TAM O’ SHANTER: SCOTLAND THE STRANGE II

Happy birthday to poet Robert Burns and author Willie Meikle! For two hundred and twenty three years, the faithful have celebrated the life and writings of poet Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796) on or around this day. And this day is also, as it happens, the birthday of Scottish* horror writer Willie Meikle, our inspiration for this series of peculiar Scottish supernatural tales and trivia, and who is still around, thank goodness.

*’Scottish’ and ‘Scots’ are both permitted and respectable; ‘Scotch’ is frowned upon, except when referring to specific items, such as Scotch eggs, Scotch whisky and so on.

Burns Nicht, or even Burns Day in some parts of the Scottish diaspora, is a time for haggis, whisky and verse, the traditional Burns Supper. And on the way to supper, we encounter a bridge, an abandoned church, , and Game of Thrones — because we’re like that…

Each in its cold hand held a light:
By which heroic Tom was able
To note upon the holy table,
A murderer’s bones, in gibbet-irons;
Two span-long, small, unchristened babies;
A thief just cut from his hanging rope –
With his last gasp his mouth did gape;

(‘Tam o’ Shanter’)

Yesterday’s story here, ‘The Eyes of Doom’, featured the small town of Arrochar, and if you drive for about an hour and half due south (trying not to drown in the Firth of Clyde), you will come to Alloway, the village where Robert Burns was born. Apart from its historical relevance as his birthplace, Alloway has two sites of of particular interest to us — the ruins of Alloway Kirk, and the Brig o’ Doon, a fifteenth century bridge located south of Alloway.

tam o' shanter

Brig o’ Doon, built somewhere between 1420 and 1465, still stands, though it has been repaired many times. It was by riding madly over this bridge that Tam o’ Shanter escaped the witches who pursued him, as described in the eponymous 1790 poem by Burns. Does its name sound familiar? Yes, that’s where the 1947 Brigadoon musical (and the subsequent 1954 film) got the title, though unlike Alloway, Brigadoon is a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every 100 years — a common enough element of European folk-tales.

The idea of a place cursed to have only a day or a few days in ‘normal’ space has become such a trope that it even occupies a whole Deep Space Nine episode — ‘Meridian’. Jadzia Dax encounters a whole planet, albeit with no more than a small village-sized community which disappears for decades and is only in phase with the usual DS9 universe for short periods. And it involves a love story, as usual, though not quite as successful a one as in Brigadoon.

tam o' shanter

Alloway Auld Kirk also still stands, but only as a well-kept ruin, and was built about a century later than the bridge. Robert Burns’s father is buried there (under the surname ‘Burnes’), and it is this church which is central to ‘Tam o’ Shanter’.

Burns himself told a friend that he drew upon a folk tale told to him to construct the poem, a tale which began (in his words):

On a market-day, in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick, and consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway kirk-yard, in order to cross the River Doon, at the old bridge, which is almost two or three hundred yards farther on than the said old gate, had been detained by his business till by the time he reached Alloway it was the wizard hour, between night and morning.

Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet as it is a well known fact, that to turn back on these occasions is running by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced on his road. When he had reached the gate of the kirk-yard, he was surprised and entertained, thorough the ribs and arches of an old gothic window which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches merrily footing it round their old sooty black-guard master, who was keeping them all alive with the power of his bagpipe.”

In 1910, it was recorded that Burns had a snuffbox made from wood out of the kirk ruins, on which was inscribed the marvellous verse:

“Frae the oak that bare the riggin’,

O Alloway’s auld haunted biggin’,

Frae the thorn aboon the well,

Whaur Mungo’s mither hanged hersel’.”

tam o' shanter
the kirk today

TAM O’ SHANTER

So, to the poem itself, which is a grand horror tale of a man who observes a ‘Witches’ Sabbath’, and is pursued by sundry hags until he finally wins free at the last minute, courtesy of the Brig o’ Doon and his faithful mare, Maggie. That Game of Thrones connection? James Cosmo, who played Jeor Mormont, the Old Bear, the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, has delivered perhaps the best aural version of ‘Tam O’Shanter’ yet. Born James Ronald Gordon Copeland, he’s been in too many film and TV series to list, everything from Dr Finlay’s Casebook, UFO, Gladiator, and the Chronicles of Narnia, to His Dark Materials. Here he is in very fine form:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU_Lbdy3Ud8

And here is the full poem in Scots, as written. For those of the faint at heart, an English translation can be found here:

http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/tamoshanter.htm

When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet;
As market days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate,
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An’ getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter:
(Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonie lasses).

O Tam! had’st thou but been sae wise,
As taen thy ain wife Kate’s advice!
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum;
That frae November till October,
Ae market-day thou was na sober;
That ilka melder wi’ the Miller,
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller;
That ev’ry naig was ca’d a shoe on
The Smith and thee gat roarin’ fou on;
That at the Lord’s house, ev’n on Sunday,
Thou drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday,
She prophesied that late or soon,
Thou wad be found, deep drown’d in Doon,
Or catch’d wi’ warlocks in the mirk,
By Alloway’s auld, haunted kirk.

Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthen’d, sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!

But to our tale: Ae market night,
Tam had got planted unco right,
Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely,
Wi reaming saats, that drank divinely;
And at his elbow, Souter Johnie,
His ancient, trusty, drougthy crony:
Tam lo’ed him like a very brither;
They had been fou for weeks thegither.
The night drave on wi’ sangs an’ clatter;
And aye the ale was growing better:
The Landlady and Tam grew gracious,
Wi’ favours secret, sweet, and precious:
The Souter tauld his queerest stories;
The Landlord’s laugh was ready chorus:
The storm without might rair and rustle,
Tam did na mind the storm a whistle.

Care, mad to see a man sae happy,
E’en drown’d himsel amang the nappy.
As bees flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure,
The minutes wing’d their way wi’ pleasure:
Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious!

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts for ever;
Or like the Borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the Rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.—
Nae man can tether Time nor Tide,
The hour approaches Tam maun ride;
That hour, o’ night’s black arch the key-stane,
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;
And sic a night he taks the road in,
As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in.

The wind blew as ‘twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d;
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow’d:
That night, a child might understand,
The deil had business on his hand.

Weel-mounted on his grey mare, Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire,
Despising wind, and rain, and fire;
Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet,
Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet,
Whiles glow’rin round wi’ prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares;
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry.

By this time he was cross the ford,
Where in the snaw the chapman smoor’d;
And past the birks and meikle stane,
Where drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane;
And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn,
Where hunters fand the murder’d bairn;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Where Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel’.
Before him Doon pours all his floods,
The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods,
The lightnings flash from pole to pole,
Near and more near the thunders roll,
When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze,
Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing,
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!
What dangers thou canst make us scorn!
Wi’ tippenny, we fear nae evil;
Wi’ usquabae, we’ll face the devil!
The swats sae ream’d in Tammie’s noddle,
Fair play, he car’d na deils a boddle,
But Maggie stood, right sair astonish’d,
Till, by the heel and hand admonish’d,
She ventur’d forward on the light;
And, wow! Tam saw an unco sight!

Warlocks and witches in a dance:
Nae cotillon, brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
A winnock-bunker in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl.—
Coffins stood round, like open presses,
That shaw’d the Dead in their last dresses;
And (by some devilish cantraip sleight)
Each in its cauld hand held a light.
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer’s banes, in gibbet-airns;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns;
A thief, new-cutted frae a rape,
Wi’ his last gasp his gabudid gape;
Five tomahawks, wi’ blude red-rusted:
Five scimitars, wi’ murder crusted;
A garter which a babe had strangled:
A knife, a father’s throat had mangled.
Whom his ain son of life bereft,
The grey-hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi’ mair of horrible and awfu’,
Which even to name wad be unlawfu’.

As Tammie glowr’d, amaz’d, and curious,
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious;
The Piper loud and louder blew,
The dancers quick and quicker flew,
The reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linkit at it in her sark!

Now Tam, O Tam! had they been queans,
A’ plump and strapping in their teens!
Their sarks, instead o’ creeshie flainen,
Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen!—
Thir breeks o’ mine, my only pair,
That ance were plush o’ guid blue hair,
I wad hae gien them off my hurdies,
For ae blink o’ the bonie burdies!
But wither’d beldams, auld and droll,
Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,
Louping an’ flinging on a crummock.
I wonder did na turn thy stomach.

But Tam kent what was what fu’ brawlie:
There was ae winsome wench and waulie
That night enlisted in the core,
Lang after ken’d on Carrick shore;
(For mony a beast to dead she shot,
And perish’d mony a bonie boat,
And shook baith meikle corn and bear,
And kept the country-side in fear);
Her cutty sark, o’ Paisley harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho’ sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie.
Ah! little ken’d thy reverend grannie,
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie,
Wi twa pund Scots (’twas a’ her riches),
Wad ever grac’d a dance of witches!

But here my Muse her wing maun cour,
Sic flights are far beyond her power;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was and strang),
And how Tam stood, like ane bewithc’d,
And thought his very een enrich’d:
Even Satan glowr’d, and fidg’d fu’ fain,
And hotch’d and blew wi’ might and main:
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a thegither,
And roars out, “Weel done, Cutty-sark!”
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied.
When out the hellish legion sallied.

As bees bizz out wi’ angry fyke,
When plundering herds assail their byke;
As open pussie’s mortal foes,
When, pop! she starts before their nose;
As eager runs the market-crowd,
When “Catch the thief!” resounds aloud;
So Maggie runs, the witches follow,
Wi’ mony an eldritch skreich and hollow.

Ah, Tam! Ah, Tam! thou’ll get thy fairin!
In hell, they’ll roast thee like a herrin!
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin!
Kate soon will be a woefu’ woman!
Now, do thy speedy-utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stone o’ the brig;
There, at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they dare na cross.
But ere the keystane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake!
For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tam wi’ furious ettle;
But little wist she Maggie’s mettle!
Ae spring brought off her master hale,
But left behind her ain grey tail:
The carlin claught her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.

Now, wha this tale o’ truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother’s son, take heed:
Whene’er to Drink you are inclin’d,
Or Cutty-sarks rin in your mind,
Think ye may buy the joys o’er dear;
Remember Tam o’ Shanter’s mare.



More SCOTLAND THE STRANGE in a couple of days. Previous article here: 

SCOTLAND THE STRANGE: THE EYES OF DOOM

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SCOTLAND THE STRANGE: THE EYES OF DOOM

This week, in honour of Burns Night, which celebrates Scottish poet Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), our greydogtales site begins a ramble through the subject of Scottish supernatural/horror and related cultural stuff. We’ll have some classic tales, new material, guest reviews of some really bad films set in Scotland, and all sorts, alongside which we will also celebrate veteran storyteller Willie Meikle’s forthcoming book of his own weird fiction, ‘Haunted Scotland’ — the other reason for staging this event.

And we should we, Yorkshire folk born and bred, be doing this? Partly because our friend Willie has had some very rough health problems this last couple of years — and partly because we are terribly Northern at heart. Remember, if you skin a Scotsman, you will find a Yorkshireman underneath, going through the Scotsman’s purse.

Dour, careful with money, generous with food, and sometimes incomprehensible to outsiders (there are elements of the Scots language and the old Yorkshire dialects which are mutually recognisable), the people of the Scottish Lowlands and Northern England have a long history of raiding each other and burning each other down, but both are rightly suspicious of the English in the South, where everyone lives on caviar and champagne, bought with the stolen wealth of the North. Or something like that.

SCOTLAND THE STRANGE
ben lomond (see story)

So, rather than rattle on further today, we start with a tale which may be less well known, one of the 1920s  supernatural stories of writer Ella Scrymsour, set in Scotland, of course. If you simply want a ‘good’ read, the first of Scrymsour’s six ‘Shiela Crerar’ tales is presented in full below. If you want more background, this post from a while ago may provide some enlightenment.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/shiela-crerar-clay-corpses-psychic-investigation-girls/

And more detail of the six tales themselves, but with spoilers, can be found here:

https://darkworldsquarterly.gwthomas.org/the-ghostbreakers-shiela-crerar/

‘Eyes of Doom’ is classic fun, and though not without its faults and oddities, is a rare example of a female writer of those times writing a female ‘occult detective’…


THE EYES OF DOOM

by Ella Scrymsour

 

SHIELA CRERAR FELT VERY LONELY as she sat in her tiny sitting-room in her dreary lodgings. She was tired, too, mentally as well as physically, and she tried to forget the misery of the past six months.

