Author: Mike Duggan

Spooky Muse

I’m a writer but I’ve got to admit, I haven’t been writing as much as I should be. I can’t decide if its apathy or lethargy, but as the pandemic rolls on, and with working full time from home, and raising kids, and all of that TV that needs watching, its hard sometimes just to keep my feet off of the poof and the cork in the bottle. Whatever the problem might be, its absolutely not lack of inspiration. Like most writers I have a collection of high quality note books and journals stuffed from margin to edge, cover to cover, with million dollar ideas. I’m absolutely not short of ideas.

I don’t know what it is but the French have a phrase for it, that thing that we can’t describe or explain, je ne sais pas ce que c’est. I don’t know what it is that is stopping me writing. It could be Writers Block, I’ve had writers block many times before, but this different. Writers Block is what stops me writing when I’m sat at my desk with pen or keys and world enough and time, but this is different, I haven’t even wanted to sit at my desk and write. Insane as it sounds, its true. My desk is the comfiest place in the house. I have a big chair with cushions perfectly moulded to my arse. I have an ergonomically arranged keyboard, not an ergonomic keyboard, I might add, just one that I have placed on my desk in an ergonomic fashion. I am also positioned next to the heater, not that I can afford to have it on, being a writer and stuff.

By now, you’ll be wondering what I’m going on about, whether there is a point to this article. Well there is, because the literary doldrums have broken and I’m back on the keyboard. The Muse, Writer’s Santa as they call it down our way, has paid me a visit and I couldn’t be happier.

I like to think of myself as a ghost story writer, but writing ghost stories doesn’t come easy to me. To take an idea and craft it in such a way as to compel your reader to fear what words will unfurl but to read on nonetheless is a gift I don’t feel I possess, and so I have to work at it, and with Christmas just behind us, I’ve been exposed to many of the greats all over again, and some of the not so greats. Netflix has added ghost stories to its offering and I’ve been working my way through them. I quite enjoyed Ripper Untold, a view not shared by many reviewers, but I thought it captured the period quite well, except for the anachronisms.

Spot the deliberate mistakes…

I stopped after the first three anachronisms, but screw top wine, electric lamp, and halogen light bulbs in Victoria’s London is enough to take me right out of the story. And the less said about An English Haunting the better, with its 1960s setting and wine cellar of Aldi wines and barcode labels. But these production issues are their’s and not mine, my problem was my muse, and at last it came.

I recently had the house to myself for a few nights while the wife had surgery. When I say ‘to myself’ I mean with the kids, and the floppy eared bunny that eats doors, and all of the creepy crawly things that live in the former outbuilding that we call the bathroom. By house I mean our hundred and fifty odd year old terrace, with its winding creaky staircases, sloping floors, draughty outbuildings and the dank dank cellar. When a loved one goes in for surgery, one can’t help but be faced with our mortality and our frailty, and when left to ones own devices in a creepy old house, one can’t help but think of those hundred and fifty years and all of the lives that have been and went within these walls.

The first night that I was alone I could not settle until I had heard back from hospital that all had gone well, and it was after half past eight when they did. By that time the boys, most unusually, had gone to bed and were asleep, so I poured a glass of wine and enjoyed a few episodes of Shed and Buried, and, while listening to the sounds of the house settle for the night, I imagined what stories the house might give me.

The house is old, and predates things like indoor plumbing, so the bathroom isn’t upstairs, its in a converted outbuilding, and when it rains it leaks. We have a well developed list of repairs to complete.

Leaky Roof

Being in an outbuilding isn’t ideal after a few drinks, and midnight trips to the bathroom, after a bottle of wine, through the creaky narrow stairs, across the dark kitchen, and out in to the porch, gave me some inspiration I can use.

To get to the bathroom, you have to exit the house, entering the unlit porch that has been built to enclose the otherwise outside bathroom, and that porch has a door with a glass window. Sometimes, when the light is right, when the house is dark and the neighbour’s security lamp is on, there is a shape on that glass window, the shape of a figure silhouetted by the light outside.

This figure is a trick of the light, but it always gives me pause when I see it in the corner of my eye as I’m about to enter the bathroom, and I thought to myself, what if on one of those occasions I dismissed this shadow standing at the door as a trick of the light, it wasn’t a trick of the light. What if the shadowy figure was actually there? What if the door was unlocked? Its easy to be complacent in a sleepy little town such as ours. An unknown figures stands at the door and stares in through the glass and I just walk right by them and get in the shower. Not really my style of story, the physical threat of a live intruder, I’m more toward the other worldly supernatural horror, not least because ghosts don’t need a key.

That first night that I was home alone was unsettled and I got very little sleep, but I did get some, and I know this because of the dreams. Do the departed visit us in our dreams? I’ve heard it said before, but its impossible to know for sure, but during times of high stress, I often dream of my sister and this night was no exception. It was a silly dream, we were both roaming the streets and high rise flats of Sheffield looking for a disreputable man that could obtain a certain part for our car. A silly dream, with unrealistic locations and implausible acts, but I awoke feeling somewhat soothed and in no doubt that it was a dream, unlike the next one.

As I lay in bed trying to get back to sleep, I heard sounds from outside the bedroom, as if someone was creeping through the house. Although we haven’t been here long, enough time has elapsed for me to become familiar with all of the sounds of the house, of which there are many. Often, I am kept awake by a long slow creaking just outside the bedroom door, but I know this to be the door to the attic room. If it is left slightly ajar it will move in the draught from the roof window, creaking loudly as is rocks ever so slightly, and it will do this all night if you let it. But this new sound was different, it was like someone sneaking through the house, most likely just one of the kids going to the toilet or for a glass of milk, which was fine, they didn’t need to be sneaky about it so I decided to get out of bed and talk to them.

