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BITTER (a Halloween story) The Visit by Christine Sutton Queen Anne Boleyn slowly lifted
her head... and placed it on the table before her. It was her favourite party
trick and one guaranteed to get results. As it did now. The room fell instantly
quiet.
"Good afternoon, everyone, and may I thank you for inviting me into your
magnificent home and allowing me to, uh, spearhead this truly ambitious project.
Perhaps I could begin by asking you all to introduce yourselves and tell me
something of the circumstances of your passing. Let‘s start with the handsome,
leather-clad gentleman in front, shall we?" The handsome,
leather-clad gentleman in question blushed a fierier shade of red even than the
magnificent rubies nestling against the speaker‘s imposing bosom and rose
uncertainly to his feet. "The, er... name‘s
Dave, Miss - I mean Your Majesty," he said, bobbing the disembodied head a cross
between a curtsy and a bow, "and I... passed over when I came off me bike on the
driveway in ‘98. I was motorin‘, I admit, but you don‘t get paid if the pizza‘s
late, see. Anyway, I tore through the gates just as ‘er Ladyship - that‘s the
current one, o‘ course - was coming out in ‘er Bentley. Never stood a chance,
broke me neck and died instant." By way of demonstration, he twisted his head
grotesquely through a hundred and eighty degrees, a feat that had the young
Royal clapping her hands in delight. "Oh, excellent,"
she exclaimed, "that‘ll get the shivers running up and down their spines, or I‘m
the Queen of England. Which, come to think of it, I am," she finished gleefully,
giving Dave a saucy wink. His cheeks turned
an even deeper shade of damask than they already were and he hastily resumed his
seat. The Queen, meanwhile, was turning her attention to the next person along,
an elderly woman dressed all in grey, with sunken eyes and a face more withered
than the driest crab-apple. "And what about
you, Madam?" she enquired. "What‘s your story, pray?"
"My name is Hester Burridge, Your Majesty," the woman answered in a querulous,
self-important voice, "and I am - was - housekeeper to the first Lord and Lady
Westlake. I perished in the fire in the east wing in 1647, along with their
daughter, little Imogen here." She moved aside her woollen shawl to reveal a
baby of about three months of age, its cream satin Christening gown speckled
with telltale smudges of soot. "Ohh, a baby,"
cooed the Queen, her dark eyes shining, "and tell me, does she cry very
much?" The old woman
nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes, Ma‘am, she‘s got a lovely wail on her once she gets
going. All thin and reedy it is, really piteous."
"Wonderful," beamed the Queen. "A crying baby beats all else when it comes to
chilling the blood. I‘ve known them turn the most sceptical souls into quivering
wrecks." She clicked her fingers over her right shoulder as if in response to
some unheard remark, adding, "And it doesn‘t matter a jot that it‘s not a boy,
Sire. For work such as this, girls‘ lungs are every bit as good as boys‘. So,
who do we have next?" The middle-aged
man at whom she was staring swallowed nervously and tugged at the collar of his
dingy white smock. "I wonder, Mum, if I might ask..." The Queen arched
her slender brows enquiringly. "Yes?" "Well, the thing
is..." Again words failed him as he fidgeted uncomfortably in his
seat. "What he wants,
lady," interrupted a pert and pretty girl seated two rows back, "is for you t‘
put yer flippin‘ ‘ead back on. His father came a cropper with a scythe when Seth
was just a lad and the daft old fool‘s never been the same since. Couldn‘t even
watch me top an‘ tail carrots without blubbing!" The Queen‘s eyes
glittered dangerously. "And you are?" "Ethel Metcalfe,
Miss," the girl answered, quite unperturbed. "Me and Seth started at the Manor
the same time, Christmas, 1863. Fourteen, we was. He worked the land and I
‘elped in the kitchens." The Queen frowned
in puzzlement. "You are of an age?" she asked, looking from the girl‘s youthful
features to Seth‘s lined and weather-beaten face. "How so?" "We copped it at
different times," Ethel explained. "I fell through the ‘atch of the disused well
three weeks after me seventeenth birthday, Seth ‘eld on till his fifties ‘fore
succumbin‘ to pneumonia." "Pneumonia?" the
Queen echoed. "A blameless enough sort of death, surely? Why does he
linger?" "Because it
weren‘t blameless, was it?" Ethel declared stoutly. "Lord Westlake ‘ad him out
mending fences in one of the worst winters on record. Snow up to his knees and
winds cold enough to freeze the whatsits off a bull. Good as murdered him. Swine
should‘ve swung fer it, if you ask me." "Yes, well, no one
is asking you, are they?" hissed Hester Burridge, twisting in her seat.
