There are currently three books in the “Ghost Stories for Christmas” series. The first (entitled Ghost Stories for Christmas) contains five stories. The second, The Festive Symphony, is a novella, and the third, In the Bleak Midwinter, contains two novellas and a short story. All three volumes are available through Amazon stores. The story below, The Stranger in the Snow, is from the first book in the series.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CHXWM4KS?binding=paperback&qid=1702519387&sr=8-1&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tpbk
THE STRANGER IN THE SNOW
The cottage was perfect. It was exactly what I was looking for – somewhere that I could rent for a few months in order to write up the research that I had been working on for well over a year. The research itself had gone well, but I was struggling to get my findings down on paper.
My wife and I had no children of our own, but my brother and sister-in-law had been killed in a car accident about two years earlier, and their two children had been living with us ever since. If truth be told, that was the main reason why the monograph was so difficult to write.
I was used to a quiet house, but now, with a ten-year-old and eight-year-old running around, it was anything but. Of course, the house would normally have been quiet during the day, and I could have worked then, but that wasn’t the case during the pandemic, when kids were staying at home rather than going to school – and people like me were being encouraged to work from home, also.
It was Susan, my wife, who had come up with the idea of me finding a cheap, quiet house somewhere, so that I could get my work done. She suggested that I go and stay there during the week and come home at the weekends. A couple of years earlier, we wouldn’t have been able to afford it, but my brother and his wife had left us a considerable amount of money, and so my “moving out” seemed less of an extravagance than it would have done before, and Susan was rather enjoying parenting in a way that I most definitely was not – even if I had nothing against the two children who were now in our care.
Susan and I had always wanted children of our own, but it had never happened – although it wasn’t through a lack of trying. Various options had been open to us – IVF, and so on – but we had chosen not to go down those routes. We were very much of the view that, if it happened, then great. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be bitterly unhappy. Perhaps fate had stepped in, and we hadn’t had children of our own for the reason that we would become the guardians of my brother’s children at a later date. I’m no great believer in fate, but sometimes you do have to wonder, considering how things work out.
After being shown around the cottage, I told the letting agent that I would like it for three months – which was the least amount of time that the owner would consider renting it for. It was a nice property – too large, really, with three bedrooms – but it was only about ten miles away from my wife and the children. Despite this, the cottage was, in many respects, in the middle of nowhere. It was two miles from the nearest village, and had no bus route running close by. The letting agent told me that it had been part of a school at one point, but the other buildings (including the main school building) had burned down back in the 1970s. It didn’t seem strange to me at the time that nothing had been built on the land in the intervening years. Apparently, that land now came with the cottage that I was to rent, and that suited me just fine. It meant that there would be no disturbances from neighbours.
When I got home after the viewing and told my wife the news, she seemed overjoyed, although she questioned whether there was really much point in going with just ten days or so to Christmas, but I said I wanted to get started straight away. Perhaps other men might have felt put out that their wife was happy that they were moving out for a few months, but our work was important to both of us. We told the children over supper than night that I would be going to live in the cottage during the week and returning at weekends, and the arrangement would begin on the following Monday. The kids thought, at first, that this was our way of saying we were getting divorced, but we reiterated that was not the case.
The weather forecasters had been saying all weekend that there would be heavy snow-storms on the Monday afternoon, and so I set off reasonably early to avoid them. I arrived at the cottage at about ten o’clock in the morning, and, by midday, I had unpacked what few things I had brought, and had got settled in somewhat. There was an old writing desk in one of the bedrooms, and so I set my laptop up on that, and managed to turn the rest of the room into a usable office. I filled the fridge in the kitchen with the food and milk I had brought with me, and plugged a blu-ray player into the television in the living room. I might have finished the research element of my project but there would still be a need to re-watch films (or parts of films) that I was writing about. The box of DVDs and blu-rays that I had brought with me were unpacked and placed on some empty shelves that were in the living room.
Given that it was approaching midday, I decided that I would have an early lunch and then start work in the afternoon. I realized that there was no microwave in the kitchen, and debated whether it would be a good idea to buy a cheap one from Amazon, given that cooking was hardly something I was good at. Still, I had no objection to living on beans on toast if I had to. About twenty minutes later, I was sitting in front of the television, watching the news while I ate. There was much doom and gloom, not just about the virus, but also about the forthcoming bad weather, which was supposedly about two hours away from where I was. I was, oddly, rather looking forward to it. The remoteness of the cottage made me feel that any such snow storm could be quite impressive to watch. Perhaps it would put me in the right frame of mind to write about the old horror films I had been researching.
