But then I couldn’t find my phone, and that was something Jess might’ve picked up and put down somewhere. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find it. I started to get really wound up when there came another knock at the door.
I was in the hall way right next to it when it happened, so I grabbed the latch and opened the door fast, no time for them to run!
I swung it open and screamed in their faces: “What the hell do you think you’re playing at!” But instead of a group of kids, I frightened the living wits out of this tiny old man, well-dressed and silver-haired – I think I almost shouted him off the doorstep.
I apologised quickly and told him that kids were constantly knocking on the door and that they were driving me crazy. A little unnerved, he told me that he’d spoken to the old ladies at the charity shop and they’d mentioned me. He worked for a small charity that did pick-ups and he wanted to give me some of the bags they used for collections. I could just leave them on the front step and they’d get them.
God, I felt so guilty. I said sorry about a hundred times but I could still see that I’d shaken the poor man up. I took the bags and went back inside. What was wrong with this place? I found my phone outside on the patio, how on earth had it gotten there? Even if I’d taken it out, which I was sure I hadn’t, I wouldn’t leave it on the floor. Jess could’ve done it, but surely I’d have heard her if she’d gone outside.
And the knocking… I asked the old man if he’d seen kids around and he said he hadn’t seen any. He said it might be the students, but they seemed a bit above knock down ginger to me. They had more exciting ways to create trouble – at the tattoo and sex toy store for starters.
I had a missed call from Alan. I thought about telling him about all the stuff that had gone on, but he was so stressed with work. He didn’t really have time to talk, he was just checking in. He asked me how I was liking the place. I was a bit cagey, said it felt weird there, but struggled to explain it. It didn’t seem like much – kids playing tricks, things going missing – not when you spoke about it. Besides, I knew how keen he was and I didn’t want to upset him. But I was starting to freak out and was really not seriously considering moving in for the long term.
We didn’t talk for very long. It was late and Jessica had woken up. I turned on the oven to heat a pizza I’d bought when, again, there was a knock at the door.
Was there really nothing else for kids to do in this town! It wouldn’t be the old man again, I’d well and truly scared him off.
“I’m not answering,” I said to myself quietly. I’m going to ignore it, properly ignore it, not let it get me all hot and bothered. The evening went slowly; I cooked the pizzas and watched a Disney film with Jess before putting her to bed properly. She swore blind that she hadn’t touched my phone and I couldn’t bring myself to blame her, but who else could’ve moved it?
I stayed up a little late, but I was still on edge. I thought I heard another knock on the door, but I wasn’t sure. I was getting all wound up about nothing. They’d soon get tired of it. They’d soon leave me alone.
The next morning I planned to drive over to Truro; I was desperate to get out of the house and used it as an excuse to take away a few more bags of rubbish to the charity shops. But it was a disastrous trip from the start; it was a wet miserable day and traffic into town was terrible. I don’t know why, some kind of accident was mentioned on the radio.
And Jess was a nuisance all day. I found the car keys amongst her toys that morning after a long search, so I knew she was the one who was picking up things and moving them about. She denied it and we had an argument so she was grumpy and moody all day and because I wasn’t expecting rain when I packed neither of us had any proper wet-weather clothes.
We gave up on the trip and came back just after lunch. As I was putting our clothes in the dryer, there was another knock at the door.
“I’m not answering it!” I said out aloud, and went back to drying my hair. Jess was getting changed in her bedroom upstairs and I’d started to make us some sandwiches.
There was a knock at the door again. “Still not going to answer,” I said quietly. But this time it doesn’t stop. They knocked again and again. And they didn’t stop knocking; it went on and on and on. And it started to get louder, and louder, and louder. They were pounding on the door – banging their fists against it.
I screamed; I was so angry – I wasn’t going to put up with this. I ran to the door; the pounding still getting louder; I threw it open and yelled: “What the hell is wrong with you!!!”
The second the door opened, the knocking stopped. I was yelling at an empty street – there was nobody there, nobody anywhere near!
I was breathing heavily. Something was wrong, very wrong. How could they have gotten away so quickly? The knocking had just stopped, in an instant – it wasn’t possible.
I descended the steps and walked into the street, looking up and down just to see if there was anyone. But there was no one. How could they be doing this?
I suddenly felt very cold – I was totally freaked out. The sky was grey and dark; it was gloomy and deathly silent, not even a car on the road in the distance. It was unbearably quiet, it was as if I was the only person within a mile; it was like a ghost town.
I heard the door creak behind me. I spun around and saw it suddenly slam shut. I almost jumped out of my shoes in shock – I raced up the steps and tried to pull it open. But the bolt had sprung and locked it from the inside.
“Hey,” I shouted, pounding on the door, giving it a kick. It was locked firm and didn’t budge.
Helpless, I started to shout to Jess: “Jess! Jess, honey. Mummy’s outside.” I pounded on the door with both hands: “Jessica, open the door”.
