She threw the work onto the back seat and sat behind the steering wheel, adjusting the mirror as she habitually did. It was a split second before she realised there was someone sitting next to her.
The figure was dark, almost entirely black, and cold to the touch. She felt the coldness as its arm reached across and pressed shut the central locking catch on Miss Robertson’s door.
When it embraced her she barely felt any physical mass to it; she felt as if she was embracing a cloud. Unaccustomed to much bodily contact she was unaware of the sensations that were suppressing fear in her. There was an almost devout manner about the figure as it stroked her skin, fumbled with her hair, ran dirt fingers along her legs.
It was when she began to realise that the shape was getting darker, and larger, that she became hysterical. By the time she saw that as it grew darker so she was becoming paler, was fading away, then it was all too late.
Janine’s mother didn’t get home until late, gone six. By that time Janine had kissed the new shadow on her wall.
There was a new calmness inside Janine as she walked down the stairs to greet her mother. The rise of emotion that had exploded in her when she witnessed her father’s cheating at first hand had subsided. It hadn’t been a deliberate act on her part to call in Miss Robertson, but she suspected that if she thought about her, and thought hard, then something might happen. Now there was just she and her mother.
‘What’s for tea mum?’
Her mother was pouring out a glass of wine from a box in the fridge. ‘Want some lemonade, love?’ she asked.
Janine hugged her. They sat in friendly silence for a while as they sipped their drinks.
‘I thought we could have a barbeque in the garden when your father gets home.’ She poured some more wine. ‘Don’t ever end up like me Janine; get a man who truly cares for you. Be happy.’
Janine smiled. ‘He’s been seeing his secretary, Grace, again.’
The house was suddenly very still. Her mother put down her glass. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Don’t worry, he won’t be seeing her any more.’
‘You saw them didn’t you?’
Janine didn’t answer, but her glance at the ceiling was eloquence itself. Her mother ran upstairs; she wanted to see the evidence for herself.
A few seconds later Janine heard her calling her name.
At the top of the stairs Janine stared at the open door of her parents bedroom. Her mother was standing in the doorway, her shape all but masked by the group of shadows groping at her, trying to pull her inside.
‘Mum, run.’
Janine’s mother pulled free but the look of anger on her face was directed at her daughter. ‘You’ve done this. You couldn’t let it rest, could you? As if you were the only unhappy one.’
She lunged at Janine, but Janine evaded her grasp and ran along the corridor. Her mother chased her, the shadows swelled out after her. In Janine’s thoughts it was like a game of kiss-chase in the playground.
Stopping, she allowed her mother to grab hold of her arm. As she did so the shadows enveloped her mother, cloaking her as if they were steam from a kettle. Obscured by the blackness Janine could just about make out her mother’s struggles, as Janine proceeded to kiss each figure on the lips. Some of them wrapped their arms about her and she felt a tangible weight there for the first time.
Later that evening, after cooking some frozen pizza and chips, Janine sat in the lounge listening to the birds in the garden. The French doors were open and a light breeze echoed into the house.
She hadn’t been upstairs since her mother had gone, but occasionally she could hear a rustle as if sheets were being folded, or wallpaper torn from the walls.
It was surprising she had been listening out for her father’s car before she remembered he was already home.
She didn’t think she would go to school tomorrow; who was there to make her?
It was quiet without anyone else in the house. She didn’t feel unhappy now, although she was a bit lonely. If she kissed the shadows enough perhaps they would hold her tighter. If she played with them perhaps they would let her join them on the wall.
There was a noise from upstairs, as if someone had jumped onto the floor.
In her bedroom she was disappointed to see that all the walls were clean and bare. Even the original shadow shapes weren’t there.
Then she heard the laughing from behind. As she looked around she couldn’t fail to notice that she was beginning to fade away.
THE WEEPING STONES
The old bricks of the wall surrounding the cemetery were yellowed with age, like a smoker’s fingers. A curiously vibrant ivy embraced the pitted stone, both restraining and supporting, as wistful as hope in a hospice. In places the bricks from the wall had worn loose, falling to the ground where they lay touching the ancient gravestones in mute sympathy. Death was quiet here, laid out neatly and worshipped regularly in a peaceful English country churchyard, where shadows crept out from behind the twelfth century church and lay forlornly, but in precise measure, on the graves of the remembered and of the long forgotten.
The church itself was grey in texture and outlook. The actual stone was a hybrid from the centuries of additions, and buttresses, with Ancaster stone evident, along with magnesian limestone, and an ochre stone that probably originated from the West Country. Much of the mortared masonry dominated, so that the building was secondary to the churchyard, where the stones laid reverently and in remembrance.
A solid yew gave colour to the far corner, while far more modern beech and oak protected two sides, including that side which nudged the village high street. Despite the trees, and the neatly clipped grass, the dominating sense was of depression; this was not a place that lifted the human spirit, rather it too starkly reminded visitors of their mortality, and imminent demise, however young they might be.
Nicola Moffat was not young but her depression had separate cause. Her husband had recently died. Not last week, not last month, but the loss was now; it had not yet diminished as friends and well wishers had assured her it would.
