A Midsummer Night’s Nightmare

Mysterious tales are, for some reason, usually set in the depths of winter. This one is different.

"What’s that star?" asked Lamienne.

"That’s not a star!" sneered Reece.

The Volvo estate negotiated a tight bend in the winding country road as it climbed the rugged hill, taking the bright point of light out of view of the two children in the back seat, for the moment. Several seconds passed before another bend revealed it again.

"Look," said Lamienne, "that’s a star!"

"It’s not a star," insisted Reece.

"What is it then?"

"It’s a planet," explained Reece triumphantly. "Girls know nothing."

Lamienne digested this information, or, rather, tried to. "Daddy?" she said at length, "what’s a planet?"

Donald looked through the window into the depthless bowl of the midsummer night. "That star’s called Venus." Lamienne’s father considered carefully before continuing. "A planet is a special kind of star."

"See," said Lamienne, "it is a star."

"It’s not a star, it’s a planet," insisted Reece.

Mary, in the passenger seat, turned to her husband at the wheel of the Volvo and said, quietly, "Nice try, Donald."

Their two children, Reece and Lamienne, continued to argue in the back. Reece was nearly two years older than his sister and this undoubtedly gave him an unfair advantage. However, Lamienne had enough determination to hold her ground, nevertheless. Donald decided to try again. "Not all stars are planets, but all planets are like stars."

There was silence from the back seat while each of the youngsters tried to determine who had won.

"So you’re both right," added Mary.

Before the children could dispute this, Donald continued, "That planet is called Venus, which is sometimes called the Evening Star."

"Because you only see it in the evening," said Mary.

"Except for when you see it in the morning," whispered Donald, for Mary’s benefit only.

Venus hung like a brilliant jewel in the blue-black sky of late evening. It was approaching the final week of June in what had been a glorious summer. The embers of the day still gave colour to the mantle of darkness overhead, though midnight was approaching. It looked like it might never go completely dark that night, as the Remington family’s car climbed the West Pennine moors towards their farmhouse home.

They had spent the day with family friends, the Caufields. The Caufields had just returned from a holiday in the Caribbean, to their home in Cannock, Staffordshire, while the Remington family were themselves returning from a vacation in Cornwall, all steep-cliffed harbours, fishing boats and all. Donald and Mary had known Susan and Geoff since before either couple had married, though the Caufields had had no children – at least not so far. In a way, in the meantime, it was as if the Caufields had almost adopted their friends’ children as their own. Reece and Lamienne enjoyed the trips to the Caufield household despite the long drive south. This particular visit – as was customary, and the first for some months – had been a relaxed and happy affair.

In fact, the four adults and two children had especially enjoyed themselves together, perhaps more than usual. So it was that a tired but cheerful family were approaching home and a welcome bed, feeling content and peaceful, after day full of pleasant memories.

How much that was about to change.

The family tumbled into the farmhouse, which seemed awoken by their sudden presence. Lights came on, decimating the shadows. Mary went into the kitchen, closely dogged by the children. The chance to move around again after the confines of the car had galvanised them, and Mary knew from long experience that the best way to get them to settle was to feed them. She took out a packet of Cheerios from a cupboard and filled two bowls, adding fresh milk that she had, planning strategically ahead, bought at the last convenience store they had passed. Then she went back to the hallway. Donald had taken all the cases out of the hatchback of the car and placed them on the paved flags before the front step. She picked two of the lighter bags – an overnight bag and her small valise – and took them upstairs. Along the banistered landing, past the bathroom and into the adults’ bedroom. She snapped on the light, and then stopped.

She looked round the room, as if expecting to see something out of place. But everything was just as it had been left a week earlier. Yet something was amiss. What was it? She took a step into the room, shrugging off the feeling, but stopped once more. What was it? The room seemed exactly as it should be, yet the feeling would not leave her.

