Dreamscapes, Ghosts and Other Weird Tales.

By Harry .J. Fry

The advice is to write about what you know unfortunately I don't know any ghosts. I do know a little about music, art and archaeology and these interests are the foundation stones of my stories.

Imagine being given the chance to talk with the ghost of a very famous singer. He is as surprised to see you as you are to see him. He has many gaps in his memory. His life didn't always go to plan many wrong decisions nearly cost him his career. He wants to know if he had a good life and he wants to know how he died. What do you tell him, the truth? or do you lie just a little.

You are lying paralysed in a hospital bed,you close your eyes and and you are back in the nightmare world of an artist well known for his disturbing landscapes and bizarre characters. In his world you have full use of your limbs, mostly, but your time there is filled with torment and pain. When you return to your hospital bed you are once again paralysed making your safe return an agony of frustration and anger.

Or perhaps ypou would rather walk the paths of an ever changing maze, your companions are the shades of the ones who walked the paths before you. You are also tormented by three ghosts determined to seek revenge for their deaths.

Fascinated by standing stones and their enigmatic carved symbols. Carved by the ancient Picts over a thousand years ago, what do the symbols mean, no one kn ows for sure. But what if some of them are warning signs. We use symbols today to convey many things.

Have you ever bought a work of art and when you got home decided it was a bad idea. This man certainly did.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harry .J. Fry
• Release date: Feb 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215359655

Book preview

CONTENTS

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THE TEACHER.

MAZE.

A WALK WITH BOSCH.

THE CRY OF THE CARNYX.

THE OPEN DOOR.

THEN HE SANG.

THE TEACHER.

I have to enter a room, a room I swore never to enter again. Should I be foolish enough to cross its threshold, I will not be allowed to leave it. It is a classroom in my old primary school, Mill Valley Primary and for those who are interested in old buildings it was constructed in 1875.

The mills that gave life to the village were closed many years ago mainly due to the more modern mills that were built closer to the docks. The village then began to fall into a mild decay. The school closed in the late sixties and my class was the last to be taught there. School numbers had been dropping for some time. The fifties and early sixties saw many families taking advantage of the emigration system and set off for a new life in Canada or Australia. My family did the reverse. My dad had been working in Canada for two years, some sort of engineering contract. I had gone to school there and by the time we returned to Scotland I had a very pronounced Canadian accent. This for some reason seemed to offend the head teacher a Miss Edwards, a very Scottish Victorian type lady. She took every opportunity to correct, as she explained it, my ‘Colonial Twang’ I can hear her rather snooty voice to this day.

We do not pronounce it that way Harris, please try and get it right.

Again for reasons known only to her she always called me by my surname, my full name is Craig Harris and I am an architect and because I am an architect I have to enter a room I swore never again to enter. But to explain fully the events I am about to relate I have to return to my childhood and my school and to the day where it all started. The day I had to clean the blackboard dusters.

Miss Edwards had found fault with me again, I cannot remember that particular crime, most probably daydreaming and not paying attention. I found it difficult to adjust to her style of teaching. I was accustomed to the more laid-back friendly approach of education as used in Canada and Miss Edward’s strict almost Victorian repetitive style bored me. I loved history and was eager to learn more but standing up in class and repeating parrot fashion date after date did not exactly hold my interest and so my mind would wander. It was during one of those daydreams that I first heard, faintly, the drone of children repeating the times table. I would have been content to listen more but then sharp sting of a ruler across my knuckles brought me back to the present. Miss Edwards had crept slowly and quietly up the steps to my desk and used her favorite weapon on me.

I should explain about the steps, the classrooms were tiered, the teacher’s desk at floor level and the pupils’ desk were raised on wide steps each that bit higher than the other all the way to the back of the room. This allowed the teacher to see each and every one of her pupils.

So Miss Edwards had once again caught me daydreaming, she more or less hauled me out of my seat and marched me down to the front of the class. I remember thinking that she should just move my desk down next to her’s and save us both the bother of this almost daily exercise. Perhaps she was having a bad day or something but instead of just making me stand facing the wall with my back to the class as was her usual form of humiliation she thrust both her blackboard dusters at me and told me I was not to go out at playtime until they were both clear of chalk dust. I watched as my classmates marched out the door to enjoy fifteen minutes of freedom in as Miss Edwards would put it,

In a quiet and dignified manner.

It was June and just a week or so before we broke up for the summer holidays, the day was hot and sunlight streamed through the high windows. I was furious at being kept in and began to take my temper out on the two dusters by banging them together as hard as I could causing a cloud of dust around me. It was through this sunlit white storm of swirling chalk dust that I saw a face staring at me. I couldn’t make out any real details I just thought that Miss Edwards had once again crept up on me in the hope of catching me out in some sort of mischief. Then the face drifted away from me almost as though it were suspended in the motes of dust. In the short time I had to study the face I realized that it was not Miss Edwards. This face was thinner, the eyes more sunken, her hair, I could see that it was a woman’s face, was pulled back tightly from her face. But it was something in her expression that chilled me, I didn’t know what, but I knew I didn’t like it. The dust in front of my face cleared and I was alone in the room. I began to think that I had imagined the whole episode, that it had just been the swirling dust that had appeared  to form the image of a face. Then I heard the children, not my classmates returning, it was much too early for that. This was the drone of children slowly chanting their two times table,

two times two is four, two times three is six...

