Obadiah Preston

When Obadiah Preston drove up to the Cafe Epsum Illum in the tiny town of Waysconin, Carlifonia, it was early autumn and the leaves on the tall maples behind the old crumpled building in which, on the ground floor, Cafe Epsum Illum was nestled were just beginning to blush. He’d looked up, craning his neck behind the wheel of his canary yellow pick up truck and thought to himself how, all things considered, things could have been worse.

It wasn’t cold yet and the road dust still swirled when moved by wind and tires. The few concrete steps leading up to the front door of the cafe were covered by first fallen leaves and months worth of dry boot mud. Obadiah wiped his hands on the front of his shirt before going in. His mother had been a stickler for manners.

Mrs Maple, aged like a fine beer in an oak casket, stood behind the counter at the Epsum Illum cafe, same way she always stood, half crooked from her left leg which was shorter than the right. She didn’t move or speak until Obadiah had seated himself at one of the stools other side of the counter and spent a good ten minutes looking at the bedraggled laminated menu. When he’d finally looked up from it, having decided to go for the house omelette in preference to the steak, the only other option on the menu, she’d snatched a half clean cup without shifting her position and deftly poured him a coffee. Obadiah nodded his thanks and pointed a grubby finger at his choice of food on the one page laminate.

Mrs Maple nodded in return and shuffled off to the kitchen to cook his order. As well as the cook, and the bar maid, she was the cleaner, the accountant and the bouncer, but not the owner. Things worked like that in Epsum Illum. Everything was owned by Mr Marshall Marshall who’d arrived one bitter winter, ten years previously and bought up the entire town. Nobody knew how he’d managed it without a single voice of protest, although things haven’t really changed that much, except for the 70 percent of everyone’s earnings, after tax, that went to Mr Marshall Marshall at the end of each year.

Obadiah sat quietly while he waited for his food, staring pensively through the ancient, chipped mirror behind the counter at two other patrons. In the far corner, sat on one of the old oak benches, Mr Shamus O’Neewl smoked his pipe and read his newspaper, his flat cap precariously perched on the side of his balding head, held in place by forces unknown to modern science. The smoke from the pipe hung thick in the air mixing with disinfectant, frying oil and grime. At the booth next to him, sat Revd Bilkin, wearing his every day clothes of brown slacks and checked shirt, nursing his first whisky of the day. Neither had looked up when Obadiah came in nor had they subsequently shown any awareness of his presence. This worried Obadiah a little.

Just about the time he was ready for a coffee refill, Mrs Maple shuffled back into the view, carrying Obadiah’s plate of omelette in one hand, propping herself along the counter with the other. Obadiah was hungry. It had been a week since he’d last eaten although it could have been longer, he was not too conversant on the days of the week. He shovelled his food down greedily, occasionally stopping to wash it down with coffee. He had exactly enough money in his pockets to pay for the omelette but he was hoping to offer Mrs Maple to work it off for her, maybe he could clean her yard or cut some wood for her, he thought.

Mrs Maple didn’t show surprise when he’d laid out his proposal over the third coffee refill and instead just nodded and motioned for him to follow her to the back where a large pile of newly felled logs waited to be cut into fire wood. Obadiah gave her a grateful smile, showing 2 good teeth right in the middle of his mouth and black holes in the rest of it. Mrs Maple pointed to where a chopping block with the axe stood and without a word hobbled off.

Obadiah took a moment to look around. At the back of the cafe was a small yard, half of it covered by concrete and the other half with compressed dirt and saw dust. The pile of logs was to his left, just by the dirt track that went around the lone building and to his right was a ramshackle log shed where the unused fire wood from last winter lay strewn about. Beyond the yard was the raw of the tall maple trees he saw from out front and beyond the maple trees a forest with a small clearing where he spied several deer grazing in the tall meadow grass. The late afternoon air smelled fresh, woodsy and, Obediah thought, of marzipan. Obadiah rolled up his sleeves and got stuck into chopping wood.