She walked over to the bed, placing the bags upon it. Should she unpack now? It was late, but the journey had made her restless, and she knew it would be little while before she would be able to get her head down. And then there was… She listened carefully. Downstairs, sounding miles away, she could hear the children in the kitchen. At least they were not arguing. Through the open front door, she could also hear Donald, still attending to the car. She opened a bag, and debated with herself whether to put anything away in drawers or just tip everything into the laundry basket.

Something checked her again. This time, she noticed that there was a faint odour in the air, that reminded her of the sea. She sniffed the contents of the bag. "I bet there’ll be sand in everything," she said to herself, and took both bags over to the lidded laundry basket. She picked out a few items not for washing – bath bag, hair brush, shoes – and tipped the rest into the basket. She did not see whether there was anything else in the basket. As she turned, she suddenly realised what had held her before. The room was frigidly cold.

Automatically, she touched the radiator, although she knew it would not be on. "Donald, could you turn on the central heating?" She called. "Righto," she heard him answer, from far away. She picked up the two empty bags and went to place them in the top of a set of fitted cupboards. In order to open the cupboard, she had to close the bedroom door first. Reaching up, she pulled upwards on the handle. Normally it opened with a swish of the sliding support struts. It didn’t give. She pulled harder. Nothing happened. She gave the handle a firm twist and tug, and, at last, the cupboard door swung upwards, reluctantly.

She wondered what the matter had been with the door. She’d mention it to Donald in the morning. She gathered up the two bags, reached up, and slid them in to the cupboard. She felt very cold. She turned her back to the cupboards and wondered if there was something warm she could slip into while the heating came on.

The shock of one of the bags falling on her head was more sudden than painful. She tried to turn to catch the wretched thing as it tumbled onto her shoulders. The second bag caught her full in the face, making her cry out. The first bag, slipped though her hands to the floor. Another bag, not one she had just put away, then struck her on top of the head. This was heavy and hard, as if fully laden, and a corner seemed to catch her viciously. She stumbled under its weight.

It was then as if bag after bag was raining down on her. She heard the clink of glass, like bottles, and felt pain as something else hit her from above, and knocked her to the ground. She found herself shouting Donald’s name over and over, until one more impact was so severe she let out a scream.

"What is it?"

Donald was standing over her. She was slouched against the wall cupboards. "I’m sorry I took so long, but I couldn’t get the bedroom door open – I thought you’d locked it at first."

"I don’t know – all these – " she gestured around her. The valise and the overnight bag were all that lay on the floor by her side.

"Something… fell on me. From up there." She indicated the high cupboard that she still yawned open. Donald, somewhat taller than his wife, looked inside. "There’s nothing in there," he said.

He helped her to her feet. For a moment, she looked confused, trying to recollect what had just happened. The two empty bags still lay on the floor. There was little weight in either of them.

"I must be getting clumsy," she said. "Maybe I’m more tired than I realised."

Donald was still holding her arm. "Come downstairs and I’ll fix you something to drink. You’re trembling. Are you cold?" She didn’t answer as he led her out of the room on to the landing. Neither of them noticed the laundry basket.

It was on its side, the clothes spilled out over the floor, with a blackened pool of water spreading out slowly across the floorboards and soaking into the carpet.



"What happened, dear?" Donald asked as he led Mary down the stairs. He was beginning to appreciate that there was more that just tiredness from the journey, or a clumsy slip in the bedroom, when she didn’t answer him. "I tell you what," he joked, trying to raise her spirits and get a response from her, "we’d better get that washing machine going – those bags were smelling really high!."

Mary suddenly looked up into his face, but, for a moment, didn’t speak.

"I could really do with a hot drink," she said.

"Could you eat something too? It’s been a long journey."

"Very long."

Donald realised he was supporting most of her weight on his arm.

When they got to the kitchen, the children were still seated at the table, finishing the Cheerios. "You’d better not have had extra helpings," said Donald, as he helped Mary into a chair. He went over to the gas cooker, lit the grill. He looked inside the fridge for something he could cook quickly, such as bacon or sausages. There would probably be hamburgers in the freezer. He stuck his head in, and thought he heard a faint chiming noise. He looked round to see what it was, but couldn’t see anything. He was about to ask Mary had she heard anything, but, he could judge from her vaguely distracted air, she had not, and didn't speak, except to ask, "What do you fancy?" She didn’t answer. He closed the fridge, and walked over to her, putting his hands on each arm of the chair.

