Eleven New Ghost Stories (7 page)

“Mummy, you’re bleeding.”

I had blood on my clothes; cuts
on my legs… I started to cry: “It’s ok sweetie, it’s ok.”

As I stood there, holding her,
my eyes caught sight of the front door. It was now wide open -
thrown open, and all the way back on its hinges.

I walked down the stairs slowly,
with Jessica in my arms. I put her down and then slammed the door
shut. I leant back against it, breathing heavily. Whatever it was,
whatever had been in the house, it was gone now and it wasn’t going
to get back in.

Then I remembered the patio
door. I had nothing to cover the smashed window, nothing to put
over it. I panicked; I got all my things together, told Jessica to
get all her things together too. I left stuff behind, and I never
went back for it. We went straight to the car and drove straight
back to London that night. We just plain bolted for it.

Alan and Dad didn’t know what to
make of the story, but I was too distressed for them not to take me
seriously and I was in some serious pain and cut and bruised all
over. Dad went back to the house himself to sort out the patio
door. As you might’ve guessed, we decided not to take the
house.

Then, a few days later, Jessica,
who was confused and didn’t really know or understand what had
happened, she was drawing and painting again. I watched her paint
and then I noticed in one of her pictures she’d painted a garden
and was colouring in a rock wall she’d already sketched. There was
a head peering over the wall, the head of small boy – I suddenly
realised what it was and I asked her “Is that the house in
Cornwall?” She nodded and then I pointed to the head and asked,
“Who’s that?”

She said that’s the boy that
kept hiding. And that he’s sad now, because he has no one left to
play with.

THE BLACK CLOCK

It was a very long time ago,
and I was very young; maybe ten or eleven. I spent most of my time
growing up in boarding schools; my parents were civil servants,
diplomats really, and they seemed never to be in the country. You
know, I think that during some of my formative years I may have
only actually seen them two or three times a year. Although, as I
was born in 1914, I suppose I should be grateful that I had a
father at all.

He spoke French, German and
Spanish, so they took better care of him and didn’t just throw him
into no man’s land to get shot. Ironically, the result of his and
my mother’s international travels meant that I grew up hating
foreigners and resolutely refused to achieve in any of my language
studies. English excepting of course.

I grew up a very lonely child,
introverted and more prone to quiet activities and hobbies than
sports or ‘performing’. When holidays would come around, and my
parents weren’t at home to accept me, I would stay with my Uncle
Guillam, who ran a shop in Egham. This gave many of my school
friends great amusement; we were all snobs from the upper crust and
the thought of me spending summer in a little shop was funny to
them.

It wasn’t funny for me; not
because I was embarrassed that my uncle wasn’t a minister or a
land-owner or a deacon, but because he was an exceptionally odd
chap. He didn’t run a normal sort of shop; his was a clockmaker’s
shop. In fact, he preferred to think of it as a clockmakers’
museum, because he had ambitions to turn his collection into a kind
of exhibition. But he never quite got around to doing it because he
was too busy with his tinkering to actually get around to doing
anything definitive. He was so very easily distracted.

This particular summer – the
last summer that I went to stay with him – he was so preoccupied
with his work that he forgot to get a room ready for me. He was
incredibly untidy. You wouldn’t believe it; he had a respectable
town house and shop front, but it was full of rubbish. His whole
home was his workshop; there were bits and pieces of clocks and
cogs and mechanics everywhere.

The worst thing was that every
so often he would get the idea to expand his knowledge beyond clock
works and bring in a motor or a sewing machine or some other
mechanical thing. And then he’d get bored with them and they’d just
get left in whatever room he’d put them in; doomed to remain in the
‘must get around to doing that’ pile. One year I went there and he
had a motorcycle in his dining room. He had the dining table stood
on its end, leaning up against the wall to make room. At least he
finished that by the next time I visited; even he realised that he
needed somewhere to eat.

