OLIVE

This story is one of my own favourites, and it always goes down well at Spoken Word events. It came second in Writing Magazine’s ‘New Start’ competition, where they were kind enough to say: ‘…because Olive is so entertaining, and flows so easily, it might be easy for the reader to miss how carefully, and cleverly, its blend of sitcom humour and horror tropes has been constructed. It feels natural and unforced, and it's an original, quirky delight.’ (Runner Up - New Start short story competition - Writers Online)

OLIVE

My brother Raymond first met Olive at a Halloween Party in 1982. My mother duly invited her to tea and Raymond said, with a slight blush, ‘I suppose I should tell you. She’s undead.’

‘She’s what?’

‘Undead. She drowned during a holiday in Scarborough when she was six, and her father made a pact with Satan to bring her back to life. His immortal soul, and hers, so she could come back from the dead.’

‘Oh,’ said Mother. She looked anxious. ‘Can she still eat ham?’

Olive could still eat ham, and pretty much anything else. Her digestive system was as undead as the rest of her, and worked extremely well.

A year later she and Raymond got married at the Register Office. Church wasn’t an option, with the lost soul thing. Church gave Olive shocking migraines. Mother was disappointed, but it was still a nice day. Olive’s Uncle Ted gave her away, her father having been claimed by Satan some years before, and after a small buffet at the Blacksmith’s Arms, she and Raymond went off for a week in Tenerife.

‘You know, I think it was a bit of a cheek, Olive’s Dad promising her soul as well,’ said Mother, after we got home. She looked thoughtful as she filled the kettle. ‘I wouldn’t have liked your father, God rest him, to do that. I mean, it wasn’t his to promise, was it? She was only little. Do you suppose it was legal?’

‘Do you suppose Satan cares?’ I asked.

But Mother, it turned out, was on to something.

The years passed. Raymond and Olive had a son and a daughter, both of whom were able to attend Sunday School with no ill effects. I got married, and divorced. Olive’s appetite matured and ripened. Everyone’s kids grew up and left home, and Mother moved into a sheltered flat. Raymond and Olive got two spaniels when their youngest went, to fill the empty nest. We all got a big greyer and stiffer in the knees, Olive included. Apart from not being able to vote in person, because the polling station was in the church hall, and feeling sick if she caught ‘Thought for the Day’ on the radio, she was exactly the same as the rest of us, only hungrier.

It was the internet that changed everything, as it has a habit of doing. It put Olive in contact with other members of the undead community, including an Australian called Alastair, with whom she spent a lot of time chatting after Raymond had gone to bed.

One day I got a text from Raymond asking me to meet him in the Blacksmith’s Arms that evening, on a matter of urgency.

I arrived with misgivings. ‘What is it?’

Raymond sighed. ‘It’s that bloody Alastair, putting stupid ideas in Olive’s head. His mum made a pact, when he was run over by a car, but in her pact, it was just her soul, not his. Apparently Alastair’s mum knew her rights.’

‘There are rights?’

He frowned, as if reciting from memory. ‘The soul must be given freely and willingly. A child, not having full understanding, does not have the capacity to freely and willingly give a soul. Therefore, the pact is invalid.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s good news, isn’t it? Olive’s not going to hell.’

‘Of course she’s going to hell,’ snapped Raymond. ‘All that stuff with the church, and having panic attacks at the school nativities. And she’s got the mark.’

‘What mark?’ I gawped. ‘Not 666? Where?’

Raymond gave a weary sigh. ‘No, not 666. It’s like a scorch mark on her hip. It hurts like hell each Halloween.’

‘I suppose it would,’ I said.

‘Well, Alastair says she should ask for her soul back.’ He sounded as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to be jealous or optimistic.

I stared. ‘Can you do that?’

‘So Alastair says.’ Jealousy was definitely winning. ‘She wants to conjure Satan on Halloween, when the curtain between worlds is thinnest, and tell him the deal’s off. Well, not totally off, she doesn’t want to die, obviously. But apparently one soul is the going rate, and the Lord of Darkness pulled a fast one. According to Alastair. Olive wondered if we could do it at yours.’

‘Why mine?’

My brother looked apologetic. ‘It’s the dogs. You know what animals are like with the supernatural. They’re likely to go completely berserk and…well…Satan might not like it.’

‘Satan’s not a postman, Raymond. He’s unlikely to be put off by a bit of yapping.’

‘Olive is afraid he’ll do something to them.’

‘Yes, well!’ I shouted at him. ‘I’m quite afraid Satan might do something to me!’

