Black Cat Tales: Black Anne and Other Short Stories

coughing fit was so severe that she was unable to dwell on the fact that that fireman was dead. Judging by his appearance he had been dead, in the river no doubt, for some time. Yet he had managed to walk up here and had spoken to her. The sudden silence that had filled the hallway was now replaced by the muffled roar of rushing water, as if she’d just jumped into a swimming pool. Rose stumbled backwards, colliding with the wall and coughed again, vomiting muddy, sickly liquid. The vile, foul-tasting water filled her mouth again. She couldn’t swallow and then she realised she couldn’t breathe either. She retched hard; twisting her guts as more of the stuff came up, blocking her throat and choking her lungs. She still couldn’t breathe. Panic gripped her. Somehow her lungs were filling with water, horrible rank dirty water. Her heart banged loudly in her ears. She was choking; drowning. She was in the hallway but she was drowning. The heaviness filled her chest and she had no doubt the Flicker-thing was doing this to her. She spun around wildly. Desperate, she thumped on her chest but still the foul turgid river water poured into her lungs. Choking, juddering, thrashing her arms wildly Rose vomited again, splashing filthy river water into an ever widening puddle at her feet. Dizziness swayed her balance. In her head she heard cruel delighted laughter cackling the word “Groac’h, Groac’h, Groac’h over and over again. She couldn’t hold on much longer; her lungs were about to burst. Bright spots flashed in front of her eyes and she felt her consciousness slipping away.

  “No, Flicker!” Hayden called loudly, cutting through the deafening echo of rushing water. “Go away Riverman”. His shrill childlike voice suddenly finding an air authority and he spoke in a tone that commanded a confidence way beyond his years. He didn’t sound or even look like Hayden any more. The way he held himself, tall and in control. He had changed. But it only last a moment though, before he fell. Through her blurred watery vision Rose saw Hayden’s limbs begin to tremble as he crumped on the floor like a marionette whose strings have been cut. His eyes rolled up in their red-rimmed sockets and his body slowly began to shake. His transformation slipping away as fast as it had come. His fingers went into spasm and the pen he had been twiddling bounced off the bottom stair and rolled away. Rose recognised the seizure coming on but she could do nothing to help as his body began shaking violently as his epilepsy swept through him. Rose managed to call his name. Then she realised the water had gone – she could breathe again. The hallway seemed to leap back into reality as her ears popped painfully. Swallowing hard and still aware of the threat from the fireman she glanced back to the door and saw he was leaving. He didn’t say a word as he quietly trudged back out into the unforgiving night, as if impelled to follow Hayden’s instructions. Then she found Flicker, the drowning-faerie again. Reflected in the glass of the picture Rose saw that it had left her and had now turned its attention towards Hayden.

  “Oi! Leave him alone” she shouted and ended up coughing up the remains of the dark mire. The Groac’h had slowed down. It couldn’t quite reach Hayden. It appeared to have hit an invisible barrier. As Rose looked on she noticed it seemed to be losing its definition, ‘flickering’ much more frequently and taking longer to reappear. Still trying to catch her breath Rose leaned against the wall and watched in fascination as the drowning-faerie slowly dissolved in front of Hayden. It thrashed about, tried to turn around but seemed rooted to the spot. It was as if Hayden’s seizure was somehow syphoning off whatever power the water-witch was using to manifest in this world. It wavered one last time before vanishing completely. Rose found her strength and charged over to Hayden, still taking deep gulps of air into her sore lungs.

  The fit lasted less than a minute and when he came round the usual groggy expression was absent. He appeared normal, for Hayden, as if nothing had happened. It was as if he hadn’t even had a seizure. He simply looked at Rose and said “Flicker’s gone away. Riverman doesn’t hurt anymore”. Then, for the first time Rose was aware of, Hayden smiled. It was just a small, quick smile of triumph before the default blank expression was back in place. Before Rose could respond he got up and retrieved his twiddling pen before taking himself back upstairs to bed. Rose stayed sitting at the foot of the stairs for some time afterward trying to process the night’s events. When Jean finally arrived she was full of apologies. Rose told her Hayden had got up, had a mild seizure but had gone back to bed again but everyone else was fine. That’s all she needed to know. All anyone needed to know about tonight.

