Tales of the Talking Picture

by Tom Slemen

  'I think you like her more than me,' Christina said, wiping her tears away with toilet tissue.

  'I don't like anyone more than you Christina, I love you. I love only you.'

  The mundane voice of adulthood intervened from outside. 'Open the door now or I'll open it!' Mr Brindley threatened.

  Just after midnight, Matthew lay in bed, worrying about Christina's silly accusation – about him liking Rhiannon more than her. Wouldn't that be my luck, he thought, to fall out of love with the first girl in my life for a woman who died hundreds of years ago?

  'Can't you sleep?' Rhiannon asked. Diffused amber light from the sodium street-lamp shone through the lace curtains of Matthew's room onto the witch's beautiful face.

  'No, I can't,' Matthew whispered in the dark. 'I know if I go to sleep, I'll have nightmares about the Mary Celeste.'

  'I'm sorry Matthew; I shouldn't have told you that tale,' said Rhiannon, and she looked so sad and sympathetic.

  'It's okay Rhiannon, ' Matthew replied, and he suddenly realised it was Sunday in the morning, a day when he usually played football with his friends, but now he was with Christina, he'd have to find something else to do. Then Matthew hit on an idea – something he'd wanted to do for years: climb Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric man-made mound in all of Europe. No one knew who built it or why, not even Matthew's maternal grandfather, who knew everything about history. Surely Rhiannon would know? Couldn't she use her magical powers to look into the remote past and see who built that 130-foot-tall flat-topped mound?

  'Rhiannon, it's Sunday tomorrow, and I think I'll ask Christina to climb Silbury Hill. Have you ever heard of that hill?'

  The witch shook her head. 'I have not.'

  'Well,' Matthew explained, 'it's about half an hour's walk from here, not far from Avebury. It's huge. Mousey Thompson reckons its an ancient alien spaceship that was buried by cavemen after crashing there thousands of years ago.'

  'I'll try and find out what it is if you wish, but you'll probably be asleep by the time I do,' Rhiannon told Matthew, and as he shook his head, the Talking Picture pulsated with faint green aura, and the eyes of Rhiannon darkened. Matthew sat up in bed with great impatience, and wondered what Rhiannon could see as she looked through the ages of time.

  Matthew's iPhone chimed. It was a text from Christina: 'r u awake?' it read.

  Matthew intended to type a reply on the mobile, but four sentences into the message, the iPhone rang. He hated it when that happened. It was Christina of course. 'What's up?' she asked.

  'I've asked Rhiannon to research the history of some place I want to take you to tomorrow,' Matthew said excitedly, thinking his girlfriend would be excited too – but there was a muffled unintelligible reply which nevertheless sounded like an unenthusiastic response of some sort. 'Christina? Are you there?'

  'No, she's gone,' was Christina's sarcastic reply. 'Why have you got to ask that old woman about everything?'

  'What old woman?' Matthew was puzzled.

  'Duh! Rhinannon? That old woman.'

  'She's not old,' Matthew said, 'well she doesn't look old. Why are you being like this?'

  'Being like what?' Christina asked, and when Matthew was about to reply, she hung up.

  Matthew called his girlfriend five times but the automated operator told him his call was being rejected. Just when Matthew was near to tears, Christina called him and without a word of explanation, she asked: 'And where are you planning on taking me later?'

  'Silbury Hill,' Matthew told her in a choked voice. 'It's about half an hour away from here -'

  'Yeah, I know where it is,' Christina sighed, 'but why do you want to take me there? Silbury Hill's just a hill, I can't think of anything more boring.'

  'It was just an idea,' Matthew said, and he struggled to explain his longstanding ambition to climb that ancient hill

  'Nighty night,' Christina sang, and hung up.

  'You mustn't climb that hill,' Rhiannon suddenly told Matthew, and she began her strange tale. Matthew got into bed and sat up, listening, as the surrounding walls of the bedroom were painted with the scenes of a long-bygone day. Matthew saw a grey sky lit up by forked lightning, and a quaint half-timbered cottage on the edge of a little town. As he watched, the cottage came steadily nearer until he was gazing through its Elizabethan-styled lattice window at three children and a woman. That window dissolved, and Matthew found himself in the cottage; he was becoming one of the children...