I got up from the chair, went into the kitchen to wash up, and then went upstairs and switched on my laptop, opening the box file of notes while it booted up. I took out the large stacks of papers and placed them on the table next to the computer. A picture of Conrad Veidt in The Man who Laughs stared up at me. It was a print-out of the front page of a movie magazine from the late 1920s. The film had always given me the creeps, despite the fact that it was not a horror film in the strictest sense. It was really a historical melodrama based on a Victor Hugo novel, with Veidt playing a man who had been disfigured after a wide grin was carved on to his face as a boy. I found it far more disturbing than any film featuring Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster or the Wolf Man. I turned the page over so that I didn’t have to look at it.
While the laptop chugged away as it booted up, I went over to the CD player I had brought with me, and inserted a disc and started it playing. I bought too much music – I was well aware of that – and much of it I never got around to listen to. Now was the perfect opportunity to catch up. I had brought with me a large, boxed set issued by Decca of some fifty or so discs of opera and lieder recitals, some of which went back to the 1940s. I hadn’t had the chance to play them at home, and so was looking forward to ploughing through them during the coming weeks. I made up my mind to start with the first disc and work through them in order.
With the disc playing, I opened the Word document that contained what little work I had completed on my book. I read through it a couple of times, and decided that I would delete the whole thing and start again. It wasn’t that the few thousand words I had written were particularly bad, but they weren’t particularly good, either. I felt that I needed a fresh start. With a new file opened, I started typing.
After an hour or so, I had written about eight-hundred words, and was pleased that I had got into something of a rhythm. I didn’t really want to stop while the going was good, but the bathroom was calling, and so I saved my work, went to the bathroom and then made my way downstairs to make a cup of tea. As I went back upstairs to the room in which I was working, I realized that it was getting darker outside, and it was clear that the bad weather that had been forecast was fast approaching. The view from the window in front of me was rather impressive. The snow clouds were making their way across the fens towards the cottage. The wind had certainly got up, and the couple of trees in the garden of the cottage were being battered by what had now become a gale.
I was almost mesmerised seeing the clouds approach in this way, and the progress I had made with my work just an hour before was now halted by the spectacle outside. The snow was beginning to fall now, and it splattered against the window with considerable force due to the heavy wind. I closed the screen of my laptop, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to concentrate until the snow had passed – or, at least, until it was dark outside, or I had got bored by it. I just sat there, watching the storm play out.
It didn’t take long for the ground to be covered in snow, and, after a relatively short amount of time, I realized that I could easily be snowed in if it continued to fall for many hours. Perhaps that was what I needed in order to get my work done. As the CD I was playing came to a halt, I thought that perhaps I should ring Susan and make sure she was alright.
“What’s it like where you are?” she asked me after we had said hello.
“The snow’s falling at quite a rate,” I told her. “But it’s very beautiful out here in the middle of nowhere. No, not beautiful exactly. But…”
“Picturesque?” Susan asked.
“Something like that, I suppose. I’m a bit worried I might get snowed in.”
“At least you’ll have no excuse to not get your work done.”
“Well, unless there’s a power cut,” I said.
“Yes, that’s true,” Susan said, a little concerned. “Just keep everything charged up as much as you can. Your phone and your laptop.”
“I’ve already thought of that. How are the kids?” I asked.
“They’re outside building a snowman in the back garden. I’m quite glad the schools have already finished for Christmas. It stops any of that will-they-or-won’t-they be open or closed rubbish. But all is fine here.”
A minute or two later, I ended the call, buoyed by my brief contact with the outside world, even if I had only been away from it for six hours or so. I plugged the mobile phone back into its charger – at least I’d have a day of two’s worth of battery if the electric went off.
By now, it was nearly dark, and I went through the house, drawing the curtains, doing my best to keep the heat in and the cold out. As I did so in the living room, I thought I saw someone – or something – pass through the garden. I would have said walk through the garden, but whatever it was didn’t seem to be grounded. I wondered if it was a large bird of some kind, perhaps even an owl. I peered out through the window, but it was too dark to see anything properly, and so I tried to forget about what I had seen.