"Would you like a good, old-fashioned bacon sandwich? Mustard and ketchup, all the trimmings?"

She wasn’t looking at him. "Why did you open the kitchen window? It’s so cold in here."

"I didn’t." He looked round. The kitchen window wide open, latched on its fastener. Outside, the blue-black mid-summer night was turned to complete darkness by the contrast of the house lights. Donald looked at the children, but chose not to say anything. They had probably been looking for stars again.

He picked up the electric kettle and crossed to the sink below the window, and filled it. He returned to the power cable, plugged it in, switched it on, confirmed by the glow of a small red light on the top of the handle. He crossed back to window. For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw movement outside. Could be a fox, he thought, though they seldom came this far up the hillside away from the cover of the trees. He reached over the sink to the window latch.

There was a rush of air and a deep, baffled flapping sound, that made him jump back. A large, black bird, like a crow or raven, had settled on the window ledge. The creatures feathers seemed dark, even against the night background, its feathers shone with an iridescent oily sheen, blocking his way to the window latch. It’s beak was a pale yellow, as long as and thicker than his thumb, curving down like a scimitar to vicious-looking point. The one eye turned towards him, looking him up and down, as if giving a silent message of warning.

Donald laughed at himself for being so startled. He recovered the involuntary step back he had made, and shooed the bird away from the window. It shuffled from side to side but did not fly away. Donald looked round at Mary, and gave an embarrassed smile. "It’s quite beautiful," he said. "Don’t you think?"

"Get rid of it," said Mary.

He waved his arms at the bird, It did not react, but continued to stare at him.

"Beautiful plumage. That black sheen. You can almost see rainbows in it. Like oil on water."

At the word, "Water," the bird gave a cry and hopped, in an ungainly fashion, on to the draining board, narrowly missing sliding on the on the grip-less stainless steel into the sink. It’s wing stuck out awkwardly, like it was broken. The bird cried out again, as if in pain, and attempted to negotiated its way across the draining board to the adjoining work surface.

"Don’t let it in here!," said Mary.

Donald tried first of all to block the bird’s progress, then to gather it up in its arms. But it seemed in pain and avoided his grasp. It let out another cry.

"I – I can’t get hold of it, " said David.

"Get rid of it!"

"Daddy, make it go away, said Lamienne. The two children bracketed Mary.

Donald turned to face them, and as he was distracted, the bird leapt into the air landed awkwardly on the table, scattering cutlery and knocking over the milk jug, the liquid, blue-white, dripping on the stone floor. The creature sprawled in a disarray of black, like a dishevelled shroud, in the centre of the table, and struggled to stand upright. It took a sudden lurch towards the mother and her two children.

Lamienne screamed.

Donald rushed around the table to put himself between the children and the bird. He had his arms outstretched as if to guard them.

Behind him, the bird suddenly took off from the table and flew smoothly out of the window into the night.

For a moment, nobody spoke. Them Mary said, "It must have been shamming."

"I’ve never known a crow – or any member of the crow family – do something like that, Donald said. "I thought it was just skylarks or something, to lead you away from their nests."

"Shut the window."

"Let’s go to bed. We can clean this up in the morning."

"No," insisted Mary, "do it now. Children, go up to bed."

Donald gathered the pieces of broken crockery and Mary tidied away the other remnants of supper. On the table he found a black feather. He picked it up and looked at it, unsure what to do with it, and failing to notice the speck of blood where it had lain on the table cloth. Just as he was trying to decide what to do with it, he heard both the children, upstairs, scream.

Mary and Donald were out of the kitchen in a s hot. Sprinting up the stairs, Donald able to move faster but Mary blocking his way. Across the landing. To the children’s’ room that they shared. They burst in.

