Tomorrow's Ghosts

by Charles Christian

  “I glance over to you for an explanation. For a few seconds you seem puzzled, then you click your fingers as if a thought has suddenly sprung to mind and you ask me what the time is. I check my watch and see it has stopped. ‘Your watch is digital,’ you say, ‘the EMP, the electro-magnetic pulse, caused by all the crap going on all around must have fried everything electronic we have with us. Hang on,’ you add, ‘I’ve a better idea.’

  “Then you rush to the edge of the tower and peer over the parapet so you can see the church clock. ‘The clock,’ you call out, ‘says 11-50. Last time we checked it was running 20 minutes late, so that means in the real world it’s now ten minutes past twelve.’

  “I ask why, if that’s the case, we are still alive and you reply ‘It must be the ley line. We’re sitting on a sacred site where time is running 20 minutes behind the rest of the world. Either the location or the time disparity, possibly a combination of the two, is shielding us. That’s why the seven-headed Beast couldn’t touch us, our time hadn’t yet run out. Amazing! We have front row seats for the Apocalypse. Of course what we’re seeing now is probably what will happen to us in ten minutes but in the meantime welcome to my world of myths, magic and mysteries, where the normal rules of science and logic no longer apply!’

  “There is a further disturbance in the air above us. We both look up to see an enormous feathered creature being chased by the biggest hound I could ever imagine. ‘So remind me,’ I ask, ‘which End of the World myth involves a big chicken being chased across the sky by a giant hairy dog?’

  “You reply ‘That’s not a chicken we are watching but Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent once worshipped by the Toltecs, the Mayans and the Aztecs. The Aztecs had their own apocalyptic myth in which the return of Quetzalcoatl heralds the end of the world and the planet being torn apart by earthquakes. As for the big dog chasing him, that’s Fenrir, the giant wolf of Norse legend. Fenrir is seriously bad news and even kills the god Odin during the events of Ragnarök, the battle at the end of the world that heralds the Twilight of the Gods of Asgard.’

  Ursula shakes her head in my direction, as if in disbelief. “I’m quite clearly losing the plot here aren’t I? I’m a vicar of the Church of England yet when I dream of the Apocalypse, I don’t see angels or devils. No, what I witness is some kind of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-denominational equal opportunity Doomsday! What is this, political correctness gone mad?

  “In my dream,” she continues, “the next thing to happen is we catch sight of another winged creature slowly emerging out of the murk and gliding towards us. This one is different. It has the size, shape and form of a winged woman and comes to a halt, floating in mid-air, a few feet away from the parapet of the church tower. For one moment I think it may be a miracle and an angel sent to rescue us, afterall that is what is supposed to happen to the Righteous in The Bible. But then I see the angel is clad in black, not white samite, and instead of being made of feathers, her wings are leathery, like those of a giant bat. In one hand she holds a scythe and in the other an hourglass. And her face! Do you remember the story I told you about the woman I caught having sex in the churchyard in Leeds? This creature has her face.”

  “Well, well, well. So that’s the second meeting you’ve had with Azraella, the Angel of Death. Better not let there be a third occasion or it’s game over,” I say.

  Ursula nods. “That’s not exactly a comforting thought but at least that encounter only took place in a dream, so that doesn’t count. At least I hope not,” she adds with a worried smile. “However I must say I am impressed by your knowledge of angelology.”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” I reply, “but our paths have crossed before. For an angel, she’s a miserable piece of work. Always in a hurry, no wonder she’s the patron saint of Goths.” Ursula looks at me askance. I shrug my shoulders. “It’s another long story and now is not the time to tell it, let’s get back to your dream.”

  “For protection, I instinctively reach for the crucifix around my throat but it is missing. The chain has snapped, just like the one I was wearing earlier this afternoon. When Azraella sees my futile gesture, she grins at me. I can still see the smile on her face and the way she bares her teeth: a mouthful of long, needle-like teeth that remind me of a barracuda or piranha. Then she glances back to the hourglass and I can see the upper bulb contains just a few remaining grains of sand.

  “Just as I feel a wave of despair wash over me, you grab me and say ‘Suppose we totally jam the clock? Would that stop the passage of time altogether? Only one way to find out but we’d better move quick. Ursula, I love you but we only have four minutes left to save the world!’

  “You pick up the telescope and its tripod, adding ‘This big boy looks stout enough to do some serious damage’ and head down into the bowels of the church tower. Pausing only to wave goodbye to the still hovering Angel of Death, I follow you into the pitch blackness of the tower and down towards the heart of the slowly ticking clock.

  “And then I wake up.”

  6. Mother Shipton’s Bane

  By the time Ursula finishes recounting her dream, she is shaking and covered in sweat. “Hold me,” she says, “I need to feel your arms around me. Pull me back into the real world and out of this nightmare.”

  Time passes. I gently stroke my fingers through her hair until I feel her relax in my arms. “How long,” I ask, “have you been having dreams like this?”

  “I told you,” she replies, “only since I first met you.”

  “No, I don’t mean this particular dream. I meant dreams generally of a revelatory and apocalyptical nature. Since you joined the Church? Or did you join the Church in the hope it might help you escape these dreams?”