Immediately to the left of my bedroom is the narrow stair case to the attic behind that creaky door. I was expecting to find one of the boys on that staircase. My ears were telling me that there was someone on those stairs, but when I pulled open the door, the stairs were empty and the light was off, so the sound must have been coming from somewhere else, but before I could check I heard a new sound, voices.

Hushed voices, but it wasn’t the children, these were adult voices, with American accents. Someone was on a device and watching YouTube. I won’t name them because I’m not sure that I can, but there was a child sat on the bottom step of the stairs on the ground floor. Not the comfiest place to sit, nor the most well hidden. I was cross that they were up at this time, but I could understand why they would have difficulty sleeping, so I called them up gently and told them to turn off the device. They did so without a fuss, and once they were at the top of the stairs I gave them a kiss and sent them on to their room in the attic. I should have taken the device off of them, but I decided it was better to trust them. Before I got back in to bed myself I made another trip to bathroom and noted that shadow on the porch door was gone, and the neighbour’s security lamp that casts it must have been off.

The next morning I mentioned the midnight videos, but neither of them would admit to it. ‘We can’t use our Switches at night, you’ve set a timer, remember’ they said in unison. They were right. I was wise to their late night games and videos and had used the parental settings on the Nintendo Switches to lock them out after 7:30pm. I had no choice but to believe them. It must have been a dream, but it was so real. Dreams usually occur in dreamy places, like the unrealistic representation of Sheffield of my previous dream. Alright, the dream city is real enough at the time, but not afterwards. If the child on the stairs was a dream it all felt very real. The layout of the house was exact, right down to the boxes at the foot of the bed that need to be stepped over because they haven’t yet found a permanent spot at the this new house. I’ve never had a dream that real before, and I remember every detail. Every detail except the child’s face, the face is blank to me now.

And if indeed it was a dream, which it most likely was, why was there a bum mark in the dust? The stairs should be swept at least once a week, but the two minute job has been low on the priorities of late so needed doing. If I had dreamed the child on the stairs, why was there the impression in the dust of a small bottom? We soon established that it wasn’t any bottom that was present in the house. The oldest was too tall to comfortably sit on the lowest step, and the youngest was too particular to sit on a step that needed to be swept.

I have to accept that this was just a very real dream, and the imprinted bottom would have some other explanation, though not necessarily supernatural, fascinated as I am with ghosts and spooky matters, I can’t say that I actually believe in them. I know that the house is old and creaky, and the light does strange things. Since I’ve been aware of the figure I have started to see other outlines in the corner of my eye, but I know these are tricks of the light. The patch of light on my bedroom wall that grows intensely, and then darts across the room and out of the window is nothing more than the headlights of a passing car cast through the lead pattern on the window glass. The strange arc of light in the porch roof is just the moonlight scattered by the glass. My office door that opens itself at random just needs a new catch, and the figure standing in the door way is just my imagination, like that time I watched the movie Ring and imagined the creature Sadoko stood at the foot of my bed and could then no longer picture the bed without her, the imagination is a powerful thing.

So I got to wondering, for my story, what if these things, these spirits that haunt our dreams and dance at the periphery of our vision, what if they need to be let in? What if, in calling for my muse I have opened the door both to and from my imagination, and what if that door cannot be closed? No. When it comes to ideas for spooky stories, I have inspiration wherever I turn my eye.

0

Midnight Train to Nowhere

Early hours of July 14th. Heard a train on the line outside just as I was about to go to bed.
It would have been crazy not to immediately run outside and film it trundling by in the pitch black.

This is one of the Network Management Trains that are used to monitor the condition of the track. It is filled with cameras and sensors and all sorts of technogubbins. You can even see the red laser light as it passes.

Wonderful stuff.

0

Twitter Break

Get yourself a twitter account they said. I can’t remember who said it or when, but someone did, and so I did. I got a Twitter account.

I was being clever. All I needed to do was acquire a large following of erm, followers, and point them all gently at my blog. Traffic would skyrocket, and publishers would fall at my feet. My arse.

The trouble with Twitter is that if you don’t tweet, it forgets about you, and your posts are hidden. The only thing that matters is engagement. If you don’t engage you’re invisible. That’s the trap.

And so that’s how it went for the last year. I built a following of over 8k followers and engaged with them by asking thoughtful questions like “have you ever stood on a piece of Lego?” And uploading pictures of mashed potatoes. The long nights just flew by.

The trouble is, of those 8k followers, only a handful of them click through to the blog. I’m grateful for the kind words and encouragement that I received from those that did, but what soon becomes apparent is that my blog isn’t exactly a hive of activity. My last post was uploaded in August, and it’s pictures of a miniature Tardis against the stunning scenery of Morecambe Bay, not the fictional stories with which I’d hoped to make my name . Twittering has become the thing that fills my time.

Of those 8k followers, I probably engage with only about fifty of them, and some of those would be fun to know in real life, if the world wasn’t quite so huge. Who are the other 7950 followers? And why do they follow if they don’t engage?

And then there’s the politics. When you spend a lot of time on Twitter, it’s easy to imagine that it’s representative of the world. It’s not. Some voices are amplified beyond their weight and against the reason they cannot hear. It’s refreshing to step outside of that space and take in the fresh air.

In the few short days since I uninstalled Twitter, I have written an article about Christmas, edited a short story that I wrote in March, and started reading a book I bought last year. These are the things I wanted to be doing, instead of Doom Scrolling from sun up to sun up again. I came very close to deleting my account. It’s the only surefire way to stop me relapsing, but that seemed extreme, and something I might regret.