The headstone for Derek Moffat had been on order since his death, the delay a mixture of rules, regulations and reluctance. Earlier in the week it had been erected at the head of the raised mound of earth that signified his resting place, and Nicola had come to view it. The stone was off white; pure but honest, she had thought when she chose it. It stood adjacent to shiny black headstones, crumpled weather torn ones, and stones of faded grey whose lettering was lost to time and memory.
‘Don’t fuss, Nicky, don’t fret,’ he would say to her. ‘The bruises will fade in a day or two.’ He shrugged usually, then, before sitting while she composed herself. ‘It isn’t as if we’re in the first flush is it? You can’t expect a honeymoon every week.’
It was a warm day, hinting of the summer about to burst. She sat on the slightly damp grass and picked at the edges of the plot with trembling fingers, while a cool breeze played with her short-cropped hair like a casual lover might have done; like Derek once did. Occasionally a car passed by on the road behind the trees and she was reminded that she was barely five minutes from their house and the village they had lived in for almost thirty years.
She closed her eyes and tried to recall the time they had moved into the house but she couldn’t, at least not clearly. She remembered his precision and his lists, but precious little about the frenetic fun packed pace of life at that time.
With her eyes still shut she leaned back onto the stone and felt the coldness seep through her clothing and into her skin. She wasn’t aware, and had anyone else been present they wouldn’t have seen, but an outline, a transparent shadow, seemed to pass between her and the stone. It was as if an essence either from her, or to her from the headstone, was transferred.
Her body shuddered involuntarily, her mouth opened and a fine mist wafted out. Her eyes opened and she blinked, her vision not quite in focus. As she stood, a little shakily, she placed her hand on
top of the headstone for balance, and felt a heat sear into her palm. She flinched away, touched the near white stone again, tentatively, and it was cold as death, as it should be.
Walking through the partially dilapidated lych-gate she felt as is she was in a dream. It was the realisation of the finality of it, she was certain, the sight of the stone with the brief dates encapsulating her husband’s life, that had upset her, caused her to feel dizzy and nauseous.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Moffat?’ Nicola had to concentrate to be sure who was standing on the pavement in front of her. It was old Mr Wright, who lived a few doors along from her. He lost his wife about five years previously.
‘Just been to look at Derek’s stone.’
Wright nodded as if he understood. His wife had been cremated, as was her wish, and he visited a plaque set in a brick wall in the cemetery in town every other Sunday. ‘Must be comforting for you.’
She looked at him, as two people do who haven’t quite connected with one another. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really.’
He seemed agitated at this, as if the gravestone should have comforted her, and that it was a personal affront that she hadn’t been. He had never liked Derek Moffat; a boastful man in his opinion, who often tried to avoid his round in the pub. Kept a fancy woman too, by all accounts, though Nicola was probably aware of that. Women always were, in his experience.
Nicola felt a little calmer away from the churchyard. The morning was moving away from her and she wanted to meet with the Morrison sisters over lunch. She’d arranged to meet them in the pub. She vaguely waved at Mr Wright, in a farewell gesture, but he was already walking away from her, his thoughts turgid and sour in remembrance of the recently departed.
‘You’ll not be needing another car for a few years. She’s a good little runner.’ Moffat had been in motorcar sales before he retired. The car Wright bought had lasted less than six months, and there had been no offer of a refund, no compensation mentioned.
The Three Willows was crowded as always, even at a little past midday on this Friday. She ordered a white wine, still feeling uncertain how she felt, and took a menu over to a corner table where she could look out for the Morrison’s. They were always late.
Derek had enjoyed a drink, though she didn’t entirely enjoy life when he had had too much enjoyment. What rows they had were often drink induced. The unreasoning tone adopted far more quickly than usual.
Children might have helped but he was never keen and she lacked the courage or the strength to prevail her views upon him. Now he was gone and one of her predictions was being fulfilled; she was alone, and their lack of real social contact, driven by his general air of antagonism, meant that she had no real friends any longer in the village.
After another ten minutes she ordered fish and chips and another wine. It didn’t look as if the sisters were going to bother to turn up. She ate alone, finished her drink and strolled back along the country road to her house.
The cricket pitch was being rolled in anticipation of the coming season. She stood for a moment and watched the grounds man pushing the heavy roller back and forth. The hedges were budding, life beginning anew as evidenced by the bird song and the sound of the children in the school playground.
She didn’t feel new, she felt weary. The two glasses of wine, and the meal, had left her sluggish of step, but there was a heavy, stone like weight inside her that she hadn’t been aware of before. This day, with the new stone marking the true ending of a stage in her life, possibly the entire reason for her life, had been one she was dreading. Now it was upon her, was half way through, she knew that she had been right to be afraid.
Drawn, somehow not to her surprise, she found herself walking up the short mud lane to the rear of the church. Here the shadows were more dense, the coolness more intense. She shivered but turned the latch on the side door nevertheless and entered the silent church.
