Last May, I visited a Greek restaurant in Wolverhampton with an atmosphere so profoundly unnerving that it has haunted my subconscious ever since. Now, after 13 months of uneasy silence, I am finally ready to tell its story. I'm ready to tell you the Tragedy of Mr Darius.
Our tale begins on an overcast evening in early summer. As the pavement outside is flecked with tepid rain, the proprietor - we'll call him Adrian - is inviting in the first group booking. Maybe they're a hen party. Inside, the dim air smells of souvlaki.
Adrian is a gigantic man; an affable ogre cast in the shape of a cathedral bell, with a voice to match, and surprisingly nimble musician's fingers. As the guests are shown to their seats, they are too engrossed in each other to notice the way he anxiously licks his lips.
He deals the menus like cards, with those delicate hands that he can't let shake. The waiters arrive to take drinks orders, and he looks across the room at Alexia, the belly dancer. She sees the sweat on his brow, but nods with a quick, hard smile: they will get through this.
More groups arrive - a birthday party, followed by a divorce celebration. They are boisterous and thirsty for fun: and why not? After all, the sign outside promises traditional music, dancing and plate smashing. It does not mention the curse.
Adrian & Alexia are in the back room now, a cramped space lit with trembling flourescent light, and festooned with tambourines and mildewed dance costumes. Alexia steels herself, moves to the box where the Plates are kept. Adrian takes a shuddering breath behind clasped hands.
As the raucous laughter swells in the dining room behind them, they look over the Plates with exhausted loathing. The powdery discs seem to swallow the joy from the air, exuding the stink of fear in its place. If only the guests knew... No. Adrian knows they must never find out.
Nobody on the staff can remember how it started. But everyone knows how it could end. That stack of cheap ceramic contains within it the essence of something monstrous - and if every single piece isn't smashed to shards by midnight, it will creep into the world.
In the hands of Adrian and his staff, the Plates are indestructible - only those who don't know their secret can destroy them. Worse yet, each day at dawn, Adrian finds the box refreshed. He and Alexia have been doing this for years now, like sailors cursed to an eternal voyage.
Adrian looks as if he will weep, but Alexia snaps for him to focus - if he can't perform tonight, the ritual will not be completed, and the Plates will win. Failure isn't an option. Composing himself, he gives her a shaky nod, grabs his Bouzouki, and re-enters the restaurant.
The guests are on their main courses now, and deep in their cups. It is later than Adrian thought. As he sets up on the little corner stage, his eyes flicker across their laugh-creased faces with deep, longing envy. In a voice booming with false joy, he welcomes them.
The first few songs are a warm-up, more to steady his nerves than anything else. Alexia twirls between the tables and the diners clap and cheer, mistaking the terror that fuels her movements for passion. In the gloomy recesses of the room, over by the bar, the Old Man watches.
Adrian tries not to look at the Old Man. As far back as anyone can remember, he has showed up at precisely 9pm each night - a withered figure in a red velour Elvis costume, eyes concealed behind golden sunglasses, shrivelled lips set in a smirk of distant mirth.
He never moves. He never speaks. But everyone on the staff knows, with ghastly certainty, that this will change if ever midnight arrives with a single Plate left intact. Adrian forces the Old Man from his mind and sings, pounding a wild rhythm on the strings of his Bouzouki.
Alexia cajoles the hen party into the back room. After a few minutes they emerge, dressed in gaily coloured rags, and shaking tambourines. As she leads them in a sinuous procession through the room, Alexia gives Adrian the signal - it is time for the ritual to begin.
Adrian knows the routine like he knows how to breathe: get this side of the room to clap, this side to cheer, then get them all up on their feet. If they all do as he says, their protector will arrive. And if not? It doesn't bear thinking about. And so he has them clap & cheer.
The noise reaches a crescendo and Adrian raises his meaty hands into the air in benediction. "And now..." he announces, his voice like the roar of a tractor climbing out of a ditch, "It's GO TIME! Wiiiiith..."
Alexia's eyes are wide as the syllable hangs.
"MISTER DARIUS!!!"
Alexia's eyes are wide as the syllable hangs.
"MISTER DARIUS!!!"
For a long heartbeat, nothing happens. The guests are all on their feet, hooting and pounding their hands together, but Adrian hears only silence. The Old Man stares straight at him, as if from across the gap between stars, with that rigid, tomb-dust smile.