I survived the week without telling the world about my meals. My sausage casserole was no less delicious for going unreported online. My existence is not diminished for missing another international something or other awareness day. But I did spend some of my evenings writing, and I did go to sleep feeling positive, and awoke feeling refreshed.

So I broke the break today to see what I had missed. I installed Twitter and logged in. There was a couple of notifications. Other accounts that felt as I did about it, but for the 12.5k tweets I’d posted previously there was no new engagement and I have to ask myself how else might I have spent that time? The answer of course is writing, and I have much catching up to do.

The only question that remains is whether I promote this post on Twitter.

1

Bored, By Thunder

It’s one of my favourite things in the whole world. Sitting by a window at night time and watching flashes of lightning light up the sky, listening to the rumbles and crashes of thunder. It’s like watching a crackling fire or a heavy snow storm. It’s compelling viewing.

We don’t get many electrical storms where we live, that’s part of the appeal of them, and the ones we do get are short-lived. They appear out of nowhere, but with a day or two advanced warning, flash and crash a bit, and then disappear.

I have a couple of memorable storms, but nothing major. The time we were shaken awake in the night by a sudden crash of thunder directly above us. We had a cat at the time, Nonsense, and before the thunder clap had even finished, we heard the four tiny feet clambering up the stairs, felt a weight plod on to the bed, and a meeping bulge of white fluff muscled in between us.

One of my favourite storms was one that we saw on flight some years ago. I’m sure the pilot must have mentioned it, but it didn’t register at the time, and the plane diverted to the south. Unusually, we flew over Paris, and I recognised the French Capital by its distinct street layout. Despite the height and distance, the Eiffel Tower was clear, and was surrounded by tiny flashes of white light from the tourists’ cameras. If only I’d had my camera. More interesting though, were the flashes of light along the horizon. Flying about five miles up, the horizon covers several hundred miles, and every second or so, the distant sky was lit by a flash. I’d never seen lightning that way before, it was breathtakingly beautiful.

That brings me to the storm we had yesterday. I’ve never seen anything like it either, and we were forecast a lot of lightening.

The Forecast

As promised, the lightening started at 1am, though there were lots of flashes before then, but no sound of thunder. I wasn’t staying up deliberately to watch the storm, I was just having difficulty sleeping because of the warmth I suppose, but I did snooze off for a while. I awoke to the flashes in the sky, constant flashes, lighting up the room.

During a normal storm I would sit and wait for the flash and the thunder. Sometimes, you blink and you miss it, or it goes off in a different part of the sky. Sometimes, the flash lights up the sky from the back of Clougha Pike, creating a brief but dramitic silhouette of the enormous hill that overlooks the city of Lancaster.

This storm wasn’t normal. The flashes were coming from every direction, and every other second. It was frenetic, and I watched it for ten minutes from the window, and it showed no sign of letting up. A look at the weather map below shows exactly what was happening. It was blumin stormy.

Weather Map

After ten minutes of the lightening getting more intense, I decided to film it for a while.

Storm Video 1
Storm Video 2

Thirty minutes of constant flashes is more than enough for me, and I returned to bed at about 1:45am after getting bored, for the first time ever, by an electrical storm.

I took a while to drift off. The sound of thunder filling the room, and the constant flashes penetrating my closed eyes made it difficult to sleep, but not impossible.

The next morning, I uploaded one of the videos to Twitter, where I saw that one of my Twitter friends had uploaded a video of a tornado brushing the side of their house, and had had to spend their night in their storm shelter. All of a sudden, lightning seems even more boring.

0

I Wrote Two Poems

I haven’t had a go at writing poetry in years, but good ones appear in my Twitter feed every day, and yesterday, for some reason, maybe the dull weather and the lazyness of Sunday apathy inspired me to capture my thoughts.

This first one, written directly to Twitter, is about that very thought,

The bread machine is silent, it knows what to do 
The crockpot is bubbling, we’ll meet again at six 
Tomorrow’s socks are washing 
Beer is opened, pen lid is off 
Poems do not have to rhyme

The next one, is an epiphany. I have taken my eyes off the prize, I’m not writing as much as I was.

I checked on dinner, phone in hand. 
I set the washing machine, phone in hand. 
I sat down to write, phone in hand. I opened a beer, phone in hand. 
I mock those who can’t put their phone down and enjoy life, with my phone in hand. 
I wrote this on the phone in my hand.

I have gained a few likes for these, and even a retweet, but whats more important is actually writing them, is writing, and it is this that I need to focus on.

1

Hogwarts Train – Hest Bank 31/10/2015

It was a Saturday like any other, except that it was Halloween . For lunch we’d decided to pick up a drive thru MacDonald’s on the way home and stop off at Hest Bank shore to eat while enjoying the views and the fresh sea air. No sooner had we finished our lunhes and prepared to set off for home, I heard the distinct sound of steam engine clatter. It sounds a bit like a military helicopter at full clink and I didn’t want to miss a photo opportunity.

I grabbed my phone and leaped out of the car in time to see the train coming to halt right behind us.

It stopped, blocking the level crossing, and our only way out.

The Hogwarts Train

After a while it became obvious that the train wasn’t going anywhere, so we wandered down to the crossing gates to get a closer look.

The train was empty, but the tables were set for a meal. This is the train that is used in the Harry Potter movies, the coaches at least. They are based at Carnforth, just a mile or two up the track from here.

From the foot bridge

There was no sign of why the train had stopped here, there is no signal or station, unless this was a SPAD (Signal Passed At Danger) incident, but there was nothing in the news about it. I must admit to enjoying the sight and sound and smell of steam locomotives, and to see two of them together, on the mainline, was a rare treat, and well worth being trapped by the barrier for the thirty odd minutes.

Eventually though, the train did leave. Google composited my pictures in to a short movie. Thanks Google.

