The Sunshine Men

Long has it been since last I heard mention of the sunshine men. For that, I can only be thankful. Questions? I have many. I’ll be dead before any are answered, which is no great loss. I never saw one in the flesh. There was only one man I know of who did. This tale I am sharing with you now, is for mine own peace. Also, for your asylum. Whilst I cannot guarantee the story I am about to share will not evoke some deep curiosity in you, I must warn you never to travel to the place I refer to in this time as Tamwood Oak. I will tell you all I know of the sunshine men.
And perhaps I shall sleep better for it.

I couldn’t see what had caused the jam when I found myself the outlier in three lanes of freight trucks on the motorway. Somewhere between Cambridge and London, with sloping grass banks choking on congestion either side. Wooden pegs had been knocked into the bank on my left, like rows of crosses where soldiers had been slain.
I rolled down my window, and leaned out to catch the eye of the driver to my right, who rolled his down too.
‘I don’t suppose you can see what’s going on up there?’ I said.
‘Sprinter van on its side,’ came his reply, causing ripples in his chin/neck. The yellow cap on his head sported a logo I couldn’t make out. I guessed the same logo was on his yellow shirt under his blue overalls.
The van behind him blared its horn.
He let his eyes momentarily widened in annoyance, then gave me a little shake of his head.
‘Nowt moving, like,’ continued the driver, resting his thick forearm on his window. ‘Looks a reyt mess.’
He shrugged and leaned back into his seat.
His window stayed half-open, and I took it as an invitation. ‘Where are you headed?’
He brought it back down and said, ‘Brighton,’ with a wry smile. ‘Reckon I’ll be here for a while.’
Not another word was said by either of us before his window went back up, and his kind eyes became placid behind the transparent glass. I was left with the grumble of engines and distant radio chatter.
My windows stayed down, for it was early summer, and England was teasing a spell of good weather, before hopes would surely be drowned in a decisive rainfall. I turned my fan up a notch. It was heaven on my sticky skin. I shut my eyes in relief for ten minutes until a sharp hiss of air reopened them. Somewhere up ahead, a truck had released its handbrake. A domino effect of hisses followed in quick succession, and we began to move.
Cooking tarmac lingered in my nostrils as we crawled along, watching helplessly the freedom of the drivers coming the other way – I wondered if the truck drivers around me were licking their lips at the sight of open road, just out of reach. I approached a bridge. Two children leaned over the handrail with their mother, waving. I could see their brown legs through the mesh. I passed under them. The traffic stopped again before I was out the other side; the shade, I was grateful for. My eyes followed the curving road round to the electric signs maybe fifty metres away. Large Xs above the middle and right lanes. I sighed, and decided I’d go off the motorway at the upcoming slip-road. It took a further fifteen minutes to reach it. Even now I shudder at the memory of ‘Tamwood Oak’ signposted just after the 40mph boards.
Golden rows of wheat reached up and met the horizon on my right. To the left, green fields followed the same pattern, only broken by a telecoms tower and small office bungalow at the side of the road. A stubble-headed gent was unlocking his jeep in the bungalow’s gravel drive. I pulled up beside him.
‘Afternoon,’ I said. ‘You’re not heading to the motorway, are you?’
He smiled knowingly. ‘No, I’ve had the traffic reports in. It’s chocka for two miles.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d know if there’s any way I could skip all that?’
‘Trying to get to London?’
I nodded.
‘You turn right at the junction there,’ he pointed up the road, ‘and follow the road down. It’ll take you about forty minutes but you’ll get to junction five. All lanes should be open from there.’
I thanked him and followed his directions. An old Victorian house had been converted into a pub over the road from the T-junction. Where I waited for it to clear either way, I could see a path leading down the side to the pub garden with wooden tables and chairs. Separated from the garden by a tall hedge was a fenced-off patch of grass – I assumed property of the church, whose steeple poked up above the trees just left of the enclosed grassland. Following the road, I came to the war memorial at the heart of the village. A pristine granite tombstone, at least two metres tall and surrounded with poppies, stood on an island encircled by the road. Two pushbikes were left on the ground near the island’s bench. Perhaps the kids whom they belonged to were at the restaurant on the corner. Three women – two elderly, one an adolescent, but wearing a cotton shawl that could’ve been borrowed from either of her companions – had set up a stall in front of the memorial. A crowd of six huddled round the “FRESH STRAWBERRIES” sign. I told myself I would stop in on my return journey, if they were still in operation. It was late when I made the trip home, and I forgot entirely about Tamwood Oak until I’d already passed by it on the motorway. When I did remember, I kept the thought in my head all the way home, where I deposited it in my diary, so as not to forget.
It was there, on my second visit, I learned of the sunshine men.

