A Cautionary Tale for Samhain

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