A flash of lightning outlined the shape of a car as it made its way down the lane, its occupant carefully steering it through the torrential downpour. The driver sat forward in his seat as much as he could so that he could see out of the windscreen. The single wiper swept valiantly back and forth as it desperately tried to clear away the streams of water that poured down the slippery pane of glass.
The driver loved his old
Austin Ruby, but admitted that she had not been the best choice of automobile
to take out in the middle of a night such as this. Built in 1937, he had
found her listed in a used car advert in the local paper a year ago, and had
had to buy her. Her bodywork was in excellent condition, having been
lovingly cared for, after all she had only had the one owner and had been
garaged since she had been purchased. He had had no choice but to take
her out on this night, as his normal everyday car was in the garage in town to
get its brake pads replaced.
He had groaned inwardly when
he had received the ‘phone call from Mrs Perks, the sound of her urgent voice
down the earpiece giving him no choice but to haul himself from the comfort of
his warm sheets and to don the clothes that lay across the back of the bedroom
chair. Her husband had died in mysterious circumstances six months
earlier, his half-eaten, twisted body found face down in a waterlogged ditch
with his bicycle a few feet away. It had been first thought that he had
been a hit and run victim, and that the local wildlife had predated upon his
body. However, investigations from the gallant men in blue had revealed no tyre
marks upon the road that would have hinted of a sudden brake stop, no revealing
paintwork upon the two-wheeled method of transport and no obvious signs on poor
Mr Perks’ body. He had had to certify him dead at the scene, and
had known deep down that something did not quite fit, but he had never been
able to fathom quite what was wrong. The coroner had filed a report of
accidental death, with the cause of the unfortunate man’s demise put down to a
mistake in the steering of the bicycle.
After all his body had been found in a ditch on a bend in the road, and
he had been reported as missing on a night rather like the one the man was
guiding his car through on this particular night. So, life in the sleepy village of
Morcambe-on-the-Moor had settled back to its usual quiet normality.
The car crossed the boundary
of the village and passed the church on its right, St Egbert’s; an Anglo
Saxon building encircled by row upon row of crooked, moss-covered, and mainly
broken, gravestones and cracked tombs. Another lightning flash and
the side of the defiant structure lit up eerily to reveal its stonework with a
brief view of several gargoyles and grotesques. Their contorting faces
moved as if made of flesh rather than stone, and they seemed to twitch and
mouth obscenities at each other and to whomever else might happen to notice
them. However, there was only one other in
the vicinity so to do, and he was too busy watching the road ahead to
notice.
He shuddered, more with cold
than anything else. These old cars had no heating, and although he was
wrapped in overcoat, hat, scarf and gloves, the cold was penetrating through
the cloth. He noticed a few lights glowing through the windows in the
vicarage next to the church, signalling that at least someone else was burning
the midnight oil, and he mused that it was probably the vicar desperately
trying to finish his sermon for tomorrow’s Sunday service. He briefly
envisaged the man poring over his paper, pen in one hand, glass of brandy in
the other and smiled cynically to himself at the image.
Something ran out in front of
the car and he pressed his foot on the brake, causing the Austin to come to a
sudden, jerking halt. ‘A rabbit,’
he thought to himself. ‘But surely that was too big for a rabbit?’ he
continued the conversation in his mind. The engine chugged away causing
the chassis of the car to gently bounce, as the wiper continued to sweep back
to and fro, its hinge looking as if it would break in two at any moment.
‘Most likely a hare, much too big for a rabbit,’ he surmised. He was not
good on animals. Human bodies were his thing. Ask him a question
about the adrenal glands and their respective problems, and he could talk for
hours (well perhaps not hours but he could keep an audience reasonably interested
for 20 minutes or so). But challenge him
on the difference between rabbits and hares and he was completely lost, other
than to say that one had bigger ears and boxed with its prospective mating
usurpers in the spring.
He glanced at the passenger
seat and the Gladstone bag that sat there, its leather slightly worn at the
corners, the gleam from its dark leather long faded with the years.
It had been his father’s, and his father’s before him and by carrying on
the medical tradition in the family, he was happy and felt privileged to be
able to utilise it now. They would be proud of him he had thought, as he
had packed it for the first time after he graduated from medical school back in
1952. That was four years ago, and now he was practising in the small
town of Netherwitch, about five miles from Morcambe-on-the-Moor. As well
as Netherwitch, his medical services were sought from four villages in total,
which - oddly enough - were situated to the four corners of the
compass, Morcambe being to the west.
Another lightning flash, and
the road ahead lit up for a startling moment, showing the continual stream of
rain as it buffeted the road surface, forming puddles to the side of the
road. But it also brought with it the shape of something else. And
this time it could not possibly be described as a rabbit, or even a hare; it
was much too large to have been either.