And then, with a flourish of red silk from the kitchen doors, the moment ends. He is here: Mr Darius, with his flared black trousers & his crimson sash, cavorting among the tables like a stallion. Adrian eyes are wet with relief, and he swears he sees the Old Man's mouth twitch.
Mr Darius manifests each night as a man in the prime of his youth - handsome but not stunning, athletic but not intimidating, face alight with true joy. Nobody knows where he comes from or where he goes after midnight - but whatever the Old Man is, Darius is what holds him back.
Darius gestures the diners from their places and they follow him unquestioningly onto the faded wood of the dancefloor, like ducklings to their mother. Alexia and all the waiters watch on from the dark, their faces burning with hope. Their fate is in the hands of Mr Darius now.
The guests take their places in a circle around Darius and the music stops, the ghost of a chord still hanging in the wine-thick air. Darius looks to Adrian and smiles, expectant.
"Mr Darius," intones the giant, with cathedral solemnity, "Teach them to dance, will you?"
"Mr Darius," intones the giant, with cathedral solemnity, "Teach them to dance, will you?"
"Dance?" cries Mr Darius. "Did you say... dance?"
He turns to the wild-eyed guests, and gathers their hearts in a sweep of his hand.
"Come on, my boys."
Adrian's fingers pluck at the Bouzouki; the music begins.
He turns to the wild-eyed guests, and gathers their hearts in a sweep of his hand.
"Come on, my boys."
Adrian's fingers pluck at the Bouzouki; the music begins.
Adrian plays with all his heart, sweat soaking his tunic. All he must do is keep the rhythm, and they will all live another night. In the far darkness, the rims of the Old Man's sunglasses twinkle, daring him to fail. But this will not be the night. Not while Darius yet lives.
The dancefloor has become a bacchanalia; somehow, despite the heaviness of the wine in their limbs, the guests are capering like satyrs under Darius' tutelage. He is Perseus and Achilles, Eros and Apollo, a figure of mythic energy, born somehow in Wolverhampton. The tempo builds.
Then, Darius breaks the circle. Like a cobra hatching from an egg, he leads a line of diners out & past the back room, and the box Alexia has hauled out. Each reveller plucks a plate as they gallop past, and Adrian would punch if the air if his life did not depend on his playing.
His fingers are ragged now, wrists numb from the tune's speed. But he cannot stop. Just when he feels he can take it no more the first splintering of pottery sounds, like the first water trickling through the parched bed of a desert stream. Then another Plate breaks. And another.
Darius dances through a storm of shattered ceramic; empowered by his spirit, the guests make shrapnel of the dread crockery. And with each shrill, hollow crack, Adrian fancies he can see the Old Man flinch in his mouldering, cigar-stale jumpsuit. He will not feed tonight.
Adrian brings the music to a drawn-out, juddering halt as the last Plate smashes. The guests roar in ecstasy, and the lights flicker. When they come back on, the Old Man is nowhere to be seen. Adrian wonders for a moment, as Darius' teeth flash, whether he was ever there at all.
Darius waves farewell to the diners and skips away to the back room. Adrian knows better than to follow - he will have vanished, as always. He glances at the clock, its second hand hovering five ticks from midnight, and meets Alexia's eye. Tonight was a close one.
It is much later. The guests have drained their glasses and moved on, and the last of the waiters is shrugging on their coat at the door. Adrian finishes mopping clean the dancefloor, and sits himself at the bar with his customary glass of Ouzo, waiting for his nerves to settle.
As he goes to lock up he pauses, grunting in puzzlement. There is a scrap of red fabric caught on the edge of the bar, no doubt snagged from Mr Darius' sash as he danced past. Adrian snatches up the twist of cloth and rubs it between his fingers: it is velour.
The wind picks up outside, rattling the windows with flurries of cigarette ends and chip wrappers. The hairs prickle on the back of Adrian's scalp, and he dares not turn to look at the back room as he hurries to the front door.
~fin~
~fin~
That's all there is to my tale, except one thing: every word of what I said tonight is founded in truth. I was there, at Zorba's Dance Greek Restaurant in Wolverhampton in May 2017, and it took me this long to find the words to review it. I saw the Old Man. I danced with Darius.
For months I tried to forget that night. The queasy fervour of the music, the quiet horror that pooled in the corners. But I can be silent no longer. Mister Darius is real, and for those of us who have smashed Plates with him, it will always be Go Time. Be warned, and goodnight.
Proof, as if you doubted me:
