Executor and Other Ghost Stories, The [S.S. Col.] by Rowlands David G

Author:Rowlands, David G. [Rowlands, David G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781553102724
Publisher: Ash-Tree Press
Published: 2012-07-11T22:00:00+00:00

It was the week before Christmas, and Father Denis of the Catholic church in the centre of the large Flaxted Estate woke to a thunderous banging at his front door. He looked at his bedside clock: one-thirty in the morning.

A young couple from his community, Tom and Alice Carter, had a problem. Their small daughter, Sarah, was a sunny child, keen on her school and Sunday classes and full of fun. Within the last week, however, she had startled her parents by having vivid nightmares on several consecutive nights. She had awakened, shrieking ‘Keep it away! Mummy! Help me!’ When pressed for details of these dreams, Sarah’s accounts seemed to be the same. At first she would see herself playing with her toys in the garden; then she would smell a hot smell, like Mummy’s jam, and the gate would open and a figure would come up the path towards her. It was ‘like a toffee bitten off at the end’, and made crying noises and seemed sticky. Just as it was about to fall on her she would wake up.

What puzzled her parents most was the positive and undeniable smell of hot jam remaining in the room.

Next night they settled the little girl down with a milk drink, and Alice stayed until she went to sleep. They were swiftly wakened by the same screams and the same story—and the same strong smell of jam. Sarah was sent to stay the week with a school friend who lived on a different estate on the other side of the village. Apart from the strangeness of her surroundings, she spent a peaceful night. Not so her parents.

Tom had decided to sleep on the child’s bed as best he could. He was tall and found it cramped, but finally dozed off. He did not dream, but he woke suddenly to an overpowering smell of hot jam. Jumping up, he walked straight into a sticky mess that enveloped him—like a mass of cold treacle, he described it; but there was a skeleton structure of some sort, because he felt bones and a form within the encroaching mass. He reached the light switch with some difficulty, but there was nothing to be seen—just the smell of hot jam everywhere. Thoroughly frightened, he ran for his priest’s house.

The day that had now begun was the 23rd, and the weather was turning seasonable, the north wind bringing a flurry of snow. As he sped past St Osyth’s church, Tom noted the rather obvious figures of ‘concealed’ police constables keeping watch. Their presence reassured him of normal things, and he remembered hearing that on the past two or three nights vandals had done damage within the church. Reaching Father Denis’s door he knocked violently.

It was this, of course, that roused the priest. Poor Father Denis was somewhat nonplussed at Tom’s story, but sent him home to his wife, promising to follow on his bicycle. In doing so, Fr Denis turned the corner by St Osyth’s and almost ran

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