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THE DUST MAN COMETH

Due to a small cleaning emergency, the final installment of the windmill has been delayed but will be on your screens soon.

AND I LIVE IN A COUNCIL FLAT

I have been absent for too long...fighting the forces of darkness.

But now I return to defeat my rival and reveal my own superpower.

I can scatter myself into tiny particals and collide them into one another, creating tiny black holes.

I am THE DUSTMAN. And I wear a dustman's hat.

So, I shall fight you to the death, Linguaman. Or at least as far as Haywards Heath. I do not fear your international translations or the fact that you sound like a cheap Italian pasta dish.

THE WINDMILL: THE LAST NIGHT

There was a torch somewhere....Gilda's room. Yes. Idima began tearing back the pillows and sheets.

There, under the pillow was a drawing book.

She opened it.

On every page a childish drawing. But dark. Somtimes the figure was far away in the distance. Sometimes close, it's features black and cruel - even in her daughter's hand.

She turned the page. A drawing. And she knew at one who this was, and at once the image sickened her. Was this more than a child's imagination? Looking back at her in a child's smudged hand, was not her father, Ben. It was a face, darker, more familiar. It disgusted her. She wanted to burn it. The face was hers.

She looked again at the drawing. The childish image stared at her. Willing her. Daring her. She could feel the world closing in. Was her face so cruel? She had to see. She dropped the book, her eyes wet with tears, and ran to the bathroom. She stood facing the mirror and jumped.



She could see him in the reflection. Maybe five, six feet behind her. She could hear him breathe. Feel him, almost. His rancid breath on her skin. She looked over her shoulder. She knew the bible story - knew that Lot's mistake turned his wife to salt. But she had to see. Her head turned. She fought to keep her eyes open. And steeling herself she looked Tom Bones directly in the eye.

But he was gone. She spun round. Nothing.

"God! Show yourself you coward!"

Behind her. A voice.

"I don't take orders from you, bitch."

She turned back. There, in the mirror, was Tom. Full, staring eyes. Nothing between them. His thin, cracked lips and sallow skin. On his high forehead, the long bitter lines that a life filled with disgust were etched deep. Each furrow seemed like the open grave of a child. Another victim of this murderer.

She could feel the windmill, as if it were calling to her. Offering her sanctuary. She pushed Tom, and for the first time felt him. Physical. Real. Yet even as she did, he was like water. Mist. Incomplete. She had to get out of here. To find her daughter. The mist swirled and dispersed, and it was then that she heard the front door close.

"Thos."

No reply. She called again. But still no reply. She panicked. She was alone in the room. Thos...Tom....Gilda. All gone. What had happened to Thos. Had he run? Or was this Tom? She must sure he could not finish what he had begun. It must not be allowed. She pulled at the door. It was stiff, but finally it opened. Mist swirled around. The buildings around her were gone. She was alone. Totally and utterly alone. Except for the mill. The sails tore at the sky. Their very turning seemed to suck the oxygen from the air. With each rotation, a cold chill seemed to further grey the leadening sky. The sun had long since this last battle with night.



Suddenly the smell came again. Ben? No. This was Tom. She was sure this time. She could taste the metallic seep of blood on the wind. And now came the darking night. A brackish pricking at her skin which was at once clammy and ice cold.

"The children are mine." The voice was callous and bruising and high. The smell came stronger. It made her throat constrict: a stifling dread closed in on her. She wretched.

"Give-me-my-children."

Each word was deliberate, struggling. He struck her face.

His eyes were devious, black, crippling. His breath smelled musty. Rotten. Like a damp room that had been closed too long. The smell poisoned the air. She could feel the mark rising on her face, but now she could not see him. Frantically, she spun around, but he was nowhere.

She put her hand to her mouth. She was bleeding.

But now the words came easier, like eels slipping free from a broken net.

"You won't have my children. I'm not scared of you."

"Aren't you?" He paused. "A pity."

"And how about your mongrel children? Are they afraid?"

She saw a quick flash of steel to his right. It caught in the moonlight. His arm crooked, raising the knife up. Watched as he drew the small blade up level with his face. Saw as he pushed his tongue out through his thin, dry lips.

She spoke.

"Cut me. I don't care".

But he said nothing. Instead, with one swift drop of the arm he slashed the blade through his own tongue, Blood poured from his mouth. Death flowered at his lips like cancerous roses and all the while the taste of his blood hung on the air.

