Hello!
My new album, Rusty Old World, is out now on CD and Digital Download from Bandcamp! This brings together all the songs released in 2022 with a couple of bonus tracks from late 2021.
Would be great if you would take a look and help support indie music!
Thanks!
https://garryabbott.bandcamp.com/album/rusty-old-world
Hello! I am pleased to announce the release of my latest song in my song-a-month-athon for 2022: ‘Lost In Each Other’!
You can also hear this on these popular streaming services:
I am very happy with this one. It again features my new Faith 12 string, along with my Takamine G Series 6 string, cajon, percussion, bass and vocals. I’m particularity happy with the phased backing vocal harmonies in the bridges.
These are perhaps some of the most interesting chord sequences I’ve found and worked up in a long time – they just seemed to suggest themselves as I was composing it, a natural progression but with lots of augmentations and suspensions.
Lyrically, it’s quite a straight forward love song, but why not, eh?
I hope you enjoy and take a listen. If you do, please share on your socials and in the real world. This song is one that I will hopefully soon be playing live again with a friend, so one day you may actually be able to watch me perform!
Thanks
Garry
Here is my February release for 2022 (a year in which I am attempting to release a song a month) – ‘Kings of Nothing’. Below the video is a bit more info about the song and links to other platforms:
‘Kings of Nothing’ was written in the winter of 2021 after I’d been listening to a news item about the state of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of troops and how no one wins and the ‘victors’, whoever they are, are left presiding over misery.
The music emerged from a riff played on my new ‘Faith’ 12 string, which seemed to elevate the fairly simple open string picking with moving bass note to a new level, and create resonance that flowed into the chorus changes and seemed to build up throughout. Because of this gradual crescendo through the verses and choruses, I have opted for an ‘electronic’ drum kit to cut through the mix, with the addition of live percussion to layer this up later in the song (Djembe).
This song is also the first to feature one of my favorite music toys, the Otamatone:
I’ve had this toy for years, but never found the right moment until now! You can hear it in the repeated chorus towards the end of the song, crying out over the madness!
This song also features the use of my new acoustic bass, doubled up from a direct input and microphone – allowing me to blend the deeper rounded tones of the DI, with the top end rhythmic fret and plec sounds.
I’m happy with how it turned out and looking forward to hopefully playing this live later this year in the new duet I am currently rehearsing with – the live version of this is sounding great!
Here are some more links to find this in the major places, but you can also find this on most platforms:
https://music.apple.com/gb/album/kings-of-nothing/1602014933?i=1602014934
My new song, Rusty Old World came out today. You can find the lyrics and all the major links for it below. I would love it if you would support my music by having a listen and liking, sharing, rating, reviewing – whatever you feel you can do.
This song was born out of something my 4 year old daughter said – she was playing some imaginary game in the back of the car and said something about ‘This Rusty Old World’, so, I had that.
The rest of the lyrics follow as a kind of a warning against a dystopian, synthetic future, where all our worst fears have come true, and the materials of the industrial and technological age are turning to dust.
This fairly epic theme lent itself to a suitably rousing musical style – so I went with a country, folk foreboding pathos, kind of thing – attempting in my own small way to conjure up that ‘Riders on the Storm’ kind of feeling. This gave me a good opportunity to use my new Faith 12 string, Stagg acoustic bass, and even bust out a bit of harmonica!
I hope you enjoy.
Rusty Old World
I don’t want to live in this rusty old world,
Where the wheels keep on turning and we are the oil,
No I don’t want to live in this rusty old world.
Sunlight can’t shine
Through oxidised skies
The Warmth can not reach,
Metal and minds.
Clouded by memories,
Of simpler times.
Falling to pieces,
Now dust in our eyes,
I don’t want to live in this dusty old world,
Where the earth’s good for nothing, it’s what we deserve
No I don’t want to live in this dusty old world.
Waters will rise,
Faster than our tempers.
The world will sink down
To no ones surprise
Will we be safe and dry?
Inside our computers?
Never again,
To open our eyes.