An orphan, she had been brought up by an uncle who idolised her. For twenty-two years she had lived in happiness in their home in the Highlands. She could visualise it now. A smallish house for a laird, built in the true Scottish baronial style, with turreted roof and pepper-box corners and a tiny courtyard. ‘Kencraig’ was built on the top of a high eminence overlooking Loch Lubnaig, and it had been one of her chief delights to sit among the heather and watch the rippling waters of the lake beneath. To her left was Ben Ledi, and she revelled in his rugged beauty. He stood for strength and chivalry in her young mind, and she always thought of him as a rough but courteous Bruce, with shaggy locks and tartan kilts flying in the wind. It was only a girlish fancy, but to her the Ben was a living personality – nature’s gentleman – a Highland chief.

For twenty-two years she had bid him good morning and waved him a good night. For twenty-two years she had wandered among the heather, bathed in the Loch, and driven into Callender once a week to do her shopping. And now – she wondered why this sorrow should have come to her. Six months ago she had been out in the woods gathering rowan berries. She had gone home gay and bright, but there was no welcoming figure of Uncle John waiting at the door for her. She went into his study – and, oh, the horror of it! He was sitting at his desk, his eyes open wide, his mouth twisted sideways, his hands cold. He did not answer her call. She knew he was dead. ‘Heart failure,’ the doctor said, and Shiela felt that the light had gone out of her world.

The funeral over, she had gone into the library with Mr MacArthur, her uncle’s attorney. At first Shiela did not understand what Mr MacArthur was trying to tell her. She couldn’t realise that she had been left penniless, with only a heavily mortgaged estate as a legacy. Mr MacArthur advised her to sell Kencraig, pay off the mortgage, and with what little remained over fit herself to take her place among the workers of the great world. But Shiela refused to sell her home. Every stone was precious to her, every corner was a dear, living friend.

At last she agreed to let it on a five years’ lease to a rich American widow.

‘What do you intend doing now?’ he asked.

‘I shall have about a hundred pounds. I shall go to London, and try and get something to do there.’

She was obstinate. She procured cheap rooms in London in a road derisively called Air Street. Her hundred pounds did not go far. In vain she tried for work in the great Metropolis; no one wanted her. Depressed and silent, she sat in her little room, and wondered what would happen when her scanty money gave out. She was a petite maid, with nut-brown hair and grey eyes that looked all too trustingly at a cruel and heartless world.

She had no money to spend on amusements, and as she walked the streets of the great city she saw visions of the long ago. She wandered in Lincoln’s Inn, and saw the passing of sedan chairs; watched gallants, with silken coat and jewelled sword, bend low before their lady loves. She sought out ‘old London’, and lived alone in the seventeenth century. Always psychic, her gift seemed trebled in her sorrow and loneliness, and her only friends now were the dim ghosts of the past.

She was sitting in the gardens of Lincoln’s Inn one day, when she suddenly became aware of a quaint figure beside her – a wizened man of perhaps sixty years, in a dark, claret-coloured suit, with a black three-cornered hat upon his knee. And as she looked, he took a pinch of snuff from a beautifully enamelled box, and applied it to his nostrils, his little finger delicately poised like a bird on the wing.

‘You are sad and lonely, little lady,’ he said suddenly. ‘Why not help those that are sad and lonely too? You have a gift – a most wonderful gift of sight. Use that sight for your own benefit and the benefit of mankind. I promise you, you will not fail.’

‘But how?’ she began, but the quaint little figure had gone; and there was only a fat old woman, with an untidy dress and a rusty black bonnet, watching her curiously from the further corner of the seat.

Shiela felt dazed. She rose and looked round. No, she was still in the bustling world of taxis and motor-buses. The picturesque past had vanished. She smiled a little, and went home, but her brain was working hard. She slept well that night, and when morning came her mind was made up.

For the next three days an advertisement appeared in the agony column of The Times:

Lady of gentle birth, Scottish, young, penniless, possessing strong psychic powers, will devote her services to the solving of uncanny mysteries or the ‘laying of ghosts’. Offer quite genuine. Reply, with particulars and remuneration offered, to S. C. c/o Mrs Barker, 14b Air Street, Regent’s Park, London.

And now she was waiting – waiting. Two days had passed since her advertisement had first appeared. A double knock sounded. The postman! A footstep sounded outside, and Mrs Barker appeared.

‘A registered letter for you, my dear,’ she remarked cheerily. ‘I’ll be bringing yer supper in ‘alf a tick. See, it’s a bloater tonight, ain’t it? A poor man’s steak, I calls it.’

And Shiela shuddered slightly. The well-meant vulgarity repelled her; the stench of cooking fish nauseated her. She felt nervy, restless, ill. The Highlands were calling her – she longed to feel the springy heather under her feet – to drink in the strong air. It was the call of the hills!

She looked at the thick, crested envelope curiously. It was certainly an answer to her advertisement, for it was addressed to her initials – S. C. Slowly she read it, and a flush of excitement crept into her cheeks.

Dunfunerie,
Loch Long, N.B.

If S. C.’s offer is really genuine, will she accept the enclosed £10 on account for immediate expenses, and wire Lady Kildrummie that she is prepared to try to solve, and perhaps lay for ever, the very unpleasant mystery known as the ‘Kildrummie Weird’? If S. C. states the time she will arrive at Arrochar Station, Lady Kildrummie will see that there is a car sent to meet her.

Shiela’s eyes glowed. Arrochar! Scotland! Her luck had turned at last. She was going back to her beloved Highlands. But would she succeed in her undertaking? Then she remembered the ‘little old man’ in Lincoln’s Inn. ‘You will not fail,’ he had said. Of course, she had heard of the ‘Kildrummie Weird’. Who had not? Was it not as much speculated upon as the hidden mystery of Glamis? Was it not even as mysterious? What was the story – did not some great calamity happen when the Weird appeared?

 

Next day she wired Lady Kildrummie that she would come at once, and she caught the night train to Glasgow where she changed for the West Highland line. At Arrochar Station, over which Ben Lomond towers, she looked round eagerly.

A tall man in the late thirties came towards her – a handsome man, rugged, strong, in a kilt of the Cameron tartan, his mother’s clan.

‘Miss Crerar?’ he asked, raising his bonnet. ‘I am Stavordale Hartland. My aunt, Lady Kildrummie, asked me to meet you.’

His voice was pleasantly tuneful, and the wholesome admiration in his eyes could do nought but please her. Instantly she compared him to rugged Ben Ledi, and, had the man at her side but known, it was the greatest compliment she could have paid him.

Dunfunerie was situate on the Argyllshire side of Loch Long, nestling under the great shoulder of ‘The Cobbler’ himself. Lady Kildrummie met her with outstretched hands. ‘How good of you to come, my dear. Are you by any chance related to Crerar of Kencraig?’

‘He was my uncle.’

‘Then you are doubly welcome, for Kencraig was my late husband’s greatest friend. Now, Stavordale, you can leave Miss Crerar and me to have tea together.’

It was not until they had finished their tea that her hostess commenced her story.

‘My dear, I am in great trouble,’ she said, by way of starting. ‘Your advertisement interested me, and I wondered if you could “lay for ever” the Weird that haunts this place. Up to now the story has been kept absurdly secret – I think none of us wanted to believe in it. Since the time of Coinneach the Strong, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, Kildrummie has been cursed by this Weird. Every twenty-three years some terrible calamity has occurred in the family, preceded for about six months by “The Eyes”.’

‘The Eyes?’

‘Yes, the “Eyes of Doom” they are called. The Kildrummie Weird takes the form of eyes that appear and disappear, and are mainly seen in the west wing. In recent years calamity has fallen on this house after the Eyes have been seen. In 1874, the year I was married, my husband’s two elder brothers died – each by his own hand. One was found drowned in the Loch, the other was shot on the summit of the “Cobbler” yonder. At both inquests the verdict was “accidental death”, but we all knew better. It was “the Eyes” that had driven them mad. My husband became heir to the title, and in 1897 my eldest son poisoned himself. Again it was put down to an accident. He was dabbling in photography, and it was supposed that he took some cyanide by mistake for his medicine. But it was no accident – twenty-three years had passed, and he had seen “The Eyes”. This is 1920, Miss Crerar; it is twenty-three years since Diarmid died, and I am afraid. My son Duncan, the only one left to me, is now twenty-six years old. Lately he has complained of being kept awake at night by curious creakings. He has seen strange lights, and, oh, he is changed. I can’t explain what I mean; you will see for yourself; he is all nerves. I am convinced he has seen “The Eyes of Doom”. Will you try and solve the mystery for me, Miss Crerar? What the cause is I don’t know, but the hideous waiting for some tragedy to fall is terrible.’

‘I’ll do my best, Lady Kildrummie. I can promise you no more.’

That evening Shiela met Duncan Kildrummie. Although young, he was a distinguished soldier – had won the D.S.O., and been mentioned several times in despatches, and had the reputation among his friends of being a regular dare-devil. But Shiela had a shock when she saw him. His hands were restless, the flesh under his eyes was puffy and dark, and if he was spoken to suddenly his whole body would respond with nervous twitchings.

‘Lady Kildrummie,’ she said after dinner, ‘will you put your son into another room to sleep, and leave his empty for me to examine? I can see he is in a state of great mental distress. Can’t you get him to go away for a change?’

‘It’s no use, Miss Crerar. I have begged him to go away, but nothing will induce him to leave.’

 

That night Shiela changed into a dark rest-gown, and when everyone had retired to bed she prowled up and down the long corridors armed only with a tiny flash-lamp. She unlocked the chapel door and went inside. Suddenly she felt an icy blast that seemed to pierce through her, and the heavy door closed silently behind her. She felt startled, and tried to open it, but the catch was down on the other side. She was locked in! The sudden gust of wind was not repeated, yet she found she was shivering with cold from head to foot. Always venturesome, the thought never entered her head to find a way of rousing the household. If she was unable to get out, then she would stay in the chapel till day came.

She sat down in one of the old-fashioned pews and looked about her. The moon was conveniently bright, and she could distinguish objects quite clearly by its light.

As she sat she became aware that someone was looking at her, and she turned sharply round.

A pair of eyes was gazing at her, eyes so mournful, so full of grief that Shiela felt her own fill with tears of sympathy.

And as she met the piteous gaze she became suddenly conscious of the fact that the eyes were not framed by a face! She rose with a startled exclamation of horror, and turned away, but to her right another pair of eyes appeared, eyes this time that were mad with hate; eyes so filled with loathing and malevolence that Shiela backed away from them in fear. But now the whole chapel seemed filled with the ghastly sight. Eyes with expression, eyes without! Eyes kind, eyes cruel! Eyes imbecile, eyes fanatical! Eyes with every expression in them that man could conceive.

Shiela put out her hands to beat the swelling mass away, but even as her arms were extended in front of her they were caught in a ghostly vice, and she was dragged to the vestry door.

She was drawn by unseen hands – hands that possessed an unseen body. All that she could see of her captor was two eyes, eyes that shone in the moonlight and that looked at her with cruel menace.

The vestry door swung silently open, and she was dragged through, followed by the eyes. She had no time to look round, for the door that communicated with the west wing, which was always doubly locked and barred, now stood open wide, and through it Shiela was taken.

The west wing was partly a ruin, and the wind whistled through glassless windows and roofless halls. Then the grip of iron relaxed, and she found she was in a small turret chamber, and around her were twenty-three pairs of eyes – all baleful and cruel, except one, and that one pair seemed as if they might belong to a wounded deer, so plaintive were they, so mournful and sad.

Shiela moved towards the door, but the eyes surrounded her. She tried to dodge them, tried to get away from them, but it was impossible. She was as keenly guarded as if by living bodies. Then she grew really frightened, terrified, her brain seemed to go numb, her teeth chattered, and she cried aloud in her agony of dread. But the eyes grew fiercer and more cruel – they seemed to menace her. With a cry she threw herself at the bodiless terrors, and all became dark.

For awhile she remembered nothing, then she was conscious that she was being carried down long corridors and up steep stairs. There was the sound of a click, and a voice said, ‘Do you want anything, Miss Crerar? I heard you call out, so I came across to you.’ It was Lady Kildrummie.

‘I’m thirsty,’ cried Shiela, ‘and, oh, please, Lady Kildrummie, will you put the light on.’

