As a means of displaying his gratitude to ObscureWriter.com for the privilege of an author’s profile, horror writer Thomas James Brown is sharing the prologue to his upcoming novel, Revive, with the readers of the website. He would like to thank Lionel Houde for the opportunity to represent himself on ObscureWriter.com and hopes the prologue is well received.
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The coffee coated the inside surface of the cup, a smooth, beige smear against the delicate bone white of the china. That last, lingering layer was the sign of a good latte, mused Maggie; evidence that she’d decanted the shots well, evidence that she’d steamed the milk to just the right temperature and consistency, evidence of over thirty years of dedication, loyalty and practice.
And if the creamy brown coating wasn’t enough of a sign, there was always the empty cup to fall back on.
‘Thanks… Thank you, Maggie…’
An old man pottered towards the front door of the coffee shop. He moved with a slight limp, not dissimilar from a puppet dangling by fishing-line strings. The resemblance didn’t stop there, either; he really was a marionette of the coffee. In the three decades she’d worked here, Maggie could count on both hands the days he’d been absent from the shop, the times he’d skipped on his daily dose.
His cane clattered quietly against the wooden floor.
‘Don’t you worry, Reg, just make sure you get home safe tonight.’
‘Yes… Yes, I will… Bus, you see.’
‘Well, you’d better run. You don’t want to miss it!’ She smiled playfully. The expression took decades off her leathery face.
Reg snorted with laughter. ‘Yes… No running, I don’t think… Thank you, drink was lovely, Maggie…’
‘Anytime, Dear.’
Locking the door behind him, she watched the old man through the window as he pottered down the lamp-lit alley. He was wrapped up tight, at least, in that same black Mackintosh coat he always seemed to wear. He’d need it at this time of the evening; the cold was really starting to come in early. The dark, too. She shook her head, tutted, before turning from the window and getting back to work. It must be something in the coffee, which kept him returning, kept them all returning.
It had done a good enough job of keeping her here for nearly half a lifetime.
Quiet crept across the shop floor. It was vacant, hallowed, but not unsettling and she marched confidently through it. The fridges hummed away in the corner and at the back the dishwasher groaned as it always did, churning through another cycle. Following the sound, Maggie dropped off Reg’s cup and saucer before returning to the front with some crockery. The china felt familiar in her tired old hands. She could tell without looking which were the small cups, the mediums and the larges. It was like they belonged there, in her grasp, and she here. She really had given her life to the place. And now the day of her last shift had finally arrived.
Her wiry arm faltered as she reached across to place the last cup atop the coffee machine. The pale band of skin where her ring usually sat – she never wore it at work – seemed to catch her eyes.
What was she going to do tomorrow?
‘A stiff drink and a lie-in, I think.’ She took a deep breath through her thin, tight lips, could taste the coffee at the back of her throat, the coffee that seemed to have saturated every inch of her being. They’d both been a long time coming. A long time, not that she was ever one to complain. If she was entirely honest, she wasn’t sure how she felt. It hadn’t really sunk in yet, her leaving this place. Maybe she’d take up jigsaws. Maybe she wouldn’t.
A shandy would probably suffice.
Once the last of the cups was neatly stacked where it belonged, she busied herself tidying the coffee counter. Anything remotely dirty went into a plastic crate, to await the dishwasher. The rest she returned to their shelves. The coffee shop rang with the delicate clink of china, the rattle of metal as spoons and knives and other, more coffee-specific tools were dropped unceremoniously into the crate.
It was only as she switched off the grinder and began emptying it of any leftover beans that she caught movement, out of the corner of her eye, in the stainless-steel reflection of the coffee machine.
She spun round, surprised, expecting she’d missed a customer, hidden in the blind spot around from the dishwasher.
Empty tables, worn leather sofas as the vast blackness of outside met her view. Of customers, there were none in sight.
‘Hello?’
The hum of the fridges, the groan of the dishwasher, the ticking of the clock above the till and nothing else.
The confirmation of the empty coffee shop was as reassuring as it was unsettling. She very rarely missed anyone at the end of the evening. The premises weren’t large by any stretch of the imagination, and she knew nearly everyone who drank here by name and seat anyway. She hadn’t locked anyone in with her in well over a year and that had only been because Reg had fallen asleep across one of the sofas one evening. She prided herself in her professionalism, in her immaculate customer service, even if it was only the same dozen customers on repeat. Without standards, they were no better than any of the other coffee houses, the faceless, international conglomerates on the high street, and she wouldn’t have anything to do with those. Maggie’s face darkened.