I don’t want to live in this silicon world
Where the people are plastic and so are our souls,
No I don’t want to live in this silicon world.
Can love survive,
Through six inches of steel?
Is there anything left
That we recognise?
Will the future provide?
What we all need to feel?
Not just numbers on screens.
That feeling inside.
I don’t want to live in this rusty old world,
Where the wheels keep on turning and we are the oil,
No I don’t want to live in this rusty old world.
No I don’t want to live in this dusty old world.
No I don’t want to live in this silicon world.
No I don’t want to live…
You Tube
Spotify Link:
So, this is it, the 4th and last ‘lead’ single from the Bag Ratty Bro EP project ‘Chapter and Multiverse’ is now available for streaming if you haven’t already got the EP!
Just click on the amazing artwork below to get links to the various services available to listen on!
And if you like this and want the full 6 song EP for as little as £1, then please grab a copy at Bandcamp by clicking on the image below!
Thanks to all those who have supported this project so far. It’s been an interesting experiment, and one that I’ve learned a lot from.
Hopefully Bag Ratty Bro will be back at some point, with a slightly new sound and more great artwork, but in the meantime, I will be focusing on acoustic based tracks under my own name, so look out for them!
Thanks
Gaz
Bag Ratty Bro
SHARES NEW SINGLE ‘RIGHT ON’
RELEASED APRIL 22nd, 2021
Pan-Reality Power Pop Combo Bag Ratty Bro released new single Right On on April 22nd, 2021. The single is the second release from the upcoming debut EP ‘Chapter and Multiverse’ that is available from May 13th, 2021.
Bag Ratty Bro are back again with more catchy guitar and vocal hooks that will have you humming ‘Right On’ in the dead of night, reaching for the earphones in a cold sweat and muttering, ‘just one more listen!’. You will lose your job, your sanity, your dignity, but it will all be worth it.
Lyrically, a theme of incredulous commentary on the constant outrage of the 21st Century condition continues. As Nancy, the bassist, puts it:
“Right On is about the madness of moral certainty in an uncertain world, and the danger of deepening divides by taking a position of privileged superiority without trying to reach any kind of understanding of the opposite view, no matter how repugnant it may outwardly seem. Will that do you? Sound.”
About Bag Ratty Bro
Bag Ratty Bro met aboard the liberated Nargonian Cruiser ‘Monstromo’ during an unlicensed zero-gravity harmonic duel.
Several time tours and dimension hops later, they’ve now decided to try and crack the home of Pop-Punk: Earth in the 20th Century. But they missed, so are going to try the 21st Century instead.
Bag Ratty Bro Socials / Contact
Twitter BagRattyBro@Gmail.Com Instagram Bandcamp Facebook
Hello again. This session is about a song I wrote and recorded in early February 2021 linked below:
This song came about from wanting to record something on my new ukulele, a rather nice Tanglewood TWT 3 if you’re interested, hence the intro and chorus to this is underpinned by double-tracked ukulele repeating a 4 chord sequence that I think rings out nicely on the diddy instrument.
When I started to work around this chord sequence, I found quite quickly that putting heavy guitars and a simple thumping bass line over this made the same chords stand out as a chorus, so the heaviness crept in quite quickly. I am pretty happy with how you can still here the little ukulele in there even in the heavy bits.
Every now and again I will get a song where I think, can I really just loop the chords all the way through? It feels like a cop out, but sometimes it just works. However, you really need to make the rhythm and feel quite different between the sections if you are going to do this, so I dropped out the uke, added a bit of funk to the bass line (which is doubled with fx in the verses) and a bit of wah-wah guitar over it all.
Hopefully this brings the dynamics down and finds a new groove for just long enough for the return of the heavy choruses to have impact. In the second round of the verse, I also added an instrumental bridge that combines the two a bit, and reminds me a little of ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, the excellent Beatle’s track from Abbey Road – that wasn’t intentional but their influence runs through everything I do despite myself.