  The Sunday King

  Once upon a thundery wet summer Sunday afternoon in the 1950s, three children named Violet, Charlie and Scot - all aged thirteen - were walking the walls with boredom at a cottage in the Wiltshire town of Marlborough. Violet’s Auntie Ivy lifted the lid of the upright rosewood piano and coaxed angel-voiced Scot to sing a popular song of the day called You Belong to Me, but Rebel, Charlie’s over-fed dinosaur of a Labrador dog, began to howl. Aunt Ivy slammed the piano lid shut and scolded the sulking dog. ‘Go home then misery chops!’ she told him, and stormed off into the kitchen to finish her washing in the dolly tub.

  ‘Come on Rebel,’ Charlie tapped his dog’s head and walked towards the door, ‘I don’t think we’re welcome here,’ he said melodramatically. Violet told him to shut up and she and Scot followed him out into the drizzle. Aromas of boiling cabbage and cauliflower hung in the air as the women of the neighbourhood prepared the Sunday dinners. As the three teens and the galumphing dog wandered off with no particular place to go, the sun unexpectedly broke through the ash-grey heavens, and swallows twittered on high. Slick-quiffed Simon Lee, one of the first Teddy Boys in the town, came up through the tree-lined road known as Arnold's Grove in a chequered shirt, tight jeans and crepe-soled shoes. Violet went bright red and bowed her head. ‘Hey, Violet, here’s your fellah,’ Charlie turned to tell his friend, and, seeing she’d changed colour, he mocked her coyness. ‘Ha! she's gone red as a beetroot!’

  The 16-year-old Teddy Boy padded silently past on his suede crepe-soled shoes, completely unaware that the girl passing by loved him and had cried when she had seen him walking with the beautiful Crow twins to to the church hall dance the night before last. How could he be so blind not to notice me? Violet thought, turning and watching him walking away in the dappled green shades of the grove. Scot sympathised with Violet’s unrequited love, for he loved a girl who served in the local cake shop and he yearned to ask her out but was simply too shy. Scot gave a knowing smile to Violet, and at that moment, the attention-seeking Charlie suddenly bolted off, cruelly trying to leave his dog behind, but Rebel yelped and bounded after him. Charlie tripped, rolled in the muddy road, and his dog hurled itself on top of him, thinking it was all a game.

  Around three that afternoon, the trio were standing at the fence of old Mr Walton's garden, surveying the enormous rosy apples on his tree. The spectacled oldster was leaning in his doorway, smoking a pipe, unable to see the three teens because he was squinting sunwards. Charlie reckoned he could leap over the fence and grab an apple or two without Walton even seeing him, and Scot said, 'Well, go on then, I dare you to.'

  Charlie stepped over the fence without taking his eye off the old man, and crept towards the apple tree. Erratic but graceful butterflies with fiery red wings fluttered about Walton's beautifully-kept garden, and one of these fragile flying creatures happened to zig-zag past Rebel's snout, startling the hound. The annoyed dog snapped at the butterfly and began to bark. Mr Walton's spectacles flashed in the sun as he swivelled his gaze towards the dog. Then the local bobby PC Spike came around the corner of Walton's cottage on his Sunday beat, and he saw Charlie trespassing in the old man's garden. 'Oi! What are you doing?' bellowed the policeman, and Mr Walton turned to the constable and fumed, 'He's trying to steal my apples Spike, that's what he's doing!'

  Charlie launched himself into the air, clearing Walton's fence, and he, Violet, Scot – and Rebel – bolted off, and none of them slowed until they had put a mile between themselves and PC Spike. The trio and the canine trav
ersed the rolling Marlborough Downs until they found themselves in the shadow of Silbury Hill, a gigantic circular flat-topped cone-shaped mound, 130 feet high, built by the enigmatic Neolithic people of England; probably the same people who had created that other local ancient puzzle known as Stonehenge.

  'I don't like this thing,' Violet confessed, her eyes settling on the summit of the hill, 'there's something wrong about it, it doesn't fit in. It looks like a big upside-down steam pudding.'

  'Let's climb it, come on!' Charlie suggested, and charged at the steep slopes. Rebel stayed put for some reason, and sat watching Charlie's ascension as he disappeared into the tall grass and thick shrubbery.

  'Come on Violet, it's just a hill,' Scot said, and he too began to climb the colossal mound.