But Lady Kildrummie stared in amazement, for she had switched on the electric light as she entered the room! She bent over the girl. Here eyes were open wide, but they met her gaze with a cold stare. The sight had gone!

‘My dear, my dear,’ she breathed, ‘what has happened?’

‘I – I hardly know. I – I was in the chapel – oh, do please put on the light. It is so dark here.’

Tenderly the elder woman put her arms about the girl.

‘Tell me first what is the matter,’ she said gently. ‘The dark is so peaceful, and I am here with you.’

Incoherently Shiela spoke. ‘I was in the chapel – through the turret room. There were twenty-three eyes – ‘ The girl’s voice trailed off. She seemed to be in a stupor, but her eyes were still wide open. Lady Kildrummie rang a bell.

‘Tell Doctor Graeme to come here at once,’ she said to the startled maid. ‘Miss Crerar is ill.’

The genial doctor, a guest in the house, came hurriedly and examined the girl.

‘She’s had a shock,’ he said.

‘Her eyes! Her eyes!’ cried Lady Kildrummie, distractedly.

‘My God! Blind! But she was all right at dinner!’ said the doctor.

That night a watchful vigil was kept over Shiela, and when the sun rose she awoke from her torpor and looked at Lady Kildrummie in amazement.

‘What is the matter?’ she asked, curiously. ‘Why are you here?’

And her hostess realised that she had regained the power of sight. When the doctor saw her he stared at her in amazement.

‘My dear young lady, why, I – I – bless my soul – there’s nothing wrong with her!’

Shiela told Lady Kildrummie of her experience in the night, but her hostess smiled.

‘You have certainly described the turret room, Miss Crerar, but you couldn’t have got into it last night, as I hold the key.’

‘But I did,’ protested Shiela. ‘The door was open wide.’

‘Well, we will go and look at it as soon as you are up, but I assure you it would be quite impossible for anyone to open the door without my key.’

 

‘Now,’ said Lady Kildrummie later, ‘you see this door is twice bolted and twice locked.’

The bolts were stiff and the key turned with great difficulty, but the nail-studded door swung open at last. Shiela gave a little cry of triumph. The floor, thickly coated with the dust of ages, was marked by freshly made footprints – footprints of long, pointed boots that crossed and recrossed each other – and among the old-fashioned prints were some made by a little, light modern shoe.

Shiela took hers off, and bent down to the mark nearest the door. It fitted exactly!

‘I was here last night,’ she whispered, hysterically.

But Lady Kildrummie was almost speechless, and terror shone in her eyes. ‘The Eyes of Doom,’ she muttered, hoarsely. ‘God help us, for our troubles are beginning.’

That night as Shiela was preparing for bed again the melancholy eyes appeared. She looked at them fearfully. It was an awe-inspiring sight to watch those expressive eyes move about, propelled by an unseen force. They seemed to float in the air, and she knew their power of locomotion rested in the bodies that were hidden from her sight. And even as she waited the other eyes manifested themselves. She tried to resist, but the ghostly hands were too strong, and again she was taken to the turret room. A circle of eyes was around her – eyes on a level with her own, but only space above them and space below. But they seemed less malignant, less cruel, though terrifying nevertheless. They seemed to be trying to tell her something, but she was unable to read their message. She was nervous, she was on the defensive, and unconsciously she rendered herself out of tune with the Weird. She was not in a fit psychic state to understand them. She was in too material a condition. The eyes seemed to realise this, and they grew menacing again, fretful, impatient. Again there came to the girl a space of forgetfulness, and when she awoke to realities she was back in her room, and she realised she was blind!

She moved uncertainly about the room. Everything seemed unfamiliar to her, unreal. Her eyes hurt her, they seemed inflamed, they were sore. All night long the pain was unbearable, and she sat on a chair, helpless and miserable. But as the dawn came so a veil seemed to be lifted from her eyes, and she could see once more. It was a blindness that came with the darkness and went with the morning light.

During the day Shiela was trying to get into communion with the astral world. She was trying to fit herself to ‘see’ even deeper into the mysteries of the ‘unknown’. It was her first trial alone, and she was gradually becoming fitted for the task she had set herself.

Daily Duncan Kildrummie grew more silent, more morose, more taciturn. The Kildrummie Weird was trying to claim him as its victim, and he realised it and knew he was too weak to hold out against it for long. Soon he, too, would die – and die ‘accidentally’, as so many members of his family had done.

The eyes grew more venturesome. One night a pair hovered over the dinner table, and gazed at Duncan intently. All saw them, and as Lady Kildrummie screamed in terror they disappeared. But Duncan rose, and stumbled blindly out of the room. Stavordale went quickly after him, and found his cousin staring at the cold waters of the Loch. He was staring, staring, and there was a look of madness in his eyes. The next night several pairs circled round him. He tried to beat them off, but they seemed always just out of his reach, and their expression mocked him.

Stavordale Hartland attached himself to Shiela, and she found his strong personality a great help to her in the nerve-racking time she was going through. Night after night when the eyes claimed her she found she was a helpless entity in their grasp. And in the turret room they supplicated, entreated, menaced her, and still she was unable to read their meaning.

And daily the eyes seemed to appear more often. They followed Duncan from room to room, they drove him out of the house, and he would disappear for hours at a time, and his mother’s heart would ache with apprehension.

One night Shiela resolved not to go to bed, and Lady Kildrummie and Stavordale agreed to sit up all night with her in the library. For Shiela had come to dread the period of blindness that was forced upon her in so mysterious a way, and she wondered if in company she would be strong enough to resist the ghostly hands.

First one pair of eyes appeared, and then another, until all twenty-three pairs surrounded the trio. As if turned to stone, Lady Kildrummie and Stavordale Hartland watched Shiela forcibly dragged out of the room. They could neither move nor speak, and when Shiela returned to them she found that three helpless people would have to stay in the library until dawn, for this time they were all blind!

Next night Shiela and Stavordale were standing together watching Duncan walking restlessly up and down the terrace.

‘Don’t you think you had better give all this up, little girl?’ said Stavordale Hartland, and his voice held a tender, caressing note.

‘I can’t’ she said, passionately. ‘Look at him. He is all his mother has. Can’t you see the Eyes are driving him mad? The Weird will claim another victim unless I can prevent it.’ And even as she spoke the evil eyes appeared, phosphorescent in the darkness, and with a wild shriek Duncan Kildrummie fled into the blackness of the night. Until the morning he roamed the country at large, and when he appeared at breakfast he was haggard and worn, and the most inexperienced eye could tell that he was really ill.

 

Shiela alone seemed to have a soothing effect upon him, and when later in the day Dr Graeme administered a sleeping draught, he suggested that Shiela should sit by his bedside until it took effect. Lady Kildrummie left her for a moment, and immediately Shiela was conscious that the Eyes were watching her.

Before she realised it she was in the turret room, and she found she was numb from head to foot – she was powerless to move. As she watched, the eyes suddenly materialised into men. Gradually their bodies appeared until twenty-two men in doublet and hose stood before her. Their garments were of silk and velvet – rich, costly, gay. And the twenty-third of that ghostly company was a girl, almost a child of not more than fifteen years. Her hair was unbound and her face distorted with grief, and she clung piteously to a black-bearded man of middle age. A ghostly play began, and all the while Shiela watched with increasing horror. Others appeared on the scene – men in kilt and plaid, with dirks drawn, dirks red with blood. Roughly the girl was torn from the arms of her father and bound with hempen ropes.

The scenes that followed were hideous to behold, and Shiela knew that there was a power at work that compelled her to watch. The captive girl writhed and tore at her bonds, but all to no purpose – they were too cunningly tied. Not a word was said aloud, but the agonised expressions, the black terror spoke louder than words.

Two ghostly figures in black carried in a red-hot brazier; the coal burned and seemed to splutter, yet made no sound. Two long irons were placed in the glowing coals. The prisoners made a desperate effort to overpower their captors; for a few moments the whole place was in confusion, but gradually their efforts were subdued, and one by one they were dragged to the fire. One by one the red-hot iron was plunged into their eyes, one by one they were blinded and flung aside to die.

Shiela watched twenty-two men done to death in this awful way. She watched their agonies of pain, their writhings, their torments, and the scene was all the more horrible because of the deathly silence that accompanied it.

There was but one more victim – the girl. Roughly she was dragged to the brazier, but a merciful Providence intervened, she stumbled and fell, and when a man roughly turned her over with his foot he found the gentle spirit had fled.

The assassins looked round the room at the dead, and even as they did so the scene changed, and Shiela found she was out in the chestnut avenue, standing before the giant tree, the pride of Dunfunerie. The rain poured down in torrents, the wind blew hard, her dress clung to her figure and chilled her, her shoes were covered with mud. A black-cowled monk approached, with beads and breviary. Horror came into his countenance as he stumbled over the still warm bodies. He touched the girl in gentle pity, but he was jostled away rudely. He opened his book, and Shiela could see that he was pleading to be allowed to say a prayer over the bodies. A huge man struck him, and as he picked himself up he silently cursed the murderers. He cursed them on the Holy Book, but they jeered in his face and continued their nefarious work.

There under the spreading chestnut tree a pit was dug, and, with neither prayer nor priest, into it the girl was flung. Then followed the other twenty-three. The hole was small – the bodies protruded above the sides. With a ribald smile on his cruel face, the menacing figure in black forced the ground to receive them. The pit was covered in with earth, the murdered ones were safely hidden away, and Shiela realised she had witnessed a scene that had taken place some three hundred years before, a scene that had been re-enacted for her benefit. At last she knew what ‘the Eyes’ had tried to tell her.

The figures died away, they seemed to be absorbed into the atmosphere itself, and once more only twenty-three pairs of eyes were left, but they were eyes that looked at her with gratitude. They knew she understood.

And as she watched them, too, fade away she was conscious that her limbs were once more warm. She looked round in bewilderment – there on the bed lay the sleeping form of Duncan Kildrummie. She was back in his room. She felt her dress – it was quite dry. Her shoes had no trace of mud upon them. Lady Kildrummie entered.

‘My dear, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I am afraid I have been rather a long time. Why ‘ she broke off, ‘what’s the matter?’ For Shiela was gazing at the open door, and her expression was soft and pitiful. But Lady Kildrummie could not see the figure of a frail young girl, dressed in a soft homespun with a white kerchief round her shoulders, a girl who looked at Shiela with thanks in her soft brown eyes.

‘I think I shall be able to help you lay your “Weird” successfully, Lady Kildrummie,’ said Shiela. ‘I’ll tell you later, after I have had time to think.’ Next day a small party gathered underneath the chestnut tree. The turf was smooth and velvety – it had grown undisturbed for many centuries, but now it was being removed.

‘Ah!’ said Shiela, suddenly, for as the spade dug deep into the rich brown earth a skeleton arm appeared. Reverently the mould was moved. Twenty-two skeletons were unearthed, twenty-two skeletons of full-grown men, but at the bottom of the pit was a tiny skeleton, a skeleton crushed and broken. And Shiela knew it was the last remains of the girl – the Weird with the mournful eyes!

Reverently the bones were placed in an empty stone sarcophagus in the little chapel, and reverently the minister spoke the prayers for the dead. And as the last amen was said, Shiela heard an unseen choir burst out in song. It was the ‘Gloria in Excelsis Deo’.

Lady Kildrummie drew her cloak about her shoulders. ‘Do you hear the wind whistling?’ she asked. Shiela smiled. She knew.

 

Six weeks later Duncan Kildrummie was up for the first time, after a serious attack of brain fever, during which for some days his life had been in the balance. But now the nervous twitchings were entirely gone, and his eye was clear and steady.

‘And you think we are free of the “Weird” at last?’ asked Lady Kildrummie, as she was bidding Shiela goodbye.

‘I hope so. I don’t know the history of the turret room, but I should say the twenty-three were trapped there, and perhaps for religious reasons were foully murdered by some of your forebears. They were refused a Christian burial, and that accounted for their hatred and their hauntings. Their poor spirits were unable to rest in peace. Every twenty-three years – their number – they returned, but they could not make themselves understood.’

Stavordale accompanied Shiela to Glasgow. He was very silent during the journey, but as the train was drawing into the city he suddenly took one of her hands.

‘Miss Crerar – Shiela – I – I – won’t you give all this up?’ he urged.

‘I – I can’t,Mr Hartland.’

‘But why? Shiela, won’t you be my wife?’

‘I – I can’t explain, but I have a mission to fulfil. I have set myself a task, and I must complete it.’ She smiled at him. ‘Won’t you wait a little?’

