Storyteller, Colin & Anne Brookfield [best fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

to listen to what had happened. It seemed that Julie had fallen into a nearby stream and been swept away with Ranu, who had tried in his little way to save her. As so often is the case, blame and counter-blame gradually drove Clair and her husband ever further apart, until there was nothing left to keep them together.

All those terrible years came flooding back into Clair’s mind, only this time, they came as though their oppressive weight had been lifted away from her. The reason for this lay before her eyes, which were now transfixed upon the bathroom floor.

Scarcely fifteen minutes beforehand, she had been opening a large jar of face powder, within which, was a small powder puff that her daughter Julie was always after, to dab on her face as all grown up ladies do. Being so engrossed in those thoughts, the jar somehow managed to slip through her fingers and splatter its contents all over the wide expanse of the dark grey floor tiles.

The next task was to get the vacuum cleaner, so she walked towards the hallway and removed her dusty shoes. Behind her, she had left a straight clear line of her shoe prints on the bathroom floor, but this was not what she saw when she returned.

Before her, was something that in an instant, had returned all the joy back into her life. She was staring almost in disbelief at the clear imprints of a child’s feet and a puppy’s paws following side by side – close to her own – right across the bathroom floor. Then she looked down at her feet and saw powdery foot and paw prints that had just encircled her.

“All this time,” she cried, “we’ve been walking along with one another and I never knew it.”

 

The Returning *

Roger Miller was married and with a responsible position in I.T. Management. At 35 years of age, he had a position and quality of life that he was justly proud of. Although, he had often wondered how successful his yesteryear fellow students might also have become, though he did have a surprise call from some past friends Mark and Billy recently, who had also lost contact with the rest of their college friends.

There was of course that other matter – although it didn’t even come up in conversation with his old buddies any more. So it seemed that in common with everyone, that ‘other matter’ had now retreated so far into the backs of their minds, as to be considered nothing more than a mere figment of imagination. But matters were now playing themselves out in another place, and apparently by the most incredible means.

Jacqui, who lived in a nearby town, had also made a success of her life but had preferred to remain single. The only blight on her happiness was the separation that had occurred from her dearly loved college girlfriend Alice, even though it was seventeen long years ago. Apart from Alice, she could not remember any of the other students’ names. Perhaps things would have remained so, had it not been for the late night experience that would mark her life forever.

She had been asleep for several hours when she was awakened by a young girl’s voice, and it was one she recognised from her college days. She lifted her head from the pillow, and saw Alice, still as a student, standing at the foot of her bed.

Jacqui screamed and hid her face beneath the blankets, but Alice kept talking.

“I won’t go away, I can’t, you’re my friend,” she said. “There is something you must do for me.” So with great courage, Jacqui listened.

The next day, Jacqui presented herself before a rather perplexed police sergeant at the local police station, who listened to the story.

“If I understand you correctly madam,” he said, “you say you had a visitation last night from a college girlfriend who was murdered seventeen years ago, and that this ghost called Alice, gave you the name and current address of her murderer.”

“That’s correct,” said Jacqui, “what can you do about it?”

“Well,” said the sergeant, “we are not clairvoyants, but we do have our procedures. Leave me your telephone number and we will contact you if anything comes up.”

A week passed with no phone call, so Jacqui presented herself in front of the sergeant again. This went on for several weeks, and each time she knew she was being fobbed off as a crank. Finally, the police got so fed up with her that they followed up on the information, but only because the file on that murder case was still open.

The investigating officer’s interest in the case began to change, as some of the information Jacqui had given, proved to be that which the police had held back from the national newspapers. The evidence was then becoming so incriminating, that the police made a plausible excuse to enable DNA samples to be taken from the suspect, and the results astounded the police.

Several weeks later, Jacqui was watching the News on the television, when they gave the results of a murder trial that she had taken a great interest in.

“Roger Miller,” the presenter stated, “has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a former class student Alice Williams, seventeen years ago”.

Ten Pieces of Gold

Foxwood Manor had been the ancestral home of the Thornton family throughout four hundred years of unsettled history. Yet never before had its future looked so uncertain.

The responsibility of the estate had recently fallen to the eldest son Michael, following the death of his father. The younger son Giles, was a professional pilot and the owner of a small commercial aircraft currently contracted for work with a company based in Singapore, but was having some time at home after his father’s funeral. He occupied one wing of the Manor with his wife Lindsey, whilst Michael and his wife Penelope lived in another. This had always been a very harmonious arrangement until now, because so many problems had tumbled in one after the other.

In the meantime, Michael had found his way to the family library for some quiet contemplation, but it didn’t last long, as the rest of the family trouped in. He had been sitting at the table gazing at the books that his father would never again read, or the riddle of the family bronzes he would never solve. He had always been passionately interested in unravelling the ancient riddle, ‘Only nine may stand; the tenth must hide’.

High up on the library wall in front of Michael, was a cabinet as ancient as the rest of the house and on its shelves, sat its equally ancient nine bronze figures. Michael’s contemplative diversion was short lived as his brother disrupted the peace.

“Have you forgotten that the dammed ‘Carpetbaggers’ are waiting for us to come up with two million pounds death duties? Instead of finding a way out of the problem, you’ve taken refuge in a bottle of father’s ‘weapons-grade’ whisky, and what’s more, spent a small fortune tracking down and buying the missing bronze. Why they were ever referred to as the ‘Ten Pieces of Gold’, I will never know. They would never have looked like gold even before the patina grew on them. If it were up to me, they’d be heading for the nearest rubbish skip.”

“They belong where they were first placed nearly four hundred years ago, up in that glass fronted cabinet,” Michael replied angrily.

He got to his feet and moved the high library steps beneath the wall cabinet. Reaching up, he opened the creaking doors and pointed a finger towards his new acquisition on the floor. Reluctantly Penelope rose from her chair and handed the offending bronze to her husband.

It was after Michael had placed the tenth bronze in position and closed the doors that it happened. There was a loud crack and the cabinet slid down the wall several centimetres with a bang. Michael was still perched at the top of the steps, but waited until he had got over the shock before placing a hand beneath the casement to see if it was insecure. Instead, and to everyone’s amazement, the cabinet swung noisily sideways on ancient protesting hinges. This revealed a large cavity behind it, in which sat a line of glistening gold goblets encrusted with precious stones. The stunned silence didn’t last long before they exploded with excitement.

“So much for my whisky haze of myopic self delusion,” said Michael as he pushed the cabinet back in place. He then opened one door to remove one bronze. There was a loud click, and the cabinet lifted up to its original position.

Later, Giles weighed each bronze and discovered they were each exactly the same weight, and after experimenting, discovered that the cabinet mechanism was designed to be activated ONLY by the collective weight of those ten bronzes, and nothing else. The jubilation at Foxwood Manor seemed to go on endlessly and six weeks later, they even had a construction company in, to carry out major modernisations and repairs.

Meanwhile, whilst the whole family were seated around the library, Michael wrote a cheque for two million pounds for the death duties.

“Chickenfeed!” he exclaimed smugly.

On the table, was a daily newspaper opened at its centre. To the corner of the page was a small article; it concerned an international auction sale in a conference hall at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, where ten exquisite, jewel encrusted gold goblets were auctioned for fifteen million pounds by a seller, who had asked to remain anonymous.

Tiger Prawn

‘Tiger Prawn’ seemed a very strange appellation to a young lady barely 14 years old. Mind you, she was quite tiny, which could make some sense of the prawn end of her name,