Time Immemorial
by Darryl Tomlin
The living room was hot, stuffy and crowded. Small huddles of mourners
stood around, talking in hushed voices. Martin stood in a corner,
backed up against a hideous 1970s brick fireplace. In his hand, Martin
awkwardly clutched a greasy paper plate, complete with a half-eaten
sausage roll. He would’ve liked to set it down somewhere, but every
conceivable surface was covered with either chintzy ornaments or more
buffet food. Feeling vaguely nauseous, he glanced at his watch and
wondered whether he had stayed long enough to leave Harry’s wake
without looking rude.
The truth was, Martin had barely known Harry, even though they had
taught in the same school for almost ten years. Martin had joined the
school as a newly qualified teacher, while Harry was already in his 60s
and quite obviously preparing for retirement. The two teachers had
shared some students, and some had complained to Martin that much of
their curriculum consisted of watching episode after episode of
‘Roots’, while he sat drinking coffee and staring out of the window.
Martin’s boss, Angela, the head of department, frequently complained
about Harry.
‘He can’t have much longer left in him’, she had once muttered to
Martin in the staff room after another complaint. ‘I bet he’s got a big
fat pension to retire on. All teachers of his age have. Why doesn’t he
just go, for God’s sake?’
Harry had also made awkward attempts to befriend Martin, despite the
age gap. He never failed to sit next to him in the staff room if there
was a spare seat, and the pair had bonded over a shared aversion to 9S1
and the terrible triumvirate of James, Caine and Bradley. Once Harry
had invited Martin and ‘his partner’ around for dinner, to which Martin
had made his excuses. Since then, the pair had spoken little, although
Martin had noticed the extent to which Harry had aged in recent months,
until Harry had disappeared on long-term sick leave. He hadn’t returned.
Harry politely made his way through the living room and into the
kitchen, where he found Angela talking to a man with an alarmingly
shiny bald head and red face. The man was animatedly explaining how
important it was that kids learned about Churchill, to which Angela was
nodding politely. Martin, having been victim to many such conversations
in the past at parent’s evenings, interjected and led Angela away into
the hallway, leaving the man angrily eating cheese and pineapple on a
stick.
Once they were out of earshot, Angela mimed putting a gun against her
head. Martin marveled at how effortlessly authoritative she looked in
her suit. No wonder he had been passed over for promotion. He tried not
to resent that his boss was younger than him.
‘Thanks for rescuing me’, she whispered conspiratorially. ‘I don’t know
how much more of that I could take. Why do people always think History
teachers should teach nothing other than the Battle of Britain and
Churchill?’
Martin nodded. He was still clutching his greasy paper plate. He
glanced around, spotted a small gap on a shelf in between some dusty
old framed photographs, and placed it down. ‘Yep, tell me about it.
I’ve had the same conversation with about three other people today
already.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Speaking of which, I think I’m
going to get off now.’
‘Oh lucky you. I think I need to stick around a bit longer. The deputy
head is here too, I don’t want to get my card marked.’
She saw the red faced man making his way back towards them, his plate
restocked with vol au vents.
‘Quick - get out now before he collars you too.’
He grinned. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Martin made his way to the spare bedroom and fished his coat out of the
pile dumped on the bed, and slipped out of the front entrance as
quietly as he could. The cold air was a relief after the stuffy living
room, and he stopped for a moment to enjoy it.
‘Martin’.
He turned round to see Carole – Harry’s daughter. There was something
incongruous about her, in her elegant black dress, stood in high heels
in the front lawn of Harry’s shabby 60s house. Her eyes were red and
puffy but she managed a small smile. She carried a small carrier bag in
her hand, out of which the sharp corners of books were breaking through
the plastic. She held it out to him.
‘Harry said to give you these’.
It was late in the evening before Harry remembered the carrier bag,
which he had dumped in the hallway shortly after getting home. The bag
split as he picked it up, and dusty, damp looking books spilled out
onto the floor. The haul mostly consisted of cheap, mass market crime
thrillers and history books about military campaigns. He sighed, and
began to sort them into a pile to take to the charity shop. At the
bottom of the pile was a battered old book with green binding,
yellowing pages, and letters picked out in gold. The title said ‘The
Mysterious Life of the Count of St Germain’. He noticed that something
was concealed within the pages. Initially he thought it was a bookmark,
but as he opened up the book, several pages of paper fell out. The
pages were closely handwritten in black ink. Intrigued, he took the
pages back to the sofa, and sat down to read.
