GLASCOT MARKET - by DAVID JACKSON

We're putting this piece in as it's quite cheerful - there'll be time for the murder stories and the paranormals soon!

I wake up worrying that I’ve missed the alarm. I haven’t, it’s only 6.30 a.m., but I get up anyway, shower and go downstairs to make the morning tea.

An hour later and feeling every one of my sixty-two years, I stumble out into a bright, spring morning, Brasher boots clumping on the path; a slightly frayed figure with long greying hair and a short white beard, wearing ‘Blue Harbour’ jeans, a blue polo shirt and a brown cord jacket.

My son Ben can’t drive, so I take the van round to the terraced cottage which he shares with his brother, Tom, and a small, dominant black and white cat called Felix. Since Ben quit his job in Financial Services to be a full-time artist and part-time ice-cream maker, his market stall is his sole source of income.

Ben is sitting on the low wall in front of the house, enjoying the early morning sunshine. His orange T-shirt proclaims ‘Never Give Up on Your Stupid, Stupid Dreams’. 6’4” and 17 stones, he lumbers across the grass verge and into the van. Smelling of toothpaste and shampoo, he utters his customary greeting, ‘I’ll need a crap when I get to yours!’, and settles into the passenger seat.

‘It feels really early,’ he says, ‘so early that Felix didn’t even try to escape when I came out. He just lay in his bed, and waved one paw.’

Ben is the fourth generation of the family to work on the markets, my father and grandfather both had fruit and veg stalls.

Back home, we load the van with cool-boxes full of cheese and fridges filled with ice-cream. The journey to Glascot takes 45 minutes.

We arrive at a scene of chaos. There’s only Alyson’s son and his girlfriend to set up the marquees for the stalls. The farmers’ market has been confined to an even smaller portion of the car-park than usual, and they’re  having trouble shoe-horning everyone in. Some stall-holders sing ‘why are we waiting?’, but mostly we all just stand quietly in the sunshine. Eventually Ben’s allocated a spot under a bright yellow gazebo by the back fence.

‘Coffee-man’ sets up next-door. Small, wiry, with receding hair, Coffee Man is a really nice, friendly man in his fifties. Wildly enthusiastic, he really hustles. He bounds round all the other stall-holders offering to deliver discount coffee or hot chocolate to their stalls. We feel really bad, when we say no. We’ve brought a flask; times are hard!

A figure we’ve come to recognise approaches the stall. A tall, thin woman of around sixty, I’d say, she peers suspiciously at our goats’ milk cheese.

‘Are your goats free to roam, or are they kept in a shed?’

They aren’t our goats. We buy the cheese from a small creamery up in the hills. The goats’ milk comes in by tanker. The cheese-makers say the goats live out in the field, but we don’t really know, and we don’t want to lie. We explain this to our interrogator.

‘We don’t know, we’ll ask them again when we see them,’ we say.

 ‘I wouldn’t want to buy products from goats that are kept in a shed,’ says the tall, thin woman and sets off to the next stall.

‘She asks that question every month,’ says Ben.

She’s questioning the Coffee Man now, about where his coffee beans come from and what the conditions are like for the workers.

We know about the sheep’s milk cheese, that’s been on TV. That guy on ‘Countryfile’ was standing in the miniature milking parlour while all the sheep ran in to be milked. That programme boosted sales for weeks. I made us a poster with a picture of a sheep on it.

‘What breed of sheep is that?’ asked a burly man at Asham Market, ‘Looks like a Clun. Can you milk Cluns?’

It’s a Southdown, but I say ‘I don’t know, it’s just a sheep from ClipArt.’

The things people ask you!

A disgruntled looking woman, like an Alan Bennett character; square-set with a leg at each corner, approaches the stall with her husband.

‘I fancy trying damson ice-cream,’ the husband says.

            ‘Well I don’t,’ she says, ‘I like plain supermarket ice-cream.’

Her husband rolls his eyes behind her back.

She looks at me accusingly, ‘Is this plain supermarket ice-cream?’

‘No, it’s got real flavours.’

‘I’ll have a damson,’ says the husband.

We give him his 125ml tub.

‘Is that all?’ says the wife, ‘I’d expected a litre tub at least!’

‘What, for £1.20?’ says Ben.

She marches away; her husband follows, eating his damson ice-cream and smiling.

One of the pie-men – there are three on the market – comes over for a grumble. He talks nineteen to the dozen. He gestures towards one of his rivals.

‘Hand-made pies, he calls ‘em, hand-made pies. I know for a fact he gets ‘em from a factory in Ashton-under-Lyne! I don’t know why I still come here, trade’s really slow. There’s better markets. Are you going to Hamford mid-week? Really good market Hamford, goes like a storm, you want to try Hamford. Have you seen Kevin recently, the one with the flower stall? I heard he’s been poorly, no? I’ll have a gooseberry ice-cream. Stall-holders’ rates?’

The market opens at 10, but by noon we’ve only sold £15 worth of cheese and 3 ice-creams. The stall rent’s £20 and there’s diesel to pay for as well. Things are looking desperate!

Coffee Man says his family are Italian, ‘Just call me Adriano from Napoli!’  He maintains a non-stop patter and offers free samples to passers-by; a cup of coffee or ‘a chocolate-covered coffee bean’. He attracts small family groups around his stall, all enjoying his samples.

He hands out leaflets. I don’t think he’s too bothered about actually selling hot coffee. He has his website and sells ground coffee, roasted beans and chocolate direct, by mail, and his quarterly visits to this market seem mainly about promotion.

Still, he’s selling quite a few of his distinctively patterned black and brown tins (‘nobody remembers the name, but everybody remembers the design’) of coffee and ‘edible drinking chocolate’. Past customers are buying refills. He seems happy with the way things are going.

Some people seem alarmed by his approaches. They veer away and scurry past; we hope that doesn’t mean they’ll miss our stall!

Coffee Man thinks we don’t hustle enough. He thinks we need to promote ourselves more, to be more visible, more aggressive I suppose. Get people talking, offer samples of the cheese, samples of the ice-cream.

Ben isn’t sure about samples. He’s heard my stories of taking stock to the Royal Show when I was a kid. By visiting the bread and cheese promotions in the right order you could get a free lunch. You could even get something hot if you hung around the demonstration kitchens.

