to live inside the house.” I paused to ask Alph one day.
“I did, Mrs Holland tell you I s’pose? What else she tell you? About my wife, my wife and child?” His voice cracked when he mentioned his family. It struck me then, as misery wounded his face, that he must have had a wrinkle for ever year of life.
“Just your wife, I didn’t know there was a child. Said she made muffins.” I conversed.
“The best muffins. Never had any since.” He grumbled. “Both of them are buried at that cemetery up the road. Can’t get down to see them much, what with these knees and the bloody engine in this rust trap is caput.”
“I could take you.” The words came before I could consider what I was offering, a kindness to the man who was making my life a big giant ball of stress. “If you want that is.”
“You would?” His eyes lit up as though kindness was a foreign concept.
He dressed up for the occasion, ripped a flower out of my flowerbeds and slipped it into his suit pocket. I considered putting plastic wrap down on my seats to protect them from the stench, but I couldn’t bring myself to. However Alph had wronged me; he was human and I didn’t want to wound him with petty insults.
Their graves were under the shadow of a willow tree. Catherine and Alfred, aged twenty-four and 4 days. I watched Alph kneel from a few feet away, far enough to obscure his face, but close enough to hear him say. “I’m keeping watch sweetheart. I’ll never stop.”
He placed the flower from my flowerbed and paused for a small moment, as if the weight of the world sat perched on his rounded shoulders.
“Thank you.” He said to me.
I woke up the next morning to a bottle of fancy beer on my doorstep.
Very soon Alph became a fixture I said hello to on the way to work. The perpetual smell of stagnant water and tobacco ceased to bother me. The three months were nearly up when another problem arrived to replace the one I was very nearly free of.
There was mould in the loft.
Awful thick black mould, I considered getting in a professional to fix it but the prices were eye watering. It was a strange mould, it was more like black moss and you had scrape it as opposed to wipe. It was only in the smallest bedroom, a rather beautiful room with a circular window with elegant brass tracery. In another time it might have been a nursery, I wondered if Alph’s son had spent his four short days there.
I took matters into my hands and bought industrial grade mould remover. Alph was cooking sausages on his camping stove when he saw me drag in the bucket of remover.
“The mould starting? In the little room with the nice window. You won’t stop it with that you know. She’s a stubborn wench.” He grunted.
“Any advice?”
“Pazuzu might help, if ya ask nicely.” He shuffled his shoulders with a low laugh. I filed that away in the ever-growing part of my brain where I stored all the odd things that Alph said.
He was right about one thing. The mould spray did nothing, in fact it antagonised it. The mould grew further and further out of the wall, it’s black tendrils reaching out towards the empty space in the centre of the room. I was about to call in the professionals after all, when I went through one day and saw that it had almost taken on the shape of a figure.
It had the proportions of a woman. A feign of light or an illusion, I convinced myself. In the quiet apprehension of horror I thought I saw it move.
“She’ll get bigger you know, she’ll be unhappy she’s nothing to take.” Alph said one day as I left for work. “There’s nightmares too, isn’t there. Deserts, empires of ash?”
There had been nightmares, and just as he had described, a desert with orange sands, a strange rotted carcass that resembled something only barely human and a man brushing the dust from the cracks in it’s black tar bones.
“He brought her back. The man who was in there before me.” Alph’s voice was layered in cryptic mystery.
“Brought who back Alph?”
“She’ll get tired of you soon, like she did of him. She doesn’t like to eat men.”
I thought he was going even more senile than he usually was. I ignored him for the last time. I returned with a mould removal servce. The gruff professional dragged his tools up the stairs and when he opened the door to the nursery room, his brows twisted in confusion.
“Where’s the mould mate?”
The mould, It was gone.
There’s an animalistic side to all of us - one we don’t realise we have until it’s triggered. I felt it then, an overwhelming feeling of dread that built up to a crescendo where the very utterance of silence rang in my ears like alarm bells. I ought to have listened to it.
I went to bed that night with that feeling still tugging at me. Sleep did not come easy, in fact it did not come at all. My eyes narrowed from exhaustion, my room almost pitch black save for the small amount of light from my phone screen. I thought it was the silhouette of a jacket at first. I stared hard at it, trying to discern any familiarity in it’s shape.
I stared for what felt like hours and I felt as though I was being watched, like I wasn’t alone. Then it came. Just the smallest of twitches. My finger danced over the torch button on my phone, but there was a comfort in not seeing, in the dark haze there was still a chance that it was my jacket or an odd shadow.
It moved again, this time more decisively. And again, and again and always closer. I couldn’t move. I was stuck still like someone had hit my pause button.
I screamed.
I know it’s silly, I’m a grown man and rather than fight or flee my instinct had been to screech at the top of my lungs. But let me tell you I was lucky I did, for that seemed to scare the thing off.
I didn’t sleep that night, I blanketed the house in so much light, Alph must have saw. He came to my door with more of that fancy beer he must have stolen.
“The first night you see her is a tough one. This makes it better.” Alph passed me the beer. “I do my rituals, that keeps her at bay most of the time. If you send me away she’ll get closer and closer. She shouldn’t hurt you. She doesn’t eat men usually, the archaeologist before me was an exception. Musta pissed her right off.”
“You’re crazy.” I muttered.
“Then so are you.”
I called off the eviction, mainly for the peace of mind as I was still frightened from that night. I tried to sell. It was easier said than done. It turns out no one wants to buy a house with a mould problem and a mad man on the drive.
I finally got a viewing, a lovely family of four so desperate for a property that they were willing to embrace the three month eviction process and the now quite extensive mould problem.
I told Alph to be on his best behaviour for my viewers, he agreed until he saw them. The wife was pregnant again and had her one-year old on her hip. I saw his eyes go glassy and then, turn more determined. I sighed into my hands.
“Yaba Baba huba booooba. I curse you and your children!” Alph yelled at the woman. He squatted on the drive, pulled down his trousers and to everyone’s disgust and horror took a massive dump on the drive.
Needless to say the family left with no intent of buying.
“I’m sorry Mike. No women or kids. I’d rather you than them, no hard feelings.” Alph shuffled back to his van. He was careful to avoid the fecal matter. “I’ll clean that later.”
I was angry, I followed him back to the van in a haze of fury.
“What happened to your family, why are you here? If I’m to be stuck here then I must know.” I hissed at him. Alph seemed taken aback but had more composure than me, he patted the space next to him in the van. I ignored the scent of urine and sat next to him.
“The house was going cheap when I bought it. An archaeologist had it before me. Killed himself. Had to clean the bloodstains myself. Me and Cat moved in here with a dream - a lovely little family, a nice garden. You know, the usual. T’wasn’t to be.” Alph grumbled. “Then the mould started but it wasn’t your usual mould, it was alive, it was her. Lamashtu.”
“L-Lamashtu?”
“She who devours. The most ancient and foulest of demons. The archaeologist that was here before me, he was doing a dig in Iran, brought back loads of artefacts for the museum. I think he dug her up, released her, brought her back here.” Alph’s voice had the lilt of a madman. I thought back to that night, to the moving mould in the corner of my room and for a moment he sounded sane.
“But your family, what happened to them?”
“Women and babies, that’s who she likes to eat. It’s all in here, everything that happened.” Alph handed me a tatty leather bound book. “I have to stay, keep her from getting out of the house. It was my promise to my Cat.”
“You’re crazy.” I resisted.
“I wish I was, but Mike, one more thing.” Alph chased after me as I stood to leave. “There are gods and demons, that much I know to be true. You do to, what you saw that night. They’re all around us and move silently, they watch and hear and eat. They’re spores.”