"Rosemary for Remembrance"

“Rosemary for remembrance”
…she said – and held up a sprig.
“Rosemary for remembrance” and we sailed the skies
And gathered the splashes of colour off spring.
We painted the bare grey sea
And pushed down the midday sun…
Then, smiling, we said goodbye…

“Rosemary for remembrance”
And I kept the sprig…for eternities of seconds…
Watching the wood sprites play around it
Bathing it with dew and kissing it softly…
The leaves soft brushstrokes of green…
Green for a new day.

“Rosemary for remembrance”
…and the sprig wilted fast.
The wood sprites grew cruel and cold
And left it to its fate.
Dry colours of death…brown and ochre
Because death is remembrance…
And life is oblivion…
And it’s all a screaming chaos of opposites.

“Rosemary for remembrance”…
Rosemary for life…rosemary for death.
Rosemary for eternity and rosemary for oblivion.
Rosemary for a laugh…
A laugh that I couldn’t discern from a cry…
“Rosemary…”

Question

I asked God yesterday
To tell me about death
And I’d tell him about life.
Tell me about freedom
And I’d tell him about bondage.
Tell me about blue
And I’d tell him about grey
Tell me about reality
And I’d tell him about illusions.
Tell me about eternity.
And I’d tell him about a second…
He smiled and he shook his head.
Stupid, he said,
They are all one.
If you know about life,
You’ll know about death.
There is no knowing one without knowing the other.
Opposites are nothing but two edges of a stretch
That’s within your grasp.
If one edge is near,
Pull the rest in.
You’ve known all along.

twisted

A pen
An instrument
Of expression.
When words,
When your voice
Fails.
And the dry tears,
The silent cry,
The colourless blush
Or the blank laughter
Is unnoticed –
And twisted language
Is twisted further
Into twisted tales
Of relentless thought.

WORDS

God put a pen in my hand.
He put paper in front of me.
He breathed consciousness into me
So that I might live
To create.
And the first letter I wrote
Said, “God doesn’t exist.”
So he stepped back and said,
“So let it be.”
And he went.
Always there
When I need him most.
Never there when I want to see him to be able to believe in him.

WORLD

My sister’s playing with her Barbie dolls:
“Will you come over for tea?”
With miniature cakes and kettles so small
And a beach rug next to the imaginary sea.
She holds them in her hands,
Makes them run over the sand
And talk to each other happily.
She’s named them, too,
Clara Brown and Mary Lou,
Lucinda and Rosemary Green.
And dressed them in laces, ribbons and shoes
That glimmer and shimmer and sheen.
They do what she wants
As she dances them about.
They whisper, they talk, they scream, they shout.
She speaks through them, creating a reality.
They seem right there,
Real and fair.
Living and thinking in their world
Of teapots and cutlery and plates and parties and shoes that fall off at every turn.
It’s all an illusion, a dream, a fantasy
That she creates in her thoughts:
The picnic spot,
The sandwich, the sand and the sea.
They’re lifeless and thoughtless
Non-existent in her hands
Their world’s an illusion, the sea and the sand…
All in her mind
Of a childlike kind.
She doesn’t know much
About the world as such…
Yet she has the right
To make her dolls live a life
That she’s made up.
It’s a child’s cup
Of tea.
To create a world
Be it with pictures or with words
And make it a reality
For those who live in it
And lead them by the nose
Helpless and clueless,
Following, wherever their road goes.
On and on and on…To where?
She alone knows.
That little girl of three.

In the Rain by the Sea

There I was,
On the sand
With my umbrella
In my hand
And the rain pelting down on my face.

There I was
By the sea,
With a reason
To be me
Watching the wind and the waves in a wild race.

All alone
Standing tall
Daring to be there
Daring to be small
Just there under skies so gray.

I
In a storm
Nature
In her most expressive form
On a cold wet September day.

The sky
Was vast
The lightning
Fast
The sea an eternal stretch.

I was small
The world was huge
I was soaked
In the deluge
One lone figure in the blue gray swirling sketch.

Believe

God sent me a shooting star.
A spark that slashed
Across the dark heavens an night.
I didn’t believe in Him.

He sent me a rainbow.
An arch of colour.
Glittering between the sun and the rain.
I didn’t believe in Him.

God sent me a storm.
A wild raging storm.
That tore the heavens apart with its angry beauty.
I didn’t believe in Him.

He sent me a dawn.
A golden dawn.
Early and fresh and the bird’s young song.
I didn’t believe in Him.

He sent me an answer
To my prayers.
Fulfilled my wish and all I’d asked for that time.
I still didn’t believe in Him.

So He sent me Fear.
That ripped apart my heart
And froze my blood and bones and forced a tremble in my limbs…
I believe, God. Have mercy.

A Thought...

God,
I look out the window and I see a star.
Behind the tree that has large leaves like plates.
Trembling into sight and out as the branches quiver in the wind.
And I think…
That’s Who You are.
Not the star.
Not the tree.
Nor it’s branches or it’s leaves.
But all of it together, including the breeze and the tremble.
And me, who’s there to see it.
That’s You, God,
Existence.

Silver Earrings

SILVER EARRINGS.



