Olde Tudor

by David Ralph Williams

  It was almost midday yet his breath still left a vapour cloud in front of him as he waited for the next empty taxicab. Whilst he waited in the carpark behind the station, he watched a pair of seagulls as they milled about on the platform, gingerly picking up and then dropping spent cigarette butts as they searched for tasty morsels. He breathed in a lung full of cool air then coughed a dry cough. His breathing had improved, in fact, he was feeling a whole lot better than he did only a couple of days since.

  A black taxicab pulled into the carpark, its sign was lit indicating that it was ready for the next fayre. Alister approached the taxi and the driver climbed out and put Alistair’s suitcase in the boot. Soon he was on his way to Gwen’s country house in west Runton.

  During transit he decided that he would not go into any detail regarding his ill fortune with Olde Tudor. He would simply explain to Gwen that the place was not quite right for him, and that he would rather find somewhere in Runton. Somewhere not far from the coast so that he could be of help to her whenever she needed it.

  Alistair asked the driver to stop a little distance from where Gwen’s house sat. He wanted to walk the final few yards, to take in the countryside. He wanted to make sure that he could settle here, to feel at home.

  As he approached Gwen’s house he could see that she had been busy, there was a line of washing blowing gently in the breeze. Her front garden however was somewhat overgrown with bramble and nettle. The old sycamore, that at one point had been struck dead by lightening, was leaning even more precariously towards the house than the last time he had seen it. He would help her to sort out the garden he thought as he made his way up the old brick path to the porch.

  Gwen had been delighted to see her brother standing on the doorstep. After some brief affectionate greetings, he had partially explained his mishap with buying Olde Tudor and asked if he could stay with her until his affairs had been dealt with. Gwen was more than happy to have him stay and she began to get a room ready for him as he unpacked.

  Later in the afternoon, Alistair had made a pot of tea whilst Gwen dished them both a bowl of lamb stew she had prepared earlier. They sat down to eat as dark began to creep in outside. For the first time in days, Alistair need not fear the night drawing in, he was a long way from the cave here he thought to himself as he ate the delicious meal in front of him.

  Gwen studied her brother as he ate. He looked thinner in the face. His whole countenance was changed somewhat and she decided to question him. “Ally, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you don’t look at all yourself!” Alistair stopped slurping at his spoon of stew and looked up at Gwen. He then placed his spoon down into his bowl and dabbed his mouth with a napkin.

  “I have been a little under the weather, caught a rook that’s all,” he said. Gwen frowned as she answered him,

  “what on earth do you mean? Caught a rook?” Alistair suddenly realised what he’d said and wondered why he chose that phrase, perhaps subconsciously.

  “Oh, sorry Gwen. It’s an idiom I picked up in Thornbarrow. I think it means to catch a cold!” he explained.

  “I see. But you look so pale. And your eyes look terrible. Are you sure it was just a cold?”

  “Yes, nothing more serious, I assure you.”

  “You need to take better care of yourself,” Gwen paused a moment whilst she thought about the next thing she was about to say, “isn’t it time you started seeing someone again. No man is an island you know. You need someone who can take care of you, you don’t intend to be a bachelor for the rest of your life do you?” Alistair shook his head,

  “of course not Gwen, but I’m no youngster you know.”

  “Oh, go on with you! You might have retired early, but you’re not over the hill yet.”

  “I’m beginning to feel it sometimes. But it’s not just that.” Alistair finished the last of his stew and poured himself and Gwen another cup of tea from the pot.

  “It’s Evelyn isn’t it. You’d feel guilty, if you were to be with someone else. I understand. I miss my Jack so much,” Gwen stopped talking to glance over at a small silver framed oval picture of a uniformed air force pilot whose beaming smile below a thin moustache almost spoke to her. Alistair reached across the table and gave Gwen’s hand a little squeeze,

  “Yes, you’re right. I do miss her, she was the one Gwen, she really was. I can’t even contemplate, you know. Someone else.” Gwen nodded, she was trying too hard to swallow a lump in her throat to answer him properly. She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “But I turn your comment back at you Gwen, your no old maid either. You could still fall in love, have a family. All those things. We don’t have to both live under the shadow of the war for the rest of our lives.” Gwen smiled as though to say he was right and she began to collect up the dinner plates and bowls. Alistair helped. “Tomorrow I thought I’d help tidy up the front garden a little, looks more overgrown than I last remembered,” Alistair said as he carried a large pot of leftover stew into the kitchen.

