Mrs Dalrymple

The sun blazed at its zenith, so hot even the shadows couldn't come out to play.

From the shade, the young man had the vantage of the remote periphery of town, of steamy wisps rising into the fiery firmament, and of the deserted streets, and motionless trees.

It was a lethargic day.

Suddenly, a haze of swirling dust cut across the highway into the bushes on the side, spiralling further away. Thunder cracked in the distance, and lightning streaked across the road, as a car burst out of a straying cloud and set its wheels on the road amid the squeal of tyres and the rise of leaden smoke. A car of an age long passed, when all cars were black, and their doors opened the wrong way.

Then, a chilly wave rippling through the air swept into him, closing his eyes, nudging him backwards, and quivering his body.

Leaning against the window of the police station, he was riveted by the strange occurrence. He had earlier contemplated closing his eyes to picture the scents from across the street carrying in the air. But he was glad he hadn’t, even though sprinkles of flavour had engulfed his hungry body, slipping into his nose, onto his wet tongue.

Meanwhile, the car bounced along on the gravelled street into town, stopping suddenly outside the police station. The bobbing heads of the two occupants stilled on their shoulders. The dust coat on the vehicle slid off to the ground in fine heaps.

A car door slammed on the other side, and a stocky, uniformed man under a slanting cap sprinted to the near side of the automobile. He opened the door and waited alongside it, offering his hand to the passenger when a booted foot stepped out.

“Here at last,” said the passenger, straightening herself out then the lopsided hat of the driver. “You wait here, Henry. I shan’t be long.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stood beside the vehicle, peering over the top. As she glanced around her, a gust lifted her veil ever slightly above her mouth to her lips where a narrow smile had sprung. “How utterly simplified; bad conduct, you sleep on this side; good conduct, you sleep on that side,” she said underneath an outlandish hat.

The young man understood what she meant. The lay of the modest town with the post office, police station, railway station, and fire station, on one side; and the diner, motel, and library, on the opposite side, had grabbed his attention too when he arrived here six months ago.

He was pleased that someone else felt like him, even if that person was a woman garbed in black from head to toe on what was still a torrid summer day.

He’d arrived here with hope, but over the past few months, his mundane existence had day by day degenerated further into purgatory. And he’d ended up lingering outside the police station. But for a few coins dropping into his hands, nothing ever happened here.

Except for today.

A lowering cloud, appearing when the vehicle breached the blurry yonder, had journeyed into town with the car, and was hovering above the police station.

The passenger whizzed into the police station, swishing her dress hemline off the floor. Eddies of fragrance surrounding her rushed into him as she passed. Not rough on the nose, a smooth caress, expensive perfume.

Barging past seated people, and shoving others around, she stopped at the rampart of a wooden counter, iron grid, and clear Perspex, behind which idled men in blue. Different shades of blue. Different shapes in blue.

“Pardon me, but which of you is the constable in charge?” she said.

“Ya, ya, what do you want?” said the man scrolling through his cellphone. He squirmed and said to his partner, “Hey, stop it, man!” His companion had nudged him, but on his frame, the nudge would’ve felt like the irritating tickle of a fly. “I said what—”

He flashed a look at the counter, and his eyes, big and round, lifted to fix on the unusual figure standing there.

“Constable take your feet off the table and present yourself to me!” the woman said.

The officer hastily removed his feet off the table, though still gripping it to avoid falling to the floor. He stumbled his way to the counter. Hanging on with one hand, he tried to stand upright, but his body sank to the counter. He swung his hands about him, like a beached whale floundering, and soon switched to holding on. 

“Good day, mam,” he said. “It’s sergeant, actually.”

“Mind your posture, constable. Stand up straight—”

“Like I said, mam… I’m a sergeant, not a constable.”

“Stop being petty. If you are an officer of the law, you are a constable… Now, where was I… Oh yes…! I need to complain—”

“Complaint? Just give me the details and…”

The noisy crescendo in the room drowned the rest of the brief communication between the woman and the officer. But it couldn’t have been pleasant. The officer was more spirited than he’d ever been, shuffling his hands and rocking backwards and forwards. He pivoted from side to side on his midriff, and cupping his jaw, jerked his neck to either side. But when his voice boomed—

“You impertinent fellow, you will address me as Mrs Dalrymple or mam… I am not just any lady.”

"Mrs Dal-rym-ple—” The officer smirked and glimpsed the others in the room, but none reciprocated, either looking down or at each other instead.

The woman slapped the counter, and rushing towards the door, screamed back over her shoulder, “It wasn’t clean the last time I was here.”

