The Grandmaster's Address

Members of the Most Exalted Order of Barbers and Hairdressers,

My friends,

I called this meeting – this emergency meeting – as you are well aware, to find a way to face this impossible situation facing us, this situation which, I might say without exaggeration, threatens not just our livelihoods but our very existence.

I shall briefly recapitulate what has been happening in these recent days to refresh your memories so we can think together and tackle this danger before us.

You may not know this, but I was – all unknowing – an eyewitness, as I now realise, of the beginning. That was the night when I was visiting our previous Grandmaster, who – as you know – handed the office over to me ten months ago. The old man had phoned me and asked me to visit him. He sounded nervous and asked me to get there before dusk. He would not answer when I asked him why. I thought about it and decided to go, if only because nobody had seen the old man in weeks and I thought I’d better find out how he was.

Well, with one thing and another, I was a little late, I admit; it was past seven, and completely dark, when I drew up outside his door; you all know he lived alone, in that lonely house in a tree-lined street with no neighbours within shouting distance. He opened to my knock at once and practically dragged me inside by the arm, reaching past me to shut and lock the door as soon as I was inside. It was months since I had seen him, and I noticed at once that he looked haggard and ill; he had even stopped shaving and had grown out his hair, so that he had a scruffy beard and a lank white mop of hair like a woman’s.

“Why are you so late?” he asked. “Now you’ll have to stay here overnight.”

“Overnight?” I asked, surprised. “I can’t. I have to be home by ten.”

“You can’t,” he said hurriedly. There was a wild look in his eyes. “It is out there, do you understand?”

“It?” I tried to draw away from him, alarmed by the look in his eyes.

“Yes...it. It comes closer every night. A month ago I sensed it. A week ago tonight I saw it. And last night,” he shuddered with horror and grasped my arm so tightly that I found the bruises of his fingers on my skin later, “it...reached the house. It was tapping on the windows and trying to break in!”

“What are you talking about?” With great difficulty I managed to free my arm from him and began backing away towards the door. He had begun shaking all over and I began to be rally afraid of him then. I thought he had gone completely mad. If only I had known...!

“Listen!” he hissed at me, showing his teeth, “can’t you hear it? It’s come around again. It’s sniffing around the house looking for a way in. Hark!” he cocked his head, as if he could really hear something. “There! There! You heard it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The monster,” he said. “The monster, all of black and blonde and red-gold...why do you think I’ve stopped shaving and cutting my hair?” Suddenly he turned and ran towards the back of the house. “I forgot to shut the kitchen window!” he yelled over his shoulder. “It could find a way in!”

You may be sure I took the opportunity to quit the presence of this raving madman. Before he had even reached his kitchen I had unbolted his front door and was halfway down the path to my car. And without waiting a moment, I jammed my key into the ignition and drove away. I wasn’t sure but that he would start after me with an axe.

In the last moment as I drove round the corner, I thought I saw something in my rear view mirror. I just caught a glimpse of Something – something huge and menacing and dark, like a shadow that seemed to be rushing after me. But a moment later I was round the corner and in a brightly-lit street full of people and rushing traffic and it was clear I’d imagined it. I drove home, shaking my head and deciding the Order would have to decide what to do about our former Grandmaster, who was so clearly now nothing better than a drivelling lunatic.

In the event we didn’t have to do anything about it, because nobody ever saw the old man again.

After that evening I had a few days so full of work that the entire business of the old Grandmaster slipped my mind. It was only when the police turned up one day at my door and asked me if I’d any idea about what had happened to the old man that I remembered anything at all...

So I told them that I’d gone to his place and he had acted bizarre and erratic and I’d soon left. They seemed satisfied and didn’t bother me again; and I – well, I decided the mad old man had simply left everything and gone away. He wouldn’t be the first to do something like that.

It was just two days after that when, as you remember, the Terror began. First one, and then another, and then almost all of our members began reporting some Thing of fear that walked the night. They could sense it, they said, coming closer and closer to them every night, some Thing of infinite menace. And, strange to say, nobody but our Order’s members sensed it, not even their family members. Soon, they said they could hear it too; they shivered in fear and pulled the blankets over their heads as it stalked the night, this Thing, and howled its anguish and hatred at the stars.

Anguish? Yes, that is what I said; for it is anguished, this Thing. And it hates us; oh, how it hates us.

I too sensed it, my friends. I too, heard it, and continue to hear it. And then, at last, I saw it.

One night last week I was driving home. Like all of you, I find these days a marked disinclination to being out after dark, but those not afflicted like us of the Order do not arrange their business according to our fears and fancies. Thus it was that I was inordinately delayed at a meeting and was driving home as quickly as I could. Those of you who have visited me know that there is a long stretch – about two kilometres – that I have to drive through fairly dense woodland to get home. As soon as I entered this woodland I sensed It. Its presence was suddenly all around me, overwhelming in its intensity. I felt the hairs erect at the nape of my neck. And then, suddenly, I saw It.

It stood on the road before me, arms outstretched. It towered as high as the tall trees, and was as broad as the road was wide, and its dim red eyes glared down at me from a face of matted darkness.

I was saved only because I was driving far too fast to stop or even swerve in time. In the moment before I struck it, my headlights shone on it and showed me something of its structure. And then I had hit it and crashed right through, and as it collapsed behind me I heard its despairing shriek in the night. I can hear it still.

Be assured, friends, it is not dead. It stalks the night, every night, and reconstitutes itself during the day. It can never be destroyed, and it will never be appeased, and it will hunt us down, one by one, and whatever it did to the old Grandmaster, it will do to each and every one of us...unless.

Unless what?

In order to answer that, I must tell you now what the Terror, this Thing that haunts us, is.

I told you I caught a close glimpse of it just before the car hit it. I saw a black, shining surface, streaked with gold and magenta here and there, a surface that split apart in a million strands as my car hit it. Yes, friends and fellow members of the Exalted Order, this Monster that haunts us is composed of nothing more than...hair.

Can you imagine the amounts of hair that we have cut, the beards we have shaved? Do we – any of us – spare a thought for that hair, that beard’s natural desire to be able to live in peace? For surely hair, and beard too, have auras, and when they are cut we violate that aura. Over time, that disturbed aura, that disorganised energy, builds up and up until it reaches a critical point.

And so, is it any longer a mystery that it hates us, poor Thing? Can you still doubt its anguish?

What shall we do, then, to protect ourselves from this Thing that nightly composes itself anew from the hair and beard we cut during the day? Remember that apart from us, nobody else is affected by this energy and so they cannot see it or feel its effects. Therefore we have no chance of being believed by anyone we might approach for help. And meanwhile, the aural energy grows and grows and the Monster comes closer and closer.

It is, then, time to ask the vital question: is there anything, at all, that we can do?

Members of the Most Exalted Order of Barbers and Hairdressers, I believe that there is. It will be a lot – a tremendous lot to ask of you, but it is the only way. We must stop feeding the beast. We must stop adding to the bad energy until the mass of it that is abroad finally weakens and collapses, as it inevitably will, given time.

Yes, my friends, you understood me correctly. Until this Thing melts itself back into the energy of the Cosmos, we must stop shaving and cutting hair. We must go on a mass cease-work. There can be no exceptions, believe me. We sink or swim together.

I suggest therefore that you all stock up on beard combs and turbans. For the next few months or years, this city will resemble one controlled by the Taliban.

I, Grandmaster of the Most Exalted Order of Barbers and Hairdressers, have spoken.