The two children had clearly barely entered the room themselves. The room was brightly lit, almost dazzling against the midsummer night beyond the window. Buzzing dully, drifting lazily as if stupefied by the heat of the just-gone day, crawling over every surface and hanging in slowly swirling clouds, were flies. Huge great bluebottles. Everywhere.

Donald slowly crossed the room. The very air was full of the low, erratic buzzing of the black, docile blobs. It was as if they had all gathered for something that the humans’ arrival had interrupted.

He got to the window and opened it. He tried sweeping the flies towards it with his arms, to no effect. He retrieved a towel, and attempted to waft the fizzing clouds. But the flies had no idea what he was trying to do, they settled on the walls and basked as if in the warmth of evening sunshine.

"Well, there’s no way your sleeping in here tonight," said Donald in his good news tone of voice. "You can come and sleep with us."

"Oh, can we?" said Reece.

"What about the flies?" said Lamienne, cross.

"We’ll get rid of them in the morning," said Mary. "Now, come along. I think it’s time for bed. For all of us."

Donald put out the light and closed the children’s bedroom door.



Donald led the way to their room while Mary, her hands around the shoulders, shepherded them up the landing. Donald open the bedroom door and switched on the light.

"Poo!" said Reece, "what’s that smell?"

It might have been more correctly described as several, pungent, unpleasant smells mixed together. There was a recognisable smell they had met on their holiday in Cornwall, before their trip had taken them to their friends in the Midlands. It was the kind of tide-gone-out, rotting seaweed, with dead fish and a hint of sewage smell, which had been their least endearing memory of an otherwise enchanting holiday. The dead fish smell was amplified by a more gruesome, distressing stench of putrefaction, as if something larger had somehow crawled into the room and died. Incongruously, with all that, was something that had a kind of solvent base to it, artificial, oily, but equally stomach-turning – especially if one were prone to travel-sickness.

"It’s like Daddy when he spilt petrol at the petrol station," said Lamienne.

Donald walked slowly into the room. "No, it’s not petrol, it’s more like – " but at this point his voice trailed off, as he could not think quite what it was like. He noticed something else. As he moved across the room, the mixture of stink seemed to move through its own kind of spectrum of vileness, first this odour was predominant, then that. His first reaction was to look towards the bedroom window, in case the stench was drifting in from outside. But all the windows were firmly closed.

Mary had squeezed gently past the children, and was moving slowly around the bed. "Donald," she said, "You said, something like petrol?"

"Yes,"

"Well, I can smell something more like burning."

He rushed over to her, putting his hands on her arms, and sniffed. "Are you sure? Is something burning?"

Mary concentrated, then clamped her hand over her mouth. "Oh, Donald," she cried through her fingers, "it’s like burning hair!"

Donald moved round the room. As vile as the smell was, it was elusive, stronger here, almost absent there, and ever-changing. Mary moved also. Suddenly, she let out a stifled scream, staring at her feet.

"What is it?" Donald was at her side in a second. He looked down. There was the upended laundry basket, the ghastly stain on the carpet. He pressed down tentatively with a toe. Moisture oozed out.

Donald felt a slow anger build within him. It fed on an inconsequential train of thoughts. They had just been on a lovely holiday. They had just spent a wonderfully happy day with their best friends. Now they had returned to their home, his wife and children and himself, a place they had once longed for, planned for, finally achieving – Mary and Donald had even joked about it as their dream house – where they had raised their children and always been so content together. Now, they had returned to the place, and it was as if they were under some kind of attack, something which wanted to undermine them, threaten them, destroy their piece of mind forever, such that, wherever they might go afterwards, they would seek for it, in vain.

Donald snatched up the laundry basket and its foul contents, and stormed over to the window. Wrestling with the catch with fumbling fingers, he finally threw open the window and hurled the offensive bundle into the night. He stopped, and sniffed.