As always the magnificence of the stained glass windows, their vibrancy at odds with the smooth wooden pews and the stark stone of the floor and walls, awed her. Here, surrounded by so much cold stone, she felt strangely more peaceful than she had earlier, when leaning against just one, more personal stone.
She bowed to the altar and knelt beside the front pew. There were flowers left over from last Sunday’s service, she could smell the sweet fragrance, past its best but lingering even amongst the dampness and dust.
A constant urge to glance behind her plagued her concentration, yet all she could see was the single bell rope, static and condemning.
‘You’d be better off hanging me from the banister, than watching me waste away like this.’ Self-pity grew upon him as the death grew within. There were accusations, and horrible, awful insults towards the end. She often planned, in her head, his final moments, often wondered if she had the courage to accelerate the inevitable.
The flagstone floor became cold all too soon, and she was forced to rise and massage the cramps from her knees. The weight within her was becoming more apparent, as though someone was pushing out from within her.
She walked from the church without a backward glance. The door closed quietly behind her. Outside the sun was shaking shadows over the graves, rippling tops of trees patterning the ground with mottled darkness.
Her headstone, Derek’s, seemed to have tilted a little as she approached it. There would be settlement in the earth but surely not so soon. As she stepped over the grass and moved towards it she was certain that it shifted, listed to one side in a visible movement.
The graveyard was very quiet, a meagre rustling of the bushes, a fluttering of leaves, the only sounds to distract Nicola. As she reached the grave she thought the earth was sunken lower than it had been earlier. There were indentations in the surface, as though something had been pressed into the ground several times.
Her body felt listless, dragged down by a weight within her that was overcoming her energy and will. She knew the headstone was leaning to one side. It wasn’t right, it should be straight. Derek would have been annoyed at the lack of symmetry.
She placed both hands on the side of the stone, intending to push the marker upright. As she pushed, as hard as she could, the stone seemed to yield. The actual stone itself softened so that her fingers melted into it. Her hands moulded into the stone, up to her wrists, the solid mass embracing her, pulling her in.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please, just let me alone.’
Struggling backwards, stumbling over grass and stone, she gradually pulled her hands free. Her legs gave way and she sank to the ground, breathing erratically. Her hands ached, the skin rough and torn. When she looked at them she stifled a scream. They were grey; off white almost, the texture of stone, the weight and stiffness of the headstone.
She slumped against the stone for support, but even as she did so she realised that her arms were slowly turning to stone. Within minutes her upper body looked as if it was encased in a thick plaster cast. In fact it had become stone. Her breathing had stopped and her body slowly melded into the headstone, stone absorbing skin, absorbing tissue, until the grave had a marker again. It was slightly larger than the original, but it was upright. On it was an inscription that indicated the final resting place of both Derek and Nicola Moffat.
BEWARE THE BECKONING STRANGER
What looked like an owl, floated softly on a gentle downwind, its ghostly white under feathers reflected in the half moon that was suspended in the flawless dark night. So silent was its flight, and so pale its appearance, that it might have been the only cloud in an otherwise smooth black sky. Or perhaps some lost soul, confined to solitary nocturnal habit, haunting the lanes and fields of an English countryside.
It swooped and rose, as the breeze and its hunger dictated. Crying out just once, as it plunged into a field of wheat, its plaintive sound ending abruptly as it gripped its victim, and the creature it believed it had captured turned, and became the captor.
In the morning the field was silent, the wheat flowing like waves o
n a sea in the dawn whisper of wind. The wheat was coming ripe for harvest, the fat ears almost ready for the plucking, the field all but prepared to yield its annual crop. On one side woods ran down to the brook by the meadow, the trees marking the far boundary. On the near side of the field, the lawns of Moreton Manor grazed the wheat, the manicured green edges an attractive counterpoint to the yellow corn, and the nettles, cowslip, and daisy that grew amongst it.
Sarah Lamb turned over in the double bed, remembering in just a moment of regret that she was alone. She had left the warmth of a sleeping companion behind when she had left London the previous night. Perhaps she would entice Amanda back into her bed, and her life, perhaps not; it was too early for predictions after the betrayal.
She stood from the bed, the sheets dishevelled from her waking anger rather than a disturbed sleep, and walked to the window. She had no idea why she had come here, though when she needed some peace and solitude to reflect and make her next move, this would always be the place she chose. The surroundings were quiet enough, and the scene she contemplated as she sat on the window seat seemed ideal for the restoration of injured spirit.
In the distance the woods, a symphony of birdsong evident even from this far away. Once she would have been able to distinguish the different species, the sparrow, the lark, possibly a woodpecker, the swallows, but now she heard only the beauty of it without the knowledge of the lost memory. The field, of course, was still here, its growth and death each year a memory she would never lose.
She could see the Manor house itself; seventeenth century with later additions and modernisations, all kept with immaculate precision by a team of local people maintained on a contract of necessity. The house had about ten bedrooms if she remembered correctly, with countless rooms downstairs of which the main drawing room, and the dining room – well, banqueting hall was a more apt description - were the most used ones.
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