Close Encounters of the Strange Kind

by Michael Kerr

  Louise was tired, and closed her eyes. Dozing, she dreamed that the waiting room was restored to its former glory. Once again logs crackled in the pot-bellied stove, and she could smell tobacco smoke, damp clothing, cheap perfume and strong tea; could actually hear the conversation and laughter and whispering of other people.

  The dream was so real. Looking up and out through the rain-lashed window in the upper half of the door, Louise could see a splendid locomotive standing at the platform. Blasts of steam rose up from its side, and a voice shouted, “All aboard! All aboard!”

  Glancing back down to where her hands rested on her lap, Louise was amazed to find that they were no longer mottled with ugly liver spots over thin, translucent skin that barely covered ropey, purple veins. And the knuckles were not swollen. Instead, her hands were smooth and well formed, and the inexpensive engagement ring on her finger appeared to be brand new, as did the gold wedding band next to it.

  If only this was not a vagary, Louise thought. To be young and at the beginning of the journey of life was not something she would be averse to.

  Julie and her husband, Trevor, were almost at the derelict railway station. Trevor drove the car slowly over the pot-holed surface of the lane, zigzagging as the suspension was tested to its limit.

  “I think we’re wasting our time, love,” Trevor said. “Your mother is almost a blank page. She hardly knows what planet she’s on, so wouldn’t remember this place, or have a clue of how to get here.”

  Julie knew that he was probably right. Her mother had Alzheimer’s, and was losing the plot. It was so cruel that a life could be insidiously stolen, to reduce a sufferer to the state of being bereft of innate ideas and the faculty of self-awareness.

  “She sneaked out of the nursing home, Trevor,” Julie said. “On the anniversary of the day that she waved my father off to war. She comes here to feel closer to him.”

  Trevor hiked his shoulders as he parked next to the footbridge. They got out and crossed over the tracks to search the abandoned station.

  A shadow appeared at Louise’s feet. She looked up and gasped in surprise. This could not be. George was standing in the open doorway, still in uniform, and not looking a day older than when she had last seen him.

  “Long time no see, Lou,” George said. “Are you going to sit there with your mouth hanging open all day, or shall we board this train and be on our way?”

  Time had become elastic; surreal, melting like a Dali watch painting. Louise knew that this was not possible, and yet she leapt to her feet and ran to him. They embraced, and George kissed her tenderly on the lips. If this was a dream, then she never, ever wanted to wake from it.

  George led her across the platform to the train. They stepped aboard, to sit side by side on the plush upholstered seat and listen to the clunk of the carriage doors being slammed shut along the train’s length. The strident blast of a whistle was followed by a lurch as the locomotive found traction and began to pull away. With a full head of steam, it gathered momentum, going lickety-spit out into bright and unfamiliar surroundings.

  “Where are we going, George?” Louise asked, even though, as long as she was with him, she did not care as to where the destination might be.

  “To a wondrous time and place, Lou,” George said, lightly stroking her cheek. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  Julie entered the gloomy interior of the damp waiting room to see her mother sitting hunched over, statue-still on a wooden bench, her head bowed as if in sleep. Julie’s heart cramped with the pain of knowing that she was too late. Rushing across the room, she knelt down next to the body, and as tears coursed down her cheeks, she noticed the corner of a newspaper that her mother had no doubt spread open to sit on. It was a copy of the Daily Sketch, and the date at the top of the page was the fifteenth of October, nineteen-forty-three!

  “Quick, love, look at this,” Trevor called from where he had remained outside on the platform.

  Totally bemused, Julie dashed from the waiting room, just in the nick of time to see the ghostly shape of a train fade, and then vanish along a track that disappeared into thin air behind it.

  “I don’t understand,” Trevor said shakily.

  A small, fragile smile lit Julie’s face. “I think I do,” she whispered. “My mother always said that father had promised to return. I believe he just did, and that they are finally back together again.”