  'I've never seen that before, look,' Violet nodded towards a clump of beech and oak trees, about a hundred feet up the hill. She was sure they hadn't been there seconds ago, and she asked Scot if he had seen them before, but he shrugged and continued to climb the ancient man-made hill. Charlie looked back and whistled to his dog. Rebel whined and gingerly began his careful ascent after his master. Charlie saw Scot was gaining on him, and so he scrambled up the hill a little faster. Violet followed Scot closely, but having a fear of heights, she was too afraid to look back. At this point, none of the teens were aware of a strangely localised mist that was rolling down Silbury Hill from the summit. The little spinney woods that Violet had noticed before had now somehow expanded into a forest that was ghosted by the mist.

  Charlie was astonished to see the woods up ahead. He had passed Silbury Hill many times and never noticed these trees on the grassy slopes.

  The teens entered the forest out of sheer curiosity, and soon found themselves faced with a very peculiar sight. In the middle of a wide glade, seated on a throne sat a bearded man in a gleaming gold crown, decked in robes of scarlet and ermine. Pied minstrels with lutes were singing before him, and an odd-looking jester with magpie wings on either wide of his head, was laughing and pointing at the three startled youths. Violet felt a heavy gauntlet on her shoulder, and turned to see a gaunt-faced giant of a man in a chain-mail balaclava and armour. Another soldier grabbed Scot, but Charlie ran off in terror with Rebel following close behind. The youth and his dog stumbled and rolled down the treacherous slopes of Silbury Hill in panic. Rebel yelped because he couldn't slow down in his headlong rush down the hill, and when he reached the level ground, the canine would have broken its neck if he hadn't rolled sideways after stumbling. Charlie found himself bruised and in tears at the foot of the hill, and when he looked up the slopes he saw the two soldiers slowly descending. He picked himself up, ignored the numbness in his posterior and left leg, and ran all the way to the home of Violet’s Aunt Ivy. Ivy and the local policeman Spike rushed to Silbury Hill and made a thorough search of the woods, accompanied by Charlie, his older brother Jonathan, and Rebel, but none of them could find any trace of Violet and Scot. More policemen and several locals joined in the search and around midnight, something bizarre happened – Violet and Scot seemed to appear out of nowhere at the crest of Silbury Hill. When the two frightened-looking teens explained where they’d been for the last nine hours, PC Thompson accused the duo of wasting police time, and Aunt Ivy was furious. Violet claimed she and Scot had been prisoners of the “Sunday King”, a vagrant who had given his soul to the Devil to become a king, but the Devil, being a trickster, had taken the tramp’s soul and merely allowed him to become a king for one day each week – Sunday. The rest of the week he remained a poor vagrant. King Gardyloo, as he was named, had in turn tricked other down-and-outs into exchanging their souls to become a member of his royal court. The jester, Mugwort, the minstrels, and other courtiers all lived extravagantly for a Sunday in a secret palace under the flat-top summit of Silbury Hill. King Gardyloo had wanted Violet to be his Queen but she had rejected his offer, even though Mugwort the jester had threatened to tickle her till she agreed to the bargain. One of the knights had threatened to chop Scot's head off unless Violet agreed to be queen, but then a church clock had started chiming midnight in the distance, and slowly, the King and his courtiers became tramps again as the palace dissolved into the night air. Of course, Violet and Scot were not believed, and Aunt Ivy even suspected that something 'untoward' had gone on between Violet and Scot, and she interrogated her niece on the following day, asking her what had 'really happened' during the lost nine hours. Violet finally snapped and screamed: 'I wish you were dead and I wish my parents were alive!'

  Aunt Ivy sobbed and went into her bedroom, broken-hearted.

  Not long afterwards, Violet came into her aunt's bedroom and apologised. She hadn't meant a word of what she had said. She was just so angry at not being believed.

  'Then what really happened up on that hill?' Ivy asked, and blew her nose into a handkerchief.

  'I've told you Aunty, the Sunday King kept us prisoners. I will swear on a stack of Bibles if you want.'

  'Now, Violet, I won't have blasphemous talk like that,' Ivy warned.

  'But I am not lying, please believe me,' Violet persisted, tilting her head to one side with genuine graveness in her eyes, and that made Ivy very uneasy, because she now knew from that expression that her niece was telling the truth.

  'Well, whatever happened, stay away from Silbury Hill,' said Ivy, and that was the last word on the matter as far as she was concerned, but a few days later, on Tuesday afternoon, Ivy was queuing in Mr Beatties butcher's shop, when an elderly customer standing in front of her who was also waiting to be served, suddenly turned around and enquired about Violet. 'Is the girl all right now?' he asked, with an asthmatic timbre in his voice.