  “What are you getting at?” she asks.

  “Come on, this is my special subject area, I don’t need to phone a friend. Ursula Southill is not a common name but it’s familiar in my circles. It’s the name of the woman better known to history as Old Mother Shipton. She was a sixteenth century psychic, seer and white witch from Knaresborough up in Yorkshire. The woman has even been described as England’s own Nostradamus.

  “She predicted the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey, Drake’s defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Great Fire of London and the End of the World, though it seems she got the date wrong on that. How does it go... The Worlde to an end shall come, In Eighteen Hundred and Eighty One.”

  As I talk, I notice Ursula avoids making any eye contact with me. “You are one of her line, aren’t you?” I suggest. “That’s what’s eating you up inside. There’s some kind of hereditary trait running through your family’s gene-pool that gives you the gift of prophecy. Only you are not comfortable with the visions you see?”

  Ursula remains silent for a few moments before nodding her head in agreement. “Prophecy is not a gift, it’s a curse. The original Ursula Southill may be the best known for it but all the women in my family have had the faculty in one form or another. I had it as a child, along with telekinetic powers. I’d have been one of those kids at the centre of your Type Three category poltergeist hauntings. And you’re right, as the dreams became more intrusive, I sought the solace of the Church. It helps but sometimes something in the environment triggers it off again.

  “Moving to this parish was a mistake. I thought I’d be escaping to a rural idyll but instead the history of the place, the influence of the ley line, the time I stayed at the Hopton parsonage and, finally, my encounter with John Patmos have just exacerbated the situation. You haven’t helped either,” she pauses to smile, “though you do offer consolation in other ways. In fact I could do with a little consoling right now.”

  “I can do that,” I reply. “And remember, Mother Shipton was happily married and lived to a ripe old age, at a time when most people barely survived beyond middle-age.”

  “It sounds corny,” says Ursula, “but I think Mother Shipton really did live a charmed life. Do you know the words they inscribed on her tomb?”

 
; “Naturally,” I reply. “Here lies she who never lied – Whose skill often has been tried – Her prophecies shall still survive – And ever keep her name alive.”

  “Wow, she really is your special subject,” says Ursula, snuggling up closer to me.

  “Actually,” I say, “the present-day Ursula Southill is my special subject.”

  But, even as I pull Ursula closer to me, at the back of my mind is a nagging memory of a comment she made the evening of our visit to John Patmos, “I have this awful premonition that my days are numbered and I’m not going to get out of this alive.”

  I also remember something else.

  According to the legend, the original Ursula Southill correctly predicted the date and time of her own death.

  7. For Every Season

  Summer turns to autumn, then to winter, before turning to spring again. Much to our mutual surprise we keep on seeing each other. Will something more permanent ever come of our relationship? Who knows? As they say on Facebook: “It’s complicated.”

  Our lives contain certain immutable incompatibilities. There’s a part of her world I can never share in. And there’s a part of my world I must always shield her from.

  8. Whisky and Tea

  I still remember a conversation I had with Archdeacon Jaffa a couple of years before I met Ursula. At the time we were sitting in the Abbey Gardens, at Bury St Edmunds, drinking neat malt whisky poured from a teapot into bone-china cups.

  “Perfectly logical,” Jaffa had explained. “When actors are required to drink whisky as part of the business in a play, they use cold tea. The audience are none-the-wiser as, from where they’re sitting, the liquid in the glasses looks exactly the same as Scotch. I’ve just reversed the logic by decanting the malt into a teapot. Besides, it would be highly inappropriate for a senior cleric of the Church of England to be spotted drinking alcohol at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon in such a public place.”

  At some point that afternoon, we get onto the subject of the latest American armageddon cult to find itself with egg on its collective face, when their self-appointed messiah’s Day of Judgement failed to take place on schedule.

  “The trouble with these latter-day prophets of doom,” said Jaffa, “is they are so busy foretelling death and damnation for others that they forget to watch out for themselves and more mundane risks closer to home.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know. They are forever warning us to repent because The End is Nigh and that the Angel Gabriel is poised to blow his horn but then they die in a house fire at their own home because they forget to replace the battery in the smoke alarm! Truly a prophet is not honoured in his own land. In fact it’s hard to take them seriously at all.”

  9. Like Fire in the Sun

  When the end comes, it comes suddenly, messily and in a fireball that can be seen from 20 miles away.

  John Patmos is the culprit. In the early morning he sets off in his white Ford Transit dropside truck. Actually his is not the correct word to use. Technically speaking, the truck still belongs to the firm of Carlisle builders it was stolen from seven years previously. After being fitted with false plates and bogus registration papers, it had changed hands several times before finally being bought by Patmos. In his case, no subterfuge was necessary because Patmos still had difficulty reading English. He also had difficulty understanding English law, which is why on this particular day, as on all days, he is driving the Transit untaxed, uninsured and without a valid driver’s licence.

  Somewhere just to the north of Saxmundham, he swings onto an empty stretch of the A12 where, dazzled by the bright low sun of a spring morning shining in his eyes, he temporarily loses his bearings and veers onto the wrong side of the road.