Then I heard screaming…
Terrifying shrieking, coming from inside the house. It was Jess screaming – I would’ve known that sound anywhere. She was frightened, petrified; screaming for her life.
“Jessica,” I cried. I hit, pushed and kicked the door. Tried to ram it with my shoulder, but it didn’t budge an inch and caused me to slip and fall down the steps. I landed on my side, grazing my leg and twisting my ankle.
She was still screaming; I’d never heard her make such a noise, not even when she was a baby. I ran as best I could around the side of the house to get to the garden. The gate door was on the latch and I couldn’t open it from this side. Without thinking, I charged at it; ran right at it with my shoulder, giving it everything I could.
The latch broke off as I hit it. I tripped and fell, crashing to the ground in a shower of splinters.
I’d hurt my shoulder and scraped my palms, but I couldn’t stop – she was still going, still screeching, shrieking, crying for help. I couldn’t stop; I got right back on my feet and dashed around to the patio doors.
They were locked. I tried to yank them open, but when I couldn’t I went straight to the rockery and picked up the first heavy stone I could get my hands on. I threw it through the door window. It shattered and I jumped through, cutting my arm and shoulder on glass still hanging in the frame.
The screaming had stopped. I ran into the living room: “JESSICA!!!!” I shrieked. And then I heard the sound of a toilet flushing. I rushed to the bottom of the stairs, and she was there – up on the landing. She was rubbing her tired eyes. I stood watching in shock – she was… fine.
“What was the noise, mummy?” she said.
I ran up the stairs, hoisted her up and held her so tight. God, I held her so tight. She was oblivious; she had no idea what had happened. I held her tightly for so long – the relief, I can’t even describe it. I thought I was going to come in and find her dead, beaten, throttled or worse. But she was ok, after all that, she was ok.
“Mummy, you’re bleeding.”
I had blood on my clothes; cuts on my legs… I started to cry: “It’s ok sweetie, it’s ok.”
As I stood there, holding her, my eyes caught sight of the front door. It was now wide open - thrown open, and
all the way back on its hinges.
I walked down the stairs slowly, with Jessica in my arms. I put her down and then slammed the door shut. I leant back against it, breathing heavily. Whatever it was, whatever had been in the house, it was gone now and it wasn’t going to get back in.
Then I remembered the patio door. I had nothing to cover the smashed window, nothing to put over it. I panicked; I got all my things together, told Jessica to get all her things together too. I left stuff behind, and I never went back for it. We went straight to the car and drove straight back to London that night. We just plain bolted for it.
Alan and Dad didn’t know what to make of the story, but I was too distressed for them not to take me seriously and I was in some serious pain and cut and bruised all over. Dad went back to the house himself to sort out the patio door. As you might’ve guessed, we decided not to take the house.
Then, a few days later, Jessica, who was confused and didn’t really know or understand what had happened, she was drawing and painting again. I watched her paint and then I noticed in one of her pictures she’d painted a garden and was colouring in a rock wall she’d already sketched. There was a head peering over the wall, the head of small boy – I suddenly realised what it was and I asked her “Is that the house in Cornwall?” She nodded and then I pointed to the head and asked, “Who’s that?”
She said that’s the boy that kept hiding. And that he’s sad now, because he has no one left to play with.
THE BLACK CLOCK
It was a very long time ago, and I was very young; maybe ten or eleven. I spent most of my time growing up in boarding schools; my parents were civil servants, diplomats really, and they seemed never to be in the country. You know, I think that during some of my formative years I may have only actually seen them two or three times a year. Although, as I was born in 1914, I suppose I should be grateful that I had a father at all.
He spoke French, German and Spanish, so they took better care of him and didn’t just throw him into no man’s land to get shot. Ironically, the result of his and my mother’s international travels meant that I grew up hating foreigners and resolutely refused to achieve in any of my language studies. English excepting of course.
I grew up a very lonely child, introverted and more prone to quiet activities and hobbies than sports or ‘performing’. When holidays would come around, and my parents weren’t at home to accept me, I would stay with my Uncle Guillam, who ran a shop in Egham. This gave many of my school friends great amusement; we were all snobs from the upper crust and the thought of me spending summer in a little shop was funny to them.
It wasn’t funny for me; not because I was embarrassed that my uncle wasn’t a minister or a land-owner or a deacon, but because he was an exceptionally odd chap. He didn’t run a normal sort of shop; his was a clockmaker’s shop. In fact, he preferred to think of it as a clockmakers’ museum, because he had ambitions to turn his collection into a kind of exhibition. But he never quite got around to doing it because he was too busy with his tinkering to actually get around to doing anything definitive. He was so very easily distracted.
This particular summer – the last summer that I went to stay with him – he was so preoccupied with his work that he forgot to get a room ready for me. He was incredibly untidy. You wouldn’t believe it; he had a respectable town house and shop front, but it was full of rubbish. His whole home was his workshop; there were bits and pieces of clocks and cogs and mechanics everywhere.
