Well I met up with a friend, Lynda, yesterday afternoon after spending the entire morning making jars of spicy pumpkin chutney. After collecting her partner Steve from Canterbury when he finished work we all headed off to the Romney Marsh in my car for a drink in a couple of the local pubs.
The 'Botolphs Bridge' at West Hythe was pleasant and welcoming and had made an effort for Halloween - carved Jack-o-lanterns on the bar, cauldrons of ghost shaped crisps also on the bar, plenty of hanging decorations and bunting, and a severed hand pinned to the front door.
The 'Shepherd & Crook' at Burmarsh, I had never visited before. I think about 20 years ago I was going to visit it with some friends but for some reason or another - possibly sickness - couldn't. So I was quite keen to tick this Marsh pub off my list! Like the 'Botolph's Bridge' this was also busy with local trade, however it had made no effort with any Halloween decorations apart from a bowl of sweets for children at the end of the bar. The locals look at bit different this far into the Marsh and the pub certainly had a feel about it akin to the 'Slaughtered Lamb' in 'An American Werewolf In London.' Interesting, nailed to one of the walls was a signed photo of Enoch Powell!
Anyway, after a couple of pleasant drinks we took the car to a remote spot where the almost full moon illuminated the miles of flat sheep fields and dykes surrounding us, and while the winds whipped up around the car we read our ghost stories that we'd been working on.
Lynda's story, 'The Drawer' was a tale in the manner of Shirley Jackson, although adjectivally more akin to H.P. Lovecraft. It told of a woman's return to her late grandmother's house where as a child she had been terrified by a piece of furniture whose top drawer would never shut and a mirror in which she had caught a glimpse of something terrifying. The story was more a psychological tale of the scars left on her by the experience and the lack of relationship she had had with her grandmother. Atrributing the latter to the crumbling Victorian house and the incident with the haunted dresser, she has left home and now surrounded herself with modern furnishings in a modern house that has simply continued the sterility in her life and perpetuated her failings in relationships. The return to the house after her grandmother's death and confrontation with the dresser and its occupant ultimately allows for some form of closure.
I make no bones about my tale being influenced by M.R. James - the scholarly and ecclesiastical setting and the inclusion of the discovery of an object which should have been left well alone! The tale concerns a church curate's plans to extend a small church with a new aisle to cater for the village's growing population, but in funding this venture he sells off some of the church's medieval silver which invokes retribution from a supernatural animalistic entity which for 400 years has been protecting the church from theft and desecration. Historically it is known that sometimes a guard dog would be buried alive under a foundation stone of a building such as a church to afford the building such protection. The church on which my story was based has an unusual canine carving on a monument in the church and it is the only monument that has survived the Puritans' desecration of the church in the 17th century. It is somewhat doubtful however that the dog on this effigy would have the temperament to be such a Hell Hound!
Thursday 1st November 2012