I nearly didn’t finish this as I couldn’t find the right way into the lyrics. I got the Chorus line ‘It’s like something out of a dream…’ bit quite early, but I didn’t know what ‘it’ actually was! Nowadays, I need a theme/reason to write a song or I can’t get it finished. In the past I was happier to just string vaguely related words together, but I can’t do it now. I’m not saying that every word has meaning or is worried over, but I always know what the song is about overall, or what my ‘way in’ was.
Anyway, the final piece of this song lyric came form a news article about an appetite suppressant drug, and I just thought how miserable it would be to psychologically not have the joy of looking forward to food and satisfying that desire, even if it does stop you being fat. Then I linked this to how antidepressants suppress extremes of emotions (so I am told), and imagined a world where the ‘new you’ is a chemically altered none-feeling model of conformity. That’s not to say that I’m down on diet or mood pills – I’m just exaggerating the ideas for effect, kids.
Lyrics:
Suppress your appetite, and then you’ll never get fat.
May also never have fun, but don’t you worry about that.
Keep having restless nights? But won’t change your life?
Just listen to my voice. Will see you right it’s like…
Something out of a dream. Something you’ve neve seen,
Shiny Happy and Clean, The age of modern living.
It’s like something out of a dream, And you can get it for free.
If you’d only listen to me your doubts will be forgiven.
Can’t take the highs and the lows? Well then we’ll flatten you out.
Just another straight line, nothing to shout about.
You head full of ideas? Just take another deep breath.
Go and find some blue light .There’s nothing left. it’s like… (repeat chorus)
And there we go. It’s quite short and fast and bordering between my rocky and punky/garage sensibilities. I don’t know if this song will find a home outside of this demo, so show it some love if you like it. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think in the comments! Cheers.
The songwriting sessions are a series of blogs taking a quick peek behind the curtain of my songwriting methods to accompany my new songs and look back at some of my old favourites.
I’ve been writing songs for over 20 years now, but still feel like I am finding my stride, my voice, and my audience. Hopefully, someone will find these blogs interesting about the craft of songwriting, or connect with my efforts, or at the very least, the process of writing it down may hale me to figure a few things out.
This week it is a brand-new song, ‘The Monster of All’ written and recorded over 3 days at the end of January 2021. You can hear it here:
Soundcloud – The Monster of All
I tend to write very fast once I have an initial idea I want to expand on. In this case, the lyric came first, with ‘The Monster of All’ being one of my 3-year-old daughter’s characters in her make-believe world!
I think it’s a fascinating turn of phrase, and I am gathering up some of her ideas into notes to adapt into a possible fantasy fiction story eventually (I’m also a writer – see the sidebar for my published books). With this, however, I also thought it was a great starting place for a lyric – loaded with possible double meaning about the monsters inside us all etc. so I set to work looking for the music to go with it.
The music was then written over the next hour on acoustic guitar and refined during recording which was about another 2 to 3 hours, so probably about 5 hours in all to get this initial ‘demo’ version together (I rarely ever believe these songs to be finished as such when recording them all myself).
Once again, a recent episode of my Beatles Podcast had influenced me and I wanted to write something in triplets timing, along the lines of ‘This Boy’ and that general ‘do wop’ feel. So, I started with a pretty standard progression that you will hear in hundreds of 50s / early 60s songs, and then deviated on the 3rd and 4th chords to minor key and diminished variations, which hopefully breaks it out of that natural expectation of a major resolve.
The chorus emerged out of a natural change from the verses, and originally was half the length of the recorded version. The challenge with this came in the recording, trying to make this feel more pushed, lively, louder than the verse, and not just a variation on it. I tried a few things, including string backing and a distorted guitar. In the end I found that dropping the piano out of the verses and bringing it back for the chorus and links gave it the boost it needed (possibly – this is all open to interpretation).
Arrangement wise, I didn’t want this to go on too long with it’s quite steady 98 bpm tempo, so there is a pretty standard verse/chorus/verse/chorus pattern, with no mid 8 or solo section, a couple of repeats of the chorus bridge at the end and then a fade out.
