I was recently asked to come up with a short story that could be read out at a Halloween party. This is what I came up with - see what you think:
The Lovers
There
once was a young couple who met, fell in love, and got married. The pair were
both bright, hard-working and successful, and everyone agreed they had a long
and prosperous life ahead of them.
Our
story begins at the end of October when, returning home from a luxury honeymoon
in the sun, the young couple arrive back at their impressive country home.
While they’ve been away, it seems that Winter has decided to pay an early visit
– leaves are dropping from trees and the late afternoon air is crisp and clean,
allowing the caw-cawing of a crow perched atop the chimney pot to echo, clear
and far around the rolling grounds.
After
paying the taxi fare, the pair head inside to escape the cold, where their
attention is quickly drawn to the sight of their wedding gifts, piled high in
the centre of their lounge – the glittering paper and beautiful bows betraying
the affection and warmth with which the young couple are universally held.
Those
presents would have to wait, however, as the husband’s first order of business
is to set a fire in the grate and get them both warm.
“Hold
on,” the wife warns, “we haven’t had the chimney swept this year.”
Dismissing
her concerns with a laugh, the husband sets the kindling ablaze and sits back
to admire his handy-work.
Watching
the fire take hold, the wife wrinkles her pretty little nose and winces with
concern. “I do hope the crow up on the chimney won’t mind,” she says.
“We’re
not running a bloody bird sanctuary!” the husband puffs incredulously, his
voice heavy with ridicule. “Of course it won’t mind – crows get cold too, you
know.”
The
young wife shrugs, still not convinced, but all thoughts of the bird are soon forgotten
– there are presents to open, after all. Ripping the stylish paper from boxes, large and small, the
couple delight in the modern kitchen appliances and revel in the chic
ornaments, before cooing over luxury fabrics and admiring the high-quality
knick-knacks with no discernable purpose that no executive house could surely
do without.
And
then the wife lifts a small, strangely shaped object, wrapped untidily in plain
brown paper. The husband
immediately sneers at the look of the gift and demands to know from whom the
modest gift has come.
Inspecting
the package, the wife identifies a sticker, stuck onto the wrapping in the way
a jar of home-made jam might be labelled. After a moment trying to decipher the spidery script, the
wife confirms the name of the giver: Nanny Bessom.
“Must
be someone on your side?” she suggests, not recognising the name.
Her
young husband suddenly laughs, as though the punchline to a joke has just been
explained. It seems the mystery beneficiary is an old lady – a “mad old hag,
smelling of stale piss and cat food”, to use his colourful description – that
they had been obliged to invite to their wedding at the instance of his own
dear mother. It seems this Nanny Bessom
had helped raise his mother when she was young, and she had always kept a soft
spot for her, despite her rather unconventional demeanour.
Encouraged
by her husband to open the present, the wife pauses to read another jam label,
stuck untidily on the base. In the same, scratchy handwriting, it reads:
‘Always share in your love together, and be
humble, happy and holy forever’.
Ignoring
her husband’s sarcastic guffawing, the wife tears away the brown paper,
revealing a delicate wooden carving of two lovers, wrapped in a tight embrace. The statue certainly leaves little to
the imagination, the naked female figure wrapping her thighs tight around her
husband’s hips.
The
young wife holds up the explicit carving so that they can both inspect its
charms.
“What
sort of person thinks that something like that
is an acceptable present?” the husband declares, before adding that, in all
probability, the several million copies of the item had been mass-produced in some
dark, third world sweatshop, each of them equally repulsive.
The
wife isn’t so sure, pointing out the quality of the carving and the beautiful
texture of the wood, speculating that it might actually be a piece of hawthorn.
“If
you ask me, it’s probably not even wood,” the husband scoffs, snatching the
statue from his young bride’s hands. “But if it is? Well, the best place for it
is on the fire.”
As
the statue of the lovers is enveloped in the roaring flames the wife initially
takes exception to her husband’s action, but the argument never has chance to
develop as, a moment later, thick smoke begins to fill the room, spewing from
the chimney.
“I told you,” she reminds her husband,
“that crow has probably built a nest up there.”
But
of course, as the husband points out with an untidy frown on his brow, if the
chimney had been blocked, the smoke
would surely have filled the room much earlier, when he first set it ablaze. Whatever the cause, the couple are left
with no choice but to douse the flames and throw the lounge windows open wide, inviting
the bitterly cold air to rushes in and embrace them.
All
is not lost, however, for the husband reminds the wife that the central heating
is on and the bedroom will be nice and warm. With a twinkle in his eye he also recalls that she had
picked out some new, expensive lingerie for their honeymoon, but had forgotten
to pack it in their luggage.