*****

The heat wasn’t so fierce when I went back the next day. Grey clouds troubled the skies but unleashed no downpour. The traffic, also mild. After the slip-road I came by the fields again, thinking of strawberries and poppies. From the state of the carpark, I deduced the public house was nigh-on empty.
As I passed, something on the grass patch caught my eye. I quickly swung into the carpark, got out and jogged to the fence. There, a man lay, propped against the hedge. His clothes, violently ripped, hung off him in mud-soaked tatters. Tanned flesh was exposed in places. In others, it was red.
‘Hello?’ I shouted. The moist timber fence between us felt brittle in my hands. I narrowed my eyes. Fear purged my voice of compassion or patience. ‘Hello!’
I choked in fright when the gentleman turned and raised his head to me. The face was inorganically paled, with a splat of blood around the left eye. It then slumped to the side. On top of his head was a sickening array of claw-marks, as though a rake had been yanked across his head, tearing patches of hair out.
I was through the gate and running to his aid in the next moment. As I neared, I could make out crevices in his being, exposing raw pink. Skin or muscle, I couldn’t tell. Some of it was throbbing. He shook like he’d never known warmth, and he said, in an equally shaken voice, ‘Help me.’
There was a plastic rattling sound, and I glanced down at his hands, wrapped in a beaded lanyard on which the cross he clutched hung. It wasn’t the cross which took my attention, more his lacerated hands. Strands of hair the same colour as his were also in his grip. I was questioning whether any of his wounds were self-inflicted.
‘I’ll call help.’ My hand went down to my pocket.
‘No!’ he screeched. ‘Do not call anybody! You can’t call anybody!’
He curled up and clasped his hands over his ears. The clenching and unclenching of his jaw was relentless, as were his anguished grunts.
‘What’s wrong? What happened to you?’
Along came a subconscious urge to step back from him.
I had planted one foot behind me on the grass when his eyes shot open.
‘Don’t leave me!’ he said in a pathetic voice. ‘I have to tell you, I can’t keep it in. If I keep it in any longer I might go mad!’
His voice cracked like glass on the final word.
‘I need to get help,’ I said, and made to turn towards the gate.
The maniac let out a shrill scream and lurched at me, landing in the grass by my leg. His body went limp, save for the fingers at the end of his outstretched arm imposing their steel grip on my trouser cuff.
‘Please! Don’t go!’
‘All right,’ I told him, unable to keep my voice from wobbling. ‘I’ll stay. What do you –’
The words fell away before they could arrive in my mouth.
‘Let me tell you,’ he begged.
‘Okay,’ I breathed. I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Wha – What is it?’
‘After I tell you, will you leave? Will you leave this place and never come back? Do you give me your word?’
‘I give you my word.’
The man sighed and let his arm fall – of course I considered dashing off in that moment – then dragged himself back to the hedge and propped himself up again.
‘They came…’ He pursed his lips to stop their quivering, and tears formed a film over his eyes. ‘I don’t remember! I don’t remember if they told me –’
Each breath he took was sucked back out quicker than the last.
‘Tell me what you do remember,’ I instructed.
The rise and fall of his chest slowed. ‘I was at work one day. It must have been recent – look at me.’ He examined the cuts all over him. ‘It must have been in the last few hours that it happened. Oh, dear god!’
He clasped his hands either side of his head again.
‘Please, let me call someone –’
‘No!’ He flinched, startled by his own outcry. ‘I’ll tell all. Just listen to me.’
Again, he gathered breath. His arms rubbed each other.
