There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
As the weather was fine, Poi decided to walk home from work last night. I said that I’d meet her, but she said that it was quite safe at 9.30 as there people were always about and that she would be accompanied by a friend. Ours is a peaceful town, especially during the week, and the walk would take less than 10 minutes. I was not especially worried.
Having just finished work myself, I was sitting in the kitchen when she burst into the house, looking white, breathless and absolutely terrified. “I am being haunted”, she gasped as she locked and bolted the front door but was too scared to say more. Thinking she might have been stalked by some lout, I interrogated her and she told me that she had been passing NatWest, glanced in and saw a malevolent old man looking out at her. The bank was deserted and he was sitting perfectly still in the gloom. He face was grey and unhealthy looking and his legs were crossed. She took all this in at a glance before fleeing as fast as her legs could carry her.
Poi wouldn’t be convinced that her vision must have been a trick of the shadows so, deciding that the only way to allay her fears was to find out exactly what had triggered them, I said that I’d go and investigate. Poi said that there was no way that she would be left on her own and accompanied me, insisting that we took the car in case we had to make a quick getaway. I don’t believe in ghosts myself, but suspected that were they to exist, an elderly Nissan would be little defence against the forces of Hell. However, my wife is Thai and, thus, exceedingly well versed in matters supernatural. She should know best.
We got to the bank, and in a split second my scepticism was confounded as there facing me was the sinister old man exactly as Poi had described. Not only that, but he had a companion. Sitting to his left was an evil looking old woman, her gaze fixed on mine, a quizzical half-smile on her lips and a gnarled stick grasped in her aged hand. There was indeed something distinctly unnatural about the pair: they looked almost too wizened to be alive.
At this point, taking the car seemed not such a bad idea after all. I now understood what it meant to feel one’s flesh creep. With foot poised over the accelerator, I steeled myself and took a second glace at the strangely motionless pair. Despite the crepuscular lighting, it was then that I noticed a sign next to the couple saying “Please don’t touch”. They were in fact papier-mâché sculptures of an elderly vicar and his wife made by the artist Peter Rush. They may have been intended as humorous but in the gloom bore a distinct resemblance to Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Feeling none too proud of myself, I returned home with my somewhat chastened wife.
