When I reached the river I found that, as a result of the hot dry weather, it was very low. The narrow stream of water was coloured brown by the peat from the moors above. After staring into the stream for some time I spotted some fish skilfully maintaining their position under a cloud of midges—three or four fat speckled trout.
I walked eastwards along the southern bank of the river, reasoning that I would not lose my way if I stuck close to the water. After half a mile or so I saw, on the northern side, a ruined stone building. I remembered that Aunt Millie had told me about it. It was called St Simon’s Chapel. In earlier centuries it had been a chapel-of-ease conveniently situated between Carlton and the villages on the other side of the dale. At one point it had even been converted into a tavern, providing another kind of comfort to the hard working farmers of Coverdale. I crossed the decaying wooden bridge and could see that it was abandoned and roofless, overgrown with moss and bracken. I picked up a stick and poked around the surrounding nettles and saplings. The river bank here was deep in the shade of tall ash trees. Although it was still the middle of the day it was gloomy, quiet and still, except for the swish, swish of my stick, and the faint tinkle of the river as it flowed over the shallow bed of cobbles.
It must have crept up on me gradually, but I became aware of a sort of faint, high, melodic sound. I stood still so that I could listen more carefully. It was a female voice, singing something pleasing and tuneful that I did not recognise. The singing seemed to come from inside the chapel ruins, and as I tiptoed towards them, intent now on making as little noise as possible, it gradually increased in volume.
I made my way warily into the ruins, and there stood a woman—a youngish woman, although I was no judge then. I think now that she must have been around thirty-five, the same sort of age as my mother. Her thick brown hair was arranged on top of her head and she wore a long, light dress that flowed from under her bust. She looked like a character on a Greek vase. In her left hand she grasped some green foliage. She was singing her song and appeared to be staring straight at me.
She stopped singing and smiled. It is impossible to describe the beauty of her smile. When she spoke, it was with a faintly foreign lilt that I could not place, but her voice was charming.
‘Hello, Martin. I hope you are well today?’
Puzzled that she knew my name, and unsure how to respond, English good manners took over.
‘I’m very well, thank you.’
She smiled again. A wave of well-being washed over me.
‘That is good. Do you know, I think today is a good day, because you have come to see me. Move closer, Martin.’
I shuffled towards her.
‘I see that you are quite a big boy now. Quite a clever boy, too, I think.’
‘It’s kind of you to say so.’
‘And polite, too! What a joy! Soon you will be a man, Martin, making your own way in the world. What will you be? What do you want to be?
‘I don’t know. Maybe a pilot, or the captain of a ship. Or a pirate.’
‘I see you have the spark of adventure in you.’
‘I’d like to travel a long way away from here.’
‘Travel is good . . . home is best. But where is your home? Where are the people that you care for? You must not be afraid to show your love, and be strong. Life is not always roses, or toys and books and sweets. You must be strong for your mother’s and father’s sake.’
I couldn’t understand why she was spoiling what had been an intriguing conversation about me by bringing my parents into it.
‘Why should I care about them? They don’t love me.’
‘You think not? I see you still have some growing up to do. It seems you will have to learn the hard way what caring for someone else really means.’
The old fury overtook me.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about! It’s all rubbish.’
She sighed.
‘If only that were true.’
It had grown almost as dark as twilight. I realised with a start of horror that her stare was still unbroken. Her eyes were fixed. She could not blink.
‘Know thyself, Martin. Life is not a painting, beautiful and the same for all time. You will survive, and change, and grow. And live. You must go now.’
‘Okay,’ I said ungraciously.
A rook started up from one of the ash trees and flapped off towards the fields. I stalked out of the building without looking back.
***
I did not know what to make of the odd encounter, so, as children do, I put it to the back of my mind and all but forgot it.