Coffee Man’s probably right, neither Ben nor I are good at ‘hustling’, we tend to wait for people to come to us. Tom‘s a lot better; five years in the hotel trade taught him how to talk to the public. But he’s still abed at home.

The organiser stops by to encourage us, ‘Ice-cream has its selling time. After lunch, if it’s warm and sunny and you’re open and visible, people will buy ice-cream’.

Coffee Man has made a big sale. He calls over, ‘Got any carrier bags?’

I rummage in our box and find a plastic bag, ‘Here you go.’

He puts his goods in it and passes it to the customer. She wrinkles her nose.

‘But it’s a Morrison’s bag!’

‘I might be able to find a Sainsbury’s bag,’ I say, ‘but we’re out of M&S.’

She laughs.

Ben thinks the cheese signs are confusing people. And so at 1.00 p.m., with temperatures rising, we take them down and pack the cheese away in the cool-boxes. We move the ice-cream signs to the centre of the stand. It’s very clear; we’re an ice-cream stall.

            Sales and spirits pick up as people start to buy our ice-cream. As others see them enjoying it, they buy as well. The ice cream’s good and customers pass the word around.

I ponder this change in people’s buying behaviour.

I tell Ben that people seem so affected by ‘image’ that we should adopt a new strategy.

We’ll be a cheese and baked-goods stall until 12.30, then away with the ‘Artisan Cheese’ signs and the green and white chequered tablecloths.

Shazaam! Hang up the ‘Home-made Ice-Cream’ signs, on with the blue and white gingham tablecloths, and put out the black glossy A-frames stressing the wholesomeness and exciting flavours of our superlative product! In the afternoons, we’ll be just purely an ice-cream stall.

Let’s hope it works!

Coffee Man has an audience. Two adults and a small girl with scraped-back black hair, large, round, dark-framed spectacles and an intense gaze. She looks like ‘Clare in the Community’ in the ‘Guardian’ cartoon. Coffee Man gives her some chocolate discs to try and asks ‘Are these your Mum and Dad?’

‘No,’ she replies. She points at the man, ‘he’s my uncle.’

‘And is this your aunt?’ Coffee Man asks gesturing towards a slightly plump young woman.

‘She’s my “soon-to-be” aunt’.

‘Hello, soon-to-be aunt,’ says Coffee Man, ‘have a chocolate-covered bean.’

They move on to our stall, the girl stands in front of the table scrutinising us intently.

‘She doesn’t like ice-cream,’ says Uncle. ‘Can you imagine, a child who doesn’t like ice-cream?’

‘We like ice-cream,’ says the soon-to-be aunt firmly.

‘We certainly do,’ says Uncle, ‘I’ll have a mango ice cream, please.’ ‘What about you,’ he asks his girlfriend.

‘Lemon meringue,’ she gives the child a long appraising look. ‘Doesn’t like ice-cream...... perhaps a child psychiatrist might help?!’

By 2.30 p.m., it’s all over. We pack our gear in the van. In go the cool-boxes. We connect the fridges, containing what’s left of the ice-cream, up to the electrics and set off for home. We haven’t made much money, but it’s been a good day.

GROKEN CHAPTER THREE

This week's offering is chapter three of Robert's story - Groken or the Watcher on the Hill.

We're hoping for some of David's writing soon but he's been busy with the Allotted booklet

For more details see http://allotted2016.blogspot.co.uk

CHAPTER THREE:

Laying down the notebook, Bron thinks about Huldegarde. His father’s journal said it had been destroyed, its people scattered and exiled. So how come these two people who say they are from Huldegarde? And who look so like him.

He remembers when Jenna had first appeared at the University. People had thought she was his younger sister, they looked so alike. An irony, he thought, for his sisters looked like his mother, slim, with pale gold, almost white, hair and grey eyes.

He remembers how Jenna had seemed to persistently seek him out, almost offering herself to him, at times it had felt flattering, at others embarrassing. There was no doubt she was attractive, but by then he had met Ciara.

He thinks of Skata, there’s something wrong there, he thinks. He can sense a rivalry, an animosity, some kind of resentment. But why? He’s never met him before, is it to do with Jenna or maybe it’s to do with the land? This is his land after all, yet Skata is living on part of it.

He knows he must resolve this. The urge to go over to Huldegarde is strong, just ride in and face Skata, demand to know what’s happening. But a voice in his head counsels caution.

So, instead, he decides that tomorrow morning he will make the journey into Thörsvik. He’ll see the land agent, find out who’s living at Huldegarde and why. This time he’ll be sensible, this time he’ll check the lie of the land, this time he’ll think before he acts.

As he falls into a fitful sleep, Bron’s final thoughts are of the cryptic notes his mother had attached to the land documents. There’s that nagging feeling at the back of his mind that continues to worry him, something he doesn’t want to face.

Early next morning, the watcher returns to the hide on the hill, to the relief of the colleague who’s spent an uncomfortable night watching the tent. An Arctic fox is running along the shoreline. Brown, shaggy and unprepossessing in its summer moult, its eyes are fixed on the little raft of eider chicks being shepherded by the females along the edge of the fjord. But there’s no meal for it today and after a while it heads off, looking for carrion further along.

Bron emerges from the tent and walks down to the fjord, where he washes in the cold clear water. He decides to skip breakfast, he’ll grab something in Thörsvik. Coffee and rolls before he goes to the agent’s office will suit him fine. He mounts the motorbike and sets off. The watcher waits a moment then ‘phones her colleagues, they’ll pick Bron up when he reaches the road. The watcher lies back in the hide, this could be a very boring day.

Bron takes the road into Thörsvik. He thinks to himself ‘This must have been the road my mother travelled every day to school, the road my great grandfather took into town, a road my forebears have travelled for, maybe, centuries.’ He laughs to himself, ‘I’m getting to be a romantic, like my father,’ he thinks, ‘my mother would say, “Keep your feet on the ground, boy!”’

In Thörsvik Bron heads to the coffee shop attached to the bakery. It’s very modern, very Scandinavian with its large expanses of glass, blonde wood and shining steel. It’s hard to think that this was the site of the place where his father and mother had met and drunk coffee and talked under the disapproving gaze of the locals.

