Please Forgive the Lady in Red

In a gloomy town of Monmouthshire, there lived a woman, Lynn Jones. She was a bartender in a grimy haunt of a tavern — Old Peg Leg. Lynn would toll the clock, Wednesday to Friday, at a humdrum pace, serving the thirsty brutes of Pontypool. The place wafted in pipe smoke, the ceiling hung low, burnt with ash. It resembled a coal pit in a hole in the earth. Drunkards guffawed at stupid stories and swivelled on rickety stools, demanding more ale for their flagons. In a rhythm, Lynn would yell at the lunkheads to “shut the hell up” while she poured more booze, a stink eye muddying her middle-aged beauty.

One patron would hunker at the bar in Galligaskins and a peruke. A vacant look clung to his eyes while he made a thimbleful with his fingers, a form of drunken sign language. Lynn would oblige, pouring the old thespian a shot of whiskey. Sometimes the theatrical shoe would be asleep at a table, drooling and huffing dust. Ah! The joys of bartending at the Old Peg Leg.

One night in October, rain wept against the salted windows of the Old Peg. A fog had swept the coal streets and the shops across the way. For Lynn, the melodious wetness was a pleasant change, soothing a pestilent bone rattling in her head. The last couple of nights had been nothing but jaunty boors yelling obscenities.

At closing hour, Lynn busied herself placing the stools over the countertop. All of the grunts had left. Only two patrons remained huddled in a corner, both women. They were small in stature, appearing as children, playacting. Lynn couldn’t tell who they were in the shroud of mist. It was a rare sighting in a place like the Old Peg, accustomed to the codger. The women wore ruby red handkerchiefs knotted in their blonde hair. The fabric bowered their complexions in shadow. They seemed to be involved in a trade of sorts, bartering items or gifts. One woman held a jar of glowworms, its wriggling contents lighting up the table like a lantern. The other proffered a quarter basket filled with toadstools.

“Sorry, ladies. We’re closed," Lynn said, shrivelled after a long night.

Then both little women stood up and started dancing merrily, their crimson dresses sweeping the haggard floor, the end of the world near.

“Ladies? I said we’re closed. Please, I’m tired.”

Both ignored the hapless bartender, their dancing clogs hammering the wood and making a racket.

“Are you deaf? I said we’re closed! No good, shrews.”

In a bleeding second, they stared at Lynn with a statue gaze, eyeing her gravely at the bar. An impenetrable stillness and a mysterious silence crept between them. Lynn felt uncomfortable in the estuary of flowing tension.

“Well? What do you say? The night is still young…”

In a flurry, both women disappeared in a wisp of smoke, evanescent in the fog.

--

On High Street, Lynn’s Victorian home sat on a lumbering hill, the seismic rhythm of the earth cradling the place. It was a Gothic Revival-styled domicile tinted with moss-beaten cobblestones. It had cupolas at both corners of the second story adorned with weaving scrolls of charred wood. She lived there with her husband, Hendrick, and their two lovely twin boys, Harry and Rhys Jones. Both toddlers, four years a piece and fair-haired like cherubs.

Hendrick was a prominent civil lawyer in South Wales. He was, for the most part, busy up to the knot of his tie, sailing through the tumbling seas of drafts, contracts, and litigation. Paperwork and take-out coffee cups littered his office upstairs. “Why don’t you quit the Old Peg Leg? We don’t need the extra money.” Hendrick would pester Lynn to stay at home with the twins, but she insisted that she needed the space. “What about Lowri? She needs a job too. She’s great with the boys, and they love her to bits,” Lynn would reply. These types of squabbles were minimal and often of a petty nature. And so, their connubial affairs were without strife for six years, a happy couple.

To pass the time, Harry and Rhys would gambol in the garden. They would scour the grass for worms and beetles with the innate curiosity of children. Hendrick collected pigeons in an aviary. The twins would coo at the birds. Other times, they would pretend to be pirates, fighting one another with dried branches deemed to be deadly hangers. Harry would let his brother Rhys kill him with a wooden blade under the withering lime trees. Rhys would cry out in victory as the good guy, and Harry would fall into a pile of dead leaves as the ludicrous villain. And Lynn would watch them with a cup of steaming coffee, an impregnable smile on her motherly lips. Such days are precious to a woman’s heart.

At night, snug in their coverlets on the bunk beds, Hendrick would read the boys' superstitious tales of old Wales. Their favourite story concerned ‘the forest of the yew’ where a magical tree grew in the middle of a winding grove. “… a magical circle under the tree enchanted Iago, who stepped inside. It was called the dancing place of the goblin…” At the finish of the story, Hendrick would tread on the tips of his toes, having squelched his son’s wakefulness.

