Close Encounters of the Strange Kind

by Michael Kerr

  Nick’s girlfriend, Glenda, had been Silas Merrick’s housekeeper for the last six years of the old man’s life, and knew that he hoarded his pension and other money in the house. Now, with Silas dead and it being highly unlikely that anyone knew of his secret stash, Nick felt that he would be nothing short of remiss, should he not attempt to liberate it and put it to good use.

  Silas had spent much of the last twelve months a virtual invalid, all but bedridden, and had no doubt kept his money close by. It would be upstairs, somewhere in the bedroom he had passed away in. Most people kept their valuables upstairs, seemingly unaware that it was the first place that any half-decent burglar would look.

  Nick tiptoed through the large kitchen, out into the wide, oak-panelled hall, which in turn led to the staircase. His heart thudded and cold sweat filmed his body. It was an unwarranted state to be in. He knew that there were no alarms, and that the house was unoccupied, and yet he felt very apprehensive.

  The loud creak of a complaining stair under his foot made Nick gasp and hesitate. His gloved hand ached with the force he was unconsciously gripping the banister rail with. He listened, but could hear nothing. But he should have heard something. The buffeting wind was surely strong enough to rattle the old sash windows, cause the gutters and down pipes to reverberate within their rusted brackets, and gain entry, to send draughts darting through the maze of sparsely furnished rooms. Instead, he might have been in a vacuum. Even the groan of the stair was unnaturally stifled, smothered and cut short.

  Nick had the impulse to turn tail and run; to not stop until he was back amongst the streetlights at the end of the winding lane. All his instincts were imploring him to quit the creepy house, but commonsense and greed overrode his predisposition to retreat. He continued on up to the first landing, on which the bedroom he sought was situated. A window at the far end allowed a grainy brushstroke of light to illuminate it dimly. There were gilt-framed sepia photographs hung on the wall, and the faded wallpaper above them curled down from damp and crumbling plaster. Nick could smell the stale mustiness of the house; a palpable and pervasive sweet and sour odour that reminded him of mouldering oranges, tacky, grime-laden carpets, and the unseen and corrupting carcasses of rats in dark corners of attics. He would have to hurry, before his resolve snapped like an overstretched rubber band.

  Opening the second door on his right, he entered. The room was large and only contained: a bed, chest of drawers, wardrobe, and a wing-chair facing the window.

  The obvious places first. He went across to the bed, lifted the mattress at first one side and then the other. Nothing. The drawers next. One by one he pulled them out, emptied the contents onto the patchwork quilt and sorted through them. There was nothing of value. Only the wardrobe left. It was a massive piece of furniture. Solid oak, he thought. Opening both doors, he was faced with a rail packed with suits and coats at one side, and shelves and drawers the other. He emptied the drawers first. There was a gold wristwatch, but it was inscribed on the back, so he left it. Some of the cufflinks he found were probably of some value, so he took them. But where was the cash? He rifled through the pockets of jackets, trousers and coats, but they were empty. The thought of having to search the entire house was a daunting prospect. Every minute inside it was one too many. He couldn’t shake off a sense of foreboding.

  It was beneath the cluttered heap of shoes on the floor of the wardrobe that he found the old man’s cache. The bottom board was canted up a little. He withdrew a penknife from his pocket, slipped the blade under the raised edge and prised it loose. In the space beneath lay a plastic supermarket carrier bag. He pulled it out, hurried over to the bed and tipped out the banded blocks of bank notes. Yeesss! There must have been several thousand pounds in readies. He stuffed them back into the bag, not inclined to count his new-found fortune in such an inhospitable environment. He would do that at leisure, back in the safety of his flat.

  It was then that the temperature inexplicably dropped by at least twenty degrees. Each breath he exhaled turned to vapour, and he was at once chilled to the bone and began to shiver uncontrollably.

