“We’re so pleased you could get home for Roland’s party.”
Mary Metcalfe looked out of the car window, her mind half on the pleasant Hampshire scenery rolling by and half on whether she had bought everything she had promised to provide for her younger son’s birthday celebration which was planned at the home he shared with his wife, Chrissie, in Chichester.
“Couldn’t let the little fellow’s big 3-0 go by without making some effort to get here,” Paul grinned, “even if it did cost me a grovelling session to my boss, and a bottle of Bushmills for the kind soul who’s covering my duty periods. Nothing can induce Paddy to help out with an extra duty quite like a bottle of Bushmills. Pity we couldn’t have the knees-up on the day but if people will go having birthdays on Mondays they must expect to wait for the jamboree. Will we need the car again today?”
“I don’t think so; Dad’s getting a lift home from the golf club meeting and unless I’ve forgotten something we won’t need to do any more shopping.”
“I think it’s very unlikely you’ve forgotten anything, Mum,” Paul declared, recalling how they had heaved two bulging shopping bags into the boot of the car after a dedicated raid on Waitrose.
He slowed as he approached a half-timbered house along Stockbridge Road, pressed a button on the dashboard to release the electronic gate closure and swung the car into the drive.
“You go in, Mum,” he said, “I’ll get the stuff out of the boot and put the car away. You can’t carry both bags yourself; leave them to me.”
“All right then, dear,” said Mary, extricating herself from the seat belt. “Your reward for that will be tea and maybe a Jaffa Cake.”
“So I should think!” he said with a cheeky grin, giving her an affectionate nudge with his elbow. “I’d expect nothing less.”
Mary let herself into the house while he manoeuvred the car through the garage doorway.
Paul pushed open the front door with his knee and tried to get the bags inside without removing any of the wallpaper. From the corner of his eye he saw Mary advancing on him.
“I’ll bring them in the kitchen, then we can sort out what needs to go in the fridge... what’s wrong, Mum? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Oh Paul, there’s something upstairs!” she gasped.
“What kind of something?”
“I don’t know but it’s big and black. I went to get Roland’s presents out of the spare room and I could hear something so I opened the door of our room and it just flashed past me! Oh Paul, it’s Hallowe’en tonight...”
“Hang on, Mum, you don’t usually get worked up over things like that,” said Paul, looking baffled. “’There’s no such thing as a ghost – people just see them in their minds...’ that’s what you used to say to Roly and me when we were small.”
“Yes, but this isn’t a ghost... it’s... it’s just... something.”
“Let me take these into the kitchen and I’ll go up and see what’s going on.”
Mary scuttled ahead; when he took the bags into the kitchen she was holding a meat fork in one hand and the bread knife in the other.
“Take these... and please be careful, Paul, you don’t know what might be up there.”
He looked from the fork to the knife and back again, decided to humour her, and took them. He wondered vaguely what his mother’s reaction would be if she knew what horrors he faced for most of his working life, and it had been like that even before the Mysterons unleashed their own brand of terror onto the world, when Spectrum existed solely as an organisation to deal with plain, honest-to-goodness, human-induced terror.
He climbed the stairs and listened at the door of his parents’ bedroom. There was certainly something in there, and something pretty active from what he could hear. But was it human? More to the point, was it dangerous? Carefully he edged open the door, suddenly aware of Mary behind him, compressing herself into a corner of the landing.
“Please be careful, Paul, you don’t know what it might be.”
He wedged the meat fork under his left arm, transferred the bread knife to his left hand and pushed the door wide open. Mary screamed and fled downstairs. Paul jumped into the room and kicked the door shut behind him.
“Mum, could you open the door please?”
Mary, cowering beside the wall of the walk-in pantry, nerved herself to cross the kitchen and open the door. Paul stood on the threshold with something in each hand. Mary shuddered.
“They’re crows! Aren’t they supposed to mean bad luck?”
“They’re not crows, Mum, they’re jackdaws. It’s my guess they’ve been having a spat on the roof and they’ve fallen down the chimney. You should ask Dad to board up the fireplace; I’ll do it myself this afternoon if you like, if I can find some plywood in the garage. Have to get rid of these two chaps first though.”
