“Oh, okay. How long?”
The guard stared up at the station clock and squinted. “Not more than ten to fifteen minutes, I don’t suppose,” and he bustled away with a whistle.
“It’ll be fine,” Alan assured, detecting the group’s concern. “I allowed some extra time for delays.”
Settling on the bench beside the track, they waited for the all-clear to board. Ten minutes turned to twenty, then twenty-five then, at last, the cleaning team left the carriage.
“I think we should bagsy another one. I’m not convinced sick that took that long to clear up is ever really clean!” Matthew smiled, hurrying to the next coach along. Waiting in the door, he fanned other passengers away from the seats he was saving. “I’m sorry, these are taken,” he said, physically using himself and his holdall as a barrier from the more persistent tut-tutting travellers.
Soon his barricade was unneeded and they sat in glorious expectation of a much needed and well-deserved family holiday.
“Are you excited, princess?” Matthew squeezed Abi’s delicate hand. She nodded so hard her head looked in danger of falling off! “Me too,” Matthew chuckled. The grin on his face now as permanent as a tattoo; a big smiling scar that promised never to leave. He had never felt happier, of that he was certain.
Spotting the guard from the window, Matthew fairly bounced in his seat as he saw the whistle move to his lips. The warm warble filled the air and the great bulk of the train edged forward; a hunter on its prey. The first chug of the wheels turning quickly became the rat-a-tat-tat of brisk onwards movement.
But no sooner had it started than the squeal of metal on metal screamed in the air. The carriage lurched, sending the Morrissey family tumbling forward in their seats.
“Oi! What’s going on?” Alan barked, steadying his wife as she struggled to maintain her balance. Shifting back on their backsides, they tried to catch their breath as the train rested on its haunches after a false start.
People crowded out of Roo Bar and stared at something ahead of the train. Pained expressions were worn by unsteady men as they clutched wives and girlfriends to their chests.
“What’s happening? What can you see?” Debbie yelled at Matthew.
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
“Well it’s not nothing, is it? Go and find out,” she bade, stroking Abi’s hair. Matthew marched to the door. Pressing the button for it to open, he wasn’t surprised when it refused.
The conductor entered from the intervening door. “Take your seat, please, sir. We’ll be moving as soon as we can,” she soothed.
“What happened?” Matthew asked, the eyes of his family falling expectantly on the woman.
“I’m afraid I am unable to divulge the details.”
“You must be able to tell us something? When are we going to be on our way again?” Alan wagged a finger.
“I can’t say anything more at the moment, sir.”
“Well, can we get on another train?” Debbie suggested.
The conductor turned and smiled at her. Gulping down her troubled thoughts, she tried her best to reassure. “I’m sorry, that won’t be possible,” and before Alan’s flapping lips could interrupt, she added, “There’s been an ‘incident.’ The police have been called and they want everyone to remain on the train for the time being. The doors will remain closed until they advise otherwise.”
“An incident..?” Matthew’s voice was weak as he deciphered the scene outside. “Has someone jumped?”
Falling at the barrage of the truth, the conductor nodded, a tear welling in her eye. “A gentleman. We believe he was probably homeless.” She gazed at the ceiling for composure. “I suppose this time of year must be especially hard to cope with.” She shuffled away along the carriage to advise the other passengers of the delay.
Matthew’s gaze had glassed over. The grin he believed would never leave slumped into a quivering downward curve.
“What is it, my love? What’s the matter?” Debbie stroked his hand as he wrestled with words that wanted to come. He stared in turn at his mum, his dad, his sister, then his wonderful wife, and then to Abi. He drank in her very essence as they all gazed up at him.
Sniffing it up and prizing a smile back onto his lips, he whispered as his voice failed him. “It’s what she said…” The others nodded. They had thought it too. “He was homeless. At Christmas. And he couldn’t take it anymore, and… and… That could so easily have been me!” As his family shifted to comfort him, he mumbled over and over. “That could have been me. It could have been me…”
He would never know how right he was.
Epilogue
And so the destructive interference of Matthew Morrissey was over. The choice to share, or deny his little sister the first turn of their new computer affected more than he ever could have imagined.
Two separate realities stayed separate, merging for the first time when Matthew achieved everything he had ever wanted at the same time his alter-ego was at his suicidal lowest.
The high of one reality met the low of the other and created destructive interference.
His generosity killed him in the end, of course. It was the fifty pounds he donated which ensured his poor homeless compatriot set off from their chance encounter on a rare high, whilst he was brought down with a heavy dose of guilt.
They may never have met again, but the cycle of their lives kept constant—whilst one fell to new lows, the other soared to never-before-known contentment. Destructive interference became inevitable once more.
We won’t ever know what would have happened if they had met again… if Matthew hadn’t made the choice to end it all in front of that train.
But of course, somewhere, in a parallel reality, he didn’t, did he..?
What choices have you made? You may not remember the most crucial ones; the ones which created the tangents that might one day appear and affect their devastation.