At that point the door flew open, I nearly jumped out my skin, Miss Edwards stood in front of me. Snatching the dusters out off my hands she shouted at me to go, but to be quick as the playtime was nearly over. I quickly marched to the door but stopped before opening it, I turned and asked her if we really were the only class left in the school. She frowned and asked me why I thought that. I told her that I had heard other children in the classroom above ours reciting their times table. She visibly paled and told me I was imagining things and not to be so stupid and that this is what comes of people who spend their time daydreaming instead of paying attention to what is being taught. This all came out in an angry torrent, she was clearly agitated, she shouted at me to get out and stop wasting her time and mine.

The rest of that day was hell for me, she told the class that I had started to see and hear things that weren’t there. I remember thinking it strange that she accused me of seeing things, I hadn’t mentioned anything about the face. She continued to mock me at every opportunity for the rest of that day . But her comments washed over me I knew that I had seen and heard something strange, something that she didn’t want to acknowledge. I felt that she was deliberately distracting the children’s attention away from anything I may later tell them by making a fool of my story now.

In the playground after school I asked some of the kids if they had ever heard another class saying their times tables, most of them just laughed at me, others avoided me and they were the ones who actually lived in the village and whose parents had most probably attended the school.

But there was someone who didn’t laugh, Jenny Day, the girl in the desk just behind and to the right of mine. One I have to confess I really liked; I suppose she was my first love. She was one of the ‘orphanage children’ and a bit of an outsider, like myself. I got the impression that she wanted to speak to me but her friends dragged her away. She turned once before they reached the corner of the school, the look she gave me was strange, almost fearful. Then she turned the corner and was gone before I could catch her. Maybe events would have turned out differently if I had run after her and we had talked. Perhaps we could have looked out for each other, who knows. I just wish I had chased after her.

The next day was also hot, sunlight streamed through the three side windows spotlighting the first two tiers of desks and Miss Edwards as she stood at the front of the class beside the blackboard. The rows of desks between the shafts of light were in shadow, a room of contrasts. She must have been droning on more than usual and it wasn’t long before I drifted off into a daydream. I remember being fascinated by the slowly drifting dust motes captured by the rays of sunlight. I loved the lazy way they moved and I remember thinking how great it would be just to lie back and drift in the warm beams of light. I looked at the farthest away window then let my gaze slide slowly down the shaft of light imagining that I was floating on that current of warm air. I  became aware then of a still, dark figure standing in the shadow at the back of the room. My eyes hadn’t fully adjusted to the shadowy light but I was convinced it was the same person I had seen the day before. She was staring up at the rear row of desks. I turned to see who or what she was staring so intensely at. It was Jenny, and she was terrified, she was actually shaking. In one way I was relieved that someone else could see that strange shadowy creature and that I hadn’t imagined her. But I was also scared. Scared for Jenny. No one else in the class seemed to be aware of the figure. Miss Edwards was still talking, turning every so often to point at the blackboard with her cane disturbing the drifting dust as she did so. The once lazily drifting dust now swirled and danced in front of the dark menacing figure causing it to disappear and reappear with every movement of Miss Edwards cane. I couldn’t help but think of the phrase ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ and that somehow in my mind made the dark figure even more menacing. My eyes had adjusted to the shadows and I could for the first time really see the dark shape in detail. It was a tall slim woman in a long black dress with white cuffs and collar. She reminded me of a photograph I had seen in a history book of a Victorian school teacher. Her hair was tightly pulled back into a bun at the back of her head. Her face was pale and her eyes were sunken and shadowed but I had no doubt that it was the face that had stared at me the day before and now stared so fiercely at Jenny. As I watched she slowly raised her arm and pointed at Jenny. She crooked her outstretched finger and beckoned to her. I had to do something, I lifted the lid of my desk and banged it down hard. The woman’s head jerked round and stared up at me, a look of sheer hatred. Still looking at me she faded into the shadows.

Naturally I got into trouble, someone, I can’t remember who, said I did it deliberately to scare Jenny. Jenny was struggling not to cry and she was still sharking. She did however manage to give me a grateful look before I was dragged out  off my seat by a furious Miss Edwards. I knew it would be no use trying to explain why I caused such a racket, no one would believe me so I allowed Miss Edwards to drag me down to the front of the class. But I knew one thing, I was not under fear of any punishment going to stand against the wall in the shadows at the back of the class. I did however have to accept six strokes off the belt across my hands. Such was the punishment back then. I also had to stay in after school so I didn’t manage to talk to Jenny. And I never got another chance.

The next day was Saturday and school was cancelled on the Monday. We never saw Jenny in class again.