Stephen King - Crouch End

By the time the woman had finally gone, it was nearly two-thirty in the morning. Outside the Crouch End police station, Tottenham Lane was a small dead river. London was asleep but London never sleeps deeply, and its dreams are uneasy.

PC Vetter closed his notebook, which hed almost filled as the American womans strange, frenzied story poured out. He looked at the typewriter and the stack of blank forms on the shelf beside it. This onell look odd come morning light, he said.

PC Farnham was drinking a Coke. He didnt speak for a long time. She was American, wasnt she? he said finally, as if that might explain most or all of the story she had told. Itll go in the back file, Vetter agreed, and looked round for a cigarette. But I wonder

Farnham laughed. You dont mean you believe any part of it? Go on, sir! Pull the other one!

Didnt say that, did I? No. But youre new here.

Farnham sat a little straighter. He was twenty-seven, and it was hardly his fault that he had been posted here from Muswell Hill to the north, or that Vetter, who was nearly twice his age, had spent his entire uneventful career in the quiet London backwater of Crouch End. Perhaps so, sir, lie said, but with respect, mind I still think I know a swatch of the old whole cloth when I see one or hear one.

Give us a fag, mate, Vetter said, looking amused. There!

What a good boy you are. He lit it with a wooden match from a bright red railway box, shook it out, and tossed the match stub into Farnhams ashtray. He peered at the lad through a haze of drifting smoke. His own days of laddie good looks were long gone; Vetters face was deeply lined and his nose was a map of broken veins. He liked his six of Harp a night, did PC Vetter. You think Crouch Ends a very quiet place, then, do you?

Farnham shrugged. In truth he thought Crouch End was a big suburban yawn what his younger brother would have been pleased to call a fucking Bore-a-Torium. Yes, Vetter said, I see you do. And youre right. Goes to sleep by eleven most nights, it does. But Ive seen a lot of strange things in Crouch End. If youre here half as long as Ive been, youll see your share, too. There are more strange things happen right here in this quiet six or eight blocks than anywhere else in London thats saying a lot, I know, but I believe it. It scares me. So I have my lager, and then Im not so scared. You look at Sergeant Gordon sometime, Farnham, and ask yourself why his hair is dead white at forty. Or Id say take a look at Petty, but you cant very well, can you? Petty committed suicide in the summer of 1976. Our hot summer. It was Vetter seemed to consider his words. It was quite bad that summer. Quite bad. There ere a lot of us who were afraid they might break through.

Who might break through what? Farnham asked. He felt a contemptuous smile turning up the corners of his mouth, knew it was far from politic, but was unable to stop it. In his way, Vetter was raving as badly as the American woman had. He had always been a bit queer. The booze, probably. Then he saw Vetter was smiling right back at him.

You think Im a dotty old prat, I suppose, he said. Not at all, not at all, Farnham protested, groaning inwardly.

Youre a good boy, Vetter said. Wont be riding a desk here in the station when youre my age. Not if you stick on the force. Will you stick, dyou think? Dyou fancy it? Yes, Farnham said. It was true; he did fancy it. He meant to stick even though Sheila wanted him off the police force and somewhere she could count on him. The Ford assembly line, perhaps. The thought of joining the wankers at Ford curdled his stomach.

I thought so, Vetter said, crushing his smoke. Gets in your blood, doesnt it? You could go far, too, and it wouldnt be boring old Crouch End youd finish up in, either. Still, you dont know everything. Crouch End is strange. You ought to have a peek in the back file sometime, Farnham. Oh, a lot of its the usual girls and boys run away from home to be hippies or punks or whatever it is they call themselves now husbands gone missing (and when you clap an eye to their wives you can most times understand why) unsolved arsons purse-snatchings all of that. But in between, theres enough stories to curdle your blood. And some to make you sick to your stomach.

True word?

Vetter nodded. Some of em very like the one that poor American girl just told us. Shell not see her husband again take my word for it. He looked at Farnham and shrugged. Believe me, believe me not. Its all one, isnt it? The files there. We call it the open file because its more polite than the back file or the kiss-my-arse file. Study it up, Farnham. Study it up. Farnham said nothing, but he actually did intend to study it up. The idea that there might be a whole series of stories such as the one the American woman had told that was disturbing. Sometimes, Vetter said, stealing another of Farnhams Silk Cuts, I wonder about Dimensions.

Dimensions?

Yes, my good old son dimensions. Science fiction writers are always on about Dimensions, arent they? Ever read science fiction, Farnham?

No, Farnham said. He had decided this was some sort of elaborate leg-pull.

What about Lovecraft? Ever read anything by him?

Never heard of him, Farnham said. The last fiction hed read for pleasure, in fact, had been a small Victorian Era pastiche called Two Gentlemen in Silk Knickers. Well, this fellow Lovecraft was always writing about Dimensions, Vetter said, producing his box of railway matches. Dimensions close to ours. Full of these immortal monsters that would drive a man mad at one look. Frightful rubbish, of course. Except, whenever one of these people straggles in, I wonder if all of it was rubbish. I think to myself then when its quiet and late at night, like now that our whole world, everything we think of as nice and normal and sane, might be like a big leather ball filled with air. Only in some places, the leathers scuffed almost down to nothing. Places where the barriers are thinner. Do you get me? Yes, Farnham said, and thought: Maybe you ought to give me a kiss, Vetter I always fancy a kiss when Im getting my doodle pulled.

And then I think, Crouch Ends one of those thin places. Silly, but I do have those thoughts.

Too imaginative, I expect; my mother always said so, anyway.

Did she indeed?

Yes. Do you know what else I think?

No, sir not a clue.

Highgates mostly all right, thats what I think its just as thick as youd want between us and the Dimensions in Muswell Hill and Highgate. But now you take Archway and Finsbury Park. They border on Crouch End, too. Ive got friends in both places, and they know of my interest in certain things that dont seem to be any way rational. Certain crazy stories which have been told, well say, by people with nothing to gain by making up crazy stories. Did it occur to you to wonder, Farnham, why the woman would have told us the things she did if they werent true?

Well

Vetter struck a match and looked at Farnham over it. Pretty young woman, twenty-six, two kiddies back at her hotel, husbands a young lawyer doing well in Milwaukee or someplace. Whats she to gain by coming in and spouting about the sort of things you only used to see in Hammer films?

I dont know, Farnham said stiffly. But there may be an ex

So I say to myself Vetter overrode him that if there are such things as thin spots, this one would begin at Archway and Finsbury Park but the very thinnest part is here at Crouch End. And I say to myself, wouldnt it be a day if the last of the leather between us and whats on the inside that ball just rubbed away? Wouldnt it be a day if even half of what that woman told us was true?

Farnham was silent. He had decided that PC Vetter probably also believed in palmistry and phrenology and the Rosicrucians.