Tales of the Extraordinary Read online

“When I wanted her, she wasn’t there.” If I showed any hint in my voice that I had a problem, she would come bounding up the stairs, catching me red-handed at the stove. “Yes, I’m fine,” I replied. “I’m playing with my dinosaurs.” Mum hated my toy dinosaurs. In fact, she hated everything older than the time scale portrayed in her bible. Things like dinosaurs were contrary to her strict Catholic view of life and its creation. If it was older than two thousand years, she wanted nothing to do with it.

  “That will keep her out for a while,” I said quietly to myself, “but not forever. Come on, Gerrard; get your thinking cap on…”

  Although I was young, my mind raced like that of an adult, like that of someone who has been in sticky situations many times before, and come out the far side smelling of roses. Then I had it, I had the solution to my predicament, to the oily smoky smell clinging stubbornly to my room, and to the fact that I had interfered with the oil stove against mum’s express orders. I would set it on fire, but properly this time, burning it completely, thus hiding the incriminating evidence.

  I had my plan, but I had yet to work out how to get out of the room safely after I had started the fire. My brain clicked into gear once again…

  Raising a finger, I whispered, “I think I know how I can do it. With a bit of luck, the house won’t burn down in the process.” I moved the stove carefully to one side, to a position where I felt it would do the least damage to my room as it burned the incrimination evidence against me. I also ensured that I had enough room for safe passage to the door, and safety.

  Satisfied that I had placed the stove in the right spot, I pushed hard on the lever to open the top half of it, the part that should only be opened when refilling the apparatus. It was no sooner open when the flames shot upwards, far beyond the meagre height of the stove, scorching my bedclothes, the wallpaper and a good proportion of the ceiling. I smiled.

  Shouting, screaming, I cried out, “MUM, MUM, the room’s on FIRE! HELP!”

  I heard her; I heard mum bounding up the stairs two steps at a time. Jimmy Young was listening.

  “What is it?” she asked, bursting into the room. Seeing the flames licking the ceiling, she bundled me into a blanket and carried me out to the landing. “You stay there,” she said calmly. “Everything will be okay.”

  By now, the black smoke was emerging onto the landing. I feared I might have bitten off more than I could chew. “Is there anything I can do?” I asked, coughing, due to smoke inhalation.

  “With eyes burning into me, like they were saying ‘I know what you did’, mum said, “Go into the bathroom and fill up the bucket, the one next to the bath. GO!”

  I dashed into the bathroom, obeying her words without question.

  Mum followed me into the bathroom, filling the bathtub with water. Tearing the blanket off my back, she flung it into the bath, thoroughly soaking it. Without wasting a second, mum removed the wet blanket from out of the bath and dashed away through the open doorway, returning to the scene of the fire, where she threw it over the oil stove, extinguishing the flames.

  I followed her with my bucket of water, to the landing. Grabbing the bucket, she emptied its contents over my smouldering bed. I watched my mum, the hero, and I was ashamed of what I had done.

  At this point, you must be wondering what this has to do with the box of toys beneath my bed, the box that I loved so much during the day, yet feared by night. Let me explain…

  Although the fire was out, mum and I waited on the landing until she was certain it was safe to enter my room. I was cold, standing on the landing, in my dressing gown and slippers. Downstairs Jimmy Young was talking to some woman who, for some strange reason, kept bursting into song.

  After a good ten minutes, standing on that cold landing, shivering, craning my neck to see what condition my room was now in, mum felt it safe enough to enter. She said, “You wait outside, Gerrard. I’ll take a look-see.”

  My eyes followed her into the room. It looked like a bomb had exploded there. Opening my chest of drawers, mum rummaged through it.

  “Put these on,” she said, handing me a trouser, shirt and pullover.

  I took them and quickly got dressed. It felt good, to be warm again.

  “It’s okay, it’s safe to come in, Gerrard,” mum finally said. “But be careful.”

  I entered my room. From the inside, it looked as if two bombs had exploded. The wallpaper was black, scorched into oblivion by the fiery hot flames, the ceiling was also black, as black as a tar pit, and my bedclothes had the appearance of something you might find on a bonfire the morning after a night of heavy rain – they were a stinking black mess.

