At the bottom of my garden is my office. It is a
peaceful place. A busy place. A place to do quality work. Although I hadn't
finished the tasks I'd set myself, I'd had enough. I turned off my computers,
the electric fire and then the lights before I closed and locked the door
behind me. The little grey cells, as Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Poirot
would call them, were in need of rest.
I walked through the cold,
still air and looked up into the night sky. The almost blinding light of the
full Moon in the southern sky didn't quite render Venus and Mars invisible,
though the spotlight quality of the light in the western sky from that small
planet near the Sun was unmistakable. To the east and at a higher elevation the
red planet Mars shimmered.
An occasional rustling of
leaves disturbed the still night air sending vibrations to my senses. Fresh,
powdery snow compacted and crunched underfoot in my steady and careful movement
as shadowy figures darted about in the sharp darkness of the night. I thought
that bats out in the cold night air very strange and disturbing. Did I imagine
the shadows? I thought I heard a soft sound like the distant tinkling of a
bell. I felt chilled, but not because of the cold, fresh air. I was nervous in
the stillness. In the near silence. I quickened my pace just a little.
I heard the tinkling again. An
inexplicable fear gripped me. More than a little ridiculous. In my own garden,
I actually felt vulnerable. Christmas is supposed to be a time of good will and
here I was nervous and fearful of being harmed. Peculiar.
I unlocked and opened the
conservatory door and warm air flooded over me. The lights had been turned off
and in the darkness I felt something brush against my leg. Maybe it was just
the movement caused by the cold night air outside mixing with the warm inside
air. I always lock this door when I disappear down to the bottom of my garden
and into my office. To leave the safety of my house and go the safety of my
office. My refuge. To remove myself from the reality of life and enter the
world of my imagination. Once, I'd given myself a fright as I'd created a scene
that had worried me, but that brief time of exposure between the two not now a
problem. I closed the door onto the imagined dangers and looked out through the
glass window.
The clarity of the white
garden was incredible. The clear black sky dotted with stars even in the bright
moonlight and the planets still looking down as they had done for billions of
years. I put out of my mind the cold stillness of the outside. I could only
think now of sleep.
That noise! Upstairs I heard
that distant tinkling again. An odd sensation of feeling cold in the warm air
and then dread creeping in. The cold had followed me inside. Yet the tinkling
sound was ahead of me. I was chilled to the bone. The house was in darkness. I
must have lost track of time and it was later than I had thought.
In the darkness, I saw a dark,
long and narrow form writhing on my bed. The sound of a bell moving quickly
towards me from behind. I felt hopelessly trapped between the two images: a
dark form ahead of me and the sound rushing at me from behind. I switched on
the room light fearful of what I might see.
I saw one of my two cats
washing itself, stretched out on my bed. The other sprang up from the floor
onto the bed from behind me to join his companion, his bell tinkling in the
cool early morning air. And then they were gone. Vanished.
My cats hadn't been alive for
over seven years now.
© Louis Brothnias (2004)