Anne Bartley was a tall girl with flaming red hair. She wore frameless spectacles and silver jewelry. She wouldn’t be caught dead with a gold earring on.
I ran into her the other day at a restaurant. She had changed. Then, I had, too. So I didn’t find anything unusual about that. I walked up to her after making sure that she was Anne. It was ages since I had last seen her: at school in my hometown. She was on her own at a table for two. So I just sat down beside her. She looked up at me in surprise and slight indignation.
She had her hair tied back loosely and was wearing heavy make up. Two large gold rings hung from her ears.
“Hi! Fancy meeting you here all of a sudden!” I smiled. “Why, don’t you remember me? It’s Clara – Clara Hughes!”
Her brows contracted a little. She frowned at me. “Clara – ”
“School, Anne, school!” I urged.
She smiled now. “Oh! Imagine that! I didn’t recognize you, Clara! I’m so sorry! What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I work at the place opposite! What about you? Never seen you here before.”
“At the newspaper office? Are you a reporter there?”
“Yes. Well, how about you?”
“I’m planning to get a job there. In fact, I’ve already handed in the application form. I’ve come to see if I’ve got the job. Couldn’t wait for the letter.”
“Oh! Then you must be doing that new column on the second page that the boss was talking of. If you are, then you’ve got the job, alright!”
She smiled happily. “Oh, good.”
I looked around for the waiter. “Are you waiting for someone? Otherwise I’ve a good mind to order for both of us. What will you be having?”
“Whatever you prefer. I’m not all that hungry, really. Nerves, I expect.”
“What have you been doing with yourself all these years, Anne?”
“Things.” She replied, her mind on the menu card.
The waiter came and took our order. I looked at her gold earrings.
“Tastes change, Anne?” I asked.
“You don’t know how much, Clara…” She replied mysteriously.
“So, what are you going to do your column on?”
“The supernatural.”
“As in – ghosts?” I couldn’t suppress my smile.
She shook her head sadly, not in denial, but just an expression of sadness, as if she was laughing at me.
“I like your earrings, Clara. Where did you get them from?”
I was proud of my earrings. I’d got them from an old shabby shop that sold valuable trinkets. They were silver. And old floral design crafted beautifully.
“A family heirloom.” I shrugged.
She smiled. Her own gold earrings sparkled in the sunlight coming in through the parted curtains. Suddenly I felt curious about her. All this time she hadn’t ventured any information about herself. And she had changed a lot.
“ Do you mind if I ask you about your earrings?” I stammered.
“ A gift.” She smiled. “From my husband.”
“When did you get married?” I asked, sitting up.
“Ten years.”
“And your husband, what does he do?” It was being exceedingly difficult to keep up the conversation. I was asking all the questions and she was giving short direct answers, not making any effort to prolong the conversation. I felt like a lawyer questioning a witness.
She sighed. “He died three years ago.” She said, not looking at me but at our approaching meal.
The waiter laid down spotless clean plates in front of us and served the steaming hot stew.
“I’m sorry,” I said. She shrugged, blowing over her spoon to cool it down.
“The earrings –” she said, laying her spoon down on her saucer and pointing at my ears. ‘Will you give them to me once?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, just let me hold them.” She smiled, reassuringly. “I’ll show you something.”
Bewildered, and not at all sure of her intentions, I slipped each earring off my ears, one at a time, and held them out to her. She took them from my hand.
“Didn’t you say you didn’t believe in ghosts?” She asked, her head cocked to one side like a parrot’s.
“I didn’t say that exactly but, well, I don’t think I do.”
She was pleased with my reply. She sat up, eagerly, holding my silver earrings on the palm of her outstretched hand, where they glittered like moonlight in the sun.
“I have a theory.” She started, looking down at my earrings. “When a person dies, he leaves behind a part of himself in this world. Understand, though, that it isn’t he himself that remains behind, but his trace, his shadow, his ghost, if you would call it that. And this part of a man doesn’t live – it can’t, it has no life. It’s just the dust of a burnt out fire, scattered over the fireplace where the fire was once lit – the remnants of a thing that no longer exists, at least, in this world. And like the dust in the fireplace, this part also remains clouded around things that belonged to the man. Not things like his money or his office. But things which were really his, so to speak. His house, his clothes, his shoes, his comb, which he saw everyday, used everyday. Things like earrings, if it comes to a woman. Earrings, you see, are my specialty. I can read through their aura. And yours, Clara, are really very interesting.
“They tell me that they belonged to a woman. A very wealthy woman whose wealth dried out, little by little. She was fair and tall. Her auburn hair fell to her waist in soft curls. Her eyes were green – a deep clear green. She was headstrong and powerful. She inherited a fortune from an aunt and was used to all the luxuries of life. These earrings were given to her by her father.
“They were a wedding present. Her husband had a title but was poor. Every attempt at business on his part failed miserably. They started with a large house. A huge house too big for two people, too large for three even, if you counted her baby son. Also they kept a horde of servants to manage it. The servants disappeared one by one. The husband flaunted her money extravagantly. He went on long, expensive holidays, gambled, drank and slowly ate into her wealth. The house had to be sold soon – they couldn’t manage it anymore.
“They moved into a small bungalow on a street which belonged to the less fashionable area of the city. They didn’t keep any servants anymore. She slaved day in and day out cooking cleaning and looking after her ungrateful husband. He didn’t make any changes for her. He still went on about his life the same way as before. The money they had left dwindled. He started going to her father for loans. Her father couldn’t refuse them.
“One night her father was returning from a vacation. Her husband was supposed to meet him at the station. He didn’t show up. He got drunk at a party thrown by one of his friends and forgot about his father-in-law. It rained heavily that night. Her father couldn’t possibly know that her husband wasn’t coming and waited for hours in the rain. When he finally staggered into her house he was soaked to the skin and very ill. He died the next week.
“What money she inherited from him was used up in a year. A lot of it went in clearing her husband’s debts and the rest of it in gambling. They were penniless. She spent days sitting in her house wondering what to do. Everyday he went out with his friends drinking at their expenses.
“One night he came home really drunk. He entered the house and slumped down on the sofa in the drawing room and fell off to sleep. Her little son came into the room crying for some reason. He woke up angrily, slapped him as hard as he would a grown man who had slighted him, and went off growling to sleep once more. She lost her temper. Her kitchen knife was lying nearby. She picked it up and plunged it through his heart. He was dead before she flung the knife away. Then, slowly, systematically, she brought a pen and some paper out from a closet, sat by her husband’s gruesome dead body and wrote a letter to her cousin, asking him to take care of her son and left him her silver earrings to give to his son’s wife when her son grew up.