And speaking of disapproving gazes he notices that many people, particularly of the older generation, are giving him strange looks. They don’t look friendly, they don’t return his smiles. They look wary, suspicious.

He thinks on his father’s journal, and on the face that had looked up at him from the fjord water that morning. Long red hair, framing a pale face, does his appearance stir memories of the old days of Huldegarde? Again, he pushes unwanted thoughts from his brain and gets up and walks through the town to Arnesen, the Land Agent’s, office.

As he enters the agent’s office, the secretary looks up at him with a frown. ‘If Mr Youngman’s sent you in for the draft contracts they won’t be ready until lunchtime, we made that very clear to him. You’ll have to come back later.’

‘I wanted to see Mr Arnesen,’ says Bron, ‘there are some things I need to ask him.’

‘We deal with you people through Mr Youngman,’ says the secretary, ‘he wants it that way and Mr Arnesen feels it best. If you have questions you must address them to Mr Youngman.’

 ‘Mr Youngman ……?’ says Bron.

‘You call him Skata, I believe, though why you name someone after a bird, I don’t know. You’re the second of your kind to come in this week, there was a girl yesterday morning.’

‘Jenna?’ asks Bron.

‘I think that’s what she called herself. I’m afraid you all look alike to me. Now I must get on, if you want the contracts you must come back after lunch.’

‘I didn’t come from Skata, and I don’t want any contracts,’ says Bron, ‘I want to see Arnesen, and I’d like to see him now,’ he pauses, ‘please.’

The secretary sighs, ‘Very well, I’ll ask. Do you have a name? Are you seagull or sparrow or …..?’

Bron swallows hard. Coldly and precisely he says, ‘My name’s Turner, Arnesen will know who I am.’ 

She disappears into the inner office. A few moments later, she reappears followed by a large, red-faced man. ‘What is this?’ he bellows, ‘’Who do you say you are?’

‘I told your secretary,’ says Bron, ‘my name’s Turner.’

‘You are not Mr Turner. Mr Turner passed away some weeks ago, he was an Englishman, an ex-RAF officer, and the husband of the owner of the Skarafjord estates. You are not Mr Turner…..’

‘That was my father, the owner was my mother and now the land is mine and I want to know what’s happening on my land. Who is this Mr Youngman, who is Skata? Why are people living out there when my father told me the land had been cleared?’

Arnesen pauses, ‘Look, I’m sorry, but do you have any proof of who you are? Any documents? I mean you just wander in and say you’re the heir to a vast estate, and ….’

‘And I look like ….. someone out of Huldegarde.’

‘Well, yes, I’m sorry.’

Bron opens the leather satchel he always carries. His father had bought it in Morocco years ago and given it to Bron when he went off to University. He pulls out a sheaf of papers; letters from the solicitor, a copy of the will, the Probate papers from the Crown Office, the deeds to the land.

‘Will these do?’

Arnesen studies the papers. ‘Yes, this makes it clear. I’m sorry, but I had to check. Look, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot here. Please, come into my office.’ He turns to the secretary, ‘Miss Hansen, please bring us a pot of coffee, and hold all my calls until we’re finished.’

‘And Mr Youngman’s contract?’ she asks.

‘Mr Youngman’s contract will have to wait, I think.’

Bron follows Arnesen into the inner office. He takes the chair offered in front of Arnesen’s large, leather covered desk.  Arnesen sits behind the desk in an old swivel chair, leans back with his hands on his ample stomach, and looks at Bron.

‘My condolences on the death of your parents. It must have been a great shock. I had heard of their accident, of course. Actually, I was expecting a first visit from Mr and Mrs Turner this summer, they said there would be changes, but fate, I’m afraid intervened.

I knew your mother, I was at school with her. The Frandsen girls were great beauties. And of course, I’ve heard stories about Alvanaes and Huldegarde, since I was young.’

‘Frandsen girls? I thought my mother an only child, an orphan.’

‘She was an orphan, true enough, but she had an older sister, Sigyn.’

‘What happened to her?’ asks Bron, ‘Is she still alive? Does she live in Thörsvik?’

‘Oh, she’s still very much alive. She left before, well, before what happened, happened. She lives with her husband in the capital. They have a son, Erik and a daughter, named Freya. Her husband’s Birger Krol, a member of the Assembly, a powerful man. I was wondering if he might take on the direction of the estate, after your mother’s ….’

He pauses, ‘Where is that coffee? ’ and getting up Arnesen goes into the other office. Bron hears him speaking in a low voice to the secretary. After a few moments he returns, ‘Miss Hansen is bringing it. Now, what do you want of me?’

‘Information for a start,’ says Bron, ‘I know nothing apart from some notes in a journal of my father’s and a few scribbles from my mother. What is this land I now own? How did it come to me?’

‘Well it came in two parcels, though for centuries both have been owned by the Frandsen family, your mother’s family. The land on the north shore of the fjord has always been farmed by the Frandsens. There have been Frandsens at the farmstead at Alvanaes for as long as records exist. At one time it was a thriving settlement with fishing boats and sheep farming, but over the years it fell away. In the end only your great-grandfather and your mother lived there. And after the …… “incident”…. the fire, no-one would live there. It’s just derelict.

Your mother never played an active role in the management of the estate. I’ve managed to let the grazing to other farmers, so you have a good income and it’s all been building up in a bank account in the capital, for your mother never touched a penny as far as I’m aware. You’ll have to go and see old Joansen, the Frandsen family lawyer, to find out how much there is. In fact you ought to go and see him urgently. I know he was in contact with your mother on a regular basis. Yes, you must speak to Joansen.’

‘And the land on the south bank?’ asks Bron. ‘The part they called Huldegarde? What of that?’

‘Ah, Huldegarde, the old folk called it the home of the hidden folk. And certainly a certain group was settled there, on the edges of our society, for a long time. The Frandsens protected them, let them live there. For their own reasons and to their own benefit, I’m sure, but it didn’t always make them popular with some of their neighbours. And of course, when old Frandsen passed away and your mother left, the government took the chance to act and clear out a nest of squatters.’

‘But there seem to be people living there again,’ says Bron. ‘I’ve met a man called Skata, and there’s a girl called Jenna.’

‘Yes,’ says Arnesen, ‘Mr Youngman is trying to create a settlement out there, some kind of ecological project, I believe. He has permission from Joansen.’

