08-10-2014, 12:49 PM
1
A ghost story for Halloween ... Part 1
FLY AWAY PETER“Mummy?” Peter’s voice interrupted Alison’s single minded perusal of her Things Not To Wear website. She sighed, half listening to her four year old as he stood, small hands on chubby hips with his feet planted firmly apart, determined to elicit a response.
“Yes, darling?” She fixed an enquiring smile in place, swivelled in her chair and looked across at her first born. God, but he was a nuisance at times. “What is it this time?”
“There’s a balloon stuck on the fence and it’s blue and it’s got a happy face on it and, and …” Peter’s cheeks flushed with excitement as he sucked in air for his most thrilling news ..” and there’s a man by it with a big red smiley mouth!”
Alison’s heart leapt to her throat. This was bad. Very bad. Images of dramatic headlines sprung to her mind of serial killers, weirdos who lured unsuspecting kids from their homes, skewed sociopaths with hatchets waiting behind trees … she stood up slowly so he wouldn’t be alarmed, forced her voice down an octave and, taking Peter’s fat little hand, walked quickly over to the window with him to where the waving yellow cornfield moved lazily in the morning breeze. “Like so many feathers” she thought idly. “Carrying out some slow ballet in synch with the wind”.
08-10-2014, 12:50 PM
2
Re: A ghost story for Halloween ... Part 1
PART 2“Now then, what have I told you about making up stories Petey?” she asked the boy, lifting him to the windowsill so he could plainly see for himself that there was nobody along the whole length of the fence as far as the eye could see. Just corn, only corn, and far in the distance against the greying sky, an ancient truck rumbling down the road towards the next town, some farmer no doubt off to market. “No balloon, no man, no elephant (to make him laugh) and no – er, no skyscraper. Just the field and the corn. Go out and play now, and be good and take Skeet with you if you’re lonely.”
Skeet was their terrier, a feisty little thing afraid of nothing and nobody. For a small dog he had the heart of a lion and a formidable bite when he was pissed. If any stranger approached it was at his peril and probably the cost of his entrails. Peter shouted indignantly that there HAD been a man and a balloon, and he was going to play with him, so there. He gave Skeet a small prod with his foot to wake him, and they both ran outside.
Alison sighed. Motherhood was all very well, but bringing up kids without a man around was nobody’s idea of fun, and she relished the peace and quiet when Peter was occupied. She glanced through the window and smiled to see her son playing tug of war with the eager dog, both vying for supremacy over a drool coated piece of rope. Her chair creaked as she lowered herself back onto the cushion, touched a key on her laptop and immersed herself in the virtual world of stick thin models with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes wearing outrageously overpriced rags.
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Skeet had given up on the rope game and was sniffing determinedly round the perimeter of the yard, his small stump of a tail waving like a tiny spiky pendulum. There was no sound, just the shush-shush of the corn stalks and Peter’s sandaled feet scuffing in the dirt. The blue balloon was still there, tied to the fence like a cartoon flower from his favourite TV show, only with a silly face on the front. He couldn’t understand why his mum didn’t see it, but there was a lot he didn’t understand about grown ups. He supposed it was just one more puzzle, like why she sometimes cried or how she drank that funny tasting water in her special mug at night.
08-10-2014, 12:51 PM
3
Re: A ghost story for Halloween ... Part 1
PART 3Peter glanced back at the house a moment, in case his mother was watching and told him off for taking someone else’s balloon, but the windows were all shaded and empty. Besides, if she couldn’t see it, then how could he steal it? He approached the balloon, so deeply rich in colour it blazed against the corn like a jewel. The face on it was red, apple cheeks coloured in, big googly eyes and a toothy grin. Peter laughed delightedly and untied the string. Skeet, alerted by the sound, trotted over to investigate, but got no further than ten feet from the fence before flattening his ears and lowering himself to the dirt, whining pitifully. He backed away comically, stumbling as he did so, before turning tail and rushing back towards the house. Peter heard the little dog-door slap wildly as Skeet shot inside.
The balloon was now firmly his. He examined its slippery surface, cautiously tracing the crude drawing with a podgy finger. He knew how unpredictable balloons were, how they could suddenly explode if you were rough, and he intended to keep this one. A shadow fell across his face and he looked up, squinting a little against the sudden bolt of sun.
The man looked like the balloon face had been modelled on him, Peter thought, and giggled. He was big, and tall. Even though every grown up was tall to the four year old, this man was enormous.
His brightly garish clown suit strained against the blubber of his slack stomach, shaggy black pompom buttons hung precariously down the face of his trunk and his shiny yellow trousers clung slickly to the swell of his thighs, creasing tightly like a concertina at his crotch and knees. Peter was delighted to see the big clown shoes with stars and moons on the toes, the stiff ruff about the man’s trunk-like rolled neck and the pointed hat rammed over the madly curled hair. The corn swayed and shushed behind and beneath the man, not a stalk broken or trodden down, and the air was as still as death. Swathes of corn were visible through the clown’s body and behind his hands and around his fat legs, and when he smiled his bright red clown’s smile and showed his yellowing teeth, Peter could see what looked like the distant road in his mouth and behind the tip of his black tongue.