I went through into the kitchen and thought that, now I had stopped work for a while, I should think about what to have for supper. I soon learned in the coming days at the cottage, that, when living alone and having stopped working, the mind generally thinks about food. In the fridge was a shepherd’s pie, which Susan had made the week before, and frozen. I thought it would be particularly suitable for such a cold, snowy evening, and so I switched on the oven and went back into the living room while it reached its desired temperature.
I switched on the television, and sat through the daily statistics about the virus that was on the news channels, and then watched the reports about the weather conditions. It was going to get worse before it got better, the weatherman told us, and I realized that I should get prepared to be stuck in the cottage for several days unless the rest of the storm somehow bypassed us. I sneaked another peak out of the window, and saw that the snow was still falling, and it wouldn’t be long before the country roads would be impassable. It seemed to take less snow each winter for this to happen.
A couple of hours passed as I ate the shepherd’s pie in front of the television while watching a rather dismal 1940s B-movie that was being shown on one of the cable channels. I had seen worse – much worse – as part of my research, but, even so, this was very much a watch-because-there’s-nothing-better-on type of film.
When the film ended, I washed up the plate that I had just used, and was about to go back upstairs to start work again when there was a knock on the front door. Surprised that anyone would be out in the inclement weather, I went to the door and opened it.
Standing in front of me was a policeman. A constable, I thought. He certainly didn’t seem to act with an air of authority, and almost seemed embarrassed to be there.
“Good evening,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“I’m sorry to trouble you, Sir,” the constable said. “But I was wondering if I might take a moment or two of your time?”
“Of course. Please come in.”
The constable smiled at me and then came into the hallway, wiping his feet thoroughly on the doormat.
“It’s not getting any better outside, then?” I asked, trying to break the ice a little.
“Not at all, Sir,” the policeman said. “It’s very nasty outside.”
“Come through into the living room,” I said. “You’ll find it much warmer in there.”
He followed me through into the living room and I told him to sit down, which he did.
“Would you like something to drink? A tea or coffee, perhaps? Something to warm you up?”
“No, Sir,” the constable replied. “I cannot stop long. I want to get back to the village. Before it gets too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“I meant the weather, Sir. The roads will be blocked in a couple of hours at most, and I don’t fancy walking home.”
“Of course.” I sat down in the chair opposite him. “So, how can I help you?” I asked.
“Well, that depends. How long are you planning to be staying in the cottage, Sir?”
“Two or three months, I think. I have work to type up, and I’m not getting on very well at home, and so I have rented the cottage to give me some peace and quiet.”
“Ah! I see!” the policeman said. “And you’re not from around this area to start with?”
“No, not really. We live in the city. So about ten miles away.”
“I see,” he said, again. “Well, I figured as much, and so I thought it would be a good time to come and have a little chat with you.”
“About what? Have I done anything wrong?”
“Oh no. Nothing wrong, Sir. But with the weather as it is, I was wondering if you might be able to help us. We are keeping an eye out for a young man, you see? And I was thinking that you might see him?”
“I only arrived this morning,” I said. “And I haven’t seen anyone. Hardly surprising given the weather. But I don’t think anyone lives close by, do they?”
“No, indeed.”
“So, has this young man gone missing?” I asked.
The policeman seemed to tense up when I asked this question.
“Not yet, Sir,” he said, quietly.
I was rather surprised by his odd reply.
“Not yet?” I queried.
“Indeed, Sir.”
“But you’re expecting it to happen? I’m afraid that I don’t understand.”
I wondered if I was being a bit slow on the uptake, but I believed that I was not. Why would a policeman come to my door in order to tell me about someone that might go missing but hadn’t yet? The conversation was not making sense.
The policeman took a moment to try and gather his thoughts.
“We have reason to think that a teenaged boy of maybe seventeen or eighteen will go missing at some point in the following day or two, and that he will likely come here.”
I stared at him, and wondered if he was actually a policeman at all. Perhaps I had inadvertently let a mad man into the cottage.
“Here?” I asked.
“I realise this sounds very strange, Sir,” the policeman went on. “But the truth of the matter is that this has happened before in this kind of weather, and with the road to the village likely to be blocked by morning, we thought it was worth coming to see you in advance.”
“You’re telling me that when it snows, teenage boys go missing from the village?”
The policeman nodded his head.
