Clouds Tell the Best Stories

White and Fluffy,

Big and Puffy,

Like Cottonwool.

They look so full.

On my back I lay,

On a sunny day,

Come back I cry

As the clouds float by.

“What was that?” he asked half laughing.

“I wrote that when I was in Grade three and recited it at the school assembly”.

“Any you still remember it?” he asked quite surprised.

“I remember you doing that” said Julie my best friend “You always were good at writing and storytelling too.  And I was hopeless!”

There were four of us lying in a field on the soft grass.

It was a warm summer’s day, and just like in a fairy tale book – birds could be heard singing in the woods over to the right and butterflies fluttered past us as we looked up towards the sky. The breeze was gentle and warm, not bothering to trouble the branches of the trees but just enough to move the longer grass in a soft swishing motion.

I felt relaxed sinking into the plush dark green carpet, hands behind my head. I turned to look at the others and noticed the buttercups thickly dotted all around us, bright yellow flowers on tiny thin stalks.

“Oh look at the horse. Can you see it?”

“It could even be a unicorn, look at the long thing sticking out from the top of it”

“Oh yes I see that but it could be a fat old lady with an ice cream cone on her head!”

“Don’t be stupid Alex, but that is funny!”

“When I was a girl I would lie on my back, watching the clouds and my Mum would lie with me. It was our time together. My dad didn’t understand our fascination with it, how it took us away to a land far away. My mum would make up wonderful stories about the shapes of the clouds we saw”.

No one said anything and I wondered if they were all asleep. Sitting up suddenly I looked over at them, three tin soldiers lying straight and still. “Is anyone awake?” I asked.

“I am” replied Jack “Seeing as you are so good at making out the shapes of the clouds, how about you tell us what some of them look like to you?”

I lay back down on the flattened grass and looked upwards to the sky above, intensely blue like a deep ocean but now with a few grey streaks smeared across it as if the weather might change later on.

“Alright then” I replied “I’ll tell you what I can see”.

“There’s a chimney, smoke billowing from it, swirling into the air. That small round figure to the right is my Grandma. She told me a story when I was young and quite often when I’m lying watching the clouds above I can see the story floating by - like today; do you want me to tell it to you?”

“Yes of course we do – sounds interesting!”

When Gran first married my grandad they lived in a small log cabin next to the brickworks.

The brickworks were owned by a Mr. Sullivan, a really miserable man but he rented out his cabin to my grandparents in return for them care-taking the brickworks when it wasn’t in operation, which was every weekend and whenever it broke down and wasn’t in use”.

“My Gran said she never liked Mr Sullivan, in fact he gave her the creeps. Their cabin which was deep in the woods had no other cabins around them and sometimes when Grandad was away at work and it was night-time and dark, she could hear footsteps outside the cabin door. She would go around making sure all the doors were locked and the curtains shut. She swore it was him trying to look inside. If you look closely you can see a long thin line just going passed now, and that is him – skinny and tall.

Lisa glanced sideways at her friends and could see they were intrigued with the tale so continued on.

“Anyway they lived in the cabin for a couple of years and then moved closer to town. Gran was so relieved to have other people around her, she felt safer. She used to see Mr Sullivan in the local store sometimes and he would always stare at her but say nothing”.

Lisa raised her voice to her friends asking them if they could see the almost black volcano shape drifting by high above.

“Yes I can” called back Julie and then the other said they could see it too.

“Well that is the tragedy of the story”.

“What tragedy?” Alex commented

“I’ve never felt the need to tell any of you about this over the years – in a way it was something that was ‘in house’ – just for the family but today for some reason I want to tell you - maybe because it’s the anniversary of her death”.

Before the friends could interrupt Lisa with more questions she continued quickly.

Can you see the wavy dark blue line next to the volcano shape?  Well that is the river bank where my Aunt Silvia disappeared from when she was young. I see the pair of boots, big ones, see them straight above us? And the only clue left on the bank of the river that fateful day”.

 “I am so intrigued” said Alex “This is like being at the movies!”

“I never knew you had an Aunt called Silvia” said Julie who had known Lisa the longest.

“Well I’ve never mentioned her before because sometimes tragedies are best kept quiet” was Lisa’s reply.

“Fair enough” someone said.

They all sat up now and wanted to know more. “What happened to your Aunt? Did they find her body?”

“Yes they found her – washed up in the reeds” Lisa answered but they never found out who did it. “When she was pulled from the river, the policeman who found her not only recognised her but also the birth mark on her leg and she had the locket around her neck he had given to her for her twenty first birthday.

 “Oh! That’s awful. How did the policeman know she had a birth mark on her leg?”

“Because that was her father, my grandad” she replied.

The small group of people sat in silence thinking about what they had just been told.

“Oh Lisa, how terrible for your grandma and grandad, especially as he found her” her friends all said sympathetically “And they never suspected anyone?”

The wind was shifting now, the sky growing darker and the clouds blowing along much quicker. The eerie silence only broken as Lisa answered.

“There was one suspect. Fred Sullivan”.

“That creepy old man?” one of them asked

“No” said Lisa “Not him but his son”.

“Why did they suspect him?”

“Alright” answered Lisa having the full attention of the other three. “I’m not going to lie down any longer because my back is starting to hurt and it’s getting chilly lying on the grass but I’ll tell you the full story”

The air was starting to get a little cool, dark clouds were rolling in and most of the birds had stopped all of their happy chirping. It was eerily silent as Lisa continued on.

“Fred Sullivan was in love with my Aunty Silvia. But he wasn’t quite ‘all there’. The story went that his dad, being a violent man pushed Fred when he was a boy, hitting his head on the door frame. They rushed him to the local doctor, and of course his father seemed remorseful, but my Gran said he still continued to give poor Fred beatings all of his life.