  “Oh, don’t worry about the garden, you don’t have to do that. Have a holiday. You look as though you need it,” she said as she began to wash the dishes whilst Alistair dried them using a tea towel.

  “No Gwen, I must make myself useful. Still not used to being retired you know. And that tree, well, I’m surprised it’s still standing!”

  Alistair withdrew to his bedroom at around midnight. The curtains were open and he glanced outside. The moon was big and almost full again. The dead sycamore was leaning close to his window. It reminded him of the large ash in the grounds of Olde Tudor and how he could not bear to look at the shadow it had cast behind those old worn drapes for fear of seeing something terrible climbing through its boughs. He closed the curtains.

  Once into his pyjamas, Alistair turned down the bedsheets and ran a poker through the glowing coals in the small fireplace to liven it up. He then removed his suitcase from under the bed and unbuckled it. He had packed a few documents relating to the purchase of Olde Tudor that he intended to post back to Brierly and Sons. He left them on the dresser.

  Before he replaced the suitcase back under the bed he saw the old journal of the Reverend Redgrave half peeking out from a pocket in the lid of the case. He removed it and held it in his hands. He had no idea why he had packed it. He had read everything within. Maybe, it was so he could read Redgrave’s words so that they could reassure him that he had not become temporarily insane during his short residence at Olde Tudor.

  He walked over to the fireplace and cast the journal onto the rekindled coals. He stood and watched it bubble and crack and fold shut like a drawn purse as the yellow flames licked hungrily around its edges. He stood and watched until the only thing left of it was a small pile of black layered powder, almost wafer-like. “Ashes to ashes,” he muttered to himself before climbing into bed.

  ******

  Next morning Alistair was up early and tackling the overgrown clumps of bramble in Gwen’s front garden. He had found an old billhook and fixed it to a broken broom handle. He used this tool to hack at the thick stems of the bramble, he had managed to clear quite a lot of it before Gwen emerged from the house wearing a coat and pushing Alistair’s old bicycle. She leaned the bike against a wall before turning to speak, “Ally, I’m going into town to get some bread and bits and pieces. Is there anything I can get for you whilst I’m there?” Alistair stopped working and hung the billhook from a low branch on the sycamore,

  “Are you going near the sea front?”

  “I wasn’t, but I can if you like. May I take your bicycle? To be honest I’ve been using it since you left it here, the basket is useful.”

  “Of course you can. If you do go to the sea front, pick me up some of that dressed crab they do from the little blue house, the one you showed me last time remember? It was delicious.”

  “I will. Oh, and Ally, don’t work too hard, you’ve been sick remember. You need a rest,” she said as she wheeled the bicycle out through the gate. Alistair took a break.
>
  Leaning against the sycamore he watched his sister as she threw her leg up and over the back wheel then plopped herself down on the saddle pushing herself off along the lane as though she’d ridden that bike her whole life. Taking a handkerchief from out his pocked, he wiped his brow, it was heavy work and although the air was still cool, he had worked up a sweat.

  Kaah-kaah! A cry rang out above his head. He dropped his handkerchief and retrieved his billhook. That sound instilled deep fear within him, a sound he had not heard since . . . kaah-kaah! the shrill call came again. He turned and scanned the fields around the house, searching. He saw nothing. Slowly he backed towards the house. It then came for him, kaah-kaah!

  A black quilled living dart, shot down from the top branches of the sycamore. Its feet, like a pair of barbed spurs scraped across his scalp drawing blood. Instinctively, he swished the billhook around himself, hoping to catch whatever was trying to attack him before he could cast his eyes upon it. kaah-kaah! Glancing upwards, he saw the black, hooded form of a raven perched high atop the dead tree, the sooty scorch marks borne from a thunderbolt were its perfect camouflage.