  Clutching his ill-gotten gains, Nick rushed to the bedroom door. Hadn’t he left it open? It was now firmly closed. He twisted the tarnished brass knob and pulled, but it was stuck…Or locked. He felt panic grip him. It was as if a solid ball of ice formed in his stomach, and he began to make a strange whimpering sound. Get a grip. It’s not locked, just jammed. The wood must have swollen over time. He dropped the carrier bag and used both hands to attempt to pull it from the clinging jamb. It did not budge. He kicked at it, even though he knew it opened inwards towards him, and that it was made of solid timber and would not break. Only when his foot hurt, did he stop and try to rationalise his position and find some composure. It was no big deal. He would exit through the window.

  Picking up the bag, Nick walked across the room, skirting the lone chair, to unlatch the window, pull it up and look out. He grinned. There was a drain pipe fixed to the wall within easy reach. He would be out of here in seconds.

  The window plunged down like a guillotine blade, onto the backs of his hands, breaking several of his fingers. He screamed out, almost overcome by fear and pain in equal measure, and elbowed the glass, intent on breaking the window and dropping down into the bushes below. He was only on the first floor; it would be easy. And he had no choice, not with his fingers broken and swelling up.

  The pane of glass had elastic properties. It might have been translucent rubber as it bounced back and regained its shape when he withdrew his elbow. He fumbled his knife out again, the money now forgotten on the carpet at his feet. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his hands, he slashed at the window; astonished to see the rents he made in it appear to heal up almost instantaneously.

  Something very strange was happening. Try the door again, he thought, and turned...to be faced by the figure of Silas Merrick sitting in the wing-chair.

  Nick couldn’t move. Like a rabbit frozen in the path of a car’s headlights, he could only stare open-mouthed into the face of a person who he knew for certain was dead and buried. The old man was wearing a shroud, and his gaunt face was bloodless and ashen. The milky cauls of his eyes held no expression, and yet Nick knew that he was being examined, judged, and would no doubt meet some terrible fate for attempting to steal the dead man’s money. His brain seemed to short circuit at the sight of a fat, green-backed beetle exiting from between the apparition’s lips, to scuttle up and vanish into a nostril. It was all too much to bear.

  Nick felt a crushing pressure in his chest, like a thick band of steel tightening and compressing it. He couldn’t seem to move or think or breathe. And then the old man smiled, and he somehow found the strength to scream.

  It was David Shadwell – who was handling the estate of his late client, Silas Merrick – who found Nick. He walked through the open door of what had been Silas’s bedroom to find the body of the would-be thief lying supine on the carpet, between a dusty wing-chair and the window, of which the bottom pane was shattered. David was distressed by the look of absolute terror frozen on the corpse’s face, and perplexed at the sight of a grubby carrier bag on the floor next to it, from which a large amount of currency had spilled out. Nothing else in the room seemed to be out of place.

  Rushing out onto the landing, withdrawing his mobile phone to call the police, David did not even see the large green beetle that had dropped down from the chair, to be crushed under his foot as it headed for the nearest skirting board.

  21

  TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

  Make no mistake, being dead was a big deal. It concentrated Howard’s mind more than anything in life had ever done. One second he’d been roaring down a country road doing over eighty, leaning over on his Suzuki with the right knee of his leathers grazing the asphalt as he took a bend. And the next thing he knew he was standing in a queue outside the gates of a building that reminded him of Westminster Abbey. It was surreal. Dense fog blanketed the ground, a
nd from what he could make out, some of the people in the line were wearing pyjamas, and others appeared to be naked. He wanted to run away, but didn’t have a clue where he was, so waited, inching forward, not knowing where he might be heading, or why.

  “Excuse me,” Howard said, tapping the shoulder of the man in front of him. “Can you tell me where we are?”

  The man turned to face him. His podgy face was ashen, and his expression of total bewilderment was answer enough.

  “I...I’ve no idea,” he said. “I was out jogging, and I felt ill so stopped to get my breath for a minute. Next thing I knew, I was here.”

  Howard decided that he was dreaming. It was the only logical explanation for such bizarre events. He would wake up soon.