The Train Now Departing…Hogwarts Express…Choo choo!!!

An unexpected treat on a grey autumn day. Lovely.

3

The Nursery

‘I always feel silly about this bit‘ I told the vendor, ‘But full disclosure is full disclosure.  Even ghosts‘. The vendor was a young man, late twenties, and as well presented as my three bed detached house he was trying to sell.

‘Ghosts, eh?’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck, ‘one man’s ghost is another man’s creaky floor board you know‘

‘Quite true‘ I said, and I had to agree with him, ‘but you know how it is now.  They changed the law to protect the buyer and seller alike.  Anything you mention now, you can’t be sued for later; and we’ve already covered the physical, social and geographical sections‘

‘I know‘ he said, sighing. ‘I know‘

‘I should probably put down that creaky board too‘ I said, ‘just to be on the safe side‘

There had been something of a scandal in the property market of late, with lofty booms and deep depressions, accusations of misleading descriptions, dirty dealings, gazumping and gazundering, and legal actions taken to recover any and every misspent penny.  The inevitable outcome of course, was the full disclosure clause.  A catalogue of features, good and bad, compiled by the seller and presented to potential buyers.  A full service history for the home; every dripping tap, noisy neighbour and molehill went in to the report, and if necessary, an estimate on the cost of correction.  If you knew about something, but failed to log it, you could be, potentially, liable for hefty losses.

The vendor fell silent and rubbed his neck again.

‘I’m guessing by your silence that you have something else to disclose‘ I said.

He laughed dryly, as if choking on ash.  ‘It’s crazy‘ he said.  ‘How can I disclose the presence of something I don’t believe in?‘

‘Do you believe there is a presence?‘

He stared through me, his eyes glazed.

‘Just tell me what you know; we can let the buyer make up their own mind.’ I pulled out my notebook to record the details.

His face dropped.  ‘That’s what worries me‘

            It was a tidy little house, only one year old and with one careful owner. It sat in an ample sized plot, its garden commanded an uninterrupted view down the long valley and the ocean beyond.  A typical modern middle class home, it was of a unique design among its neighbours, and it was hard to imagine how a house of this standard would fail to find a buyer in the current market.

‘We bought it in a rush‘, the vendor explained, ‘with the baby on the way and the unexpected job transfer; we found ourselves moving back out west. Found this house as part of a new development and moved straight in, just one week before baby was due.‘

That was August, last year.  A real heat wave, I remember it all too well.  While I celebrated my promotion to Associate Member that night with altogether far too much alcohol and a skinny dip in the Tamar, the vendor had had a celebratory barbecue at his brand new home.

He took me outside to show me, and his tale unfurled.

‘We were out in the back garden‘ he said, ‘When I first thought something was up‘

‘Over there‘ he said, pointing to the neighbouring street that backed on to his land, ‘That’s Elms Walk now, but when we moved in, that was the edge of the wood‘

‘We were all out here drinking; having a laugh, scoffing Evie’s minted lamb burgers and caramelised bananas. It was a beautiful day, practically tropical.  It must have been about seven o’clock though, when the sun started to dip behind the trees, casting the garden in to shade, and at that same moment, the wind picked up.  The whole yard cooled down, and, this might just be the booze, but the shadows from the wood seemed to dance menacingly toward us, and creepily, and far faster than I would expect the sinking sun to cast.‘

‘I had hoped we get more sun in the back than we did, but I didn’t mind.’ He went on. ‘The setting sun was just an excuse to light the chiminea.  This was when Evie asked me to get her a blanket from indoors.’

‘I did as asked and went inside, everything was still in boxes, even some of the cupboards were still in flat-pack boxes and waiting to be unpacked and assembled.  The Nursery had become an unofficial laundry room while we got sorted, and as I pushed open the door to collect a fleece blanket, something rustled behind the boxes.  I only saw its shadow, but my best guess was a cat, or a small dog; I could hear it rustling the plastic bags as it tried to evade me.  It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption, the doors and windows had been open all day. Anything could have got inside; my only worry at the time was getting bitten by some rabies infected mog.’

‘And then I thought it was a bird because when I crept cautiously round the boxes and found nothing, and walked round around again.  I was certain, then there was a tap and the window, a flutter of wings and it was gone.  I thought no more of it as I picked up the blanket.’

When I got back outside, Evie was sat up on the bench, nursing her huge baby bump.  I was very protective of my wife and bump, and I didn’t care for the worried look on her face.

‘It got cold very quickly, she told me, as I wrapped the fleece around her shoulders.’

‘I asked her if the baby was ok, and she assured me that everything was fine, but that she’d felt something, like someone had been touching her tummy, stroking her, pressing down like an obstetrician might examine the baby.  She said that she must have imagined it, but that it felt so real with her eyes closed; when the shadow from the trees moved across her, she was sure someone was stood there’. 

‘That sent a right chill up my back,’ he said, ‘and Evie never really shook the feeling that someone was stood over her shoulder where ever she was in the house.  I wished I’d listened to her at the start.’

‘After the barbecue, we only had a week to try and sort the house, but so much of our stuff was still in storage that we just couldn’t feel at home; and the bare walls and polished floors made for a cold and empty feeling.  It was harder to settle in than we’d thought, especially after the weird dream I had that night, I had enough doubts about the house and moving without some haggard looking grey skinned witch with wiry green hair screaming “Idiot, you got the wrong house!” at me. I woke up with a scream, my vest soaking; I very nearly set off Evie’s labour.’ 

‘About a week after later, we were both in bed, and I’d made Evie a caffeine free coffee for a Sunday snuggle and snooze, but we both heard a noise.  We sat upright, and heard it again.  A high pitched, but stifled giggle, like an excited schoolgirl trying keep her cool as she met her idol.’