She stood facing the windmill, her damp hair tousled with sweat, blood and dirt. Quixotic.

She longed for a first strained hopelessness of day to whimper onto the horizon. But even if a trickle of dawn flowed, it seemed only to add grist to the mill. And now the sails were in full rotation, sweeping strokes against the brutal remains of night. But strokes made not of the wind, for there was none. But for the turning sails, all was still. But not Idima's heart. For that alone could be heard, above the angry silence. She did not wonder at the presence of no other heart, for she knew that Tom Bones heart, if indeed there still was a heart inside this beast, was withered and rotted to a poisoned core.

She did not know how she took those steps that she saw in the mudied grass behind her; only knew that when she turned back she was thrown down as a mighty sail struck her face, tearing the skin below her right eye. There was no way in or out of the mill, then. The door was boarded tight. She beat at the boards until her hands were bleeding;

"Tom! Tom Bones, I know you. I know who you are! Come here and show your face. Give me back my children!""

The sails seemed to quicken, but still there was no breeze: no way in. And it was then that she saw him. Framed against a window, half way up the mill. Tiny, too tiny to provide a way in. But what other way was there. And then she heard another voice.

"It's hurting me"!

Gilda

"Leave her alone!"

"Mummy!"

"For gods sake, let her go!"

Idima threw herself hard against the sail. It's force threw her back. Steeling herself, and dazed, she staggered to her feet, and again she threw herself against the sail. This time it caught her arm as is tore her off her feet. She felt her wrist shatter as she clutched at the wood. Felt the searing pain spread through her arm, through her body. Felt the sickening feeling of her stomach churning as she was turned by the sails. Somehow, disorientated, she managed to inch her way toward the centre of the mighty cross.



"Mummy!" The scream was louder, higher. She had only heard this sound before when Gilda has burned her arm against the iron when she was three. Why was she thinking about that now?

"Get away from her!" Thos' voice seemed to jolt her back to reality. Clear. Strong; but this was worse. More pleading. Begging him to stop. Was this what escape meant? Was this why they had run from Ben, from Gilda's father?

And suddenly, the sails stopped. She was flung hard again, this time against the force of the turning sails. She clearly heard the sound of bones shattering this time, but she felt no more pain. She was past that; now all she felt was revulsion. Revulsion for Tom Bones, and determination that he would not have her children. He had taken enough lives, and now it would come to an end.

THE WINDMILL: TAKEN

The world was still. Tom was gone – for now. The Thos she knew stirred uncomfortably, but it was Tom she still saw upon his face. His features were marked by the sins of his ancestor…now they were burning through his innocence. Even sleeping the wicked satisfaction showed. She bit the cuticles around her fingers and sat contemplating her next move. She had carried Gilda into her bedroom. This was NOT her fault. The tooth she had lost seemed to have let Tom in, admittedly. Perhaps you could blame her for that, but how could Gilda have known?

She was puzzled by something Tom had said. And it made her think that the words were to spoken solely to mislead. Teacherous lies flowering like cancerous blooms upon the lips of her beloved Thos. Her baby. He said he’d washed ashore. But how could that be here? Brixton was miles inland.

Thoughts danced in her head like fire. And they ignited an idea. They had a computer – it was just about the only valuable thing in the flat. Thos used it for school. Thos wouldn’t waken for a while, but she needed to work quickly. She stopped, remembering something the woman who found them the flat had told her, and opened a cupboard in the hall. The electricity meter read "14 pence". The key though, she knew, had an emergency supply. There was a big "E" on the meter. Emergency. Well, she thought to herself...the meter got that right.

It took a minute or two for the computer to start up. Thos had set it up with a password, but fortunately there was a way to log in a guest. She’d put Thos’ secrecy down to teenage paranoia, but now she wondered if he’d been hiding more than just puberty from her.

A minute more and she was on the google page. She typed slowly B R I X T O N W I N D M I L L. The first few pages were for a nightclub. Her eyes scanned further down and there it was…a page about the mill itself. It all looked perversely normal. Youth clubs, open days, cheerful looking locals. She read on for a moment - reminded of other lives, happy, perfect. These people's reality seemed so abnormal now - Idima thought she must be going crazy. But then, something she read stopped that thought in its tracks:

In 1964 the mill was restored as near as possible to its original appearance, although not in complete working order. New sails and some machinery was made but most was obtained from a derelict mill at Burgh-le-Marsh in Lincolnshire which was then being dismantled. The mill opened to the public at Easter, 1968.