Cool fresh air from the midsummer night gently flooded into the room. It dispersed the foetid atmosphere of the enclosed space, like a subtle fragrant scent. Stepping closer to the window, Donald looked out to the northern horizon. The day just gone, June 21st, the day just about to come, June 22nd, with the shortest night in between, had seemed overrun with disturbing – distressing – events like a multiple pile-up on a motorway. On a clear night such as this, in midsummer, it never went completely dark. The sky due north was the deepest indigo, but it was not the impenetrable blackness of a winter’s evening. The sun lay tantalisingly close below the northern horizon – 900 miles further north it would not have set at all. In just a couple of hours the sky to the north-east would begin to brighten, heralding the onset of the new day, the dawn at last on its way. Donald longed for the daylight, where nothing more could clothe itself in shadow.

The air in the room improved steadily with the little eddies and drafts from the outside. Mary told the children to take off their shoes and outer clothes and get into their parents’ bed, while she and Donald did the same, lying down beneath the quilt with the children between them. Mary put out the bedside light, sinking the room into blackness. Darkness in the countryside is a shock to people used to town night-time. There is not street-lamp, no headlight, no reflected glare from another window – just no light at all. At first, they could see nothing, but as their eyes accommodated, the slight iridescence from outside silhouetted the window. But that was all. Soon, however, dawn would start to steal its way across the hills behind the farmhouse, like an ill-behaved youngster hoping to sneak back home late from a first date without being detected.

It was cool but not unpleasant with the window open, and they gained warmth from each other. The discomfort of clothing in bed receded, and they began to doze.

"Lamienne?" The whispered voice was close to her ear.

"Yes, Daddy?"

"Speak very quietly. Is your brother asleep?"

"No, Daddy." His hoarse reply suggested he was just about to drop off.

"Listen to Mummy and Daddy."

"Yes, Mummy."

"Mummy and Daddy are going to get up now."

"Where are you going?"

"Lamienne, you know that Daddy loves you very much, don’t you?"

"And, Reece, you know Mummy loves you very much also?"

"Yes."

"And you love us don’t you?"

"Yes, Mummy," said Reece.

"And we’re always going to be very happy together."

"But where are you going?"

"We’ve got to get up and go, and you’re to come with us."

"OK, Mummy."

"Where are we going?" asked Lamienne.

"We’ve just got to go down stairs. Alright? But we can’t put on the light. OK?"

"OK. But how are we going to know where we are going if we can’t see?"

"Sh! Quietly! Just hold hands, then hold on to Mummy-and-Daddy’s hands. OK?"

"OK"

"Lamienne, give me your hand."

"I can’t find it."

"Here it is."

"And, Reece, you give Mummy your hand."

"Yes, Mummy."

"Are you holding each other’s hands?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Now, we want you to push back the quilt, and stand up. And you must be as quiet as little mice. OK?"

"Yes, Mummy."

"Then stand up, and we’ll lead you to the door."

"How can you see the way to the door?"

There was a pause. "Just hold Daddy’s hand tightly. I can see clearly."

"But how can you see?" insisted Reece.

"Just hold Mummy-and-Daddy’s hands very tightly."

"Daddy, you’re –" Lamienne began.

"Quiet!"

"Daddy, you’re hurting my hand."

"Mummy! Mine too!" Reece’s voice rose to more than a whisper. "Mummy!"

"What is it? What’s the matter?, said Mary, snapping on the bedside light. She was heaving herself upright in the bed, looking drowsy. Donald, next to her on his side, opened an eye.

The two children were beneath the quilt. They, and it, were on the floor, leaning against the wall, a few inches from the open doorway, – far from the two adults who lay, uncovered, in the bed, on the other side of the room about twelve feet away.

The children sat frozen together clutching each other’s hand. "What’s the matter?" said Mary. "What an Earth are you doing over there?"

An Earth-shattering thump shook the house.

The children screamed and fled across the bed to their parents. Donald and Mary grabbed them, uncomprehending, as another thump shook the house as if a giant footfall had landed on the ground outside. The window was still open, outside still dark. The impact had not come from beyond the window. It was inside the house.

"What the Devil’s that?" said Donald, hugging Lamienne to his chest. He realised his own heart was pounding in his ears, confusing him. Lamienne was speechless, terrified. Mary, too, could not speak. She was staring out through the open bedroom door to the darkness of the rest of the house. Reece clung to her, his arms coiled around her shoulders.