“Then, she placed the letter in her son’s hand and retired to her room. She hanged herself from the ceiling, her dead body dangling lifeless and limp, a cord taut around her neck, her eyes open, staring and dead.
“Her cousin sold these earrings to a shop after they found them still on her ears. He wasn’t going to care for the child, whom he sent to an orphanage. The child was sickly and weak and died soon after the incident.
“So you see, Clara. You didn’t inherit these lovely silver things as a family heirloom. No, you bought them at a shop, a shop that sells little trinkets. That is why when I see these earrings I don’t see them on any of your ancestors but on the pale ears of a dead body – the body of a strangled blue woman hanging limply from a ceiling.”
My stew was cold. I hadn’t touched it. I didn’t feel like eating anymore. Trying to think for a good excuse, I got up and pushed my chair in. Clara smiled up at me, the earrings still in her hand. “Going so soon?”
“Sorry, I have to get back. I lost track of the time talking to you. The boss will be getting angry and I still have to see to the evening edition. It was lovely meeting you after all these years. Do call when you’re free. We’ll have lunch together again perhaps.” Throwing some money for our meal down on the table I hurried out the door before Anne could realize that I hadn’t given her my number. I wanted to be well locked up inside my department before she went to the office with those horrible earrings that I’d dared to call mine.
The sun was high in the western sky and the heat was almost intolerable. The sunlight forced its way into every open window into every shadowy lane. The office building was exactly opposite the small restaurant. On either side of it small flower shops were lined up, closed for lunch. The flowers in the window drooped in the sullen heat of the early afternoon, their otherwise vibrant colours dull in the orange bright glow of the midday sun.
I hurried in through the open doorway and ran up the stairs, my leather bag dangling from my shoulders. The office was relatively empty. Everybody hadn’t come back from lunch yet. I was early. Technically, I hadn’t even had lunch. A few people were sitting idly about, eating packed meals and chatting. I sat down with them.
“Back early, Clara?” George Farthing asked, looking up from his computer screen. George was a little too serious about his work. He worked through meals and coffee breaks. “Looking anxious, too? Lunch been too expensive for you?”
“At least I can afford to eat everyday, unlike you.” I replied, turning towards the door. The boss had just come in. He was a short stumpy little man with nervous manners and a nose that could twitch in the funniest manner at odd times.
He looked at George, craning his neck to look over the monitors.
“The new employee’s just arrived. She’s standing outside. Would – would you show her around, George?”
George nodded briskly, getting up. “That would be Mrs. Clive, I presume.”
The boss nodded, turning to leave.
“Excuse me, sir,” I burst, surprised. “That wouldn’t, by any chance, be the woman who’s to write the new column for the second page of the paper, would it?”
He looked back at me with an annoyed frown. “Why, of course. Mrs. Clive’s going to write on ‘managing a house’. Or something the like, if I remember rightly.”
“And Miss Bartley?” I ventured. “Anne Bartley?”
“Never heard of her.”
“She’s not going to join here?”
“I’ve told you already, Hughes, I’ve never heard of her! How many new people do you expect me to employ in a day?”
“She has written to you, hasn’t she, asking for a job?”
He looked at me with a queer expression on his face.
“I haven’t had any letter asking for employment in the last eighteen months. No one by that name has ever written to me in my life, I can guarantee that.”
I grabbed my bag and ran towards the door, excusing myself.
“Mad as a hatter,” I heard George mutter after me.
I flew down the stairs and rushed out of the building into the heat. From across the street, it looked as if the table I had had lunch at that day was still occupied. I hurried into the restaurant. An unknown family, dressed shabbily, was sitting at our table by the window.
I stood still for sometime, wondering what had just happened. A sudden thought made me walk out the door and hail the nearest taxi I could find. I wasn’t going to give up till I knew.
The sun was much less aggressive when the taxi pulled up outside the dingy old shop. Its reddening rays seeped through the dark stained glass onto a large dirty-looking tray laden with jewelry and little trinkets in the window. The artificial stones glowed softly and, somehow, mysteriously in the dull light. The faded letters above the doorway were almost unreadable – paint peeling off the rusty board.
I walked into the shop, feeling nervous. As I pushed open the door, a bell attached to it tinkled softly, its sound bringing out an old wrinkled man to match the old wrinkled shop out from somewhere behind the old wrinkled counter. He nodded feebly at me, his small but magnified bright blue eyes peering out from behind his thick glasses. He recognized me from my previous visits.
“And what are we here to buy today?” He smiled, half of his yellow blackened teeth missing.
“Mr. Shepherd,” I asked, hesitatingly, “do you remember the silver earrings I bought a few days ago?”
He nodded at a moth-eaten tapestry hanging on the wall behind me for a few minutes, processing my question in his mind, slowed down by his years.
“The flower – ” His face broke into a thousand more wrinkles as he smiled. “Aye. That was a beautiful one. What would you like to know about that one, lass?”
“Where did you get them from?”
Once again, his balding head bobbed on his thin weak neck, his eyes on the tapestry. This time, he took longer and I waited, my heartbeat loud in my ears. At last he broke off from his stupor, looking at me with another wrinkled smile.
“That would be from a little girl, lass, only ten or thereabouts. She sold them to me. It’s my belief she told me she was gifted them from a rich uncle and she didn’t want no jewelry – only a book she’d seen in some shop. She bought it with the money she got from me.”
“You didn’t get them from a man whose cousin died a few days earlier?”
“Why no, missy,” He broke into a laugh. “Who’s been scaring you with wrong ideas? Those earrings were beautiful. What would you like today? I’ve never seen a gal with better taste, no sir. No one saw those earrings before you and I’d kept them in the center of the window for all the world to see. This lady saw them too and she’d be about your age. Poor thing. She hadn’t the money to buy them. Not them and not any others in my shop, though I have them so cheap. The only things she could afford were a pair of large false gold rings. And she had taste, too. What this world will come to, I don’t know, lass. Ah me, look there she is outside. Talk of the Devil – ”
I whirled around. I was too late to catch more than a glimpse of Anne’s face. She was pressed to the window, her eyes wide in shock at seeing me there, a silver glint beneath each of her ears. Then, in a swirl of flaming red hair she was gone, with my earrings. I rushed out the door as fast as I could. The only thing I was in time for was the sound of running feet. The street was empty.
I never saw Anne Bartley or my earrings again.

