Matthew Wilson is a UK resident whose stories have been published in Horror Zine, Star*Line, Zimbell House Publishing and many more, he is currently editing his first novel.

 

 

Mother called it a cry for attention. It started when I mentioned the murder with too much flourish. Then the woman in the green dress threw the box into the river and wailed about her son’s disappearance.

Yes, the world of a hat shop owner’s son is small and uninteresting but I didn’t pluck stories from the air. When the depression hit and people brought food rather than hats, I filled my down time behind the till with constructing fairy tales.

Maybe one day I would be a famous author, I mused. So to turn the gears of my mind into some tale I could rattle out, I headed out late at night for some peace and quiet.

Instead, I saw the lady in the green dress.

It seemed her bad luck had begun the previous year when her oldest son had passed away with diphtheria. I doubted the heavy insurance payout she received would mend her heart but now I was not so sure she had one.

It cost a lot to feed children in this economy and mother’s struggled to support two kin but now the woman in the green dress had money and time to herself.

She filled said time by visiting my mother’s hat shop.

Then she seemed to roll my name around her head before deciding on the right one.

“Samuel? I’m your mothers friend, Hannah Stokes.”

I tried to talk but I could emit nothing above a strangling noise, hard to be heard over the tinkle of the door bell.

“I hear you’ve been saying silly things about me,” she purred and placed a large note on the counter. Ten pounds is nothing to an adult but my twelve year old mind had never seen so many numbers on one bank note.

“I’d like a hat,” she smiled and then darted her eyes grudgingly at some boxes stacked on the shelves.

“That one,” she gave a smile that didn’t light her eyes.

I turned and then turned again so as not to show my back to her and took down the feathered box with trembling hands.

“Is something wrong, dear? You seem nervous.”

I swallowed.

“S-silly things? I haven’t -”

She waved away my argument with a brush of her gloved hand and said, “Oh, your mother and I have a bridge club on Thursdays and we laughed about your fairy tales but I don’t mind. Boys will be boys -” she flipped the hat out of the box like a magician flexing cards and placed it on her auburn locks.

“I didn’t. I -”I reached a hand out to take the money and get her change from the till when with a snake’s quickness, Hannah’s hand struck out and grasped mine.

It hurt when she squeezed but she relaxed her grip when she heard a woman’s voice pipe up from behind a curtain stretched across the doorway marked PRIVATE. STAFF QUARTERS.

“Hannah? Is that you?”

The hate in Hannah’s eyes was shrugged off as easily as a tramps coat from small shoulders and again she smiled with the warmth of an aunt.

“Ah, hello Abigail. I was just saying hello to your boy.”

“Has he apologised for making up stories.”

Hannah looked at me and the hard wooden floor seemed to melt away hideously.

“There’s no need for that,” Hannah said. “I’m sure he realises he made a mistake.”

My hand pulsed painfully when she finally released me and stepped back.

“Keep the change,” she said and turned away and then in a louder voice, called to my mother; “I’ll see you Thursday, Abi.”

She waved once and then with the tinkle of the door bell, was gone.

The world seemed to turn slowly in the vacuum of air she had left behind. My heart drummed against my chest and the whooshing blood beating against my ear drums blocked out the rumble of wagons passing outside.

Rain knocked against the window but I took no notice.

I had more than seven pound change.

Mother had never given me pocket money but just like that I was the richest boy on the street. I could go out and buy sweets until I exploded.

With money paid from a dead child’s insurance.

It’s a bribe, I thought when my senses returned.

A means to keep me quiet.

My flesh shivered and again I thought of that river.

I scooped up the note and put it in the cash register, wanting no part of it.

Tonight I would lock my bedroom door and windows and pray for the dawn.

* * *

“Mom, I’m telling you – she’s a murderer.” Mother shook her head till her fake gold earrings beat against her cheek and left green smudges.

“Oh, Sam – all these wild stories is why you have no friends,” mother moaned, looking. “What about the werewolf in the high street or the ghost in the bathroom? I know you want to be a writer but you’ll make more money inheriting this hat shop.”

“I don’t want to work here,” I said. “Not now.”

“Oh, honey. The woman does a nice thing for you and you think she’s the worst. Anyway, what’s wrong with selling hats? This store’s been in our family for eighty years.”

I didn’t wish to hurt her heart by saying that it looked older with a boiler that didn’t warm the rooms and a leaky roof that didn’t keep the floor dry.

True, I wished for more than this – I wanted to explore the world. But I had no money so I created that world in my mind. I dreamed up a library of falsehoods to make me believe that magic existed when my mood was low. To give me heart and hope in dark times.

But damn it, I wasn’t lying this time and as mother refused to believe me then I would expose Hannah’s villainy before she discovered I could not be brought off.

Mother had always asked me not to be ungrateful when given presents so I reconsidered and took seven pounds out of the till – just enough to write to Sheffield archives and request any recent obituaries on the name Stokes.