"Naturally, I never had the privilege of knowing your Lord Westlake but I‘m sure
he was every bit as fine a man as his predecessor. Time you started showing a
bit more respect for your elders and betters, young lady." The Queen
eyed the two women with amusement. Their sparring put her in mind of her own
spats with Henry‘s first wife, the po-faced Spaniard, Catherine. Such fun.
Taking up her head, she eased it back on. ‘There, good Sir,"
she said, turning to Seth, "is that any better for you?" Seth beamed his
gratitude. "Much better, thank ‘e, Mum," he agreed, clearly
relieved. With her eyeline
restored to its natural level, the Queen was able to see the couple seated at
the rear of the room for the first time. One was a strikingly attractive girl
with sun-gold hair and milk-white skin, the other a wan-faced lad maybe a year
or two into his twenties. "So, then, my dears," she said, "would you be so kind
as to tell us your tales?" But it was the
redoubtable Mrs Burridge who answered for them. "That‘s our Tom
and Jenny, Your Highness. Our ‘tragic lovers‘," she said in a confidential
whisper. "Tom‘s a deaf mute who was boot boy to the third Lord Westlake back in
1758. It must have been a lonely sort of existence, what with his deafness and
the other lads‘ teasing. But when Jenny was taken on as lady‘s maid to Her
Ladyship she took him under her wing, so to speak. She started looking out for
him, taking his side when things got bad. If only she hadn‘t been such a beauty,
perhaps things might have been different." The Queen gave the
girl a second glance. Yes, looks such as hers were indeed a mixed blessing. She
certainly wouldn‘t have relished having such a ravishing creature around at
Court to catch Henry‘s eye. "Put bluntly,
Ma‘am, there was a fight. Tom entered the kitchen one evening to find one of the
footmen molesting young Jenny. He was a strapping lad and it was clear he was
getting the upper hand. Our Tom intervened. Handled himself well, too, by all
accounts. That is, until the other lad grabbed the knife." The Queen
grimaced. ‘Tom was stabbed?" "Through the
heart," Mrs Burridge confirmed. "Died in Jenny‘s arms right there on the
flagstone floor. Poor thing was distraught, completely beside herself. Took
herself up to the west tower that very night and threw herself off, screaming in
torment as she went. Dreadful business, dreadful." The Queen nodded
forlornly. "Sad, very sad. All grist to the mill for us, though," she added,
brightening. "After all, if we‘d all died in our beds we‘d have been up with the
angels long ago and no need for this meeting now. So, ladies and gentlemen, we
have our players. We know our parts. All we need now is our
audience..." *** Bursting with
excitement, Hortense and Bernard Lethbridge lugged their cases back across the
rapidly darkening car park to their battered old Ford Estate. "Brilliant,
brilliant," panted Bernard for the umpteenth time. "We‘re made, Hortie, old
girl, made!" "I know, I know,"
puffed his equally ecstatic wife, "with the stuff we‘ve got here, we‘ll be on
every chat show and in every magazine in the country." "The world,
Hortie, the world," corrected Bernard, setting down the cases and unlocking the
boot. "Why, I bet we even make the pages of Dear Departed. Did you hear that
baby wailing? Utterly bloodcurdling, and I swear I could smell the
smoke." "You could,
Bernie, you could. It‘s just a shame these things can‘t record odours too," his
wife enthused, tapping the sensor machine under her arm. "It‘ll come, my
darling, it‘ll come. Technology‘s improving all the time, you know," Bernard
declared heartily, taking the case and shoving it in alongside the others.
"Still, with photos, video, and the audio stuff, we‘re going to be rich! How
many of ‘em did we get, do you think?" Hortense frowned
in concentration. "Well, there was the boy on the motorbike when we arrived.
What an opener that was, driving straight through us with his head lolling like
that. Good job I had the video going. Then you snapped that girl disappearing
down the well and picked up the death rattle of the boy in the kitchen. I think
I got the screams of that lass jumping off the roof, although she did take me a
bit by surprise, shooting past the window like that. How many‘s that,
five?" "Counting the
baby," Bernard confirmed, slamming the boot shut, "and I definitely got a shot
of that old crone in grey. And what about that chap we mistook for a scarecrow?
