Tag Archives: short-story

The Cottage

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‘Needs a bit of work eh?’, a cheerful voice said from behind me. I turned to see a man with a dog.

‘Just a bit!’, I replied in a similar tone, disguising the fact he’d startled me. ‘Does anyone live here?‘.

The man chuckled in that way that makes you feel you’ve just asked a question you should already know the answer to. ‘Been empty for years. I’ve lived here since the seventies and I’ve never known anyone living there’.

The most obvious thing to say next was ‘Why?’, and so I did. The man shrugged. ‘No idea. Perhaps they’re waiting for it to fall down so they can build on the land?’.

I kept my next question to myself.  Why would you need to wait for a house you own to rot away? Unless it was one of those historic houses that there were rules about knocking down, but this one didn’t look anything special. Just a red brick rectangle with a door in the middle and a pair of windows either side. A bit like the sort of house I might have drawn at primary school. Except my version would have had flowers in the garden and smoke coming out of the chimney and it had been a long time since this one had either.  

‘Tell you something though,’ the man said suddenly. ‘She don’t like it’. He nodded towards the spaniel at his feet.

‘She doesn’t like the house?’, I asked, checking I had grasped the right end of the stick.

‘No, her ball ended up in the garden once and she wouldn’t go in to fetch it. Just stood at the gate, shaking’. A puzzled look must have flashed across my face, as he added, ‘Must have been foxes’.

Looking back, I’m not sure which of us he was trying to convince more. To cut through the awkward silence that followed, I checked my phone. Despite having nowhere to go and nothing to do, I smiled, ‘Well, I’d best be off. Nice to meet you both’.

 ‘Righto’, he replied and we headed off in opposite directions.  

Later, the idea of taking some photos of the place occurred to me and so the next day I made my way back there. As I reached the cottage, a tennis ball sat on my side of the gate.

‘Daisy’s ball. The foxes must have been playing with it’, I thought, although now there was no-one to convince but myself. Pleased with my pictures of the peeling paint and ivy-clad brickwork, and the menacing ‘Not for sale or rent. Keep out’ sign, I headed home. As I uploaded them to Instagram, I saw the light reflected in the windows in a way that made it seem someone might be standing there and wondered if anyone would comment on it.

The following day, the man with the dog passed me in the nearby woods. ‘Did you get the photos you wanted?’ he enquired. ‘I saw you both up there yesterday when I was on my walk with Daisy. Thanks for getting her ball back’. His words only registered after they’d walked on. Both of us? Maybe someone had followed me up there. It wasn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere and someone could easily have worked out where the creepy old cottage I’d shared on my Instagram account was. Could do without the local teenagers adopting it as their new drinking den though.

Feeling some sort of responsibility for the place, I walked over to see if there was any evidence they’d discovered it. From the gate I could see that despite the overgrown tangle of a garden someone had managed to get the door open. I was ok with kids being kids but wanted to let them know their presence there had not gone unnoticed. I picked my way through the wilderness and shouted ‘Hello?. I thought I heard some movement from inside. ‘I think you better come out of there, it’s probably not even safe’. I couldn’t be sure but I thought I heard a giggle. I pushed the door open wider. ‘Come on now’.

More shuffling sounds from upstairs. I put on my adultiest voice. ‘You need to leave NOW’. A gust of wind howled down the stairs, slamming the door shut in my face.   ‘Ok fine’, I thought, retracing my steps through the garden. ‘Serves them right if the foxes eat them’. Thinking I heard a tap from a window, I turned, fully expecting to see a bunch of kids gesturing through the glass but there was no-one.

Later that week, the bluebells in the woods were in full bloom. I bumped into the man again, but this time he was without a dog. Something had spooked her, he told me, and she’d run off. That was yesterday and he hadn’t seen her since. I promised to keep an eye open for her but couldn’t shake off a sickening feeling that I already knew where she was.