It took a week before I heard anything. Mother would have grounded me had she known but I was lucky that the postman fetched the shoebox of printed newspaper obituaries when she was out.

Mother would tell me to hand drinks out at her bridge club. Of course I had listened to their prattle but one nugget of information had remained when one of the women mentioned Yorkshire.

Hannah had noted to having lived there, a beautiful spot in Sheffield that she had left some years before. Was she married? Had she had any other kids?

The woman was a mystery so I determinedly rummaged through the newspaper cuttings that the archives had posted me until I struck gold.

LOCAL WOMAN DOUBLE SHOCK Hannah Stokes, 28 wishes to thank friends for the kindness and flowers shown at the double funeral of her daughter and husband, felled last week from diphtheria. Mrs. Stokes nursed the pair for 48 hours before their spirits gave up and though their lives were insured for a hefty amount…

A Thomas Stokes had been prosecuted for shoplifting, Marion Stokes wished to report the theft of her poodle, Lancelot but it was at the bottom of the shoebox when luck found me again. When the penultimate clipping informed the reader of a terrible tragedy.

FIRE OF UNCERTAIN ORIGIN KILLS WIDOW A house fire reportedly started by a lighting strike is believed to have killed a local widow, Hannah Stokes, 30, of 29 Croftwell Road. Mrs. Stokes seemed to have turned her life round of late with plans, mentioning to friends that she planned to spend some insurance money recently received on the trip of a lifetime. Though detectives rustled through the ashes of the ruined home, they found no sign of Mrs. Stokes but did pull out the charred bodies of her three daughters that had once been fortunate to survive a recent diphtheria epidemic…

I had a motive but no proof. Hannah loved life and money so to get the best of both she rid herself of barriers to these things. She could have more fun with a spouse’s insurance money than the man himself and children were another mouth to feed.

Better to be a wealthy widow than a burdened family hen.

But mother would never believe me and when Hannah tittered girlishly at bridge that she had met a man – one she wished to marry, I knew that I had to act to save his life.

* * *

I was small when it happened – when the spider bit me. Mother had told me to dust and clean beneath the counter but of course, I didn’t. I was waiter and cashier enough and refused to be a maid so mother could pinch pennies but when the hat box fell off the counter and I reached down to reclaim it, I felt a pinch of fangs between the cobwebs.

I fitted, I foamed and wept but when the venom left my body and mother paid the doctor’s fee for saving my life, she told me to be wary of black widows. If I ever found one that had dared out into the sunlight I should stamp on it.

I intended to do just that.

Sergeant Michael Sullivan made no pretense about being in love with Mother. Despite being single and motherless himself he had brought seventeen ladies’ hats in our store for an excuse to talk to my mother and stare longingly at her like some besotted schoolboy.

He was a simple lad of good humour and slow to temper but when I brought him the paper cuttings he didn’t immediately shrug me off. If he were to make Mother his sweetheart then it wouldn’t help his case to call her only son a nut.

“Again with the stories, Sam?” He took off his helmet and rubbed the lard on his head after mother had mentioned once that she liked a man with well kept nice hair. “Have you heard the one with Peter and the wolf?” “But the newspapers -”

“It’s not against the law to start your life again halfway across the country,” Michael explained, patiently. “And who’s to say it’s the same Hannah Stokes? Even if the ages match up. Okay, so she’s unlucky -”

“No one’s THAT unlucky,” I said, tears streaming my eyes at the unfairness of it. For once I was telling the truth and no one would believe me. “The only thing that hasn’t happened to her is a meteor landing on her head.”

Sullivan sighed but didn’t raise his voice as I expected. “What do you want me to do? Dig up the bodies and do an autopsy?”

I looked at him hopefully. “Well…”

“No, not for this nothing,” Sullivan said, dropping the newspaper clippings back into the shoebox. “It would cost more taxpayers money then we’d see in our lifetimes after they exhume the bodies and find you wrong -”

“IF I’m wrong,” I corrected but said no more as I knew it would hurt my case.

I had been very welcoming of Sullivan’s awkward intrusion into mother’s life. Maybe a young man’s affection would break her dark spell and Sullivan appreciated my help on notes with mother’s favorite flowers and food.

He promised to look into matters but nothing more.

No, he would not tell Hannah who had brought up complaints against her. He would talk to her and see which way the water went.

But by the weekend, the black widow’s luck seemed to have improved greatly.

She did not attend Sergeant Michael Sullivan’s funeral but when Mother wept at his graveside as the vicar read the psalms, I realised that she had loved him after all.

Of course, Mother blamed herself for his suicide. The certainty that he felt his love was unreciprocated had led him to take his own life.

But, honestly – I don’t think he did it.

* * *

I had no alternative – like a down on his luck gambler with his back to the wall, I threw in my last hand and created a trap that the sticky legs of this black widow could not escape. Especially after she set her eyes on me.

I don’t know if the drink she offered me at bridge club was poison, true, it had small black flecks in it and when mother registered my caution and said she would drink it instead, Hannah laughed the whole thing off and poured the water down the sink.