‘How many people are there?’

‘I think about twenty.’

‘And do they all have red hair?’

Arnesen smiles, ‘I believe they do.’

‘Maybe I should go out there, I’d fit in well, don’t you think?’

‘I think you must go to the capital and talk to Joansen, I have said too much perhaps.’

They shake hands and Bron goes out into the street. He mounts the motorcycle and rides off, heading for the ferry that will take him to the capital island.

He doesn’t notice the mud-spattered Land Rover that follows him, at a discreet distance down the highway.

Arnesen watches him as he goes.

‘A young man in a hurry,’ he says, ‘but not sure where he’s going or where he wants to go.’

‘Did you see how he looks?’ he asks Miss Hansen.

‘Indeed,’ she says, ‘maybe some of those old stories about Anna Frandsen were true?’

‘I’d better ring Nils Joansen,’ says the land agent.

"Settlement"

For those hoping for more of David's science fiction story set in the Cumbrian fells to appear here, there may be a little wait as David's decided to enter a version of chapter one in a competition. However once that's passed, we aim to publish "Settlement" through this medium.

We're aiming to add David's 'Gothic' piece "Vladimir Davidovitch Ossilinsky is going to die" next Friday.

GROKEN - by Robert Eldon - Chapter 2

We're posting the second instalment of Robert's tale 'Groken' today

It's a sort of explanation section and may or may not work so well, what do you think?

The letter tries to evoke an older style of writing - maybe Buchan-esque?

CHAPTER TWO:

The light never fails in summer in these latitudes, so later that evening Bron sits in front of his tent reading the old leather bound notebook handed to him by his parents’ solicitor on the day the will was read. He has read it so many times he could almost recite it from memory.

Bron,

If you are reading this then your mother and I have not survived to your twenty-fifth birthday, for we had agreed that on that day you would be told the story I set out below.

It is a story that as a writer I have long wanted to relate, the genre within which I never got to write. It was my knight errant episode, when I cast off the shackles of academia and became, for a brief moment, like the heroes of the battered dog-eared adventure books I took out from the library as a child, “Biggles” or “Dick Barton” or more appropriately for the tale I’ll now tell “Richard Hannay”.

Your mother and I told you that we were both orphans. That at least was true.

I never knew my parents, they died when I was very young. I was brought up by my maternal grandmother, and she said little about either of them. My grandmother came from the far west of Ireland and as a girl had spoken only Irish, a language in which she would tell me tales of heroes, kings, and gods.  We were very poor, but I was bright and worked hard, and at 17 had the opportunity to go to university. By then my grandmother’s health was failing, and we desperately needed me to earn money. So I applied for and secured an RAF scholarship that enabled me to attend one of our more respected provincial universities and gave me a salary (out of which I could send some funds to my grandmother) with the proviso that when my studies were over I’d accept a short-term commission.

When I completed my degree - Archaeology / specialising in Celtic and Norse studies, and with my grandmother by then passed away, I asked that I be allowed to stay on to take a doctorate. The military agreed on the proviso that during that period I also studied the Baltic languages.

Once I’d got my Doctor’s gown, I was summoned to a MoD facility just off Whitehall for assessment and a medical. For some reason part of the assessment was to see how susceptible I was to ‘suggestion’ techniques such as hypnotism. The assessor reported me very unsusceptible, ‘a very poor subject for a hypnotist,’ he declared. This trait subsequently turned out very useful as you’ll learn.

 I was commissioned into the RAF’s Intelligence wing and after a short but intensive period of training in Scotland I was posted to the Vastrafolk islands far up in the north Atlantic. They flew me to the base there to join a team at a top secret listening station. We were pretty isolated. The base commander wasn’t keen on us fraternising too much with the locals and they for their part kept their distance from us. The work however wasn’t arduous and there was plenty of free time, in which I began to explore the rich variety of archaeological sites on the islands.

In my wanderings, I came upon Alvanaes, a remote farmhouse, standing on the northern bank of the Skarafjord immediately opposite a place called Huldagarde, which, according to local legend, was the home of the last of the ‘Hidden Folk’ on the island.

An elderly farmer called Frandsen lived there with his grand-daughter, a pale willowy girl, of about 17 with long blonde hair and very light grey eyes. Her name she said was Anna, though I noticed that sometimes old Frandsen would address her as Nanna, as if she were named for Baldur’s wife, who threw herself on his funeral pyre after he was slain. I began to spend many of my free days, even nights, at the farmhouse.

The place had many attractions of which Anna was not the least. We got on well, perhaps the fact that we had both been raised by a single grandparent gave us some empathy and many evenings we sat together by the fjord-side and talked of the islands.

One day Frandsen took me out to the edge of the fjord and showed me the remains of an ancient church. He told me that the church had been built there so that the Hidden Folk from Huldagarde could attend services on Sundays. Frandsen swore that in his own grandfather’s day one of the hidden people would join the fishing boat when it went out, work his shift, collect his share and then row back to Huldagarde.

Although people on the fjords were supposed to have converted to Christianity nine hundred years before, Frandsen claimed that many had, for a long time, stuck to the old pagan ways. Later that evening when we were alone in the old burial ground besides the church, Anna lay down on the grass and showed how they had been  buried – ‘like a Christian, head facing the sunrise ----- but with one foot pointing off to Valhalla just in case”.

I asked her if there were any heathens left on the islands. She laughed and said ‘Yes, grandfather and me for a start!’ And then she led me behind the farmhouse and showed me an altar made of driftwood, with the skulls of seals and stags fastened to it.

A couple of days researching at the library in Thörsvik, the island’s only town, revealed that the area around the Alvanaes had a dark reputation. Most of the isolated farms had been abandoned over the years and the families had moved into the hamlets at the head of the fjord or Thörsvik itself. A recurring theme was tales of young girls going missing on their way home from work or school or market in the evening. The tales went back into history but some were quite recent.

All this made me ever more fascinated by Huldegarde, I tried to get Anna to speak of the Hidden Folk and what might lie on the other side of the water. But she would never speak of them and urged me never to try to cross the fjord.

Sometimes on my visits to Thörsvik I’d encounter Anna, in to do some shopping. I never seemed to see her with folk of her own age. She was always alone, and though she was greeted politely by the locals on the street, no one ever seemed to stop to pass the time of day with her.