“That’s correct, Sir.”
“And they come here?”
“Yes.”
“Will this boy be dangerous?”
“Oh no, Sir, not at all.”
“How do you know? He might have a concealed weapon.”
“That’s unlikely.”
“Why?”
“Because, in previous years, there have been no weapons involved.”
“Can I ask why this is going to happen?”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” the policeman said, rising to his feet. “It would probably be for the best if I went now, or the car won’t get back along the roads.”
He walked back into the hallway, and I opened the front door for him.
“Look after yourself, Sir,” he said. “And if the boy does turn up, it would be appreciated if you’d look after him. Keep him warm, and all that. Good night, Sir.”
And, with that, he was gone.
I shut the door and went back into the living room, rather bemused by the conversation. If I was being totally honest, I would say that the policeman seemed thoroughly embarrassed by the information he had relayed to me, and yet had seemed perfectly earnest.
I telephoned Susan and told her about the episode.
“Do you think someone’s playing a trick on me?” I asked her.
“Not on you,” Susan said. “But on him. I bet someone in the station had made a bet with him or dared him to come and tell you that story. Something like that. I’m sure that’s all it was.”
“Well, it was very bad timing,” I said. “He could have had an accident getting here in the snow.”
“You know what some people are like. They don’t think about things like that. It was just a lark. I bet that you’ll find out for sure before you come home for Christmas.”
I wasn’t quite so certain, but we said goodnight to each other, and ended the call. It was around ten o’clock by this point and, although I was normally someone who didn’t go to bed until the early hours, I felt decidedly sleepy, and decided to turn in. It had been a busy – not to mention, slightly odd – day, and I thought I would feel better the next day if I had a good night’s sleep.
Sadly, sleep didn’t come quickly, and I found myself lying awake going over what the policeman had said while he was at the cottage. The more I went over it, the more I decided that it was not just some strange prank. He had been genuinely worried that a young lad might try to come to the cottage in the snow.
I got out of bed and went through into the room that I had made into my office. I switched on the computer and, rather miraculously, found that the internet was still working. I tried doing a Google search for missing teenagers from the village during previous winters, but I found none, although I realized that we hadn’t really had bad snow since the so-called “beast from the east” a few years back. And so, I centred my search around that period in early 2018, in order to see if that brought up any results. There wasn’t much, but there was a couple of small articles in the local newspaper. The first one reported that a young man was missing from the village, and the second one, from a couple of days later, informed readers that he had been found a couple of miles away, and that he was suffering from hypothermia, but was expected to make a full recovery.
I set about finding out which years had had heavy snowfall in the local area, and then seeing if I could find similar articles from the local newspapers about missing boys. There certainly seemed to be some correlation, going back several decades. There wasn’t always an article with every snowfall, but I assumed that the newspapers weren’t informed if the person had been found quickly.
The whole thing seemed very strange indeed, but I realised that I wouldn’t find out much more simply through using the internet. I needed to speak to someone local who could give me more information.
I had begun to get sleepy, and so went back to bed, but not before looking out of each window to make sure I couldn’t see a boy outside.
*
I woke up at about nine o’clock the next morning, and was quite surprised that I had managed to sleep right through the night, especially given it was my first night in the cottage and with the strange events of the previous evening.
The cottage didn’t have a shower, and so I ran a bath while I shaved and cleaned my teeth. The hot water system was barely adequate, and so the bath needed a couple of kettles of boiling water to make it hot enough. But once it was full, I soaked in it for at least half an hour, basking in the silence that was now only rarely present in my own house. I loved my brother’s kids, but I loved the peace and quiet we had before they moved in with us, too. I thought of this while I was laying there in the tub, and I felt saddened by my own selfish thoughts. Those kids had lost their parents, and I was moaning to myself about the house being noisier.
Eventually, I got out of the bath, got dressed, and went downstairs to fix some breakfast, opening the curtains in the downstairs rooms while I prepared the food. The snow had been falling heavily all night, and it was still coming down. When looking out of the kitchen window, there was no way of knowing where the garden path ended and the grass began. The same was true out of the front window. The garden, the footpath, the road and the field on the other side were all merged into one. And standing about five or ten metres from the window, was a boy.