‘To whom this may concern,
If you are reading this, it is to be assumed that I am dead. During my
lifetime I experienced something so extraordinary and inexplicable that
I do not feel that I can prepare for death without recording it
somewhere.
The account that follows is one that I wish to preserve for posterity
in the event of my death. I could not talk about it during my lifetime,
for reasons that will become apparent, but terminal illness has a way
of making one consider eternity.
Harry Lewis’
Martin put the letter down, feeling a growing sense of unease. He
wondered if he really wanted to know what Harry was going to divulge.
He thought about possible scandals and front-page headlines –
journalists at the front gate of the school, and the faint taint of
impropriety that would forever cling to him.
Curiosity got the better of him.
‘It was about 1981 when I first encountered the Brace family. I’d been
teaching for a couple of years at that point and was enjoying it. I
have fond memories of those times – things were a lot simpler in the
classroom then. All you needed was a textbook, some chalk, and a decent
bit of knowledge. There was none of this Powerpoint nonsense back then.
You’d be surprised how imaginative you can be when you are forced to
rely on your own wits instead of Youtube.
It was a few weeks into term that my attention first became drawn by a
young lad called Anthony Brace. At first, I’d paid him no mind. He was
the sort that passed under your radar – never spoke up or really
answered any questions. Other students eclipsed him. It was only when I
took in my first batch of essays that I really started to take an
interest. There were a few other bright students in the class, but
Anthony’s work was on a different planet. You’d never have known that
he was only 13, reading his work. He wrote with a real air of authority
– with that confident voice that only comes from deep learning. I did
initially suspect that his work must have been written by someone else,
so I kept him behind after the lesson.
He was a shy boy and was reluctant to speak to me, but he stayed
nevertheless. As Anthony tended to sit at the back of the class, up
until this point I hadn’t really noticed how striking a child he was.
He had long, dark hair which flopped in front of his face, obscuring
olive skin and extraordinarily deep set brown eyes which regarded me
cooly. I had a sense of a very keen mind at work.
I asked him a few questions about his essays to try and catch him out,
suspecting that perhaps someone in his family had had a hand in his
work. However, I quickly found that not only could he answer all of my
questions, but he was also possessed of a first-class intelligence.
There comes a time in a teacher’s career when you meet students who you
know are far cleverer than yourself, even at a young age. Sometimes
with such intelligence comes arrogance, but with Anthony he was such a
shy and self-effacing boy it was charming. From that day onward, we
struck up a great friendship. He would stay behind after each lesson,
and I would recommend him books to read – Churchill, W. H. Carr,
Trevelyan, Dickens – and he would return the favour, producing dusty
old tomes from his bag that you would never imagine a teenager reading
– Herodotus, Tacitus, and the like.
You can imagine how excited I was to meet his father at that year’s
first parent’s evening. I knew that I would spent much of that evening
complaining about one student’s lack of attention, or another’s awful
handwriting. Instead, I had such great things to say about Anthony, and
I couldn’t wait to discuss them with his father.
I recall perfectly the first time I saw Mr Brace. The school hall was
full; teachers sat at desks earnestly explaining to successive sets of
parents the failings of their child, while others sat waiting on
benches for their appointments, desperately trying to entertain bored
children. You almost had to shout to make yourself heard over the
noise. I was halfway through one such conversation when Mr Brace walked
in. I think every eye in the room turned to him – I distinctly remember
the headmaster at the time, Dr Bates, and how his jaw dropped. For a
beat, the room fell silent.
It wasn’t that it was unusual to see people outlandishly dressed – we
had just come out of the 70s after all – but Mr Brace exuded power and
confidence. In a room full of shabbily dressed people, he wore an
expensively tailored suit. I don’t think I even knew what one looked
like until Mr Brace walked past Dr Bates. He made him look like a
shabby insurance salesmen.
But it was more than the clothes. Mr Brace was devilishly handsome,
with long flowing hair, and olive skin. I remember him approaching a
row of seats, taken up by two parents and their sullen children.
Without words being spoken, the father stood up, and Mr Brace took his
place.