  “Next,” a small, bearded man wearing what appeared to be a white, silk dressing gown said after the man in front of Howard had been interviewed, processed, or whatever the procedure was.

  Stepping forward, Howard leant his arms on top of the marble counter that separated them.

  “Name, please,” the harassed gatekeeper asked him; a quill pen poised over an enormous leather-bound ledger.

  “Who’s asking?” Howard demanded. “And what is this place?”

  “My name is Peter. And you are at the departure terminal. Now if you’ll just confirm that you are Howard Parker, I can tick you off and send you on your way.”

  “To where?” Howard asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said. “You’ll have to wait and see. We don’t handle destinations. You’ll be interviewed by a panel in Last Judgment, and they will decide which way you go. Now please sign on the dotted line and make your way through the gate. You’re holding up the queue.”

  That was the moment when the penny dropped: when Howard realised that he was dead. He panicked, turned tail and ran off towards a wall of fog that stretched up as far as he could see.

  “Come back here, there’s nowhere to go,” Peter shouted after him.

  Howard careered blindly on, believing that if he didn’t sign the book and enter the gate, then he would somehow be able to return to his life. He increased speed, and shot off an unseen ledge with his legs still pedalling in space as he fell through the all-encompassing murk.

  He came to a jarring stop, stretched out on his back in pitch blackness, but instinctively knew that he was in a confined space. Reaching out, his fingers met a hard, satiny surface. He tried to sit up, but his head collided with an unseen obstruction.

  Lying back, he could here a muffled voice: “...and as we bury the body of Howard Parker, welcome him into Your presence, watch over him, and with Your saints let him rejoice in You forever. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the unseen congregation muttered.

  Oh, God, Nooo! It was true. He had died. Probably crashed his bike, and was now listening to his own funeral service, from the inside of a coffin.

  The sound of what he knew to be soil hitting the lid galvanised him into action. He left the husk of his deceased body, shot up and out of the pine box, and found himself among the mourners who were looking down into the open grave.

  Staring wildly around the gathering, he was aware that no one could see him. Teary-eyed friends, family, and his beloved Sharon were mercifully blind to the presence of the spectre among them.

  Walking straight through the mourners, as if it were they that had no substance, Howard made his way across the cemetery to an old oak tree, where he sat on the grass with his back up against the trunk and waited until everyone had left.

  “You just passed?” a gravel voice asked.

  Howard turned to see an elderly man sitting next to a timeworn headstone that was spotted with coins of lichen, and on which the lettering was almost illegible.

  Howard nodded. “Yes, I know I’m dead, but I don’t feel it. Who are you?”

  “Stanley Barstow,” the apparition replied. “And the truth is, you don’t feel anything, son. The likes of us are not of this world anymore. We’re in-betweeners, reluctant to move on to the next life.”

  “I don’t understand. What are we supposed to do?” Howard asked.

  “Go forward,” Stanley said. “To whatever comes next.”

  “Then why haven’t you?”

  The ghost shimmered like a holographic image that was losing its cohesion, and then settled back into a more solid-looking presence. “I wasn’t ready to die,” Stanley said, hiking his narrow shoulders. “I was happily married with three children. I was on my way to work when a hackney carriage ran me down in the Strand. That was back in 1898, and here I still am. I visit the graves of my wife, children, and the grandchildren I never met in life.”

  “That’s sad. Why aren’t you with them?” Howard asked.

  “Because I have no way of knowing that we’ll be together again if I move on. And time seems to pass at a different rate when you’re dead. It doesn’t seem any time at all since I died.”

  “But what do you do?”

  “I watch the world go by. Sometimes it’s fun to be a voyeur. You can go wherever you want without being seen. And I’ve met some very interesting people who are still reluctant to get on with death. Only last week I bumped – metaphorically speaking of course – into Charles Dickens. He enjoys the enduring posthumous fame, still writes, but is very frustrated at not being able to get anything published.”

