Posted May 4, 09 01:26 PM
50 Berkley Square
Some stories stay with you...even the ones from dime store paperbacks.
Back in grade school - Christ the King, Mandan, North Dakota - every other Friday meant teachers shipping us home with Scholastic Book Club order forms in hand. Then there were the telephone solicitors pushing the kids' reads. Mom would politely dismiss those guys after they interrupted the evening meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Not Dad, though; he'd buy anything you tried to hock him and vice versa. Don't get me started on how he let the backyard swingset go for $25.
Interesting, the childhood throwbacks we keep around. Well, at least until junior high. I remember a particular plastic-wrapped third grade-level pick-up: The Pumpkin Smasher. It was a nice little just-scary-enough-for-boys tale about a small town tiptoeing into the mystery of why its decorations get destroyed each Halloween. Loved that one.
Both of my brothers were - and still are - collectors of all things throwback. Charlie's forte: Wargames and models. Andy's: Board games and books (Note to Andy: if you're reading this, dude, don't you think it's about high time you rented a truck and hauled your stuff out of Mom's basement? Honestly...).
Andy boasted the entire line of Choose Your Own Adventure books, all one hundred-something of ‘em. He also knew where to look - and that's where most people wouldn't. Like the now defunct Owl Bookstore, its precarious steps and twisted railing descending just off Main Street. Andy often returned with spooky-spooky, PG-fared anthologies. And in one was a little story called “50 Berkley Square” (British addresses are always so cool, aren't they?). If it was doctored fiction, I'm surprised...because its imprint stamped itself like a legend.
The story goes like this: London, World War II. Late one night, two sailors on leave go looking for lodging. They meet a man who offers to rent an entire three-story boarding house, the address being - oh, yes - 50 Berkley Square. As he hands them the keys, the man gives the sailors one stern word of caution: Spread out, enjoy the whole place, but whatever you do, don't use the top floor room.
Naturally, the sailors aren't sound sleepers. You see, the bedrooms on the first two floors don't quite shut out the streetlights. So our boarders decide, unwisely, that the third floor beds (you know, the ones without the street lamps next to them) sleep the coziest.
Exhausted, they turn in. But soon, in pitch darkness, something rouses them. A sound. The kind of sound coming from the floor in the middle of the room. Not so much the boards creaking, but a trapdoor scraping open. The sailors' eyes come awake, unblinking, their hands clenched to the covers. And that something, that lumpy something...is crawling - no, slithering - towards them.
The sailors spring to their feet. One arms himself with a curtain rod. The other runs down the landing and out into the street, grabbing a constable. When Mr. Flight returns with Help, the To-the-Rescue Crew discover the remaining sailor...dead on the floor, eyes opened in fatal fright.
The rest of the story becomes hazy. After the incident, the boarding house was rented to tenants who knew how to follow a stern word of caution. No one stayed in the top floor room, and no one reported any paranormal bumps in the night. After time, the building was torn down and another put in its place.
Was it legend? Fiction? Something in between? Or, was it a craftily-scribed chapter of a book bought second-hand, now encrypted in that special, shadowy corner of my imagination? Yeah, my imagination has gads of shadowy corners, mind you, but this certain niche is extra snazzy.
Years back, Andy and I backpacked across Europe, beginning in London. I couldn't find 50 Berkley Square - even given the head start on the address - and my brother didn't even know we were looking for it. Some legends are far more powerful without knowing too much about them.
Then again, we did do the Jack the Ripper Walking Tour. I want my pound sterling back.
Posted by Mike Kalvoda at 01:26 PM