THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS Part 4

The Cottage in the Woods Part 4

THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

4. The Blues and Twos

Constable Pierce dropped to the ground and pushed himself to one side so that he was almost under the small kitchen table and knee-deep in all manner of fetid foreign materiel, mostly ancient food dropped carelessly goodness knows when and growing hair of its own.

“Crikey!” screamed Enid, and with unbelievable gallantry Anthony grabbed hold of her and pulled her down to the ground just outside the lop-sided back door.

“Please be okay, love?” he gasped into her ear.

“You called me love,” she whispered when the last echo of the explosion had withdrawn to silence.

“Did I?” he asked, still trembling, and then he mastered himself and produced an exaggerated wink. “I don’t know why I should have said that,” he added.

Meanwhile, the elderly Winifred Winterbotham had thrown the gun onto the floor, and retreated through the nearest door into what, when the constable followed her, he judged to be a living room of sorts, untidy and with mostly grubby clothing scattered all over it, mainly on the floor where it must have been trodden on more times than enough to spoil it. There were the remnants of a three-piece suite in there too, the settee with springs clearly visible sticking through its worn fabric. There was nothing in the way of what you might normally expect to find in a modern living room, no radio or television, though in one corner was the dusty and tarnished horn of an ancient gramophone, its tarnished handle like a shadow from a forgotten past.

She backed further into it and collapsed into one of the two tatty armchairs before reaching to the mantelpiece and grabbing a wooden crucifix, which she held before herself like a defensive shield.

“We are not coming!” she squawked, “mother and I are staying here, this is our home, we love it here, under the protective shadow of the trees, so take your jack boots away and give us peace in our old age!”

“Nobody wants to take you anywhere, Miss Winterbotham,” Constable Pierce tried to assure her, “this is your home and if you’re happy and feel safe here, nobody wants to take you anywhere. But I must have a word with your mother…”

As he said the word mother he was certain that something was wrong because the woman in front of him and cowering in a tatty armchair was surely too old herself to be sharing the house with a living mother who was still alive.

“You two young ‘uns keep well away!” he ordered when he detected a shuffling as Anthony helped Enid to her feet. He suspected that he might be on the verge of discovering the fact that if the woman’s mother was somewhere in the cottage he’d probably find her in a wooden box

He waved a hand in the direction of Winifred in her chair where she had adopted an attitude that involved visible shaking and audible moaning.

“Now this isn’t anything,” he said as soothingly as he could, and he pulled his police radio from his pocket, “but I reckon we need some sort of back-up here, don’t you?”

But Winifred had escaped from the present and was occupying a very different space and time in which she was with her mother and listening to what that parent said, and echoing those words in an eerie almost audibe hiss.

“They’ll take you to the chancellor who’ll have your bosoms cut off and fed to his gorillas,” she hissed, “we all know what evils await you if you let that servant of the devil use magic and talk to the necromancer!”

But the constable paid scant attention to her jabbering as he contacted the police station. “We’ve got a problem,” he said, “the old woman had a real weapon, which she discharged. Nobody was hurt but her kitchen sink’s got a bloody great hole in it! The woman, a Miss Winifred Winterbotham in her seventies by the look of it speaks as if her own mother was still alive and kicking somewhere in the building, which is on the brink of falling down, if you were to ask me. In my pinion Miss Winterbotham needs to be assessed because, if you’ll excuse the term, she gives every impression of being three sheets to the wind!”

A crackling voice assured him that back up was on the way and ordered him to do or say nothing that might exacerbate the situation and to do what he could to reduce any danger from the weapon.

He replied that he would, and slid the radio back in his pocket. Miss Winterbotham was still conversing with her mother, and he approached her. Seeing him apparently threatening her she let out an almighty howl and launched herself at him as if making a last ditch attempt at freedom.

“Now therre’s no need for that,” he said, trying to sound as calm as he could.

But the old woman wasn’t satisfied that anything short of neutralising what she saw as a threat would do, and despite being unsteady on her feet she grabbed hold of a grubby, tangled skein of wool with knitting needles attached, pulled one of them free from what must have been the beginnings of a garment years ago and had probably remained untouched since then, and plunged it towards him.

“What the!” he roared, “you bloody wait for the meat wagon to come for you!” he shouted as the blunt and dirty needle tried to penetrate his skin through his jacket.

Outside, the two teenagers heard what sounded very much like a cry for help.

“What the…?” muttered Enid.

“Are you all right, officer?” called Anthony.

“The witch has attacked me with a blunt knitting needle,” replied the constable, “and it bloody hurts!”

“Wait here,” Anthony almost ordered Enid, and he made for the door.

“I’m no weeping willow!” snapped Enid, and she followed him.

Inside the cottage they were met with a police constable trying to extricate himself from the whirling action of an old woman lunging towards him armed with the knitting needle.

“Stop!” commanded Anthonyas loud as he could, and there was a surprising amount of authority in his teenage voice that the woman paused in her attack on the policeman.

“They’ll lock you up and throw away the key!” added Enid.

It wasn’t so much the verbal threat but the presence of three people all threatening her, as she saw it, that made Winifred fall slowly and dramatically onto her knees.

“Take me to your master then,” she managed to croak out, “I know what they do to women like me. Mother told me, and mother knows everything…” It was at that point that a police car could be heard bouncing down the unmade road from Brumpton, its siren and blue lights flashing though there was little chance of it moving towards them much faster than walking pace.

“Outside!” insisted the constable, “she might have other tricks up her sleeve!”

Itt didn’t look as if the fragile old woman had ever had much in the way if tricks up any sleeve, but the two youngsters retreated anyway. The blues and twos from the crawling police car flashing on the trees of Brumpton Woods were a promise that all would be well soon enough.

“Thank goodness,” whispered Enid. And she smiled almost teasingly at Anthony, “and you did call me love…” she said quietly.

© Peter Rogerson 15.01.23

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