Week 44 2012 (a Hallowe'en Special)

Tendring Topics………on line

 

A story for All Hallowe’en

            Especially for All Hallowe’en I thought that, instead of my usual comment on local, national and international affairs I’d publish my only foray into the field of fiction writing.  It is a horror story of just over 2,000 words and it was published in the ‘London Mystery Magazine’ some forty years ago.  I was paid five guineas  (£5.25) for it, which even in those days was a paltry sum!

I hope to be ‘back to normal’ next week.  There’s more than enough horror in the real world without any need for contributions from my imagination.  Anyway, here it is.

The Night Mare                                                                                                                

           Yet another spray of semi-liquid mud splashed onto my windscreen from the wheels of the removal van ahead.  My cleaning fluid had run out and the wipers gave an agonised screech as they dragged over the mud-spattered glass.  I cursed under my breath.  I seemed to have been staring at the back of that van, Harper Bros.Ltd., Saffron Walden, House Removals, for hours, the driver obstinately ignoring my bad-tempered hooting and refusing to pull over and let me pass.

               

It had not been my day.   I had made a late and hurried start from Manchester and had made myself even later by having had to go back to the hotel for the case of samples and order book that I had left behind there.  Then – and goodness knows how I had managed to do this – I had missed my turning off the motorway!

               

That was how it was that I was now hopelessly lost amid a tangle of narrow, muddy lanes somewhere on the borders of Cambridgeshire, Essex and Suffolk.  Darkness had fallen long before and it seemed increasingly unlikely that I would reach my destination that night.  I pondered as I drove on through the murk.  The next day’s appointment wasn’t until 2.00 p.m.   Probably my best course of action would be to find somewhere to spend the night and get my bearings; then to set off, rested and refreshed, in daylight tomorrow morning.  There must be an ‘A’ road, if not a motorway, reasonably near and, once I had struck it, Ipswich could surely be no more than an hour or so away.

               

A village loomed ahead.  Lighted front rooms and the flicker of television screens looked warm and welcoming.  Out into the darkness again and then – out of the gloom – the lights of a pub loomed ahead.

               

I pulled onto its forecourt.  At the very least it would give me a chance to let that wretched furniture van get well ahead. I’d be able to clean the mud off my windscreen and the lenses of my headlights.  Perhaps I’d step inside, have a quick drink, and find out where I was – and how best to get to Ipswich.

               

I got out of the car, stretching my limbs and shivering a little in the chilly northeast breeze.  It was still only mid-October but in East Anglia winter had come early that year.  The spotlight illuminated inn sign creaked as it swung gently to and fro above my head.  I stepped back so that I could see it properly. ‘The Night Mare’ it said.  There was a picture of a white horse, with staring eyes and mane blowing in the wind, galloping over moonlit fields.

Not a name that I had ever seen used before for a pub – and I’ve been in a few in my time!  Probably one of those trendy modern names that crop up nowadays.  You know the sort of thing ‘The Astronauts’ Arms’,  ‘The Moon and Rocket’, and so on.

But there was nothing trendy or modern about this pub.  The white plastered walls were of traditional wattle and daub.  Over them, and encircling the tops and sides of the dormer windows like bushy eyebrows, hung time-darkened thatch.  Through a window I could see a scrubbed brick floor and blazing log fire.

A large notice near the front door said:  ‘Good Pub Food; Bed and Breakfast’ and another announced ‘Rooms Vacant’.  It was enough for me.  I drove my car into the car-park, grabbed my overnight bag, pushed open the pub door and stepped into the warmth and light of the bar-room.

Two elderly men, playing dominoes by the blazing fire, looked up as I entered but quickly resumed their game.  The landlord, a slightly built man, auburn haired and with pale blue eyes, dragged himself away from the crossword puzzle with which he was struggling.

‘G’d evening sir.  What can I get you?’

‘Well, first of all I’d like to know if I can have some food – and a room for the night?’  

‘No problem with the room sir.  I’ll get Annie to show it to you, and you can leave your bag there before you come down again for a drink.  ‘Food though?’  He scratched his head. ‘The missus is under the weather so I can’t give you a cooked meal – but if cold meat and pickles with a crusty loaf, cheese and farmhouse butter will do – I’ll have it ready for you by the time you come back from your room’.