  Alistair picked up a fist sized stone from near the gravel path that led to the front door. He took aim at the bird and bowled the stone. As ever the bird was off its perch and soaring aloft before the stone could mark it. Alistair watched as it climbed ever higher, and circled like a vulture, riding the thermal currents until his eyes could no longer perceive it.

  Inside the house Alistair was still bathing his grazed headwound with a flannel cloth when Gwen returned. She carried in some shopping without looking at him and went into the kitchen. She spoke as she began to fill the pantry, “I got you the crab Ally, oh, and I posted the letter you left by the front door, you wanted it posted, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, thanks,” replied Alistair, he came into the kitchen with a flannel pressed to his head. Gwen was alarmed when she saw the once white cloth reddened with her brother’s blood.

  “Goodness! What happened to you?”

  “Oh, I, I caught my head, on some thorns. It’ll be alright,” he said thinking it best not to elaborate too much, he didn’t think that she would actually believe that he was being pursued and relentlessly attacked by a malicious raven.

  “Are you sure? Let me take a look I can–”

  “I’m fine Gwen, really. It’s stopped bleeding now.”

  “Well you remember Aunt Lilly, she died from pricking her hand on a rose bush, you shouldn’t–”

  “I’ve cleaned it well, I’ll be fine, please don’t fuss. Shall I prepare some of that crabmeat?” Alistair went off into the kitchen, Gwen followed him in,

  “I can cut us up some bread to go with it, it’s freshly baked today and still warm.”

  “That’ll be nice.” Gwen started slicing the bread,

  “Oh, I was listening to the wireless this morning. Apparently, we’re to have a blood moon tonight, whatever that is.” Alistair carefully dished up the crabmeat onto two small plates,

  “a blood moon is a total lunar eclipse. During the eclipse, all the sunlight is blocked from the moon by the earth, well most of it is. Some of the sunlight is refracted through the earth’s shadow, and that gives it the red colour.”

  “Gosh Ally, how do you know all that stuff? I suppose, being a teacher . . .”

  “Well I had to teach the boys something you know, although frankly, that was my colleague, Davenport’s field. He taught science.” Alistair carried the crabmeat to the dining table, Gwen had already set down the freshly cut bread.

  During the evening Alistair and Gwen talked about the old days, when they lived with their parents in Norwich. They reminisced about school days, and the games they’d played in the streets once the school day was over. They both listened to the light programme from the BBC on the wireless before deciding to retire to bed.

  Alistair sat on the end of his bed. He thought about the raven that had attacked him early in the day and he went over to the dressing cabinet to examine his scalp in the mirror.

  He noticed that the new wound was almost superimposed across the scar of his previous injury. He wondered if it was indeed the same bird, or did all ravens in this part of the country have a propensity to attack middle aged men. He shook off the thought that the bird may not be a bird at all. The thought that it might in some way be a sentinel, sent out by whatever spectre had undertaken the charge of protecting that fusty cavern was not a pleasant notion.

  As he began to draw the curtains he noticed the large full moon hanging silently in the starry sky. Its colour was like oxidised iron. There was something about the colour of the moon that unsettled him. Remembering the dreams triggered by his recent fever, he pulled the curtains tight and climbed into bed.

  Alistair had a troubled sleep. He woke many times feeling as though he had just broken free of a nightmare, but he couldn’t remember anything of the dream, only the feeling of mortal dread that the dreaming had bestowed upon him.

  The sixth and final time he woke, he found himself paralysed, unable to move. It was as though his wrists and ankles had been tethered to the bed. He struggled, but his leaden arms and legs would not move. Then he heard it.

  At first the low, grunting, breathing seemed to be a distant call from somewhere far away outside of the house. As he focused on the noise, the all so familiar disturbing noise, he was horrified to realise that the breathing originated from within the room.

  With his eyes tightly shut and in absolute fear, he felt the blanket being pulled with force from off his body. He opened his eyes, and found himself not to be lying on his bed but tied to a stone slab. The bindings were so tight they were cutting into the flesh of his arms and feet. He blinked several times trying to clear the vision, but it made no difference, he remained strapped at the centre of a stone circle.