Further restoration and maintenance was carried out in 1978, and again in 1983 after serious vandalism. Despite campaigns by concerned local residents, the windmill has now been boarded up and closed to the public for a number of years.

Lincolnshire. The coast. That machinery...the fools that did that brought Tom here. Here to Brixton. Had he planned all this? Her head was reeling. She needed something to still the world. She walked unsteadily across the hallway and scrambled around in her toiletry bag. They were here somewhere. The sealed silver foil packs. 32 tablets per pack. She tapped the packet against her left hand. She noticed a new line. She was ageing. That couldn't be stopped, but...why was middle aged vanity here at a moment like this? She laughed. The tablets would help -just one. Thos had insisted, before Tom got inside him. Why? Why was he so desperate for her to take a silly little tablet? Unless...unless...Tom had been there all along. Telling him what to do - but these were her tablets. Could Thos have switched them? They had been in her bag the whole time. She pressed through the tetra pack. It fell onto the table. She stared in disbelief. A tooth lay there, root, crown – a child’s tooth. Her hand was shaking as she pushed a second pill from its plastic case. Dreading what she would find. Another tooth? Gilda’s? But Gilda had only lost one. Why was there....she pushed again. A third tooth. Again, and a fourth - how many more? Five, six... What was happening? And then she heard a scream.

"Gilda!"



The bathroom door slammed shut. A second scream, not of fear but pain. It bled through the wall. Hot knives thrusting in her ear. She could feel the agony of boiling nails freezing in her jaw as the teeth were torn from her daughter's gum. Suddenly, Gilda's cries ceased. She could hear a tune, humming. A familiar refrain. Her blood ran cold.

"Gilda! I'm coming. Mummy's..."

"Hush, mamma. Tom Bones has her".

The sentence smashed the remaining certainty of the world apart. Tom was growing more powerful than ever. Idima couldn't move. She was pinned against the wall and no amount of struggling, even the instinct of the mother to fight the monster that was harming her child could free her. And then she could hear Gilda once more. Yet all she could do was listen to her child, begging him to stop, powerless to help.

Suddenly, she could hear Thos moving! He had woken. She heard him pushing at the door from outside. But just as soon as a glimmer of hope had returned, Thos was thrown back as a supernatural strength slammed the door shut again. But now she had hope. Tom was not yet strong enough to fight all three of them at once.

"Thos. Help me."

With a sweeping moment of clarity, Idima knew Thos could stop Tom...but Thos was weakened from the drugged food. She managed to pulled open the door and flung herself between Thos and her daughter. Tom Bones face was there, carved from hate and anger. Idima reached deep into her past. Heard long forgotten words her Grandmother had taught her.

"uSathane suka uSathane uMvelinqangi."

She didn't know whether she spoke them or merely thought them but whatever had happened, Tom seemed to recoil. Fear and loathing flashed across his face. Idima seized these few precious seconds to reach her daughter. Gilda could barely even cry. There were no tears. Only pain etched upon her beautiful face. Blood was pouring from her mouth.

“I'm here. I'm here baby.”

She knew he was gone, for now at least. Something about those words... She lay her daughter on the bed and ran back into the bathroom. She found cotton wool and TCP. She would need to stop the bleeding. She could see Thos cowering in the hallway. Thos. Not Tom. He looked so small suddenly and his clumsy voice seemed to sharpen into focus as it pierced the surface tension in the air.

“Mum”.

The word made a stabbing pain. This was Thos' voice now. This was her son. The twin beasts of love and loathing battled in her as she looked down at him. She kissed his head though he shook beneath that kiss. A mother’s instinct for a moment silenced the beast which seconds before had reared up against her love for him. She knew he needed her. But so did Gilda.

She turned, but a sudden click plunged the world into black. Shit. Suddenly she remembered that you had to take the key out and put it back in for the emergency £5.00 to start working. She fumbled in the darkness...fingers touching, searching for the small black key. The lights came back on but in that one moment, everything changed. Gilda's bed was empty, the front door open.

She didn't need to speak. She knew instantly. He had her. Outside, the night was silent. She saw the sky, heavy with mist. There was almost nothing else. Every building was gone - except for one. Standing there. Watching. Four sails turned and stuck the air with triumphant blows. Ben...Tom...whoever it was had tricked her. And now she knew where she must go.

She looked at Thos. Who just smiled.

*

SHOCKHEADED PETER

More dark musings from London's Theatreland past...

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