  17

  BY SPECIAL REQUEST

  Dusk was approaching when David Ryder emerged from Exmoor Forest and drove the last few miles to the outskirts of Pangbourne. The wintry heavens were gunmetal-grey; the sun a distant orb racing away to the western horizon, to paint the ocean – or to be more precise, the Bristol Channel – with a pale brushstroke of liquid gold.

  As darkness rushed in to herald night, David pulled up to the isolated cottage and cut the Range Rover’s engine.

  At last! He was free of the city; the noise, pollution, frantic pace of life, and the daily grind of tubes, milling people and the nine-to-five toil of a crowded workplace. He was now the owner of a small, tastefully renovated cottage, located on a cliff top that overlooked the broad, scimitar sweep of Horseshoe Bay.

  Climbing out of the 4x4, David approached the gate in the white picket fence, opened it and paused awhile to admire and appreciate his new acquisition. He smiled, and realised that he was gloating over his good fortune. His great aunt, Emily Thornton, had passed away twelve months ago at the more than respectable age of ninety-three, and God bless her, had seen fit to leave the property and a substantial sum of money to him. Now, at just thirty-two, he was liberated, and would take time out to enjoy his new-found freedom before starting up as a self-employed financial advisor; an endeavour that could be conducted – in the main – via the Internet.

  As he unlocked and opened the front door, a chilling draught cut through his clothing, causing him to stagger backwards and cry out in surprise. He experienced a fleeting foreboding, and stood transfixed for a few seconds, his mood now dampened. For just a moment he had felt something akin to menace pass by, or maybe through him. With leaden legs he stepped across the threshold, scrabbled at the wall inside the door for the light switch, and finding it, clicked it on and sighed as bright light flooded the small living room. He shrugged. He was not used to such isolated surroundings, and had allowed the atmosphere to unsettle him.

  Walking through to the kitchen, he found a logical cause for the unexpected through draught. A small window above the sink was slightly open. He closed it, then made coffee and switched on the TV to catch the late news before going to bed. He was exhausted. Tomorrow would be soon enough to start unloading the car and trailer of possessions he had brought from the flat in London. He had not relocated until the cottage was refurbished and ready to live in.

  At lunch time the next day, David drove the two miles along a winding lane into Pangbourne, where he parked next to the village green and made a beeline for the Boar’s Head Inn.

  “You’ll be the new owner of Moor View Cottage, then,” Samuel Cutler the landlord said as a statement. The local grapevine was extremely fast, and usually accurate.

  “Yes. I’m David Ryder,” he said, offering his hand, which was grasped and shaken by a hand as big as a malt shovel that threatened to crush his fingers like dry twigs.

  “What will it be?” Samuel asked.

  David studied the brass hand pumps. He did not recognise the name of the West Country brewery advertised on them. “I’ll try a pint of your best bitter, please.”

  “Did you know Emily Thornton?” Samuel asked as he slowly pulled a foaming pint and set it down on a cardboard beer mat in front of David.

  “She was my great aunt,” David replied.

  “With all due respect, that’s not what I asked, sir. Did you know the woman?”

  David was taken aback by the directness of the hulking, ruddy-faced publican.

  “Well...No, not really,” he said, somewhat defensively. “In fact I only met her
once, when I was not much more than a toddler. Why do you ask?”

  “Because she was a rum old bird, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so. She had the power to make things happen, good and bad.”

  “What do you mean? Are you implying that she was a witch or something?”

  “I’m saying that a few hundred years back, she would have been mistaken for one in these parts. I reckon she’d have wound up in the ducking stool and then hanged, or burnt at the stake.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “I can’t deny that. But it’s the truth of the matter. Ask anyone who knew her. She could cure most ills or bring them on you, with little more than a glance of her eyes.”

  David moved away to a corner table and sat with his back to the bar. He might not have known his late aunt, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to stand and listen to the ramblings of a yokel, who doubtless accused any ageing spinster who owned a cat of being a practitioner of the black arts.

