Read Black Cat Tales: Black Anne and Other Short Stories Page 7

through his arthritic fingers and fluttered to the floor. He sighed, almost pitifully as he bent to retrieved it. Then, just as he was straightening up again he froze.

  “Ah!” His back had tensed in a sudden spasm. Amber watched him cautiously as he angrily reached around to his lumber area; still bent double. His rasping breath came out in short rattling bursts. From assessing the way he had been walking, Amber had guessed what was wrong with his postural musculature. She had seen his symptoms before in the village.

  It could easily be a rouse though: Frail or not, he could be faking the injury; trying to lure her out from behind the safety of the counter so he could attack her? But she couldn’t just leave him. But what if he was dangerous? Should she risk it? If not, what was she supposed to do? Call an ambulance? That would be a waste of time. Regardless, Amber concluded, she was a healer. And with a grim certainty she knew what she had to do.

  Iggy Pop was mumbling again. “… I’m sorry… please, just make it stop”. Amber picked up some words from his lunatic ramblings but the rest was too jumbled and incoherent to understand.

  “I can help” she explained stepping out from behind the protection of the counter. “Come with me and we’ll get you sorted out”. She was doing her best to sound like a fully qualified physiotherapist and not just a student.

  She could make an icepack from something in the freezer section if she had to, but first she had to get him outside and sitting down. Under the window on the forecourt there was a garden bench on display next to the barbeques and sacks of charcoal. He could rest there.

  She took Iggy Pop by the hand and elbow and walked with him out of the store and back into the smoky haze outside. He remained hunched over but for the moment at least he complied with her directions.

  Outside, everything was still hidden beyond the veil of grey and their footsteps echoed eerily in the silent fog. It was so quiet now, it was as if the night itself was holding its breath and listening to them.

  The wooden garden bench was barely visible in the thick swirling vapour. Her patient was finding it more difficult to walk now, taking slow unsteady footsteps, which confirmed Amber’s suspicions about his condition beyond any shadow of a doubt. The mist whispered about her as she finally helped him onto the seat. He sat down heavily and groaned to himself. His hand reached into his pocket and seemed to fumble for something: A weapon perhaps?

  “Wait here; I’ll be back in a second” Amber instructed and ran into the store without looking back. She quickly locked the doors behind her and got out her phone out to call Corwin. She watched Iggy Pop as the drifting grey fog lapped curiously around him before drawing him in. He was sitting still, looking out into the roiling haze as it slowly enveloped him. She saw his hand was still resting in his pocket, trying to get whatever was in there. As long as he didn’t try to come in again she would be okay.

  It had just turned five thirty when Amber heard the sound of Corwin’s van grumble onto the forecourt. She flew to the window and saw the pale lights pushing through the stirring gloom.

  “Bright blessing” Amber hurried outside to greet her bespectacled cousin with the archaeologist’s-style beard. She gave him a warm hug

  “You took your time” she chided.

  “I came as quickly as I could in these conditions, Amber. Is everything still OK?” he enquired cautiously looking around the forecourt. “Where’s the passenger?”

  Amber gestured towards to the bench where he was sat.

  She went to check on him while Corwin opened the back of the van. Iggy Pop didn’t respond to her and when she waved her hand in front of his eyes he didn’t blink. He looked even greyer in the dull light out here than he had done earlier. Amber reached out to touch his hand. It felt cold and hard: As cold and hard as stone in fact.

  “It’s definitely happened then?” Corwin called over, wheeling an upright trolley from his van.

  “Yes, Old Meg has touched him” replied Amber backing away from once-human, totally lifeless statue that was perched on the bench. “He must have been inside the stone circle at midnight and fell victim to her curse”.

  “Oh dear. He’s not from the village is he? Do you think anyone will miss him?” Corwin asked as he levered the large stone onto the trolley with well-practiced ease.

  “Nah” said Amber casually as she watched Corwin manoeuvre the stone into the back of his van. “People get lost on the moors all the time. He did have a friend up there as well, so you’d better keep an eye out for him to”.

