'Tween the Devil and The Deep Bloo See by Danny Coleiro
from the Candlewick Stories
His name was Austin Spooler, and he was the unluckiest man in the world.
He was born in the middle of a blackout during one of the worst storms in living history. An erratic bolt of lightning had wiped out the National Grid early that evening, and then, a few hours later, with uncanny meteorological precision, another bolt had put the hospital’s old asthmatic generator out of its misery. In the darkness, a screaming and sweating Mrs Spooler, having refused all drugs in order to “experience labour in all its natural glory”, had taken out the head doctor by planting a wildly flailing foot firmly in his face, breaking his nose and rendering him unconscious. Eventually, baby Austin had been dragged kicking and screaming into the cold dark world by a first-year medical student who was capable of determining the respective locations of his arse and his elbow only if given a second try.
From that moment on, it was downhill all the way.
By the age of twenty, Austin had, in a series of freak accidents, broken almost every bone in his body at least twice, with the notable exception of, funnily enough, his left humerus. By thirty, he had been the victim of six burglaries, four hit-and-runs, two drive-by shootings and three bank hold-ups. By forty, he had been married five times, divorced twice and widowed thrice. He had spent most of his fifties behind bars, having stepped out one morning to post a letter and ended up, through an extraordinary chain of events, serving a life sentence in a tiny prison cell in Thailand, wrongly accused of murdering a small village. He had been released nine years later, when the real murderer, in an uncharacteristic burst of drunken guilt, had confessed to it all. Upon his return to England, while being questioned by an assembly of reporters at the airport, Austin had simply shrugged, smiled a ‘shit happens’ smile, and said “Mistakes will be made”, before tripping over his shoelace and tumbling down an escalator, breaking both humeri in six places.
Not once had Austin bemoaned his life of misfortune and misadventure. Day after day, he was met by ill fortune of such cosmic proportions that it would have reduced lesser men to tears of frustration, and yet not a single complaint nor lament had ever passed his lips. For Austin was a man of faith, and he knew that for every broken bone, for every bruise, beating and bout of buggery that he had suffered in life, he would be rewarded hundredfold in heaven.
Today was Austin’s eighty-fifth birthday, and he was dying.
He was understandably over the moon at the prospect.
***
Born of a Greek father and a Spanish mother, Tanius Poleros had inherited his father’s good looks and his mother’s passionate nature. He had also inherited his grandfather’s battered old fishing boat when the old man had prematurely gone to meet his maker with a half-chewed stuffed olive lodged fatally in his throat, and it was with this boat that Tanius made a living, providing the residents of Anguila Frito, right on the outskirts of Candlewick, with the freshest and tastiest fish anywhere in the small seaside village and beyond.
The boat was a far cry from the splintered wreck that his grandfather had left him. Months of loving restoration had made it the envy of fishermen all round the village. It gleamed from bow to stern. Brass fittings twinkled in the rays of the sun like liquid gold. Not a single scratch marred its brilliant white hull, and the fire-engine red strip that ran along it could be seen miles out at sea. Across the red stripe, hand-painted in bible black italics, the name of the boat: The Blaartoss. (A large number of people had wondered about the meaning of the name. Had they bothered to ask Tanius, he would have been mildly surprised, for surely everybody knew what an albatross was? He would then have found out that he was dyslexic. But nobody asked.)
Throughout his fifty-six years as a fisherman, Tanius had been caught in storms at sea of epic proportions, and he had always relished the challenge, farted in the face of fear and returned to tell the tale. Tourists to the village would join him of an evening at the local bar, and listen with wide eyes and unhinged jaws as he told them of fifty foot waves and torrents of rain so heavy that the fish swam through it at eye level. They bought him beer as he spoke of thunder and lightning and howling winds. And when they left, he would still be rambling on, pissed as a newt and embellishing his anecdotes with mermaids and the odd sunken treasure chest.
This time, however, he wasn’t so confident of making it back.
The storm wasn’t playing fair. It had snuck up on Tanius from out of nowhere and then viciously and violently hit him with everything it had. Not since the days when God had told Noah to pack in his umbrella business and “think big” had such a storm been seen. The Blaartoss was flung effortlessly into the air again and again as the waves flicked it savagely from crest to crest. In the tiny cabin, Tanius was tossed around like a rubber ball in a washing machine. Floor became wall and wall became ceiling as another wave lifted The Blaartoss ever higher, and Tanius felt the boat begin to overturn as its centre of gravity gave up the ghost. The wind howled in triumph as the boat began to capsize and…
… froze.