I had forgotten – or, at least, tried to forget – the weird visit from the policeman the night before. A night of sleep had rather put it to the back of my mind. I peered out of the window to make sure that he was really there, and not some strange optical illusion caused by the snow. But he was definitely there, and staring directly at me. He wasn’t moving, just standing still – not affected in any way by the cold weather, it seemed. He wore no coat, and was there in his shirtsleeves and trousers. I guessed that he was about eighteen years old, but it was difficult to be sure.
I went into the hallway, put on some boots and a coat, and opened the front door. It was like a blizzard. It wasn’t just the snow, but the wind, which was blowing directly towards the house. I was covered in snow in an instant. But I had to go and get the boy indoors.
I went outside and pulled the door shut behind me. As I trudged towards him, I saw that the boy wasn’t moving at all – not even shivering. I thought for a moment that he might be dead already from the cold, but then I saw the breath coming from his mouth. I grabbed hold of his hand, trying to lead him into the cottage. He refused to move, as if he was in some kind of trance, and so I picked him up and carried him inside, closing the front door behind me.
By now, I could see that he was indeed about eighteen years old, slightly built, and, while he was wearing shirt and trousers, he had on neither socks nor shoes. I put him down on the sofa in front of the fire while I worked out what I should do with him.
My first thought was to call the police or an ambulance, but there was no mobile reception, probably due to the weather, and the house had no landline phone. I ran upstairs and turned the computer on, but guessed that the internet would probably be down, too. I wondered if I could get him to the nearest village for some help. There would have been a doctor in the village. But that was two miles away, and I had little hope that my car would get that far given the amount of snow there was on the road. There was little doubt that my only course of action was to look after the boy myself.
I tried to speak to him, but I got no response. It was almost as if he was hynotised, with his eyes just staring straight ahead, and he didn’t seem to know that I was there.
I turned up the heating in the house. I didn’t really care if it was going to be unbearably hot for me, but I needed to get his body temperature up. That was about all I knew when it came to what I thought could be hypothermia. I went upstairs and took the quilt from the bed and brought it downstairs, but it was no use covering him with it if he was lying there in wet clothes. I felt bad doing it, but I took off his clothes, and dressed him in a pair of my own pyjamas before covering him with the quilt and drying his hair with a towel.
“What were you doing out there?” I asked.
I didn’t expect a response, and I didn’t get one.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
Again, there was no response, but my efforts were to try and bring him around from whatever trance-like state he was in. I went into the kitchen to make some tea, thinking a hot drink would help to warm him up. I checked on him every now and then while I did so. There seemed no improvement in him until I brought the cup of tea up to his lips and he almost instinctively took a sip, and his eyes looked into mine. I started to believe that I might make progress after all. I didn’t get him to drink all of the tea, but at least he had some of it.
I confess that I was somewhat curious as to who he might be, and so I went through his trouser pockets in search of some identification. I found a set of keys and a couple of tissues in the front pockets, and a wallet in the back one. Upon opening it, I came across a driver’s license that informed me that the young man on my sofa was Benjamin Haydn and that he was nineteen years old. I put the wallet back into the pocket and walked back over to him, kneeling down on the floor beside him.
“Benjamin?” I asked, hoping that there might be some sense of recognition to his name, but I detected none.
I was still unsure what to do with him, but with no working phone or internet, and the snow too deep for me to transport him either home or to a doctor, I decided the best thing that I could do was to simply keep him as warm and comfortable as I could. Bearing this in mind, I took him off the sofa, carried him upstairs, and put him down on my bed, covering him up with the quilt. I didn’t know what else to do, and this action seemed the most sensible.
I went back downstairs, and switched on the television. There wasn’t much of a reception. There was a signal one minute but not the next, but I did manage to catch a few moments of the news, which usefully told me about the heavy snowfall that I was already very aware of. There was an emergency number to use, but that wasn’t exactly helpful given that the phones weren’t working.
I decided that the best thing I could do was to kill some time by writing up some of my monograph while we still had electricity. I went back upstairs and sat down at the laptop and switched it on. While it booted up, I gazed out of the window at the rather splendid view. The snow had stopped falling – at least, for the time being – and it made it easier to see how great the snowfall had been overnight, as well as how cut off the cottage was.