  Then I saw it, I saw my toy box, the box that contained all my wonderful toys, the toys that I cherished so much. It was charcoal, burned almost beyond recognition. My eyes followed a few wisps of smoke rising from it.

  “I’m afraid your toys are all ruined,” said mum, looking into the remains of the box, and then back to me.

  “All of them?” I asked, hoping for a miracle.

  Prodding the charcoaled remains, she replied, “I’m afraid so. But we must see the bright side, mustn’t we, that the house wasn’t burned dawn.”

  “That couldn’t happen,” I blurted, “the stove was too far away…”

  Distracted by something under my bed, mum missed the gist of what I was saying, what I was admitting to, and she said, “Pardon? What were you saying?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I lied. “What are you looking at?”

  “There’s something down there,” she said. “Reach down and get it, will you?”

  Crouching, staring under my bed, I beamed with excitement. “It’s one of my dinosaurs,” I told her excitedly.

  “Oh...one of them,” she said, steering away from the antiquity it represented.

  “Yes,” I replied. “It’s the Diplodocus, my favourite! Did you know they had two brains?”

  Mum, however, did not want to know how many brains they had.

  I clung to my toy as if it was made of gold.

  Mum did not say anything more about that incident. If she did suspect I had something to do with it, she never said. Mum sent the oil heater to the dump. Despite the house insurance paying out for the damage caused, mum did not buy another oil heater. No. She bought a brand-new oil filled radiator. After that, there were no more naked flames left anyway near me.

  You want to know what happened to the remains of my toy box? It was gone; sent, like the oil heater, to the dump. I was free, never again having to fear things that go bump in the night.

  A note:

  I placed my toy dinosaur, my prized possession, my Diplodocus, into my toy box beneath my bed. That one toy was all that I had in my new toy box for quite a while. Despite the absence of toys, I was so happy playing with it on Saturday mornings. It was my best friend, and it would not go bump in the night, would it? 

  We Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

  Long ago, a wise coined the phrase, we have nothing to fear, but fear itself. I am sure he believed it. Having said that, I believe there are some things than cannot be included under this heading…

  The older I get, the more I believe that many, so many of the things we explain away, with the confidence of youth, are in reality too complex to treat in so simple a manner. Take the example of John. He passed away, going on a year now, but not a day goes by without his beloved wife, Josie, speaking to him. Yes, I do realise that you are probably thinking, it’s just a woman grieving after her love, and to a point you are right, my friend, but only to a point. Let me explain…

  John and Josie Fitzmaurice were married in nineteen fifty-seven, in the village of Glanbride, high in the Scottish mountains. For fifty years, they lived a happy and contented life. Despite being in his early seventies when he died, John was still a fit man. John his wife began married life together, in rural isolation. That, however, changed the day a stray dog wandered up to their door one day…

  “Ah, would you look a
t that, John,” said Josie as she drew back the curtain, admiring a large dog standing patiently outside their door.

  John glanced though the window. For a moment, his heart softened at the sight of the dog, looking in. Being a poor man he envisaged the amount of food such an animal would consume, so he said, “Leave it be, Josie, we have more things to be doing than feeding stray animals.”

  For a second, for one fleeting second, the dog’s blue eyes fixed onto John’s, sending shivers of cold sweat running down his spine.

  “I’ll just give it a few crumbs, to fend off the chill,” said Josie, as she searched the larder for a few scraps of food.

  John said nothing; he loved his wife too much to force an argument over something as minor as the appearance of a stray animal.

  After she fed the scraps of food to the dog, which gulped them down as if it had not eaten for a week, Josie returned to the kitchen and watched it through the window. After licking the plate for the umpteenth time, the dog ambled away from the house, disappearing into the woods at the end of the garden.

  “The poor creature is going,” Josie whispered as her husband pulled on his work boots.

  “I’m sure it’s for the best,” he insisted, taking hold of the axe, and then opening the door. Kissing his wife on the cheek, he made his way outside, to begin chopping the mountain of timber that was awaiting his attention.

  Over the following days, Josie was relieved to see the dog return on a number of