‘“She’s on her way” The same hushed voice called out. And in the next moment, Evie was gripping my arm.  Her waters had broken.  I won’t bore you with the slippery details, but twelve hours after that, we had a beautiful baby girl, and the creepy voice was right. And after that, things started to get weird.‘

            ‘Got weird?’ I said to the vendor, ‘as if the creepy voice and groping thing was normal?’

He led me back inside and up the stairs to the master bedroom.

‘We kept baby in here with us to begin with, for the first two weeks’ he explained, ‘but she was so unsettled, and it began to interfere with our sleep.  She would wake every three hours for a feed, which is normal, but we started to have weird dreams.  Both of us dreamed that she was in the bed with us, and we’d wake at the same time looking her under the sheets.  It was like we were having the same dream, at the same time, and it was only when one of us looked up to see her in her crib, that we realised that we’d been dreaming it, but it was hard to shake when it was so realistic, like something had been there with us in the bed.’

‘That is weird’ I said, ‘Spooky even’.

‘That’s not the worst of it‘ he went on.

‘One night I woke up in the small hours.  Evie was sat on the end of the bed, with her head slumped.  I asked if she was ok, but she shushed me. I went over to see what was wrong, and tapped her on the shoulder’.

‘She snarled at me, muttering that I’ll wake the baby, but the baby was in her crib, and I told her this.  Then she opened her eyes and saw her empty arms. “Where is she, where is she!” She almost screamed the house down’.

‘It’s all right, I told her, gripping her upper arms to steady her, though by now baby was screaming too, and ready for a real feed’.

‘It was after this I suggested that baby be moved to her own room. I’d hoped that things would get back to normal if at least one of us would get some sleep.  Evie took some convincing to let the baby sleep in another room, but she knew it was the right thing to do, and she wasn’t very far away, and we had the pressure matt, and the sensor, and the night vision camera streaming to our phones, which meant that we were effectively in the same room wherever we were’.

‘On the very first night in her own room, just as we had settled her in her cot and stood admiring her, Evie spun around, adamant that she had felt a breath on her neck.  I shrugged it all off at the time, but if truth be told, I felt it too, and not just the breath.  I also felt a nudge, like someone was pushing their way between us’.

‘As the baby grew older, a couple of months or so, she began taking an interest in the corner of the nursery, always that same corner.  I tried sitting with her facing the other way round so that she couldn’t see it, but that would agitate her, and she’d wriggle her way round, and I’d have to give in and face that wall anyway.  This went on for a few weeks, always the same corner, and if you can imagine, a two month old girl, laughing and smiling at a plain empty corner.  Even I had the creeps by now’.

           ‘ It could be my imagination, and it probably is in all fairness, but one night, she woke up all grumpy, needing a change and a feed.  Evie was doing her dead to the world thing, so I got up.   It would have been about five am, and she was cradled in my arm, glugging down the milk, and as normal, I was staring at those gorgeous big brown eyes. She smiled back at me, gargling cheerfully on the milk, but she wasn’t really looking at me, she was looking past me, and this is where my eyes must have been playing tricks, because there was something there, moving over my shoulder, reflected in her eye’.

            ‘I froze at first, and my skin tightened as the Goosebumps formed, forcing the hairs of my arms to stand on end.  Baby just chuckled though, and I had to force myself to find reason.  If someone was behind me, it was either Evie, or I had an intruder to deal with’. The vendor continued his story, and even I was starting to have goose bumps. ‘I turned to see an empty room.   I was beginning to agree with Evie, and that we weren’t alone here.  Baby eventually fell asleep and I placed her back in her cot, but I didn’t really want to leave her there on her own’.

            ‘I did go back to bed though, eventually, and snuggled up to the sleeping Evie, wanting to wake her, tell her what had happened, and if she’d seen or heard anything more, but I heard baby was awake again, although this time, she didn’t cry.  I was happy enough to listen to the monitor and leave her to laugh herself to sleep, but as she giggled and gurgled, I made out another, distinct voice in there’.

            ‘Evie, not as asleep as she’d made out, heard it too, and we both sat, bolt upright, at the same time.  We leapt out of bed and ran down the hall to the nursery, terrified by what we might see, but driven on by parental instinct.  I got there first and turned the light on.  Baby was alone and now sleeping again, quietly in her cot’.

            ‘Evie yelled at me, Now do you believe me! I did’.

            ‘I really did, but I didn’t want to believe her.  I’d heard it myself, seen things too, inexplicable things, but if I confessed to this, it would make it real somehow, and it can’t be. So, “It must have been the wind or something” I told her’.

            ‘She harrumphed at me, and we both crept back to our room.  I turned the monitor screen on, and angled it so that we could both see it, and the cot on the night vision screen where the baby was now sleeping soundly, and we listened to every blip…blip…blip of the pressure mat that vigilantly reported every breath and heartbeat, ready to alert us to any lack of movement’.

            ‘Evie turned her back to me, and I felt terrible for dismissing her fears. But we both loved the house, for all of its weirdness, and accepting it really was haunted would destroy that.  Instead, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the screen‘.

            ‘Do you ever get that thing, where you’re looking at an everyday thing‘, he went on, ‘and it looks normal, but there is something different with it, but you can’t say what. Like when a colleague gets a haircut‘.

‘Well, we had neighbours living on either side of us now, and when a car drove up the road, the head lights would shine through the curtains and cast a shadow on the back wall of baby’s room that was clearly visible on the monitor.  By this time, the neighbours were up and leaving for work in the darkness of the winter morning, and each time a car passed the house, their headlights shone upon the wall the outline of branches from an enormous bare tree.  I’ll attribute my slow conclusion to my lack of sleep, but it did eventually dawn on me that there are no trees outside, and certainly not between the window and the road’. 