"Could it be… could it be an earthquake?" said Mary at length.

As if to answer her, another terrific impact shook the house. The door swung slightly on its hinges. Floorboards in the landing gave a creak. A little inverse fountain of dust strayed from the ceiling.

"That was like something…" Mary trailed off, not wishing to complete the sentence. "Something downstairs."

"I know," said Donald. "Reece, Lamienne, what were you doing out of bed?"

"Somebody was talking with us," said Reece.

"Talking with you? Who?"

"I don’t know," said Reece, close to tears.

"We thought it was you," said Lamienne.

Donald listened for a moment. There was nothing about the sound he could recognise. Except for the certainty that it was from within the house itself. "What did the person talking to you say?"

"It was both of you," said Reece.

"You were asking us to go downstairs."

There was a shattering impact, greater than the others, that made the bed shake. The terrified occupants hung on closer to each other. A wardrobe door swung slowly open.

"Downstairs?" There was another large "wump," as if in answer. "There’s something downstairs?"

Wump.

"I’m going to have a look," said Donald. He sprang out of bed.

"You can’t leave us here," said Mary.

"No," Donald considered. "Follow me. Stay close, but keep behind me."

Mary kept the children in front of her with guarding hands. Donald went first, and put on the landing light. He looked down the stairwell but saw only the hallway furniture. "Come on."

He crept down the stairs and turned on the hallway light. Nothing was out of place. Ahead of him, in the direction of the kitchen, he could make out dull, thumping sounds, almost like a boat banging along a jetty. He moved towards the closed kitchen door. When he was close enough, he flung open the door and snatched at the light switch.

The kitchen, too, seemed perfectly in order. The cereal bowls were still on the table where the children had left them.

There was another thump.

Donald’s eyes scanned the kitchen. The sound had come in the direction of the door, beneath the stairs, that lead to the cellar. There were more nondescript bumps and bangs, nothing compared to the great impact of a few moments earlier. Donald was certain the noise was coming from behind the cellar door.

"Follow me."

Donald moved across the kitchen and collected off a hook a large brass poker they sometimes used with the Aga stove. Then he moved over to the cellar door. There were creaking and scraping sounds coming from the other side, but nothing more. He reached out for the handle. "Are you ready?" Mary looked as if she would rather have done anything than find out what was beyond the door, but at the same time she knew she must. She nodded, holding the children more tightly to her.

In a swift grab, Donald threw open the door and reached for the light switch. The light came on, nothing happened, and he felt foolish with the poker held in mid-air. He threw it on the kitchen floor.

Only it was not quite nothing. The sounds had stopped. Donald looked down the stone steps into the cellar. They used it as a utility room, a chest-freezer and tumble-drier were down there. Toys that had fallen from favour. Tools, paints, an assortment of home-made pickles – even some better wines they had bought – usually abroad. The single, naked light-bulb seemed to struggle to drive away the shadows. Donald scanned the expanse of the cellar as far as he could see it from the top of the steps. Corners were elusive in gloom. Nothing, again, seemed out of place in the cellar. Donald stared. There was something wrong. What was it?

"Mary?"

Mary was just inside the doorway, with the children still close in front of her. "What is it?"

"Nothing – I just – … Pass me the torch, will you?"

There was a large, durable, rubber-coated torch hung from a hook by the back door. She would have to cross the kitchen to fetch it. "What is it?"

"Just get the torch."

She didn’t like to leave the children, but they were stood at the top of the steps, close to Donald. She fetched the torch, reached forward and gave it to him.

"What’s the matter?"

"I can’t see… I can’t see the floor of the cellar." He took the torch from her, flicked on its heavy duty beam, and aimed it downwards. "That’s funny. I still can’t see – "

He was cut off by the abrupt failure of both the kitchen and cellar lights, and by the cellar door slamming shut. In doing so, it knocked Mary sideways and sprawling across the dark floor of the kitchen, and trapped Reece and Lamienne on the top of the cellar steps with their father. Startled, he attempted to turn, but lost his footing. The torch careered crazily from his grasp, stabbing light into their eyes before falling through the air. Donald found himself grabbing for the torch and plunging headlong from the steps and falling into empty space.