But there had definitely been movement…
She scanned the coffee shop one last time; the sea of chair legs, the rickety, bleached bone blinds, the sheer, wiped-down tables, before turning back to the grinder.
It must have been her reflection, caught in the shell of the coffee machine. She edged a little to the left, where it wouldn’t catch her again and where she didn’t have to risk seeing her own drawn-out face in the metal. This close to the grinder, the rich, intoxicating scent of roasted coffee bean filled her nostrils. That she could still smell it was a testament to the strong, full-bodied flavour of the beans they used. Another waft of it rose into her face as she poured the beans into a plastic tub and her sharp nose crinkled critically. They smelled…strange. Like coffee, obviously, but there was something else beneath the bitterness. Something…almost mouldering. Like they were too fresh.
Must be the new stock, she remembered. Norman had said he’d changed suppliers. Her coffee had tasted fine earlier, and they’d had no complaints. With steadfast hands, she resumed emptying the grinder.
The tarnished hull of the coffee machine would not be ignored and she found her gaze flicking critically, almost imperceptibly, back and forth from it. Her warped reflection twisted in the metal.
She used to be pretty, once. That machine had watched her age with the turning decades, withering from a clean, bright-eyed thirty-something into the weary, work-tired woman of today. Perhaps the machine had done more than watch, she thought, as she stooped to stash the Tupperwared beans under the counter. Perhaps it was because of that machine that she’d aged so; that infernal, accident-prone pile of cogs and wires and God-knows what else they packed away inside there, stealing her youth, her energy, and siphoning it away to others in little porcelain cups, under the pretence of caffeine.
And all the while it had sat, dull and metallic and unaltered by the turn of time.
‘The best years of your life, Mags, that’s what else is inside there. The best years.’
For the briefest moment, she entertained the thought of dismantling the machine. Then she banished it, reminded herself that she wasn’t so bitter a woman, that she’d enjoyed working here over the years. She’d raised a glorious family on her wages, four strapping young men, each with wives – and lives – of their own now. She was very proud of how she’d lived. Besides, Norman would go crazy if she tampered with his precious coffee machine.
It was not an entirely dissuasive thought.
A gleam in her eyes, she retreated to the staffroom, before the temptation became too much.
The staffroom was a state. She shook her head, reminded herself that it wasn’t her problem anymore, and began rooting around for more beans. It doubled up as a stockroom – the little closet at the back barely counted – and all the new deliveries had been dumped here this morning, waiting to be distributed across the shop front. The essentials had made it, from the look of the few, desecrated boxes; Styrofoam stuffing thrown inconsiderately across the floor. The rest had been forgotten about. Forgotten, or left for her.
She rolled her eyes, before taking the plunge into the room. She needed coffee beans, that was all. A couple of bags, to stick under the counter for the morning. The least she could do was close the place well, leave it in top shape for Norman when he got in at six, even if he didn’t show her the same courtesy in the evenings. Her lips pinched wordlessly tight.
It took her nearly ten minutes to find the damned things, such was the state of the place, and when she did they were not as she’d expected. Gone was the dark green packaging, the Fair Trade brand, the familiar logo. Norman had shacked up with some new suppliers. Cheaper, more profitable ones, from somewhere in Ethiopia according to the label. No wonder they’d taken her so long to find.
Pulling a disapproving face, Maggie grabbed three bags and returned to the shop front. The quiet buzz of the fridges droned back into her ears, the sluice of the dishwasher gurgling across the shop floor. The beans felt heavier than their predecessors had, the foil packets crinkling between her fingers. She strode behind the counter, dumped them on a shelf, found more utensils to run through the dishwasher -
And three packets of sandwiches, scattered across the floor.
Maggie frowned, her forehead vanishing beneath a rush of wrinkles. She was sure they hadn’t been there before. She’d have noticed them, when seeing Reg out. Stifling a tut, she marched over, bending down to return them to their shelves. For just a second, her hand hesitated. Then she snatched them up and replaced them appropriately. They were the chicken mayo, she noticed critically. A favourite, they were always being over-stocked. And when the fridges became too full, they fell out. It happened all the time.