‘I work at an insurance company, in the village next on,’ this man told me. ‘What I do there isn’t important. I got a call from my son. He’s off school for the summer holidays. He never calls my office. But he called, and I answered.
‘He said, “Dad. There’s a man in the garden.”
‘I didn’t believe him, but he pressed on, repeating the same phrase: “There’s a man in the garden.”
‘He was panicking. I’d never heard him sound so scared before. I took to scolding him for trying to put the wind up me, but he broke down into tears and said, “P-Please come home, dad. I’m terrified.”
‘He swore at me as well. He never swears. I told him stay put, and that I’d be down to see him as soon as I could. I asked if the man was doing anything, if he was trying to break in.
‘“He’s just standing there,” my boy told me. “He’s staring in through the kitchen window.”
‘“Call the police,” I instructed. “Call them and tell them what you’ve told me.”
‘He said to me, “I’ve tried, dad. Every time I go to do it, I can’t.”
‘“It’s okay,” I said. “You can speak to them.”
‘“No, I can’t.” He was crying. “I’ve called three times, something won’t let me speak to them. All I can hear on the other end is–”’ the man made a noise mimicking radio static.
‘I started to tell him something else, but he began screaming.
‘“Dad, he’s looking at me! Dad, make him stop! He’s smiling at me! Come and make him go away! PLEASE!”’
‘I couldn’t stand any more. I informed everyone I had an emergency and left.
‘I went straight to my house and rushed through the side gate. I thought the bastard wouldn’t be expecting me to come around the side to the garden. I hoped I might be able to surprise him.’ He dragged air in over his teeth. ‘I tried to call for help. Couldn’t reach anyone on nine-nine-nine.’ He wiped his eye. ‘I don’t understand why.
‘When I arrived in the garden, I found myself stopping dead in my tracks without another thought. It was like the world had been sucked away, and all that was left was this man and I. He stood a little taller than me, in a black and white pinstriped suit, and beneath that he had on a white shirt and black tie. On his head was a black derby. This man was staring like he’d been longing for me to show. He didn’t look all human. He was this sickly grey colour and had this yellow tint to his skin. And he wasn’t morbid, but his skin was loose and sagging. I forgot entirely that this was my property, and that my son was inside. All I could focus on was the man in the suit, with the revolting skin. All at once, he looked as likely to laugh as he was to sink to his knees and cry. When he opened his mouth, he looked suddenly afraid.
‘“Please don’t go!” he implored, distraught and shrill. “The others are coming.”
‘A cold terror came creeping over me. I – I just couldn’t bear to accept that it was – it’s real. I turned my back and ran. I will admit to you now that I gave no thought as to what would happen to my boy until I was down the road. My only concern was getting away from the man in the suit. It was the laughter that stopped me. All the way at the end of the street, I heard an awful laughter echoing, and I knew where it came from. I rushed back home and stood in the drive. Through the windows, I saw silhouettes. Men, every one of them dressed in suits and derbies. It’s so clear – it’s carved in my head. They had their arms around each other, raising glasses. There was music playing as well. You might have heard it at fairgrounds.
‘I wanted to enter the garden in stealth, but I couldn’t. The front door opened, and I was drifting towards it. Nothing in my willpower could stop it. Something happened to me.’
The man cried out, put a hand to his head. Blood glistened in his palm when it came away.