Instead of the bone-shattering crunch of hitting the cellar floor, he was plunged into icy cold water.

Choking and spluttering, he surfaced to the sound of both Reece and Lamienne screaming in the stygian dark. He could feel no ground beneath his feet, and the water was salt. He thrashed to steady himself. The screams of the children were above him and away to his right. The nerve-tingling thrill of shock echoed through him.

"Don’t worry. Daddy coming."

He struck out in a crude dog-paddle towards where he imagined the steps should be. But where was all this water from? The children’s screaming was joined by another noise. It was Mary, calling desperately through the closed door, scrabbling to get it to open. But she could not.

Another stroke, and he barked his knuckles on stone. The steps. He kicked and got both hands on to a step, and started to heave himself out of the water.

He felt arms reach out to him.

"Lamienne, Reece, stay back. You may fall in."

But it was not a child’s hand that now grabbed his face.

"Give us the children," a voice hissed. It was not Lamienne or Reece. "Give us the children."

"No!" he yelled. The hand’s grip was brutal, as it pushed his face beneath the water and held him there. Water flooded into his gagging throat and on into his lungs. He kicked and struggled, but the vice-like grip was unyielding. Suddenly, the hand in the darkness plucked him by his face above the water.

"Give us the children!" The voice was more insistent now.

"Give us the children," said another voice. Inconsequentially, there was something familiar about the voices.

Donald spluttered and choked for a moment before he could answer. "No!"

The hand pressed him down beneath the icy water once more. This time he had just managed to grab a breath before the liquid poured into his nostrils. He almost waited for the hand to let him up. But it did not. Held in total darkness, beneath water, he felt resistance ebbing from him. The desire to suck in a breath was becoming overwhelming. He knew that if he attempted that breath, it would be his last as his lungs filled with water. Just when he thought he could endure no more, the hand, gouging its fingers into his cheeks, pulled his face from the water.

"Give us the children, and we will let you live!"

It was several seconds before he could muster the breath for a response. He could hear the children sobbing, sounds from the door, all amplified in the darkness.

"You can," he gasped, "never have the children. They’re our life! Take me, if you want a life."

The hand opened and let him drop back into the water. He heard, or thought he heard, one of the voices saying, "We wanted a life, a life with children."

He felt the last of his strength had gone as he slipped beneath the water for the final time.

Suddenly, the door above him opened. Mary stood at the top of the steps. She was holding the big Maglite, that they carried in the Volvo for emergencies, in one hand, and the poker, which she’d used to prise open the cellar door, in the other. The children were on the steps, distressed and tearful. Donald lay, spread-eagled, on the bone-dry cellar floor.

Scrambling, stumbling, toes stubbing, elbows banging into unseen walls, the family, grabbing handfuls of each other’s clothing, fled up the stairs and along the darkened landing to the main bedroom. Donald pushed past Mary, halting their path, and scanned the bedroom with the Maglite. There were no flies, no odours, no voices, just the bedroom with the large bed against the far wall and the quilt on the floor at its foot. He shoved the group into the room, wedged a chair behind the door – the old-fashioned lock no longer had a key – and they flung themselves on the bed. Donald threw the quilt over them. The bedside digital lamp had failed in the loss of power, but the luminous dial on his watch showed 1:38. He went over to the window and looked desperately to the north-eastern hills. Sunrise would not be till 4:35 and then there was the height of the hills to climb above, but there should be pre-dawn twilight at least an hour before that. He estimated that the sky would start to lighten by three. God grant that it were sooner.

He climbed quickly into bed and drew the quilt around them, with the Maglite, still on, resting on the quilt, between his knees.

"Everyone hold tightly to each other. We mustn’t go to sleep. Everyone understand?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Yes, Daddy."

