Something Wicked (Part 1)
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
The boy shot bolt upright in bed. Had he imagined it? No, there it came again, a tentative tapping as of someone who seeks admittance but is uncertain of his welcome.
“Uncle, is that you?” The child asked in a quavering voice.
Dead silence washed over the boy in waves.
“I must have imagined it. That poem’s giving me the creeps. I won’t read anymore tonight”, he thought placing the moth eaten edition of Edgar Alan Poe’s Collected Works on the bedside table.
The boy turned his face towards the wall and attempted to fall asleep. Visions of Poe’s Raven swam before his eyes. It was, he felt sure watching him from the bookcase which stood in the corner of his room. For a few minutes he fought against the urge to open his eyes and look in the direction of the bookcase. The rational portion of his mind told the child that he had nothing to fear, that it was merely an overactive imagination which conjured up phantoms. However the other part of his brain screamed at him that something was amiss, that just beneath the surface of everyday life lurked something unspeakable waiting to devour his very soul.
With a supreme effort the child opened his eyes and, rolling over in the ancient 4 poster bed glanced in the direction of the heavy oak bookcase. Of course there was no raven perched atop the bookcase, which had become black with age. Only the ornamental owl regarded him curiously, it’s beady eyes appearing to bore into his very soul.
The boy dragged his gaze away from that of the bird and for want of anything better to do scanned the titles of the tomes which filled the bookcase: Brontae’s Wuthering Heights, Henry James’s The Turn Of The Screw and other such dark stories met his tired eyes. There wasn’t, the boy remarked, not for the first time, not a single humorous title among them.
“I wish I haden’t lost that copy of 3 Men In A boat that mummy gave me”, he thought.
At the thought of his mother the child buried his head in the pillow and wept. His beautiful, sweet gentle mummy would never again call him her darling and hold him close. He still remembered her scent. Wild flowers mixed with new mown grass, at least that is how he recollected her.
He recalled the police coming to his prep school and how a pretty policewoman had gently taken his hand, in the headmaster’s office,
“Charles I’m so very sorry, I’ve some very sad news. I’m afraid your mum has had an accident”, she had said.
“Is she in hospital?” he had asked.
“Yes she was taken to hospital but, I’m so very sorry, your mummy is dead. Her car hit a tree. She was taken to the hospital. The doctors did everything they could but she died soon after arriving there”, the policewoman had said.
Charles had broken free of the policewoman’s hand. He remembered running and running until, reaching the heart of the woods which bordered the school grounds he had thrown himself on the forest’s ferny ground and wept.
He dimly recollected lying there for what seemed like hours before gentle hands conveyed him to the headmaster’s house.
“He can’t go back to the dorm to stay with the other boys, not after his mother having been killed, Robert”, the headmaster’s wife had said to her husband.
“No Jo, I agree. The poor lad can stay in the guest room until his uncle arrives”, Robert had said.
“I spoke to Lord Brockett just before you came back with the poor little lad. He is coming to collect him tomorrow”, Jo had said.
Charles’s uncle had collected him on the following day and conveyed the boy to Brockett Hall in the depths of Dartmoor.
Notes:
The Raven, a poem by Edgar Alan Poe can be found here, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178713.
Henry James’s novel, The Turn Of The Screw relates how a governess, charged with looking after 2 children in a remote location becomes embroiled in ghostly happenings. It is never clear how much of the happenings are in the woman’s imagination. For further information please see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turn_of_the_Screw.
3 Men In A Boat is a humorous novel, by Jerome, K Jerome about the journey of a group of friends along the River Thames. For the book please visit, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/308/308-h/308-h.htm.
Wuthering Heights, By Emily Brontae is a dark tale, set on the Yorkshire moors, of twisted love and ghostly happenings (the latter hinted at rather than being explicit). For the ebook please visit http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/768