The cottage door was ajar again. ‘Daisy?’, I tentatively called from the doorway. A slight whimper came from inside in reply. Then, something rolled down the stairs. Daisy’s ball. ‘Daisy come here! Good girl!,’. More whimpering. I’m not a huge animal lover but the sound was so pitiful I couldn’t just leave her in there. I stepped inside the cottage for the first time. Any curiosity I’d felt about the place had evaporated and there was nothing here that I wanted to see. I tiptoed up the stairs to avoid treading on the handfuls of fresh bluebells scattered on the steps. Trampling on them brings bad luck I’d been told as a child, and didn’t faeries use them as a lure to trap humans too?  

From the landing, I could see Daisy in the corner of one of the bedrooms and stepped inside. Her tail wagged weakly and she started to make her way over. The she stopped dead in her tracks and seemed to stare at something behind me. A soft thud caused me to turn around to see Daisy’s ball slowly rolling towards her. I scooped her into my arms and sprinted for the stairs.  Back on the landing, one of the floorboards in the bedroom behind me creaked and the dog whimpered again. I didn’t take my time on going back down the stairs.

Daisy’s owner was waiting outside. As I passed the trembling spaniel over to him, his look turned from relief to concern. ‘Where’s the other girl gone? She was right behind you’.

‘There was no-one else. Perhaps it was a trick of the light?’, was the answer I gave to reassure him as I looked up to the window.

‘She’s still in there. She always will be’, was the answer I kept to myself.

Footnote: I’ve been toying with the idea of writing more place based fiction for a while. I decided just to be brave and do it…

The Funeral

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I’ve long contemplated the idea of writing semi-fiction, taking inspiration from the legends and folklore I love and bringing in elements of my own story telling and experiences. Would it work though, I’ve wondered? Well, I’ve finally concluded that there is only one way to find out….

This is my first attempt. Please be gentle with me.

In 1974, a group of children were spooked by the sight of a figure in white rising from a grave in the churchyard of St James, Aldon on their way home from youth club. There was no indication of which grave it was in the newspaper report which had intrigued Felicity Murray and when she arrived at Aldon church on a warm July afternoon in 2021, she found no clues. The cemetery contained the usual assortment of Victorian tombs, any one of which could have been a contender for those strange events explained away as a trick of the light fifty years prior.

After taking a few photographs of the carvings on the church doorway, Felicity took a moment to sit in the sunshine on the bench outside.  On hearing the sound of horses’ hooves, she looked up from her phone and the message she was sending and noticed a funeral cortege approaching the church gates. The two black horses adorned with blue and white plumes and ribbons and pulling a Victorian hearse made for a fine sight but feeling uncomfortable as an uninvited onlooker, Felicity decided to leave the churchyard before the mourners began to get out of their cars. As she slipped out of the gate, Felicity muttered an awkward apology to the female undertaker but received no acknowledgement.

Felicity’s own car was parked just around the corner and as she pulled out of the space, she thought she’d take another look at the horses as she drove past the church. Yet on turning the corner, the horses were no-where to be seen. Neither was the hearse, the undertaker, the mourners’ cars. Nothing was there to indicate the presence of a funeral and the church doors remained shut. Getting back to her car had taken just minutes and even with the greatest efficiency, there was surely no way everyone was already inside.

As a bemused Felicity drove home, she tried to rationalise the experience. Perhaps the church had been a stop off on someone’s last journey and their final destination had been elsewhere? Maybe she’d catch up with cortege a little further up the road. Even the idea that she’d witnessed something paranormal, perhaps the replaying of a past funeral or a time slip crossed her mind but no. Despite the vintage touch of the horse-drawn hearse, every other element had been indisputably contemporary, especially the female undertaker. Distracted by her thoughts, Felicity didn’t notice the cyclist as she pulled out of a junction until it was too late.

The funeral of Jack Sharp took place at St James, Aldon on a warm July afternoon. He was brought to the church in a hearse pulled by two black horses, each adorned with blue and white plumes and ribbons, the colours of his favourite football team. On arriving, the undertaker thought for a brief moment that she’d seen a woman sitting outside the church door but concluded that it must have been a trick of the light.