‘They beat me. I shouldn’t pity myself, I know. Not after I left my boy –’ his voice rose. The story paused to let the tears spill down his face. ‘In brief spurts when consciousness burdened me, I was blind. I could barely breathe. All I could feel was them swarming on me. Their scratching,’ he whipped his head around and swatted an invisible presence on his shoulder, ‘their hitting and-and kicking.’ He sobbed.
I knelt down. ‘I’m here. They can’t – It’s just me.’
‘When I awoke I wasn’t far from here.’
‘Did they drag you here?’ I asked.
‘They must have. I tried to crawl –’ He pointed at imprints in the mud that told of his scrambling.
‘What – Where is your son?’
The man gasped as if I’d winded him. ‘My son… my boy.’
‘What happened?’ I gripped his shoulder with haste, narrowly missing the bloody rake marks. I was crying with him. ‘What happened?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘What?’ I breathed.
‘I heard the stove bubbling in the kitchen. Vicious searing,’ his lips foamed, ‘as something was dropped in it, dear god.’
‘No.’ I began to back away again, wishing with everything I had that there had never been a lane closure on the motorway.
‘Yes,’ he told me. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is. I couldn’t see, and what I heard alone isn’t enough to convince you of what they did. But I know, I swear blind that I can feel in my bones. They cooked my boy,’ with the end of his sentence the very soul seemed to vacate his body, as his words became a breathless scratching in his throat, ‘and they ate him!’
The man rolled away from the hedge and dragged his torn up, shaking, cadaverous form across the grass. His arms clawed at the grass with slow but sure determination, bisecting his old marks. Unsure of what to do, I closed my eyes. Each grunt I heard grew fainter, yet more intense than the last.
‘Why did they come for you?’ I asked.
When my eyes found him again, he was just about on his feet. A sad smile set on his lips. His eyes had a glassiness to them.
‘The sunshine men didn’t tell me much about where they came from, or why they chose me.’
‘The sunsh– What did you call them?’
The man looked down at his shoes, shrugged like a shy child. ‘The sunshine men,’ he squeaked. ‘I don’t know if they told me that, or if I just have a feeling. But I know that’s what they are called. In fact, yes, yes, I remember what they told me now. They said they like to come in the summertime, when the sun is shining. When the children like to go out and play.’
On puppeteer’s strings, his arm reached over his head, the fingers grasping his face. I thought he was gouging his own eyes out. Still staring at me, in a kind of relieved way, his other hand came underneath his chin. I cried out and covered my face. There was an appalling snap. Mouth open, I awaited another sound. A scream, anything. None came. When I had gathered the courage, I peeped from behind my hands. Splayed out on his front in the mud, both legs cocked as though he were sprinting. I crept closer, and affirmed his neck was crooked, enough that it was broken. Upon his face was that same inherently sad smile. The smile, I supposed, of the sunshine men.
I thought I was shivering. Instead, I was quaking, mouthing the word “help” but never daring to scream it. I was careful with my foot placement to avoid the twigs as I returned to my car. It was hours before I’d put enough distance between myself and Tamwood Oak to call for help. I have since dialled the same number on a few occasions. Only one of them was regarding something other than the body in the brook. There was a fire at the bakery down the road, and I was put through to the emergency services right away. Aside from that, I was met with static. As the boy had said, I could not talk to the police.
I set out to go to the station in person a multitude of times, but I’d blink and be back home, ironing a shirt or cooking. Or stoking the fire pit. Never far from something that could melt the skin. Perhaps they were warning me.