  The following morning the river Tees was lapping at the door of Hillside Grange and the day staff safely evacuated the children to another home. After they had all left, the body of a fireman was found floating in the car park. It didn’t take long to identify him as one of the firemen who had lost their lives in the floods last year. Rose was thinking of the fireman as she walked towards the rugby club that afternoon. Huge amounts of water were still puddled across the road, testing the barricades of sandbags people had piled up by their homes in an effort to keep the waters at bay. The rain had stopped now, thankfully, and the thin white clouds overhead were reflected clearly in the flood water below. Rose didn’t know what had happened to Flicker, the Groac’h, or whatever that thing was. But with Flicker gone, it was as if the river hadn’t wanted the fireman’s remains anymore and had given him back to his community. But, she speculated coldly; two firemen had drowned in the river last year. Which meant; somewhere out there the river still possessed a second body. A breeze rippled the water, distorting the reflection of the houses and clouds. Rose quickly looked away from the water. She felt foolish but Hayden was always nervous of reflections, especially reflections in water because that’s where Flicker could find you. Rose walked on quickly, looking straight ahead of her until she reached the rugby club.

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  Revelations Part 1

  “Imagine you are in a very dark room; a cellar” the undertaker tried to explain. His deep doom-laden voice brought a slight chill to cosy living room of the vicarage. The way his tone rumbled with the rich eloquence of a classical education mixed with a delicate blend of sympathy and depression was fabulously macabre, Nigel Timmis mused.

  “Imagine you’re looking for something” the funeral director continued. “But its pitch black in there and you can’t see a thing. Now, you do have a torch but the batteries are almost gone. So when you switch it on the light it casts is very dim and you only have a few moments to search the darkness and learn what is hidden before the illumination is gone and you’re once again blind to the treasure hidden just out of sight”.

  Outside the grey midwinter sun began to set. The fire in the open hearth crackled invitingly, sending flickering shadows dancing over the walls accentuating the speaker’s deathly features. Nearly seven feet tall Guy Alderman of Alderman and Son’s Funeral Services carried a thin gaunt frame. His black hair, greying at the temples was always combed backwards which, together with his sallow cheeks and sunken eyes, gave him an uncanny likeness to Christopher Lee’s Dracula. Guy Alderman looked and sounded the archetypal undertaker and the vicar always believed he should have been in the theatre. Nigel had prayed his long term friend would join the church’s amateur dramatics society on occasions too numerous to mentions but alas he had always bowed out. He didn’t share Nigel’s flamboyant disposition, which was a tragic loss both to the group and the entire community.

  “What I am about to tell you, Nigel, must go no further than these four walls” his long-time friend intoned gravely. “That trip I was telling you about has been brought forward and I must leave. Tonight”. Nigel had suspected something was amiss earlier when Guy telephoned to announce his visit. He never usually rang. Then when he arrived, Nigel had observed the surreptitious way his friend had scuttled into the vicarage after casting what looked like a nervous glance, if such an emotion were possible for Guy Alderman, around the snow covered churchyard next door. Outside the wind was picking up, rustling the branches of the fir trees that spread amongst the old crumbling gravestones. Flurries of freshly fallen sno
w danced through the air with the most intricate choreography that God could possibly conduct, before settling on the trees and headstones.

  For a long time Nigel had suspected there was something his dear friend was hiding. It was that faraway look in his piercing eyes that suggested to the overly imaginative vicar that there was something lurking below the surface. God had failed to bless Nigel with a great capacity for patience and he often wrestled with his curiosity and imagination as to what macabre secrets his old friend harboured. His very active, if not eccentric imagination conjured up countless scenarios: Perhaps Guy Alderman had been a spy in a former life? Or maybe he was a serial killer? Or perhaps he was in some kind of witness protection programme? But no matter how hard he tried to coax it out of his comrade; he had not revealed a thing, until tonight.

  The snow had begun to fall again and the wind outside blew stronger, rattling the window panes as if they were cheap stage props. Nigel took another sip of his whiskey and settled back into his seat feeling the fiery malt