Altogether, I am quite happy with it, and quite excited about possibly turning more of these fiction fantasy ideas into songs and creating a concept collection along with whatever I end up writing. Genre wise, I like the idea of ‘Dungeon Rock’! A blend of prog/rock/folk/fantasy themed songs? What do you think?
Anyway, I hope you had a listen and found this remotely interesting. If so, let me know using the contact form below or via my podcast or SoundCloud page, all linked in this article! I am always open to opportunities and collaborations too.
The cat dashed past Gerard’s legs and up the stairs in a black, scrabbling blur. Moments earlier the backdoor had crashed open, squeaking and clattering noisily in the frame.
He ran to the backroom and wrenched the door closed against the resistant wind and whipping rain. Gerard locked the door, leaving the key slightly turned. He took a final glance through the frosted pane into the garden, weakly lit by a neighbour’s security light, and returned to the living room.
The family watched as he knelt on the sofa under the front window and peered out into the street. They sat across the room, on the larger sofa, huddled together in the far corner.
‘I take it that’s the last of you?’ Gerard said without turning from his watch.
‘I told you, we’re all here’ the father replied.
Gerard turned his head and grimaced.
‘You didn’t mention the cat. I don’t remember a cat. I don’t remember any of this. Thought I would. Any other potential visitors I should know about?’
Of course I didn’t mention the cat! The father wanted to scream at the intruder. You break into my house, threaten my family, and you think I give a damn about the cat? But instead he just nodded and simply said, ‘No. Why does it matter?’
Gerard turned to the window. The family watched the leathery curls on the back of his neck wrinkle as he spoke.
‘Nothing matters now. Everywhere is locked. No getting in, no getting out. Now it begins.’
Despite her husband’s hurried appeal for calm when the intruder was out of the room, the mother struggled to hide the frustration in her voice.
‘What begins? What do you want?’ she snapped, clinging to her son tightly.
‘I don’t want anything. I’m here to save you from what’s out there.’ Gerard peered into the gloom between the streetlights.
‘There’s nothing out there’ said the mother.
Gerard turned, smiled, and sat facing them. As he crossed his legs the mother noticed how he repeatedly toyed with the laces of his gnarled boots. A nervous tick? Obsessive behaviour? She’d seen it before somewhere she couldn’t place.
‘Not yet. We’re in for a long night. You might want to get some bedding down for the little one. Looks like he might need it.’
The son, despite the adrenalin and confusion, was nodding into his mother’s armpit, the whites of his eyes rolling up under flittering eyelids.
‘I’ll go’ said the father.
‘We’ll both go’ insisted Gerard, pulling himself up to his intimidating six and five, wreathed in his long, worn leather jacket.
The father ran another mental bout against the monster before him. There was no way he could beat him in a fair fight, and he guessed there’d be nothing fair about it. When the intruder had first appeared in the house just twenty minutes previously, having casually just walked in from the street through the unlocked door, he had quickly subdued the father’s attempts at retaliation with little more than a sturdily outstretched arm and a firm grip.
So far the intruder had revealed no weapons, but that coat could hide a small armoury. There was nothing in the house the father could use anyway, save a sturdy walking stick in the storm-porch, but that was locked away like everything else.
He got up and walked to the corridor and was signalled by the intruder to go first up the stairs. As he reached the top he realised there was one weapon that was available to all, given the right circumstances. He stopped and waited for the footsteps behind to catch up.
‘What are you waiting for?’ said the intruder, one foot half on the landing, his knees bent and arms spread to the walls.
The father turned, planted his hands firmly on either side of the stair walls, lifted his leg and kicked the intruder squarely in the chest, putting his whole weight behind his straightening knee.
Gerard instinctively reached forward to grab the assailing leg, but was already toppling backwards as he did so. His hands flayed pointlessly into the void between them. He hit the steps hard, with the weight of his body on top of him, and then tumbled through all the angles to the foot of the stairs.
The mother came running out of the living room, in an instant seeing the contorted intruder and closing the door behind her.
‘Stay in there darling, just stay in there a moment’ she called back, holding the handle to stop her son from following. The handle wobbled and then fell still.