‘Then you do care,’ he said, triumphantly, as he sought to draw her towards him, but the train had already stopped at the platform of the Glasgow terminus. Then all was bustle and rush, and it was not until he had said goodbye to her as she left for Edinburgh, where she had engaged rooms, that he realised she had not replied to his question!

Well, perhaps the time was not yet ripe for his love-making, but he realised whate’er might befall he had met his fate. And, like a knight in the ‘days of long ago’, the wish of his lady was his law. He would bide her time, impatient though he might be.



Lots more SCOTLAND THE STRANGE over the next couple of weeks, so do check back again!

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WINTER TALES: THE BEASTS OF KEMBERDALE

The final free story of our winter tales from JLG this year is a bit different — a winter solstice on its way, a piece of quiet folk horror set in Northern England in 1975…

“Our first mistake was the car we hired in York. I rarely drove; Petersen was used to London and the flatlands. It soon became obvious that we would have been better hiring a Landrover than the large, comfortable Ford Granada we had been offered. This was late November, and although we’d avoided snow as yet, every route to Kemberdale involved narrow lanes lined with drystone walls, sudden lurches into precipitous inclines, and poorly-metalled country roads. Crossing the purple and dark green expanse of the moors proper, Petersen jerked the wheel at every idle sheep in the road and every bird which broke from cover.”

This was first published in Lonely Hollows, Pavane Press 2023, and as it happens, this rather neat cover was inspired by my contribution.

winter tales

If you would simply like a free download to read later on some abnatural mechanical device, click the link right below:

kember-jlgscreen



THE BEASTS OF KEMBERDALE

by John Linwood Grant

 

North Yorkshire, 1975

I shall call the place Kemberdale, in order to spare those who deserve their anonymity. It is real, though—one of those small communities on the edge of the bleak North York Moors. Perhaps once it straddled a Roman road, or a later pack-trail between more important destinations, but now it stands disconnected, isolated. Farming land, with little to commend it to outsiders—none of the ruined buildings or interesting vistas which delight ramblers and amateur photographers. Sheep on the hillsides; wheat and potatoes in the fields.

Archie Crane mentioned it to me, at a dull party in Chelsea. Archie is a touch pestiferous, and will poke his nose into others’ affairs.

“Young Petersen has his eye on a collection held by the local lord of the manor. I say ‘lord’, but he’s just a jumped-up farmer, really.” Archie refreshed our glasses. “Anyway, they say there are a few oddities up there, and Petersen thinks they’re worth a look…”

The conversation swung to gossip about a sculptor we both knew, and I thought nothing of it until I bumped into Erik Petersen later that week at a wine-bar.

“Fancy an adventure, Justin?” Petersen was a tall blond, a fine echo of his Scandinavian forebears. “I need to go north later this week.”

“Kemberdale?”

His eyes widened, then narrowed with suspicion. It spoiled his good looks.

“Are we in competition?”

I laughed. “I don’t even know what’s up there, and no-one’s asked me to go hunting, if that’s what you mean. I’m carefree—and commission-free—at the moment.

He relaxed. “Oh, well, I know you’re fond of Yorkshire, and you do have an eye for curios, so I wonder…”

“What’s the quarry?”

He stubbed out his cigarette and leaned closer.

“I have it on good authority that there used to be a number of quaint practices in the area, the sort of thing that people keep trying to revive.”

“Dear God, not druids?” An unfortunate encounter the previous year, involving suburban accountants, had quite put me off that area. Little was worse than middle-class Englishmen—or women—donning robes and wandering round spouting pseudo-Celtic nonsense without the faintest idea of what they were doing.

“No, genuine folk history. Chap up there wrote to say that he has some costumes; mumming, sword dances—that sort of game—including a nice set of masks.”

It wasn’t particularly my field, but I’d submitted my column to ‘The Sculptor’ magazine, knocked off a couple of articles for The Times, and completed a large estate valuation, so a trip up North might provide a pleasant break. Petersen was easy on the eye, and decent company.

“I could be free by Thursday,” I offered.

We agreed the details there and then.

*****

Our first mistake was the car we hired in York. I rarely drove; Petersen was used to London and the flatlands. It soon became obvious that we would have been better hiring a Landrover than the large, comfortable Ford Granada we had been offered. This was late November, and although we’d avoided snow as yet, every route to Kemberdale involved narrow lanes lined with drystone walls, sudden lurches into precipitous inclines, and poorly-metalled country roads. Crossing the purple and dark green expanse of the moors proper, Petersen jerked the wheel at every idle sheep in the road and every bird which broke from cover.

“Christ, what was that?” he said as he almost took us into a ditch.

“Pheasant. For goodness sake, Erik—are you expecting spear-wielding natives to burst out of the bracken?”

In time, and after a few accidental detours, we spotted a lichen-covered wooden post with a sign which could just be made out: Kember 5 miles. The rest of the journey was a low-gear crawl down into a valley bottom, and on through a scatter of stone cottages to our destination.

Kember Manor was the only building of note in sight—a farmhouse fortified in the manner more commonly found on the Scottish borders. No doubt the northern dales had seen their share of sheep and cattle rustling.

I wouldn’t have called the manor attractive—the thick walls appeared a mix of gritstone and brick, unevenly plastered, with lank ivy hiding a good third of the two storey building, which could have been 16th or even15th century. A few small, quartered windows were scattered across the frontage as if afterthoughts, looking out over a pitted gravel drive which meandered between barns and chicken-huts.

“Chap we’re going to see is a Samuel Beckshaw. His family have lived around here since Adam; he owns most of the houses hereabouts. Has the only telephone in Kemberdale, would you believe?”

“That’s one more phone than I might have expected,” I said, conscious that the landscape was fading into a charmless dusk. “Are we going to drive back to York in the dark?”

“No, Beckshaw’s putting us up for the night—he wanted me to come as soon as possible.”

I hadn’t been able to get a straight answer as to whether Petersen was buying any of this stuff, or simply viewing it and looking to catalogue it, but I’d been promised a couple of nights in a decent York hotel when we’d finished in Kemberdale.

Petersen slid the Granada to a halt in a patch of mud by the nearest barn, and pronounced himself content.

“Four o’clock. Not bad time, really.”

I said nothing. We were supposed to have been here by two in the afternoon.

A cold wind cut across the manor yard, bringing with it the smell of rank vegetation and stagnant water; it smelled as if the entire area could do with a good hosing down, and perhaps a few barrels of carbolic. But the door was answered promptly by a man at odds with these surroundings—a well-dressed man in his late twenties, clean-shaven, red-cheeked and redolent of Old Spice.

“Mr Petersen—you made it.” He looked relieved to see us. “And this would be…”

“Justin Margrave,” I said, extending a hand. His grip was firm, too firm.

“Good, good. Do come in.”

He showed us into a large, barely furnished room with whitewashed walls.

“Where the cattle would have sheltered during raids,” I murmured, and Beckshaw smiled.

“Quite right. With a few modifications.” He indicated a pair of ancient leather sofas, and a set of closed pine cabinets which lined the long far wall.

“By your accent, you’re not from Yorkshire, Mr Beckshaw?” I ease myself into one of the sofas, expecting mice to shoot out of its seams.

“Born here—in this house—but I was abroad for years. In France. Came back when my father died this summer. Cancer.”

“My condolences.”

“Yes.”

Not ‘Thank you’, but ‘Yes’. His smile had gone, and I changed the subject.

“So, Petersen tells me you have some fascinating pieces. I’m more in the sculpture line, with a touch of ceramics and bric-a-brac, but still, I imagine–”

“Time presses, Mr Margrave.” Beckshaw’s interruption was accompanied by the jangle of keys, drawn from his jacket pocket. “I know you’ll think me rude, but I’m hoping to rid myself of this lot as soon as possible…”

“Of course.”I was used to odd customers, and Petersen had an acquisitive gleam in his eye.

“Let me show you what I have. We can have a drink later, and maybe come to terms.”

He unlocked the row of cabinets, five in all. The were tall, not that old, but the contents clearly went back many years, and I found myself stepping closer…

The display before me was reminiscent of a theatrical costumiers I had visited, not long after the war, a warren of a place packed with the most gorgeous and most tawdry racks of gowns and robes, fake jewelled necklaces; sceptres, hats and masks. This looked like its rural, folk museum equivalent.

“Feel free to browse, assure yourself that it’s all genuine.”

We did, and we did.

Thick woollen robes, dyed green and crimson, smelled of another time; furs were moth-eaten in that way which only many decades could achieve. Petersen lifted out a horse skull, gaily coloured but faded, which must have been from a mummer’s hobby horse.

“Early Victorian, at least,” he said, showing it to me. “Brass fixings for the pole, heavily used.”

In the cabinet nearest me were blades typical of the traditional sword dances of the North—rigid steel with simple wooden hilts, the varnish peeling—and padded black ceremonial jackets. The casual heap of jackets was topped by a basket of belled anklets, typical of Morris dances and similar going-on. And there was much more along the same lines.

“Is all this from around here?”

“I don’t know—I didn’t collect this junk. I tried to get rid of it all last month, but none of the museums I rang had enough space or interest to come through in time.”

“In time?”

“You’ll understand in a minute. Here…”

Beckshaw stood back from the last cabinet, holding the door wide open.

This one was shelved—four deep shelves, presenting a display of twelve of the most curious masks I had seen since a Venetian collection I valued back in sixty eight. I had been prepared for the sort of thing that you saw at Mayday and other such times—the papier-mâché dragon’s head, the wheat-sheaf mask, the plague doctor and the knight’s helmet, battered out of tin cans, but these…

Each was a superb representation of an animal’s or bird’s head, fashioned with incredible skill. I took up one from the top shelf; it was clearly meant to portray a robin redbreast. If worn, it would cover most of a man’s head. The small black eyes—volcanic glass?—glittered, the short beak was ready to stab, and the lacquer around it as red as arterial blood. I squinted over my glasses, and could see a patina to the lacquer, a series of those tiny cracks which come with age. The mask was made of wood.

“This is surely carved, painted oak, yet it’s so thin, so beautifully crafted. Quite a find.”

Petersen, running his fingers down the mask of a horned bull, agreed.

“Better than I’d expected. Have you any idea how old these are, Mr Beckshaw?”

“As old as the manor?” The man had a look of immense distaste. “They’ve always been here. My father coveted the masks; I hated them.”

“Hard to hate a wooden mask,” said Petersen, but there we differed. The stare of the robin was cold, even aggressive… I put it down.

I have no peculiar talents, but it has often been said that I am receptive to the ‘feel’ of things. Useful in my line of work, because it means I have an eye for forged paintings, and for mutton passed off as lamb. However important—or valuable— these masks were, I did not trust them. An otter’s head had lips drawn back, sharp teeth exposed; the bull was a mask of anger, not placid strength.

“Ritual.” I murmured. “A local custom, some performance at certain times by the villagers and hill-farmers?”

“The Beasts of Kemberdale,” said Beckshaw. “Much of the collection in general was brought together over the last fifty years, but as I said, the masks have been here for generations. They belong to whoever holds the manor. They’re brought out each solstice, and worn in procession around the limits of the dale. It’s a private thing; no outsiders, no reporters or folklorists allowed. I always refused to take part.”

Petersen look blank, poor boy, but dear, clever Margrave could provide.

“They call it ‘beating the bounds’” I said. “Still goes on in various places around the country. Costumes sometimes, and willow sticks—a sort of ritual to remind everyone of the boundaries of the parish or community. Ordnance Survey for beginners—for those with an old-fashioned sense of the land.”

Beckshaw locked the mask cabinet, and going to a small cupboard, pulling out a bottle of whisky and three glasses. He said nothing until we were seated and supplied, the bottle to hand. It wasn’t very good whisky, but the burn of it was welcome.

“So, you hope Erik will take this lot off your hands?”

Beckshaw poured himself a hefty refill. “Those damned ‘heads’, if not the rest. I remember my father taking them down and stroking them—they always frightened me.” His face darkened. “He spent more time with those bloody masks than with his own son. When he died, I wanted to burn them, but when I suggested a good bonfire… well, I started to hear what I took as veiled threats from some of the local people.”

“Burn them? That would be a terrible waste.” Petersen sat on the edge of the sofa, next to me. “They are… magnificent.”

Which is not what you say if you’re thinking of purchasing an item. You point out the flaws, the limited market, the plunging pound—anything you can, including the price of butter and your tragic war wound, to soften up the seller.