Eventually the room settled back to normal, and my appointment ended.
Mr Brace took his seat opposite me. It’s strange, but I can still
recall his smell – I thought at first it was an expensive aftershave,
but afterwards I changed my mind. It was the kind of smell one
associates with damp leaves in a forest at autumn. Not unpleasant, but
strange nevertheless.
Regaining my composure, I enthused to Mr Brace about his son. I told
him that he was one of the brightest students I had ever met, that his
knowledge was far above any teenager that I had ever known. I
recommended that he be entered for his ‘O’ levels early, and that he
should consider Oxbridge. I also suggested that he be entered into some
national essay writing competitions.
His father remained silent at first, but as I continued to praise his
son, I became aware that what I took to be a certain taciturn nature on
his part, was instead a growing sense of fury. Eventually, my words
tailed off, and Mr Brace spoke. His words were cold, hard, and
underlined with menace.
‘Mr Lewis, I have already mapped out the path for my son. It is not
your place to concern yourself with such things. There is much you do
not know about him.
He is a shy boy and does not like to be made a fuss of. You must stop
drawing attention to him.’
I confess that I was somewhat speechless. I had not expected this
reaction. I began to protest that I had only the best of intentions,
but Mr Brace cut me off. He stood up to leave, and I held out my hand,
apologizing if I had caused any inadvertent offence.
His hand was as cold and hard as iron. I winced, while his deep-set
eyes bored into my skull.
‘Remember what I have said. Leave the boy be. He wants to be left
alone.’
The next day, Anthony was absent, and he did not return for the rest of
the week. I wasn’t unduly concerned at first, as his attendance had
always been somewhat erratic, but after a week had passed with no sign
of the boy, I sought out his form tutor, who told me that Anthony’s
family had moved away suddenly.
You can imagine my shock, and disappointment. After my conversation
with Mr Brace, I felt responsible, although I was mystified as to what
I had done that had caused such offence. Unfortunately, any teacher
soon learns that there is no pleasing some parents. Eventually, Anthony
and Mr Brace faded from my mind, as one term replaced another, and
other promising students came to my attention. However, there were none
that were the equal of Anthony, and a small part of me mourned the
opportunity to help to guide the intellectual development of such a
fine mind.
It was fifteen years later before I had to cause to be reminded of him
again. By then, I had met and married my wife. My career ambitions were
frustrated by a head of department who swore that they would only leave
if they were ‘carried out in a pine box’, and as my wife and I had few
ties to our local area, we opted to move to Northumberland, where a
head of department post became available.
The new school was somewhat more forward thinking than my last. The old
chalkboards had just started to be replaced with whiteboards and marker
pens. To me this was a great loss; somehow, coming home without chalk
dust caked into my clothes made me feel less like a teacher. Computers
had also started to barge their way into school. Originally, it was
just one big boxy machine that students queued up to use, but by the
mid-90s, there were whole rooms full of the bloody things. Still, in
many ways the classroom was unchanging, with the same mixture of
students there always are, and it was in that spirit that I looked
forward to the beginning of term.
I received my class lists, set up my seating plans and registers, and
got on with the job. It was a good school and even in those early days
it became clear to me that there were many bright students, and I began
to take on my familiar role as a mentor to those who loved to read. I
enjoyed my first experience of running a department, and although there
were a few dinosaurs (isn’t that always the case?), I also struck up a
good rapport with Adam, a newly qualified teacher. A few days into
term, we were in the staff room, when I happened to mention how
impressed I was with a boy in my class, who had talked to me at length
about the works of Kafka.
‘Oh, that’s nothing’, Adam said, helping himself to a biscuit in the
staff room. ‘There’s a boy in my class who reads Tacitus. He can quote
whole lines of it.’
I smiled, recalling my own early days of teaching. ‘I knew a student
like that once. Read Herodotous too. I don’t know where on earth he got
it from.’
Helen, one of the English teachers, caught on to our conversation, and
chipped in. ‘Are you talking about Anthony? He’s an absolute marvel
isn’t he..’
At the mention of the name, I immediately sat up. I felt as if I had
received an electric shock.
‘What? Did you say Anthony?’
‘Yes – Anthony Brace. One of the most extraordinary students I have
ever taught…..’
At first, I was completely confused – until I realized that it must be
a remarkable coincidence. One teaches so many thousands of students
over the course of a career that they are bound to occur.