‘That’s it,’ she said, trying to hide the shake in her voice, ‘just have a little lie down, we’ll be there in a minute.’
The father descended the stairs quickly, lunged and landed purposefully with his knee on the intruder’s throat, figuring he could at least hold him down him while his wife and child ran to safety. All the heap below him could manage, however, was to turn his head slightly to meet his eye.
‘I came to save you’ Gerard moaned, pushing back against the waves of pain and cold numbness that phased across his being.
‘Don’t move!’ the mother yelled. ‘I’m calling the police.’
She thrust her hand into the intruder’s pockets and pulled out the keys he had stashed away earlier after bursting into their home and overpowering her husband. She felt a guilty pride now as all the intruder could do to try and stop her was strain against unresponsive muscles and limp limbs, thanks to her husband’s besting.
She unlocked the storm porch and retrieved the mobile phones the intruder had sealed away.
‘Close the door’ he whispered through strained breath, but the mother didn’t listen, busy as she was frantically checking each of the devices.
‘No signal?’ said the father. She nodded.
‘Use the landline. I’ll be okay.’
She ran to the kitchen.
‘Don’t go out. Don’t let anyone in. Not till light. Please!’ Gerard’s eyes bulged with the effort of speaking.
The father twisted his knee. He could barely force out words through the anger.
‘You come into my house, you say we will die if we don’t do what you ask, you threaten my family and now you beg me not to call the police?’
‘They can’t help you!’ Gerard pleaded. ‘They can’t help anyone! Not tonight. Only me.’
‘Why? Because there’s something ‘out there’? There’s something in here, and you’re done, man. You’re sick, you’re a sick…’
The father was interrupted by the sound of his wife’s cursing from down the hall. He called out to her and she returned, clutching the telephone handset.
‘There’s nothing’ she said, handing it over.
The father pressed fruitlessly at buttons, listening to the silence.
‘You cut the lines? Why would you do that?’
The intruder seemed to be coming to some kind of peace. His breathing slowed, his features calmed, his eyes looked past the father and to the ceiling.
‘They’re all down. Everything’s down. I came back to stop it from happening to you again. I failed.’
‘Damn right you failed. Sarah. Go next door, now. Get the police, and an ambulance.’
There was a loud scratch from behind the living room door.
‘Darling?’ said the mother tentatively.
‘I told you. They’re here. But how can… How did I make it? If…’ the intruder babbled weakly. There was another scratch in the wood of the door, deep and jarring. And another. It grew louder, furious.
‘Mummy!’ the son shouted from beyond.
‘Get him out!’ she yelled at her husband.
The father jumped to his feet and quickly but cautiously eased the door open. His heart pounded violently as the cat flew past him and down the corridor to the kitchen. The son followed soon after, sniffling from the fright of the dark living room and the sound of animal claws. He stood blinking in the doorway.
‘Just the cat!’ the father said furiously to the intruder, but the intruder said nothing. His eyes twitched urgently, but the words wouldn’t come to his lips, his breath failing in his throat. All he could do was look to the top of the stairs.
‘What?’ said the father. ‘What’s up there?’ He peered up, trying to follow the intruder’s line of sight but could see nothing on the dark landing.
‘It was me!’ the intruder croaked suddenly and violently. ‘I let it in. But why send me back here if… Oh dear.’ the intruder choked on the end of his sentence.
There was another scratch, and a deep, rattling growl, this time it came from upstairs.
‘But, Claw just went to the kitchen?’ said the mother.
‘Probably a stray’ the father said. ‘I’ll go and have a look.’
‘I’m coming too’ insisted the mother. ‘What if he wasn’t alone?’
The father looked at the dazed son in the doorway.
‘We can’t leave him. Not here, not with,’ he nodded at the intruder who had closed his eyes, and was very, very still. ‘Oh god. I think he’s…’ the father stopped short of saying the word in front of his son, even the sound of it in is head made him shudder.
The mother turned the boy by the shoulders and stepped him into the porch.
‘We’re going out soon, so you put your shoes on, Mummy and Daddy are just going to get some things. I’m going to close the door. Only for a few seconds, I promise.’