*****

In the days after the abhorrence I rarely slept, and jumped at every sound that came around me. Upon my mind was the ill man in his suit, stood in a stranger’s garden and begging them not to leave. My weight dropped significantly, and I was forced off work for two days and told to replenish both in food and rest. I wasn’t hungry; I was in fact feasted upon by my own paranoia. Checking outside my house through the blinds became habit, as did nights staring out into my garden. When I couldn’t resist it anymore, I went back to Tamwood Oak. This was some weeks later, when I had managed to half-convince myself that what I saw, and the story I had been told, were a result of the heat and stress I was under.
His tracks in the mud were long gone. There were no official-looking persons sniffing about the place, nor a shred of yellow tape where once they might have been. No clump of hair left behind, nor a rag from his garments, nor a strip of flesh.
I allowed myself some peace of mind here, but would not be satisfied until I’d been to the man’s house. Maybe further, to his garden.
I circled the war memorial twice in my car – no strawberry stands. Then, I drove around Tamwood Oak looking for the house. Something told me I’d know it when I saw it.
The night was pure and without a single cloud when it reared its ugly head. A terrible chill would have complemented the ambience, yet in its place came a cosy warmth. A debilitating nervous cramp in my stomach made it hard to turn the steering wheel, but I spun onto the wide, densely populated road. My expectation was to find what I was looking for at the crown of the hill but it wasn’t until I reached the crown that the music began. The kind played at a fairground.
I followed it down the hill until it was no longer faint, and neither were the voices. Voice; a single sound, projected through many a mouth. The car stopped outside a house tucked in at the street corner. Again, contrasting expectation, in place of the envisaged tall, bleak, gothic structure with bats on the roof and stained-glass windows, was a two-storey build from the 90s, I’d imagine. A single car was parked upon the driveway. The lights were on. All of them. And through the windows, where the curtains were not drawn, I could see silhouettes. Many of them, in every room. Men in suits and derbies with their arms around each other. They swayed to the fairground music, backslapping and laughing together. The same laughter I told myself I hadn’t heard up the street.
In the top left window, three figures had their arms raised to the sky – I presumed toasting. Then, one slapped the other quite hard on the back, and their laughter erupted. The same silhouette was slapped again, and again, then on his head, before the third man in the trio got involved, and their laughter only magnified every time. An army of silhouettes passed by the windows as they rushed in to join the fun. Their bodies formed a single black curtain. Both hands covering my ears in a trivial attempt to block out the endless smacking and laughter, I watched a lone figure run up the stairs to the room where the commotion was taking place. The smacking ceased, and whispering took its place. Another whisper answered it, and another answered that, until they were all whispering over each other. The silhouettes filtered out of the room and descended the stairs. The victimised individual remained in the room. He was still laughing. His hat had been knocked off in the melee. His heartfelt chortles grew heavy, then tipped into whimpering, which became moaning, which became a sobbing, his shoulders drooping lower with each sorrowful gasp. He dusted off his hat, placed it back upon his round head, and the dreaded laughter made a brief return, dying out as he followed the others downstairs. I jerked round in my seat, checking for signs of life in the street. Not even a meandering cat.
One by one, the lights in the house went out. My hands went to the car controls, but grasped at nothing. A glance down sent me into a frenzy of panic. It was all black. The porch light came on, snapping me from my daze. A quivering, high-pitched voice, one I pray to God I never hear again, cried: ‘Hello?’
The blood in my veins froze.
‘Hello!’ the voice cried again. ‘Will you join our party?’
There was a bristling noise below, and I realised my foot was dragging through the grass on the lawn. Even now, I wonder if I was actually touching the ground. There was a soft click – the porch door to the house had opened. My memory holds just brief snippets of the minutes that followed. One is sprinting to the inside lights forming a beacon in my car. Next, twisting the key in the ignition and throwing it into third by mistake and miraculously not stalling. I don’t know how long I spent racing around Tamwood Oak, but I can tell you my foot didn’t inch off the accelerator before I was on the motorway. I barely watched the road that night. My eyes, all the while, were on the rear-view mirror. The laughter followed me all the way to the village edge, and stayed between my ears for weeks afterwards.

*****

You won’t see Tamwood Oak in the news. Not much worth mention occurs there. It’s a quiet little village that pays its respects to the fallen in battle, and the strawberries, I’m told, are the sweetest you’ll ever try. If curiosity delves deep inside of you, and drags you towards London, you may well come across it. The story you’re currently reading could feed a darkness within you. The urge to see for yourself the maniacal scenes I witnessed may prove too much. Carry with you my warning. I have never been back to Tamwood Oak. I am sure that if I did, the sunshine men would be waiting for me.

THE END

Bio: "I am a Graduate Construction Engineer from Leicester, England. I won the Henrietta Branford competition when I was eight, and had my first short story published when I was ten. I balance writing with my construction career, as well as my hobbies of fitness and learning new languages. I enjoy writing science fiction and suspense, and have previously had suspenseful short stories published, however my favourite genres revolve around adventure, coming of age and great friendships."

E-mail: Tom Hooke

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