It’s with great pleasure that I welcome back a regular on here – Murray Clarke has written another entertaining story for us. If you’d like to be included in my guest writer slot, please get in touch: estherchilton@gmail.com. Poems can be up to 60 lines and prose 2000 words. If you’d like to add a short bio and photo, then great.
Now, over to Murray:
Home Alone
By
Murray Clarke
At first, Beryl thought she was imagining things. All alone in her quaint thatched cottage, she wondered what it could possibly be.
The full moon shone brightly through a gap in the curtains, casting an eerie glow into the cosy room where Beryl sat reading a paperback under the light of a solitary table lamp. The ornate grandfather clock in the corner – a family heirloom – chimed the hour. Eight o’clock. Where was Arthur at this time of the night? How long did it take for a “quick game of darts down the Horse and Jockey” with his cronies?
Rat-a-tat-tat! No, she hadn’t imagined it – there was that noise again! A knock at the door, perhaps? Couldn’t possibly be her husband; he had his own key. Unable to concentrate, Beryl reluctantly closed the book, placing it on the pedestal table by the lamp, and rubbed her tired eyes.
Rat-a-tat-tat! Yes – it was certainly someone at the front door. Or something! But at this hour on a dark, damp, autumnal night? She laughed nervously. She wasn’t superstitious, didn’t believe in ghosts or ghouls or such nonsense – but she was beginning to wonder.
Rat-a-tat-tat! Whatever it was had no intention of going away.
‘Oh Arthur!’ Beryl whispered out loud. ‘Where are you when I need you?’
She eased herself out of the armchair, and with the help of her walking stick, shuffled to the window, parted the curtains and peered outside into the gloom. Her cottage was the last house in the village and overlooked open countryside. She noticed the mist beginning to roll in off the fields, threatening to blanket the village in dense fog. The neon streetlight opposite flickered. It was about time the council got around to fixing that, she thought.
All seemed quiet. But then . . .
Rat-a-tat-tat! Again!
Full of trepidation, Beryl shambled to the front door. What if it was a ghost or something equally scary? She shivered and drew her shawl closer around her neck.
She felt her heart beat faster in her chest as she turned the key in the lock and cautiously opened the door.
She recoiled in horror as dazzling bright lights were shone in her face, momentarily blinding her. Instinctively, she raised her hand to shield her eyes from the glare.
Standing on the doorstep, Beryl strained to make out the silhouettes of four dark apparitions, backlit by the moonlight. Ghosts? Aliens? She shuddered to think. One of the “ghosts” pointed a torch upwards on to its face. The others did the same. The effect was frightening, casting macabre shadows over the hideously painted masks they were wearing.
One of the “aliens” – dressed in a long black cape and pointed witch’s hat –stepped forward.
‘Trick or treat / Trick or treat / Give us something nice to eat!’ sang the small child menacingly, an impish smile on her cherub-like face as she held out a bucket already half-full of chocolate bars, sweets and other goodies.
Beryl breathed a sigh of relief.
Of course – it was Halloween Night!
***
Esther Chilton 
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