That afternoon, I had no classes scheduled, and as I was keen to stamp
my authority upon my new department, I decided to pay a visit to each
class in turn. I knew that the older teachers particularly resented my
presence, so I made them my first port of call, sitting silently at the
back of the class while they taught, drinking in their discomfort.
Next, I made to visit Adam. As I approached his classroom, I was
pleased to hear him teaching the class about the Harrying of the North,
as per my instruction. I opened the door in good spirits, nodded at
him, and made to take my seat at the back of the classroom.
It was then that I locked eyes with Anthony once more.
There was no doubt that it was him. The same olive skin, the same
fathomless dark eyes. What is more, I could see that he had also
recognized me, although he quickly looked away and pretended to be
absorbed in his work. I froze, my mouth gaping with astonishment. 15
years had passed, and yet here was Anthony, who looked like he hadn’t
aged a single day. My mind whirled with questions and possible rational
explanations. Could he be a relation, perhaps Anthony’s brother, or
cousin?
By this point, the class had noticed my discomfiture, and a ripple of
amusement passed over them. Adam asked if I was ok. I demurred,
claiming that I had forgotten something in the staff room, and quickly
made my exit, gathering my thoughts.
I waited out in the corridor until the bell sounded, and as the class
rushed out I saw the boy Anthony. He tried to make himself
inconspicuous, head down, but I pulled him aside and spoke to him.
‘Excuse me..Anthony Brace?’
He stiffened, but kept his head down, his floppy fringe falling in
front of his face.
His voice was barely audible. ‘Yes, sir.’
I gently guided him to the side of the corridor, away from the crowds
of students heading to their next lesson.
‘I’m sorry to bother you – I won’t keep you long. I simply must ask you
something. I once taught a student in Kent who looked just like you,
and their name was also Anthony Brace. This was, oh, about 14 or 15
years ago now.’
He looked up at me warily, his face inscrutable.
‘I just wondered if – well, if perhaps that was your dad, seeing as you
look so very much alike, with the same name?’
He remained silent for a moment, fixing me with his curiously dark
eyes. When he spoke, his voice was flat and monotone. It struck me at
the time that it was very like he was reciting from a script, or that
he had said the same thing many times before.
‘I’m sorry sir, I really don’t know what you mean. My father has never
lived in Kent. We’ve always lived in Northumberland, and before that my
family came from Ireland.’
We stared at each other for a moment longer. Eventually I smiled,
apologized for my mistake, and sent him on his way.
I had to admit, the encounter had shaken me. I felt certain that it was
the same boy. I remember going to the staff room toilets to compose
myself. I splash water on my face and stared at my reflection. A
balding, 40 something man looked back. Lately, I had considered how
much I had seemed to have aged in the last few years, looking more and
more like my own father as each month rolled on. My mind struggled to
comprehend Anthony’s agelessness.
For the rest of that term, I tried to avoid Anthony, and I believe that
he reciprocated. I recall once seeing him emerge from a classroom. He
saw me and immediately scuttled back inside. I did not try to
investigate. I was too caught up with my own position as head of
department, and my new marriage and child. For the sake of my sanity, I
convinced myself that I had misremembered the Anthony I had known back
in 1981.
One day, I was reading the newspaper in the staffroom when I overhead
Adam in conversation with another teacher. I heard the name Anthony
Brace mentioned again, and afterwards I asked Adam about it.
‘Oh, it’s just a shame’, he said, looking genuinely crestfallen. ‘That
student I told you about – Anthony – he’s left the school. I had tried
to talk to him about enrolling him on our advanced scholar’s programme.
I’d sent a letter home about it, but a few days later he just stopped
turning up to school, and now I find that his father has telephoned to
tell the school that they have gone back to Ireland.’
I felt confusion welling up inside of me once more. I remembered that
strange meeting with Mr Brace.
‘Did you either meet the family at all?’
‘No, they never turned up to the parent’s evening. Anthony’s attendance
was pretty dire too.’
Once again, the strange parallels with my own experience troubled me,
and once more the issue filled my mind. I tried to do a little digging
into the background of the Brace family. All of the records in the
school were still on paper at that time. Once, after school, I stayed
late, telling the caretaker that I had some papers to mark. When I knew
that I was the only person left in the school, I made my way to the
office and rifled through the filing cabinets which kept the student
records. I found the place where the Brace records should’ve been, but
they were empty, and I couldn’t ask the office staff without revealing
that I had been snooping around.
