All Hallows

 All Hallows

By Jane Scoggins

A chilly autumn night at the end of October and Laura snuggled under the duvet on the sofa in her sister and brother-in-laws sitting room. It was kind of them to put her up at short notice after arriving back from Spain.

  Annie had laughed and said ‘No problem, that’s what big sisters are for’.

Laura had enjoyed a brilliant time working in a bar near Marbella, and had made so many friends. She had gone out to Spain against her parent’s wishes as a sort of late gap year before she settled down to a sensible job, and also to get over her two year relationship with Max.

  ‘I’ll show him that I can get on with my life without him’ she had thought to herself. She was totally over Max. All she needed now was to find a job, preferably in London, and life would be sweet. Her sister Annie lived in London and Laura was really pleased she had agreed she could stay whilst she was job hunting.

  It was very quiet here in this little old fashioned back street in Southwark, Quite a contrast to what she had been used to for the last months where the bars and clubs came alive with young holiday makers partying in the warm balmy evenings until the sun came up the next morning.

  Laura peered over the duvet and absorbed the silent night air around her. Her sister was married to a London curate and this small upstairs flat was their home. Annie had made it as homely as she could but the old Victorian vicarage was a bit run down and for many years now had been two flats, with the vicar upstairs and the verger at Southwark Cathedral downstairs. All Hallows Vicarage stood large and imposing on the corner of Copperfield St, and no doubt had much historical value and many true life connections with Charles Dickens who lived about these parts as a youngster. In fact, his father was sent to the debtor's prison on the Marshalsea Road a few streets away. Dickens had written his story Little Doritt about his friend Amy Dorrit whose father had also spent time in the Marshalsea due to debt.  Such harsh times. However interesting all that may be to historians it was no compensation on a cold night to a modern young woman when there were drafts seeping in from the ill fitting sash windows.

  During the night Laura drifted back into semi-consciousness from sleep and lay momentarily getting her bearings. She thought she heard a noise and strained her ears to recognise the sound and where it came from. The noise came from below, at the bottom of the stairs to the flat. She knew that her sister and brother in law were in bed and that the verger was away so who could it be? Laura strained her ears. She hears shuffling and then a distinct footstep on the stairs, another step on the creaky stair they all knew well and then silence. Laura felt anxious, The street door was always locked from the inside at night time when everyone was in and Laura remembered locking it herself earlier by sliding the big iron bolts across the top and bottom of the door.  More slow halting steps on the stairs and Laura knew by the proximity that it would not be long before whoever it was reached the top of the stairs and the door to the flat with its partially glass partitioned door. It also had a key and bolt on the inside but had anyone of them remembered to lock it that night. Laura could not remember doing so. Her sister and brother in law were so trusting that they may not have locked it once they knew that Laura had bolted the main door downstairs. Laura felt afraid as she heard another slow shuffling step on the stairs. She got off the sofa and in the pitch dark felt her way around the back of the sofa and lay down out of sight. Trembling from fear and cold and hardly breathing, she lay without movement and strained her ears to listen. Another footstep much closer and then a second’s silence before she heard the brass handle on the door of the flat being turned very slowly. Laura felt a wave of increased anxiety exacerbated by the dark Dickensian surroundings which gave her to imagine Nancy’s fear from the approach of Bill Sykes. The first time the door handle was turned was quiet and cautious,  but when the door did not yield a second more forceful turn of the knob was tried.  Again the door did not yield. Laura felt real terror as she imagined a burglar having made such an effort to come up the stairs so quietly, resorting to breaking the glass and putting his hand inside to turn the key. Seconds passed and then the footsteps could be heard slowly retreating down the stairs in the slow shuffling cautious way that they had ascended. Not a sound from a human voice or breathing was heard in all the time Laura had been listening so she could not guess who the shuffling feet might belong to. And then the clicks of the outside door opening and then closing could be heard before silence once more. Laura let a couple of seconds elapse before she felt able to move and then leapt from her crouching position and ran to the window and peeped out of the curtains. The street was completely empty. Still afraid but galvanised into action Laura ran through to her brother in law and woke him to tell him of the terrible fright she had had. Leaping out of bed and grabbing his dressing gown and stout walking stick from the umbrella stand he ran down the stairs to find the door bolted and no one in sight. When he came back upstairs Laura was weeping in shock in Annie’s arms.

The mystery was never solved but Laura remains certain to this day that this was not a dream, and whoever, or whatever it was that dark night was up to no good at All Hallows, and they had had a lucky escape from something unknown.

 

Copyright Jane Scoggins