But blood is thicker than fear, and a fortnight later Raymond and Olive came round on Halloween, Olive clutching an incantation Alastair had emailed her. 

She looked at me hopefully. ‘Shall we have a nice cuppa, before we start?’

‘Oh. OK.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s any biscuits?’ she said.

After a cup of tea and three bourbons, Olive chalked a pentagram on my polished wood flooring and we sat cross-legged, and a little stiff-kneed, on its perimeter. Olive chanted her incantation, and I could only assume the rhymes worked better with an Australian accent.

It got colder and there was a scent on the air, nothing unpleasant or sulphurous, but a fragrance half-remembered, half-grasped, older than anything our minds could conceive. I closed my eyes, trying to catch it more clearly, and then Olive said, ‘Hail, Lord of Darkness.’

When I looked, a tall, muscular, naked man was standing in the middle of the pentagram. I blinked. Raymond looked a bit taken aback. Light wreathed around the figure, sliding from deep reds to icy blues, so that it was difficult to see the features of its face, or the colour of its skin, but the power radiating from it was unmistakable. I suddenly felt more frightened than I could have imagined possible.

‘Who summons me?’ It wasn’t a voice. The question hung in the air. 

‘I do,’ squeaked Olive.

The figure considered her. ‘I know you. I have your soul.’

Olive said, in a rush, ‘Yes you do, and I want it back.’

‘Your soul was given, in a pact.’

‘Well, no,’ said Olive.

‘No?’ The house seemed to rock.

‘My father had no right to promise you my soul.’

‘No right?’

‘No.’ Olive clenched her fists and stuck out her chin. At that moment, I both really admired her, and wished more than anything that she would stop this nonsense now. ‘A soul must be freely and willingly given,’ she insisted, ‘and a child cannot freely and willingly enter a pact. You took my soul by deception.’

After a moment Satan said, with a touch of petulance, ‘What do you propose to do about it?’

‘I ask that you give my soul back.’

‘And why would I do that?’

Olive stuck her chin out further. ‘Because if you don’t, I shall appeal to a Higher Authority.’

Satan laughed, and the house rocked again. ‘You think a Higher Authority is going to listen to you, one poor, pathetic, single lost soul? I don’t think so.’

‘I do,’ said Olive.

Satan regarded her for several moments. Then a resigned sigh echoed round the room. ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with all that. It takes ages, and to be honest one soul isn’t worth it. I’ll toss you for it.’

‘What?’ Olive sounded bemused.

‘We’ll toss a coin.’ Satan sounded quite excited. ‘You can call. You win, you get your soul back.’ He leaned forward, and the air sharpened with a million pinpricks of fire, ‘I win, and I take you now. Have you got a pound coin? It seems a bit insulting to your soul to use anything less.’

Raymond put his hand in his pocket and said, ‘I’ve got a pound.’

I stared at him. ‘Are you completely mad? It’s a trick!’

Another, house-rocking laugh. ‘I don’t have to trick her. I already have her soul. But now and again,’ the laugh subsided to a chuckle, ‘we all enjoy a punt.’

Olive stood up, every inch of her trembling. 

‘Heads or tails?’ asked Satan.

Olive made a small, muffled sound.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Satan.

Olive looked up at the naked figure. ‘Heads,’ she said, defiantly.

‘Then do it,’ said Satan, words that flung themselves against the walls and slithered into our brains.

The coin sparkled in the darkness, against the shifting colours around the naked figure. It sparkled like no coin has ever sparkled, and it spun, over and over, like no coin has ever spun, and Olive suddenly said, ‘What the hell?’

The figure was gone, the pentagram was gone, the pinpricks of fire were gone. We were sitting round an empty space on my wooden floor, surrounded by a slight smell of burnt matches.

Before us lay an ordinary, dull pound coin. The Queen’s head peered up at us.

Olive started scrabbling at the waistband of her trousers. She tugged it down and shrieked, ‘The mark’s gone! Raymond! Raymond! It’s gone!’

They hugged each other, laughing and crying on my polished wood floor.

‘It’s a new start,’ Olive gasped. She looked round at me, and it was as though ten years had fallen from her. Her smile had a strength, and a warmth and sincerity, that I’d never seen.

There have been quite a few changes. Olive now goes to church every Sunday. She’s joined the choir, and helps with the flowers every week. She’s gone off chatting to the undead, even Alastair, so Raymond’s happier. Her appetite remains as robust as ever, though. I suppose there are some things even the Lord of Darkness can’t change.

THE END