Well, what was I to do after that point? I remained convinced that I
had been privy to something unearthly, but I had no way of proving it,
no further avenues of enquiry, and there was no-one I could tell
without sounding mad. So I kept it to myself, and as time went on, it
retreated more and more to the back of my mind. As any young teacher
knows, teaching is a job that you can lose yourself in, and I threw
myself into my teaching that year. However, I never entirely forgot my
encounter with the Brace family.
Time passed, and the following years were not altogether happy ones. I
began to drink heavily, and I am afraid to relate that I was not a
pleasant person to be around. My marriage broke down, and in the
settlement I allowed my ex-wife to take the house in Northumberland. My
daughter, Carole, opted to stay with her mother, which left me
heartbroken. At school, I lost my motivation for teaching, and let many
aspects of my job slide, while I drank and pursued my obsessions. Soon,
I began to get into regular clashes with the headteacher, who had
received complaints from parents about my poor lessons. Rather than
face disciplinary measures, I resigned there and then, deciding that my
time in the North had come to an end.
Instead, I joined my sister in Dorset, while I tried to put my life
back together. She helped me to overcome my addiction to alcohol, and
in return for her kindness I began to attend her church. I was never a
believer myself, although the story of Methuselah dying at the age of
969 seemed to take on a new significance to me.
While I had somewhat lost my passion for teaching, I still enjoyed the
contact with the children, so I opted to enlist with a supply teaching
agency, and began working in many of the local schools. This helped
somewhat to reinvigorate my passion for the profession, as I had the
opportunity to teach everything from Drama to PE. I found real pleasure
in teaching the youngest children. Youth is so fleeting, and so
precious. Any teacher knows how much children can change from week to
week, and it is often amusing to watch a shy, awkward child transform
into a strapping teenager almost before your eyes. However, such
encounters inevitably made me think of Anthony Brace.
By 2010, I was feeling much restored, having had a difficult few years.
Little did I know that my life was about to be thrust back into chaos
once more.
One morning, I was driving on my way to a booking at a school in
Southampton. I found myself stuck in traffic, listening to the radio. I
was staring out of the window, watching young mothers push their prams
upon the pavement, and students making their way to school. My eye was
eventually drawn towards a solitary student, with his head down,
walking fast along the pavement. He tried to pass a large group of
boys, who shouted something at him. One of them pushed him, causing his
bag to spill open and upon the floor, and the rest laughed. I
considered winding down my window and intervening, but the group of
boys moved on and I thought better of it. I watched the boy quietly
gathering his books and papers from the floor and stuffing them into
his bag, while all the while his back was turned to me. At that moment,
the traffic began moving, but I turned to take a final glance as I
passed the boy.
It was Anthony Brace.
In a state of shock, I touched the brakes of my car, immediately
eliciting furious honks and shouts from the cars behind me. It was a
busy road and I was unable to stop. By the time I was able to find a
place to pull over, the boy had disappeared.
I sat in the car, feeling my heart hammering in my chest. It was a
cold, autumn day, but my shirt was drenched with sweat. Once again, I
feared that I was going mad – but I couldn’t deny what I had seen. It
was certainly the same boy, as ageless as he had been when I had last
saw him 15 years ago. I could no longer ignore it. For the sake of my
own sanity, I had to know the truth.
I had almost arrived at the school I was contracted to teach in that
day, but instead I turned my car around. Having taught at most of the
schools in Southampton, I felt confident that I could identify the
school that Anthony attended based on the uniform – a grey blazer, with
red flashes.
Dear reader, you must not judge me here. I know that this is deeply
unprofessional behaviour for a teacher. But hopefully you have heard
enough of my story now to know what was motivating me. It wasn’t just
for my sanity – it was for the sake of science, and reason. I had to
know what this all meant.
After driving round for a further twenty minutes, I saw other students
dressed in the same uniform, and discreetly followed their direction of
travel, stopping when it became too obvious. Eventually, I turned onto
a long, leaf-strewn lane, lined with cobbled walls, leading towrds a
small, expensive looking independent school, based in an old Georgian
manor house.
