WINNER, 2020
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
BY KEELY MacCULLOCH
“That one,” Geordie said, using his chin to gesture.
Ed leaned forward on their shared barrel, eyeing the man in the neat coat and hat striding up the lane. “Who is he?”
“The barber,” Geordie said with an exaggerated shudder.
“What’s wrong with that? Scared of getting your hair cut?”
“He carries a razor everywhere,” Geordie said. “And one of his eyes is always looking somewhere else. Once he came along this way and there was blood on his collar. And he’s plain creepy.”
“What?” Ed said. “What do you mean about his eye? He’s got a lazy one?”
“That’s it, a lazy eye! He’ll look at you with the one but the other will drift off . . . somewhere else.”
Ed thought about that. “What about the blood?”
“I swear it—little drops all over his collar.”
They leaned forward, watching the man approach.
“My old man went to his shop once,” Geordie added, his trump card. “Never came back. I think the bugger murdered him.”
Ed had to agree, the barber was a shifty fellow, glancing left and right. They watched him stop outside a grocery. He had a polite conversation with the proprietor and then bought two apples. He had a very pleasant voice.
“’Course,” Geordie mused. “Dad might’ve left on account of how much Mum hounded him.”
Ed thought about that before nodding along. “Yeah, your Mum is a bit demanding.”
“Positively shrewish.”
“Right.”
The barber tipped his hat to them. Up close he didn’t have a lazy eye, and he was much too small to be threatening at all.
Ed nudged Geordie. “Who else, then?”
“Eh . . . ” he looked around. “Aha! See her?”
Ed gazed obediently across the street. A young woman was leaning out of the top story window, calling down to an older passer-by.
“She murdered her husband,” Geordie said enthusiastically. “And his ghost comes ’round to knock on the door at night, hoping to be let in.”
It seemed a stretch. Ed wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Naw, I’ve seen her husband. It’s that bloke who runs down to the cheese shop every Wednesday.”
Geordie’s jaw dropped. “That loony? Wouldn’t be surprised if she did off him and lock his ghost out late at night.”
They laughed over that. The woman in the window pulled the shutters and vanished into her house. Her acquaintance on the street moved along. Silence hovered over the barrel as people continued to trickle past. Ed nudged Geordie.
“That one,” he suggested.
Geordie looked as directed, but lost interest immediately. “Nothing weird about that one,” he complained. “He’s plain as whitewash.”
The fellow certainly didn’t look out of place. He was dressed respectably, nothing odd or off-putting about his appearance. The man had the kind of face a person passed over; he was perfectly average, perfectly plain, as Geordie had said. Even so, as he drew closer Ed could feel the hair rising on the back of his neck.
Passing them by, the man looked at Ed. For a fraction of a second, Ed found himself staring into the face of a white, grinning skull. He grabbed Geordie’s arm.
“Did you see that?”
“What?” Geordie gazed down the street. “What are you looking at?” Ed turned to point, but faltered. The man was gone. He hadn’t even made it to the end of the road.
“That man . . . where did he go?”
Geordie looked at him oddly. “What man?”
“Oh, ha ha,” Ed said crossly. “The one you said was plain as whitewash. He was going that way.”
Geordie shrugged. “Must have wandered off.”
Ed stared, troubled. “I thought . . . his face looked funny for a moment. Like he was only a skull.”
Geordie burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny,” Ed said, annoyed.
“Probably all this talk of ghosts,” Geordie said, trying to be kind. Then he grinned. “How about this one,” he suggested, pointing to Ed. “He saw a boring man one day. Then he realized the man had a skull for a face! He thought it was a trick of the light—but then later that day, he died. Because the man was really Death.”
Ed shuddered. “Don’t. What if it comes true?”
“Why, then that would make me the devil himself, wouldn’t it?”
Ed scowled as Geordie laughed. “If you’re the devil, I’m a daffodil.”
That only made Geordie howl more. He rocked back a touch too far, and fell straight off his perch. His head thudded against the iron boot scraper next to the hooper’s door.
“Geordie? Geordie!” Ed hopped off the barrel and knelt next to his friend. Blood was running along the cracks in the cobblestones. When Ed shook his shoulder, Geordie didn’t blink.
A nearby movement made his blood run cold. The whitewash man crouched down beside the barrel. Ed gasped.
“Don’t fret, lad,” said the man, gathering up Geordie’s body. “I’m only here for this one.”
Ed swore he saw them both go, but afterward Geordie was still lying in the street.
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Keely MacCulloch recently graduated from Kingston University in London, U.K., with an MA in publishing. She lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. “That One” is her first published story.