He cleared off the condensation that had started to form on the glass of the
windscreen with his gloved hand. He leant further forward in his seat until the
tip of his nose touched the cold glass, to try to get a better look, but before he
could discern anything, the light afforded by the flash of lightning had gone,
leaving just pitch black ahead of him on either side of the beam of the
pale light emanating from his headlights. ‘I must be seeing things,’ he
muttered to himself. He would never have admitted it to any of his mates,
but this journey was beginning to scare the shit out of him.
Something was wrong ... eerily wrong, just
as it had been when he had been called out to sign the death certificate for
Mr Perks.
He had not been back to the
village until now. It consisted of only around twenty occupied houses,
the others had been left to decay, and those that were left seemed to be
inhabited by slightly unusual people. As prospective patients they seemed
either to be as healthy as oxen, or grinned and bared any aches or
pains, or just did not wish to travel to Netherwitch to seek out help, for he
rarely had to treat anyone from Morcambe-on-the-Moor.
Mrs Perks was just one of a
handful who had visited his surgery, and she was – as he had put it when
handing his secretary her notes to file one day – a rather odd kettle of fish,
eccentric to say the least. Susan, his secretary, had given him a knowing
nod as she had taken the notes, and had intimated in her reply that Mrs Perks
was not as odd as some of the people who lived in Morcambe-on-the-Moor.
He had quizzed her on this, but in response she would only suggest that he took
the time to visit the local library and look up the village’s history. He
had not. It was not that he was too busy; he wasn’t. He had
quite simply forgotten so to do.
‘Alright, Jack my old son,
let’s get moving,’ he said to himself. ‘There was nothing there just now, it was just shapes formed by the light
and the rain. Pull yourself together, Mrs Perks is waiting for me, so no
time to waste.’ And he put his foot on the clutch, changed from neutral
to first gear and gently pushed his foot on the accelerator, vacating the
clutch as he so did. The car wobbled into forward motion and soon he was
on his way again.
There were no lights in the
village, and everybody – apart from him, Mrs Perks and perhaps the vicar –
seemed to be asleep. Onwards he drove until he saw ahead, on what he
could only describe as a natural roundabout - it being just a largish mound of
grass covered earth - a venerable old oak tree. His headlights
caught the shape of the gnarled indentations and knots on the dark bole. He tried,
in vain, to not acknowledge his ideas that he could see faces staring out at
him from the bark. He could see that it
had clearly set its roots down many decades before, and he would have
discovered - had he not forgotten to read about the village in the library
archives - that it was, in fact, reputed to be at least as old as the
church. It had stood on its solitary mound since the roads had been
laid with tarmac, its continued existence owed to the villagers of the time
expressing their dismay at the thought of one of their oldest ‘inhabitants’
being ripped from its earthy home.
In each direction there was
darkness, but he knew that he had to turn right on to Old Hag Lane where he
would eventually find Mrs Perks’ cottage; she had told him as much in her
hurried ‘phone call. As he manoeuvred the vehicle around the oaken
roundabout, the squeaking sound of the wiper blade on his windscreen alerted
him to the fact that the rain had stopped. And, he mused, remarkably suddenly
considering its ferocity over the last few hours. It had been raining
most of the evening, and had been hard at it when he had settled himself
under his blanket three hours before setting off on this journey. The
sharp suddenness in its abatement just added to his uneasiness, but – again - as
to why he knew not. All he knew was that the hairs on the back of his
neck were tingling.
‘This village gives me the
bloody creeps,’ he muttered as he changed gears clumsily, causing the little
car’s engine to rev angrily in protest.
He inched the car slowly down
Old Hag Lane, occasionally peering into the tiny rear view mirror. As the
Austin trundled along, the world behind him was enveloped into darkness and
there was no real reason for him to keep checking the road behind him; there
was no-one else out on the roads at this time of night. Or was
there? He turned his gaze back to the road ahead, but something caught
his eye and he immediately looked back through the mirror again. He could
have sworn he saw a shadowy shape lolloping alongside the hedgerow on the
nearside of the vehicle. The tiny red lights at the back of his car
seemed to pick out something pale, almost human in shape. He checked both rear
view mirrors quickly in succession, but this time could see
nothing. Where was Mrs Perks’ house? ‘Jeez,’ he
said aloud. ‘What the hell is going on in this place?’
He had expected the
comforting sight of lights to greet him at any moment, but when he eventually
stopped the car outside Rose Cottage, he was slightly confused to see the
building shrouded in darkness. There was not even one light illuminating
the cobbled path to the front door porch. ‘That’s weird,’ he thought to
himself. He flicked on his torch to check the address on Mrs Perks’
patient file....Rose Cottage.