The window of the bedroom I was using as my office faced the back garden, and I wondered, perhaps for the first time, just why that large expanse of land hadn’t been built on since the fire that had destroyed the old school. I was sure that the letting agent had told me that the fire had happened some fifty years ago. It seemed odd such a prime piece of land remained unused. It officially came with the cottage, but clearly no-one had made any attempt at using it as a garden. It was just a mess of overgrown weeds on the other side of the small fence that once had marked the territorial boundaries of the cottage.
Once the laptop had started up, I tried to concentrate on my work, while checking on my guest every hour or so. I got a surprising amount of work done. The house was deathly quiet – I didn’t put music on for fear of waking up Benjamin – and no vehicle came past the cottage due to the snow. I assumed that a snow plough would reach me eventually, but I feared it might be a day or two away. I was just thankful that we still had electricity.
After typing up four or five pages – almost a record for me in the given time frame – I went downstairs to make myself another drink and to try to come up with something that I fancied to eat. I thought I would probably make do with a tin of soup, and use up some of the bread that I had brought with me the day before.
It was as I was standing at the fridge that I heard footsteps from upstairs, which eventually made their way down the staircase. I went into the living room to find Benjamin standing at the bottom of the stairs. I smiled at him, in an attempt to be as unthreatening as I could possibly be.
“Hello,” I said.
My guest looked at me, but seemed confused.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You’re at a cottage about two miles from the village,” I told him. “I found you outside in the snow this morning.”
“Why was I out there?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry. A policeman came here last night and pretty much told me to expect you.”
“He told you that I would come here?” Benjamin asked, understandably bewildered.
“Not you, specifically. Just someone. A young man, he said. He told me that this happened quite regularly when there was this kind of weather in the area.”
At this comment, there seemed to be some kind of recognition in his face.
“So, this is the old school cottage?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Yes,” I said. “How do you know?”
He looked as if he was feeling faint, and he grabbed hold of the banister at the bottom of the stairs.
“Why don’t you sit down?” I said, and guided him into a chair, which he almost collapsed into. “Would you like something to eat or drink? Something hot? Tea or coffee, perhaps?”
“Tea would be nice, thank you,” Benjamin said.
“Anything to eat?” I asked him.
He thought for a moment, not quite sure.
“I was going to have some tomato soup,” I said to him. “Would you like some of that?”
Benjamin nodded his head.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“I’m Paul,” I said to him, as I went back into the kitchen.
“I’m Benjamin,” he said.
“Yes, I know. I found your wallet. I would have informed the police or got you a doctor, but all the phones are out. And my car wouldn’t get through the snow. So, I’m afraid you’re stuck with my company for a few days, possibly.”
He smiled at me.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience of having me here,” Benjamin said.
“It’s fine,” I told him. “I’m just glad you are OK. You didn’t even have a coat.”
I handed him his cup of tea.
“Thank you,” he said. “They never have a coat.”
“They?”
“The people who are found here at the cottage. I guess I’m just lucky that you were living here and saw me. A few years ago, this happened and the boy died.”
“So, you know what all of this is about?” I asked.
“Yes. All of the villagers know about it. But sometimes when this happens, it’s kept quieter than others.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story,” Benjamin said.
We agreed that he would tell me the story after we had eaten.
Benjamin said that he wasn’t particularly hungry, and yet he ate his soup quickly. I asked him how he was feeling, and he said he was tired, but otherwise he felt OK.
“You’re lucky,” I said. “I really didn’t know that you were going to get better without proper treatment when I came across you this morning, but I’m guessing that you hadn’t been out there as long as I first thought.”
“I don’t remember anything about it,” he said. “I remember getting out of bed at some point last night, and then waking up in your bed an hour or so ago. I don’t remember anything else about it. Perhaps it’s for the best.”
I agreed with him. He sat there in silence for a few seconds, and then he took a deep breath and began his story.
“It’s all to do with the school that was here,” he said. “Nobody really remembers it in the village. It closed down just before the start of the Second World War, and so anyone still around would only have been young children back then. I guess someone in their nineties might have a memory of it, but there’s only one person of that age in the village that I can think of, and she doesn’t have much memory of anything.”
“Why did it close down?” I asked.
“There was something of a scandal. I guess that’s what you’d call it. The man who ran the school was known in the village for being something of a tyrant.”
“He didn’t treat the kids well?”
Benjamin nodded.
“Something like that. But he didn’t treat the teachers well, either. Or anyone else who worked at the school. Stories spread about him in the village. They still do, but I don’t know how many of them are true and how many are gossip.”
