It was working in the bank, with sales pressures and people always wanting a minute of time that gave me a fondness for solitude. When Annie came along and the rigours of being a parent to a disabled little girl took their toll I began to value even more highly the snatched hours alone.
The hills were a gentle roll up from the garden, rising steeply as I neared the wooded brow of the hill. My boots gave me a good grip on the damp earth, and the walking stick helped manoeuvre over the dry stone walls and stiles. Once inside the copse of trees the daylight, already a fading memory in the rag end of the year, was distinctly muted.
It was my habit to walk as far as the church at the end of the long lane. I had never seen the mouth of the lane, nor any village that might belong with it; I left the social aspects of our life to Lucy. I approached from the rear, through the churchyard with graves ancient and modern, and entered through a solitary door abutting the nave. I was always the only devoted servant at pew and my silent prayers were never answered. Not once, but then they never had been. Once shorn of my religious thoughts for the moment I generally found the walk back much easier.
On this occasion I reached the top of the hill overlooking the house much more quickly than I imagined possible. My thoughts must have consumed the time because it would need a good couple of hours even at good speed to cover the distance. Glancing down to the house I was astonished at what I saw.
In the garden Lucy was surrounded by a group of young girls. I knew it couldn’t be possible; it would be unlikely any of the villagers would trust a stranger with their precious daughters. Yet I watched as they all played and ran around the garden, in and out of bushes and danced around trees. And all the while Lucy laughed and called to them, as carefree as I had never seen her. From the distance and elevation it was hard to be certain but the girls seemed young and playing so casually. There were three of them and, surely not, Lucy held a young girl, little more than a baby, in her arms.
Then two realisations struck me. While I had walked in December weather, dry but noticeably overcast and dull, the children and Lucy seemed to be bathed in sunlight. It was if they were enjoying a summer’s day. I also knew that one of the girls, even though it was hard to see her face from this distance, one of the girls playing was Annie. She was unable to run as fast or as far as the others but she seemed happy.
There were two ways down to the garden. The direct approach I had taken when I began my walk a few hours ago, or the more circuitous route that would bring me round by the front of the house, along the gravel drive to the south. Something about the scene I was watching made me decide to take the slightly longer southern path.
It took longer than I expected but eventually I walked as fast as I could up the drive and round the side of the house to the garden. Lucy was there as I had anticipated, but she was alone. Cloaked in heavy overcoat she was raking some leaves on the lawn.
“Where are the girls?” I said.
She looked at me as if I had spoken a different language. “What do you mean?”
“I saw…I thought I saw you with…”
She shook her head, a dismissing gesture I was familiar with. “Are you deliberately cruel when you say things like that?’
“They were playing. You were laughing.”
The rake was flung down in anger, though it revealed more sadness than aggression. “Annie? John, have you seen her again? Laugh? I haven’t laughed since the moment you impregnated me. When she died it was already too late. It’s gone, all gone. Life and love. Welcome home, husband.”
That evening we did a rare thing and sat together around the dining table for the family meal. Lucy and I had enjoyed life once, together. Annie was a joy we had sought but were unable to cope with. Most parents I believe find it hard to raise a child, and despite the love we lavished upon her, we found it harder than we could have imagined. There was some help at first but like mourners after a funeral they were well meaning for a while but then drifted away. Alone we retreated into our private landscapes. We indulged Annie because we knew of no other way to make her happy.
People were kind when they saw how she was, and that strengthened us. Doctors weren’t definite about how they could help and so it became easier to ignore the appointments and advice. Annie wouldn’t get better like that but she couldn’t, we couldn’t make her, go through the surgery, especially when the results were uncertain.
I loved being alone but Lucy craved company. Neither of us could understand the others needs and so we were disunited about what Annie might need by way of company. When the car crashed, and Annie was killed, neither of us could admit to the other that there was a moment, just when the doctors told us in their kind professional way that she had gone, there was a moment of relief.
Lucy went up to her studio early that evening. With the floodlights she had installed she could work in there all night when the mood took her. I cleared away the dishes and then sat with a book and a glass of port by the fire. Seeing Annie earlier had roused in me emotions I thought I had managed to control. Although life without her was easier in many practical ways, the guilt and the loss were constant reminders that I was less now than I had been.
Although it was a dark evening, and the sky was crammed with clouds, I could sense movement just outside my window. I stood and walked across so that I could peer into the darkness. There were two or three darting shapes running in and around the ornamental bushes.
I went out through the front door and round to the side of the house, where the disturbed gravel from my first visit still remained, still not swept back neatly. In the garden I could see three young girls playing on the swing. Two of them were pushing the third, one girl in front and one behind. The girl on the swing was laughing uncontrollably. It was Annie.
I wanted to rush over and hug her, and say I was sorry, but I was unable to move. The two girls started to push Annie quite strongly, too much so, and I could see she was beginning to fret.
“Stop, leave her alone,” I shouted.
The two girls turned to look at who was calling them and I saw their faces for the first time, saw the fire damaged skin, the pain etched into the sad timeless eyes.
Annie was beginning to cry as the swing violently swung in the air.
A tapping sound from behind me attracted my attention and I looked back at the house. At an upstairs window Lucy was standing, both hands on the glass, and she was calling out words I couldn’t hear. She was shaking her head. Next to her was a woman dressed in a white shift, raw bleeding wounds at both wrists. She was smiling down at the children in the garden and at the baby in her arms.
Then Annie fell from the swing and I ran forward to comfort her, soothe her tears. The other two girls stood over her and waited while I cradled my daughter in my arms, then they ran laughing into the house.
CRITICAL PRAISE
A Haunting Of Ghosts.