But, if you ever see your double; your doppelgänger, if you will, avoid them at all costs: or you could find yourself at the confounding conception of your own destructive interference…
The End
You don’t have to be DEAD to work here…
But it helps
Chapter One
Angharad woke irritably from an unsettled night’s sleep. She thought she could remember having had nightmares, but nothing certain. Her name being called perhaps, and… no. That was it. That was as little as she could recall. It didn’t sound like it should have caused her too much distress. There must have been more to it.
“Oh well, the day won’t wait for me to make sense of why I feel so awful,” she conceded to her cold, dark bedroom. Swinging her legs round and placing her feet onto the cold floor, she reached for the large woolly house coat she’d been knitting for the past three years and had finally finished. Good job, she shivered at the wintry October morning.
Cold had never troubled her much. She wouldn’t have bought the icy, draughty house in the foothills of Pembrokeshire’s Preseli Mountain range if it did.
It was beautiful, to a certain way of thinking.
‘Like stepping back in time…’ the estate agent’s details had evoked. It certainly was. Dating from the eighteen hundred’s it had received little modernisation since.
Open fires in each room provided heat, most of which escaped through the thin glass of the sliding-sash windows. Water requirements were met by a spring bubbling at the bottom of the garden for drinking and bathing, supplemented by a large water butt which collected rain from the roof for washing her clothes and dishes (and drunk by the numerous stray cats who had adopted her. They were a permanent fixture now and appeared to have come with the house.)
Filling a large terracotta pot in the pantry, which was plenty cold enough to out-perform a modern refrigerator, meant her supply would last the best part of a week, so she could usually choose the driest weather for its collection.
Sometimes, though, the rain didn’t stop for days on end in this part of South-West Wales.
Getting wet was no problem, she’d soon dry again, and the precariousness of carrying heavy water containers of on the soaked, slippery mud was a danger Angharad gave little concern.
She had enjoyed the summer, pottering around the garden tending her vegetables, milking Janet the goat (named after the lady who’d sold it to her when she first moved in), and collecting a small number of eggs from the three hens that bustled round the yard. It was all she needed.
Her electricity was generated from some solar panels and a wind turbine. There wasn’t need to generate much—she didn’t own a television and was meticulous about switching off lights whenever she left a room, and of course hot water and heating were achieved by burning wood in a range.
Summers were great. She would be out in her garden tending shoots, or if nothing needed her immediate attention, taking a stroll in the magnificence of the scenery surrounding her little cottage, as late as ten thirty at night. After such activity, she wold sleep well and awake with the dawn ready to do it all again.
But as the summer turned to autumn, and the nights drew in, Angharad had felt restless with the drop in activity. Since retiring two years ago, she had felt the same each time the seasons changed. Her melancholy had become so serious her GP had suggested she might be depressed and had offered to refer her to specialists.
Depressed! What nonsense, Angharad had argued. She had the perfect life. No-one to rely on but herself, no bills to pay, what more could anyone ask?
But the doctor had asked her to fill in a form of tick-boxes and had insisted his diagnosis was correct, drawing particular attention to her negative answers to questions of whether her life was worth living.
After storming out, the shock of what he had suggested had staved off the worst of her numbness for a while until spring had sprung from the chill of winter once more, and along with the budding plants, Angharad’s mood blossomed in the warmth.
As winter approached this year, she recognised the same feelings of despair… no, no, no, that was far too strong, she was very lucky; restlessness, she decided was more palatable; and so set about finding something to occupy her mind.
The work of chopping logs for the fires, from trees on her land, was ongoing, but she found she always managed to be well ahead of herself, and lack of daylight prohibited most work outside. So, she had scoured the local papers, and now an exciting project, which suited her perfectly, had grabbed her attention. Today a response to her application to volunteer as a helper for the children’s charity, Barnardos, arrived in the morning’s post.
All the necessary checks were completed. Glowing references had been obtained from Angharad’s previous employers where she had thrived caring for the elderly in a run-down nursing home on the outskirts of Bristol, despite confusion when her old bosses were requested to provide a reference for Angharad, as that wasn’t the name she’d used then.
After retiring and moving back to Wales she had decided to return to using her given name of Angharad, rather than the anglicised shortening she’d gone by for years of ‘Ann’. Angharad she deemed was more appropriate to her age and connected her to her Welsh roots.
The door to the bedroom groaned to her gentle shove and fell back on its hinges. Tiptoeing the short distance across the landing from her bedroom, she plodded down the creaky stairs to the kitchen, clutching the housecoat closed about her.
Lighting the main fire in the Simenei Fawr (big chimney), she hung a kettle full of water over it to boil. A cupful would go towards a steaming herbal tea, and the remainder would provide hot water for her ablutions.
Drumming her index finger on thin furred lips, she pondered another of the things she liked little about the colder months, other than the threat of insipidness; he dwindling self-sufficiency. Janet gave less milk, the hens, fewer eggs, and fruit and vegetables from the garden became very limited despite careful growing.
She knew today she’d need to venture out in the cold to the local shop which stood several miles away in the next village. Usually she would walk the distance, but today, as she had quite a lot of things she needed to buy, she decided to take her car.
Slurping the last of her tea dregs, she cooked the last egg with some slightly stale breaded soldiers, resolving to toast them halfway through breakfast in light of their staleness, by which time her egg had become cold. Shrugging, she ate it anyway. There was only so much time she could spare to devote to the most important meal of the day.