 Fred and Silvia went to the same school and were really good friends. They grew up together and Silvia always just thought of him as a friend and also felt sorry for him, but Fred had other ideas, he wanted more than to just be friends”.

“That was like the story of my Mum and her first boyfriend – he caused a lot of trouble and in the end my Grandpa had to really warn him off – they had a massive fight down the end of their street with the police being called and everything. Anyway carry on Lisa!” said one of the boys.

“Where was I?” she thought “Oh yeah…so when Silvia became engaged to someone else when she was in her late teens Fred tried to burn down their house”.

“What he set fire to your grandparent’s house?”

“He tried to…the family was out and came back one night to find Fred pouring petrol over the back porch. He was yelling that Silvia was marrying the wrong bloke, swearing and carrying on. I think he was drunk. My Grandad chased him off and the next morning put on his uniform and went around to talk to his father, old man Sullivan”.

By now it had started to rain and the group put their rain jackets on and stood up. “I think we should stand under that tree over there or we’ll get soaked” one of them said already heading towards the huge oak tree holding up a mushroom shaped cover.

“Do you want me to finish telling you the story here and now or driving home in the car?” Lisa asked them.

“Now!” said Julie “I want to know about your Aunt being found in the river”.

The group of four huddled under the wide canopy of the tree – the wind had died down a bit stopping the rain from blowing onto them. It was quite dark and very dismal but they were used to living in a place where it can be bright and sunny one minute and then suddenly the clouds roll in and it begins to rain.

“Well my Aunt was I think twenty two or maybe even twenty three when it happened. She still lived at home and worked at the local hospital as a nurse” she began, stopping occasionally to recall the story. “My mum told me it was summer and so the river was quite busy with people swimming and playing on the river bank. She had gone down there with her friends for the afternoon but my Aunt was working a late morning shift so didn’t get off work until early afternoon. Silvia’s fiancé Brad was sick with the flu so she said to my mum that when work was finished they could go and do something together”.

Before Lisa could carry on Julie spoke “Gosh, the river is still a great place to go, walk along and have a picnic but you really wouldn’t want to swim in it today would you?”

“Nah too polluted, but back then the water was clear and clean, fast flowing and enticing for a dip. There were even loads of fish in it”.

“Well that’s progress for you! Sorry Lisa, please continue”.

“So at the end of Silvia’s shift, she came home and the two sisters decided that they would wait until it cooled right down and then go for a walk along the river bank. Then, as far as I can recall, my Mum’s then boyfriend Tom came around and asked her if she wanted to go to the picture theatre in town and she went with him instead of with her sister”.

The rain had started to get slightly heavier and through the gaps in the overhead covering of the trees the group were beginning to get very damp. The temperature had dropped and the air had a decided chilliness to it.

“Are you sure you want me to finish here and now?” asked Lisa, knowing the answer. She was a very enthralling story teller.

“Of course we do – just get on with it!”

“Right then….so Silvia decided to wander down to the river on her own. It was still quite warm and a few people were still out and about enjoying the evening. Anyway Silvia told her Mum that she would go around to one of her friends’ houses first and they would go out together. So when it got really late that night no one was particularly worried, after all Silvia was in her twenties, engaged to be married and could look after herself”.

“Oh I’m not sure if being in your mid-twenties ensures that you can look after yourself, eh Alex?”

“Oh shut up Jack!”

“So” continued Lisa knowing she was getting to the crux of the tale. “It wasn’t until my mum, who shared a bedroom with her sister realised when she woke at about 3.30am that Silvia had slept in her bed, so she woke up her Mum and Dad and told them. Her Dad, my grandad had been on the late shift that night so was sound asleep but of course jumped up immediately, the policeman in him wide awake”

“How scary for everyone” one of them said

“Yes it was, and after ringing all of Silvia’s friends and being told that no one had seen her that night made it an even bigger mystery. She never went to a friend’s house at all, so must have gone down to the river by herself or met someone there. So then Grandad called in the troops and everyone from our street and lots more made their way down to the river with their torches, lamps and whatever else they had that would give some light and searched.

Like I said before, the only thing they found was a pair of wellington boots, later to be traced back to Fred Sullivan.

“But you said he didn’t do it”.

“No I said they couldn’t prove he did it” corrected Lisa, “but he was the main suspect”.

“How long until your Aunts body was found? Did she have clothes on? How did she die? Come on tell us the rest of it”.

“She was strangled, fully clothed. Grandad was never the same after that, in fact no one was. That was the end of Grandad’s career in the police force – he had a sort of nervous breakdown. Brad was devastated and he never married and my mum always blamed herself – she said that if she hadn’t gone to the pictures that day with her boyfriend it probably wouldn’t have happened”.

“So they never found out who strangled your Aunty?”

“No never, but as Fred Sullivan took his own life six months later, everyone thought it was probably him. But no one knows for sure”.

“Wow” said Jack “That’s quite a mystery. It was worth getting soaked by the rain to hear that”.

“Let’s get out of here before we all freeze” said Lisa as they grabbed their sodden bags and rugs and walked quickly over towards the car.

No one spoke very much on the journey home – it could have been because the day had been long and tiring or just because they were still all thinking about the terrible story of Lisa’s Aunt, or both.

And Lisa was quiet too thinking just how interesting she had made that story!

She would tell them one day that it wasn’t true, and in fact was just fantasy, a figment of her imagination and they would only laugh at being so ‘taken in’, but for now she would bathe in the knowledge that she was a good tale teller and be thankful

 to the beautiful clouds in the sky for awakening her imagination!