Having located the school, I drove to nearby café, bought a coffee and
a newspaper, and tried to kill time. At this point, I had little
conception of what I intended to do, other than that I needed to
establish the facts. Soon, my phone began to ring – it was evidently
the agency, enquiring why I had not turned up to my appointment. I
ignored the phone, and the subsequent voicemails. I was determined that
I must finally have answers.
Eventually, the hour drew near for the end of the school day, and I
parked up on the lane outside of the school, taking my place amongst
the waiting parents. Soon, children began to emerge from the gates of
the school, and I studied them carefully, but none resembled Anthony.
After some half an hour, the flow of children from the gates slowed to
a trickle, and then stopped altogether. I had began to convince myself
that I had been mistaken, and was preparing to go home, when I saw him
emerge from the gates of the school.
As before, he walked with his head bowed low and his jet black hair
flopping over his face. I felt a pang of sympathy for him – he seemed
like a lonely fellow – but this was soon surpassed by my need for
answers. I started the car and began, as carefully as I could, to
follow him on his route home. Occasionally I had to stop and pull up if
I grew too close, and once or twice I drove around the block to avoid
suspicion, but he seemed oblivious to my presence.
After some 15 minutes or so, I watched the boy turn a corner, and found
myself on a long avenue of semi-detached houses, the kind you see all
over the country. I found a space amongst the other cars parked on the
street, and parked up. I watched his progress up the street, until he
suddenly turned onto the driveway of a house. As the boy approached the
front door, he stopped for a moment to search in his bag, until he
pulled his keys out. However, as he approached the door, it swung open.
I gasped.
The man who opened the door had long, black hair, and dark olive skin.
He looked to be in his late thirties. I felt a cold sweat envelop my
body, for even from where I was sat, there was no mistaking Mr Brace,
the man I had last saw in 1981, and who apparently had also not aged.
Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed with fear and panic, and began to sense
that I had stumbled upon something that was beyond my comprehension. I
started my car, and tried to pull away. The engine roared but the car
remained still – I had forgotten to release the handbrake. My palms
sweaty, I pulled off the handbrake, and the car leapt forward as I
tried to make a U-turn.
Unfortunately, in my panic I somewhat misjudged the turning circle of
my car, and as I swung around, I clipped the rear end of the car in
front of me with a loud crunch. Consumed with fear and confusion as I
was, I prepared to drive off, but a resident, who had evidently watched
the whole thing from their front garden, sprang into the road in front
of me. I had no choice other than to pull over. The man shouted at me
while I stammered out my apologies and scribbled down my insurance
details.
As I did so, I looked up to see the eyes of both Mr Brace and Anthony
burning into me, before they drew inside, slamming the door behind them.
I arrived home at my sister’s some time later. I made straight for the
drinks cabinet, and poured myself a large glass of whiskey to steady my
nerves. My sister, seeing my agitation, asked me what was wrong, but I
mollified her with an excuse about a bad day at work. For how could I
tell anyone, even my dear sister, what I had seen? Who would believe me?
Besides, by now I had decided that I had made a terrible mistake in
following Anthony home. I resolved that I would forget the matter
immediately, and would make no more moves to investigate whatever was
behind their apparent agelessness. Eventually, I drank myself into a
stupor, and ignoring my sister’s well-meaning questions, took myself
off to bed. Despite my inebriation, I tossed and turned all night. I
tried to forget what I had seen, but my mind raced with explanations,
until eventually I fell asleep.
Some time later, I awoke. It was still dark in my bedroom, and I felt
dog tired, so at first I wondered what had awoken me. I realise now
that it must have been some primitive instinct, for as my eyes adjusted
to the gloom, I could see that I was not alone. Indistinct, shadowy
figures crowded the room. I made to cry out in fear, but a cold, gloved
hand clasped over my mouth and pinned my head to the pillow. My
assailant wore a dark, black hood over their head, rendering them even
more terrifying.
I ceased to struggle and lay still, terrified. A figure emerged from
the gloom and stood at the end of the bed. They too wore a dark black
hood over their head. The voice that spoke was cultured and sonorous,
but menacing.
‘Mr Lewis – do not attempt to call out. If your sister is roused, we will need to deal with her too. Do you understand?’
Shaking, I nodded my head as best as I could.