            ‘There was nothing outside that could cast anything even remotely similar to that shadow, and I didn’t just look out the window.  I investigated this properly, taking in to account the height of the window, the level of the road, the direction of traffic; I modeled exactly where a tree would have to be to cast a shadow on that wall’.

            ‘What’s more, I have the recording from that night, and the shadow is there.  I didn’t imagine it, it shouldn’t be there, but it is‘.

The Vendor was starting become agitated by his own story.  It was hard enough to imagine that someone would make this up, especially as it could affect the value of their home.  ‘Maybe it was a trick of the light‘ I said, trying not to over stimulate him further, ‘Maybe the tree was further away, down on the main road’

            ‘It really wasn’t‘ he said, ‘And if it was, that wouldn’t explain the leaves in the nursery.  Everyday we’d have to vacuum, but the windows were never open, how they blew in is a mystery‘

            He walked me back through to the nursery and we looked out the window, ‘See,’ he said, ‘these windows were never opened, Evie was terrified baby would fall out one day and it was better not to get in to bad habits.‘

            Outside, he was right, there were no trees, just shrubberies.  The whole wood had been cleared for the housing development, much to the protest of many conservationist and pressure groups at the time.  ‘Show me where the phantom tree would have been‘ I said, and he pointed out a recently disturbed flower bed.

            ‘Just there he said, I dug it up, found a bunch dead roots down there, but nothing of note’.

            ‘That’s where you thought the rabbit warren was isn’t it?‘ I said.

            ‘Yes, but as we discussed, the investigation found nothing down there, and no on-going concerns’ 

            ‘Yes, it’s all in the report, and there’s sign of pests. No sense going over old ground, is there anything else I should put in the disclosure?‘

            ‘That’s everything I can think of‘ he said.

            At that, we shook hands and I returned to the office to type up the brochure.

It was about a week later when, I received a visit from an interested buyer, and we spoke at length about this house, in particular, the spooky goings on.  I was worried this would put them off, but she was illuminated by the prospect and she went on to make a very generous offer, generous enough that I wanted to give the news to the Vendor in person, so I could see his face.

            We met in the Kings Arms pub next to my office and he beamed as I gave him the news.  Cash buyer, no chain, wants to move quickly.  It’s the best part of the job for me, seeing someone’s plans work out.

            ‘Who is she?”‘He asked me, taking a long celebratory sip of beer.

            ‘Didn’t like to pry‘ I said, ‘but she gave me her business card‘ and I slid it toward him. ‘It’s got a photo of her it’. His eye brow rose as he picked it up to inspect it closely.

            ‘Cornish Dryad Society?‘ He said, reading the words on the card beside the picture, ‘That’s the old woman from my dream!’

For more tales and spooky matters, click here.

0

Research Trip – Liverpool Overhead Railway

I have a story that I have been meaning to write for some time, a few actually, that are set in the old and smokey docklands of Liverpool, and to write these stories with any authority and authenticity, I need to establish an understanding of the period and setting. There is only so much that you can garner from books and archive films, and nothing beats a site visit. That was my excuse at least for dragging my wife and two children all the way to Liverpool to look at a train.

The train in particular that I wanted to see belonged to the Liverpool Overhead Railway, known colloquially as the Docker’s Umbrella. My digging told me that there was a preserved vehicle on Display at the Liverpool Museum, and probably a model railway too. Unfortunately the Model Railway wasn’t there, and I haven’t been able to track down the one that I saw at an exhibition a few years ago, but I’ll keep looking.

The lighting in the museum was really dim, and the spot lights caused a lot of glare and lens flare. J.J. Abrams would like it here.

The view from beneath gives a good feel for what it might have been like to walk beneath the elevated track, and imagine the trains rumbling above our head.

After taking the lift up to the first floor, there is a mock station display and part of the train compartment is accessible to visitors. We went inside and took a seat. I can’t imagine that these trains were this clean when they were in service. The elevated track ran for substantial sections directly above the steam operated dock railway. This would have been a much dirtier journey than we could ever expect today. Smoking would have been permitted too, and the floor was likely to be a grimy black, and littered with cigarette butts and paper wrappers.

The seats, curved slatted wooden benches, were actually quite comfortable, this was a very well built machine. Two thirds of the carriage were inaccessible, but the mannequins in period dress posed behind the glass gave a good impression of what it was like in the fifties.

Around the carriage display, there are information panels, posters and memorabilia. Its a great shame that this railway didn’t survive and would be a great transport solution for Liverpool and tourist attraction in itself. Unfortunately, when the line was closed in the 1950s, the dock was in decline and the private motor car was in ascendance. Railways and tramways were being replaced by buses and the infrastructure being torn down. Even if there was an appetite to save this railway, the decades of steam and acrid smoke from the dock engines on the railway beneath had caused substantial damage to the iron structures and full replacement was never going to be feasible.

This was a great loss to Liverpool, and the country, but like all of the beloved railways of yesteryear, this one lives on in our imagination.

Further Reading

Read more of our train posts on our Wheels of Steel page, and more travel posts here.

0

Two Bridges

It’s funny how becoming a parent changes your life in so many ways.  You look in to those brand new eyes, the eyes of a new person, a unique individual, and imagine all the things they have yet to see; the life they have ahead of them.

For the past, however many months it is, all they’ve seen is the pitch blackness of the womb, punctuated by the occasional red glow of a bright light from somewhere beyond penetrating the flesh and in to the womb, so all of this, my face, mommy’s smile, is all new to them. Or at least it, we assume it is.

