in an apron with specks of flour dusting her hands and face. He told her that he was looking for a room for the night and, as she beckoned him to step inside the hallway, the cat followed him towards the first room off the lobby. The woman gestured to a firmly built wooden chair standing alone by a heath, in which a roaring fire was glowing away, dissipating a veil of warmth into the far shadows of the room.
He sat down and the cat leapt onto his lap, snuggling into a compact ball and purring affectionately as it did so. The elderly man continued his story to me by explaining that he repeated his request for a room for that night and, after a while, he and the landlady had agreed the terms of his stay. By then, the evening was drawing on and an autumnal gale had begun to form in the darkness outside. The wind howled around the chimney stack and echoed into the room as nearby trees rattled their distorted claws against the outside of the windows.
The elderly man went on to explain to me how grateful he had felt then to be able to secure a room before nightfall. Next, he pushed the cat aside and stood up in order to make his way out of the room, following the landlady who led the way with the faint glow of a small candle. The flickering flame threw an array of dancing shadows onto the walls of the hallway as they made their way towards the guest quarters at the far end of the corridor. Unbeknown to them at the time the cat followed in their wake, stealthy creeping in their footsteps along the wooden floorboards of the hall.
The woman reached the far end of the corridor, turned a key in the lock of the door and pushed the door aside to reveal a small cramped room, furnished with a single readymade bed, a solitary cupboard and an enamel jug of water in a similarly fashioned white enamel bowl, resting on a sideboard at the back of the room.
The elderly man continued to explain to me that he stepped inside the room and flung his kit bag onto the counterpane of the bed. As the landlady swung the door shut from outside the room he became aware of the presence of another creature. It was then that he realised that the cat had followed the two of them down the corridor and, past the landlady, into the room. The man was young and alone and grateful for the security that the cat’s presence gave him and so he lifted it up onto the bed as he made himself ready to retire to sleep for the night. The gale continued to blow outside the window and he could hear the clatter of a glass bottle rolling along the ground outside the pub. As he finally stepped into bed, the cat snuggled up close to him and burrowed its way into the recess of his right arm. The man lay upon his back listening to the sounds of the gale outside and the cat, nestling itself into the hollow formed between the man’s right arm and body, lay its head upon the shoulder of the man and began to purr contentedly as the man very quickly fell asleep.
The elderly man then paused in the recount of his story and a glimmer of fear crept into the corners of his eyes. “Have you ever dreamt of dying?” he enquired of me. “Have you ever awoken with a fear so profound that pools of sweat cause the very nightclothes you wear to fasten upon your skin with a revolting, chilling clamminess?”
The elderly man explained that he had awoken with a start from a deep nightmare to find himself lying on his back in exactly the same position that he had fallen asleep earlier that night. The room still lay shrouded in darkness and the storm had passed. He became aware of a tingling prickly sensation in his right arm. Assuming that he had trapped a nerve in his arm, he reached across his body with his left hand to pull the right arm free when he felt that the pools of sweat were not what he thought they were. The still of the night air was broken by a scream as he pulled his left hand back and saw trickles of fresh blood running from the tips of his fingers. With all his strength, he leapt to his feet and shouted for help but, as he did this, he remembered the cat and felt a deadweight hanging from his neck, as if attached to his body like a leech to a host. He recalled feeling faint and nauseous, falling to the floor but, from that moment on, he was unable to recount any more of the happenings of that night.
The old man paused in the description of his story. The only detail he could recall after this was awaking in a clean sterile bed, with the smell of disinfectant filling the air. The room was filled with a distant fragrance of flowers and towering above him was the fresh and starched figure of a nurse at work.
“Sleep now and build your strength,” she whispered to her patient. “You’ve had a nasty fall and I guess that’s why you’ve lost a lot of blood. It’s lucky that the landlady of The King’s Arms heard your call and found you otherwise we may have lost you completely.”
The elderly man looked at me with a perplexed, confused glare and explained that he felt a strong obligation to return to the pub as soon as he was able and to confide with the landlady that she was wrong regarding the nature of his blackout. Somehow the cat was entangled with this ghastly episode and he had to warn her before this adversity could repeat itself with another visitor. The very first thing he did, upon leaving the cottage hospital, was to return to The Kings Arms and consult the landlady.
“I must speak with you urgently about your cat,” he began.
“My cat?” she interrupted. “But I thought it was yours. It followed you in as you came.”
The old man stopped in the recollection of his story, hinting at what was to follow. My eyes were glued upon his face and I detected a sense of fear; an ancient fear that had been harbouring in the creases of his face for the past fifty years or so. He pulled a gnarled old finger to his neck and hooked it into the collar of his shirt. As he pulled slightly, I spied the scar of two small white dots lying side-by-side along the bulges of one vein that ran the length of his neck. The hairs on the back of my neck began to erect and bristle with fear as I realised the enormity of what had happened that eventful night, all those years ago. I turned my face away to view the expression of his elderly friend, sitting opposite him on the other side of the table. He too, seemed to be as shocked as I felt. The second old man very slowly crocked his head to his left hand side, pulling it away from the folds of his coat. The contours of his face seemed to echo the fear that I witnessed upon that of the storyteller and it was then that I noticed a second pair of scars on his neck too. Indeed it seemed that these two old friends had more in common than I first thought. For the first time, it was evident that they shared a grisly dreadful secret from their separate pasts.
I was unable to wait for any longer to escape from the relative safety of the warmth of that pub but I knew that I had achieved what it was that I had been searching for. I had got my ghastly story.
I stepped outside into the colds of a dark autumnal evening and straight into the path of the sinister glaring eyes of an obese black cat sitting on its haunches on the doorstep of the house opposite.
The Suspension Bridge Disaster (True Story)
Many of my public house gigs are scheduled for a Friday or Saturday evening. This is the time of week that many pubs vie for weekend custom, by offering some form of in-house entertainment. Certainly, an evening of mentalism makes a welcome change from either a karaoke night, a pub quiz or some singer and I find that, having been established and having become well known, my Friday and Saturday evenings are now fully booked up for two months in advance. Even from the earlier days of my career change, I found that the early weekend slot was the one that was most keenly sought after.
For no apparent reason, I recollect one date of these booking with a vivid recall: Friday 2nd, May. I had been asked to provide a double session at one riverside pub in Great Yarmouth: The White Swan. The evening booking was no different to any of my other weekend calls; I was there to simply entertain the regular punters and to draw holidaymakers from the many cruise boats that had moored at the riverside for the bank holiday weekend. At this time of year, holidaymakers would be arriving in the town for the start of the season and some of these would travel along the River Bure by cruiser, as part of an extended journey exploring the Norfolk Broads. The afternoon session was slightly different, however, in that the pub had recently revamped its catering facilities and wante
d to offer some form of entertainment to complement the launch of this updated facility. The management had simply decided to combine the two bookings with one engagement and I, luckily, had been asked to take responsibility for both of these.
I arrived at midday as planned and got ready for the first of these two sessions. This was simply to be a two-hour table-hopping session from one thirty until three-thirty, after which I would receive a meal. Next, I would have a break until six and it was my intention to walk the short distance into the town centre and spend an afternoon browsing the local shops. From six o’clock until eight I would return to repeat my table-hopping session in the restaurant and bar areas before a second, much shorter, respite that would finish with a forty-minute cabaret show in the pub’s function rooms. All in all, I was looking forward to the day’s work. I knew that it was going to be a long day but I had a great deal of material planned. I knew that I could pace myself effectively, simply repeating material in a cycle; material that was well
The Ghostman Page 4