He clutched tightly onto his balloon and smiled tentatively up at the not-quite-there clown man. “This is mine” he piped. “I know it looks like yours but it’s not. I found it here. It’s mine.” They stood for a long moment either side of the fence in the dusty yard, the grinning man in the funny clothes, the small lonely boy with the cowardly dog, and something stirred around them, an eddy of hot and fetid air that seemed to suck at Peter’s breath and made him gag. He fell to the ground, eyes watering and on the verge of full-blown yells of fear and fright, and when he felt brave enough to open his eyes he was alone except for the blue balloon which had affixed itself back to the fence.
08-10-2014, 12:52 PM
4
Re: A ghost story for Halloween ... Part 1
PART 4Peter rushed back to the house, panting, sweaty and torn between wild excitement and a nameless terror. He careered into his mother in the kitchen and gabbled out his adventure. “Mummy, mummy, I saw the man, the funny man and the balloon, and he was fat and the field was in him and the road, and then he went.” Alison had an evil headache, and winced at the cacophony and the rude disruption of her morning drink. “It’s bad enough with Skeet peeing on the floor” she snapped. “What on earth have you been doing to him? He looks petrified and won’t come out from under the sofa. Honestly, Peter, I leave you for five minutes and you can’t even play nicely.”
This was so unfair that Peter was dumb with indignation at the unjustness of the reprimand and started sobbing with frustration, which irritated his mother so much she sent him upstairs to his room to pull himself together. Wiping his hand over his snotty nose and sniffing back his tears, he ran to his window to peer into the yard.
The fence stretched away into the distance, the corn washed the horizon pale yellow and the clouds scudded across the greying skies. Apart from the vivid blue balloon twisting and whirling against its tethering string, everything looked the same as always. There was no clown man.
Over the following weeks Peter met the clown each morning across the fence, and the balloon marked the place of their rendezvous. Each time, the figure appeared to drift a little closer to the boy and each move closer altered the red smiley mouth in subtle ways, as if the hand painting the wide shape had trembled more and more so that the crude lips veered off to the right or one day slashed upwards at one side towards an ear. Peter thought it was really funny, though he didn’t much like the way the yellow teeth sometimes peered out smeared in oily crimson. Always the air stood still around the clown and seemed to thicken, as if a sudden hot fog had formed like a cloak, and Peter shivered and sweated all at the same time but was unable to draw himself away. He had stopped telling his mother now, and Skeet refused to come with him to play in that corner of the yard. Nevertheless, Peter was still only small, and fascinating as his new friend was, he knew where clowns came from and determined to find out about the circus, and why the clown wasn’t there tumbling over trip wires or throwing buckets into the crowds. He didn’t think he looked like that sort of clown though, when he thought about it, and the way you could see through his fat body might scare people off.
08-10-2014, 12:53 PM
5
Re: A ghost story for Halloween ... Part 1
PART 5Friday morning Alison was particularly distracted. She had loads to do in the house, needed to sort out her shopping, put some sort of food together for the two of them for the following week’s freezer, and to add to the stress Peter was being exceptionally noisy, teasing Skeet with a toy that he refused to relinquish and shouting with laughter at every yap and angry bark.
“For God’s sake, go outside Peter!” she called, “and give me some rest. You’ll drive me mad, I swear it. Sometimes I wish I’d never had you.” She immediately regretted the taunt but, glancing over, she could see that Peter hadn’t heard a word and was already slamming the door and running in his unsteady knock-kneed way across to the fence, sandals slap-slapping as he went. She shot a look at him in his usual spot, neck craned up to the sky, eyes wide and mouth half open in a smile of joy and one arm at an odd right angle, fist clenched tight. “A biscuit” she thought suddenly. “He’s pinched a biscuit, the little devil.”
The morning wore on to the tiny sounds of an old cottage settling, the light snoring of Skeet in his bed and the deep ticking of her grandmother’s clock which were all around the house and served to calm Alison as she finished a casserole for their evening meal. Peter was a good kid, she thought fondly. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t have a father or that he made up silly stories. Didn’t all boys do that? She really must make more effort.
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Across the yard, in the corner where Skeet wouldn’t go, where the fence stood straight and the cornfield came right up to the edge and shush-shushed and painted the horizon pale yellow was one dusty sandal on its side. Next to it was a shred of something wrinkled. shiny and bright blue, attached to a short length of grubby string. In the far distance, high, much higher than the waving corn and shadowy as a wraith bobbed the top of a clown’s hat.
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