  Thirty seconds later, as he accelerates around a corner, his truck ploughs smack into a pale-blue Beetle heading in the opposite direction. He has no time to brake because he doesn’t see the other vehicle coming.

  The impact throws Patmos, who of course isn’t wearing a seatbelt, through the Transit’s windscreen. He bounces off the roof of the other car before landing by the side of the road, where he is impaled on the iron railings at the entrance to a farm track.

  The driver in the other car is not so lucky.

  The subsequent police investigation reveals that not only did the late John Patmos display a cavalier attitude towards his adoptive country’s road traffic laws but he also disregarded a host of other official rules, including the distinctly obscure Petroleum Spirit Plastic Containers Regulations 1982 which control the amount of petrol you can legally store at home.

  I’d always noticed the lights had a tendency to flicker at John’s beach hut but had assumed it was just dodgy wiring. What I hadn’t realised was the hut had no mains electricity supply. Instead John and some of his neighbours had rigged up portable petrol generators to power their lighting and electrical appliances. This particular morning John had been on his way back from his no-questions-asked-source with a fresh supply of petrol, all stored unlawfully in a collection of five litre plastic containers rolling around the back of his truck.

  Whether it was an escape of petroleum fumes, a loose fitting lid on one of the petrol containers, the truck’s wiring shorting out or a combination of all three, we’ll never know. What is certain is when the collision occurs, Patmos’ illicit cargo of petrol explodes in a fireball that consumes both vehicles in a blaze of such intensity and ferocity that it is only after the wreckage is damped down that the rescue services recognise the charred fragments inside the car as being the remains of a woman.

  Carmaggedon! is the punningly cruel but apposite headline the local East Anglian Daily Times newspaper uses to describe the accident. There is also the suggestion that the occupant of the VW was doubly unlucky because, being a Beetle, the petrol tank was mounted in the front luggage compartment, just inches away from the driver’s seat.

  As for Patmos? He dies before he can be cut free from the railings but, ever the mystic, his final words are “I saw her. I saw Azraella, the Angel of Death.”

  10. The Face at the Window

  There’s a ghost in my house.

  It still sits at the upstairs window and it still waves at me only now I deliberately try not to look. I’m afraid of making eye contact. The haunting was disconcerting at the best of times although I had learned to live with it. But now... now I know who the ghost is, or at least was, I no longer have the stomach for it.

  Logic tells me it is still just a Type Two residual imprint haunting that cannot interact with me but now I’m not sure.

  Maybe it’s time for me to move? Houses are redolent with powerful memories and associations at the best of times but when those reminders come from beyond the grave?

  I finally got around to mending Ursula’s crucifix and chain. It still hangs from the headboard of the bed in the upstairs front bedroom.

  Sometimes I see the ghost of Ursula lying on that bed.

  Sometimes I cannot resist the temptation to lie down beside her. I know I cannot communicate with her but it consoles me... a little.

  RIP AND BURN

  Charles Christian

  1. A Telephone Rings

  The grey-green telephone in the grey-green interview room rings twice before it is answered.

  “Quick, Sergeant, is the Pryce girl still with you?”

  “She was just a minute ago, she’s just popped out to the loo. Why do you ask? She seems a lot more chilled than when we spoke with her yesterday? At this rate, I might even grow to like her.”

  “It’s not her but the rest of the family that’s in trouble this time. There’s just been an incident at the Pryce home. The emergency services are down there now. First reports say the building has collapsed. Do you mind telling the kid the news or do you want some moral support from me?”

  2. The Lonely Forest

  In a bleak windswept clearing, close to an ancient burial mound in the middle of a lonely forest lies the body of a young man.


  At first glance you just might think he is merely chilling out in the morning dew. Perhaps listening to some banging tracks on his Apple iPod Nano after a long night’s clubbing? But don’t be fooled by the Skullcandy headphones covering his ears.

  Even if you can overlook his bulging, manic eyes and his blackened tongue jutting out from between his bloodless lips, you will never forget his feet. A pair of new indigo Converse AllStar Chuck Taylor sneakers should not have their soles worn away so badly that the young man’s naked feet protrude from the bottom. And those feet! All bloodied with the flesh flayed away to the bare bone in places.

  Dannii Pryce wakes with a jolt. Her heart is pounding and she is sweating. “Now where in Seven Hells did that nightmare spring from?” she thinks to herself. “Oh yes, that would explain it...”

  Slowly her eyes adjust to the darkened room. Unfamiliar surroundings. Unfamiliar bed. Unfamiliar sounds.

  “Got it,” she says under her breath, as she remembers she is back home from university and staying with her father and his new wife, the improbably named Xanthe del Monte. “What kind of name is that for a grown woman, particularly one with a Geordie accent?” Not that Dannii can talk, as most people who meet her for the first time think she was named after Kylie Minogue’s kid sister.

  And, talking of kids, being at home with her father means that bloated creep Sebastien, with an ‘e’ – Xanthe’s son by her first marriage and now Dannii’s stepbrother – will be snoring his fat head off in the next room. “Yuk, yuk and double yuk again.”