  Quickly finishing his beer, David left the gloomy pub without further acknowledging the oaf who had dampened his spirit. Outside, he looked about him, saw the spire of the church and walked towards it with no conscious decision to. He entered the lych-gate and made his way directly to where the remains of his aunt lay, even though he had not attended the funeral or knew the location of her grave.

  Squatting down on his haunches, David cleared the layer of fallen leaves from the bronze plaque. Where it was situated disturbed him. For some obscure reason Emily had been buried apart from the rows of mostly aged tombstones that leant at angles, succumbing to gravity and covered in florets of lichen.

  A reedy voice erupted behind him. “Good day, young man. May I be of assistance?”

  David turned to see a thin, balding man in dog collar and black suit approaching. He looked to already have one foot in his own grave, being almost skeletal, with jaundiced skin stretched drum-tight over prominent cheekbones. He also had pronounced curvature of the spine, and had to crane his neck up to see ahead and not face the ground.

  “I’m just paying my respects,” David said.

  The vicar grimaced, and David thought his parchment skin might tear, to split apart and display bone as yellow as old ivory.

  “And why might you want to do that, if I may ask?”

  David frowned. “Emily Thornton was my aunt. Is there a reason for her being buried so far from the rest of the departed, up against the graveyard wall?”

  “She...your aunt, was not like her neighbours,” the vicar said. “She left specific instructions to be laid to rest apart from all others, as she had been in life. She also requested to be placed face down in her coffin for some pagan reason. Naturally that was not something I could or would sanction.”

  “You sound as superstitious as the landlord at the Boar’s Head. Are you implying that she was in some way different?” David said sharply.

  A muscle twitched in the vicar’s left cheek, repeatedly drawing his mouth up at that side in an Elvis-style sneer. “I offer no personal observation,” he said. “But look about you, my friend. The grass will not grow around her grave. And the oak above her is now dying. Emily was much more than she appeared to be.”

  Later, back at the cottage, David stared in disbelief. Was it his imagination, or did the newly thatched roof look discoloured? And were the freshly whitewashed walls beginning to flake in places? That was impossible.

  Entering the cottage, he caught the slight smell of must and dampness, and cobwebs he had not noticed before were hanging like ships’ rigging or black bunting at the juncture of the walls and ceiling. But that could not be. The place had recently been decorated throughout.

  By nine p.m. David was falling asleep in front of the TV, and so went up to bed, convinced that the sea air was responsible for his tiredness. Within minutes he was slumbering, and dreamed that Emily – who he only recognised from old black and white photographs – was standing at the foot of the bed, talking to him, demanding that he carry out her wishes or suffer the consequences.

  Sitting bolt upright, he looked about him in the grainy dawn light that filtered through a window that was now smeared with thick grime and gull droppings; a window that had been sparkling clean the day before.

  His heart thundered. He could not move for the shock that locked-up his muscles: for the lumpy bed he lay on was not his. Neither was the old wardrobe facing him, nor the faded prints in dull gilt frames that hung on peeling, yellowed wallpaper. Even the floorboards that had been sanded and varnished were now warped and riddled with woodworm. This was, he knew, how Moor View Cottage had looked up until his aunt’s demise.

  When able, after the initial stupefaction passed, David investigated, to discover that not only the bedroom but the entire property both inside and out was in the state of disrepair in which he had inherited it. There was only one explanation. What he had believed to be nothing more than a vivid dream had in fact been a real event. Emily was not at peace. She had visited him, and he knew what he must do.