The ghost who owned the footbridge

THE GHOST WHO OWNED THE FOOTBRIDGE




She ran out into the rain and into the darkness, straining her ears for a sound of footfalls coming after her but none came and she realized that was the way it was. Her two dollar scarf that she’d picked up at some yard sale which she went to only to oblige some acquaintance flew back behind her, untwined itself from her collar and glided away in the flying wind. The rain lashed into her coat, driving the frayed stitches deep into her skin and seeped in through the moth holes and drenched her fake designer evening gown. Maybe she was trying too hard to be herself.
The streetlights glared from behind the thick translucent curtain of rain, a glazed phosphorescent halo around their shadowy posts. Her feet splashed through two inches of drain water that some burst pipeline had let into the streets, the splashes drowned in the roar of the rain and the intermittent clashes of thunder. The sky was pitch black and the clouds invisible in the claustrophobic emptiness of the night and she ran with her face raised to the skies but she couldn’t keep her eyes open because of the rain. The sheet of water above her glittered in the soft light like a shower of blessings from heaven, only she knew them for what they really were.
Past the criss-crossing chaotic mess of roadways that the weather had driven empty and the tall apartment blocks behind the thick concrete walls that kept the burglars out and the silverware in, the lines and rows of monotonous houses whose lights were hidden behind heavy linen curtains that seemed as thick… and the night thundered on. The river was right ahead and past the turning. She couldn’t see it because of the rain but she imagined how it would look with the tiny ripples on its ever-moving surface magnified by the storm and she was satisfied. She ran on and felt the hollow toughness of wood beneath her feet replace the cobblestone road as she stepped onto the footbridge and she thrust herself against the railing and slipped down to her knees, pressing her face in through the bars.
She pulled off her ruined black crepe silk hat – the one that had belonged to her mum and the one her mum had given her for Christmas because she wanted to borrow money from her – and tossed it into the waiting depths below. The raindrops trickled from her sad blonde locks onto her face and down her cheeks like misplaced tears that she’d borrowed from the skies because she had none of her own. She turned and sat back against the railings and sighed. The whisper was lost in the rumble of the rain and the wails of the wind.
“I wish…”
And the rain thundered on…