I walked the mile or so back to Carlton. Nearer the village, the path ran past the large walled garden of a white-painted house, and the drowsy drone of bees gorging on the flowering plants and bushes followed me up the slight incline onto the village road. When Aunt Millie returned, she took one look at me shivering and dozing in the chair, and sent me straight to bed. I was fine the next morning.
After that first exploration I began to walk further afield, over to the village of West Scrafton on the other side of the dale, and then finally up on to Melmerby Moor, the moor above Carlton. I climbed Penhill, and found that I could see as far north east as the Cleveland Hills and the steelworks of Middlesborough. A sharp pang of homesickness clawed at my guts as I spotted smoke rising from the factories and furnaces.
Over the weeks I explored as far as I could walk. I met few people on my adventures, and I did not seek them out. I still felt raw and savage, but gradually I found that the hurt and disappointment in my father was fading away. In short, I discovered a renewed interest in life.
Aunt Millie took me on some of her antiquing expeditions, which I enjoyed much more than I expected to. She had a real interest and expertise in the social history of small objects of desire, and I found her enthusiasm infectious.
I devoured the books I found in Aunt Millie’s bookcases. While listening to the wireless in the evenings she watched with some amusement as I sat in her comfortable sitting room, reading about hallmarked silver, Chinese porcelain, wild flowers and birds, English country furniture.
‘We’ll make a countryman of you yet, Martin. Or an antique dealer.’
As August rolled into September, and then the bitterly cold winter of 1940-41, I settled into life in Coverdale. I was never bored—there was always a new walk or a thrilling new book to explore—and I began to help Aunt Millie with the business of running the house. She did not believe in keeping a maid from the War effort, so I carried coal and chopped wood, shopped for provisions and scrubbed the stone flags of the kitchen floor. I even learned to cook. From time to time my father wrote me letters—short, impersonal scrawls about his work. I did not bother to reply.
A foot or two of snow covered the village in January, and life became harder. Food and petrol rationing took a firm hold, and I came to appreciate the hardiness and resourcefulness of the villagers. I made some friends, firstly among the shopkeepers and tradesmen I had dealings with, and then more generally. Aunt Millie, although an outsider, was well liked, and when people found out I was her sort-of nephew, I was accepted without having to try very hard to impress.
Spring in Coverdale was late but memorable. The curlew returned in March, and soon the pale yellow primroses punctuated the grassy banks and verges. By May there was a real warmth to the sun. School had not been mentioned, and I had no intention of reminding anyone. I continued to roam the countryside and happily read all the books I could lay my hands on.
One day in early June, Aunt Millie announced that Uncle Simon would soon be coming home on leave. We decided that we would push the boat out and make the house especially jolly and welcoming. Aunt Millie gave me some money so that I could scout around for a few extra supplies. Many local farmers’ wives kept chickens, and I knew that I should be able to buy eggs and maybe even butter and meat.
The day before Uncle Simon was due, while we were arranging a vase of roses picked from the garden, the te
legram boy knocked at the door. Aunt Millie returned to the sitting room holding the thin, folded paper as if it were some kind of poison. She sat down heavily. I felt dreadfully sorry for her.
‘Would you like me to open it for you, Aunt Millie?’
‘No, no. Bless you, Martin. It must be borne, I suppose.’
I watched as she read the short message. I was already beginning to think of ways to try to make her happy again.
Her face crumpled, and she clutched the chintz material of the chair.
‘Is Uncle Simon . . . ?’
‘Yes . . . well . . . Martin. . . . The telegram says that he has been killed. . . . I mean, your father has been killed. He was working in a hospital in Birmingham when there was an air raid. He carried on with the operation until the baby was safely delivered and the mother attended to. Only then did he go to the shelter. There was a direct hit and he was killed instantly. Twenty-four other people died. I’m sorry. I know that you cared for him very deeply.’
As I stood up, I knocked the vase of roses off the table. It smashed to pieces, the delicate red petals crushed on the floor.
