by Jane Palmer
CHAPTER 9
For some while Yuri genuinely tried to obey Diana’s orders. Even though he managed to control his restlessness about the impending end of the world, the encounter with the strange entity in the meadow below filled his head with very odd desires. One moment he was able to dismiss them from his turbulent thoughts and, in the next, the only thing he wanted to do was rush down to the fairy ring and summon them into life again. Until that morning he hadn’t known the true meaning of confusion.
Yuri dashed about his cluttered living room in frustration, snatching up exercise books, textbooks and anything that could be stacked into a pile with them. These he crammed into the already overflowing bookcase whether they belonged there or not. Cushions were pounded back into shape. Vases, plates and ornaments were thrown into the sink and scrubbed clean of any ancient patterns that had managed to adhere to them. The table was rapidly waxed and polished, legs, struts and all, armchairs and sofa pounded until every speck of dust from years past had given up its hold. This was a lot of dust, and the resulting attack of sneezing drove Yuri into the garden.
He rummaged about in the coal bunker where he kept the unused garden tools Eva had bought him and pulled out a scythe. It was practically free from rust and as sharp as the day it was purchased. He was reluctant to hack down the stinging nettles at the bottom of the garden as they had done him such a favour in molesting the pompous Daphne Trotter. Yuri nevertheless reasoned that his state of desperation was greater than his gratitude, and set about them with the ferocity of a true madman. With arms stung more than Daphne’s extremities, Yuri ploughed on regardless until he was actually able to see the fence that bordered the property.
Exhausted, he slumped down in the middle of the felled weeds and pulled off his shirt to reveal a shabby T-shirt and a haphazardly tied neck-scarf that was too worn to serve any useful purpose. He rubbed the nettle stings on his arms ruefully as he looked about for something else to attack. Still the urge to go back to the ring gnawed at him. He pulled his fob watch out of a trouser pocket and discovered that he had managed to only kill forty minutes. It wasn’t even midday. Perhaps if he phoned Eva..? She would be mad and driven one step nearer to having him certified, and not be the best company to spend one’s last day on Earth with, and Diana had gone and deserted him the very day he needed to be convinced of his insanity the most.
Perhaps the world was only coming to an end in his head and the strange experience in the ring a symptom of that encroaching madness? That must be it. He was a scientist and should use what sense he had to rationalise his hysterical thoughts. But he had collected his data over the years in a thoroughly scientific, albeit increasingly inebriated, way and his rational sense told him that it was inevitable the Earth would explode at any moment. Whether he dropped dead then and there, or lived for another hundred years, didn’t bother Yuri. It was the people he knew that he grieved for. Diana, little Julia and her friends - and even Eva. How could the entity that had held him so gently in its phantom hand be the very thing that was going to destroy them?
An idea filtered into his jumbled brain. What if he could contact it and make himself understood? Yuri shuddered. There were many ways to be killed; he knew several of them from uncomfortably close experience. The idea of being crushed in the palm of an unknown being with perfumed thoughts permeating his every cell again filled him with the fearful fascination that had been trying to pull him back all morning.
Leaving his shirt where he had let it fall, Yuri stumbled unsurely down the meadow towards the fairy ring. He was almost relieved to see no sign of movement anywhere near it. Suspecting the mechanism was marking time below the ground, he stepped into the ring believing he could jump aside at the slightest movement of the grass. But it was not the mechanism below that had been waiting for him to arrive.
Yuri was so taken with looking at what was happening inside the ring, he didn’t notice that an opaque curtain had suddenly been drawn around the perimeter. He found himself wondering where the rest of the meadow had gone before he realised that it had completely enclosed him. Misty butterfly patterns engulfed him in their upward revolving spiral. The hand that had held him before enclosed Yuri, plucking him up and whirling him at such frantic speed that he lost consciousness.