Esther Chilton

If you’d like to be included in this 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. All I ask is that there’s nothing offensive.

This week’s guest is Lou Holmes. She’s part of the online writing club I run for The Writers Bureau. Lou comes up with such interesting concepts and has such a wonderful style of writing, making you feel part of the story. The following story came from a prompt I set: The hidden staircase. Here’s Lou’s tale:

The case of the hidden stare     

By

Lou Holmes

I was sure it was the worst monsoon I had ever encountered in my fifteen year life so far. The rain bounced off the shining pavement – silver bullets against steel, attacking me – attack, attack, attack!

Leave me alone!

Rain crept up the step to the shop doorway – my bedroom for the night. I watched as the water pooled at the rim of the step, trickling over, tickling under bare feet.

Sleep became a distant wish in a foreign place yet again.

I peered into the dark shop just as a theatrical thunder thump fell down above my head and reverberated all around me. The ground beneath me shook. This weather sought world domination. Instinctively I looked up to the bold black sky, as if I could see who sent the thunder, to shout and roar back at it. My tether had reached the end. Instead, my eyes were taken out by a bolt of fork lightning. I screamed, covering my eyes, hoping to save whatever sight I was to be spared.

The strike struck the centre of the glass doorway two inches from my head. My maker had come to meet me – I was sure of it. When I dared to open my eyes I saw before me a hole where glass had just stood. The doorway was now free. I took advantage and stepped through, taking care not to cut my unsandalled soles.

The shop was filled from top to bottom with pots, pans, rice, spices, candles,  ladles, incense and burners. I felt comforted by the aroma of domesticity, arousing my memory of better times in my family home, now faded, jaded, obliterated.

I sat on a stool in the corner to rest and recuperate, letting my eyelids fall and my spirits rise.

 I was so hungry.

I took some deep breaths and felt an eerie sensation of being watched. The scent of the room had become sweeter, heady patchouli stirring my senses. The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention as I felt a warm breath against my skin, the nape of my neck reaching back to meet it. I quickly turned to see who was staring at me when suddenly there was an almighty crashing clatter of cans and pans sent sprawling across the stone and straw floor. A rat scuttled across the floor and took my racing heart with it.

Amongst the chaos I saw a flash of cerise and turquoise  surrounded by a rim of  light. It flashed and headed for the back door and I dashed after it. I stumbled into an old man sitting on a stool tending a pan of hot dahl. He stared at me from behind a Harlequin  mask and held his stare silently. It unnerved me. The triangles of cerise and turquoise painted on the mask danced around his disguise joyfully. Eventually he looked down to the pan of dahl, scooped up a ladle full and handed it to me.

‘Now you have food,’ he said.

His hands were a hundred years old and I felt love in his soul.

Walking down the alleyway with food in my belly and gratitude in my heart I felt less afraid than I had done in months. Such a feeling had become a stranger to me but I dared not question it.

Walking alongside the river, the smell of the funeral pyres hung heavy in the air, filling my lungs with sadness, remembering the loss of my family after the fire.

 I am always alone in the biggest crowd.

I let the emotion sit with me as I crouched  on the river bank. A black dog came to sit beside me and we both looked  onto the horizon. A tear dropped down my cheek. The dog turned to face me, licked the tear from my face and sat staring at me. Not wanting, not asking, not afraid – neither of us. His stare was hypnotic, comforting and strangely all – knowing. As I matched the depth of his stare I realised that his eyes were glazed over and milky white. The gift of sight was hidden but I knew he knew me. I stroked his head and he bent his ear towards my hand for more, revealing a ribbon of silk scarf tied loosely round his neck. The scarf was bright cerise and turquoise, shining like a magpie’s stolen jewels amidst his thick black fur. His eyes met mine again as he tilted his head to one side.

Now I have company, I thought.

I shivered as the rain assaulted my bare skin. Would a roof over my head be too much to ask? The dog and I walked along the riverbank. He took the lead  and was confident in his stride. I didn’t question him but followed faithfully as he led us both through the doors of the temple.

We sat peacefully absorbing all that had come to greet our senses. Sleep was beckoning – but forbidden by the sense of a stare upon me once again. A stare and a voice this time, a whisper, a giggle, a pee-po, as it teased around my head like a moth to a flame, unsettling in more ways than one. My eyes were drawn to a wooden screen, brightly painted in cerise and turquoise. Two black eyes stared out at me from two holes in the screen.

‘Who’s there? Show yourself!’

Candles lit themselves around the corners of the temple reassuring me with their waxy glow.

‘Now you have shelter,’  said the stare.

Smokey patchouli oil invading and overwhelming  my senses., keeping me alive.

A shimmering, quivering  vision arose from behind the screen, alternating translucent and opaque. An orange ring of fire.  Fragments of cerise and turquoise glistening.

The colours of my little sister’s favourite sari before me.

‘I’m always watching, and will take care of you big brother,’  said the stare.

If you feel like someone’s watching you, they probably are.

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Bio:

I really enjoy writing short stories, flash fiction and poetry. I have plenty of ideas for novels and have started one but it’s a long work in progress! I have returned to writing after many years of pre-occupation with my career but now I have the time during my retirement to devote to my favourite thing. I live by the sea in Cornwall  and love to walk with my dogs on the beach and cliffs. The simple things in life are best – love, laughter, good food, fresh air. It works for me anyway!

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