Home Sweet Home (3 page)

Mr Marigolds
expression had grown ever more horrified as the tale went on. “Well
that’s a bit of a grisly tale to be going to sleep on,” he said
“anyway, it’s probably not true. You know what they’re like in
villages like this, stories get passed around and distorted and
embellished with each re-telling.”

“Maybe.” said
his wife, “maybe, but I wouldn’t say anything to the children about
it, I wouldn’t want to frighten them, and in any case, I haven’t
finished yet. It seems that the house was eventually rebuilt and
the young girl’s parents moved back in and lived in it for a number
of years and it seemed that they had got their lives back together
when suddenly, out of the blue, one night the woman took an
overdose of sleeping pills and killed herself. When her husband
discovered what she had done he was so distraught that he hanged
himself, poor chap.”
“Ok, ok,” laughed Mr Marigold, “you’d better stop now before you
give us both nightmares. Let’s go upstairs and try to get some
sleep.”

As he lay on
his camp bed in the gloomy darkness of the front room, Ben could
just make out the sound of his parents voices droning away in the
kitchen. It was comforting to know that they were near by, but he
still felt scared. He had to spend an entire night in this, frankly
terrifying room. He tried to rationalise his fear by persuading
himself that he had only to shout out and his parents would come
running to him. It helped, a little bit.

Ben had no idea
what time it was. He must have fallen asleep and then awoken. He
lay absolutely still and projected all his senses out around him
into the darkness. He strained as hard as he could but there was no
longer any sound of voices, so his parents must be in bed by now.
At this realisation he felt his skin begin to crawl and he lay
stock still, petrified and clammy with sweat. He decided that it
must be the dead of night, maybe 3am, because the total absence of
noise was so profound. It was like an unbearable weight of silence
pushing down on him and slowly smothering him. He wanted to clear
his throat just to make a sound, just to prove to himself that he
could still hear and that noise was still possible in this enclosed
little micro-universe of his. But he was too frightened to make a
noise, in case it aroused unwelcome attention. He could hear
nothing and yet he was certain there was something; something
silent out there in the room. Whilst he had been lying in terror,
his eyes had been slowly adapting to the darkness. He was torn
between, on the one hand, pulling the blankets over his head and
trying to get back to sleep and on the other, looking around the
room and making sure that everything was as it should be. Bravery
won out in the end and without moving a muscle he peered out across
the room and tried to make sense of the vague shadowy shapes he
could see. The room would have been scary at the best of times at
this time of night, but now… well, his heart was pounding inside
his chest so hard that he was convinced it was about to burst.

After a couple
of minutes of intense scrutiny of the shadowy nether-world within
which he lay, he felt reasonably certain that everything was as it
should be and this calmed him, just a little. He dared to make a
very small sound in his throat and the reassurance of the familiar
noise settled him further. He had been lying on one side for so
long that he was feeling quite cramped and uncomfortable so he
flipped over onto his front and turning his head the other way, he
immediately felt his scalp crawl and his body go clammy with cold
sweat, but for several seconds he lay in almost total paralysis
whilst his wide staring eyes gazed in horror upon the image of two
bodies lying stretched out on the floor with another, half-seen
figure crouching over them. Suddenly, with a piercing yell, Ben
launched himself backwards away from the figures so violently that
he capsized the camp-bed and in his blind panic he couldn’t
coordinate his movements and ended up thrashing about in his
blankets helplessly, and with each passing second his dread built
as he imagined the crouching figure rising and moving towards him
and…. Finally he freed himself and with a cry of terror he made
straight for the door without a backward glance, whilst just behind
him, so he imagined, unseen and claw-like hands reached out towards
him grotesquely and silently.

He ran, still
screaming, from the room and made straight for his parents bedroom.
At least such was his intention, but he came to a confused halt
where the stairs should be, for there were no stairs and underfoot
was nothing but rubble and broken glass. By now Ben was crying for
help at the top of his voice and running pell-mell, crashing
through shards of glass, through the door that hung from one hinge
and out into the garden. He ran down the lawn away from the house
and crouched in the bushes at the end of the garden sobbing in fear
and without any clue as to what he should do.

The apple tree
was a towering and sinister presence looming close by and seemingly
growing larger and more frightening each time he looked at it, and
all the time the image of what he had seen so recently was
emblazoned on his mind. There had been two bodies lying side by
side on the floor with the unmistakeable figure of Mrs Smith
crouching over them. It had been dark, but he was nevertheless
quite certain of what he had seen.

Ben crouched,
shivering, at the end of the garden for an indeterminate length of
time. He was exhausted, frightened and terribly lonely and he
wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t all just a terrible dream.
But, if it was, he had no idea when it would end, or how he should
end it. He had never been in a situation before, where his parents
couldn’t help him and he missed them terribly. He had an emptiness
inside him that longed for the succour of his mothers smiling face
and reassuring words.

In due course
the suns’ first feeble tendrils cast upwards from the horizon and
the inky night sky was slowly softened to a milky grey that failed
to provide the least shred of comfort to the small boy as he lay
huddled on the dew-sodden lawn, knees tucked tightly up into his
chest and knuckles thrust painfully between his clenched teeth.

Ben had spent
the night in a fitful and interminable state of semi–wakefulness.
He was stiff with cold and lack of movement and had been staring
for some time through half closed eyes at an object that, perhaps
his eyes or mayhap his torpid brain, could not quite resolve. As
the cold early morning hue turned by degrees to the warmer tones of
incipient sunrise, so the image took on a clearer form. Slowly it
moved, by mere inches, to and fro, to and fro. Metronomicaly,
hypnotically it swung, whilst Ben’s sub-consciousness followed the
rhythmic motion, poised, as it was, midway between wakefulness and
sleep. Finally and with a great flourish, the sun entered its
domain and piercing shards of light brought Ben to cruel and sudden
wakefulness. At first he merely stared uncomprehendingly but then
he jumped to his feet and gasped in horror, for the moving shape
was none other than a large man swinging lazily by the neck up in
the Apple tree. As the body swung, so it turned until there could
be no further doubt; Ben found himself staring straight into the
bloated and hideously distorted face of Mr Smith.