"Hold on, Mrs Dal—” The officer craned his neck around to his colleague. “We gotta take a statement, right?” he said, and with that he grabbed his cap and followed her outside, cursing under his breath, all the way out.   

On the sidewalk, Mrs Dalrymple opened her umbrella, nearly taking out the eye of the constable. They traded a few remarks before he whisked his cellphone out of his pocket and pressed it to his ear.

“Yes sir… no sir… yes, yes. It’s hardly half an hour, sir… I’ll do that sir.” His shouts into the phone were nothing like the way he spoke earlier. It was a comical sight, a squeaky voice emitting from a giant mouse. A uniformed, armed mouse.

And as soon as he finished speaking, the giant mouse cut across the street to his favourite place: the diner.

A fascinating silhouette against the dusking sky, Mrs Dalrymple scanned either side of her and across the dusty street. Her dress sheathed her lean body. An elegant, old-fashioned frock; seemed like it exploded out of the cover of a book on grandma’s coffee table. 

She lowered her umbrella in front of her and closed it quickly, her exposed hands becoming lost somewhere in the action. Not gloves as he thought they were, merely glints of pale at the end of her black sleeves, gone in a blink.

Just then her car slinked alongside her. Again, the driver rushed to open the back door and help her in. The vehicle hissed to a start and wiggled its way up the hill. It took an age to reach the summit far on the outskirts but faded in an instant.  

No sooner had the automobile vanished than the questions appeared. He searched inside him. But his limited education couldn’t present a reason for the vehicle materializing. And then perishing. 

He realized the answers lay elsewhere, or with someone else.

In the meantime, the rapidly evanescing daylight had yielded to eerie darkness. Not yet black, bluish darkness, and the light from nowhere yet everywhere. A single invisible bird chirped high up and far away. It was that kind of darkness.

The surrealness of this day, of the events unfolding, obscured the real progression of time, if indeed time had progressed, because here at the police station everything had stayed the same.

“Is he back yet…?” A figure came out of the darkness into the flickering light. But not all the way out. “What time she leave…? Awww! Why the hell am I asking you?”

The familiar growl of the town’s very visible mayor. On any normal day, the whole day, he’d be dawdling about town. But his sudden haste at this moment hinted at existing or looming danger. His protruding belly hadn’t stopped bouncing from the moment he uttered his first word, although he'd been stationary since then.

He took off into the police station, his belly clearing the way as he went. The door had hardly shut behind him when he flew out again and flumped into his idling car. A shaking gust followed him as he passed. “Get in the car, boy,” he said at some stage before reaching his vehicle.

The car thundered off with a jerk. A whisper from behind, an eldritch breath, strangled like slender fingers on the throat and eyes turning upwards. “She’s a good person you know… But they done her wrong.” It was only the mayor speaking from the driver’s seat, which was pushed so far back as to line up with the back seat.

“Who?”

Silence prevailed for the rest of the journey, the view along the meandering pathways and intersecting lanes, a despairing one. And scary too, the image of the houses with splotched walls, cracked windows and dangling roofs, captured so clearly in the flaring headlights. He’d left his home to escape these scenes, not to find them somewhere else.

After a short while, the automobile veered off the path, stopping short of rank foliage. On the flank, the black car was barely visible under wisps of smoky-grey fog and overhanging branches.

“You’d better go get her,” said the mayor, gesturing to a recess in a wall. “I’ll be waiting here.”

If it was an access, it didn’t appear so neither marked nor flashy. He had to enter, even if peril awaited him. Apart from the mayor’s instructions pushing him, there was a greater force pulling him: his curiosity.  

In the dense mist, amidst the whispering trees and rustling of unseen footsteps on the ground, he edged closer to what he believed were recognizable voices.

“Is everything arranged, Henry?”

“Almost, ma’am… the mayor—”

“Oh, I think we can count on him.”

The sudden chill pierced through the skin to his flesh. Then he couldn’t feel a thing. Too afraid to move, his buckling knees drew him lower and lower. He clawed into a tree with his trembling fingers. Until…

A faint flicker carried through the mist, beckoning him closer. Lest he imperiled himself, he sheltered longer behind the tree. But the faint words riding to him on a murmuring wind impelled him to steal a glance.

In the light of a candle, a young woman, all in white, dusted herself off a few paces away from a man with an askew hat. The dark locks dancing around her neck played in the wind as they lengthened to her waist; and exposed her face, flecked with the gold from the candlelight and the silver of moonlight.