“That’s always the case,” I agreed.
“There were a couple of young people about my age working there, so the story goes. They had been pupils there, and they stayed on there to help out. Probably looking after the building or something.”
“Maybe even some teaching,” I told him. “There were less regulations back then.”
“They lived at the school,” Benjamin said. “That’s what I’ve been told, anyway. It was the middle of winter, and the weather was like this. The headmaster of the school went to find them late one night. Nobody really knows what he wanted – it was probably just to speak to them about keeping the school warm or something like that. But the story says that he found them together. In bed, presumably. He went mad, and sent them outside into the snow as a punishment, and made them stay there. Just in whatever they were wearing. No hat or coat or boots or anything. He made them stand in the grounds all night and into the next day. It was only when one of them collapsed that the other teachers got together and went against the headmaster. The boys were brought in, but one of them died. The headmaster was removed from the post, but I don’t know if he was charged with any crime. The school closed down shortly after.”
It was a horrible story, but I had little doubt that it was true.
“And now,” I said, “whenever there’s the same kind of weather, a boy from the village finds himself re-enacting what happened to the two young men back then?”
Benjamin nodded.
“Yes. Not just any boy of the same age. It’s only those that are gay. That’s why there have been times when it has been hushed up. There were always stories that these things happened, but often the people involved didn’t want it known. Being gay in a village is still not always easy once people find out and the gossip starts.”
“And what about the school burning down? Do you know anything about that?”
“Possibly. It’s said that a boy died of hypothermia after being drawn to the school and standing outside in a blizzard, and that his mother or father came here in a rage and set fire to the main school building. It’s only a rumour, though. Village gossip.”
I sat there quietly, trying to take in the story that I had been told. I had never been a believer of ghosts and the supernatural, but there must have been something in the tale for it to have been kept alive for eighty years – and for the local policeman to have come and warned me the previous evening.
“People in the village know that I’m gay,” Benjamin said, as if he was reading my thoughts. “I reckon that’s why Harry came to see you.”
“Harry?”
“The policeman in the village. He would know that I was gay and the right age, and that I could end up here considering the weather.”
“You told me that one of the people who ended up here died?” I said.
“Yes,” Benjamin said. “That last happened five or six years ago. Maybe a bit longer. There was no-one in the cottage then. Nobody’s lived in it for many years, but the owner died, and his family has decided to let it. You’re the first person to live here for many years. Lucky for me that you were here. I could be dead, otherwise.”
*
It was another three days before the snow stopped falling completely and the snow plough reached us. Luckily, the phone signal had returned prior to that and so Benjamin had been able to call his parents and tell them that he was safe. He did a very good job of staying quiet during the day while I did some work, and then we ate dinner in the evenings and watched a film on the television.
When I took him home, his mother was overcome with emotion, and didn’t stop thanking me for my efforts during the time I was there. She tried to get me to stay to dinner, but I told her I needed to be getting back to Susan and the kids. The incident in the cottage had made me feel as if I wanted to see them at the earliest opportunity – and I felt guilty for sometimes thinking of them as a distraction to my work.
Before I left the village to go home, I stopped off at the small police station in the village, and thanked Harry, the constable, for having called on me during my first night in the cottage, in order to prepare me for what happened.
“Think nothing of it,” he said. “I am just sorry that I didn’t think I could tell you the whole story at the time. But I was worried you’d think I was barking mad.”
“Well, you probably saved young Benjamin’s life by coming to see me,” I told him.
“Well, at least something came out of the visit. But you can only do so much, and I feel so bad about Martin. His parents are distraught.”
I was confused.
“Martin?” I asked. “Who is Martin?”
“Why, he’s Benjamin’s young man, Sir. He went missing from the village on the same night, but nobody has seen or heard from him since. I have to break that news to young Benjamin, now that he is home. I didn’t feel it was right to tell him on the phone when he called us from the cottage to say that he was fine. In all honesty, I have a horrible feeling that we won’t find Martin until the snow has melted.”
I wondered if I could have helped Benjamin’s boyfriend, too, if I had only looked out for him.
When I returned to the cottage in the new year, I learned that Martin still hadn’t been found, even after the cold spell had ended. Benjamin told me that he was hoping that his boyfriend had simply run away, but neither of us really believed that to be the case.
Beyond Boundaries 