The wind cut off in mid-scream, as if someone had brutally grabbed it by the throat. An unearthly silence reigned.
Tanius blinked, not daring to move. Ten minutes passed, in no particular hurry. Tanius blinked again. Very slowly, he crawled on his hands and knees across the wall / floor and made his way to the door. Then he peered out into the storm.
The Blaartoss was lodged halfway up a wave which seemed to have frozen in mid-break. Around them, the sea had become a vast mountain-range of still, grey waves and the sky above was a cheerless canvas of depthless mist. It was as if someone had accidentally sat down on the universe’s remote, and pressed the pause button.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
Tanius glanced up sharply. At the stern of The Blaartoss, sitting casually on nothing at all, was a short, stocky man in a dark green T-shirt and a faded pair of jeans. There was a small round badge pinned to his top which read ‘To Hell with the lot of you’.
“Who”, asked Tanius in the slow and calculated tones of one who has just passed through the warped door marked ‘gibbering insanity’ and out into the relative calm of the padded room beyond, “are you?”
“I’m Nick”, said the man, winking at him in an avuncular fashion. He stood up and sauntered leisurely over to Tanius, not seeming at all bothered by the fact that there was nothing but thin air to actually saunter leisurely on.
“Right. I can only hold this for a couple more minutes – five tops – so let’s get on with it”, he said. He squatted down to where Tanius, still on his knees, was gripping the door jamb, and gave him a friendly smile.
“You’re going to die when this all starts up again, right? Don’t kid yourself. You have abso-fucking-lutely no chance at all of surviving this one. Trust me on this”.
He seemed to be waiting for acknowledgement, so Tanius nodded dumbly.
“Unless…”, said Nick slowly. He grinned at Tanius with a look that said ‘go on, ask me’.
Tanius just nodded again. He was hoping that if he kept on nodding agreeably, this strange man would go back to wherever he had come from, leaving Tanius to get on with drowning in peace.
Nick was still giving him an encouraging look, eyebrows raised and mouth stuck in a half smile of anticipation. “Unless…” he prompted again.
“Unless what?” said Tanius finally. Nick beamed at him, and waved his hand about in a complicated, not to mention physically impossible, manner. An A4 sheet of paper appeared out of nowhere.
“Ta-daa!” said he. “Unless you sign this”.
“What is that?” asked Tanius, eyeing the paper warily. He could see writing on it. Lots of writing in small black print.
“Contract”, said Nick. “You survive the storm, live a long happy life, etc etc, and we get your soul when you eventually do kick the bucket”.
Tanius, who had so far been incredibly slow on the uptake - although in his defence he was in a partly inverted boat which was stuck in a petrified wave – blinked as the proverbial penny dropped.
“You are the devil!” he cried.
“Um… yeah”, said Nick. “What’s your point?”
“But I am a good man!” said Tanius, “why are you picking on me?”
Nick tsk-ed impatiently, as if he couldn’t believe how remarkably dense Tanius was.
“Well, that’s the whole idea, isn’t it, you Muppet! He waved the contract under Tanius’ nose as he spoke. Tanius caught a glimpse of the words ‘eternal damnation’ and ‘brimstone’ and, somehow more alarmingly, ‘tea-bagging’.
“There’s no point in going for the bad guys, is there?” Nick continued. “They find their way on their own. We’re trying to target the goodies”. He paused and pointed at Tanius with a winning smile. “Of which you, my friend, are one”.
He looked up at the sky, and then at the peak of the nearest wave.
“Look. That wave is going to come crashing down like a ton of bricks any minute now, and you’re going to be under it for longer than you can hold your breath, so I’ll cut to the chase. Sign this…” he pointed at the contract, “… and live. Don’t and die. Simple as that. So what’s it going to be? No pressure, take your time. You’ve got thirty seconds”.
“I would like to read it first!”, said Tanius desperately.
“Sure”, said Nick, handing it over. “Twenty seconds”.
“Ten seconds have not passed!” protested Tanius.
“Yeah yeah, whatever. Ten seconds left. Nine… eight…”
“What about a game of chess? I’m good at chess…”
“Nope. That only happens in artsy movies and Chris De Burgh songs. Six… five…”
Tanius glanced up at the towering wave, which had begun to quiver, and gulped.