“What do you wish?”
She leapt up, startled, and peered into the darkness. The voice was sad, like her own should sound now, if she spoke, only her voice had lost any emotion it could possibly have held a long time ago.
“I’m sorry, I can’t see you in the dark – I didn’t see you –”
“It’s alright. I didn’t see you either. I just heard you.”
She could make out his silhouette now, kneeling back against the railing just as she was, just opposite. She hadn’t noticed before. She hadn’t looked before. The city lights were strong but dimmed in the rain and dimmed further by the empty dark not-yet-lighted long stretch of unused road between the station and the river. She could hardly see him yet, only a dark form against the spent lights of the city behind.
“Did I frighten you?” He hardly seemed to move as he spoke.
“No – ” She edged forward a little, peering at him through the haze. “I mean, yes. Perhaps a little. You surprised me. ”
“As you did me. I generally don’t expect anyone to be on my bridge.”
“I come here pretty often. I’ve never seen you or anyone else here for that matter.”
“Funny, don’t you think? If the bridge is yours as much as it’s mine, you would have thought we’d be knowing each other, wouldn’t you?”
“At least have had seen each other – ”
She stretched out her hand and her fingers brushed against his jacket – the waterproof polymer felt hardened and yet calm under her touch.
“I have seen you here before.”
She withdrew her hand with a sudden jerk. “Who are you?”
The pause she expected didn’t come. Instead, rough fingers, warm and still dry from being tucked safely under the jacket closed around hers from the other side of the darkness.
“Not who you’re thinking I am, I promise.” His voice was gentler, stronger. “Tell me, do I sound like him?”
She closed her eyes and tightened her grip on his hand, raising her head to the rain. The drops were gentler now; their wild harsh strikes a little less spiteful, a little less wild.
“No – I’m sorry. It’s just that he’s the only one I’ve ever come here with.” And for the first time in fifteen years her voice broke down. “Was the only one I ever came here with.”
And the rain, drumming onto her skin in a frenzied chorus, drummed into her thoughts the lost ties and futile gestures of painstaking adorations, lost promises and treasured vows that served only to, again and again, remind her of the cruelty of false facades of love and the world.
“I’m sorry about him.” The sound of his voice didn’t break off his respectful silence – only seemed to emphasize it.
“He’s gone now… away from who I am…” Then, not quite paying much attention to the incongruity of what she was saying, nor of what he was saying, she broke into a gay laugh. “And I have you. You’re my new ghost.”
“I’m your new ghost and you are mine,” he acknowledged, in a matter-of-fact manner. The rain stopped suddenly, as if cut off by a bout of contentment that did not belong to the night and yet was strong enough to drive it away. She looked up at the clouds, now dark red in the silenced heavens and then brought her eyes down to his chiseled face, his silhouette clearer and formed without the rain, and smiled.
“When will you be here?” she asked.
“Always.”
“When will I be able to see you?”
“Always, now. Whenever you want to.”
“Goodbye then.”
She let go of his fingers and felt them slip away, not quite aware of the feeling of his touch edging away from hers but of the depth of his eyes, as she imagined them, looking into hers in the resolute darkness. Then she turned and ran towards the lights.
Her boots splashed heavily through the waterlogged streets, the sound they were making amplified by the stark silence of a rain-washed night. Her drenched coat weighed her down. The cool breeze that had sprung up after the storm slapped against her cheek and her coat, pushing the warm stitches against her skin and finding their way in through the moth holes, bristling against the silk of her gown. The streetlights looked warm and bright against the blue-orange sketch of the city, somehow inviting. She looked up at the fleeting clouds and the obscure patches of deep blue sky in between, trying to spot the infrequent star.





And, from the storm that had moved ahead, leaving her behind – or had stayed behind and let her move on ahead – a soft growl of thunder reached her ears from the east.
She stopped suddenly. And stared ahead, smiling. And then turned back to face the way she had come. The footbridge stood empty and bare, its wet wooden boards gleaming softly in the light from the city, and her heart fell. She ran towards it, splashing through the street, and closed her eyes to remember. Her footsteps splattered across the rainwater and then onto the hollow wood yet again and she opened her eyes to stare at the emptiness on her bridge.
“Are you there..?” She searched for a name and then realized she didn’t need one. “I want to see my ghost – my ghost who owns my footbridge – ”
“I’m here.”
She swiveled around on her heels. He was standing behind her, at the foot of the bridge, having materialized from some shadowy corner beyond. A smile played across the corners of her lips and she could imagine it being reflected on his.
“On our footbridge.”

****************************

LUCK

Ten…
Nine…
Eight…


So I had a shotgun to my head and my finger on the trigger and my lips mouthing the most ghastly countdown I’d ever witnessed in my life. What had happened? I had no idea. All I knew was that I was all alone in this ancient music hall, the old stage lying in ruins across the front five rows of moth-eaten seats that were barely visible under the rubble and the sawdust, a single dying-out electric bulb hanging from the dilapidated ceiling near the barricaded entrance, splaying a pathetic hollow yellow haze all over the place.


*****************


Perhaps it all started with that old woman in the coffee shop. The old wrinkled dark-skinned woman in the heavy brass jewelry, with the awful peeling-off make-up and the foul-smelling mug of what she called coffee and what she was trying to coax me into accepting for the whole dollar (daylight robbery in the first place) I’d spent. Oh, and her weird black hat, shaped like a bird’s nest and made like a deflated balloon or something.

She bent over me like one of Macbeth’s witches, silver-gray hair spilling out from behind one wrinkled dirty ear and took the coffee mug away from under my nose – where it had been creating a near-asphyxiation effect. Breathing a sigh of relief I was about to leap out of my uncomfortable chair and dash out of the door like a sprinter at the crucial start of a marathon, when the woman stretched one parched hand out from under her shawl and, pushing me back into my seat, whispered impishly into my ear (although it had seemed more of a cackle than a whisper at that time), “It begins today.”

So what had begun that day? Truth be told, I still don’t know. Perhaps she had meant the car that had stopped by me on the road just outside the shop and thrown out something that inexplicably smelt, looked and tasted like washing soda all over me. Perhaps she had meant the flock of white and gray birds that had alighted from the hedge around my garden, leaving behind their unwelcome leftovers all over my carefully mowed lawn. Perhaps she had meant the friendless old man who had collapsed with a heat stroke in front of my drive and made me drive him over to the nearest hospital and spend all but every cent of my money on him for a check-up and a treatment and wait for the doctor’s report plus the police report after that for six hours in that wretched stark white crowded waiting room in the crux of the afternoon. Perhaps, I hope not, though, she had meant that pretty lady in the Mercedes, who looked somewhat familiar and who’d leaned out of her window to blow a kiss at me and then disappeared behind a shaded glass.