***
I stayed in Coverdale for another two weeks—they are rather hazy in my memory—and then my mother and her friend Mr Vickers came to collect me. Mr Vickers—Michael—eventually became my stepfather, and I lived with them quite happily in Sheffield, going back to my old school and doing well there. My friends James and Stephen accepted me back as if I had never been away. There were few serious bombing raids on the city.
My mother, who was a kind woman, spoke to me often about my father, telling me little things about him—how they met, and what a clever, well-respected doctor he was. She would have liked me to have trained as a surgeon, but it was not to be.
I followed up my interest in antiques and made a living, after a few years dealing in English silver, as an auctioneer. I moved to Cardiff and set up my own auction house, Coverdale’s, which has been very successful. I have my dear wife and children, and I am in many ways a lucky man.
I have never been back to Carlton, but Aunt Millie wrote me wonderful letters right up until her death. Uncle Simon survived the War and they had a son and daughter, rather late in life. Once, not long after the War had ended, I wrote and asked Aunt Millie if she had ever heard of a blind woman, perhaps foreign, living nearby. She replied, without questioning why I had asked, that she had not.
THE HOUSE ON NORTH CONGRESS STREET
Jason A. Wyckoff
If you are afforded the discretion of choosing when to spend a terrifying night in a haunted house, I strongly recommend opting for it during your college years. I doubt I could tolerate the experience these twenty years later; certainly I could not behave as resiliently as I did at the time. My psyche was undoubtedly more pliable then, so much so that my experience, though never forgotten, was quickly attenuated by more pressing matters (here I wish I was speaking of academia, but as with many other young men, my primary concern was the oft-agonising pursuit of the fairer sex). It may be that my estimation of life appraised such occurrences as more common than I have since learned them to be. Possibly, I was more self-centred and expected the exceptional to be routine for me. I feel there must have been something special about me; I say this because I saw the ghost, whereas my companions, one resident and one frequent guest, did not, that night or any other. I believe I might have been what is referred to as a ‘sensitive’—whether or not I remain so to this day I cannot ascertain. I have recognised no other encounters with the supernatural.
It happened one year that I, a student at the Ohio State University in Columbus, and my good friend Hayes, a student at Ohio University in Athens, were both romantically involved with co-eds attending Ivy League universities. As each school’s respective week-long ‘spring break’ coincided, we elected to take a road-trip to visit our paramours. We would be accompanied by a friend of Hayes’s, Steve, who had nothing better to do and who was the only one among the three of us to own a car. As a spiteful aside, I might point out that the ‘spring break’ occurred in the middle of March, and the equinox marked its conclusion rather than its commencement. Regardless: I was retrieved from Columbus and taken back to Steve’s house on North Congress Street (I’ll leave off the exact number), where we three would spend the night before embarking on the next day’s long drive. We prepared for departure with the customary discipline of three young men confident of their invulnerability. So let that be the first arrow in the sceptic’s quiver: Yes, we imbibed enthusiastically. It will probably not serve my defence to mention that in this at least we were well studied. I remember how, impecunious as we were, we thought we would be thrifty by chipping in to buy a carton of cigarettes together, with the expectation it would last through the trip. I am not certain it lasted through to Providence.
Athens is a college town in southeastern Ohio, tucked amongst forested, swelling hills. Busy by day on campus and downtown in a saddle traced by the Hocking River, out from its centre the town reaches residential wings of increasing languorousness. When school is not in session, the town is strikingly quiet. One imagines it disappearing if the students forget to return. Sometime following my experience there, I heard that Athens is the thirteenth ‘most haunted’ town in the United States. I suppose if you can’t be first in that category, then you might as well be thirteenth—I doubt Athens is the only town to have that claim made for her. The house on North Congress was unremarkable, a quaint American two-storey house with peaked roof, pale siding and dark trim (I remember it as white and blue). Approached from the street, it looked as likely owned by a grandmother as rented to a handful of students.