The son sat down on the cold tiles. The father winked and rubbed his hair before locking the door behind him and heading upstairs with his wife.
That was the night the shadows came in from the darkness and waited for those who went looking. That was the night that changed everything.
Gerard fiddled with the laces of his shoes while he waited for his parents to return.
THE END
A note from the Author:
Thanks for reading! I really appreciate it, and it would be great if you could help me reach more people by sharing this on social media by using the buttons below, or copying and pasting the web address far and wide.
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Thanks.
Garry.
It was something my grandma told me. I don’t know if it’s common knowledge, or a common myth, but I’m guessing she didn’t just make it up.
The way it goes is this: if you have lost something, simply take a pin (any type will do), and say out loud “I pin the devil”. Follow this by the name of the lost object and stick the pin in the back of a cushion. Leave it there for three days and the object will turn up.
To be honest, incantations over pierced furnishings wouldn’t have occurred to me, if it wasn’t for the ghost. Had my mind not already been on the supernatural, my grandma’s words would have remained a forgotten memory when I lost the ring. But I am getting ahead. Perhaps I should start with the ghost.
I don’t know when the ghost started. It was in the house before me I’m sure, so who can say? When I first moved into 32 Forge Lane, the landlady had neglected to mention that I would be sharing my little terrace with a poltergeist.
Maybe she hoped it would be masked by the plethora of other phenomenon the house presented. She would have been right to. For the first three months I accounted every strange going on in the house to faulty heating, dodgy wiring, and incessant drafts. But after a while, when all the doors had been oiled, all the cracks plugged, and your step dad has kindly given the boiler and the electrics a once-over, you start to notice the difference between a knocking pipe, and just plain knocking.
For a start, a knocking pipe doesn’t knock back. It may seem to, if you are prone to an over-active imagination, or chance so happens to time the random expansion and contraction of metal with your own signals. But that kind of chance, or whimsy, is not demonstrable to others. You know for certain when you can spend a whole evening with your sometimes-boyfriend, rapping knuckles with the other side, asking questions.
The problem with the whole ‘knock once for yes, twice for no’ system, however, is that it rather puts the emphasis on the person asking the questions. But it can get you so far, if you are persistent.
Isabelle
Do you want to talk to us?
Knock.
Isabelle
Good. We want to talk to you too. Did you use to live in this house?
Knock.
Josh
Did you die here?
Knock knock.
Josh
But you are dead?
Knock.
Isabelle
Is it you who opens the doors upstairs?
Knock.
Isabelle.
I thought so. And opens the windows?
Knock.
Josh.
See? I told you it wasn’t me.
Isabelle.
Shush! Are you happy here?
Knock.
Isabelle.
And do you mind me living here?
Knock knock.
Josh.
Does that mean no he doesn’t mind, or no he doesn’t want you here?
Isabelle.
He doesn’t mind, I think. Actually, are you a ‘he’?
Knock knock.
Call me a sexist, anti-feminist if you want, but something about knowing it was a ‘she’ made me feel better immediately. I’m sure you could argue that women are as free and equal to turn into spirits just as terrifying as men, but another female presence in the house reassured me. After all, how many tired ghost stories have you heard about dirty old misogynistic man that died in the battered armchair in the corner? That’s not what I wanted at all.
After our conversations, things settled down. If something ever happened that I didn’t like, or that disturbed me, I would ask very nicely for her to stop, and she always did. It just became normal to talk to the ghost when needed, but other than that, life continued as normal (at least for me). Then things started to go missing.
It was just little things, usually, and they almost always turned up. Josh’s tobacco, my hairbrush, house keys and whatnot. I know that you’re thinking: who doesn’t lose their keys? We all do, I know, but they don’t usually turn up on top of a six-foot bookshelf that you can’t even reach without climbing on your armchair.
It caused arguments between me and Josh, before we realised it was the ghost. He can be, let’s say, controlling, and I thought he was hiding things to put me off kilter, to make me feel like I was losing it. Josh said it was stupid to blame him when I was the one living with a mischievous spirit. He had a point, so I decided to speak to the ghost again, this time alone.