*******************


Seven…
Six…
Five…

Or maybe the story had really started ten years ago. Under the scorching sun of the heart of Africa – a clearing in the depths of a forbidden jungle – the tall broad branches of the huge unyielding trees that hardly obstructed the glaring merciless sun, the incessant chatter of the birds and the monkeys interrupted to a standstill by the sudden gunshot that had blasted through the din, sounding like a scream in a room filled with humming priests.


I had two bullets left. My revolver was getting heavier instead of lighter in my left hand as I ran in and out through the stout trunks, creepers clinging on to the peeling bark, although the bullets kept disappearing by the minute. I heard the soft whimper of the monster behind me, its paws falling softly and surely on the thick entangled undergrowth. I was fast – but not fast enough. Not even close to fast enough for escaping a creature bred and raised in the midst of the jungle, in a race for life that was taking place in the middle of its own element, with me carrying nothing but a measly little revolver that had two bullets left only.

It was playing with me. I could sense the tense excited delight in its every footfall, movement and hot breath that escaped through its snarling display of sharp teeth – built for tearing flesh – my flesh at that.

Perhaps I lost my head back then. Perhaps it was a calculated movement on my part. Whatever it was, I left the suffocating jungle and ran into the clearing. Had I seen the abandoned temple from between the trees that bordered the clearing? I didn’t think so. However it was, with whatever fortunate twist of fate that had brought me there, there it was: an old half-collapsed temple, its northern wall a crumbling heap of dry ancient ruins, blades of new grass peeping out from between the edges of the decaying bricks.

I ran into the ruins, as far in as I could go. The animal couldn’t come in. Its huge tawny body was too large by far for the small entrance. It paced outside the doorway, an angry snarl stretching the corners of its lips, losing its temper now and then and hurtling itself at the old good wall, only to bounce back with a painful rib with each failed attempt. Its eyes were transfixed on mine, hypnotizing and unmoving, challenging and frightening, large and bright orange, the pupil a small but deep black hole, surrounded by red-green flecks. I took aim and shot the thing. The bullet whistled into the bushes behind the animal, which leapt aside with an angry growl. I could see the blood seeping out through the tough skin on his foreleg – where my last bullet had hit its mark, a foot too low for my liking.

The last bullet.

I don’t know how long I waited for a good shot. Hours, ages, maybe the whole day. When I finally lost my nerves and took aim for the shot, knowing that one bullet wasn’t enough, knowing I was going to die, the shot never rang through the thick fruit-scented air of the evening. A single arrow whizzed over my head and embedded itself in the animal’s hide. It lunged forward; the arrow seemed like an ant on its great strong muscular back for a moment; then it fell, floundering, at the foot of the wall. Poisoned.


I swerved around on my heels. A man stood in the distance, visible through a small gap in the part of the wall that had fallen in, a white man with a grin on his face. He walked around the ruins, to the entrance – where the huge beast lay sprawled across the doorway, its once terrifying eyes sightless and dazed, its tail sill thrashing the earth, raising pathetic amounts of red dust, at long intervals that got longer by the second, its breath short, slow and irregular emissions from its flaring nostrils.

The man was tall, scrawny and young. His beard, though, was white and unkempt – as unkempt as his hair was tidy. His clothes were native. He stepped over the beast and walked into the temple, towards me.

“Dr. Livingston, I presume,” I quoted, stammering, gaping, at my rescuer. His grin broadened.

“Close, Stanley,” he retaliated, his accent stiff and British, his tone friendly and informal. “It’s Daniel Scarridge to you. Dr. Dan. I’ve been working with the tribes around here for ages. Glad to be of assistance.”

“Ralph Summers.” I stretched out my hand, not even trying to lie about what I was doing, running from an overgrown wildcat in the middle of nowhere with only a revolver in my hand.

He grasped my outstretched hand in a strong grip and smiled, nodding. Then, suddenly, he snatched his hand away, his grin fading into a look of horror. He grabbed my wrist, flicked my palm over to face the sky, and scanned it intently. Then he backed away from me, his intense blue eyes probing into mine for a long moment, before turning and running towards the trees.

I called back after him. “What’s wrong?” The monkeys were chattering again, in rhythm with the twittering of the birds, at the setting in of dusk.

He paused. Then, hesitantly, he looked back. “So it hasn’t begun yet?”

I shook my head in a gesture of bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged, crossing himself with a trembling right hand. “You’ve been marked.” It was hardly more than a whisper – but I heard it clearly in spite of the evening sounds of the jungle. At that moment all other sounds seemed to freeze into a sudden nerve-wracking eerie silence. Then the moment passed. Dr. Dan turned his back towards me and ran into the woods.

The animal gave one last jerk and relapsed into a dead stillness.

***************



Four…
Three…

Or maybe it had started that cold September night on that miserable little ship somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic fifteen years ago, the gusty wind screaming at the cabin windows and the tumultuous waves roaring as they hit the weakening hull, time and time again. The world was a chaotic mess of blue paint, dabbed randomly across a gray-black canvas, the brushstrokes strong and terrifying. White streaks of lightning slashed across the stormy skies, which growled in anger as the sea answered back with its relentless rumble.