About four years later, it was summer and Obediah was helping on Mr Shamus O’Neewl’s farm tying up rolled up hay bales, working his way down the neat rows left by the combine harvester when a small harvest spider scuttled across his work boot. This made him pause, and for the briefest moment he thought to himself that there was something really important he was forgetting. But the moment flitted past and Obadieh returned to his work. Mr O’Neewl didn’t like slackers.
Later that day when Obadiah had washed up and came down to the Epsum Illum cafe for his dinner which Mrs Maple always let him work off by doing small chores, he almost stepped on a large, black house spider that sat square in the middle of the topmost step. Obadiah recoiled, not from aversion to spiders, for they didn’t bother him, but from a thought that arrived into his mind, crisp and urgent, like someone had put it there on purpose. “Why have you come to this town, Obadiah?” the thought said.

Obadiah wiped his hands on his shirt a few times to compose himself before he opened the door which gave way without the usual clatter. He paused in the doorway, uncertainly and had a look around. Mr Shamus O’Neewl was sitting in his usual spot, smoking his pipe and reading, Obadiah could have sworn, the same newspaper he’d seen him read on the very first day he’d arrived in Waysconin. Revd Bilkin was staring morosely at the bottom of his whiskey glass and Mrs Maple was cleaning a scratched glass with a crumpled dish cloth.

Obadiah blinked and tried to remember if he’d ever seen anyone else in the cafe, apart from who he could see now. He tried to remember if he’d ever seen either of the men move or speak or how he came to work for Mr Shamus O’Neewl on his farm. His memory was not obliging, instead of pictures and sounds and smells and other such things, it offered fog and fatigue. Obadiah shivered with something that wasn’t cold and narrowed his eyes. On the bar stool where he usually sat and took his dinner was another large spider. Obadiah looked quickly to Mrs Maple to check whether she’d spotted it but Mrs Maple didn’t show that she did. He approached the stool carefully, looking back at Mrs Shamus O’Neewl and Revd Bilkin neither of whom looked up from what they were doing or showed any signs they were aware of either Obadiah or anything else in the world. The spider moved slowly, lazily until it had turned around on the seat and was facing Obadiah. It seemed to have several eyes all of which appeared to be appraising Obadiah gravely.

“Why are you here Obadiah?” The thought arrived into Obadiah’s mind sharp and accusing. Obadiah shrugged. “Remember, Obadiah, what were you supposed to do here, when you arrived, three years, nine months and seven days ago?” Obadiah strained his foggy mind back through the mists of time but all he saw was more fog and more mist. He shook his head, it was no use.

The spider on the bar stool scuttled around as if looking for a way to dismount. Obadiah watched it, perplexed. The thoughts that had arrived in his head a moment before had left him uneasy and he felt like a long forgotten well within him had been opened. The light was shining inside him and it made him restless. “Look,” he started to say out loud but before he could finish whatever it was he was going to say, the spider on the seat started to glow, first orange then gradually an angry red. “Think Obadiah!” a voice, Obadiah now recognised was not his own, rang shrilly in his head. “Think!” it commanded.

Obadiah’s head felt heavy. He felt sick and like he needed to get into fresh air. Before he knew what he was doing he’d run out back, towards the forest and the small meadow where the deer grazed. The sun was low hung in the sky and the air was thick with moisture and insects. Obadiah panted heavily looking this way and that about him.

“Why have you arrived in this town Obadiah?” The voice in his head was not letting up. It was getting angrier and shriller until it sounded like a thousand cycads were droning on inside his skull.

“Aaaaargh.” Said Obadiah. And then he said, “I don’t know. Please. Stop.”
But the sounds in his head wouldn’t stop.

“I can’t remember,” Obadiah pleaded with the voices. “Please, you are hurting me,” he begged.

“Think! Remember! Why are you here Obadiah Preston?” The voice in his head was relentless.