It sounded fine to me.  I signified agreement and he shouted for Annie.  She turned out to be a plump and friendly girl still – I guessed – in her late teens.  It was a pleasant enough room, comfortably carpeted with a good springy bed, a comfortable easy chair and a small tv set.  The window was one of the dormers that I had spotted from the forecourt.  There was a wash-hand basin with mirror and a clean towel in a corner, a radiator under the window was comfortably hot – and the bathroom was, as Annie showed me, just along the corridor. 

I hung my coat behind the bedroom door, with my hat on the peg above, and put my overnight bag on the bedside chair. Then I paid a brief visit to the bathroom, noting that there appeared no shortage of hot water, and made my way down a creaking wooden staircase to the bar.  The landlord had been as good as his word.  A plate of cold sliced beef, a pickle jar and a cottage loaf, with a good pound of mature cheddar cheese and a well-filled butter jar awaited me.

I smiled appreciatively.  ‘Thanks’, I said,  ‘I’ll have a pint of best bitter and a large Bells, with just a little water, to finish off with.  That should see me comfortably through till morning’.

I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so I enjoyed my meal, savouring every mouthful and feeling my body glow as the Bells began to take effect.  I was just wondering whether or not to risk another Bells – I had a longish drive in the morning – when the landlord looked at his watch and called out ‘Time gentlemen – if you please’.  

The dominoes players put away their pieces, finished their drinks, and trudged out into the night.  The landlord seemed fidgety and kept glancing at his watch – probably, I thought, he was eager to be with his ailing wife – so I wished him good night and went up to bed myself.

Before getting undressed I opened the casement and looked out.  The clouds had cleared and there was a full moon low in the sky. It shone, I realized, on the very fields over which that wild white horse galloped on the pub sign.  Cold night air blew into the room, bringing a smell of decaying cabbages.  I shut the window hastily, pressing the catch firmly down.  As far as I’m concerned those who like fresh air can go outside and get it!

               

I had had an exhausting day and I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep directly my head touched the pillow.  I don’t know how long it was before I woke but I did so with a sense of unease.  Someone, or something, had wakened me.

               

Could it have been the creaking of the sign in the wind – or a strand of ivy tapping on the window?   Hardly; the wind had dropped and the night was deathly still

               

There was something at the window though.  I had pulled back the chintz curtains before getting into bed and could see clearly.  I rubbed my eyes and stared. It was a woman’s face, beautiful beyond words but nevertheless conveying a sense of ultimate evil. Her cheeks were deathly white but she had jet-black hair and full rosy-red lips. Her eyes were green-black bottomless pools of evil.  Keats’s ‘Belle Dame sans Merci’ and Housman’s ‘Queen of Air and Darkness’ came to my mind, which was beset with ugly jumbled images:  Those women of Paris during the reign of terror, who calmly knitted and gossiped in the shadow of the guillotine as the bloodied blade rose and fell and heads rolled into the basket; a Witches’ Sabbath on a bare mountain side; human sacrifices to Astarte, goddess of the Phoenicians and to Kali the many limbed Hindu goddess of death and destruction.

               

The face opened its mouth and spoke to me. My ears couldn’t hear the words but they seared directly into my brain: ‘Come to me, my beloved.  Come to me. All the riches of the world will be yours and together we shall enjoy pleasures beyond your imagination.  Come, come to me’.  The mouth twisted into a ghastly smile of welcome and I felt myself being drawn inexorably off the bed and towards the window.                

               

I prayed. I’m not a church-going man but my mother was a Catholic and my father a Quaker. I did know how to pray and I remembered a few prayers:  ‘Our Father’, ‘Hail Mary’, ‘the Gloria’ - and I remembered how old George Fox, founder of the Quakers, had had a vision of an ocean of darkness and death being overwhelmed by another ocean of love, light and peace. I could have done with that vision, then!

             
             As I prayed ‘Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil’;  ‘Holy Mary….pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death’, my mind became a battlefield. The evil whisperings from the thing at the window: ‘Come to me; come to me. You are mine. All the wealth and every pleasure the world has to offer will be yours’, tried again and again to block out my prayers. 

               

‘Lead us not into temptation; deliver us from evil’, I prayed.  ‘Come to me, come to me, you are mine’ whispered that evil unbidden voice from beyond the casement. ‘Holy Mother of God, pray for us’, I begged.  ‘She won’t help you, come to me’, came the whisper.

               

Were my prayers answered?   In my better moments I certainly like to think so.  It was as though a stretched rubber band had suddenly snapped.  I fell back on the bed utterly exhausted. The whisper of the temptress faded and disappeared.  There was no longer anyone – or any thing – at the window.