From a shallow porch the front door opened into the living room. The door was situated in the middle of the house, but because of a dividing wall to the left as one entered, the space opened to the right. A long, wide hallway ran the length of the house to the back door. Some modification had been made to accommodate the expected inhabitants; an opening to the left led to two bedrooms on the first floor that likely had been intended as a dining room and study. The base of a stairway sat along the right wall of the living room, catty-corner to the front door. A landing at the top of the stair opened onto two more bedrooms; turning right and taking a few steps back along the length of the stair led you to a large bathroom. Returning to the first floor: the hallway (passing a small alcove under the stairs) led to an open kitchen on the right and a small utility room on the left. This room had been converted to a recording studio. It was not large enough to accommodate much more than lo-fi sonic experimentation and solo recording. The room was bleak, poorly lit, and crowded over with an ivy of black patch cords and speaker wire immobilising two folding chairs and connecting a Frankensteinian collage of electrical equipment stacked atop tables, crates, and amplifiers. This room they called the Dungeon, variously because it was bitterly cold in winter and clammy in summer, because the walls and floor were bare and suffered from neglect, or arising from the claustrophobic conditions consequent of its purpose. But beyond those concerns, I was told the room was considered ‘oppressive’ or ‘heavy’—and this impression was attributed to something more than the physical attributes of the space.
And so I was initiated into the deeper mysteries of the house. Both Steve and Hayes claimed that the house was haunted, based both on their experiences as well as those of the other inhabitants. (Perhaps here I should point out that we three were alone in the house that evening, the other housemates having already departed. Alone, I should say, except for Steve’s golden retriever, Rollo, who will feature prominently in the narrative.) As is the habit of young men, the matter was addressed with as much affected indifference as earnestness. While both claimed the appellation ‘haunted’ was the consensus opinion of all familiar with the property, likewise did they refrain from expressing any sense of wonder about its unusual status. That blasé repression impressed me initially as an attempt not to laugh—as though they were curious how far they could carry the ruse an
d were afraid if they oversold the concept, they wouldn’t be able to constrain their mirth. So I listened dubiously, aware that I was the perfect target for such a joke, believer that I wanted to be. In addition to the ‘heavy’ atmosphere/presence often felt in the Dungeon, they testified that electrical devices in that room would switch on and off extemporaneously, and that objects of all sorts would be found throughout the house other than where they were left. These claims are easily refutable as claustrophobia, excessive cross-wiring, and living in a house populated by college students. I was surprised they offered no more grandiose claims, reporting neither inexplicable sounds or disembodied voices, nor sightings of apparitions or moving shadows. Any of those phenomena would fall within the realm of expectation for a truly ‘active’ haunted house. I did not pry beyond what was offered, but I believe I presented a willing audience if either cared to say more. Their reticence added validity to the claim; though guilt for pranking a friend would not hold them back (even if, as I said, the artfulness of the ploy might benefit from it), embarrassment might. The overriding attitude of that age might be summed up as ‘laboured cool’. Such studied nonchalance easily accommodates all manner of outlandish behaviour, but struggles to find the right reaction to the ‘mundanely odd’. Of course, the subject of the supernatural is easily distrusted at any age. One is as wary of discomforting a friend or inviting ridicule from an unbeliever as one is of engaging someone whose enthusiasm for the subject greatly exceeds his own (and thereby eliciting worry that he might appear similarly overzealous to others).
I’ve noticed that, perhaps contrary to expectation, the more uncommon a conversational topic, the more devotion it requires from the participants to hold focus. Failing to engender the requisite enthusiasm, the subject of the haunting was dropped. No invitation to revisit it was offered, and I could not hope to make any mention of it that would be anything but awkward. Instead, we drank and smoked and talked of women measuredly and of music wantonly. We may have attempted some impromptu noise-making ourselves; I don’t remember it, but it would have been par for the course. I remember Hayes was excited about the new Six Finger Satellite record, and we played it repeatedly. All other particulars are lost to time.
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