I’m not really one to believe in reincarnation, I’m not really sure I believe in a God, but when I look in to those deep blue eyes, there is so much more depth, more pain, more joy, more tales to tell than in any of the other eyes that I have ever seen. The things they would tell you if only they had the words.

It is nonsense I know, but when I tore myself from my wife that night, nursing our new born child in that hospital room, I got to thinking of my own life, my childhood, my parents and upbringing. How might his experiences compare to mine, I too was once a tiny new born once, a blank sheet, as it were, what will his first memory be? I remember mine so vividly, and not like it was yesterday, but like it were today, still happening now, like part of me is caught, forever in that moment.

I can’t have been much older than one. My mother always insisted that all of her boys were walking by that age, though I can’t have been any younger. It was the day I was given a first taste of freedom, and my first real reprimand that I recall, though there must have been others before it, for me to have dreaded this one so much.

My parents were very strict on hygiene, and germs and disease, that led to a paranoid over-cleaning of surfaces and the unfortunate over-cooking of food. Maybe this is why I like crunchy vegetables and rare meat so much, in rebellion of my folk, but I knew even then that I must not eat from the floor. That was forbidden.

                It was a warm day, must have been August, since that was the month of my birth, and I wasn’t quite walking yet, but I do distinctly remember that this was the first time I was allowed out on to the communal grass to play by myself.  To the front of the house was a grassy area where the older kids would play.  There were no cars here, just neat little footpaths that meandered between the houses and through the estate.  I remember quite clearly for such an early age, the elation of being allowed out by myself, the freedom I had been given, and how I would not disappoint. But I was wrong about all three.

                I clambered up the shallow sloped path that led on to the main pathway that served the 1970s traffic-free open plan estate, and remember coming across the small dip in the tarmac.  This dip features heavily in my early memories.  About a foot across, but only an inch deep, this was where the older kids, and eventually myself, would assemble to play marble tournaments.  Or when it had been raining, me and my brothers would race, fighting all the way, to be the first to leap, feet first, in to the puddle, full pelt, and empty the dip of water before the others got there.  It was worth the inevitable thick ear.

                But anyway, back to the one year old me, alone on the footpath.  Dad had definitely closed the door behind me.  I was alone, free to do as I pleased, and although I knew not to put things in my mouth, I soon came across the discarded outer wrapper of a packet of Opal Fruits; the ones now branded as Star Burst.

                I don’t know what I was thinking, maybe I figured no one would know, but I felt wrong even as I did it.  It was like being possessed by one’s own primal instinct.  I clutched the litter in my chubby little fingers and raised it to my mouth, but even as I did so, something compelled me to look up.  Twisting my back and neck to look up and over my shoulder. My heart sank as I realised that I was not as alone I had believed.

                Of course my Father hadn’t let me play out alone, I was a baby, and he was right there, watching me from an upstairs window.  I caught just a glimpse of a boiled red face before it disappeared, and before I knew it, I was back indoors.

                I can’t say as I remember my punishment, I don’t really remember much else from that age, but this one thing, every detail, down to the Opal Fruits wrapper, is clear enough in my mind that I know the memory is real.

            I had the most lucid of dreams too as an infant.  Often waking in the night to find my mam sat beside me, often before I’d even realised that I’d even had a nightmare.  Usually, it was my two older brothers that had inspired the dream.  They teased me rotten, both of them being a fair bit older.  I would scream not to be left alone with them as Mam and Dad would get ready for their Friday night out down at the Clog and Hatchet.  Bizarrely, though, my brothers would usually manifest themselves as girls in the dream.

One dream in particular has stuck to me to this day. My “sisters” had pinned me down and tickled me so hard that I woke up screaming. I think it scared my Mam that I talked so much about the sisters I never had, and whenever I try to ask her about it later, she said she didn’t recall, or that it I was confused between boys and girls, him and her, he and she, when I was younger, but I know that that wasn’t it. The two older sisters were blonde and had long hair; I can see them now if I think back, tying me the washing line or putting Barbie’s shoes up my nose for their evil amusement.

            But there was a recurring dream too.  On more than one occasion I had this dream that I had fallen off of a railway bridge, often enough that for some time I believed that it had actually happened, especially though, as I never dreamed of the accident directly, just that it had happened, like I had been told about it happening to me.  I was usually at school or nursery in the dream, and the teacher would explain why I wasn’t there, that I had fallen, had a terrible bump, and why the children must always stay with their Mummy and Daddy and keep away from the bridge.

            I hadn’t thought about this stuff in years but something in Byron’s eyes got me thinking; awakening old memories, my oldest memories in fact.  So old that dream and fact and imagination often overlay each other, blurring the lines that should keep them separate.  Of the nice dreams that I have had, this one was the nicest.  It was about God.

            At the edge of the estate was an old ash path that led through the wheat field, over the railway, and then in to the next village where Gran lived.  I walked this way so many times with Mam, or Gran, or sometimes both, through those bright yellow fields, which to my knee high stature pretty much formed the horizon, connecting with the soft and fluffy white clouds that sailed silently above in the rich blue sky. It was inevitable that they would find their way in to so many of my earliest dreams and memories.

In the warm breeze, where the wheat crops rippled like waves on a vast yellow sea, and birds cawed cheerfully above, my asthmatic gran would wheeze as she dragged me away from something in the bushes that I had no business prodding. In my dream I would hear laughter and happy music, an assault on the senses, and always I would be drawn to this spot, where it was always sunny, and filling the sky above and down to where the sky met the field, was God. God, as I understood him to be with my innocent young mind. He smiled on me; and a long arm would sweep across the surrounding fields, not beckoning, but welcoming, like an open invitation to enjoy all that I could see. It felt like home, safe.