The majority of these tales are told from the viewpoint of two widowers, Pulford and Priestley, who meet and exchange tales. As the traditional style dictates, much of the spookiness is inferred, and left to the reader’s imagination to fill the gaps.
In the first, “The Man Who Wore The Wrong Coat”, Pulford and Priestley (or the “two P’s in the pod” as their wives called them in happier times) discuss the tale of Anthony Noble over fine port and a pair of Ramon Allones Cuban cigars. After Anthony Noble’s uncle passes away, he is asked to help put his affairs in order. He soon learns of a chapel constructed in their grounds that is linked to a number of mysterious deaths…
As with any Maynard Sims work, the prose is delicately crafted and beautifully delivered.”
THE BRITISH FANTASY SOCIETY
Maynard Sims (i.e. Len Maynard & Mick Sims) is an excellent writing duo, author of several collections of ghost and horror stories, a few horror novellas and some supernatural thrillers.
The classical British ghost story was their debut genre , to which they have recently returned with the delightful collection “Flame an
d Other Enigmatic Tales” A new collection of ghostly tales in the tradition of MR James (but their models are apparently Wakefield, Rolt, Cowles and Munby)
While in their last book they surprised their fans by penning a series of stories with a one-word title , here they revert to their customary knack for creating stories endowed with long, imaginative titles. Another sign of their return to their origins.
Needless to say, all the featured tales are fully enjoyable, a real delight for the readers fond of elegant, subtly unsettling dark fiction. Most of the stories are told in the classical setting of two gentlemen (Pullford and Priestley, a couple of widowers) sitting around a fireplace and savoring a good cigar and a generous glass of spirit.
“The Man Who Wore the Wrong Coat”, revolving around a cursed chapel sitting in the garden of a country mansion, is a fine example of traditional, enticing ghost story.
“The House with Too Many Windows” is a puzzling, atmospheric piece blending reality and dream, while “Love Lies Floating On the Water” is a disturbing, fascinating tale set in a haunted Venice, where life, love and death chase each other in a phantasmagoric race.
The ingredients of the melancholy, and disquieting “The House That Was Too Grand For Laughter”, in which sadness is stronger than fear, include a haunted mansion, a shaky marriage and a lost child.
My favorite piece is, perhaps, “The Church With the Tower That Moved” an outstanding story with a distinctive Jamesian flavor, but the whole book is a little treasure of pleasurable shivers and intriguing darkness.
MAYNARD SIMS
www.maynard-sims.com
Thriller novels, Shelter, Demon Eyes, Nightmare City, Stronghold, and the three Department 18 books Black Cathedral, Night Souls, and The Eighth Witch, have been published mass market and eBook in the USA. The fourth Department 18 book, A Plague Of Echoes, is for August 2014. A standalone ghost story, Stillwater will be released in March 2015. A new Department 18 book 5, Mother Of Demons is due summer 2015
Falling Apart At The Edges, a crime thriller, Through The Sad Heart, an action thriller, Let Death Begin, a mystery thriller, are 2014 publications. A Bahamas trilogy, Touching the Sun, Calling Down the Lightning, and a third book, Raging Against The Storm are all 2015 publications.
They have written a screenplay based on the first two Department 18 books – this screenplay, their first, won the 2013 British Horror Film Festival Award for Best New Screenplay. They have also written scripts based on The Eighth Witch, and some of their ghost stories. They have completed two original, commissioned screenplays, one a mainstream drama currently out for funding.
Numerous stories have been published in a variety of anthologies and magazines.
Collections include, Shadows At Midnight, 1979 and 1999 (revised and enlarged), Echoes Of Darkness, 2000, Incantations, 2002, two retrospective collections of their stories, essays and interviews, The Secret Geography Of Nightmare and Selling Dark Miracles, both 2002, Falling Into Heaven in 2004, The Odd Ghosts, 2011, and Flame And Other Enigmatic Tales, and A Haunting Of Ghosts, both 2012.
Novellas, Moths, The Hidden Language Of Demons, The Seminar, Double Act, and His Other Son have been published in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2007 and 2013 respectively.
They worked as editors on the first seven volumes of Darkness Rising, and the two annual Darkness Rising anthologies. As editors/publishers they ran Enigmatic Press in the UK, which produced Enigmatic Tales, and its sister titles. They have written essays. They still do commissioned editing projects.
Visit the Maynard Sims Author Page at Amazon
And find us on Facebook, Linkedin, Google +, Wordpress, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Goodreads under Maynard Sims, and Twitter on @micksims as Maynard Sims
OTHER BOOKS BY THESE AUTHORS
Maynard Sims / L H Maynard & M P N Sims
Thriller novels
Shelter
Demon Eyes
Nightmare City
Stronghold
Stillwater
Let Death Begin
Through The Sad Heart
Falling Apart At The Edges
The Bahamas series of novels
Dark Of The Sun (to be Touching The Sun)
Calling Down The Lightning
The Department 18 series of novels
Black Cathedral
Night Souls
The Eighth Witch
A Plague Of Echoes
Mother Of Demons
Story Collections
Shadows At Midnight
Echoes Of Darkness
Selling Dark Miracles
The Secret Geography Of Nightmare
Incantations
Falling Into Heaven
The Odd Ghosts
Flame And Other Enigmatic Tales
A Haunting Of Ghosts
Novellas
Moths
The Hidden Language Of Demons
The Seminar
Double Act
His Other Son
As Editors
Enigmatic Tales 1-10
Enigmatic Novellas 1-6
Enigmatic Variations 1-5
Enigmatic Electronic
F20 1-2
Darkness Rising 1-7
Darkness Rising 2003
Darkness Rising 2005
Dead Water
Ghosts and Hauntings Page 22