So, I started taking her to the coffee shop at the local bakery. I noticed some of the locals looking at us and muttering to themselves, but put it down to the resentment they always seemed to show to men from the base.

Once, when it came time for her to take the bus back to Alvanaes, I asked whether I should accompany her, as I was concerned about her walking alone from the bus stop to the farm. She frowned and said ‘Oh, I’ll not be alone.’ Obviously, I thought, her grandfather shared my worries and met the bus.

One morning after I’d stayed the night at the farm, I came down to breakfast to find Anna had gone out and Frandsen seemed very disturbed. I asked him what had so troubled him, but he was strangely reticent and kept looking out of the window across the water as if afraid someone out there was listening.

I decided the time had come to see for myself what lay on the other side of the fjord. So the next week, instead of going overland to the farmhouse, I hired a small boat in Thörsvik rowed up the fjord and landed on the Huldagarde side. I started to climb the steep hills up towards the summit, wondering what lay on the other side of the ridge. Suddenly I was surrounded by a host of short, stocky men with pale skins and red hair. I was knocked to the ground and my hands and feet were bound. Then I received a kick to the head and became unconscious.

I awoke in a long cave-like dwelling. My assailants were gathered at the other end of the room talking in a language that to me seemed some ancient form of Irish – I recognised many of the words but I kept this knowledge to myself. One of them (who seemed some kind of elder) approached me.  We discovered that we had another common tongue – the old man could speak a kind of Old Norse.

In that tongue, the elder told me something of the history of his people. How their ancestors had been brought as slaves to the islands from a land far away. How they had escaped their captors, and survived by hiding away in the remote moors of the farthest islands. But they had a problem, their race tended to have only male children and therefore they needed to acquire girls regularly for its continuance, hence the abductions over the centuries. When I said surely this lead to conflict with the local farmers and such, he smiled and said ‘There are arrangements that suit both sides.’

Our conversation was interrupted by another of the red-haired men. Gesturing towards me he said, ‘He is that Outlander who visits Alvanaes. Machndoch will wish to speak with him.’ He smiled. It was not, I felt, a smile that promised me a happy outcome.

The two left me alone. I knew that I must make my escape before this “Machndoch”, which if my Irish served me right meant ‘young man’ or more likely ‘young chieftain’, returned. There was a peat fire burning in the middle of the room. I crawled towards it, and turning on my side managed to hold my wrists and the hide ropes that bound them over the flames. The pain was intense but I managed to hold the ropes there just long enough for them to burn and I was able to break free of my bonds. Trying to ignore the pain in my hands, I slipped down the passage and out into the moorland. As I cleared the ridge I heard my pursuers coming after me. Desperately I ran back to my boat and managed to push off and start rowing back to Alvanaes.  The ‘Hidden Folk’ pursued in their own craft and arrows landed near my skiff.  Landing on the Alvanaes side, I raced up the banking and gained the safety of the house. As I made it inside, Anna slammed the door shut and put down the bar. Of Frandsen there was no sign, Anna said he’d gone to town, so the two of us sat out the night.

At dawn Frandsen returned. I was determined to make my escape, and implored Frandsen and Anna to leave with me. Frandsen refused – saying he had no quarrel with the ‘Hidden Folk’, ‘We have an understanding, between their folk and mine, we get along,’ he said. I asked Anna to go with me for I remembered the tales of abducted girls, but Frandsen insisted she must stay. Then he signalled to her to bring me a drinking cup filled with a strangely perfumed herbal mixture. ‘Drink this,’ she said, ‘it will help you recover.’ Once I’d drunk the potion, Frandsen said, ‘you will remember nothing of this when you go back to your base, the potion is strong and it will wipe all memory of the ‘Hidden Folk’ from your mind. I have told them this is what we will do and they won’t pursue you any further, but it’s best you don’t come here again.’

However, the potion had no effect on me.

When I got back to base my burned hands were dressed by the MO. I made up some story as to how I’d been injured, which he seemed to accept. Over the next three days I found it hard to concentrate on my duties, my mind constantly returned to Alvanaes.  I was wracked with guilt about leaving Anna at the farm. Could she become an abduction victim? My curiosity about the ‘hidden folk’ grew – why had no-one discovered them before? – Why were there no learned papers about Huldagarde?

Someone once said that chivalry is a man’s desire to protect a woman from all men save himself. If that’s so then it was both academic interest and chivalry that drove me back to the farmstead.

When I got there, I discovered Frandsen drunk in the kitchen – he was weeping. Anna had been taken away the previous night by the ‘Hidden Folk’ – ‘She’s gone,’ he said, ‘I always knew Machndoch would take her one day, but not yet, not so soon!’

I determined to rescue Anna. A foolhardy confidence (which you’d see as completely out of character) had come over me. I was a trained military officer, I was armed with my revolver. I felt sure I could deal with the ‘Hidden Folk’ and after all, what else could I do, Anna was in danger. I set off across the fjord. 

When I reached the far shore I found myself surrounded and was quickly overpowered.  My assailants bound my hands and blindfolded me and lead me back over the ridge to their camp. But they did not search me nor take away my revolver.

Once more I found myself in that same long dark building. That first evening the elder visited me again. We talked a while and before he left he loosened my hands so I could eat the meagre food ration he’d brought me.

Once he’d gone I managed to free my legs as well and began silently to explore the building. I found a door out onto a corridor leading to rooms cut back into the hill. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I looked into the first room to see Anna asleep on a mat, covered with some kind of animal skin. I was about to call out and wake her, when I heard someone coming along the passage from the far end and had to scramble quickly back to my own room.

The next day the elder returned. He explained that it was their ritual every thirty years or so to sacrifice an island woman to their deities. But their religion forbade that any of his people might slit her throat. It must be done by one of her own kind. Now Anna had been given to them and I had fallen again into their hands. Their priest said the gods had spoken, that the omens were propitious. Anna would be the sacrifice and I would be her slayer. Then another, dressed like a shaman, came in. He drew out from his cloak a large nugget of white gold on a leather thong, which he spun before my eyes. Obviously he intended to hypnotise me, so after a few seconds I pretended to enter a trance while he intoned in Irish. After what seemed an age the shaman murmured, ‘now he will do our bidding, now he must obey our commands. Come we must prepare the ceremony, best we do it quickly whilst Machndoch is away. He will not take kindly to us slaying his chosen woman.’