            These dreams stopped by the time I could verbalise them, but that part of the village was always an enormous draw to me; but then I’m sure that the real appeal was a little less ethereal.  It was of course the path that led to the train bridge, and what was more attractive to a small boy than the sight of a dirty great big noisy blue diesel locomotive chugging up the hill with a long train of coal hoppers?  

            My mother must have had the patience of an angel to stand and wait there on the bridge, in all weather, in the hope that something would use the line soon.  But it was hardly a Mainline, and hours at a time could pass before a train would come by.  I loved to see Gran, with her chip butties and jam rolls, but not until I’d seen a train or two.  I image Byron will be very much the same.

            It wasn’t just the trains either, that drew me to the bridge.  Down the line was another bridge, just close enough, on a clear day to see people crossing it.  Sometimes they too would stop and look up the line, and I would wave to them, and they would wave back.  Another little boy and his Mam perhaps, just like me, waiting for trains to pass beneath.

            I was fascinated by that other bridge and I kept nagging my Mam to take me there, but she would always say no, that it was too far, or we don’t have time; but as a child I was as resourceful as I was persistent, and eventually persuaded her that we needed to walk down the path that ran parallel to the track and in to the village. I was certain that we would cross another footpath that would lead to the other bridge.

            The path ran straight and hugged the side of the railway that lay in the cutting to the left.  I would have been most disappointed had a train passed now as it would have been out of sight.  It wasn’t long though, before the path began to descend, and soon we were level with the track.  There was a gap in the hedges here and I could see through to the rails.  The rail was now at eye level.  It would have to rise again soon to provide another crossing, but it didn’t.  The path continued to descend, and dropped through a hedge row and in to a ginnel flanked by high fences before emerging on to the main High Street of our village, next to the low bridge that took the road beneath the railway and out of town. 

I couldn’t understand it. I thought I had the whole spatial awareness thing sorted. I knew my way around the village. I had been wrong before though, at Christmas, Santa came to the Woollies Grotto and I remembered quite distinctly how to get there. It was in the snowy area outside of a small cave toward the back of the store. You had to wait your turn and then cross over a small hump bridge, over a frozen pond with penguins and elves, before sitting on the bearded man’s knee and telling him that you wanted a train set. Later, after Christmas, I wanted to visit him again, mostly to tell him about the apparent mix up with the presents. I ran to the back of the shop, my wheezing Gran in hot pursuit, only to find nothing. Where I expected to find the grotto, now there was no cave, and no humpback bridge, just a selection of light fittings; from which I was promptly pulled away.

            Of course, now I understand that it was just a display, specially erected to draw customers, but to this day, I have no such explanation for the bridge.  The next nearest bridge was two miles down the line, near enough to see the tops of wagons go over, but you’d need a hefty set of binoculars to spot someone waving.

            Until just a few days ago, I’d put this one down to false memory, or an overactive imagination. But Carmel had started researching our family tree, now that we had started a family of our own, and we’d agreed that we would put aside a copy of the local paper from the day of Byron’s birth; but as a nice surprise, I ordered reprints of the Chronicle from the days that me and the wife were born.

            On page eight of the Dearne Chronicle, 22 August 1974, there was an article about the planned demolition of the unsafe Spur Lane Bridge as it was structurally unsound.  It went on to say that the Vickers family, whose son had tragically fallen from the bridge in December the year before, were leaving the area to start a new life with their two remaining daughters.

            Make of this what you will, I like to think that my feet are firmly on the ground, but in the delivery suite, when Byron took his first good discerning look at his new world, the midwife looked over and smilingly said, “This one’s been here before”.  I knew exactly what she meant.

0

Ghostly Word Art

I recently joined a Facebook group that shares True Scary Ghost Stories and started thinking about my own real ghost experiences, and I posted this account on the group page.

Whenever I’m asked if I’ve seen a ghost, I always think ‘No, of course I haven’t seen a ghost‘ and the conversation dies or moves on to something else, or both. But later, sometimes hours, sometimes days, I’ll start remembering the weird things that happened that could well have been ghosts. Its a bit like when someone asks if you know any jokes and your mind goes blank.

This morning I remembered something that happened over twenty years ago in the student house I shared with six other students. It was a big old terrace, with three floors and a cellar, and a yellow door.

At the time, I was having a bit of a personal problem with one of the house mates, a storm in a tea cup really, and I was in the kitchen discussing it with one of the others. Everyone else was out and my house mate was preparing a lunch to take to campus while we chatted. He finished making his packed lunch and left the house for the university, leaving me in the house by my self.

I was very cross that day and used the large colourful magnetic letters on the fridge to leave a hurtful message for my troublesome roomie. Pleased with my mean comment, I made myself a coffee, but when I turned back to the fridge, just moments later, I saw that my cutting words had been scrambled.

I can still feel the way that the hairs on my head, arms and legs stood on end as I saw that my message on the fridge had changed. The magnetic letters been pushed to the edges and formed a thick band around the two words in the center of the fridge door. Its simply said “No Mike“.

The house was definitely empty. The kitchen was at the end of a long narrow hall, impossible to get to without being heard. The house itself was big and lofty, but every door and floorboard in the ancient building made its own identifying sound and betrayed the location of any one moving around the house. It was impossible to not know if someone else was home, you could even hear the neighbours on either side at times, coughing, laughing, or closing a door. The silence of the house during the daytime, when everyone else was out was deafening, and the sound of the fridge, grumbling and gurgling alone in the kitchen, seemed all the louder for it. No person could have changed those words, no one was there.

The problem with the roomie soon resolved itself, as these thing usually do, and I am grateful for what ever force intervened in my quarrel that day, as somethings are best left unsaid.

1

Start a Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