--

It was a Tuesday morning. Hendrick was away on business in North Wales, meeting with another law firm. The house was silent like a sepulchre except for the creaking and groaning of water pipes and aging wood. Lynn stood anchored to a door in the hallway, her soles gathering dust littered on hexagonal tiles. She wore an aquamarine floral dress that swooned to her ankle bones. On her breast, she cradled a basket woven from threads with a loaf of Bara Brith bread infused with black tea and golden raisins. She had baked it on a whim, wearing a tattered apron with tinctures of yeast and flour. A delicious gift for a beautiful neighbour — Lowri, the nanny.

From the alley, a wind besotted with the fragrance of bread, crooned through the drapes of the twins' chamber. Lynn watched them sleep, their bodies webbed in dark sheets of wool, the fabric moving ever-so-gently like buoys on the ocean’s bosom.

I won’t be gone for long. They should be fine alone for 10 minutes or so. Right? I’ll close the door just in case. They won’t be able to reach the doorknob, those little urchins. And I did turn the oven off. Yes? Yes. Everything is fine. Be back soon, babes.

Lynn locked the front door and ambled down the stone steps through weeping bilberry shrubs arching on both sides. Her slippers crunched on dried brown leaves, which satisfied her—a simple pleasure to stomp on crispy things. The cold autumn air was refreshing to her lungs.

Lowri’s house could be seen on the other side of the street, down the hill. It lay crooked on a pile of dirt, the shingles rooted on loosely, but it had a heartbeat. Far below, winding down the crest of the slope, the quaint town of Pontypool huddled in close quarters, the shops and apartment buildings conjoined and mixed in with the occasional sycamore tree. A filament of mist stretched along the roofs like a ghostly crown.

In the corner of Lynn's eye, a strange figure in a knot. A small woman climbed a patch of land, then moved into the middle of the street. She wore a ragged petticoat, an antique. The scarlet underskirt was long, loose fibers dragging on the pavement. On her shoulder hung a burlap sack. A lump protruded at the bottom, which had Lynn guessing in all directions. A game ensued. Possibly a book. Possibly fruits from the market. Maybe a bunch of dirty clothes. Maybe an alley cat. No, the bag isn’t moving. Possibly a dead alley cat. No. That can’t be right.

Lynn looked at her closely, a curiosity coaxing her. She had dirty blonde hair falling frowsy to her middle back. Her head was cast to the ground, unwilling to look at the inhabitants of Pontypool or the greyish sky. That’s about all she could see. Oh, and the clogs. Those clogs. Then the lady in red peeled down the street towards the town shops. Lynn’s thoughts shifted as she approached the threshold of Lowri’s driveway.

When Lynn returned, she walked through the hallway with hexagons, and to the right, the door was ajar. Her breathing accelerated, knowing that she had closed it. She rushed to the frame. Inside, her boys slept in their bunk beds. Nothing had changed. Their loud snoring trembled the room.

--

Over time, a trail of disturbing subtleties and inexplicable certainties spread all over the Jones house and bore a crux. A growing mass, infernal and terrible, sought to infiltrate the corpus of all living things. A nebulous formation of quarks and dust turned corporeal into an evolving dark intelligence. The twins, Harry and Rhys, at the helm of the matter, the unruly hosts.

--

It started small, like all things, naturally. One night, Lynn washed the toddlers in the tub. She scrubbed their backs with a wet sponge. To her horror, patches of bushy hair grew like mold on a rotten peach. “What’s wrong, Mommy?” Rhys would ask, his eyes dilated beetle-black.

At the doctor’s office, both boys were on the examination table, shirts off. The fuzz patches had grown out of control. “We’ll run some tests. But no, I can’t say that I’ve seen this before.” The doctor’s reassurance made Lynn feel worse somehow. Under the lights, in that bright hospital-white room, their complexions looked gaunt and lifeless.

At dinner time, Harry and Rhys would finish their plates with the appetite of malnourished wolves, never gaining a pound of muscle or fat. Their search for food was around the clock; heads in the freezer, in the fridge, whining about being starved to death, gullets like threshers.

At night, Lynn would catch them on her way to the bathroom. They walked through the hallways, hobbling, ghoulish. The distressing noises — grunts of a deranged nature — that came out of them sometimes were unimpeachable.

It was the night of October 21st when a seed of doubt unfurled beneath the soil and blossomed into a full-grown poisonous plant. Lynn had trouble sleeping, tossing and turning over needles and acorns, a nightmare reeling. She woke up with a gasp, the vivid moving picture of a fire burning a bush projected onto the wallpaper of the bedroom. It was 1 o'clock in the morning.

Lynn looked pale, and probably felt as she looked. Her wet, frizzy hair cowled at the tips, a couple of strands glued to pulsating veins on her forehead. Hendrick slept beside her panting breast, deaf to the troubles of his wife. She heard commotion in the backyard, pigeons cooing wildly from the aviary.