“What sort of threats?” I asked.

Beckshaw’s face was redder than before.

“Oh, I don’t know that they were serious, but they annoyed me. The locals are tight-mouthed, short on words. Tight-knit, as well—few enough marry outside Kemberdale. They said things like ‘Would be a bad do for thee, maister,’ ” He shuddered. “It’s like living in a bloody Brontë novel.”

Another whisky, and Beckshaw began to say more of his late father. He was not only the one who had owned the collection which lay in the cabinets, but the one who had amassed it, gathering remnants of Dales traditions as they fell from practice, and nurturing those which persisted. The masks were his beloved centrepiece.

The manor house settled; cast iron pipes complained at the boiler’s demands, and the large room closed in on us. I sipped my drink, feeling an unease I couldn’t shift. I had the sensation that even through an inch of pine, the masks were staring at us—and listening to the waspish sound of Beckshaw’s continued narration…

“…Yet never a word from him,” Beckshaw was muttering. “His own wife—my mother!—for God’s sake. Influenza, fatal, because he wouldn’t fire up the heating, and wouldn’t take her to hospital. They came close to charging him with negligence, but never a complaint from her…”

“So you left at fifteen, and never came back?” Petersen nodded, clearly half-cut. “Well, Beckshaw old chap, I don’t think there’ll be any problem relieving you of all this.”

He took out a notebook, scribbled in it, and showed it to the other man—probably didn’t want me to see how little he was offering for the collection, in case I poked my nose in.

“Fine, fine,” said Beckshaw, barely glancing at what Petersen had written. “It’s all yours. The sooner the better.”

“Why the rush?” I asked.

He scowled. “The Winter Solstice is near. Soon they’ll trail up here, wanting the bloody masks out again, all the paraphernalia of the procession. Just as they always have.”

“It sounds a harmless enough affair.” I thought it odd that, if he felt so strongly about the things, he hadn’t quietly broken them up. Was he more superstitious than he’d admit to us?

Perhaps he felt his father’s spectre peering over his shoulder, not just the disapproval of the Dalesfolk.

“Harmless? Damn the lot of them, and damn my father!”

And then I grasped what was happening. This wasn’t the first ‘vengeance’ sale I’d seen after someone’s death. Not just removing unpleasant memories, but deliberately selling off objects beloved of the dear departed— out of pure spite. By his lock, stock and barrel sale of local history, Beckshaw was getting back at a whole community, as well.

I offered one last mild suggestion.

“Why not simply donate the ‘Beasts’ to the village?” I stood up, my legs stiff from the car. “Call it a bequest from the manor, and then have done with the place.”

“Bollocks,” said our intoxicated host. “I won’t give them the satisfaction of keeping that crap. Kemberdale and its masks can go to hell. I’ll teach them that this isn’t the Middle Ages.”

Petersen merely giggled; I said nothing more.

A few minutes later, the lord of the manor showed us to our rooms on the floor above. Plain rooms, with good beds. Tired, I stretched myself out, trying not to think.

I was sure that something dark was on the horizon…

*****

My companions were quiet at breakfast, which was slabs of gammon, eggs a-plenty and hot tea. I let the food amuse me for a while, and then asked Petersen about his plans. He chewed on the fatty meat and tried to smile. He wasn’t used to hard drink.

“I’ll ring around this morning. Need a haulier from Whitby or Middlesborough—we can’t get that lot in the car.”

It was a sort of plan, immediately scuppered by the fact that the phone line was down.

“It happens,” said Beckshaw. “November’s the devil for storms up here.”

There hadn’t been a storm in the night. I wondered if the November was also the devil for a truculent villager with wire clippers?

“I’ll take a stroll,” I said. “I’m sure it will be fixed soon.”

Why would it be fixed, though? No one else around here had a telephone. I suspected that Petersen might have to drive to some more modern part of civilisation if he wanted to make arrangements.

I have always been fond of Yorkshire. It is, in general, a vast and fascinating county with a vehement sense of its own worth – ‘God’s Own Country’—and a dour suspicion of the South. And of Lancashire, and the Midlands, and… well, you get the picture. Generous in person, and yet insular. Kemberdale was little different from any other small dale in aspect, but as I walked down from the manor and along the main road, I felt I was being observed.

A lone ploughman worked a field by the roadside, a team of horses turning the wet soil, and I thought of the hobby-horse skull in its cabinet. These people were closer to the earth than most, for better or worse. Beckshaw and Petersen had no sense of it, but I—

A stoat or weasel darted across the lane, their scramble followed by a shriek of rooks in the gaunt trees above. And there were wrens in the hedgerow ahead.

“Who killed Cock Robin?” I asked myself aloud and thought of black, gleaming eyes.

I passed a roofless schoolhouse with 1743 carved into its stone lintel, and next to that, a low cottage with a woman sitting outside, peeling potatoes. She paused in her task, her fingernails broken, her fingers caked with mud. Her hazel eyes met my gaze.

“He mun relent,” she said. “We knows as why tha’s here. We all knows.”

I had nothing to offer. “The masks? Not much I can do, to be honest. Mr Beckshaw’s made his choice.”

I thought I caught a glimpse of a face at the window of the adjoining cottage. Kemberdale was definitely watching me.

“T’ain’t his to make. He mun relent, or…”

She went back to her work, making it clear she had nothing else to say.

I, too, thought Beckshaw should relent, and leave well alone. But I didn’t like the sound of ‘or…’

Back at the manor, I asked our host if he had a shotgun.

“Rabbits,” I added, without offering to explain further.

He seemed surprised, but brought down an absolute beauty, with a box of cartridges. A genuine Purdey up and under, twenty eight inch. I silently assessed it as worth seven, eight thousand pounds. To him, it was some casual relic of his father’s time here.

“I don’t shoot,” he said, which was fairly obvious.

If I was wary of the masks, I coveted this gun. A collector’s piece, like a diamond discovered in a coal scuttle. I muttered something about cleaning it, and he lost interest.

The promised rain came, heavy enough to worry Petersen. He looked bleary-eyed.

“Don’t fancy taking the Granada through this. I’ll drive to Whitby first thing tomorrow, and have a chap follow me back with a van. We’ll be out of your hair as soon as we’re loaded, Mr Beckshaw. You have my cheque.”

“One more day?” said Beckshaw, somewhat morose. “But yes, that’s good enough.”

Whilst Petersen spend his afternoon cataloguing the collection, I lay in my room and read or pondered. So Rafael Beckshaw, our friend’s father, had been a typical hard hill-farmer, clearly uncompromising, even cold to his only child. There were no photographs of him, but pages at the back of the huge family bible ran through the generations, scribbled down by successive patriarchs. The earliest entry was 1612. And there was one picture of his wife, taken in the forties or fifties, by her outfit. She looked sad, harried.

The ‘Beasts’ had brought her no comfort, whatever they offered the rest of Kemberdale.

After a dinner which consisted of beef, potatoes and a rambling explanation by Petersen of what he might do with the collection—donations to favoured museums and pure profit-making—I retired early. The rain had not stopped. It had made a lake of the yard; it hammered against the roof tiles, and spoke of nothing good.

I kept the Purdey with me, and wondered why I found myself too often in these awkward, unsettled situations…

*****

The noises in the night were not the house timbers, nor the heating pipes. I had been dozing, above the room where the collection was kept, and was sure that I had heard the heavy main door grate open.

I threw on my jacket, and crept to Beckshaw’s room, the shotgun with me. I shook him gently.

“Beckshaw, there’s someone in the manor.”

His eyes flew open.

“What?”

“Downstairs. There’s someone downstairs. What do you want to do?”

It wasn’t my house, and I doubted that anyone around here meant me any particular harm.

“I want to chase the buggers off,” he said, sliding out of bed and dressing.

I roused Petersen, who had been drinking again and was slow to respond. When he was up, we gathered on the landing.

“They won’t want to tackle three men, whoever they are,” said Beckshaw.

I sighed at ‘whoever they are’. Who would the intruders be but Kemberdale, come either to take the masks—or make a crude and direct point about their disposition?

We went barefoot down the blackened stairs, wincing at every small creak, until we stood before the room which held the collection. Any chance I might have had to urge caution was ruined by Beckshaw throwing back the internal door and striding in.

Oil lanterns stood by the door to the yard, setting long shadows across the room, but my attention was drawn rather to the six figures by an open cabinet. One of them was the ploughman I had seen earlier, I thought; the other five were already masked—the robin, the otter, and the bull; the raven and the boar. I shivered at the sight.

The ploughman stood back, holding a powerful representation of a wolf’s head, whilst other masks lay on the floor.

“They are ours, by right,” said Cock Robin—a man’s voice, muffled but strangely high and melodic. “If we must take them, we shall not be kind –”

Beckshaw lurched forward, but the Bull intervened, slamming into the man and felling him. Petersen gasped, and with the usual stupidity of youth, tried to grapple with the Bull, the largest figure there. That gained him a driving fist to the belly, and the attention of Cock Robin—the beak thrust, and Petersen shrieked, blood running from his cheek.

I am not a man of action. I am slightly overweight, in my middle years, and inclined to favour comfortable seating. I was, however, concerned about how far this would go. I made my own move, mostly to protect Petersen, grabbing at Cock Robin’s mask and pulling it from his head…

There are moments in our lives, moments when our souls take precedence over our clever minds or earnest hearts. Such moments are rare, but this was not my first, and so I stood, rather than ran screaming.

Beneath the mask of glittering black eyes and cruel beak, was… a stark and unexpected sight. From the man’s collar rose a feathered head with eyes of dark ice and a wicked beak, open to show a bird’s darting tongue. The feathers moved gently, alive, with his breathing; he was, undeniably, the mask that he had worn.

I fell back, grasping the Purdey. I knew that I was sober, that this was real—and more, I could smell them now, the warm, musty scent of damp animals, close around me.

One by one the others took off their masks. The Bull, a blunt, over-large head with thick lips and wide nostrils, bovine anger glinting in his eyes—not a man, no, not a man. The Otter, river-sleek and ready, his companions each as their masks made them.

Five beasts stood before us, the Beasts of Kemberdale, and the ploughman, still holding the wolf mask.

“If I were t’wear this,” he said, “I’d be as them. It’s the way, tha sees? Our way to be Kemberdale, an’ keep it as it always were. The Beasts, and the Boundaries, all ours.”

Cock Robin came closer to me, and trilled, called, with a song that spoke of bare hawthorn and tangled hedges; fierce combat, and conquest. Of the short, sometimes violent life of small birds. The Otter barked, and gave me swirling, icy waters—the soft sweetness of a trout caught in mid-leap… and a threat.

This was possession, a possession which went beyond surface appearance, and a terrifying one at that; it reminded me of dear Arthur Keen, now long gone, who had spent time among the Sámi people of Northern Finland, and tried rather too many mushrooms. To wear the skin of the seal was to become the seal…

Petersen moaned, holding the side of his face. Blood ran between his fingers. Beckshaw was blank and bruised, crouched against the cabinets; it was up to me, and I was a dealer as well as a critic. I was used to negotiations. I pointed the shotgun at the hare mask on the floor, not that far from Beckshaw.

“If I fire, the Hare will be shattered, one of your Beasts no more. Lost, gone from Kemberdale.”

Cock Robin shrieked; the Bull grunted, but they held back. That hesitation told me all I needed. I doubted that anyone living had the art to make such potent things again—if they had, this intrusion would not have been needed.

“Two cartridges—two masks. I might even manage to reload, but I don’t want to do this, believe me.”

“Tha’s not frit, not like t’others.” A harsh croak from the Raven. “Tha knows how it mun be.”

Frightened? Well, I might be later, but for now…

“So we understand each other,” I said. “We can make a deal –”

“No!” Beckshaw tried to rise; the Raven turned its huge black beak to him and cawed an obvious threat.

“Steady,” I warned them all. I eased myself to one side and helped Beckshaw up, with the Purdey steady.

“Beckshaw, your father is rotting away quietly wherever he was buried. There’s no vengeance to be gained, no ‘win’ for anyone here if the masks are destroyed. You can sell this place and have a life—back in France, maybe. I don’t know.”

His anger struggled with fear, and with my slow, steady words.

“Be a more generous spirit than Rafael Beckshaw. Let these people be, let Kemberdale keep its ways.”