“Three… two…”
Tanius hastily signed his name on the dotted line in a series of frantic loops.
“One. Cheers”, said Nick, snatching the contract from his outthrust hand. Without further ado, he winked out of existence.
The wave came crashing down. Tanius screamed.
And woke up in bed.
***
Austin Spooler opened his eyes. An overpowering smell of brimstone invaded his nostrils and made his brain want to cough. Bewildered, he looked around. He seemed to be standing on a moonscape, provided that the moon was made of smoking, burning lava and rivers of blood, with the screams of the damned for background music.
“Oh shit”, said the soul of Austin Spooler.
“Hmm, shit indeed”, said the short, stocky man in a dark green T-shirt and a faded pair of jeans who had suddenly appeared beside him. He was wearing a badge which read ‘Hello. My name is Nick’ and flicking through a notebook.
“What…?” started Austin, but the man held up a hand to silence him.
“Gimme a minute here, would you?”
Nick found whatever page he was looking for, and squinted at it in the wavering light.
“Hmm. Tanius Poleros”.
He absent-mindedly waved his hand about in a complicated gesture. To Austin, it looked as if his fingers were dancing a tango for five on his palm. An A4 sheet of paper popped into being.
“Heyhey, what’s this then?”, muttered Nick, peering at the paper. He looked up at Austin, then down at the squiggly signature at the foot of the page.
“Austin Spooler?”
“Yes”, said Austin in a dry whisper.
Nick’s eyes darted from one name to the other, a frown of concentration creasing his forehead. Then, as realisation dawned, he chuckled and looked up at Austin with merriment dancing in his eyes.
“Would you believe it?” he chortled incredulously, “you're a victim of dyslexia!”
Austin stared at him uncomprehendingly. Nick clapped a hand around his shoulder and gave him a companionable grin.
“Austin Spooler, you have got to be the unluckiest man in the world”, he said cheerfully, and then gave him a look of concern as Austin broke down into tears.
Nick led him gently along a twisting path. Paved, of course, with human skulls and the flesh of the wicked. Seconds later, the choking black smoke had completely obscured them from view.
And from that moment on, it was downhill all the way.
He was born in the middle of a blackout during one of the worst storms in living history. An erratic bolt of lightning had wiped out the National Grid early that evening, and then, a few hours later, with uncanny meteorological precision, another bolt had put the hospital’s old asthmatic generator out of its misery. In the darkness, a screaming and sweating Mrs Spooler, having refused all drugs in order to “experience labour in all its natural glory”, had taken out the head doctor by planting a wildly flailing foot firmly in his face, breaking his nose and rendering him unconscious. Eventually, baby Austin had been dragged kicking and screaming into the cold dark world by a first-year medical student who was capable of determining the respective locations of his arse and his elbow only if given a second try.
From that moment on, it was downhill all the way.
By the age of twenty, Austin had, in a series of freak accidents, broken almost every bone in his body at least twice, with the notable exception of, funnily enough, his left humerus. By thirty, he had been the victim of six burglaries, four hit-and-runs, two drive-by shootings and three bank hold-ups. By forty, he had been married five times, divorced twice and widowed thrice. He had spent most of his fifties behind bars, having stepped out one morning to post a letter and ended up, through an extraordinary chain of events, serving a life sentence in a tiny prison cell in Thailand, wrongly accused of murdering a small village. He had been released nine years later, when the real murderer, in an uncharacteristic burst of drunken guilt, had confessed to it all. Upon his return to England, while being questioned by an assembly of reporters at the airport, Austin had simply shrugged, smiled a ‘shit happens’ smile, and said “Mistakes will be made”, before tripping over his shoelace and tumbling down an escalator, breaking both humeri in six places.
Not once had Austin bemoaned his life of misfortune and misadventure. Day after day, he was met by ill fortune of such cosmic proportions that it would have reduced lesser men to tears of frustration, and yet not a single complaint nor lament had ever passed his lips. For Austin was a man of faith, and he knew that for every broken bone, for every bruise, beating and bout of buggery that he had suffered in life, he would be rewarded hundredfold in heaven.
Today was Austin’s eighty-fifth birthday, and he was dying.
He was understandably over the moon at the prospect.
