'Down the Plug-hole'

Tom Johnstone's collection Last Stop Wellsbourne continues with another variation on an increasingly familiar-theme - man in fairly dreary local government job confronted by bizarre possibly-supernatural phenomenon. In this case it's no less than the Riddle of the Sphinx - well, sort of. Ed, who operates a pressure washer that cleans pigeon crap off war memorials etcetera keeps answering riddles posed by a talking cat with a woman's face. As you might imagine, the back story to this situation is somewhat strange. Not to mention tragic.

Maybe she was calm, peaceful even, as she sank into oblivion, her locks floating serenely about her head, covering her face in a dark-green blanket. She can’t have changed her mind when it was too late, can she? Pills and open veins. It wasn’t like she was leaving anything to chance. 

You don’t know. And you’ll never know how it was for her. And you’ll never know why.

 The story's descriptions of weed clogging an old water conduit to the Wellsbourne river are downright poetic. There is a dream-like beauty in Johnstone's horror that sometimes recalls Blackwood's nature mysticism, but it is always undercut by grimness simply because human beings - flawed, weak human beings - are involved. The jokey title (from an old music-hall song) sets the tone of black humour, regret, and eventually oblivion. Messy, bloody, watery oblivion.

And on that cheerful note, we anticipate more from this running review later.