There were no bedrooms empty
though, either that or he just didn’t want me in his hair. So I
stayed at the pub across the road. Besides the initial sorrow of
being neglected by my family again, I actually came to like it
there. The food was good, not special, but filling and wholesome.
And I was getting to the age when I was starting to feel for women,
and there was this charming young barmaid working there. I wish I
could remember her name, but she was probably my first love. She
was very sweet to me and I absolutely adored her.

Uncle Guillam for all his
eccentricities was an expert in his field, and people would travel
quite a distance for his skill and to hear his expertise. And
Guillam loved visitors, because he would cajole them into seeing
his museum, such as it was. I wasn’t particularly interested in
clocks and watches, but I was lonely and I was keen to feel the
affection of a parent, even a neglectful one. So I would often
watch him work and spend time in his shop.

Now this particular visit,
Guillam was working on something special; it was a 16th century
German clock. It was black, a sort of gothic design, with covers on
the front and back, but with the cogs exposed on the sides. It had
two bells on the top, one on top of the other, and, I’m not certain
how to describe it, these little embellishments on the arches; the
ones that went from the body up to the top where they held the
bells. There were these… nobbly things; I suppose they were
supposed to be leaves or maybe just simple decorative twists, but
they looked to me look like gargoyles or cruel birds, like crows or
ravens, perched threateningly. Along with the spiked feet and
points at each of the top corners, it looked rather… unpleasant. I
didn’t like the look of it, and I told my uncle so, and this made
him rather upset.

“Don’t you know who this clock
belonged to?” he asked, as if I could possibly know. He said it
belonged to, and I think I’ve got this right, Count Emilio
Martinez, a Spanish nobleman who was known to have a love of
timepieces and clocks. By all accounts he was not a pleasant figure
and his love of clocks came from a ruthless need for efficiency
from his staff and business associates. We’d probably call him a
compulsive these days. Anyway, the clock had carved on a small
plate on its front the Count’s name and icon. And if the clock was
owned by the Count it must be a quality piece, one made by a
clockmaker of some renown.

Guillam was quite puzzled by it
though. He was sure that the design and mechanism were German, but
he could not determine who had made the clock, because the maker’s
mark or stamp was missing. But also because the gothic design
wasn’t one that would appeal to a noble family, at least not to
more florid Spanish tastes. It was a fine specimen of its type, in
good condition, but not very ornate. More of a clock for an
official or a judge than a wealthy nobleman of some standing.

The clock was a mystery, which
was why my uncle was distracted by it. It was something he was
determined to get to the bottom of. But the clock needed repairing
too. Although outwardly, it had been well looked after, it hadn’t
told the time in many years. Guillam spent all afternoon making
measurements and making sketches. He recognised the mechanism, but
felt that somehow the pieces were out of proportion, not the sizes
he’d expected, and certainly not the work of a master craftsman. He
garnered the opinion that it was a botch job; that some amateur had
attempted to mend the clock after its original workings had worn
through.

The clock presented a challenge,
if a frustrating one. The clock’s owner, who knew something of the
clock’s strangeness and obscurity, had promised that if Guillam
could make it tick, and solve the mystery of its origin, he would
allow him to display it in his museum for six months, along with
full payment for his services. As if the fulfilment of this bargain
was a certainty, Guillam had already made a place for it in his
hallowed museum; a high shelf on the right-hand wall.

Uncle Guillam, though a man of
considerable skill, had no sense of aesthetics. His museum was a
mess. His clocks and watches badly organised on these unattractive
metal shelving stacks, all too crowded together and
over-stocked.

His other mistake, which I
suppose was more understandable, was to have all his clocks working
in his museum. You can understand why, after all, that was his job,
to make his clocks tick. But the noise! It was like a field of
crickets going bananas –
tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,
tick
. It was an incredible sound, quite something to
experience, but not something you could stand for very long.

Uncle Guillam liked to say that
he could listen to the sounds of the clocks ticking and tell
instantly if any of them had lost time. Of course this was absolute
nonsense; when it was the turn of the hour, clocks would start to
ring their bells and chimes five minutes before and some ten
minutes afterwards.