‘Good. If it had been up to me, you would never have awoken from your sleep tonight.
It is unfortunate that coincidence has brought you into contact with my
son so often. That cannot be helped, and we make no judgement on you
for that. What we cannot tolerate are your actions today. Our order is
a peaceful one, and we aim to avoid suspicion and alarm by blending in
with our communities, and moving often. Occasionally someone like you
presents a problem for us, and I can tell you now that you that few
ever live to realise their mistake.
When I saw you at our house today, I immediately summoned the others to
put into place our usual plans for dealing with unwelcome attention.
But my son pleaded for your life. He remembers your kindness and your
mentorship well. When you have lived as long as we have, 30 years is a
grain of sand in a desert. You are lucky that he spoke up for you. He
has assured us that you are a reasonable man and that you will be
sensible and will listen to this warning, which we will deliver only
this once.
Never try to look for us again.
Never try to contact us again.
Never tell anyone else about us, or this encounter.
Failure to obey our commands will result in your death, Mr Lewis, and
we will know if you disobey, for there are many like us, and our reach
is long.
Do you understand me?’
The hand was removed from my face, and I managed to stammer out an answer.
‘Yes…yes, I understand.’
The next thing I remember is the morning light streaming through the
curtains, and my sister Kitty knocking on the door to ask if I would
like a cup of tea.
That morning, I felt both stunned and confused. I was almost certain
that I had not dreamed the encounter, but it was too fantastic to
accept. Kitty commented again and again on my pale appearance, asking
if I was unwell and what was wrong with me. Much as I yeared to share
my burden, I kept silent.
There isn’t much more to tell. Eventually I moved back to Kent, and
kept my head down teaching at a little school there. I tried my best
over the last few years to forget my encounter, but it rarely entirely
left my mind. Every now and then at school I would catch a glimpse of a
student with black hair, and convince myself that it was Anthony. Every
sound in my house at night was some unspeakable force coming to murder
me in my bed. But I have never revealed my secret.
However, receiving my cancer diagnosis changed my mind. The prospect of
certain death makes the notion of possible death seem that much less
intimidating. I write this words in the hope that someone, someday,
will be able to make sense of my experience. Also, who knows what these
people (if they can be called that), are capable of?
I am very tired now, and must sleep. Perhaps I will write more in the morning.'
The account ended there. Martin put down the letter, and leaned heavily back in his chair.
Rumours had always flitted around the school that Mr Lewis was strange.
Both students and staff alike had laughed behind his back at his
oddities. Martin himself had once happened upon Harry in the stock room
at school. Harry had been absorbed in looking at some books on the
shelf, and had evidently not heard Martin approach. When Martin spoke,
Harry recoiled in horror. At the time, Martin had laughed about it to
Angela. These encounters now took on a new meaning.
Martin considered what to do with the account. Of course the contents
were nonsense. Not only that, but they presented serious child
protection issues and breaches of trust. Martin wondered what other
students Harry had followed home. He resolved to give the letter to the
head teacher tomorrow at school, and to wash his hands of the affair.
He finished his whiskey. He felt very tired now, and another long day
at school awaited him. He made his way up the stairs to bed.
As Martin lay under the covers, he thought about the letter and its
insane content. Unable to sleep, he instead reached for his phone and
began conducting some internet searches, using combinations of keywords
– ‘Anthony Brace’, ‘Brace family’, ‘Harry Lewis’, ‘Agelessness’,
‘People who never age’. After an hour or so of fruitlessly scrolling
through endless pictures of strangers on social media, and crazy occult
websites referencing medieval conspiracy theories, he gave up and
placed the phone back on the bedside table. He thought once again that
Harry Lewis was crazy, and resolved to give Harry’s letter to Angela
the next morning.
After some time he drifted off to sleep.
He didn’t stir as the cold hands enveloped his neck.
THE END
© 2021 Darryl Tomlin
Bio: I am a 39 year old guy who lives in deep in the English
Fens, a mysterious, grey and wet part of the British Isles. I am a
History teacher, but also have a keen urge to be creative, which I try
to express through film photography as well as writing and singing
songs in a band. I have always been drawn to strange and weird tales of
the fantastic and supernatural, and find inspiration in the works of
authors such as M R James, as well as the folklore of the Fens.
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