By the time she chopped logs, filled the water container, hunted for and collected eggs, and milked Janet, it transpired to be late in the afternoon. If she were to make it to the shop before dusk she would have to hurry.
Dead skin around her fingernails had a good chewing as a mild surge of panic filled her mind. Plagued by night blindness, driving in the dark was something she avoided.
Tugging on a woolly hat (another home-knitted creation) she covered her shorn grey hair, worn short-cropped for years for its practicality. Making her way across her potholed driveway, she slipped in the forming ice and struggled to regain her footing.
Stepping more carefully, she found her balance and rounded the corner to her car shed, a hap-hazard structure fashioned from corrugated tin nailed to old railway sleepers.
The car itself, a Skoda (from the era before they were much improved by VW), boasted being adapted to run on bio-oil—considerably cheaper than diesel at the pump. A magnetic sign advertised this fact in case other drivers hearing the sound of her tractor-like engine, and smelling the unmistakable odour of rancid chip fat, were tempted to convert their own cars.
After a lot of key turning and silent cursing, the Skoda coughed into life and Angharad was off. A few minutes later she pulled the noisy, smelly little jalopy into one of the parking bays outside the garage-cum-supermarket that served the surrounding area. She inserted her pound coin into the trolley release and went clattering into the shop.
“Bother!” she exclaimed, realising she’d forgotten her list. Aimlessly walking up and down the aisles, she plonked what she supposed she needed into her trolley. Scrutinising the price of prawns; deciding whether the ‘value pack’ was actually better value than the standard pack, she heard someone call her name. Not the name she went by now, but the name she hadn’t used since her move back to Wales.
“Ann. Ann! Is that you?” she heard clearly. A shrill, woman’s voice she didn’t recognise. Shaking off her shopping mind-set to engage with whomever had called out to her, she thought it must be someone from across the border who knew her before.
When she turned there didn’t appear to be anyone speaking to her at all and her cheeks burned in the cold. Other shoppers moved up and down the aisles, but none even glanced in her direction.
The confusion distracted her from her prawns dilemma, and she walked away without having chosen. Red faced, she stumbled self-consciously away from the freezer, hoping no-one had observed her muddle.
When the voice echoed in her head again, she tried not to embarrass herself by looking, but curiosity proved too much and she couldn’t resist a peek behind. It didn’t help. Still no-one looked her way.
Realising she must be hearing someone else’s conversation, she took a deep calming breath. Humiliation turned to annoyance at someone being persistent verging on obsessive with their insistence at calling out to Ann. Obviously Ann wasn’t answering so Angharad wondered why they didn’t simply give up.
The notion this could be a sign of early dementia reddened her face again, but only briefly. Partly due to her strong belief in her own capabilities. But mainly because the calling stopped.
She pushed the small trolley around, filling it with many more things than she remembered being on her shopping list. Cursing under her breath at her absentmindedness, she arrived at the till, still muttering.
“Hello Angharad. How are we today?” the pleasant woman serving inquired.
Angharad ceased her mindless muttering and turned to the cashier. With darting eyes, she struggled to look directly at he
r and babbled her reply “Okay. If it wasn’t for that infernal woman calling out for Ann all around the shop! I kept thinking she was speaking to me.”
The shop lady frowned at the reference. “That reminds me of last night,” she said, her smile returning. “Oh it was brilliant it was! ‘Medium at Large’ she goes by. Big, fat psychic lady. I’ve always fancied myself as a bit psychic, but last night was summin else.”
Angharad wholly ignored her, placing the items from her trolley onto the conveyer in introverted disregard. Her thoughts caught up with her and she asked tersely, “How does someone calling out ‘Ann’ in your shop remind you of a fat medium?”
The shop lady took no notice of Angharad’s unfriendly tone. She was used to her unusual customer and her odd ways. The remarkable time she’d enjoyed the night before mellowed her placid nature further.
“It’s just, there was a time during the show when the medium was calling out,” she explained.
“I imagine there must have been. Given the nature of the act,” Angharad spat her caustic scepticism.
“Yes, yes. Of course,” the shop lady agreed good-naturedly, “but it sticks in my mind because she was so accurate all night, but this one time…” she paused for breath. “This one time, she called and called for this woman, but no-one from the audience could relate, and in the end she had to move on. You could see it bothered her though.” The shop lady, thrilled with her tale, sighed and drifted away.
Angharad didn’t bother saying that in her opinion it was all mumbo-jumbo nonsense, perpetrated on the perpetually gullible and foolish by unscrupulous charlatans. She didn’t want to cause unnecessary offence, and had little desire to change the woman’s mind anyway.
An alarming pang of fear relating to her own passing gave her sudden goose bumps. As the first flush of panic swamped her, she forced it down. She had a long time to worry and consider what would transpire when the inevitable happened. Nothing, she sincerely believed, but it still wasn’t very nice to think about. Hence the appeal of this medium woman, she supposed.
Blurred Lines: A box-set of reality bending supernatural fiction (Paranormal Tales from Wales Book 9) Page 28