Soon after I was taken into a large chamber, which blazed with light from a hundred torches. Anna, dressed in a pure white gown with her yellow hair dressed in an ornate style, had been tied to a stake in front of a kind of altar. She seemed all too aware of what was going to happen, and she stared at me in horror as I entered the room. The shaman led me to the altar. He handed me a knife and pulled back Anna’s head so that I might slit her throat.

Suddenly there was an interruption, a young man, taller and broader than anyone else I’d met in Huldagarde, his hair long and red, his skin pale, his eyes green, burst into the room. His attire made him look like a warrior from some child’s picture history of the Iron Age. This I thought must be Machndoc. Speaking in their Irish tongue he shouted ‘This stops. You cannot take her, she belongs to me. I have coveted her many years, and waited long ‘til I brought her here to be mine and bear me a son. She is not for your sacrifice. Set her free.’

Priest and warrior faced each other. The rest of the ‘Hidden Folk’ retreated down the passage. The four of us, Anna, Machndoch, the priest and I, were for a moment isolated at one end of the chamber. I looked at the warrior. The thought of Anna living with this man, bearing his children here in this earth barrow like some wild animal, sickened and enraged me. A red mist descended. Whilst the warrior and the priest argued seemingly oblivious to my presence, I took my chance. I had the sacred knife in my hands, I plunged it into Machndoch. He slumped to the ground. The priest lunged towards me, but he was old and frail, and a simple blow dealt with him. He fell to the ground, his neck broken.

The noise had brought back the rest of the tribe. Pulling out my concealed pistol, I fired two shots hitting two more of the ‘Hidden Folk’. The rest scattered back into the darkness.

I used the blood-stained knife to cut Anna free. Free of her bonds, she bent over the dead warrior with a strange look on her face, and removed a pendant hanging from his neck, which she hid in her gown.  ‘Quickly,’ she said, ‘there’s a passage at the back. I’ve seen the priest use it.’ We set off down the passage. The ‘Hidden Folk’ began to follow us and I fired the pistol again.

The shots were causing the roof of the chamber to collapse. Part of the roof and part of the tunnel began to fall trapping our pursuers. We broke out into the open air and started to run for the fjord. Some of the ‘hidden folk’ ran along the ridge trying to cut us off but a couple more shots sent them scurrying for cover. We reached my boat and rowed back to the farmhouse.

We reached the farmhouse to find Frandsen and a group of local men standing outside. The men ordered us into the building. Sitting by the door we could hear them arguing, Frandsen was shouting at the men. Then to my alarm, through the window, I noticed that three of the ‘Hidden Folk’ had joined the group.

Darkness fell and Frandsen came into the farmhouse. ‘You must get away,’ he told us, ‘the men want to hand you back to the ‘Hidden Folk’ for they will not anger them.’ He looked at Anna, ‘they say that you belong to the ‘Hidden Folk’, that I must keep my bargain, you must be returned.’ Turning to me he said, ‘and you have killed a priest, the ‘Hidden Folk’ demand justice, a blood payment. Nothing can save you if they ever get their hands on you again.’ Turning back to Anna he said ‘We must part here. Quick, take the track over the hills and don’t stop ‘til you reach the base. Go and never come back.’

Anna had grown up on this land and knew every inch of it. She lead me up a path that would take us up the mountain and over to ‘the base’ and freedom. As we reached the top of the hill we looked back and saw that a large fire was burning in front of the farmhouse. Something was being dragged towards it by the three ‘hidden folk’. To my horror I realised that it was Frandsen and that they intended to throw him onto the blaze alive.

I made to go back, to help him but Anna stopped me. ‘There is nothing you can do for him now. He knew this would happen. He did this to save me, don’t let his sacrifice be in vain.’

An hour later, back at base, I told the Commander our tale.

‘I’ve already had a call from the local magistrate,’ he said, ‘he says you had some kind of row with the grandfather of a local girl.’ He looked towards Anna, ‘I suppose this is her? You killed him and then you and the girl set fire to the farmhouse to cover your crime. The magistrate wants you both sent back.’

‘But they’ll kill Adam,’ said Anna.

‘And they’ll send Anna back to be a sacrifice or else to be a brood mare.’ I cried, ‘You must help us!’

‘I don’t want trouble,’ said the Commander, ‘either with the locals or with your superiors in Intelligence. This place is supposed to be top secret. We want no publicity. I’m getting you both out of here tonight.’

An hour later, we were on a transport plane back to Shetland.

As we sat in the plane your mother took charge. ‘I knew you’d come back for me,’ she said, ‘that’s why I gave you a harmless draught rather than the potion my Grandfather intended. But I never thought you’d take three days to come or that Machndoch would act so fast or do what he did. And I expected you to come with reinforcements from the base, to drive Machndoch and his people away and free me from my Grandfather’s bargain, but of course, you had to be like the hero in those old stories of yours and come alone to save your “damsel in distress”’.

‘Now listen to me,’ she continued. ‘We shall never return to the islands nor speak of these events to anyone. The people of the island will never press a murder charge. Too much about the ‘Hidden Folk’ and the islanders’ arrangements with them would come out.’  Finally she smiled, ‘And now like a hero, you may claim your prize, I am all yours. After all you won me in mortal combat, and now you must protect me for life.’

When we got back to the UK the Ministry stepped in and arranged a new life for us, well away from either secret bases or ancient pagan halls.

Some years later we were told that the people of Huldegarde had been driven out by the island government. They had fled, scattered across the globe. Later we received the documents attached to this journal which show that in the weeks before his death Frandsen had made a will stating that a vast tract of land, on both sides of the Skarafjord, including Alvanaes and Huldegarde, was to be placed into your mother’s name to be held in trust for her eldest son. So now, Bron, that magical and fearful place is yours. Do with it as you will but take care, and try not to think too harshly of me.

Adam Turner

GROKEN by Robert Eldon

This is chapter one of Robert Eldon's story 'Groken' or 'The Watcher on the Hill'. It's set on a set of islands in the North Atlantic - which may be the Faeroes or may be Iceland - or may just be in his mind

CHAPTER ONE

Bron sits alone, on the shore of the Sakarfjord, besides the burnt-out remains of the ancient farmhouse, watching a white-tailed sea eagle glide effortlessly above the sparkling waters. His attention is caught by a movement on the far bank. He watches for a minute and then turns back to the bird as it swoops to take a fish from the fjord.

