the last winter

November 1876

IT IS HARD TO DESCRIBE THE TERRIBLE SUFFERINGS at the sanatorium, an institution haunting the fit and able with its rumours.

Ma Blackly, said she'd worked there years ago, saw things that'll make your hair drop out from fright. She's always remembering horrible things. The gossips gasping, gathering closer to her stall of knick-knacks taken from the recent deceased.

Ma, buckle-backed, jutting chin and pointed finger delivers her performance. Devil's work I tell thee... Each tale worst than the last. Why she claimed to have seen a baby with three arms. Find her again, tongue loosened with ruin, there be another tale. Like the time she stumbled on some...thing, crawling, all long-haired, covering its entire body, howling like it were a wolf. Dragged it off they did, feral creature, hosed down with icy water.

One should not wish to end up fated and committed when furnished with Ma Blackly's stories. Left confined in darkness and shadowy nightmares. However, for all this and unnoticed, are acts of kindness by devoted hard put upon souls tending to the lost. Hidden, they are, from mind, and life, and Ma Blackly. Detained in this place means, never to escape, incarcerated, until freed from the physical.

A fortress forever in gloom, gathering heavy clouds on most days over winter. Here is a place, that although you wish to forget, exists throughout the years and will continue to exist long after your mortal life leaves the physical plane.

And so laid in narrow bed with fading memories, old eyes stare at the falling snow and at the window, a robin...

Lost Souls

THE ERRAND BOYS WERE SCAPING and shovelling snow from the pavements calling out to one another in their tasks. Now and then, exchanging a snowball and when landing on target laughing heartily. The job asked of them taking far too long. Too much merriment, a tut-tutting from irritable and flustered shopkeepers calling them back inside to work not play. Mr Darby fit to burst when hit by a stray shot from the greengrocer's lad, who scampered at the butcher's threats of turning him into mincemeat.

On the ground over by the way, dirtier snow had ploughed up into deep furrows from the heavy cartwheels criss-crossing back and forth. Muddy water had collected in the grooves and a thin layer of ice formed a glassy pane shattering under foot or hoof.

This was a merry street. Orangey and yellowy glowing windows dressed to tempt who gazed in wonderment at the adornment of festive fare. Plump game and poultry, the wetness and glistening fish, silted and displayed in neat lines. Blended scents of tea and coffee, of mulled wine, of spices, great full baskets loaded with temptation, vegetables, nuts, and candied fruits, so tempting to want it all. Provisions placed among the deep bottle greens and reds of holly and berry, as well as the trailing and pointed ivy leaves and the hanging mistletoe, that revealed bashfulness from the women and a twinkle in the eye of the rosy faced Mr Darby, said purveyor of quality meats.

Take the time to stare and listen, do so at the sights and sounds of customers, of shopkeepers, of clanking scales, of wrapping goods, of coins changing hands. Around you the hustle and bustle of commerce, the chattering, the laughter, the buying and selling, behold, a busy market street.

Such a festive vision will not warm chapped fingers and toes from an evening that bites sharp and catches the breath. In the yard awaiting their duties, bull-necked men who beat their chests and stamp their feet on cobbled sets to keep warm outside the alehouse. Some searching with wandering eyes catching a slender figure and noticed, jeering they are with one another.

Out above the street the skies are gloomy and dark with greyness. Look away from icy skies to gaze upon the roofs of buildings huddled together and belching thin sooty strands from their chimneys that turned the colour of the falling snow to blackened greyish ash. Now gaze upon places where no heat from the fading watery sun or escaping warmth from thin walls can ever hope to melt away a half-thawed mist.

Look at the busyness of people, of men in top hats wrapped up warm and the women gliding across the snow in their furs and fabrics. Behold the banter, the smiles, the nods, the laughter, listen at the far corner to the mellow tones of a brass band and then over there the spitting and cracking of a brazier. Life expressing its way on this winter's eve.

And across the way, a chill, that of the grave, and unnoticed a place where dead eyes stare.

Little Benjamin Taylor slipped and slid his way out of back alleys where the frost was intense and a latent echo melancholy. He fell into a throng of people and remained invisible to the husbands carrying precarious stacked parcels, tramping into snowy banks and led blind through icy obstacles underfoot by their wives. They to and fro in their detours to the next window attraction. Benjamin, eager and quick with the skill and movements of a squirrel, jack-knifed, twisted and turned to take a fallen ribbon here, a misplaced bauble there, placing them in a rough coarse small knapsack strung over his shoulder. He had a gaudy collection of trinkets but to Benjamin they were jewels. This little wiry figure, at his best in stealth, was no match for the eye, in a second gone.

However, someone noticed. Kloe continued to watch his antics and gave a loud gasp at his near accident with a carriage. A startled horse spooked and caught off guard by a sudden flash of something quick. The coachman exercised his authority, calming the horse, but he remained at a loss to what had worried his mild tempered Roxburgh.

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