Obadiah tried very hard to remember, to make sense of the cotton wool that filed his head. He tried for a good while before giving up, “I don’t know,” Obadiah cried, “I can’t remember, why won’t you believe me?”
“Oh, I believe you, Obadiah Preston,” the voice inside Obadiah’s head said, “why don’t you believe me?”

Obadiah froze, suddenly seeing a very sharp memory inside his head. He saw himself arrive at the Epsum Illum cafe on that first day in autumn almost four years ago. He remembered how he leaned over the wheel of his canary yellow pick up truck to look up at the tall maples behind the decrepit wooden structure and how he thought to himself that things could have been worse.

What things? Obadiah thought.

“Ahhh,” the voice in Obadiah’s head sighed with something that resembled relief. “You are starting to remember!”

“Hmm,” Obadiah said out loud even though the deer were not paying any attention. He thought back through that first day; remembering how he ordered the omelette and how he’d watched Mr Shamus O’Neewl and Revd Bilkin and marvelled that nobody minded that everything in town belonged to Mr Marshall Marshall.

“Hold on!!!!” Obadiah jumped up as if cattle prod had been stuck up his backside.”Hang on just a minute there!” he said to the insect filled air around him. “How did I learn about Mr Marshall Marshall?! Nobody ever spoke to me!” Obadiah paused, uncertain, trying to recall if maybe Mrs Maple had told him about Mr Marshall Marshall but he was pretty sure she had never spoken to him. He tried to think if he’d ever seen anyone else in town, but the mists still filled the space in his mind where memories should have been. He waited for the voice inside his head to offer further direction but all was quiet in there.

Obadiah shook himself angrily and marched back inside. He walked up to the counter and addressed himself to Mrs Maple, “Good evening, Mrs Maple, how are you today?”
Mrs Maple looked at him without comment and disappeared into the kitchen. She came back almost immediately with a plate of omelette and fresh pot of coffee which she proceeded to pour wordlessly into a not very clean cup for Obadiah.

“Fine weather we are having,” Obadiah tried again but Mrs Maple gave no indication that she’d heard him. She wiped the counter with the dirty dishcloth she had been using to clean the glass earlier and then assumed her half crooked stance, half leaning on the counter.

Obadiah sighed and uncertainly turned to Revd Bilkin, “Reverend, let me buy you another drink,” he began but then remembered that he didn’t have any money. He blushed self consciously waiting for the Reverend to respond.

“Thank you, I’ll have another whiskey if you please,” Revd Bilkin pushed his empty glass towards Obadiah, not lifting his head to meet his eyes.
Obadiah gasped. Although he was hoping for an answer, when it came, he was taken aback. “Yes, sure thing,” he mumbled and grabbed the empty glass with shaky hand. Maybe he could come to some sort of arrangement with Mrs Maple, work off the whiskey like he did his food, he hoped, but Mrs Maple just re-filled the glass he put in front of her as if she wasn’t expecting payment.

Obadiah took the glass of whiskey to Revd Bilkin and sat opposite him on the uneven oak bench. He didn’t know what to say, but he knew he wanted to say something. More than that, he wanted Revd Bilkin to say something.
“How’d you wake up?” Revd Bilkin said, still not lifting his head to look at Obadiah.
“I..I don’t know,” Obadiah stuttered, pausing for a moment to think if he remembered waking up. “All I know,” he continued in a raspy voice unused to talking, “there was this spider, earlier in the field, and now, on the seat,” he gestured towards the counter, “and all these voices in my head,” he carried on, “and I felt kinda weird and then I remembered the day I arrived here, but I don’t remember why I’m here.” He sighed loudly and peered anxiously into Revd Belkin’s face.
Revd Bilkin gave a short nod and emptied his glass in one bitter swill. “Yup, spiders,” he said, never meeting Obadiah’s gaze.
Obadiah tried to find out more but Revd Bilkin sat in grave silence as if they’d never spoken.