“Give
me ten minutes,” the wife laughs, disappearing into the bedroom.
Suddenly
alone, the husband half-heartedly attempts to tidy the discarded wrappings from
their haul of presents until, after just five minutes, he knocks on the door
and enters the bedroom.
“Times
up, ready or not!” he cries, only to be taken aback by the sight of his wife
sat on the end of the bed, still dressed in her travelling clothes. Her eyes are shut tight and her hands
are clamped hard over her ears.
“Everything
all right?” he enquires, reaching out to put a comforting arm around her. Alas, at the moment his hand touches
her shoulder, she jumps to her feet, her face full of fear.
“What’s
wrong?” he asks, taking her hands into his own and finding them to be as cold
as ice. Getting no immediate
response, he walks over to check the radiator and finds that too, to be stone
cold.
As
cold, in fact, as the grave.
Returning
to his wife’s side, the husband asks why she didn’t come to tell him that the
central heating wasn’t working.
And, of course, he also asks why she had been sitting there with her
eyes shut and her hands over her ears. Initially, she refuses to answer, but
eventually she takes a deep swallow and begins to tell her story.
Hesitantly,
she explains that when she had entered the bedroom, she had found a crow, tapping
its beak against the mirror fitted above her dressing table.
“A
crow? Are you serious,” the young man laughs. “What happened– did you chase it
out of the window?”
“I
couldn’t…” she whispers, “the crow was in
the mirror.”
The
husband frowns and asks her what she means.
Taking
several deep breaths she explains, once again, that the crow wasn’t there in
the room, it was inside the mirror,
looking out at her and tapping on the glass.
From
the other side.
The
young man pauses, trying to digest what his wife is telling him.
“That’s
stupid,” he says.
“Don’t
tell me I’m stupid!” the young woman lashes out, spinning away from her
husband.
“But…
you know that can’t be right,” he
laughs, disbelievingly. After all,
as he carefully explains, she must be very tired after all that travelling and
she was probably just mistaken – spotting an odd reflection in the glass and
not realising what it was.
The
young man is unable to elicit any further conversation from his distraught
wife, and eventually leaves her to her own thoughts. Retiring to the garage he tries to fix the central heating
but, after an hour, the radiators remain stubbornly cold. Returning to the lounge, he finds his
wife curled up on the sofa, wrapped in a coat, hat and scarf.
Thankfully,
she is in a slightly sweeter mood and immediately apologises for her earlier temper,
explaining that he was probably right – she simply imagined it all, what with
being so tired from the travelling.
And
then, upon deciding they both need some sleep, they head back to the bedroom
together. The husband reaches out to take his wife in his arms but she simply
responds with a sharp “Goodnight” and climbs under the duvet, still wearing her
coat.
“Sweet
dreams,” the young man shrugs and, in the way of such things, falls straight
off into a deep sleep.
A
sleep as deep, in fact, as the grave.
Sometime
later, he is stirred from his slumber by a hand, frantically shaking him by the
shoulder.
“Wassup,”
he yawns, coming out of his dream.
The type of dream you might recognise, when the strangest of images
immediately leave your consciousness on waking, leaving only an eerie sense of foreboding
lingering on the edge of your senses.
“Listen,”
the wife hisses, before explaining that the crow is tapping on the mirror again.
Unable
to hear anything, the husband reaches for the bedside lamp, but no matter how
hard he flicks the switch on and off and on and off again, the room remains
defiantly dark.
As
dark, in fact, as the grave.
“Just
there, did you hear it?” the wife whispers, gripping her husband’s arm with
tight, panicked fingers.
The
young man sighs, explaining that the noise was only his own efforts to turn on
the lamp. But she insists otherwise
– it was definitely tapping, coming from the mirror.
Resigned
to his fate, the young man slips from the bed, explaining that he will go and
fetch a torch. It’s a few minutes later when he returns, balancing a candle on
a saucer, the flickering flame sending shadows dancing around the room.
“Even
the bloody torch is dead,” he explains. And dead it was.
As
dead, in fact, as the grave.
With
the candle light sending more shadows dancing across the walls, the husband carefully
surveys the four corners of the room before solemnly declaring the space free
of birds.
“I…
told… you…” the wife shudders. “The crow… is in… the mirror…”
The
husband makes to reply but then wisely catches himself, suggesting instead that
he removes the mirror from the dresser, and takes it outside.
The
wife readily agrees, and moments later he disappears with the offending glass.
“Can
we go to sleep now?” he requests, returning from his errand.