I stood on the deck, swaying with the movement of the boat, the wind slamming into my face.

“Mr. Summers?” The voice was high-pitched, shrill almost – a small girl’s voice.

I turned. She stood by the door of one of the cabins, hardly four and a half feet tall, about eleven or twelve years old. She was muffled in a big woollen coat, sheltering her slight figure from the harsh weather. Her light brown curls fell over her cheeks, reddened by the cold. Her eyes were a clear emerald green.

“Yes?”

“He won’t wake. Mr. Reynolds won’t wake.” She was agitated, confused, shifting her weight from one foot to another.

I ran up to the cabin door and, turning the knob, pushed it open. The man sat back in his chair in one corner, staring up at the ceiling, an expression of painful surprise on his aged face, his bald head shining incongruously in the white electric light.

I bent over him and checked his pulse. Stone dead. I turned to face the little girl. “What were you here for?”

She shrugged. “I came to see if he needed something. Mary does it everyday. She’s sick today. Papa asked me.”

Mary was the stewardess and papa was the captain. I nodded. “Go call your papa. And Dr. Frisch. Hurry.”

I heard her footsteps run up the deck to the captain’s cabin and leapt to my feet. Reynolds’ glass was on the table by the chair, the rim glistening silver and the contents sparkling red. I picked it up, hurriedly, and, running out of the cabin, threw the liquid out into the sea. Then I ran back into the room and washed it carefully, meticulously, with water from the wash-stand and placed it back on the table. Then I turned around to face the dead man and smiled.

“What if tell them that the glass was full when I saw it before?”


I jumped. The girl was standing at the doorway, her hands in her coat-pockets, a complacent smile playing at the corners of her lips. I stood staring at her wordlessly, tense and apprehensive.

“You poisoned the wine, didn’t you?” She walked in calmly and sat waiting on the bed. “I saw you washing the glass.” She leaned back, resting her weight on her palms, her arms stretched back behind her. Her gaze travelled around the cabin, coming to rest on a large brown leather case in a corner.

“What’s there in that?”

I sat down beside her on the bed and shrugged the question off. “What are you going to do about it?”

She smiled again. “Are you going to kill me now because I know you did it? Don’t worry. I haven’t called papa yet. And I’m not going to tell anyone. You should know.”

I nodded. “You should call them now.”

She stood up and looked at me. “They won’t know. Don’t worry. You used a good poison.” She ran to the door and stopped to look back at me before she walked on.

“Be careful. Someday your luck will run out… and then it will begin.”


***********************






Two…

It was a warm summer night. I was fifteen. And reckless. And daring. And there was a circus camped behind our country house. So I slipped out through the kitchen door and jumped over the boundary fence and slinked towards the caravans…

The moon slipped in and out of wispy pink-gray clouds, the sprawling green meadows splashed with silver and shadows. The caravans and the tents loomed up ahead, their vibrant colours faded into a dull gray in the light of the moon. I tiptoed up to a shaky temporary wooden stall that sold charms in the daytime. A single piece rested in the small coffee-stained glass case I’d seen on my first and officially only visit. Its silver gleamed in the moonlight streaming onto it through the old glass; the amulet was enchanting, breathtaking, even in the dark when the intricate designs on its disc were invisible. I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off it that morning. And it wasn’t for sale.

I wanted it. I wanted that old fake silver locket that hid behind a dusty corner of the shredded velvet in the showcase. I didn’t even think about the fact that all the other trinkets had been taken inside for safety and this one had been left behind; I didn’t even realize that this was too easy. I didn’t think of it as dangling bait on a fishing hook, I thought of it as luck…and I guess I was right. Too damn right for my own good.


I prised the glass open, slipping my hand in under the brass-lined cover and drew the thing out. I didn’t risk a peek at it. I turned and ran.

A branch cracked behind me. I stopped dead. And all of a sudden, in the dead silence of the still night, someone laughed. A mocking triumphant hoarse laugh, that crept into my blood and made the warm night so much colder, so much more sinister.

I turned. A figure stood poised by a caravan, against a starlit sky and the pale ghostly disc of the moon, his face in the shadows.

“It’s yours now!” His voice was guttural, his expression mocking, triumphant, excited. “We couldn’t give it to anyone, we couldn’t sell it to anyone. And now it’s yours. You’ve brought it upon yourself, boy, voluntarily. We’re free.”

I shivered, every instinct in my body urging me to run; but I couldn’t. I needed to know.

“It’s a luck charm, boy,” he called, after a pause, his voice gentler, sympathizing. “It brings you luck alright, for a number of years… and then…and then it takes back all it gave. You can’t give it away. You can’t throw it away. You can’t lose it. You can’t sell it. And when it’s tired of luck, that’s when it all begins… the nightmares.”