After a while Obadiah gave up on Revd Bilkin and turned to Mr O’Neewl.
“Don’t you be trying to talk to me, boy,” Mr O’Neewl looked up sharply from his faded newspaper. He shook his paper with vexed air and bit harder on his pipe.
“But, I have to remember why I’m here!” Obadiah said, embarrassed.
Mr O’Neewl ignored him.

Obadiah sat silently for a while, having forgotten his omelette and his coffee. He kept trying to remember more about his arrival in town but his mind did not budge.
When the sun had sunk behind the horizon and the only light came from the bulbous moon hung low on the sky, Obadiah went outside and started pacing up and down. After about 50 laps or thereabouts, he stopped sharply and looked around for his truck. He had remembered earlier about his canary yellow pick up and he was trying to see where it was, but it wasn’t parked in front of the cafe. Obadiah tried to remember where he usually slept but couldn’t remember that either, so he just started off down the road. There were shops either side of the wide road, closed and run down looking and Obadiah crossed the road several times to peer into the dirty windows but found nothing useful behind them. Few hundred yards further down the road, he came across a small canal winding alongside the road. He could hardly see about him, in spite of the bright moonlight but he stumbled along stubbornly, determined to find out more about the town. He figured he might come across someone else, someone who’d help him jog his memory. The night air was fragrant and warm and Obadiah found himself humming a tune he couldn’t quite remember the words to.

“What a pickle,” he said out loud.
“Indeed,” came a muffled response from somewhere to his left. Obadiah strained to see where the voice had come from but the night was very dark.
“Excuse me, who is there?” Obadiah said into the night.
There was a short silence followed by a deep, rich timbre; Obadiah fancied it sounded almost like a purr. “Mr Marshall Marshall, at your service,” the voice said.
“Oh!” Obadiah was stunned. He was almost certain he’d never come across Mr Marshall Marshall before. “I’m..glad to make your acquaintance, Sir,” he said.
“Quite so,” Mr Marshall Marshall replied in his velvety tone, “not many are.”
Obadiah stood silent for a moment, unsure what to say next. He shifted from one foot to another several times.
“Mr Marshall,” he began eventually, pausing to shift his weight another couple of times. “I been meaning to ask you something, if that is all right?” he carried on, uncertainly.
“No you did not.” Mr Marshall interrupted him. “You have not been meaning anything. Not until today, at any rate.” There was a soft huff and a quiet rustle, as if a fat feather duster was brushing over the undergrowth. “You want to know the secret of this town; why nobody speaks, why I own everything and why you couldn’t remember who you were or why you came here until today when those pesky sons of Hades prompted you to remember.”

Obadiah grew suddenly very cold. “Well, er, yes, Sir, that is exactly what I have been wondering.” The light inside him grew agitated and brighter and he felt faint. “Will you tell me?”
Mr Marshall Marshall chuckled softly. “There is no need to tell you about it Obadiah Preston,” he rasped, “no need at all.”
“But, I need to know, why am I here?” Obadiah strained to see into the darkness but all he could make out were thick ferns next to the canal. “Can’t you show yourself, I wish to know who I’m speaking to,” Obadiah added boldly. He felt peculiar but not afraid.
“Of course, how rude of me,” Mr Marshall Marshall said. “Are you ready?”

Obadiah asked himself if he was ready and why should he be ready and what kind of question was that to ask. And then he suddenly recalled his Mother and her whip on his back when he hadn’t washed his hands before coming to the dinner table and how he’d clambered into his truck and drove off with white rage in front of his eyes.

“I see you are ready,” Mr Marshall murmured somewhere very near Obadiah’s ear.
In the darkness above them a barn owl screeched and the air started to buzz. Obadiah’s legs gave away and he crumpled on the ground, feeling suddenly very weak. Inside his mind the fireworks of light exploded and as one massive inky paw covered his head and four, sharp, foot-long fangs sunk into his throat, Obadiah remembered everything.