               

Time passed.  Somewhere a door slammed, a car started, revved up and sped away.  I glanced at my watch – 2.30 a.m.  I had work to do in a few hours time!  I must try to get some sleep.  I closed my eyes and composed myself.  Eventually I fell into a restless, dream-haunted sleep from which I woke, still tired, at about seven o’clock.  Could it all have been nothing but a nightmare, brought on by too heavy a meal on an empty stomach?

               

Annie was in the corridor as I made my way to the bathroom.  ‘I hope that you slept well’, she said.  ‘Well no, I didn’t,’ I replied, ‘I had a most terrible nightmare.  I have never known one to seem so real’.

               

‘I’m sorry sir’, she replied, ‘but it’s no surprise. There were lots of comings and goings in the night and I reckon we must have disturbed you. T’missus’ baby was born in the night.  She had a hoolly hard time of it and we had to get the doctor out.  He waren’t best pleased, I can tell you, about being dragged out o’ bed in the middle of the night.  Howsomebe, she had her babe – a dear little owd gal - at about two o’clock.  I’m just goin’ in t’see to ‘em sir’, she said, as she disappeared through another door.

               

I had my shower and shave with a much lighter heart.  So that’s what the landlord had meant when he said that his wife was ‘under the weather’.  Of course that was what had happened.  The big meal on an empty stomach and the pub’s odd name had, no doubt, played their part.  The real cause of the nightmare or waking dream though, had been the commotion involved in a difficult childbirth.  The car that I had heard at about 2.30 a.m. had been that of the departing doctor.

               

I stepped lightly out of the bathroom.  Annie was in the corridor with a bundle in her arms.  ‘Hello sir’, she said.  ‘All’s well. The missus is sound asleep.  I’m going to look after the babe for a bit so she don’t get disturbed.  Would you like to look at the littl‘un sir?’   Babies aren’t my first enthusiasm but Annie was a friendly girl and I was in a cheerful mood..  I nodded.

               

She thrust the bundle towards me.  ‘Here she is sir’, she said.  Her Suffolk accent thickening as she gave way to her maternal instincts. ‘In’t she a little love?’  I smiled encouragingly.  Annie burbled on. ‘Look at that sir.  The dear little owd mawther ain’t more nor five hours old, but she’s opening her dear little eyes and looking at you – and I dew believe that she’s a smilin’ at you sir’.

               

The baby opened her eyes and focussed – yes focussed – them on me.  I looked down into the two green-black bottomless pools of evil that had haunted me in the night.  The baby smiled – in recognition.

Note - No, of course I don’t believe in infantile demonic possession.  It is only a story!  However, for those who are revolted at the thought of an evil baby and the apparent triumph of evil, here is a – previously unpublished - ‘Happy Ending’.

A couple of years after the events recorded above, the story teller again found himself in that corner of East Anglia.  He discovered that the pub, that had clearly had a recent makeover, was now called ‘The White Mare’.  Annie, two years older but as friendly as ever, welcomed him at the door, accompanied by a friendly (but rather shy) golden haired two-year-old toddler who showed not the least sign of recognition.

It was the same landlord and he did remember the overnight stay at the inn at the time of his daughter's birth. The now proud father made him welcome and introduced him to his wife.   It seemed that the child born on the night of that previous visit had for well over a year been ‘a right little terror; allus awake, allus a’hollerin, allus wantin’ feeding, never satisfied’. Yet her mum and dad, though often despairing. had at all times tried to be patient and loving. She was their only child. Then, when she was about eighteen months old, she had fallen desperately ill with meningitis.  In despair the landlord had begged for help from a cousin of his – an Anglican nun reputed to have the gift of healing.  The nun came gladly and held the child in her arms all one night, murmuring familiar prayers as she did so.  In the morning the fever had left her little patient – and so had the bad temper, the spitefulness, the insatiable greed and the tantrums – revealing the sweet child that had always been her true nature   The nun was now the child’s godmother. The child,, the golden haired toddler who, with Annie, had welcomed him to the pub had been named Susanna after her.  She  was, as Annie put it, ‘a hoolly nice little owd gal!' full of love and joy.

It was a happy ending for all concerned  (even for the demon who hadn’t really enjoyed being trapped in a tiny body with a very limited capacity for evil!). 

We should be thankful that All Hallowe’en  is always followed by the Feast of All Hallows, or All Saints Day.!