  The red effulgence from the blood moon tinted the tall standing stones that surrounded him. The same red light picked out the scowls worn on the faces of the primitive looking crowd of men, women, and children who were slowly advancing towards him.

  Alistair tried to scream, but his voice was muted. Unable to move he winced as the first strike of a flint scored down his thigh. Then came another. The pain he felt with each cut seemed to snap him out of his ethereal vision of being tethered inside a long-forgotten monolith ring. He was now back inside his bedroom but the assault continued.

  Unable to see what was attacking him, he could hear a grinding cracking noise created by his indiscernible assailant as it moved around his bed, invisible. The low guttural breathing from this creature grew louder with every strike of sharp stone. Alistair found his voice and screamed.

  Gwen was awakened by the desperate cries from her brother. She quickly threw her dressing gown around her shoulders and ran across the landing to Alistair’s bedroom.

  She gripped the bedroom door handle and pushed, but the door seemed to be locked. “Ally, Ally what’s wrong? Ally open the door!” Alistair replied only with more fearful cries. Gwen twisted the handle some more and kicked at the door, she was relieved when it opened.

  Quickly she flicked on the light and saw her brother writhing in a gore soaked bed, blood oozing from under his pyjamas. The sight of Gwen broke his paralysis, “it came for me! My god it came for me here!”

  ******

  Alistair was still shaking as Gwen tried to clean his wounds. She was no nurse, but she knew that the wounds on his legs and arms needed sutures. She carried a bowl of bloodied water out to the kitchen sink and poured it away, she returned with a large glass of brandy for Alistair.

  The brandy calmed him, reducing his trembling. Gwen parted the curtains in the sitting room and glanced out. Dawn had broken. There was no sign yet of Phillip Renshaw, the local doctor. Gwen had called Phillip after she had calmed and settled Alistair in the sitting room. Alistair had pleaded for her not to call a doctor but she would not listen to his appeals.

  As they both sat and listened quietly to the dawn chorus out
side, Alistair began to speak about what happened to him, not only at Gwen’s house, but also about the events back at Olde Tudor.

  Gwen listened but grew concerned for her brother’s state of mind. She couldn’t understand why he would believe in such follies. He was a teacher, she had always been proud of his achievements, her brother was clever. Now he looked broken as he babbled about ghosts and phantoms. Listening to him though seemed to ease his anxiety and reduce his agitation.

  “At first, I thought I was imagining things, but everything that I heard, I felt was all corroborated. I found the journal you see, the Reverend Redgrave. He lived in Olde Tudor, he was also . . . plagued.” Gwen listened and thought she would try to help her brother realise that maybe all of this was down to his recent sickness.

  “Where is this journal Ally, are you sure that whatever was written in it was factual, I mean the reverend may have been writing fiction, and when you were sick you–”

  “No, no you don’t understand. I heard, saw, I-I . . .”

  “Ally, you told me you were sick. When I saw you turn up at my doorstep I thought my goodness! You looked terrible.” Alistair finished the remains of the brandy in his glass,

  “You sound just like Mortimer,”

  “Who?”

  “A friend, he helped me. Helped me when–” Alistair was cut short. A loud rapping on the front door caused him to recoil in fear, “Don’t open the door Gwen, it’s, it’s . . . that . . . thing. It’s come for me!” Gwen rose from her seat, it pained her to see Alistair almost crying like a frightened child.

  “That will be Doctor Renshaw, I have to let him in.” Alistair gripped her hand tightly, so tightly it hurt her. She carefully pulled her hand out of his, “Don’t worry, he will help you. It’ll be alright.”

  Gwen opened the door and the doctor stepped inside removing his hat. Doctor Renshaw was tall with brown hair side-parted neatly. He wore round wire rimmed spectacles and carried a leather physician’s bag. Gwen took the doctor’s hat and coat and led him over to where Alistair sat, curled on a seat in almost a foetal position. The doctor pulled up a chair and sat beside him.