And yet…
The quiet crawled back, weighed down on her, hung like a dead weight in the air, except not quite as dead as she was accustomed to.
Pale-faced but narrow eyed, Maggie glanced anxiously around. The hallowed quiet did seem different tonight. Reverent. Somewhat stale. She’d been to enough funerals in her time to know the air of morbid veneration that accompanied them and she felt it now, in the coffee shop no less, seeping from the walls like a spilled coffee, a discoloured haze in the air. The young ones, they talked about a presence, a Coffee Ghost…
She shook her head, laughed derisively, ran a hand through her wispy, straw grey hair.
‘What’s come over you, old girl?’
Nothing had changed. Nothing was different, tonight. Close would be just as it always was, for the last thirty years no less. She must be feeling paranoid, unsettled by the prospect of tomorrow. Of saying goodbye. That was all. She didn’t go in for any of that Coffee Ghost nonsense. She’d worked hard her whole life to take the holidays, pay the bills, save for rainy days. She didn’t have time for uneasy feelings or silly superstitions. Not unless there was overtime involved, anyway.
The clock behind the till-point etched steadily, recurrently, into Maggie’s mind. Her left hand twitched with every quiet tick.
Her narrow eyes returned to the fridges. The cold drinks were almost empty. A couple of Cokes remained and some bottled water, from somewhere up north, but little else. Wheeling away the crate filled with used utensils, she set the dishwasher on another cycle, then made for the staffroom. Access to the cellar, where the drinks were kept, lay beneath one of the many boxes strewn about the room. It was cold down there. Cold and dark. Perfect for storing the chilled products. She’d grab some crates, fill some drinks and hurry through her final close. There’d be no complaints tomorrow with the high standards she’d kept over the years.
And if there were, she wouldn’t be here to listen to them.
The familiar, mechanised creaks of the dishwasher roared into life as the machine fired up again, filling her ears, rolling like ancient drum beats into her consciousness. Drum beats and voices. Her footsteps faltered as she turned from the dishwasher, but she didn’t look back. She refused to, as much as she refused to hear the tribal percussion, the savage chanting, hammering into her head. There were no drums, primal and ancient and exotic, beating within the coffee shop. There was no guttural hymn. It was just the dishwasher, gearing up for another wash. Those buzzing midges, like a swarm of pestilent flies, they were just the fridge units and the clammy, equatorial heat that pressed on the damp of her blouse was just steam, escaping from the dishwasher. Just steam, that was all. Just the dishwasher.
She stepped out onto the shop floor, oblivious to the dark, emaciated figure reflected in the bright metal of the dishwasher behind her, and strode quickly towards the staffroom. Her little black plimsolls, chosen for their comfortable fit against her aching feet, squeaked quietly across the shop floor.
The staffroom was just as she’d left it. Marching through the Styrofoam, her chest rising and falling hurriedly, Maggie shifted a box, lifted with her knees, dumped it heavily on the table.
A trapdoor stared innocuously back at her.
She eyed it apprehensively. It was the same trapdoor she’d used since starting here, the same staffroom, nothing was different, nothing had changed, and yet…
She knew how it went, at the pictures. In those frightening films things always lurked in the cellars. Not so much nowadays, with all the blood and gore and naked Hollywood lesbians – four sons had afforded her more than enough insight into modern cinematography – but the formula remained the same. It always did, with those kinds of films. Death awaited those who descended into cellars.
Maggie caught herself. Her pale, pursed lips twitched at the corners and she rubbed her temples with a coffee-stained hand. Death, in the cellar? What had come over her? People died from cancer, old age and occasionally from queuing in town on a Saturday – not because of monsters in darkened cellars. This was no horror picture. It was going half eight, on a crisp November night. Her eldest, Mark, was waiting for her at home, visiting with Cheryl. She would cook them both a chilli, just like she’d promised, and they’d settle down in front of the TV for some primetime family viewing.
She might even make them a coffee.
Horror pictures? Noises? Reflections in the coffee machine? She took a slow breath, to steady herself, and managed another humourless laugh. Her dentures flashed, revealed for a moment from behind those thin lips. If Rhonda could see her now…
Reaching down, Maggie grasped the handle, lifted, and descended into the cold, yawning black of the cellar for the very last time.
*
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