*******************




One…

So here I was. I’d had a good forty years. Adventuring in the wildest corners of the world, playing with my fortune, stealing gold from a dead smuggler’s large brown leather case and trying out my version of the perfect murder at the same time, exploring the depths of the remotest jungles on the earth, hunting scary wild beasts, trying my luck to the farthest stretch. And now… well, luck was a funny thing. It gave and it took. What it had given me was a wild crazy life of my fancified desires. What it had taken away was the ability to get around without luck. I mean, so many unlucky people seem to get around fine without it. But now that I’d got used to it, I couldn’t imagine a life without luck. So I was done for. Finished. Dead. And dead unlucky, at that.
The crazy car, the stupid birds and the sick man – they had just been the beginning. It got so much worse after that. From near-death accidents, no less than five broken body parts, one dead friend and two dead parakeets to huge gambling loses, stock-market crashes and a short-circuit fire that blew up my beautiful New York apartment, I’d experienced it all, what an old man from my shady past had called “the nightmares”. And I guess I could have stood through all that… if it wasn’t for the real nightmares. The woman in the car: the pretty lady I’d seen the day it all began. Every night I dreamt of her. Just staring at me throughout every scene of my dreams. Her cold gray mocking eyes locking into mine, triumphant and evil. I woke up in a cold sweat every morning, that frightening beautiful face haunting my thoughts and my very consciousness. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I didn’t know who she was, or why she frightened me so. I just couldn’t take it.

I tried throwing the amulet into the river. It got caught on the suspension wires of the bridge. I tried leaving it there, and every place I went to, every restaurant I ate at. It kept reappearing in my coat-pocket. So in the end I thought maybe I should end this thing. Really end it. And what better place to end it than the place it had all started in. The music hall that had been built, a year after I left, over the meadow the circus had parked itself in. It was in disuse now. Broken-down, neglected, forgotten. Like the life that I’d left for a more exciting one. And this was the end…

Zero…

The light bulb hanging by the door flickered and died out.
**************************





Stop. Rewind there a bit. What had I said back there? “So many unlucky people seem to get around fine without luck.” And what had the circus people done? They’d traded their fortune for mine, losing the amulet to me. How had they done that? One last spurt of luck before the dark? I didn’t think so. The amulet was, before all, a luck charm. And losing it, then, wasn’t lucky at all. It was unlucky. “The amulet takes back all the luck it gave.” And the first bout of luck was finding it in the first place. But you couldn’t lose the amulet. You couldn’t give it away, throw it away or sell it. But the circus people hadn’t given it to me. They hadn’t lost it, or sold it. I had taken it from them. Stolen it. “Voluntarily.” So maybe the way they got around fine without the amulet’s luck was because they were unlucky. Unlucky enough to have it stolen from them. So maybe… maybe it wasn’t too late for me. I lowered the gun.




I heaved myself into the overcrowded bus. The signs glared down at me from above every dark head: “Beware of Pickpockets”. I’d figured the best way to lose it was the Thomson and Thompson way: the end of a chain of pure silver that I’d attached to the amulet hung from my coat-pocket, swaying with each jolt of the wheels on the potholed road, temptingly. A poverty-stricken country in the hotter regions of the world. Faces, brown from continuous exposure to the tropical sun, stared curiously at me, an out-of-place visitor, reeking of wealth. It was a bus that carried farmers from the market to their villages miles and miles away, farmers, travellers, traders and the odd pickpocket or two. So why did I prefer these pickpockets to our own back at home? Simple, I wanted that amulet as far away from me as possible. And as far away from the places I was likely to go to in the near future. Assuming I’d escape the enchantment, of course.


I moved in to the centre of the narrow passage between the seats. There was no room to sit, and I guess I preferred it that way. I wanted to attract all the attention I possibly could. Correction, I wanted the chain in my coat-pocket to attract all the attention it possibly could. And I waited. Waited for that heavenly soft tug on my coat that I’d hardly notice if I hadn’t been waiting for it, wistfully. One hour. Two hours. Three. And it never came.

The bus was out of the town area, speeding through fields of yellow corn, wilting under the heartless sun of the drought season. The roads were worse here, the bus hardly inching its way in and out through mounds of abandoned ‘repair work’ that had started last century and would end the next millennium. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky or a drop of water on the dry earth. We neared a village and the bus stopped, the conductor leaning out to help the new passenger in.

My heart skipped a beat. I stared, dumbfounded into the eyes of the woman from my nightmares – the woman in the car that dreaded day – the woman who frightened me so much that I would have driven myself to suicide. Only her gray eyes had lost their cold malevolence. They were friendly and surprised, finding another American in this place. She came walking up to me and stood next to me.

“Tourist?” She asked. Her presence didn’t frighten me as it always did, her face didn’t scare me.

“Yes. I’ve seen you before, back at home.”

A look of panic flashed through her eyes – so fast that I almost didn’t notice. “I… think you must be mistaken. I haven’t been in America for ages.”

Then I remembered where I’d seen her. Before that day on my way home from the coffee shop, of course. Her face had looked familiar then. Now I knew why. She was the woman who had been suspect in the Manhattan murder cases in ’98. I seen her on the front of the Daily and forgotten her, along with thousands of New Yorkers that year.

She must have seen the fleeting look of recognition in my eyes. She turned and pulled on the emergency chain. The bus braked, with a sudden jolt that sent me lurching forward, grabbing wildly onto the nearest seat. When I’d recovered and stood up, she was gone.

I put my hand instinctively into my coat-pocket. The amulet was gone, too. With her… and away. I knew it was gone, now. Finally. Forever. She’d never come back to America. Or here, for that matter. For the same reason why I never cross the Atlantic on boats anymore. And I… I was free.

It had been a good thing after all, meeting her here in one bus out of a dozen, in one town out of scores, in one country among hundreds – a chance in a million. Lucky.

Or should I say unlucky?

****************************