It really was quite a collection
tough; there were extraordinary items in there: Grandfather clocks,
pocket watches, wall clocks, astrolabes… The cuckoo clocks were my
favourite growing up; sometimes they were very imaginative and
playful. Little wood cutters would pop out and chop the wood, or
little canaries would come out and sing just for a little
moment.

Amongst them the black clock
looked positively miserable. Yet it got pride of place on a high
shelf above the wall clocks with the hanging chimes. The hands,
although one of them was broken at the end, pointed to just after
four-thirty. I swear to you, to this day, if I ever look at a clock
and it’s four-thirty-two or four-thirty-three, it sends a shiver
right down my spine.

Now, I’ll tell you what
happened: Although my main love was the inn’s barmaid – I wish I
could remember what the pub was called, although I think it’s gone
now – I had struck up a relationship with the grocer’s daughter.
Entirely through self-interest of course, because she had daily
access to boiled sweets and was good at stealing them without her
father noticing.

We’d become friends in the
Easter holiday before. Her father wasn’t sure what to think of me,
probably because of my family, but her mother absolutely encouraged
our games. I think she hoped that we might be married one day and
that her daughter might be moved up the social ladder. Seems silly,
doesn’t it, that we really thought like that back then.

But we did get on famously… Iris
was her name. I wonder what happened to her. She was a loner like
myself; a dreamer with her head in the clouds and not good at
paying attention at school. We both liked to draw and to walk in
the country. We weren’t so far from the edge of Windsor Park, where
we could watch young couples punting along the river or the lake.
Happy days. Well, happy mostly.

To my slight embarrassment, I
didn’t know how to fish, and it seemed to me that everyone knew how
to fish in the village. It was something that seemed to bridge
divisions; I remember the young men at my school speaking fondly of
it too. And Iris could fish, and I felt a bit silly getting lessons
from a girl. But she was very keen to teach me and I couldn’t help
but feel obliged to accept her offer.

So plans were set for us to go
fishing. I was able to find a fishing rod in Guillam’s attic and he
was able, after a full day’s pestering, to get it in working order
for me. We were all set to go when I found, much to my surprise,
her father’s shop closed. Not to be discouraged, I went to her
family home, which was not so far away. There was quite a
commotion, raised voices, screaming – tearful screaming – from the
house. I was pretty wary, as you can imagine, but I was still keen
to keep my appointment with Iris, so I still went to the door. And
I was about to knock, I remember, when there was this terrific
smash. Something thrown and then breaking – crockery, a glass –
something like that. That made me scared so I was about to leave,
but just as I was about to go I heard my name called.

I looked up and saw Iris in her
bedroom. She had the window open and shouted me to meet her around
the back. I quickly obeyed and she appeared a few moments later in
the alley, with her fishing rod and all her bits and pieces. She
was never one to let anyone tell her what to do. That was something
I liked very much; I was a much meeker child.

We went to the lake and I tried
hard to find out what was going on at her home. She said that her
brother Billy was home and this was news to me because she’d never
once mentioned a brother. She said he was a wrong-en and always in
trouble. And that her parents preferred him to stay away, but now
he was home again and was insisting on staying.

She didn’t seem to know much
more than that, either that or she wasn’t telling. I didn’t enquire
too much I don’t think.

So we went fishing; we had fun I
seem to remember, although I didn’t really understand what the fuss
was about. Dangling your rod into the water and then just sitting
around waiting. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been again. I
wasn’t very keen on the wriggly things – worms on the hook, that
sort of thing. She didn’t seem to give it a moment’s thought. Then
when we caught a fish, and it was there in my hands, its big eye
looking up at me, with the hook through its mouth – I was so
shocked I dropped the poor thing. Iris was quick to save the day,
and got it into the net in the water. She teased me about being a
posh nob – I remember being a bit upset about that. But it was a
nice afternoon ultimately; we caught four or five fish, all
tiddlers.