Isabelle
Are you there?
Knock.
Isabelle
Did you hide my keys?
Knock.
Isabelle
And Josh’s tobacco?
Knock.
Isabelle
I’m not angry, but can you please stop hiding things?
Knock.
Isabelle
Thanks. Also, I don’t know how you can answer this, but I still can’t find my grandma’s ring. Only, it’s valuable to me, and I really don’t want to lose it.
Silence.
Isabelle
Is it possible you can put it back for me, where you found it?
Knock knock.
Isabelle
Please? You did hide it, didn’t you?
Knock knock.
Isabelle
No? You didn’t?
Knock knock.
Of all the luck, I had an honest light-fingered ghost willing to return my goods, but the one thing I really wanted back wasn’t in her possession. I searched everywhere I could reach and clambered on furniture for those places that I would normally send Josh. He was having another of his ‘absent’ patches, so was no help at all.
The ring was an heirloom and was of more than just sentimental value. Mum had smuggled it out of my grandmother’s house when, in her dying days, long absent relatives suddenly started appearing like so many woodworm. It had always been intended for me, but with the hyenas around, Mum wanted to make sure it was safely out of reach from sticky fingers.
It was thinking of my grandma, and what mum would say if she found out I’d lost the ring, that trawled up the memory of ‘pin the devil’. It’s a funny thing, I’d only ever heard her mention it once, a long time ago when I still lived at home, but it had stuck with me. I think I’d lost something innocuous, probably my Walkman, and was scampering around the house in a blind panic. My grandma sat there watching and told me I should ‘pin the devil’, and exactly what that meant. Mum was there at the time, and for a rational sort of person, she didn’t bat an eyelid at the suggestion.
I never did it. The thought gave me the same chill as I got from playing Ouija with my friends, and a lost Walkman just didn’t seem worth the risk of dabbling with dark forces. But the notion that we could call for help on forces beyond our understanding stuck with me, as if there was a symbiosis at play between worlds.
It took a bottle of wine on a particularly lonely night before I plucked up the courage to give it a try. I had found out earlier that day that Josh had found somewhere else to hang his hat. He’d got his hands on some money, for a change, and no longer needed my social, sexual and financial subsidies. Apparently he was telling people it was my fault for being too overbearing. Presumably because I once asked him if he could bring some milk around, or some other torturous domestic request.
It’s funny how you can’t find a pin when you want one, and realise that you haven’t needed one since you were 12 and wanted to stick a Take That poster up on your wall. Fittingly for that teary night, the only pin I could find in the house was from the back of a badge that Josh had bought me at a gig. It was a black badge with a picture of a green skull in a bowler hat. I don’t even remember the band it was for. I never liked it, and had no issue with bending the pin back and probably ruining it forever.
I performed the ridiculous ceremony, calling for the ring and thrusting the badge pin into a sofa cushion. I went to bed expecting nothing, at least not for three days, but my wait was considerably shorter.
Now, I didn’t know if I had forgotten the added detail about the feathers, or if my grandma neglected to tell me, but it was a nice touch. At first I thought that Bart, my long missing cat, had returned with a present to say sorry for having disappeared three years ago. The feathers were dotted around the living room. There wasn’t hundreds of them, but enough that the eye noticed them straight away. I couldn’t honestly say what kind of bird they had come from, but they were white with black roots, and relatively small, about the size of my thumb nail.
I gathered them up one by one, following a trail of my own making, so I thought, until they led me up to the mantelpiece where I spotted the last one behind the carriage clock. And there it sat, the last feather, resting on Josh’s favourite lighter. He had kicked up a huge fuss when it had gone missing, accusing me of throwing it away to spite him. I remember how he’d been a miserable bastard all night after that, but wouldn’t leave because he knew I was making dinner and wanted to eat, basically.
Now I had found it, I actually did throw it away, along with the feathers. I checked everywhere and found no more. Okay, it wasn’t the ring, but it was something. A warm up. I resolved to leave the pin in place, and see if anything else turned up. Sure enough, the next morning, the feathers were back.