As his shoulders slumped, the Boar, motionless until now, bent and picked up the hare mask. Whoever was beneath the tusks and bristled snout was female, powerfully built—or was that also a property of what she had donned? She held the Hare out to him—as if to demonstrate that he still had one last chance to join them, to be part of this…

“No.” He turned away, shuddered. “Just take the damned things. Get them out of here!”

Cock Robin trilled, and I watched as they gathered up the rest of the masks from the cabinet, cradling them with care; as they formed a solemn, silent procession out into the night. Would these people be themselves again, by dawn? Which was real, the image or the creature beneath? I had no idea.

The whisky bottle was empty, but all was saved by discovery of a rather nice cognac behind it in the cupboard. Beckshaw was silent; I propped Petersen on one of the sofas, and cleaned with wound, which was long but shallow.

“Could be worse, Erik. He might have had your eye out. Cock Robin is a fighting bird, you know.”

“What… what happened?” He had retreated into himself.

“We were visited. The poor light and jostle of local villagers confused you, and you gashed your face on a door.” I surprised myself by chuckling—a nervous reaction, I suppose. “That’s what I’d say, down the wine-bars.”

The brandy helped my companions drift off to sleep again, and allowed me to sit quietly by the empty cabinet which had held the masks. I had a good friend in Hull—a land agent—who would be able to help Beckshaw shift the Kember Manor estate quickly, if certain aspects of the story were trimmed. Petersen could turn a profit on the rest of the paraphernalia in the other cabinets, and would be able to show off his scar for a few weeks. It gave his long Viking face even more character.

And I? I had lost nothing by the trip, and if Beckshaw wasn’t too mad with me, he might be persuaded to part with the Purdey.

Ah, you will say, but more importantly, I had learned the truth of the Beasts of Kemberdale. To which I might agree, except that what I witnessed had no rational explanation. It is fortunate that, unlike Archie Crane, Justin Margrave knows how to keep his mouth shut.

Outside, in the deep dark of Kemberdale, unsullied by street-lamps or other acts of man, the triumphant song of a robin pierced the night…

(copyright John Linwood Grant, 2023)


And you can purchase the full Lonely Hollows anthology in all formats through the following links:

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2024 will see the publication of John Linwood Grant’s fourth and fifth collections of dark tales, as well as two anthologies he is editing –  Alone on the Borderland: The Edwardian Weird and A Darker Continent: Strange tales of Europe at War. His most recent publication is the 80 page novella ‘A Promise of Blades’, which can be found in Sherlock Holmes and The Arcana of Madness (Crystal Lake, 2023):

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A SUPERNATURAL YULE: THE HERON IN WINTER

Today, for your consideration during idle moments, we offer the full text of another of JLG’s stories of the strange and supernatural at this time of year, ‘The Heron in Winter’, to read here online or download as a pdf. Set in 1907, this tale concerns the Edwardian intelligence officer Redvers Blake, who is ordered to solve a mystery concerning the canals which serve the great mills of the North…

If you would simply like a free download to read later on some dark and infernal device, click below:

heronscreen



THE HERON IN WINTER

by John Linwood Grant

 

supernatural yule

It had been an excellent dinner, the more so because none of the diners – indifferent cooks themselves – had been involved in its preparation. O’Hanrahan, the Irishman who acted as major domo to the household, had prepared and served the entire meal, and would accept no help with the clearing away of the remains.

“Will you join us for brandy, O’Hanrahan?”

“I’ve no head for brandy, nor for your sort of tales, Mr Dodgson.” The Irishman considered the half-empty soup tureen in his large hands. “And sure now, isn’t that a bottle of porter in the kitchen, calling out to me?”

Dodgson hid his smile. “I do believe so. Well, you know where we are.”

He led the others through into the small dimly-lit study. There were only three of them that night – Dodgson, his colleague Miss Jessop, and their occasional guest, Lieutenant Redvers Blake.

“A snort, Redvers?”

The young officer ran gloved hands along a bookshelf, his eyes drawn to titles which made little sense to him. These were books he would not care to touch, not with his bare fingers.

“I will, Henry. Be generous with the soda.”

Settled in leather armchairs, the diners entered that awkward comfort of those who have known each other for some time, but who cannot be sure of what any one of them might say. All three took slim cigarettes from the case which Dodgson handed round; matches scraped, and brief flares disturbed the darkened corners of the room.

Dodgson, a broad-shouldered man of almost O’Hanrahan’s proportions, was clearly the most relaxed; pale, slim Miss Jessop the least at ease. Her long fingers brushed the cameo at her throat, ignoring the glass of brandy by her side.

“You carry something with you, Blake,” she said.

“Only d-d-death, as usual.” The lieutenant spoke without any particular emphasis, without emotion. Winter rain beat on the window panes behind him, muffled by heavy drapes.

“Your work with Special Branch?” Dodgson looked interested.

“No. A matter of m-m-mills, and uniforms; of ordinary lives. This new B-b-balkans affair, however…”

But neither Dodgson nor Miss Jessop would be diverted.

“The story, in return for dinner.” Dodgson insisted. “You know that’s the arrangement here at Cheyne Walk, an arrangement set in stone. You can be what you must be outside these walls, but here, we follow the old ways.”

Blake smoothed his slim moustache with one finger; neither of the other two could see if he smiled or frowned beneath the gesture.

“Very well.”

And so between brandies and cigarettes, speaking crisply above the hiss of the gas-lights, he paid the toll for his meal…

*****

You know that there is a meanness and brutality to much of what I do (began Blake), and some tales I would never tell you. This one, however… you must judge for yourselves.

Early last week I received orders that I was to head up Manchester way, and from there to make directly for an establishment belonging to the Rochdale Canal Company, somewhere out in the wilds. The company had begged Whitehall’s assistance, and what Whitehall had chosen to send was, well, me.

I asked why, of course. Were we talking insurrection, agents of foreign powers, Bolsheviks – or perhaps even Fenians? No, came the curt response. Simply… difficulties. I was told to wear full uniform, and that a canal company man, Mr Charles Edgerton, would explain more when I got there. Orders were orders, so I packed a bag, and did as I was told.

The inclement weather down here at the moment is nothing compared to the winter that the North has been enduring. The train was lashed with sleet as it sped towards Manchester, and once in that city I had the devil of a job to make my way to my destination – an isolated spot near Todmorden. A motor-cab, skidding on two inches of packed snow, finally managed to get me there later that same afternoon.

I’m not a literary man like you, Dodgson, but let me see…

Picture a landscape of hillsides, almost bare of trees and bleak with snow; villages of grey native stone huddled in valley bottoms, the occasional rearing chimney of a mill or factory, like dead fingers pointing to the heavens. And a building, a badly-wrought brick building set on its own by the canal-side – a toll station and centre of operations for barge traffic. A friendless place which squatted by a basin crammed with idle, canvas-covered barges.

That was Lydgate Stop House, my temporary assignment, and where I was given into the care of said Mr Edgerton, a damp, nervous man in his fifties.

“Lieutenant Blake, from London,” I said, stamping the snow off my boots in his office, “As requested – but I d-d-don’t know why.”

At least the fire was built high. The room smelled of mould and scorched toast.

“They… they didn’t tell you?” Edgerton took a kettle from the stove, and scalded himself filling a large cracked teapot. “Oh dear me.”

The milk was almost off, but the tea was welcome enough. I sipped, and waited.

“We… er, we have a problem with Low Hawnsey Cut,” he managed at last.

“N-n-never heard of it.”

Ah, how I hate these tales within tales. Still, I’ll give you the gist.

The company had an antique ice-breaking barge, Heron, for when such icy circumstances gripped the network of navigations. Thus, when the hard frost set in, Heron was manned by company men and local workers, and sent to open up the seven mile cut to somewhere called Cochrane’s Mill.

The mill lay in a deep fold of the Pennines, and the waterway in question, Low Hawnsey Cut, was the main artery to the mill – but the cut was frozen solid.

“Our problem is the… ice-breaking crew, Lieutenant Blake,” he said. “They… what with the… body, you see?”

He was a man of many pauses; I was a man without a clue. I suggested that he be succinct, before I took myself back to my cramped but more congenial office at Whitehall.

“The Heron started from the basin, here…” said the company man, “And made good progress, until…”

“Until they found a b-b-body?” I suggested, hoping to speed him up. “A corpse in the canal?”

He paled, which was difficult with a man already so wan.

“The crew… saw a body in the water. This was yesterday. They had covered almost three miles, the horses were tired, and they… the tiller-man shouted that there was something… someone… in the water, by the patch they had broken moments before.

“Naturally, men rushed to see, and called to the lengthsmen who were on the banks… they have long rakes, you see, to haul sheets of ice and flotsam to the sides. ‘A woman!’ was the cry, and rakes dipped from Heron and the canal bank…”

“They hauled her out, presumably?”

“There was… nothing to haul. The rakes went through the… body, whatever it was. It drifted past the boat, they say, and then… was gone. Vanished. The men would go no further.” Edgerton swirled the dregs of tea in his cup. “Heron lay near a winding hole on the cut, where she could be turned, when the incident occurred, so they brought her back here to the Stop House, against their instructions. Since then, they talk of spectres, and hauntings, and all manner of unhealthy things… yet the mill…”

“What’s so important about this mill?” I pressed him.

Edgerton explained that Cochrane’s Mill was a leading supplier of serge, under contract to the War Office. The barges in the canal basin outside were jammed with raw materials for the mill, and given the thick ice, neither those materials nor the finished serge could go anywhere. Bargees were angry; tolls were being lost, and the factories which made up the uniforms in Manchester had their own complaints.

“I can’t… can’t seem to get them to take Heron out again, lieutenant.”

My presence now made sense. I was there to bluster, to order, to put steel into these people, to get things moving – and to deal with any talk of ‘sightings’. Send that Blake fellow, some idle official must have muttered. ‘He has a taste for oddities and nonsense.’

I nodded. “So – water-weed, old rags that the rakes could not catch; too many early b-b-beers, delusions brought on by this bitter cold. I suppose that I should speak to your men.”

“You don’t believe in… ghosts, lieutenant?”

“I d-d-don’t believe in anything, Mr Edgerton.”

Looking slightly puzzled, the man led me out and round to the rear of the building, where eight or nine men sheltered by some stables, oiling various implements, mending ropes, and drinking mugs of tea from a battered urn.

“Blackwood, this is Lieutenant Redvers Blake, of the –”

“North Surreys.” Which was all they needed to know.

“Ah, yes. He is here to consider our little… problem.”

A thin man with one shoulder higher than the other stood up. Whether his posture was from accident or from birth, I couldn’t tell, but it tilted his long head perpetually to one side. His eyes were sharp enough, though.

“Ay up. They goin’ to shoot us, if we don’t work Heron, then?”

I walked closer. “W-w-would that help? I do have my revolver with me.” I spoke affably enough, and patted the side of greatcoat.

Several of the men gave out uncertain laughs; others scowled.

“Mr B-b-blackwood, I’m here to get the cut working again. If there’s a way to do so which involves neither guns nor p-p-priests, I’m open to it.”

Blackwood squinted at me. “We saw what we saw. Ned, Harry, Joseph and all the rest, even them as leads the hosses. There were a woman in the watter, and then there weren’t.”

“A woman? Did you recognise her?”

The fact that I didn’t immediately dismiss his words seemed to throw him.

“Recognise, sir? There were no… face, like, nobbut a blur. She had mebbe a dress, shawl, it were hard to tell. And summat white, like a flower, pinned to her.” He touched the lapel of his grubby jacket. “’Bout here.”

It was an odd detail. The others agreed, though not everyone had seen the flower or broach, whatever it was. These men had had time to confer, but there were none of those typical ‘rehearsed’ lines to be heard. Most said it had been a woman; almost all thought that the body had been drifting along in the same direction as the weak current, which was some product, beyond me, of lock gates, sluices and the reservoirs above Cochrane’s Mill.

“When would you take Heron out again, n-n-normally?”

Blackwood considered the grim, snow-speckled afternoon which gripped the toll house, the basin, and the low hills around it.

“Should mebbe be out now,” he admitted. “But the light’s goin’, and the hosses aren’t ready.”

I had no wish to remain up North any longer than needed. “Mr Edgerton, Mr Blackwood. We’ll sail – or whatever you canal p-p-people call it – first thing tomorrow. I’ll be on the boat.”

“But –”

That earned them what might be called an ‘army stare’. “And I hope you have a cot ready for me somewhere in this Stop House of yours.”

I was given a room cluttered with dusty ledgers and unidentifiable tools; Edgerton was sleeping in the toll-keeper’s bedroom, and the toll-keeper in the office downstairs.

