MicroHorror

Opening the door, I paused on the threshold sure there was someone standing in the half-gloom waiting.

This is a cold place crouched in the shadow of the Ben, the outside haar seeming to follow me in.

I coddled the Rayburn to life with the paper I’d read on the train and went to fill the kettle from the burn. The cloud slunk low concealing jagged peaks as I scooped the kettle across the water, holding it by its blackened spout. A late dragonfly hovered then zigzagged away, its metallic blue a flare amongst all the brownness as I hunkered on the spongy bank. A shadow undulated across the peaty surface and a face that wasn’t mine stared out. Letting go of the spout, I sprang up and met a woman’s gaze on the opposite bank as the kettle gurgled down into the murk. She was old and stooped, carrying a crook which she upended and fished into the burn.

Laughing lightly she landed the filled kettle at my feet and unhooked her crook from the kettle’s handle.

“Lucky you were passing,” I said.

“You wouldn’t have dropped it if I hadn’t.” She turned away and was gone. I stood a few moments listening, but all that I heard was the unending water and echoing bellows of deer in rut. Walking back the way I had come, for company I whistled a song my father had taught me.

The peeling cottage door stood ajar, damp footprints curved into the kitchen. I entered as slow as a stranger, finding the old woman seated beside the stove–legs akimbo, her crook propped against the mantelpiece. I clanked the kettle on the hob where it hissed at first, and then I asked, “Would you like a cup? Tea? Coffee?”

“Tea would be grand.” She twisted to one side, retrieved a bottle from inside her clothing and bumped it down on the table. She tipped a generous measure into each mug as I placed a chair in front of the hearth and joined her facing the stove. We sat sipping in silence and then both flushed and spoke at once. We stopped and started a few times until I persuaded her to tell first.

She replenished our mugs, folded back into her seat and told me my life so far. I listened with the ears of someone who has just heard their own voice on a tape recorder. I wanted her to continue, but I also didn’t. She stopped, pulled herself from the chair and went outside. I lit candles, placed them in the empty wine bottles Connor and I had drained in the spring. And I waited. At first I thought she had melted into the haar and was nothing other than my imagination, but the half-filled whisky bottle stood proud as my witness.

A mouse darted across the soot-spattered hearth as I heard a rustling scrape in the hallway.

She came in clutching a bunch of dried broom, the empty husks of seedpods rattling.

In the heat of the August sun, before he went, Connor and I had lain naked in the ferns listening to the seedpods exploding.

She split the bunch into two and sweeping the floors we laughed as if exorcising our demons. We swept the whole house down from the attics, across the landing and down the stairs, gathering balls of dust, dead spiders, mouse droppings. Back in the kitchen, I went to place the kettle back on the heat; when I turned round she was gone. I laid my head on the table beside the empty bottle and wept like a hungry lamb calling for its mother.