My Big Find by Stephen Bullock
I found a hand under a bench in the park when I was ten. A dead one. A human one. Burnt crisp and orange and hollow, with a 3 inch steel nail through the palm. I wondered if someone had been crucified. Or been tied to the railway line only to have a passenger train cleave all four extremities from the flailing body. I imagined the still twitching and bleeding hand bouncing down the embankment, finding its way to some local kids who proceeded to torture, burn and scream like toddlers at the grim article as they kicked and flicked it at each other. My imagination burnt so fiercely with the mystery of where this thing that should never, ever be found in a playpark could have appeared from, that there was no time for repulsion or horror. Finding a dead hand, as it turned out, was cool.
In truth it was the dog who found it, but I told the story different ways to different people for maximum impact. I quickly became a master storyteller, moving facts around and building tension through the details. Our dog, who I always fancied was the result of a happy union between a Jack Russell and a Rottweiler, had ferreted underneath one of the solid park benches and dragged something out. My Mum launched herself at the dog, shouting ‘Leave! Chas! Leave!’ My Mum had always wanted a King Charles Spaniel but couldn’t be doing with that much fur, so as the next best thing she bought a mongrel and called it Chas. It made sense at the time. We had been lectured again and again that Chas could die if he ate chicken bones as they have a tendency to splinter and a char-grilled chicken wing was the closest identifiable thing to what the dog now had between his saliva-drenched fangs. He was hoiked by his choke chain into mid-air, legs dangling, whining in utter desolation that his newfound tasty-beautiful plaything was lost to him. It wasn’t chicken, but there were bones, rattling about inside the fried skin that was frozen in position with fingers bent but not clenched.
I managed to get a really good look at the dismembered hand, close enough to see the wrist bone jutting out from within the crispy-duck skin and the hacksaw grooves that had scarred the bone. Close enough to see the skin was almost transparent, and the fingerprints were still visible, like an amber resin model of the real thing. There was some screaming in my general direction and me and my brother were ordered away to a more respectable distance by my Mum. I decided to set a good example to my 6 year old brother who was poking the thing with a stick. Poking a dead hand with a stick, as it turned out, was cool. I took the stick off him and we begrudgingly retreated to the steel safety of the big cube climbing frame.
I climbed to the very top where I had an aerial view of the body-less crime scene, drawing maps of the area in my head. A passing neighbour was sent scurrying home to telephone the police. That’s what people did before mobiles, in the backward dark Eighties. We formed a strange security team, guarding the hand from other dogs and passers by, shouting the news to gangs of kids from my lofty tower, like a medieval castle’s gatekeeper - protecting my story until the police would take over. For a time we all felt terribly important.
The police came and cordoned the whole park off for several weeks as they searched it inch by inch. They even rang my Mum and confirmed that the hand was really real, not fake. The relief washed over me, a bit like my Grandma’s tight knitted jumper going over my head. Having relished the story so far this was the best news. It was a genuine Police certified dead human hand. Fantastic. All too soon the tape came down and the Police left with no new discoveries. They never found out whose hand it was, or even where it might have come from. Back in the playground tales of body snatchers, grave robbers, Mafia retribution and mislaid buckets of hospital amputations due for incineration were rife. I refused to pick an answer. I preferred the mystery. I told the tale to anyone who would listen, still do. I soon found myself part of an urban legend when a kid told me his best mate had found the hand in the park. I didn’t correct him. After all, it was a great story.
That night my brother and I must have been suitably unaffected by the day as my parents went out for the night. My Aunty Linda was nominated to baby-sit and being a responsible type she sent my brother to bed, but let me stay up to watch the Friday night horror film. It was called The Hand. Michael Caine’s decapitated hand returns from the dead, strangles the cat, and finally tries to kill him too. I’m fairly sure I had a nightmare that night.
Although the hand was my first big story to tell, and probably nudged me into a career in storytelling and theatre, I don’t believe the macabre nature of the dead hand I so vividly remember had any influence on my character. I am a happy, untroubled, married man who makes friends easily and runs a murder mystery theatre company. Basically I kill people for a living.
