In a previous workshop, I was worried that my piece was too weird and I apologised for it. Often I can be anxious when sharing my work, as it reveals a part of me that’s hidden from view – a deep, dark pit I feel obliged to cover up most of the time. I read the story to the group, and braced myself.
I finished, and then they asked me why I thought the story was weird. Apparently, my fears were unfounded.
Instead of being relieved, I felt annoyed.
Is it these kinds of moments when writers decide their tone, style and identity? I realised – in that moment – that I wanted to creep people out, to disturb them, to make them look at me in a funny way. I don’t know where that urge comes from, since, in most social situations, that’s rarely my aim. But here – in the eerie world of storytelling – my ambition slithers at night, in the soil, under the Earth, with all the creatures that worm and writhe out of sight. And so, I was determined for a different reaction in the next session. And thus BAGHEAD was born.
I’ve had the premise for BAGHEAD for a while, at least in image form. Initially, it served as the opening for my strange small-town crime novel The Devil In Your Eyes. As I began writing, I slipped into Stephen King mode – specifically in relation to his first novel Carrie, which opens on articles discussing the vengeful and telekinetic heroine. With my piece, I wanted the lines between what’s reported, what’s communally perceived and what actually happened to blur together. I was also keen not to be autobiographical, which I had been (albeit loosely) in my prior pieces for the group. And I wanted to research the more gruesome facts of what takes place, which made me feel a little sick but I don’t regret it: I used that nausea to fuel the horrors. As a result, BAGHEAD is one of the darkest things I’ve ever written.
The nightmares began with Phil Tooting: sailing calmly and quietly and with inching progress up the River Caroigne. He looked across the water to his right, past the clinking masts in the marina, and spied his apartment window. His wife didn’t stand there. Just empty glass.
According to reports, Phil Tooting, 53, was seen to depart in the boat known as ‘Cassandra’ at around five in the morning. Seen wasn’t quite right. Phil was watched by his harmlessly voyeuristic neighbour David Bishop, 39, who lived in the same building. At Cassandra’s wheel, the sailor noticed the shine of binocular lenses from the next window along. He smiled and waved in David’s direction.
Phil’s wife of thirty years, Kathryn, 51, said to authorities that her dear husband wanted to catch the colours of dawnlight on the water. It was the ideal time of the year for that. She just wanted to lie in.
But everyone in the riverside village of Little Heart knew that the stern, but forgiving, Kathryn Tooting had thrown her husband out again. She’d found a red thong that wasn’t hers in the laundry basket, and correctly assumed the worst.
The week before, David had noticed Phil in the car park – the latter’s hand cradling the shoulder of a younger, blonder woman with tortoiseshell sunglasses. Ah: the lovely Tessa, 26, who David had seen around town. Often with her boyfriend. Sometimes in the middle of an argument.
And so, fresh out of denials, Phil had slept inside Cassandra and started the next morning with a few beers stored below deck. After sailing downriver for a while, he dropped anchor and snatched a few more cans. He climbed to the front deck and leant over the bow, slurping and burping. He couldn’t tell where he was. No other boats – that suited him perfectly.
Cassandra rocked slightly and Phil listened to the quiet of the current, wondering if the hot cashier from the chandlery was really worth the trouble.
As Phil stared over the bow and into the soupy void of the river, he noticed some object ahead that ruined its surface. A buoy? He prepped himself for indifference. A collection of litter? He grew angry. No one should throw their cans or crisp packets overboard to infect the river, the perfect river. Water – such lovely water. Man evolved from water, water is the foundation of all life. It’s why he hated modern rubbish in natural environments, which were perfectly fine until humanity arrived. But neither buoys nor Evian bottles came to pass.
The long, heavy object bobbed closer and closer to Cassandra, arriving into Phil’s dizzy focus.
Wait.
Wait.
Was that—
Phil noticed the heels before the torso. Before the scalp.
The soft current pushed the corpse to Cassandra, like some morbid gift, and Phil’s insides burst with adrenaline. His legs distorted to liquid as he stepped back, forgetting the empty portside behind him. The wired companionway submitted to his fear and his vision jerked up to the heavenly sky, tumbling into the water he adored so much. His eyes stung. A sharp pain burned in his head, and a red mist bloomed towards the surface. He didn’t feel his head crack on Cassandra’s side when he fell.
Phil didn’t struggle. Didn’t even try to save himself. He sank and sank and sank. The Caroigne was enamoured with his fitness, so much as to swallow him whole. At about ten or twelve feet underwater, he looked up and watched the overweight body pass beside his boat.
But unbeknownst to Phil, that body would have good company.
As he floated further down, another corpse floated up. Red, patchy skin smothered in mud.
Another.
This one was also red. Gradually, the water turned this second cadaver towards Phil. The face… it was bloated, inflated to its limit like a weeping balloon.
Another.
Similar features, but new horrors sprouted around the hands – the skin peeling away.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Before long, a dead army of at least twenty bubbled to the surface while Phil continued to drown. As if pushed.
The pressure grew too heavy, and the beautiful water splashed into Phil’s lungs. He drifted in and out of consciousness, toward a delirious dark.
Another.
This one also turned in the water. It’d been smothered and encrusted with wet dirt from the riverbed. Phil examined the face. Or what used to be a face. Like a shopping bag dragged through mud, the head had wrinkled and torn and faded. None of the human features remained.
The darkness came quicker, deeper.
And the corpse twitched. First its hands, then its arms. Its neck clicked into place.
It stared at Phil, and pushed towards him.
It grabbed his shoulders. Without a mouth, the bag face screamed.