Instinctively
Ben fell backwards, away from the dreadful apparition, and crashed
through the shrubs at the rear of the garden and out through the
gap in the fence onto the road behind. The accumulation of that
night’s horrors had sent him mindless with terror and he ran back
towards the village in great stumbling strides, his only coherent
thought being to reunite himself with his parents and bring this
relentless nightmare to a close.

After a couple
of minutes he came to the junction of the lower road and the main
road into the village. He stopped momentarily and stood gasping for
breath, but he knew not what nameless horrors still pursued him
and, though his legs would scarcely carry him, he turned left and
continued his desperate run up the gentle incline of the road into
the village, before careening sharply left up the garden path to
the front door of the house, where he fell to his knees in
exhaustion and hammered on the door with both fists, whilst
screaming for his parents continuously at the top of his voice.

*****

Mrs Smith sat
beneath the branches of her beloved Apple tree and gently swung
herself backwards and forwards on the home made swing that her
husband had made for their daughter Josie, twenty years before. The
swing had been a feature of the garden for so long now; that it
seemed it had always been there. It had hung unused through the
long cold winters only to be reawakened each spring by the
shrieking laughter of Josie and her friends as they rediscovered
the endless possibilities for play that the swing could
provide.

Of course, as
time passed and Josie grew up, the swing had seen less and less use
and eventually it hung idly from its branch for most of the
time.

Mrs Smith had
such fond memories of this Garden. As she swung gently on the swing
so she remembered the summer that Josie had arrived. She used to
position Josie’s pram in the dappled shade beneath the Apple tree,
whilst she went about her daily chores and sometimes she just sat
contentedly beside her baby and gazed in wonder at the little
miracle that brought her such unending pleasure.

Later on, when
Josie was maybe two or three years old she began to help her mum to
gather up the windfall apples before they rotted on the ground and
when she was much older she helped her mother to harvest the apples
from the tree itself, climbing the ladder and leaning across to
reach apples that were almost out of her reach with an assurance
that made her mothers heart swell with pride.

Mrs Smith had
always wished for a fruit tree and when she and her husband had
first set eyes on this house, with the apple tree in the garden,
everything had seemed so perfect about it, that they bought it
there and then and never even considered moving again. It was to be
as it were, their ‘forever’ house.

She remembered
the very first time that Josie had brought Archie back to the
house. She had brought one or two casual boyfriends back previously
and Mrs Smith had done her best to be open minded about them, but
when she met Archie she had secretly hoped that he would turn out
to be ‘the one’ and indeed this very quickly turned out to be the
case. It had soon become clear that he and Josie were mutually
besotted and in every way they seemed so well matched. They were
both calm, considerate and level headed. He was an Architect with a
career that was just beginning to take off and Josie; well Josie
could be whatever she wanted to be. She was gifted in so many ways,
but had yet to discover what she really wanted to do.

When the
engagement was announced and the wedding date set, Mrs Smith was in
her element. She took on the planning alongside Josie and together
they organised the wedding that her little Josie deserved.

Mrs Smith’s
expression had been wistful but now her eyes moistened and tears
began to stream down her cheeks. She was choked with sadness; How
had she thought that she could live without her dear, dear Josie.
Her life was merely mechanical now. Her body carried on living as
if it was some soulless robot, but inside, her spirit was dead. She
needed her Jodie back. Somehow she had to find a way to reunite
herself with her little Josie. There was a way, she felt sure,
there was a way that they could be together and she could
obliterate her torment once and for all.

Mrs Smith
swallowed the little tablets one by one, seemingly not in any
particular hurry. She then retrieved a half bottle of whisky from
her coat pocket and shakily unscrewed the cap before raising the
burning fluid to her lips and gulping it down as though it
contained within it the power to restore her youth and happiness.
For a few moments more, she sat gently rocking on the swing and
then she mumbled almost incoherently, “Josie my beloved, my perfect
little Josie, Mummy is coming for you.” A few seconds later all
consciousness seeped from her body and she tumbled backwards off
the swing and lay silently on her back, eyes staring sightlessly up
into the foliage of the tree that had been the focus of so many
happy memories for her over the years.

*****

Finally Ben’s
Hammering blows on the front door were answered. He could hear the
security bolt being pulled back and then the front door swung open
and he staggered wearily to his feet, relief that his ordeal was at
an end flooding through his body. He looked straight into the
friendly and familiar face of his mother, he had missed her so
profoundly and he so needed the comfort that only his mother could
bring to him, that he began to sob hysterically and flung himself
into her arms. But rather than receiving the warm hug that he so
desperately needed, instead, he felt an overwhelming sense of panic
and disorientation as he passed straight through the point at which
she had just been standing without touching her at all.

His momentum
sent him stumbling through into the hall where he lost his balance
and fell heavily to the floor. He lay completely still for several
seconds, stunned by what had just happened, but then the immediacy
of his predicament got him scrambling to his feet in a frenzy. The
hallway was enveloped in a thick pall of smoke which had already
descended to within a couple of feet of the floor and he could see
that he had little time left to get out of the house. The front
door was shut and he lunged at it in desperation, alternately
kicking at it and tugging at it, until his breath finally gave out
and he had to drop back to his knees in search of the small amount
of breathable air still left at ground level.