The scene playing out in front enthralled him. So much so that he slid on a stone, and lost his footing. Even a patch of twigs couldn’t cushion his fall or lessen his pain. “Aargh! Dammit!”  

When he got back up, his pain had mysteriously disappeared, and so had the other persons. In the flickering haze, any type of clues was scarce for strained eyes.

“I was about your age.”

A voice from behind, gentle, as if filtered by the mist, but strong enough to wind around his body and pin him to the spot. Later, when the pounding in his chest had stopped, and he was wet no more, he pivoted around with a hop to whence the voice came.

“It's you… Mrs Da-a-lrymple,” he said, relieved, but not quite. “Wh-at you doing here?”

***

She had dawned early that morning, earlier than the day. Still Mary, expecting to soon become Mrs Dalrymple. Though the misty pall that had greeted her still lingered outside, she was bright-eyed and anxiously happy.

Twinkling in the mist from the gateways above, golden arrows shot through the forest canopy into the hut, striking her face on one side, warming, then on the other side as she turned.

She waited in her thick and thin dress, the one she’d sewn together from pieces of material she’d found. Mostly as white as the foamy waters of the river outside, except for the threads and cloth that didn’t match.

The river near her house was alive. The water raced down from the mountains in urgency and caution, swerving around the charcoal boulders, and splashing off the banks back into its unrestrained meander.

A gentle, flowing melody.

But the rhythm changed. Water swashed against the rocks and crashed over the edge. The earth shook in a rumble of thunder, drawing closer every moment. And bang!

The door of her home was flung open, landing clear across the room.

A million screaming voices silenced the words coming out of her mouth. “Burn her… Witch! Witch!” Filthy hands clawed at her, dragging her outside amongst the herd of pitchforked farmers and a mounted horde.

A man with a wig stepped forward, and the mob quietened. He read from an unfurled scroll. “You are accused of incanting. What say you?”

“No… it’s not true. All I do is happily sing to myself.”

“You cavort with dark forces. What say you?”

“No… No, I dance because I’m joyful… Because of my true love… Nothing else.”

“You fly with a broom. What say you?”

“No… My feet are firmly rooted to the ground. What is in my hand, I clean my house with.”

“You are hereby adjudged guilty of witchcraft. You must be absolved of this crime.” The man in the wig put away the scroll and pointed to a spot behind the crowd.

“Burn her… Burn her to ashes.” They all screamed again as if rehearsed.

“Please, I am innocent of all these things. Please… I am to be wed today. I am waiting for my betrothed… He will tell you.” She glanced around as she pleaded. But none was a sympathetic face. Even as they told her they’d killed her betrothed.

There was a blur when she heard their words; when she glimpsed her once white dress had become a wrap of rags. But her eyes screamed open as her flesh seared under her blistering skin. So much left her mouth so quickly, over which she had no control.

Without thought, names and curses flowed out in pain and anger.

But, in a flash, the pain had stopped. Lightning struck her, lashes of blinding white across her body forcing her head down and forward and shaking her for a long time. A wild tempest raged, like she'd never known. Cracking, thundering, blasting, and showering her in icy drops. The fire soon stopped, and the flames turned into a soothing balm on her itching skin.

And she lived another day.

And she lived thereafter.

***

“Are you okay, Mrs Dalrymple?” said the young man, noticing her brief silence.

“Yes, I’m… I’m fine. I’m here to meet my husband… As I do every year,” she said.

Her quavering voice stopped with a slight cough. Against a tree, she turned her head upwards, and the silvery trail on her cheeks extended down her neck into her frilled collar. She dabbed at her eyes and shook her body to compose herself.

“Your husband is coming here?”

“He will be here soon… Never mind that. What do you want for yourself?”

“Me… I want to escape this miserable life.”

“You see, we both want the same thing… that you escape this miserable life.”

“But how?”

“Well, If you go—I mean escape, then my husband will arrive.”

She stepped away from the tree, her hands crossing her heart; her gaze resting on a splashed headstone, whilst her legs pushed at a bucket.

The sway of a light wind cast the candle’s illumination onto the headstone, the flickering flame bright enough to remove any doubts of what he was reading.  

“JOHN DALRYMPLE 1701–1720.”

The trees sighed, a hollow shriek in his ears. An icy breeze bit on his skin.   

Mrs Dalrymple circled him, drawing ever closer in swirling rings. He stepped back, further and further, until he felt no ground behind him. He stopped, and over his shoulder glanced a gravestone. In the shortest of instances, he thought he saw the runes of his name flashing by, as the mantle of half-light descending upon him turned into pitch darkness…