***
Born of a Greek father and a Spanish mother, Tanius Poleros had inherited his father’s good looks and his mother’s passionate nature. He had also inherited his grandfather’s battered old fishing boat when the old man had prematurely gone to meet his maker with a half-chewed stuffed olive lodged fatally in his throat, and it was with this boat that Tanius made a living, providing the residents of Anguila Frito, right on the outskirts of Candlewick, with the freshest and tastiest fish anywhere in the small seaside village and beyond.
The boat was a far cry from the splintered wreck that his grandfather had left him. Months of loving restoration had made it the envy of fishermen all round the village. It gleamed from bow to stern. Brass fittings twinkled in the rays of the sun like liquid gold. Not a single scratch marred its brilliant white hull, and the fire-engine red strip that ran along it could be seen miles out at sea. Across the red stripe, hand-painted in bible black italics, the name of the boat: The Blaartoss. (A large number of people had wondered about the meaning of the name. Had they bothered to ask Tanius, he would have been mildly surprised, for surely everybody knew what an albatross was? He would then have found out that he was dyslexic. But nobody asked.)
Throughout his fifty-six years as a fisherman, Tanius had been caught in storms at sea of epic proportions, and he had always relished the challenge, farted in the face of fear and returned to tell the tale. Tourists to the village would join him of an evening at the local bar, and listen with wide eyes and unhinged jaws as he told them of fifty foot waves and torrents of rain so heavy that the fish swam through it at eye level. They bought him beer as he spoke of thunder and lightning and howling winds. And when they left, he would still be rambling on, pissed as a newt and embellishing his anecdotes with mermaids and the odd sunken treasure chest.
This time, however, he wasn’t so confident of making it back.
The storm wasn’t playing fair. It had snuck up on Tanius from out of nowhere and then viciously and violently hit him with everything it had. Not since the days when God had told Noah to pack in his umbrella business and “think big” had such a storm been seen. The Blaartoss was flung effortlessly into the air again and again as the waves flicked it savagely from crest to crest. In the tiny cabin, Tanius was tossed around like a rubber ball in a washing machine. Floor became wall and wall became ceiling as another wave lifted The Blaartoss ever higher, and Tanius felt the boat begin to overturn as its centre of gravity gave up the ghost. The wind howled in triumph as the boat began to capsize and…
… froze.
The wind cut off in mid-scream, as if someone had brutally grabbed it by the throat. An unearthly silence reigned.
Tanius blinked, not daring to move. Ten minutes passed, in no particular hurry. Tanius blinked again. Very slowly, he crawled on his hands and knees across the wall / floor and made his way to the door. Then he peered out into the storm.
The Blaartoss was lodged halfway up a wave which seemed to have frozen in mid-break. Around them, the sea had become a vast mountain-range of still, grey waves and the sky above was a cheerless canvas of depthless mist. It was as if someone had accidentally sat down on the universe’s remote, and pressed the pause button.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
Tanius glanced up sharply. At the stern of The Blaartoss, sitting casually on nothing at all, was a short, stocky man in a dark green T-shirt and a faded pair of jeans. There was a small round badge pinned to his top which read ‘To Hell with the lot of you’.
“Who”, asked Tanius in the slow and calculated tones of one who has just passed through the warped door marked ‘gibbering insanity’ and out into the relative calm of the padded room beyond, “are you?”
“I’m Nick”, said the man, winking at him in an avuncular fashion. He stood up and sauntered leisurely over to Tanius, not seeming at all bothered by the fact that there was nothing but thin air to actually saunter leisurely on.
“Right. I can only hold this for a couple more minutes – five tops – so let’s get on with it”, he said. He squatted down to where Tanius, still on his knees, was gripping the door jamb, and gave him a friendly smile.
“You’re going to die when this all starts up again, right? Don’t kid yourself. You have abso-fucking-lutely no chance at all of surviving this one. Trust me on this”.
He seemed to be waiting for acknowledgement, so Tanius nodded dumbly.
“Unless…”, said Nick slowly. He grinned at Tanius with a look that said ‘go on, ask me’.
Tanius just nodded again. He was hoping that if he kept on nodding agreeably, this strange man would go back to wherever he had come from, leaving Tanius to get on with drowning in peace.
Nick was still giving him an encouraging look, eyebrows raised and mouth stuck in a half smile of anticipation. “Unless…” he prompted again.