When, a few minutes later, he looks again, a small boat has been launched from the opposite bank.

‘What do I think I’m doing here?’ Bron wonders.

He knows he should have waited before coming here. Gone to see the lawyer in the capital, gone to see the land-agent in Thörsvik. ‘Done a proper recce?’ his father would have asked him. ‘Think first,’ his mother would have said. But he’d just rushed out here, he’d had to come, and he’d had to come alone.

He watches as the boat approaches across the fjord. Bron can see that there is only a single figure in it. The oarsman seems to be heading for the jetty at Alvanaes just below Bron’s vantage point. As the small boat nears the landing, Bron can clearly make out the man rowing.

Bron remembers his parent’s insistence on him studying history and languages. Not just any language, but specific odd ones, in his father’s case Irish whilst his mother had insisted that he learn the language of her homeland, though she’d never spoken of her youth nor shown any interest in bringing her children here. Indeed the reverse was true, she’d forbidden them to come here, even to the extent of preventing Bron’s participation in a field trip to a centre just along the coast from where he’s now sitting. He thinks, ‘Maybe that’s where Ciara’s gone now.’

He remembers his father’s insistence (almost an obsession) that he develop a proficiency in martial arts. But it had been an obsession he’d come to share, becoming good enough to make the short list for the British Universities Tae Kwan Do team.

In some ways he feels his parents had been preparing him all his life for this journey to Alvanaes.

Five minutes later and the rowing boat has tied up at the landing. Its occupant sits for a while in the stern looking up at Bron. Then, slowly, he climbs out of the boat and stands on the jetty, his eyes still fixed on Bron.

Bron stiffens, could the boatman be a threat? He’d been told there was no-one on the far side nowadays, but the tale in his father’s journal had been vivid and he remembers the warning in his mother’s final note.

Bron rises to his feet. He feels in his pocket the weight of the old military revolver that he’d taken from the desk in his father’s study the day after the reading of the will. He starts to walk down to the jetty. He laughs to himself. ‘I have my old service revolver, just like Watson in a Sherlock Holmes story.’

The boatman raises a hand in greeting, ‘Welcome Gröken, welcome Brother,’ he says. A tall man, with long red hair, pale skin and green eyes, he looks an awful lot like Bron.

As Bron stands facing the boatman, the cross hairs of the rifle held by the watcher on the hill, are sighted firmly on the boatman’s chest. The watcher’s fingers tighten on the trigger, then relax. There seems no immediate danger.

Bron looks at the boatman. ‘Why do you call me that? My name’s Bron,’ he says, ‘Bron Turner. So who are you? ‘

‘Where they sent me, I was named Thomas, but here I’m known as Skata.’

‘So what are you seeking, Mr Magpie? I have no trinkets for you to steal.’

‘So, you have the language, do you? But you also have trinkets, there’s that pendant round your neck for starters.’

‘My mother’s gift,’ says Bron, ‘a triskell maybe, Celtic probably, don’t you think?’

‘I wonder what you know,’ says Skata, ‘I wonder what you’re not telling me.’

The watcher on the hill becomes aware that someone is moving along the shoreline towards the jetty. A slim girl with long red hair is heading for the two men. The watcher knows her. The watcher could turn the rifle, and put an end to her, like swatting a persistent black-fly. But the watcher does nothing.

The girl has reached the jetty now. The two men watch as she walks towards them.

‘Hello Bron,’ she says, ‘hello, Skata.’

‘Hello, Jenna,’ Bron says, ‘what are you doing here? Have you travelled from the field centre?’

‘Of course,’ says Skata, ‘you two know each other, don’t you? Same university for two years, wasn’t it? Never got it together with him, did you Jenna?’

‘That black-haired girlfriend of yours was always in the way, wasn’t she Bron?’ says Jenna, ‘Not around now is she?’

‘No, I’m on my own.’

‘So where is Ciara?’

‘Don’t know if I’m being honest.’

‘Sorry to break up this reunion, but Jenna and I need to get back to Huldegarde. Are you coming with us,’ he pauses, ‘…. Brother Bron?’

‘I think I’ll spend the night here. It was my mother’s old home, I’d like a little time here alone.’

‘Maybe see you tomorrow then.’ says Jenna, ‘You’re always welcome at Huldegarde.’ She glances at Skata, ‘in my hut anyway.’

As Jenna and Skata row away across the fjord, Bron starts to pitch his tent and make ready for the evening. On the hill behind him the watcher keeps vigil. Soon the relief will come to stand watch until the morning light, but for now the watcher wants to make sure there are no further visitors either by boat or by foot.

‘I should have brought a boat, maybe a canoe,’ thinks Bron, ‘the bike’s great, but ….. Ciara would have told me, she’d have been sensible, where is she when I need her?’

He thinks about the day of his parents’ funeral. There had been no sign of Ciara, though he’d texted her twice. Two days later he’d received a reply, ‘Remember, I’m always with you. Love, Ciara.’

‘Well,’ she isn’t with me now,’ he mutters, and he turns towards his campsite.

The sound of an engine breaks the silence of the evening, Bron has kick-started the old bottle-green BMW R600 that he’d bought two days before in the islands’ capital. He twists the accelerator grip and the engine note rings out over the fjord like a roar of defiance. Then he cuts the engine and sits savouring the silence.

‘This,’ he thinks, ‘is my place.’

On the hill, the watcher smiles.

 - FURTHER CHAPTERS WILL FOLLOW VERY SHORTLY

Free Beer Tomorrow - DAVID JACKSON

We thought maybe you'd think we were just going to fill this blog with stories we'd sent off without success - we probably are!!! But a longer version of this one won a competition in "Scribble" back in 2013 - hope you like it

FREE BEER TOMORROW

Today should be my writing day.
That’s unusual because today’s Monday and I don’t usually write on Mondays.
On Mondays we take Ray to his IT class at the Sensory Centre. Ray’s my wife’s younger brother, he’s got mobility problems and he’s visually impaired. He also suffers from depression. We go round every Monday morning, help him get ready and then load him and his wheelchair into our car and take him down to the Centre. His class lasts two and a half hours. Then we pick him up and take him home, just in time for his ‘Meals on Wheels’ delivery. Last week there was an Arts Class in the afternoon and we were going to take him back to that but he felt too tired.