It was sweltering in that field yesterday yet I felt like I was freezing to
death." His eyes shone in the darkness. "It‘s possible we‘ve got footage of him
actually fading, you know, a genuine dematerialisation. Wonderful. There‘s only
one that puzzles me," he finished thoughtfully, getting in to the
car. "Oh, yes, dear,"
said Hortense, sliding in beside him, "which one‘s that?" "That one you
reckoned was Anne Boleyn. I mean, it doesn‘t make sense. This place wasn‘t even
built till a century after her execution, so what on earth would she be doing
here?" "Well, it was
definitely her," Hortense insisted, "I noticed the extra finger on her left hand
as she was taking off her head. And that was a bit of a giveaway, too, come to
think of it." "Hmm," said
Bernie, sounding less than convinced. "Anyway, whoever she is, it still makes
eight in all. Ghost Getters‘ best haul yet. So good that I think we should
nominate Westlake Manor for the Most Haunted House in Britain Award. What do you
think?" "I think it‘s a
great idea, darling," said his wife, snuggling into her seat. "In fact, I‘ll
make it the title of my report." They were both far
too busy talking to notice, but as Bernard and Hortense drove away from the
imposing old pile, the faint but unmistakable sound of cheering could be heard
coming from the Great Hall. It was, as the Queen had just declared, mission
accomplished!
"All The Pretty Horses" by Lynn Ellen
Wolf
©Lynn Ellen Wolf 2007
She had
perfected the art of guilt-driven, puppy-whipping verbal assault, the kind
that could manipulate even the strongest personalities into licking her
shoes clean and then thanking her for the privilege, while feeling bad
that they hadn’t done it sooner. No one was safe from her venom, not
even the dog. She had put “Spaz” out to water the dying grass and
stood in the doorway, her pale skin hauntingly aglow in the moonlight
while the November wind went to work puckering her sagging baguettes
underneath her flannel nightgown. For the moment they matched her
puckered face; long, droopy and wrinkled. Age had been as kind to
her as she had been to everyone else in her life. Abby Pinehurst had
suffered all the injustices, real and imagined, of a jackass universe and
she refused to pretend that life could ever be thought of as
good.
“I give, and I give, and I give,
and what do I get?” Her voice wavered on the late fall air as she
let the dog know who was in charge. “C’mon, girl. You’ve had
enough time; making me wait here in this weather. I swear.” The rat
terrier, blissfully unaware of her mistress's aspersion, but highly
motivated by an acute blast of thunder, leapt from the concrete patio,
over the steps and across the threshold, her stubby tail a giddy
blur. Those sweet, liquid brown eyes fixed on Abby, waiting in vain
for a touch of affection, but receiving instead the cruel brush-off of
Abby’s foot to her backside, shoving her out of the
way.
While Abby was never happy, she could
manage to attain a fleeting state of contentment with a spoon, a pint of
Chunky Monkey, a remote control and a couch. She settled into the
rump-shaped depression in the middle of the sofa, cursed the weather and
mashed the power button. The TV blinked on. The lights blinked
off. Lightning scattered the shadows to the smallest corners of the
room but they immediately returned and joined forces, immersing the room
into a nearly palpable blackness. The silence followed. The wind
didn’t blow, the dog didn’t whimper, the floor didn’t creak under Abby’s
slipper-socked feet. Time held it’s breath; so did Abby. In
the darkness, something exhaled a cold wisp of air on her shin, making the
unshaven hair stand on end. Torturous tremors overcame her
body. The spoon slipped out of her hand and landed on the cushion
next to her.
“I think you dropped
this,” a scratchy alto voice cooed in the dark. “You’re going to
need it.” A gaunt hand picked up the spoon and placed it back in
Abby’s, then closed her fingers around it.
“There, that’s better.” The
fingers traced their way up Abby’s arm, up her neck, across her chin and
down to her other shoulder where it followed it’s path down to her other
hand. Its frigid touch could have been stone or fine sandpaper that
traced the path down Abby’s arm instead of that shriveled hand that
belonged to the creature crouching in front of her. Abby winced at
every caress and tried to turn her head away, but the hand rose, and held
her face firm.
“This is what
you’ve wanted for so long, Abby, my friend, my love.” The cold
stench from the creature’s mouth burned in Abby’s nostrils and she found
herself choking down air instead of breathing
it.
In Abby’s hand was the spoon, and in
the creature’s hand was Abby’s, drawing her closer to it’s gaping mouth to
scoop up the black, foamy saliva welling up inside it. Abby’s
struggle to resist became blank resignation as it guided her hand back to
her mouth.
“Eat, my love. The
bitterness you crave is the company you keep.” The spoon slid across
her mouth and between her lips, smearing, spilling, dripping onto her
tongue, her chin, her chest. The creature nibbled on Abby’s toes as
the spoon delivered its first taste of pure bitterness to her
tongue.
Abby choked, convulsed, swallowed. The hand guided
hers back for another serving. She consumed the bitterness just as
the bitterness was consuming her.
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