“Unless what?” said Tanius finally. Nick beamed at him, and waved his hand about in a complicated, not to mention physically impossible, manner. An A4 sheet of paper appeared out of nowhere.
“Ta-daa!” said he. “Unless you sign this”.
“What is that?” asked Tanius, eyeing the paper warily. He could see writing on it. Lots of writing in small black print.
“Contract”, said Nick. “You survive the storm, live a long happy life, etc etc, and we get your soul when you eventually do kick the bucket”.
Tanius, who had so far been incredibly slow on the uptake - although in his defence he was in a partly inverted boat which was stuck in a petrified wave – blinked as the proverbial penny dropped.
“You are the devil!” he cried.
“Um… yeah”, said Nick. “What’s your point?”
“But I am a good man!” said Tanius, “why are you picking on me?”
Nick tsk-ed impatiently, as if he couldn’t believe how remarkably dense Tanius was.
“Well, that’s the whole idea, isn’t it, you Muppet! He waved the contract under Tanius’ nose as he spoke. Tanius caught a glimpse of the words ‘eternal damnation’ and ‘brimstone’ and, somehow more alarmingly, ‘tea-bagging’.
“There’s no point in going for the bad guys, is there?” Nick continued. “They find their way on their own. We’re trying to target the goodies”. He paused and pointed at Tanius with a winning smile. “Of which you, my friend, are one”.
He looked up at the sky, and then at the peak of the nearest wave.
“Look. That wave is going to come crashing down like a ton of bricks any minute now, and you’re going to be under it for longer than you can hold your breath, so I’ll cut to the chase. Sign this…” he pointed at the contract, “… and live. Don’t and die. Simple as that. So what’s it going to be? No pressure, take your time. You’ve got thirty seconds”.
“I would like to read it first!”, said Tanius desperately.
“Sure”, said Nick, handing it over. “Twenty seconds”.
“Ten seconds have not passed!” protested Tanius.
“Yeah yeah, whatever. Ten seconds left. Nine… eight…”
“What about a game of chess? I’m good at chess…”
“Nope. That only happens in artsy movies and Chris De Burgh songs. Six… five…”
Tanius glanced up at the towering wave, which had begun to quiver, and gulped.
“Three… two…”
Tanius hastily signed his name on the dotted line in a series of frantic loops.
“One. Cheers”, said Nick, snatching the contract from his outthrust hand. Without further ado, he winked out of existence.
The wave came crashing down. Tanius screamed.
And woke up in bed.
***
Austin Spooler opened his eyes. An overpowering smell of brimstone invaded his nostrils and made his brain want to cough. Bewildered, he looked around. He seemed to be standing on a moonscape, provided that the moon was made of smoking, burning lava and rivers of blood, with the screams of the damned for background music.
“Oh shit”, said the soul of Austin Spooler.
“Hmm, shit indeed”, said the short, stocky man in a dark green T-shirt and a faded pair of jeans who had suddenly appeared beside him. He was wearing a badge which read ‘Hello. My name is Nick’ and flicking through a notebook.
“What…?” started Austin, but the man held up a hand to silence him.
“Gimme a minute here, would you?”
Nick found whatever page he was looking for, and squinted at it in the wavering light.
“Hmm. Tanius Poleros”.
He absent-mindedly waved his hand about in a complicated gesture. To Austin, it looked as if his fingers were dancing a tango for five on his palm. An A4 sheet of paper popped into being.
“Heyhey, what’s this then?”, muttered Nick, peering at the paper. He looked up at Austin, then down at the squiggly signature at the foot of the page.
“Austin Spooler?”
“Yes”, said Austin in a dry whisper.
Nick’s eyes darted from one name to the other, a frown of concentration creasing his forehead. Then, as realisation dawned, he chuckled and looked up at Austin with merriment dancing in his eyes.
“Would you believe it?” he chortled incredulously, “you're a victim of dyslexia!”
Austin stared at him uncomprehendingly. Nick clapped a hand around his shoulder and gave him a companionable grin.
“Austin Spooler, you have got to be the unluckiest man in the world”, he said cheerfully, and then gave him a look of concern as Austin broke down into tears.
Nick led him gently along a twisting path. Paved, of course, with human skulls and the flesh of the wicked. Seconds later, the choking black smoke had completely obscured them from view.
And from that moment on, it was downhill all the way.