Supper was a fatty chop and a slurry of heavily-boiled peas, peppered with attempts by Edgerton to tell me things I didn’t really need to know.

“We rely, you see, lieutenant, on the steady flow, yes, the steady flow of industry… each broken link costs everyone. Our investors, the bargees and the families, who have to eat; the mill-workers who must be on short hours until goods move in and out… you understand?”

Low Hawnsey Cut did have to be opened, it seemed.

*****

I slept badly; there were missing tiles on the Stop House roof, with the resultant whistle of icy blasts across my room throughout the night. At first light I abandoned my cot and shaved in a bowl of cold water. There was a hot brew waiting down below, accompanied by cheese and stale bread buns. ‘Baps’, the company man called them.

“They have Heron ready,” said an unshaven Edgerton. “Come, I’ll take you. I don’t… participate myself, of course.”

Of course.

We made our way over frozen ground, away from the basin and the double lock which led into the Rochdale Canal, heading north-west for the first stretch of Low Hawnsey Cut itself. It was an unromantic stretch of grey water, stone-lipped and bordered by no more than the occasional stunted hawthorn, their leafless forms bent over the tow-path as if they sought to reclaim it. I was surprised to see that a team of six horses stamped and blew clouds of steam by the water, already harnessed to… an odd boat indeed.

Heron was a wooden barge of forty foot or more, maybe eight wide, with a great iron rail running down the length of it, fixed with metal stanchions to stand about three foot above the planked deck.

“She has, you see…” panted Edgerton, clearly not a fit man, “Protective plates bolted to her sides. As the horses pull, the men grip the rail… and roll the barge, first one way then the other. This and the forward motion shatter the ice.”

Blackwood and four others had turned up to man the icebreaker, six less than her normal crew, I was told – and those few stalwarts hardly looked cheerful. Their faces fell further when a large heavily-wrapped woman came striding down towards us.

“Alma.” Blackwood reddened. “Get ‘ome.”

The woman glanced at Edgerton and myself, sniffed and turned to Blackwood.

“To hell wi’ thee, Layton Blackwood.” She strode across the gangplank, onto the barge, and took up a position at the rail. “If tha cannot get t’men to do it, someone must.”

“His wife.” Edgerton dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief. “A…. lively woman. Well, Blackwood will be on the tiller, and if you stand there with him, you’ll see the way we work.”

A mutter or two, and the rest of the crew was in place. Alma Blackwood was a head taller than the men, and as she rolled up her sleeves, I saw muscle enough to drop a donkey in those arms. Her husband clearly didn’t wish to discuss her presence, but called out for the ‘hosses’ to begin their steady plod up the tow-path.

The wind had dropped, leaving a chill mist clinging to everything, but we were mercifully free of yesterday’s snow or sleet. I braced myself at the stern, careful not to be in the way of the tiller-man, and Heron shuddered as the ropes went taut and she began to move.

“Old, solid oak, and iron plates,” said Blackwood. “She’ll break an inch, mebbe more.”

I could see fragments of ice still clinging to the banks of the cut, glinting whenever the weak morning sun broke through, but the way ahead showed only fragile skins reaching out from those fragments. Occasionally a jumble of dead leaves and detritus had frozen into a block by the tow-path. Stone markers on the bank showed each half mile; the horses hauled, silent in the mist except for the thump of their hooves. We were an island of quiet, no talk between those on the rail; most of them had pipes out, and were staring down at the water as they smoked.

“How much farther?” I found myself speaking in a hushed tone.

“Less’n a mile,” said Blackwood, hunched over the tiller. “Heron’s a heavy bugger, with all that iron, and the best hosses are on the Rochdale. We’ll get… there.”

There.

Where they had seen the apparition, if such it was; where they had stopped the barge, and baulked at going on.

Heron surged, slowed, surged, as the lads at the horses showed their jitters, not regulating the pull as well as they should.

“Steady, there!” I call over. “Nice and steady.”

Blackwood accepted a cigarette from me.

“The army must want them uniforms bad.”

“D-d-doubt the army cares that much. What it doesn’t want is canal companies and m-m-mill owners bothering it.”

Which earned me a thin smile.

“You a regular, then, lieutenant? Seen action.”

They always want to know, and what they want to know was: Have I killed anyone? The Fenians ask it, when cornered in dank cellars; the pacifists ask it at polite dinners. Children ask it, and old men always wonder…

“I’ve seen enough.” I said, and turned away.

We hit thin ice ten minutes later, but that meant nothing to Heron’s bows. Some twenty yards ahead I could now see the untouched sheet which blocked the cut. The men looked nervous. I slipped off one glove, and gripped the rail at the stern, reaching into the barge with my damnable, unwanted gift, listening…

Nothing. Scarred timbers, iron, years of duty, but Heron was what she seemed. I could sense no malice, no unnatural influence within her.

Blackwood’s eyes were fixed on the others.

“Ready, lads. You’ll want to hang on there, lieutenant.”

Edgerton’s explanation hadn’t prepared me for the moment of action. As the barge came close to unbroken ice, the tiller-man set up a call – a canal shanty, I suppose you’d call it.

“Hold, and…

Those at the long rail tensed themselves, boots scraping on the deck.

“Onside! Offside! Let her run, and… Onside! Offside!”

With the first word of command, the crew – without letting go of the main rail – threw their weight in the direction of the tow-path, and with the second, lurched towards the other side.

“Onside! Offside!”

Heron shifted with them, rolling in the water, and hit the thick ice like a slow, twisting bullet. A great grinding and cracking sound arose about us as the ice-sheet splintered; the timbers of the barge moaned, but held.

Fascinated, I watched as the frozen surface of the canal shattered, throwing up inch-thick plates of ice and a spray of ugly water. Men who had followed the tow-horses, willing to work as long as they didn’t have to be on the barge, unshouldered rakes with clawed tines and dragged the broken ice to the banks, hauling some slabs out of the water altogether.

It was practised, organised.

“Onside! Offside! And let her run, me bullies!”

I threw off my greatcoat, and went to the rail, next to Alma Blackwood.

“You object, madam?”

Dark eyes narrowed. “Hold t’rail tight, lad. I’m not fishing thee out.”

This was work. All had to time their movements perfectly, and to do so gripping a freezing iron rail, with wet planks beneath us. I thanked my heavy army boots for joining me, and I cursed my arms, which were aching after only ten minutes of lurching and wrenching.

“Onside! Offside! And… Lord, look!”

It wasn’t difficult to spot what should not have been there – a shadow, emerging from under the ice ahead. Not a woman this time, but possibly a child.

The body was floating a few inches below the surface to our larboard. Offside, as Blackwood would have put it. I let go the rail, and went forward, picking up one of the long rakes on the deck.

This child – a boy, I thought, maybe eleven or twelve years old – drifted face-up in the cut, but the face was wrong. The eyes, the mouth, were smudges, the whole head indistinct; likewise, the drab clothes were vague, as if seen through muslin.

I dipped the rake, but already knew what would happen – the curved tines passed through the apparition without resistance.

Worse for the mood of Heron’s crew, I was not the only one who could see that there were more such dark blurs, slipping out from under the ice before us…

“Steady!” I snapped, hearing alarmed mutterings and curses behind me. “There’s n-n-no harm in them.”

The horses had been stopped; Heron was barely moving. The mist had thinned, but I could see dark, heavy clouds gathering. More snow. For a brief moment every living eye was on me – the army man, stiff, expressionless in his wet uniform. These are the times I hate, the times I use. Depressing, how men will follow a uniform into peril, however stupid or venal the wearer.

“Double wages.” I stared round at the worried faces. “We b-b-break another hundred yards or so, to see whatever has been laid out for us to see. D-d-double wages for today.”

I had no authority for this, but could not see the pale, worried Edgerton denying me.

“I’ll be on the rail with you,” I reminded them. “B-b-but they’ll not give me a brass farthing more for it. Pity the poor bloody soldier.”

Alma Blackwood responded with a snort of amusement, which broke the mood. “Hunnert yards, aye. I’m game.”

“Alma –” Her husband fingered the tiller, hesitant. She was shaming them, as she had done when she boarded the barge.

I clapped my gloved hands together. “Settled, then. Whatever these are – lost souls or echoes – they can’t hurt us.”

Which may have been wishful thinking, but suited the moment.

“Echoes?” said the big woman. “Echoes of what?”

“People who’ve d-d-drowned here over the years?” I had no idea, in truth. “Memories?”

The next man along shivered, and I decided it was best not to explore the matter further at that time.

“Mr Blackwood?”

“Aye – I s’ppose.”

He called out to those who were leading the horses, cursed the lengthsmen for slacking in their task of dragging broken ice to the sides, and the barge began to move forward again. Onside, offside, and into the next slab with a crunch, and a crack like a rifle being fired. Fault-lines shot across the surface, and Heron made another few yards, sheet-ice breaking into manageable chunks for the rakes.

“Cut’s nobbut two year old,” said Mrs Blackwood as we lurched to starboard with the rest. “Meks no sense there’d be s’many drowned, like.”

“We’ll see.”

It was not a sight that inspired enthusiasm in me, I admit. As the ice shattered, those dim forms floated towards us with a painful slowness, and no one could be immune to their presence. They did at first seem like rags and water-weeds from a distance, but as we closed, they could only be visions of people. Boys, perhaps also girls, women in long skirts and shawls, a man in working clothes – but the hands and faces indistinct, blurred. I knew there was no point in using the rake again, or seeking any physical contact – and what sensitivity has been forced on me is useless without touch.

“D-d-do any of you,” I said, in a loud clear voice, “Know these people? Can you tell me anything about who they might be?”

The crew peered into the water with reluctance.

“Them’s the dead.” A thin, red-haired man on the other side of the rail crossed himself with his free hand. “The dead, come t’warn us of oor sins.”

“Bloody funny way o’ doin’ it,” said Mrs Blackwood. I was warming to her. She had a broad face, a broad accent and a bluntness which I could appreciate.

My gaze was on the water; as the apparitions passed Heron, I saw that they grew more tenuous, as if dissolving, until nothing could be seen of them.

Snow had begun to fall, and given the mood of those around me, I could see little point in continuing. I understood that Cochrane’s Mill was only three miles off, where the cut curved around a spur of scree-marred hill.

Might as well have been fifty miles.

“Have the team unhitched, Blackwood, there’s a g-g-good chap. I think we’re done for today.”

There was no way to turn Heron around at this spot, so she was tied up. Men and horses made their way back, the men moody and quiet, the horses content enough that they would soon be stabled, and at their feed.

When we reached Lydgate Stop House, Edgerton came out, and saw plain enough how people were going into huddles, making occasional gestures towards me.

“It happened… again?” He brushed snow from his cheek.

“Worse this t-t-time.” I followed him into the office and set myself to steam by the fire. It was easy enough to give him a summary of the day’s progress.

“Will they go out tomorrow?”

“With me, p-p-possibly. But I’ve something to do, first. I need a riding horse, and a local guide. Where does Alma B-b-blackwood work, normally?”

“She oversees some of the looms at Cochrane’s Mill. Her husband knows the area, though…”

“Better that it’s her.”

He huffed and sighed, but made arrangements.

By four in the afternoon, with constant light snow, I was back on the tow-path, a skittish mare under me and Alma Blackwood striding alongside. She didn’t ride, laughed at the idea.

“Ah walk God’s earth, like it were meant. They call this God’s Own Country, did tha know, Lieutenant Blake? Meant for hard women, frit of nowt.”

“My name’s Redvers. You m-m-might as well use it.”

“Alma.”

“So what are the men saying?” I edged the mare around an icicle-tipped hawthorn.

“Nowt and summat. ‘Bad fortune for all’, and ‘Needs t’vicar and his book-larnin’,’ that sort o’ talk. They’re not sure, but seein’ tha work t’boat fair took them. None o’ the bosses would ha’ done that.”

We came to the section where Heron was moored, lonely by the bank. Faint ripples on the open water; a cold gleam to the ice. None of the earlier phantoms remained, but there was yet another dark figure in the water, drifting slowly as before. I dismounted.

“Are you game to look, Alma?”

She spat out chewing tobacco, and followed me to the edge, which put us no more than five feet from the ‘apparition’. It was clearly female – and the face was more distinct this time. A high forehead, thick eyebrows… I fancied the eyes were closed, but that was harder to discern. Alma sucked in a breath.