In the yard, she stood by a sliding door. Her fists were clenched tightly, nails stabbing her palms. The aviary’s gate hunched on its hinges, opening to the cage. Harry and Rhys sat Indian-style, blood and guts on their cheeks, feasting on dead pigeons.

“Those aren’t my sons…” Lynn whispered to the four winds, tears falling on the grass.

“…HENDRICK!”

--

…under the shelter of branches, splotches of yellow and brown, almost all have fallen. Why is this happening? Am I a negligent mother? Am I hot-tempered? God, I have such a foul mouth sometimes. I'm sorry for all the mistakes I've made and for the faults in my beliefs. Where do I go from here? I can’t change the past, but I try to be good. I don’t know how to fix this. Please forgive me. I miss my boys... 

--

The next day, Lynn was due for a shift at the Old Peg Leg. For most of the night, she stood behind the bar, stone-faced. Her jaw clenched in the middle of grinding teeth. Her fingers tapped the gnarled counter, unending. Her black eyes fixated on one of the tables by the salty window. That table. Those red devils dancing like clowns. It brought bad memories to the roaring shores of Lynn. It represented a marriage falling to pieces. Hendrick and Lynn arguing over an impossible panacea. It represented a nightmare, both of her sons lost, foregone to an unknown gulf of wickedness. Some of the patrons looked at her in fright. They whispered of possession and prayed under their beards, penitent to the Welsh pantheon of gods and spirits.

Near closing hour, a drunk old codger mopped the floor with his wet boots. He sat heavy-assed on a stool. Lynn was still transfixed. That table. Those little red fairies. He then lit a soot pipe with a wooden match. Lynn watched him, a red flame in her eyes.

“…we’re closed. Get out.” She spat.

"But miss Jones, I haven't finished me ale..."

“I SAID GET OUT!"

Lynn pulled out a baton from underneath the bar. The old boot fled like a drunken mouse.

That table. She stared in a trance, advancing toward it. 

--

Lynn stormed up a dark street, a brooding tempest. On her shoulder, she carried a stack of broken wood. That table.

“I’ll burn them! Do you hear me, red devil woman! I’ll BURN THEM!” 

--

Hahaha! The twins were laughing. Both of them were in the aviary, the gate closed. Prisoners in the yard. The skeletons of pigeons lay by Lynn’s feet, bloody feathers scattered.

“LYNN! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Hendrick opened the sliding door. I'm bluffing, Hendrick. 

Lynn held a cheap plastic lighter. With her other hand, she lit one of the sticks drenched in kerosene. It glowed red in the grey. “I’m going to burn these two. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“HAVE YOU GONE ABSOLUTELY MAD, WOMAN?”

“I’m open to suggestions, Hendrick. Have you seen our ‘sons’ lately?”

Hendrick glanced at the boys, or rather uhh… well the boys, yes. His twins, Harry and Rhys. At the sight of their horrid faces, he cried. Their skin was blotched with a green roughness mixed with red and white pigmentation. 

“I’M READY WHEN YOU ARE, LADY!” Lynn screamed at the sky.

“WHO ARE YOU EVEN TALKING TO?…”

--

Behind the fence, two piggish eyes gleamed over the pickets. Dirty blonde hair lit up like a bushfire under the waning moon. Then her body crawled over, a red petticoat snagged on a picket, but she managed to get loose. She carried a swollen burlap sack heaved over her shoulder. She fell with grace, her clogs pounding the dirt.

Lynn and Hendrick eyed the apparition — the lady in red — in a daze. She hobbled forward and, as she did, her features became clear in the electric lights of the yard, a crystal pool of a face. Her thin nose was lopsided and her lips were plump as a rose. She was pretty for an old woman, or whatever she was. Her expression was peculiar. A melancholy countenance seared her black eyes. A rugged exhaustion showed, as if she were tired of her own wickedness. Maybe. 

A silence permeated the yard, punctured only by the harsh, mouth-breathing of the twins. Their knuckles greenish-red as they gripped the bars. The lady dropped the overbearing bag in front of the married couple. The woven jute was moving.

Knowing what had to be done, Lynn proceeded to open the aviary gate. Both boys stepped out, maligned, eager to commit evil deeds.

Then two heads poked out of the sack, blond hair wet and disheveled, seeping from the horrors of a hellish womb. 

The boys rushed over to Lynn; the family embraced in a circle.

Are you hurt? Did she hurt you? I’ll never let anything bad happen to you again. I promise. Please forgive me. Lynn pleaded, her boys crying.

As Lynn comforted Harry and Rhys, the deluge in red and her two goblin sons disappeared over the fence.