And it’s not just Ray. Margi’s mother needs an ever increasing amount of support, especially since she got out of hospital after her fall a few weeks back.
But the Sensory Centre’s closed today for redecorating, so we have a free day, and if no new crisis arises, I’ll be able to get down to writing.

Wednesday's my usual writing day, but I didn’t write at all last Wednesday. Ray had a clinic appointment. Usually Margi takes him, but she was working. He has about three appointments a month as different consultants try to address their individual part of the complex web of symptoms that make up his problems. The only thing no-one talks about is his depression. Maybe, they hope if they can sort the physical things, the depression will go away.

Ray’s appointment was 11.00 a.m. so I should have had him home for 12.30 p.m. leaving me the afternoon free to work on another competition entry.

I got to his flat about 10.00. He wasn’t ready, then he insisted on having a shave and changing his trousers before he’d consider going to the clinic. I got worried he wouldn’t be ready by the time the taxi came, but we just made it.

You can’t park near the clinic so we always hire a specially adapted taxi to take him in his wheelchair. The taxi firm know us well and they’re very kind to Ray and very reliable, so the travel was no problem.

As always Ray needed to use the toilet as soon as we got there. Accessing the disabled toilet (there’s only one) at the clinic means queuing up at the reception desk and getting the key.  Even with this complication, we were in the waiting area in good time.

And there we sat. 11.00 o’clock came and went. By 11.15 Ray needed another toilet trip. I asked the young nurse on the desk when Ray might expect to see the doctor. She said they were running forty minutes late, so I told her I was taking him to the toilet. Off we went to get the key.

We returned to the waiting area. There were some magazines lying on a table. I picked up an old issue of a camping and caravanning magazine. Ray talked about a camping trip his parents had taken the family on many years before. I’d heard the story from Margi a couple of times, but from her, very different, viewpoint. I wondered whether there was a piece of writing in it, but maybe Emma Kennedy’s cornered the market on teenage girls’ camping horror stories. I recounted a time in Sweden when the campsite flooded and we found our pitch was a pond, complete with two ducks swimming on it. Then for some reason a reporter from Irish Radio turned up and wanted to do an interview for a holiday programme. Now that might make a story, I made a note in my notebook.

Time dragged on, by 12.30 we’d made two more toilet trips and still no sign of getting seen. Ray began to feel hungry. I wheeled him over to the snacks machine and he chose a Mars bar.

                ‘90p,’ he grumbled, ‘you can get four for £1 at Morrisons.’

Then an older nurse appeared and said ‘Raymond’s next, not long now.’

Ten minutes later, the Mars bar had an unwanted effect. Ray was desperate for yet another trip to the toilet. I told the nurse I had to take him, and we set off again. From my vantage point outside the toilet I watched as the older nurse came out, looked around and then called another wheelchair bound patient into the doctor’s room. We’d missed our turn. When I got back the younger nurse told me that Ray would now have to go to back of the list. They were worried. They’d got another clinic starting at another location at 2.00. Ray began to mutter to himself and clench his fists, the signs weren’t good.

Eventually, at just past 1.00 p.m. we got to see the doctor. The doctor looked tired, and he hadn’t any time for niceties.

‘How often has he been to the toilet? – Four, five times – too often, the patches aren’t working - we need another treatment – Botox injection in his bladder. But he’ll have to learn to self-catheterise first, the nurses can assess if he can do that, we’ll arrange a test.’

Ray began to shake and started to cry and rant.

‘It’s been a bad time in the family, my dad’s died and my mum’s in hospital.’

             I told him, ‘Your Dad died a year ago and your Mum’s out of hospital now, calm down.’

             ‘She had a stroke.’

             ‘No she didn’t, she just fell over a paving stone.’

              Ray continued, ‘Why have I had to wait so long?’

It didn’t help. The doctor told us we’d have to go to another clinic and they’d be in contact. The whole consultation took just five minutes.

In the taxi Ray kept muttering and sobbing. In his flat he alternated between ranting and threatening to chin the doctor and crying and saying his life wasn’t worth living.

To cap it all, we’d missed the Meals on Wheels delivery. Once I’d calmed Ray down, I rang Margi and asked her to come and talk to him, to calm him down while I went off to the nearest takeaway to get him some lunch.

By the time we got home (about 3.00) we were exhausted, no writing that day.

On Friday morning we got a call to say Ray had lost his cash card. He’d no money to pay for his shopping (his care workers do his shopping for him on Fridays). We couldn’t find the card.  We searched the flat with no success. So we had to ring his bank and cancel it. It’ll take two weeks to get him a new one, so we had to lend him the money for his shopping. He called us this morning, he’d found his card. He’d had it in his tracksuit top all the time. He thought this was hilarious.

The phone downstairs is ringing. It’s Margi’s mother. Ray’s rung her. He got a letter on Saturday from the DWP, containing some questionnaire about his ability to work, he can’t read it, he’s panicking, he’s afraid he’ll lose his benefits. She says we must go round immediately. Margi tries to reason with her but to no avail. In the end Margi agrees that we’ll go round and sort Ray out.

‘You’ll have time to write tomorrow,’ she reassures me.

There’s a pub near one of the markets I work on at weekends.  Carved into the stone lintel over the front door is an inscription that says ‘FREE BEER TOMORROW.’ It’s always free beer tomorrow, never today.

I’m going to put a notice on the wall above my laptop. It will say ‘MY WRITING DAY IS TOMORROW’; somehow I think that’s how it always will be.

ALL THAT WAS NEARLY THREE YEARS AGO NOW - MARGI'S MOTHER SADLY PASSED AWAY LAST YEAR. RAY GOT A PLACE IN A DISABLED PERSONS UNIT A FEW MILES AWAY. HE GETS THE 24/7 SUPPORT HE NEEDS. HE'S MUCH HAPPIER, HE HAS A LOT MORE COMPANY, A MORE VARIED SET OF ACTIVITIES AND A MUCH BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE AND LOOKS A HUNDRED TIMES BETTER.