“Hettie Cowton, ah’d swear. See, she’s gotten that red shawl on.”

“When d-d-did she die?”

“She nivver did. Ah saw her this morn, fit as anything, afore I came down. On her way to t’mill. Works t’looms, she does. Sithee, cut’s froze over solid to Cochrane’s, so how’d she get down ‘ere? Meks no sense.”

It did not.

“A red shawl, a white flower. Your husband saw the f-f-first…”

“A white rose, he were thinking, as he said to me. Tha knows, like t’flower o’Yorkshire.” She turned from the water. “Lieutenant… Redvers, then. Queer sort o’ name. It dunt seem like tha’s ower fussed by this. Tha’s seen ghosts and t’like afore?”

We regarded each other, whilst soft flakes gathered on our shoulders. Two different worlds, tight-wrapped in the cold – the mill woman, and the man who fed the hangman.

“I’ve seen worse. It’s what they p-p-pay me for.”

She nodded.

“Our Uncle Alf ‘ad a stammer, when ‘e went down the mines.”

“Did he get over it?”

“Not before t’shaft collapsed and took ‘is ‘ead off. Us didn’t notice it s’much after that.” She laughed, and trudged on towards the mill.

I wondered if she’d ever considered joining the army. We could have used men like her.

*****

Water made industry. Alma explained it as we rounded the scree and came in sight of Cochrane’s Mill. Two small reservoirs fed the mill, which thrived on steam from its own boilers, and the flow, polluted with washings from the textile sheds, went into a basin directly by the mill. The basin, now iced-up, then fed the cut which ran to the Rochdale Canal.

There isn’t much to tell you about the mill. A massive four storey building, facing the water as I said, and an engine house to the back and centre, like the servants’ wing of a mansion, with a two hundred and fifty foot chimney rearing above all. Pale brick, with the occasional terracotta moulding, set against gloomy hillsides which harboured rows of small cottages. It was a dour land, making dour folk.

“Come wi’ me.”

Alma took me through broad, open gates to one side, and into the behemoth. I followed her up flights of steep stone steps to the second floor, where mechanical looms clacked across the length of the floor, making the most abominable noise. Ropes, pulleys and beams; the smell of sweat and chemicals.

“There!” she said, pointing to a loom-worker with a distinctive crimson shawl around her shoulders. “That’s Hettie Cowton.”

The woman at the loom turned her head for a moment, and yes, the likeness was unmistakable, the clothes identical. We had seen the semblance of a living woman drifting as if dead in the icy waters of the cut, where she could not be.

“How do, Alma.” A man in a worn, over-tight suit sauntered over. “Thought you were down at Lydgate Stop House.”

“Ah’m to help this gentleman, the maisters say.”

“Lieutenant Blake, N-n-north Surreys,” I said. “Whitehall send me about the hold-ups with the serge.”

He shook my hand. “Bert Gault, foreman for Cochrane’s. Aye, it’s a rum do. Hear some lass or summat drowned in the cut, spooked the canal men.”

“Something like that.” I imagined that this afternoon’s news would spread like wildfire once the men around the Stop House went back to their homes.

“How’s it going with the cut, sir?” asked Gault.

“Can’t say, as yet. Three miles still frozen. It’ll be p-p-pack mules between here and clear water, at this rate.”

He took this idea more seriously than I’d expected.

“Might be done, with carts and suchlike. I’ll tell the bosses, if needs must. But you’re here, so must want summat.”

“I n-n-need the feel of the place.”

He frowned. “Alma can show you round, as good as any, I suppose.”

“Much appreciated.”

In truth, I didn’t want a tour as such. I wanted to find a girl with a white rose, or a white silk flower, that sort of thing, pinned to her blouse or jacket. Was it possible that all the drowned were from this mill?

Alma knew everyone, be it for the time of day, for a word about ‘snap’ as they called the food they took at breaks, or for news of Low Hawnsey Cut. She said little about the latter. We walked the weaving and finishing floors, watched carders at their work on the raw wool; we edged away as boys ran past, carrying huge bobbins. The place was an ants’ nest built of Northern brick.

“Hang on.” We were back by the looms, and through the dusty air I saw a flash of white. I almost ran, skidding up to a young woman at a loom, much to her dismay. I would have put her at seventeen or eighteen years of age, and she wore a grubby white silk rose pinned to her lapel.

“Mister, I’ve dun nowt –”

“And there’s nowt to worry on,” said Alma, huffing up behind me. “Meggy, this ‘ere’s a gentleman wi’ t’canals.”

“I don’t mean what I says,” the girl whimpered. “I’m not reet, Alma. You know that.”

My guide caught Gault’s attention, mimed taking this girl from her place; the foreman looked to me, and nodded.

We walked to the stairwell, the three of us, and I knew there was something wrong. Meggy Whoever-she-was was frightened. Alma leaned close to me.

“She’s allus been slow, mebbe a bit touched. There’s no ‘arm in ‘er, though.” In a louder voice, she said: “Tha must tell Mr Blake ‘ere whatever is botherin’ thee.”

Soft brown eyes shifted in my direction, then to the older woman.

“I been hearing it, Alma, these last couple of days. It’s so loud, like God’s shouting at me. Like thunder, it is, in me head. I tells them ‘Summat bad’s coming,’ but they laughs at me. ‘Meggy Gaines, daft as our dog.’ They won’t listen…”

She was weeping; I hauled out a handkerchief and gave it to her.

“Like thunder?”

Meggy nodded, pulling on a length of thin blonde hair. I took her gently by one hand.

“This feeling you have – when d-d-did it start?”

“Three, four days ago, sir. But it’s me – I’m touched, like they say. Allus getting ‘feelings’, I am. Me mam hits me for it.”

I tried to smile in what I hoped was a considerate manner. “Maybe I’ll have a word with your mother about that, Meggy.”

“Go on, lass, back to tha place,” said Alma. “Not so long ‘til knockin’ off time.”

Thunder.

What was thunder? A storm coming? I am not, thank some pitiless God, a psychic, but I felt uncomfortable, ill at ease.

“Is it n-n-nonsense, what the girl says? About ‘feelings’?”

The tall woman paused, frowned. “Meggy were reet about Young Alf losin’ a leg in t’ropes, last summer, like. She said as he’d not be walkin’ again, and that were t’day afore it ‘appened. But she says all sorts…”

I was painfully aware that most so-called ‘sensitives’ relied on keen observation, co-incidence, and clever half-truths. And yet…

“Has anything changed in the last few days, Alma? Here at the mill, I mean. Or did anything happen, three or four days ago, before Heron first went out?”

She thought hard, then called Bert Gault over and asked him the same question. He had to work it over as well, chewing on an unlit pipe.

“Nowt much, sir. We’ve had a bit of trouble, like, with the looms and the carding machines – first they run too fast, then too slow. I telled the bosses as we should have engineers out, in case the boiler, or the piston fittings–”

“Take me there. Now.”

Too surprised at my tone to argue, they led me down again, and into the engine house attached to the main mill. The noise was worse than elsewhere, the hiss and clatter of great pistons; sharp bursts of steam and men yelling at each other.

“It’s a triple-expansion engine, you see –” Gault began, but I pushed him aside. Pulling the leather glove from my left hand. I pressed my bare palm to the nearest wall, and listened.

The inanimate can be sullen, unwilling to share its slow existence, but I waited, seeking some connection. My fingertips stroked the coarse surface of the bricks; Gault and Alma Blackwood watched me, perhaps just as they watched Meggy Gaines when she had ‘feelings’, and then I found it. Cochrane’s Mill spoke to me.

You understand that objects, places, have no voice, not as such. What I hear is what they have heard, felt, seen – and this building spoke of rushed construction and poor foundations, which it might have withstood. Worse, it spoke of a flaw in its beating heart, deep in the engine house. A flaw that was worsening, a fatal wound.

The building itself expected thunder, and destruction, soon…

“Clear the mill!” I yelled at Gault and Alma.

The foreman stared at me as if I were mad. “I can’t –”

My revolver slid easily from its holster, used to the work. I didn’t aim at anyone, but I showed it plainly for any who were watching the scene.

“For God’s sake, clear the mill! Get them all out!” I locked my gaze on Alma Blackwood, and she did not disappoint me.

“The whistles, Bert,” she said, urgent. “The fire whistles.”

He gaped, but then ran to the wall, where a heavy iron handle protruded from a cabinet. He pulled down hard, and somewhere outside a steam whistle shrieked, loud enough to be heard over the engine noise. Others sounded off within seconds, and I caught the thin shrill of something akin to policemen’s whistles on the floors above.

A system – at least they had a system.

My left hand was still pressed against the wall, and I could hear it coming, pain which lanced through brick and mortar, pain which would twist an iron beam like a child’s liquorice stick.

I made for the nearest way out, shouting at anyone I met to get as far away as possible.

A panicked, puzzled crowd of workers jostled down the stairwells, out into the main yard, and I urged them further away, helped by Alma.

“What is it?” she grunted, pushing confused boys aside and out of the gates. “What’s ‘appenin’?”

“You’ll know soon enough.” I saw stragglers still coming out the mill, and wondered if I could be wrong – but then I heard the thunder.

The first roll of it was apparently the sound of the boiler exploding; it felt as if the hills shook, but that was probably an echo of the blast. We ran, all of us – I grabbed a dazed girl by her waist and carried her bodily away from the mill yard; children shrieked and had to be made to hurry…

The ground definitely moved only a moment after that, for whatever carnage there had been in the engine room, it must have torn at the roots of the great chimney.

Two hundred and fifty foot of brick, cast iron and terracotta, the chimney trembled, swayed – and fell. Not lengthways, but down, the entire mass collapsing in stages into the mill’s main body, shearing through the upper floors. A cloud of dust and debris filled the air for a moment, obscuring our view…

“Dear Jesus!” gasped a man behind me.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the entire south face of the mill broke away, sliding into the frozen basin. I saw a boy scrabble at a wooden beam, screaming – and saw him fall, still screaming, into waters which churned with masonry and ice…

*****

In the quiet study, Blake lit a cigarette.

“There were two hundred and n-n-ninety three survivors,” he said, “And seventeen people crushed, killed instantly – or missing, presumed d-d-dead. Two men, eleven women, and four children.”

“Dear God,” said Dodgson.

“Meggy Gaines was amongst the dead; I found her b-b-body myself, under a shattered loom frame.”

“A damned bad business. So… the figures in the water…”

“Matched the seventeen who died, as far as I could establish afterwards. We searched the rubble as best we could, but the main building was at that time too dangerous to venture in far. Most of those killed had fallen into the basin with the collapse of the mill’s upper floors – they’re still hauling d-d-debris from the water.

“I stayed at Lydgate Stop House two more days, and took Heron out again; we opened the cut all the way, so that emergency supplies could be run directly to the communities around what was left of Cochrane’s.”

The study fell silent, apart from the rattle of rain against the window; Dodgson rose and went to lean on a bookcase, his half-empty glass in his hand.

“You’re an odd fellow, Blake.”

“Am I?”

“For heaven’s sake, had you not been there, it would have been a tragedy of terrible proportions. Your actions probably saved over two hundred people.”

Blake shrugged. “M-m-makes up for some of those I’ve killed, I suppose. You might as well give the credit to Mrs B-b-blackwood, who took it all in her stride, and made sure the alarm was sounded.”

Miss Jessop shifted in her chair. “You mentioned a red shawl on one of the figures in the water. I presume Hettie Cowton was among those who were lost.”

“She was.”

“A procession of the dead, before their deaths,” she murmured. “Ghosts of the living, headed by Meggy Gaines herself with her white rose, the first apparition they met. I wonder, did poor Meggy somehow create those images without knowing what she was doing — or did she intend to provide a warning of the disaster to come?”

“D-d-did her no good, either way” said Blake with a sour look. “P-p-perhaps it was simply what had to be.”

Thunder sounded outside, and Redvers Blake stared at the curtains, without seeing them.

“Henry, I’ll t-take a dash more of that b-b-brandy, I think,” he said. “But forget the soda, this time, old chap.”

 

(copyright John Linwood Grant, 2020, 2023)



2024 will see the publication of John Linwood Grant’s fourth and fifth collections of dark tales, as well as two anthologies he is editing –  Alone on the Borderland: The Edwardian Weird and A Darker Continent: Strange tales of Europe at War. His most recent publication is the 80 page novella ‘A Promise of Blades’, which can be found in Sherlock Holmes and The Arcana of Madness (Crystal Lake, 2023):

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