  Howard felt totally depressed and desperate. He had no wish to meet the ghosts of long dead luminaries, or mess about haunting people. He wanted to be alive again.

  “How do I get back to the gates,” he asked Stanley, who was slowly sinking into the ground, distracted by the appearance of what had been a portly, middle-aged man, who was flying through the trees, no doubt acting out a childhood fantasy of being Peter Pan or Superman.

  Stanley drifted up to ground level again. “You need to go back to the location you died at, and just wait. They’ll come for you.”

  “Thanks,” Howard said, getting up and walking across the grass, passing through trees and headstones and then through the railings that enclosed the site of so many mortal remains. The worst thing about being dead was not being able to feel or smell. He could still see and hear, but couldn’t enjoy the sensation of the breeze against his skin, or the bouquet of the flower beds he passed. He had a sudden craving to eat a juicy steak with all the trimmings, but knew that he couldn’t. He was alone, lonely and separate from the world he had been a part of until so recently. It crossed his mind that being dead, sucked. There were no benefits that he could think of. Above all, he missed Sharon, his girlfriend. It wouldn’t harm to see her once more, before he faced up to whatever came next in the greater scheme of things.

  In a blur he was transported to where he wished to be, outside the council house in Burnt Oak, where Sharon lived with her parents. He walked up the path, his feet several inches above the ground, and stepped through the solid door without any sensation of resistance. There was no one in. He had beaten them back from the cemetery. He waited, and mentally changed his attire, to be once more in his favourite black bike leathers. It struck him that it was all self delusion. He had no physical substance, and was in reality no more than a sentient spirit, who chose to appear in the guise of how he had been used to seeing himself.

  When Sharon and her family arrived home, he moved into a shadowy corner of the lounge and was moved to tears at the sight of Sharon’s disconsolate demeanour. She hunched on the sofa, crying freely, her red-rimmed eyes puffy. She was consumed by grief, and he wished he could let her know that he was okay. Truth was, he wasn’t okay, though. He was in some infernal limbo, between what had been and what was to come. Being here was a mistake. He wanted to hold Sharon in his arms and comfort her. He stepped through the wall into the kitchen, unable to endure her anguish for another second.

  The setting froze. He was transfixed like a shop window mannequin, or a figure in a waxwork exhibit. Reality melted as an electrical surge brightened the overhead fluorescent tube with a brilli
ance that could not be sustained, and with a loud crack – that sounded like cannon fire – it exploded, sending a fusillade of hot, glittering glass particles down. The air in the room shifted, visibly wavering, similar to the effect seen when driving along a road on a broiling day, which made the distant blacktop appear almost liquid in appearance. A low, pulsating throb emanated from the empty space above Howard. It was an indefinite submarine sound that seemed to burst from the depths of some alien and parallel universe, and was followed by the appearance of Peter, the white-robed gatekeeper, who manifested clutching his bulky book.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Peter said. “There’s been a clerical error.”

  “Meaning?” Howard asked.

  “That it was another chap by the name of Howard Parker who should have passed over,” Peter said. “You aren’t due for...for a good many years yet. We need to put things to rights, or it causes all sorts of problems in the future. Close your eyes.”

  Howard did as instructed, and was at once leaning over, going too fast, almost losing control of the bright red Suzuki. He saw the patch of oil at the last possible moment, swerved around it and slowed. He stopped in the next lay-by, removed his helmet and took deep breaths. That had been too close for comfort. Maybe he would sell the bike and get a car, like Sharon wanted him to.

  22

  SHELTER FROM THE STORM

  I am all too aware that if you are reading this, then you will think it a short work of fantasy fiction; a wholly fabricated tale that I have conjured up to entertain, alarm, and perhaps even chill your blood by a degree or two. Nothing I might say will convince you that the following abridged version of horrific events was my misfortune to actually experience. So why am I setting it down on paper? Because it is better out than in, and relating it may go some way to relieving me of the mental burden. What is it they say: a trouble shared is a trouble halved?