He looked up from the file just
as a shape landed on the bonnet of the car with a thud. He jumped in his seat
and an overwhelming feeling of fear swept over him. ‘What the.....’ he
said aloud. The yellowy light from his torch caught a shape in its
beam and his heart raced. He laughed manically and slumped back in his
seat when he saw the large, rather portly, ginger cat looking back at
him, its green eyes glaring in the light. 'A cat ... a bloody cat. That
is all it is, Jack,' he said aloud. After sitting for a few moments while
his heart rate settled back to near normal, he placed Mrs Perks’ notes into the
Gladstone bag, grabbed it, and opened the door of the car. ‘The quicker I
can get this over with, the quicker I can get back to my bed,’ he
thought. Closing and locking the door, he shone his torch at the garden
gate and opened it slowly. He picked his way carefully over the uneven
cobbles and reached the front door.
He knocked. No
response.
He knocked again, this time
with more urgency. “It’s me, Mrs Perks. Dr. Lantern,” he called
out. At last a light flicked on inside the cottage and a few moments later the
door opened.
“Ah...Mrs Perks. You telephoned?
You have a problem?” he said peering round the door at the woman.
“Evenin’ doctor,” replied the
tiny, grey-haired old woman in front of him. “Telephoned? Me?
There be nowt wrong with me. That would not have been me doctor, who
‘phoned you. What you doin’ out on a night like this’n? You lost?”
‘No, Mrs Perks. I am not
lost. You telephoned me...’ replied Jack somewhat annoyed and unnerved at
the same time.
‘I be tellin’ you I didn’t
..... I ain’t got no telephone,’ replied Mrs Perks. ‘But come on in,
doctor and I can make you a nice cup of tea if you like,’ she continued.
‘And you can have a piece of seed cake too if you would care to.’
She opened the door wider and
he stepped in, removing his hat as he did so. His eyes quickly took in
every detail of the tiny hallway ... no telephone. She led him into the
sitting room ... no telephone.
“You sit yourself down there,
doctor. I’ll put kettle on,” said Mrs Perks, and she disappeared back
into hallway. All his instincts were telling him to leave, but Jack
really could do with a cup of tea before setting off home again. He
removed his gloves, scarf and overcoat and looked at his watch .... 2.31
am. He wondered if there was any way that he could engage this
woman in conversation for the next few hours, at least until dawn so he could
drive back home in the comfort of daylight. Someone had obviously played some
kind of trick on him this evening and he was as angry as hell, but there was
nothing whatsoever that he could do about it now. But to trick the old
woman in such a way seemed callous, so he decided that he would just see what
happened.
Mrs Perks came back in with a
trolley on wheels, full to the brim with teapot, cups and saucers, plates,
small milk jug, sugar bowl, spoon and knives, with a plate adorned with a large
round seed cake taking pride of place on the bottom shelf. The trolley
clattered as she pushed it across the carpet. He noticed that the cake
had already had one sizeable slice removed from it.
“I am sorry to have awoken
you, Mrs Perks. It would seem that somebody thought it would be funny to
have me driving around in the middle of the night. I am sorry that you
have been involved in their prank.”
“That be no problem, doctor,”
Mrs Perks replied as she settled herself down in the armchair next to the
hearth. “Since Mr Perks passed on I don’t get many a visitor.”
Jack thought it odd that she
appeared so relaxed about being woken up in the middle of the night.
Perhaps she didn’t even realise what time it was? He put it down to the
unfortunate, and rather cruel, result of old age.
Mrs Perks poured out the tea
and handed him a cup and saucer. “Help yerself to milk and sugar, m’
dear,” she instructed softly.
Jack settled back in his
chair and sipped the hot beverage. Mrs. Perks handed him a plate with a
slice of cake neatly placed upon it and he thanked her. He took a
bite. The taste of the light, airy sponge on his taste buds seemed to
soothe away his anger. “This is delicious, Mrs Perks,” he said between
mouthfuls. She smiled.
“It was Mr Perks’ favourite,”
she announced. Her expression seemed to
have changed, only slightly, but Jack could discern what seemed to be a slight look of malice in
her eyes. “He had a slice that night he passed on,” she continued. Jack thought it an odd thing to remember
about the night of her husband’s passing, but again put it down to the ravages
of senility.
He heard scratching at the
sitting room door. “It seems your cat wishes to come in,” he said, taking
another sip of tea.
“I don’t have a cat,” was the
reply. Her voice seemed miles away. The door slowly opened and Jack
saw, through clouded vision, several creatures creeping into the sitting room,
on all fours, just as those he thought he had seen in his rear view
mirror. He tried to move, but he had lost all feeling in his arms and
legs. The drugged seeds had done their work again.
‘I’m sorry doctor, but they
are hungry,’ were the last words he heard.