The worst thing was that every so often he would get the idea to expand his knowledge beyond clock works and bring in a motor or a sewing machine or some other mechanical thing. And then he’d get bored with them and they’d just get left in whatever room he’d put them in; doomed to remain in the ‘must get around to doing that’ pile. One year I went there and he had a motorcycle in his dining room. He had the dining table stood on its end, leaning up against the wall to make room. At least he finished that by the next time I visited; even he realised that he needed somewhere to eat.
There were no bedrooms empty though, either that or he just didn’t want me in his hair. So I stayed at the pub across the road. Besides the initial sorrow of being neglected by my family again, I actually came to like it there. The food was good, not special, but filling and wholesome. And I was getting to the age when I was starting to feel for women, and there was this charming young barmaid working there. I wish I could remember her name, but she was probably my first love. She was very sweet to me and I absolutely adored her.
Uncle Guillam for all his eccentricities was an expert in his field, and people would travel quite a distance for his skill and to hear his expertise. And Guillam loved visitors, because he would cajole them into seeing his museum, such as it was. I wasn’t particularly interested in clocks and watches, but I was lonely and I was keen to feel the affection of a parent, even a neglectful one. So I would often watch him work and spend time in his shop.
Now this particular visit, Guillam was working on something special; it was a 16th century German clock. It was black, a sort of gothic design, with covers on the front and back, but with the cogs exposed on the sides. It had two bells on the top, one on top of the other, and, I’m not certain how to describe it, these little embellishments on the arches; the ones that went from the body up to the top where they held the bells. There were these… nobbly things; I suppose they were supposed to be leaves or maybe just simple decorative twists, but they looked to me look like gargoyles or cruel birds, like crows or ravens, perched threateningly. Along with the spiked feet and points at each of the top corners, it looked rather… unpleasant. I didn’t like the look of it, and I told my uncle so, and this made him rather upset.
“Don’t you know who this clock belonged to?” he asked, as if I could possibly know. He said it belonged to, and I think I’ve got this right, Count Emilio Martinez, a Spanish nobleman who was known to have a love of timepieces and clocks. By all accounts he was not a pleasant figure and his love of clocks came from a ruthless need for efficiency from his staff and business associates. We’d probably call him a compulsive these days. Anyway, the clock had carved on a small plate on its front the Count’s name and icon. And if the clock was owned by the Count it must be a quality piece, one made by a clockmaker of some renown.
Guillam was quite puzzled by it though. He was sure that the design and mechanism were German, but he could not determine who had made the clock, because the maker’s mark or stamp was missing. But also because the gothic design wasn’t one that would appeal to a noble family, at least not to more florid Spanish tastes. It was a fine specimen of its type, in good condition, but not very ornate. More of a clock for an official or a judge than a wealthy nobleman of some standing.
The clock was a mystery, which was why my uncle was distracted by it. It was something he was determined to get to the bottom of. But the clock needed repairing too. Although outwardly, it had been well looked after, it hadn’t told the time in many years. Guillam spent all afternoon making measurements and making sketches. He recognised the mechanism, but felt that somehow the pieces were out of proportion, not the sizes he’d expected, and certainly not the work of a master craftsman. He garnered the opinion that it was a botch job; that some amateur had attempted to mend the clock after its original workings had worn through.
The clock presented a challenge, if a frustrating one. The clock’s owner, who knew something of the clock’s strangeness and obscurity, had promised that if Guillam could make it tick, and solve the mystery of its origin, he would allow him to display it in his museum for six months, along with full payment for his services. As if the fulfilment of this bargain was a certainty, Guillam had already made a place for it in his hallowed museum; a high shelf on the right-hand wall.
Uncle Guillam, though a man of considerable skill, had no sense of aesthetics. His museum was a mess. His clocks and watches badly organised on these unattractive metal shelving stacks, all too crowded together and over-stocked.
Uncle Guillam liked to say that he could listen to the sounds of the clocks ticking and tell instantly if any of them had lost time. Of course this was absolute nonsense; when it was the turn of the hour, clocks would start to ring their bells and chimes five minutes before and some ten minutes afterwards.
It really was quite a collection tough; there were extraordinary items in there: Grandfather clocks, pocket watches, wall clocks, astrolabes… The cuckoo clocks were my favourite growing up; sometimes they were very imaginative and playful. Little wood cutters would pop out and chop the wood, or little canaries would come out and sing just for a little moment.
Amongst them the black clock looked positively miserable. Yet it got pride of place on a high shelf above the wall clocks with the hanging chimes. The hands, although one of them was broken at the end, pointed to just after four-thirty. I swear to you, to this day, if I ever look at a clock and it’s four-thirty-two or four-thirty-three, it sends a shiver right down my spine.
Now, I’ll tell you what happened: Although my main love was the inn’s barmaid – I wish I could remember what the pub was called, although I think it’s gone now – I had struck up a relationship with the grocer’s daughter. Entirely through self-interest of course, because she had daily access to boiled sweets and was good at stealing them without her father noticing.
Eleven New Ghost Stories Page 5