That was the night I left the shoebox of newspaper cuttings on her front door step and a note in trembling handwriting indicating some anonymous intention to tell all. This nameless shadow had proof – I didn’t – and wouldn’t stop until she was legally hanged by the neck till dead – I would.

But she didn’t know that.

All I needed was for her to react, to put one foot wrong that I could use as evidence against her.

But what I didn’t expect her to do was come late at night to mother’s hat shop, wild eyed and weeping that there was a burglar in her house. She needed her good friend to run and fetch the police, my mother was kind – surely she would help her!

Shortly after the bell tingled and Mother’s footsteps died away, I drew my ear away from my bedroom door when I heard boots click on the private quarters stairs.

“Sam?” Hannah called. “We’re alone now. You don’t have to be scared, I just want to talk.”

The only exit was down the stairs, past her and it was a twenty foot drop to the ground below outside my bedroom window.

“Sam? I’ve brought you that water – I need you to drink it this time.”

Children hid under the bed and foolishly, I told myself that I was a man but when my fear snapped me into a charge that tried to barrel into her and hopefully break her neck as she toppled downstairs, instead she laughed, grabbed my hair and dragged me back onto the landing with the annoyance of a farmer ushering a wayward sheep into its pen. “You’ve caused me enough problems, boy,” her voice lost its musical greeting as she thrust a small flask at me. Liquid sloshed inside and I closed my mouth like it was glued.

“Come now, it’s good for you,” she said and we struggled as she cut my lips with her fingernails, trying to force my mouth open and then she howled as I kicked her shin and barked in worse agony when some of the liquid spilled out on her arm and sizzled.

“You little devil,” Hannah shrieked like a harpy loose on earth. “Your mom’s a good friend – you think I wouldn’t recognise your handwriting after I’ve been around the place. Nosing through all her possessions–” she stopped talking when she heard the bell tinkle downstairs and her eyes glowed pure hate at me.

She looked like a bad sportsman that missed the goal by an inch.

It was wrong and unfair. It was too soon.

“Hannah – by good fortune, I ran into a copper in the next street,” my mother called, having come in through the shop door and called up from behind the counter. “Hello?”

Hannah showed her teeth and then with some resignation, made a shushing gesture as if this matter had never happened and seemed to take a moment to transform into a happy normal creature rather than the mad thing that had previously attacked me.

Dabbing her burnt arm, she turned and hurried downstairs, positively skipping.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said. “I was so scared -”

“Mom, she tried to kill me,” I couldn’t stop the hot tears when they came and astonishingly, Hannah looked hurt as if we had made a deal of immunity and I had broken it.

“What’s all this?” a policeman said and mother’s eyes were as hard as his shield.

“Sam, that’s enough -”

You’re embarrassing me.

“But it’s true,” I choked on snot and saliva but I could not stop talking. I would not. “She tried to kill me. She killed Michael -”

Mother’s anger turned to hurt as she was reminded of what she had lost and her soft words became a bark.

“That’s enough.”

“It’s okay,” Hannah said with great patience.

Children were always trouble and liars.

“Sam’s been telling the world how I’m some black widow, how I shot Sullivan in the head and that I’m really a werewolf who sings to the moon.”

“How did you know Micky was shot in the head?” asked the policeman.

Hannah stopped her story and recalibrated the situation. “W-what?”

“That wasn’t in the paper,” the officer said. “How did you know he was shot in the head?”

Hannah laughed good humoredly like an actor who had stumbled her lines. “I – I heard. I must have.”

“Mom, she has poison, she tried to make me drink it,” I said and though she tried to put it away, the officer covered the distance between them in two stride and snatched it away.

“You have no right, that’s my property,” Hannah snarled like a dog deprived of a bone.

“You can have it back when you tell me how you knew about Micky’s death. I was his friend. I had to break the news to his mother and I didn’t even tell her about the head shot.” The officer’s voice became very low and controlled. “You want to tell me again how -”

Hannah had not lived so long on the outside of the law by answering questions first, she attacked with her fingernails, going for his eyes and ran out the room as he staggered but didn’t fall.

Mother scooped me up protectively as Hannah screamed her vengeance from down the street and the dazed and blinking officer stumbled out after her.

I didn’t see the chase but when I heard the gunshots, I knew it was over.

* * *

Now there isn’t much to mention. Only the police has asked me to go to Newgate to identify the wounded widow in her hospital wing bed but mother refuses me to go. I saved new newspaper clippings of her trial, how her dead children and lovers had been exhumed and their guts were found rotten with arsenic.

Mother threw all the papers away, saying they were not mementos to save. She had been hurt by the betrayal of her friend – lately, she has been hurt by a lot of things but now we have a future and a peaceful one since the judge has donned his black cap and Hannah will meet her maker next week.

I think this will be my last story. The life of a writer is too exciting for me and I will be happy enough working in a hat shop after all.

Good night.