"We will stay awake till morning. We’ll tell each other stories to keep awake."

"Yes, Daddy."

"Right. Well," Donald managed to suppress the urgency that had built in his voice. "What shall we talk about?"

"I don’t know," said Mary. "What we did on our holidays?"

"Good idea. What did we do, children?"

"I don’t remember, Daddy," said Lamienne.

"Well – what about what we did today?"

"What day is it today?" said Mary.

"It’s going to be Friday. Friday the 22nd. When the sun comes up. Technically, it’s Friday now. Remember, we said we would come back from Cornwall a day early so that we could see the Caufields? They were flying back from the Caribbean the previous night."

"That’s right," said Mary. "So by today, you really mean ‘yesterday.’ Thursday."

"Yes," said Donald. "What did we do all day, children?"

"We spent the day with Auntie Susan and Uncle Geoff."

"They’d just got back from their holidays too," said Reece.

"They had been to – what’s that word?" said Lamienne.

"The Caribbean. They had just flown back from the Caribbean."

Donald thought about the night flight the Caufields had been on. Flying eastward, towards the heart of the sunrise, the night was very brief. He had experienced a similar thing himself.

"Can we go to the Caribbean for a holiday?"

"Maybe next year."

"Maybe we could live there."

Mary looked at Donald in the darkness. "Perhaps moving wouldn’t be such a bad idea," she said.

The children chatted on, hesitantly at first, with only the reflected glow of the Maglite showing their faces. Eventually, they talked more freely, as Donald and Mary kept reminding them of events through the day in Staffordshire. Inevitably, though, they begin to tire as the minutes dawdled past. The Maglite appeared to be dimming. Donald wondered how much battery power was left in the lamp. Then he began to realise that it was not just the lamp growing weaker, but that the hue of the sky outside the window was changing. An uncountable number of indescribable shades of blue quietly displayed themselves at the window, before yielding to lilacs and pinks.

"Daybreak," he said, as if planting a flag on a hard-won battle-ground. Mary and the children were silent. Without realising it, he too drifted off into sleep.

He was awoken by the sound of someone whistling. Brilliant sunlight dazzled through the window, and the hillsides glowed with a day in full glory. The digital clock was back on, flashing. This meant that the power-cut was over, but that clock would need resetting with the time and the date. Without power, its electronic memory wouldn’t work. It was a nuisance resetting it, Donald thought to himself. Outside, the whistling approached. The paperboy, who had a long climb on his bike to deliver to the farmhouse, often announced his triumphal ascent with a whistle.

Donald got up, leaving the family undisturbed, and went downstairs. Opening the door, the day burst in, hurting his eyes. He was just in time great the paperboy.

"Hello, Tom."

"Morning, Mr Remington. Am I glad you’re here. We couldn’t remember at the shop if you were due back today or tomorrow. I’d’ve been mad if I’d had to cycle all this way for nothing. Here’s your paper."

Donald took the paper and looked at it, only half-noticing its headlines at first. "Just a minute, Tom."

"What’s the matter?"

"This is yesterday’s paper."

"You sure?"

"There it is, look. Thursday June 21st."

"But it is Thursday. That’s why we were unsure. We thought Thursday was an odd day to be coming back. Then I remembered Mrs Remington saying you’d be back a day early for something."

"Yes, but that was in order for us – " he broke off, distracted by a story on the front page of the paper. The headline told of a plane crash. The plane had ditched in the Irish Sea.

"Something wrong?"

The plane had developed severe engine trouble and the pilot had decided to ditch rather than risk coming down over land. Emergency services had reached the aircraft within minutes. The overnight flight had been from the Caribbean.

"No. I – I don’t think…"

It had been a miracle that so many of the passengers and crew had been rescued, the story went on. The only fatalities had been a couple, trapped inside the aircraft when it sank, who were believed to have come from Cannock, Staffordshire.

They were named as a Mr and Mrs G Caufield.

"Well, whatever it was, I don’t get paid till Friday, so today is definitely Thursday," said Tom, and rode off.

The End