  Under cover of darkness, David drove to the graveyard with a spade and all the tools he thought he may need in the rear of the Range Rover. He climbed over the wall, made his way through the tombs and markers in a low crouch, and stopped at the far side of the cemetery, next to the plaque that marked the spot. He hesitated, questioning his sanity. Surely he could not be about to desecrate his aunt’s resting place. What if he was to be discovered waist-deep in the grave by the vicar or the police? He would be charged with...with what? Attempted grave-robbery? God! The media would have a field day, especially as this was the evening of October thirty-first; All Hallow’s Eve. He would be labelled a modern-day body snatcher; an unholy and deranged lunatic. No matter, it had to be done. Forcing back a sense of dire dread and gut-churning horror, he swallowed hard, placed the blade of the spade into the soil and began to dig.

  The transition was not immediate. The cottage slowly metamorphosed over a period of several days, renewing itself inchmeal around him, as though it were a living entity and not just so much brick, timber, straw and paint. But at last it was magically returned to the pristine state in which the builders, thatchers and decorators had rendered it prior to his occupation. His nocturnal endeavours had not been in vain.

  On a whim, David once more visited the country church yard. Somehow he was not surprised to see fresh grass growing around Emily’s grave, or the appearance of new shoots sprouting from the overhanging limbs of the revitalised oak tree.

  Emily was now truly at rest, face down in the soil beneath him.

  18

  JOSIAH’S ANGEL

  Josiah sold his wares from a shop in Bascombe Street that he had owned and lived above since first opening the door for business forty years previously, in the spring of 1832. Above the cobwebbed windows in cracked and flaking blue and yellow paint, the legend: ‘J. Tenby ~ Toymaker’ could still be deciphered, if closely scrutinised with sharp eyesight.

  Josiah was a craftsman, who had honed his manual skills to a level that placed him in a league of but a few of his peers. He possessed the dexterity of an artisan, and produced merchandise worked in wood, specialising in the creation of toys and games that were the finest in all of London. It was both a vocation and a livelihood, and had served Josiah well throughout the majority of his seventy-five years.

  For every item made and sold, another was crafted and stored away for special distribution. On Christmas morning every year, Josiah would deliver his cache of duplicate toys to the nearby children’s hospital, in the hope of giving some little cheer to the suffering and disenchanted tots therein. It was the same hospital that his only son had been taken from him and delivered into the Lord’s keeping so long ago now, to undoubtedly perform some important task in furtherance of his maker’s vast, eternal plan.

  Time had surreptitiously taken its toll, and nowadays Josiah was slower at his work, due to his fingers being badly swollen at the joints from the creeping, painful onslaught of arthritis. He still p
roduced magnificent toys of praiseworthy acclaim, though his fading, pale blue eyes were watery and strained from a lifetime of labour by candle and lamplight. He could now only bear short periods of time on the more delicate, detailed work, and that was with the aid of spectacles with lenses as thick as the shop’s murky bulls’ eye windows. His hair, still thick, though now chalk-white, topped his jovial, bearded, lived-in face. And although his back was stooped, his spirit was not broken, nor the love for his craft diminished by his deteriorating journey into old age.

  Christmas was but a week hence, and Josiah still had orders to complete: a Jack-in-box, rocking horse, and a walnut chess set, its Kings and Queens sitting high above the other pieces on thrones; mounted knights with lances raised; pious bishops praying, and castles towering.

  With a sigh of relief, the last foot-soldier pawn was placed in the box. Josiah had spent more time than planned on the noble board game, which had been ordered by a well known member of parliament; an expensive gift for his foppish son.

  There was hardly space for Josiah to work. Each shelf and surface and cupboard was crammed with toys and sundry articles. There were scores of dolls and flap-wing geese. Farmyard animals stood on wheels, and marionettes hung limp on their strings from nails in ceiling beams. The workshop was an Aladdin’s cave of painted, woodworked treasure, waiting to surprise the children on Christmas Day.

  With each chisel cut, and every drop of paint, Josiah imparted love to his creations, as though each piece was being made for his lost child. A widower these past ten years, he had but one reason to rise each morning; to carve and whittle, saw and plane; his charity unbounded.