  The villagers of Mid Haven knew it was bad luck to cross Old Meg’s Circle on the solstice. But no matter how many times they were warned, Outsiders never believed them when they talked about the magic in the stones.

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  Revelations Part 2

  In her more self-pitying moments - usually after finishing a bottle of wine - Penny Flame found she possessed a remarkable ability to blame just about everything that had gone wrong in her life entirely on her parents. Her mother had the uncanny knack of finding fault in absolutely everything she did from her Christmas nativity performances to only getting a 2:1 in her degree. Her father on the other hand; a serial womaniser, had been absent for long periods of her childhood. He had at least three affairs that she knew of before her mother finally threw him out for good.

  A therapist had once pointed out that she was still searching for that father figure in her life. Perhaps she was? She only really fancied older men, usually ones twice her age. Also, there was something about sleeping with a married man that really attracted her for some reason. She had enjoyed many guilty flings with men who complained their marriages were dead but in the end they always went back to their wives, leaving her alone and rejected. Each time it got more painful. Although she hated to admit it, she had a real fear of being alone and dying alone.

  Clive was the latest lover to be consigned to the ever growing list of failed relationships. She had, naively, thought he could have been ‘the one’ but he had ended it quite recently and gone back to his wife again. His absence still felt very raw and the only way Penny could deal with the rejection, until the next conquest to come along, was to throw herself fully into this assignment.

  This wasn’t an official piece of work but something she was pursuing in her own time. It was a little more interesting than covering the school fetes or farmers markets that her sleazy Editor, Derek Charming had her doing these days. He gave her all the dull uninteresting assignments ever since she’d rejected his advances at the paper’s annual barbecue last summer. Sleazy Derek had told her to find out all she could about Alderman and Son’s Funeral Services and report back to a more ‘senior’ reporter who was working on a potentially ground-breaking exposé. Sleazy Derek hadn’t even seen fit to reveal the nature of the story to Penny. So, humiliated but always willing Penny had started her research.

  Obviously she was better than this and her skills were being wasted so she decided to take some initiative and start her own mini investigation into the ‘Dodgy’ Funeral Director; Guy Alderman. Perhaps if she could dig up more dirt on him she could impress her colleagues enough for them to start taking her seriously for a change instead of viewing her as a mediocre journalist / office slapper.

  Recalling the basic techniques of following someone; she ensured she had kept the recommended ten meter distance from him, wore a variety of nondescript clothes and accessories so he wouldn’t recognise her, and she moved within crowds to avoid detection. This shady investigative work was one of the few areas she believed she truly excelled in. She had successfully used these techniques to stalk one of her lecturers at university, before eventually shagging him. So applying those techniques to this creepy old man had been easy. After three weeks, Alderman was still completely unaware of her. One of the things she’d learned was that every Tuesday afternoon the ‘Dodgy’ Funeral Director would visit the local vicar in the village of Wellby. Despite the weather, this was where the young determined reporter found
herself now; freezing her frigging tits off in the snow covered churchyard next to the vicarage.

  Snow was falling again in swirling flurries. A kaleidoscope of shifting white shapes softly tumbled from the grey sky overhead. All around her rows of headstones of differing shapes and sizes leaned at various angles. Some were in better condition than others. Encircling the graveyard, skeletal oak trees towered over smaller fir trees whose branches where decorated with glittery white snow. It was under one of these fir trees, nestled up against the grey stone wall that Penny had secreted herself. Almost an hour had passed since she arrived here. The fir tree and the wall were helping to shelter her from the biting winter breeze chilling the graveyard. Her frosty breath plumed up before her reminding her of the last time she had been hiding in a churchyard like this: Back on that particular night she hadn’t been alone. And she’d had had a lot more fun!

  There was something about graveyards that had always unnerved her and the little voice of doubt at the back of her head, which sounded an awful lot like her mother’s voice, told her she should go home. But what kind of investigative journalist would she be if she snuck off every time she missed her home comforts? Still, it wasn’t just the cold or the