  'Is who all right?' Ivy queried guardedly, mindful of the gossips in the queue behind her.

  'Your niece,' replied the old man.

  'Which one?' Ivy asked, staring straight into his grey-blue eyes, 'I've got four.'

  'Violet I think her name is;' the old man replied, and he added, 'Is she all right after that ordeal up Silbury?'

  'She's fine thanks,' Ivy let him know in a stand-offish manner.

  'That hill's a queer place,' the old man whispered to Ivy. 'It's named after Sunday. Sil is an old word for sun you see, but some say it's also an old word for serpent -'

  Mr Beattie the butcher interrupted the old man's ramblings: 'Right Jack, what are you after?' he asked.

  'Brisket I think,' old Jack decided, but then he turned back to Ivy. 'Children have gone missing up there on Silbury,' he said, wide-eyed, then turned to the butcher, who had developed a nervous tic in his left cheek. To Mr Beattie, old Jack said: 'They never found Annie Corrigan did they?'

  'That was way before my time Jack,' said Beattie, and he projected a brief hollow laugh.'Now, do you want your brisket or what? There's a queue of people waiting to be served here.'

  Back at her cottage, Ivy sat thinking about the strange words of old Jack. That evening, Ivy was visited by her older sister Alice, and over tea and biscuits, Ivy told her sister about Violet's disappearing act with Scot up on Silbury Hill, and the enigmatic reference about an Annie Corrigan, made by the old man Jack in Beattie's butcher's shop.

  Alice returned a peculiar vacant look and let her dunked custard cream plop into the tea. 'Annie Corrigan,' Alice's faint words barely left her lips, 'I remember that incident.'

  'Who was she?' Ivy asked, exceedingly intrigued.

  'It must have been around 1913; yes, it was just before the First World War. Mother warned me not to go near that place you mentioned - '

  'Silbury Hill?' Ivy speculated.

  'Yes,' Alice nodded, and thinned her eyes as she struggled to recall the case. 'Annie Corrigan was about fourteen, or fifteen, and she started going missing every weekend. She said she was seeing this well-to-do man. He said he was royalty, and you know what children are like; she fell for it. Anyway, I think she left a letter on her bed, and she ran away from home. She said she was going to marry the king, and that she'd be his queen. They nev
er found her, but the police found her blue dress on that hill with all the buttons cut off. I'm almost certain it was around this time of year when this happened – August, yes. The girl's mother used to go up that hill every day looking for her, and in the end she became ill and died. They said she died of a broken heart.' Alice put down the china cup and saucer after seeing half of the custard cream bobbing about in the Earl Grey.

  Violet had been listening to the strange recollection of Auntie Alice as she stood in the hallway, just outside the door of the living room. The girl shuddered when she heard Alice mention Annie Corrigan's talk of a king, for she knew very well that this was a reference to the Sunday King – Gardyloo – who had asked her to be his queen.

  On Wednesday, Violet was in the Marlborough high street, shopping with Aunt Ivy, when she saw Scot and Charlie coming out of Woolworths. She tried to talk to them, but Ivy told the girl she was not to go anywhere near Scot. Violet silently mouthed 'Meet me tonight' and Scot nodded, then mouthed back 'When?'

  Violet slyly showed him the nine digits of her outstretched hands, and Scot nodded.

  'What did she say?' Charlie asked Scot.

  'I'll tell you in a minute,' promised Scot out the side of his mouth.

  Rebel caught sight of Violet and bounded over to her with his tail wagging furiously, but Aunt Ivy told him to stay away. 'Go on, shoo!' she said, and Rebel tilted his head sideways, baffled by the rejection.

  At 8.30pm, Aunt Ivy sat dozing in her fireside chair with a mug of cocoa on the flint mantelpiece. Violet was sitting nearby at the table, reading a comic called the Bunty. She looked up to the face of the grandfather clock, then went to the window of the living room. Scot and Charlie were early. They were peeping over the hedge, and Rebel was blatantly looking through the bars of the gate at Violet.

  As Ivy slept in the armchair, Violet crept out the room as silent as a nun and gently closed the door behind her. She left the cottage and sneaked down the path, looking back at one point to the rosy glow from the living room window. Rebel let out a single bark, and Charlie pounced on his dog and gripped its muzzle to prevent any further barks.