The jackdaws, their beady eyes scrutinizing their surroundings, were conveyed outside to the garden where Paul took them to a large oak tree and released them. They flew up into the branches, chattering at each other in bad-tempered yak-yak-ing; he thought it would not be long before they were at each other’s throats again.
“It was silly of me, I know,” said Mary, sitting on one of the kitchen stools with the inevitable mug of tea, the panacea for all English ills. “But they looked so menacing.”
“Well, they weren’t very pleasant when I was trying to catch them,” Paul declared, dabbing at the bleeding peck marks on his hands with a piece of kitchen roll. “It wasn’t too bad catching one but try grabbing a determined jackdaw one-handed.”
“Have they left much mess?”
“Um... you’ll need to put the bedspread in the wash. And take a brush and a bucket of soapy water to the carpet. I’m afraid they were a little excited.”
***
Chrissie had invited the party guests, mainly friends who lived in Chichester plus a colleague of Roland’s who was bringing his wife, for six thirty, thinking this would give her plenty of time to prepare the buffet. Roland could serve drinks and they could eat around seven, late enough given that both sets of parents were not keen on eating well into the night. She had cleared the sideboard in the lounge for the drinks and spread a white cloth over the table in the dining room ready to receive the food.
She looked out of the lounge window. It was dark now. Well, it was half past four on November the 1st and the clocks had gone onto GMT the previous weekend. She rather liked the dark nights. It was cosy to settle in the warm lounge and watch television, or read with the pair of them snuggled together on the sofa in companionable silence, books in hands. She cast one final glance out of the window to see if Charles’ car was in sight, decided it was still a little early for them to arrive and drew the curtains together. I ought to check the heating’s on in the bedrooms; the radiators didn’t seem very hot last time I felt them and it will be chilly later.
“Roly’s car’s not here,” said Paul as Charles pulled up outside number 10 Wells Crescent. “I hope we’re not going to have a birthday party without the birthday boy.”
“He won’t be home from work yet. The bank doesn’t close until five,” Mary reminded him.
“But Chrissie said he’d taken the day off so he could help her get everything for tonight.”
As they climbed out of the car, a distraught and shrieking Chrissie came thundering across the drive.
“There’s something in the spare double bedroom!”
“Not again!” Paul wailed. “What kind of ‘something’?”
“I don’t know but it’s big and black. I left the kitchen window open because I’m boiling potatoes and it must have got in... it’s huge... oh Paul, would you come and sort it out? Please!”
She ran her hands through her shoulder-length curly hair and looked at him beseechingly.
“Where’s Roland, dear?” Mary asked.
“He’s gone to Tesco; we forgot to get the whisky this morning.”
“I’ll tell you what I think it is,” said Paul, halfway across the drive. “It’s probably a jackdaw.”
“Aren’t they supposed to predict a death? And it’s Hallowe’en...”
“No, that was yesterday,” Paul corrected her. “But this jackdaw, or whatever it is, has probably misread the calendar. Come on, let’s get it evicted, before it starts marauding about the bedrooms and takes a liking to something shiny, your engagement ring for example.”
Chrissie had calmed down now. Leaving Mary and Charles to deal with the food and presents in the car boot, Paul followed her inside and up the stairs to the large spare room at the front of the house. From the sounds which were emanating from behind the door it seemed he would be on his second de-birding mission. He eased open the door trying, with a very great effort, to control his mirth at the thought which had suddenly jumped into his mind.
THIS IS THE VOICE OF THE MYSTERONS. WE KNOW THAT YOU CAN HEAR US EARTHMEN. OUR RETALIATION WILL BE SLOW BUT NONETHELESS EFFECTIVE. OUT NEXT ACT OF REVENGE WILL BE TO UNLEASH A PLAGUE OF JACKDAWS ON THE BRITISH ISLES...
This story was beta-read by the Spectrum Headquarters beta-reading panel.