The
wife smiles and agrees wholeheartedly, explaining she feels much, much better
now that the mirror has gone. And
so the couple wish each other good night and once again the husband returns to
his dreams. Back to the chase. Back
to the fear that, whatever terrible end was going to befall him in his
nightmare, there was nothing he could do to stop it. It was surely inevitable.
As
inevitable, in fact, as the grave.
And
then the wife wakes him again, bringing him back from his dreams even more
violently than before.
“What
is it now?” he asks.
Her
voice can barely be heard as she explains that she can still hear, from
outside, the bird tap-tapping on the mirror.
Truly
exasperated, the husband explains that there are lots of birds outside – they
live in the country, after all, and that’s the sort of thing one really does
have to come to expect. “I can’t
go out there and scare away every bloody creature that makes a noise,” he
declares.
The
wife – her face deathly pale and her eyes wide with terror as she strains for
another sound of the crow – patiently explains that it isn’t about the birds
and the animals and the countryside.
It’s
about the mirror.
“You
need to smash it,” she demands.
Realising
that this is the only way he was going to stop all this nonsense, the husband
reluctantly agrees.
And
a short while later, he returns to the bedroom, only to catch sight of his
wife, caught in the flickering glow of the candle, disappearing into the en
suit bathroom.
“That’s
okay, hun,” he calls, feeling more than a little under-appreciated. “It’s no
problem. Smashed up mirror. Just like you wanted. And if you think it’s cold in here, it’s bloody freezing out
there, I can tell you…”
He
pauses. His wife does not respond.
“Hello?”
he sings, calling out her name. And, for just a moment, he thinks he can hear an odd
sound. He calls again, and goes to
knock on the door. No response. And then he catches the unusual sound
once more – like a scraping or clawing, coming from the bathroom. He tries the handle. The door is locked.
And
at this point, it’s safe to say, time for husband seems to stand completely
still.
As
still, in fact, as the grave.
For
it is then, at that particular moment, he suddenly realises that the strange
scraping sound has now stopped, and in its place he can now hear a gentle
tap-tap-tapping, as if a fingernail – or a beak, perhaps – were knocking on a
hard, cold surface. And as this
thought registers in his head he remembers, too, that inside the bathroom,
there is another mirror.
Filled
with concern, he calls for his wife once more, flinging his shoulder hard
against the door. And again. And then again once more until the frame
splits and the door spills open, the sudden swish blowing out the candle flame
and sending the room into a thick and constricting darkness. But even this cannot conceal the shadow
of the bird as it swoops out of the bathroom.
The
husband runs.
Blind
in the ink blackness, crashing into furniture and bounding off walls, he
stumbles down the stairs, the bird’s wings flapping around his head, its claws
ripping at his skin and its beak tap-tap-tapping at his face.
Thinking
only to get outside – out into the moonlight and the open air, away from the
frenzied attack of the crow – he throws himself at the back door. But, as he manages to wrench it open,
he somehow looses his footing and stumbles over the threshold, spinning out of
control and headlong towards the broken remains of the very expensive dressing
table mirror.
*
Afterwards,
those that visited the house always said the place somehow felt very odd. Of
course, for the neighbour who found the young man in a pool of blood, a
six-inch shard of broken mirror stuck through his throat, this is perhaps
understandable.
For
the policemen who were called to the scene and went inside to find the body of
the young woman, this is understandable too – not just because of the way her
finger nails were shredded and splintered, as though she’d tried vainly to
scratch her way from a nightmare, but also the way her eye sockets were left bloody
and empty as if scavenging birds had eaten their fill.
But
it was the two workmen who had the strangest tale to tell. They had come to clear the house of all
its contents, including the modern appliances and the fine fabrics and the
luxury knick-knacks, and all those wedding presents, left untouched and
unwrapped, stacked in the middle of the room. And when their work was done and they were just about to
leave, a sweet old lady had approached them in the driveway and asked if she
could just take a quick look inside.
She
explained that she had seen the fine house from a distance many times, and had
long wondered just what the interior was like. Knowing they had cleared every last object from every last room,
the workman thought no harm could come of it, and they let the old lady in. And just moments later she came straight
back out again, thanking them kindly for their assistance.
And
even now the two workmen still argue.
For one of them claims that, as the old lady stepped back out from the
doorway, she cradled in her arms a carved, wooden statute, possibly – although
his glimpse was no more than fleeting – of two lovers, wrapped in a sensual
embrace.
While
the other said, no – that in fact, the object she cradled was a black crow, and
that as she walked away she lovingly stroked its feathers, like one might
stroke a contented pet cat.
And
no matter how hard either of them was pressed, neither would change their story,
each insisting that it was his final word on the matter.
As
final, in fact, as the grave.
Copyright Justin Peter Beaney 2012