This time, they led me to the bookcase, and the last feather lay on one particular book. The book itself was not lost, evidently, but I opened it up and a photo dropped out from between the pages. It was a picture I had forgotten even existed, so I suppose in a sense, it was lost. The picture was one of me from back home, before I moved out here, when I wanted so much to get out and make my own world. I am kneeling on the sofa at Mums, throwing my hands out to the camera, and I have a look in my eye that I haven’t glimpsed in the mirror for a long time. It was a look of wide-eyed determination and hunger for independence, if such things can be gleamed from a Triple-Print Kodak.
When did I lose that look? If I was going to blame anyone, it would be Josh, but I’ve never been one to lay my shortcomings at other’s feet. Maybe, on some dark nights of the soul, I have been guilty of bitterly blaming my underwhelming existence on his toxic blend of possessive none committal. But I have always checked myself. I am more that the product of someone else’s whims, I know that, even if the hurt can occasionally make me feel otherwise.
I thanked the feathers for the discovery. To find something you weren’t looking for, but needed, is a gift indeed. I resolved to capture that look once again, and looked forward to what day three would bring.
I didn’t have to wait to the next morning, however. I woke during the night, for reasons unknown. There was no startling dream, no wind whistling down the terrace, and no bodily functions to satisfy. I was simply awake at 3am. Trying to find some reason to satisfy and return to sleep, I decided I must be dehydrated and went to get some water.
On the landing, my bare foot twitched as a tickle ran across it. I didn’t need to turn on the light to see the feather, the white down echoing the moonlight against the grey carpet. My eyes adjusted quickly, seeing the line leading down hall, past the bathroom, and terminating below the hatch to the attic.
The attic. That strange none-place in most houses where lost things are forgotten, and forgotten things are lost. I recalled the last time I was up there. It was Christmas, in the obligatory annual attic-opening to recover the old biscuit tin full of decorations and the bin bag with the plastic tree. It was possible that the ring had fallen off when I was up there.
I retrieved the stick from the corner that existed solely for the purpose of clicking the hatch up and off the magnetic catch, allowing the wooden door to swing open and the folding ladder to swivel on its hinge to a reachable height. It was okay getting it down. Putting it back up was another matter. Last time I was up here, Josh had to do it for me. As I pulled the ladder down to it’s full height, another feather drifted slowly down beside me.
I climbed the stairs, lit only by the night through the hallway window, knowing that a small switch on the inside of the hatch frame would illuminate the void above. I positioned myself half way up the stairs and switched on the solitary bulb. I was surrounded on all but one side by my hastily stacked decorations and boxes that I had never unpacked since moving in. Some were open, which I couldn’t remember doing. Maybe I had a taken a little look one of those Christmases, and decided that the memories were exactly where they needed to be, but I was sure I hadn’t.
Either way, as my eyes reached the level of the floorboards, more feathers came into stark contrast, leading through the gap to the small triangle of space by the apex of the rafters, where one could just about stand crooked by the water tank. I crawled up and around the corner, and that’s when I saw them.
Both birds were skewered to the boards by a single metal peg driven through the breast. I would say the pegs had come from my stashed camping gear, but these were thick, rough, mottled iron pins, the kind that you could imagine hammered into the hull of a boat. The poor beasts were dead, of course, their white feathers with black roots haloed around them. They both lay at his feet.
Just when and how Josh had found his way into my attic, and who it was that did that to him with the third peg, will forever be a mystery, if you believe these words. Don’t bother going to the house and trying to ask the ghost; the knocking stopped that night.
I submit this to you as my statement, as my declaration of innocence. I doubt it will help me now. When I pulled the peg from his chest, I swear it was only to retrieve the gold ring that was looped around it. In my shock I handled everything that has now incriminated me in his murder. All I wanted was my grandma’s ring back, and now it is locked up, like me, awaiting the exhibition of justice.
THE END.
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Garry Abbott. Writer & Musician 