SHORT STORY: The Red Dress

THE blood-red dress hangs on the wardrobe door. Floor-length A-line taffeta with a Nero neckline and delicate capped sleeves like tulip heads just beginning to wilt. Dropping down from its black velvet coat hanger like an impressionistic veil of weeping poppies it carries an air of sadness.

The dress and the old pine wardrobe, in which woodworm has made its home, are the only evidence of human occupation left in this long-deserted, derelict cottage. The other two bedrooms and the rooms downstairs are empty, yawning spaces. Their ancient, creaking floorboards engage in a cryptic dialogue which only they understand. The chatter becomes particularly vehement in stormy weather when rain and gales knock on the blind, dusty windows and an invisible giant's hand appears to rock the house in its foundations.

No one can say precisely how long the dwelling has stood bereft of inhabitants. The small island is home to fewer than a hundred people. Jock, just shy of his ninety seventh birthday, is the oldest of them. It must be nigh on twenty years he tells Pete when they talk about it one night in the hotel bar as Pete pours out a dram of Jock's favourite whisky. Surprised at how long it's been, Pete whistles through his teeth, a sound reminiscent of a broken gate buffeted by a gale. Jock utters a delightfully youthful chuckle. 

“Not many folk would feel comfortable living in a house standing on land known as Purgatory.”

When he still farmed, Jock used to graze his sheep in the field next to the cottage. It was called Hell. Nobody knew how or when the plots had acquired their strange biblical names. Certainly no one wanted to put their animals out to pasture there. Who knew what evil forces the fields might hold. Jock had given up on religion a long time ago, when he was still a young man, recently returned home from a war he had neither understood nor approved of and in which several of his friends had needlessly died. A war which had been Hell on Earth. The names, therefore, held no fear for him.

Pete arrived from Caithness five years ago, had bought and extensively refurbished the only hotel on the island. He is an astute businessman. While careful not to alienate the local community by imposing his ideas where they are not welcome he nevertheless wants the hotel to be profitable and serve as his pension pot when he retires in ten or fifteen years time. Therefore, it plays a dual role. For the local folk it provides a venue for weddings, dances and a congenial place to eat, drink, socialise and make music together. The ten bedrooms upstairs have been individually decorated with the discerning visitor in mind. Over the last few years the island has become popular with city types from the mainland seeking to escape the rat race for a few days. Occasionally, they see honeymooners looking for an out-of-the-way location which offers them warm hospitality and an abundance of beautiful views around every corner.

On his third dram Jock is reminiscing about the old days. Nearly everyone on the island was born and bred here and only rarely left it, even for holidays. Folk were too busy looking after their farms, tending to their animals and crops and ensuring their families had food on the table during the long winter months. The only cottage occupied by someone from outwith the island was the now-derelict dwelling on the plot called Purgatory.

“I'm not even sure the cottage ever had a name of its own.” Jock frowns as he tries to remember.

“The last person to stay there was a young woman who mostly kept to herself. She was a writer, supposedly, but I canno' mind her name. There were rumours that she had lost someone in tragic or mysterious circumstances, but I don't ken if there was any truth in it. On the few occasions I saw her about the village she was always dressed in clothes of the same colour, Red – bright red.”

Jock shakes his head. “A strange colour to be wearing for someone who is allegedly mourning”

When the door to the bar opens all heads turn towards it. It's a Monday evening; always a quiet night at the best of times, but tonight an angry November storm is rattling at windows and whining mournfully underneath doors. A night when few venture out needlessly, so Pete, Jock, farmer Sam Harvest and Betty Mackay, known as 'Old Soak', are curious to see who is about to join them.

The four exchange glances. Jock's last words still hang in the air as they stare at the woman in the expensive-looking red coat. The hairs on the back of Pete's neck tingle as he tries to get his mouth to speak. Looks around thirty or thirty five, but could be a young forty. The thoughts chase around his mind in the ensuing seconds of silence. The woman clears her throat.

“Good evening.”

Jock detects a slight foreign accent, but can't identity it.

“Sorry”, she pauses, looking back at the faces staring at her. “There's no one at the reception desk and I'd like to check in.”

Hesitating a moment as the men continue to gaze at her without speaking she says, “The sign in the window says there are vacancies.”

As one the three men mumble, “evening”, while Betty continues to stare wordlessly. Pete finally finds his voice.

“Of course, I'll come right on through.”

“We don't get many visitors at this time of year,” Pete tries to explain away the earlier awkwardness as he finds the key to Bedroom One and, picking up the woman's small leather suitcase, leads the way up the stairs to the first floor. The case looks old and well-travelled.

“I'm not sure,” she replies when Pete asks if she is on holiday or visiting someone on the island.

Taking the key from Pete after he opens the bedroom door for her and places her case on the luggage rack she thanks him and shakes his hand. Pete invites her to come down to the bar for a drink and something to eat. 

“The drink will be on the house,” he tells her, hoping to entice her to tell them about herself and her business on the island.

“Perhaps,” her smile is coy as she closes the door.

Back in the bar his customers are curious. “She's awful formal and secretive. She shook my hand and thanked me when I gave her the key,” Pete tells them.

“Maybe she's someone famous,” Sam says. “She must have given you her name.”

Pete shrugs his shoulders. “It's unusual, she spelt it for me – Anna Rotmond.”

Sam snorts, looking around at the others to see if they share his amusement. “What kind of name is that?”

“Not her real name probably, an artist's name, perhaps, or she has some other reason to use a false identity.”

Jock speaks quietly. The others have to lean in to hear him. “Rot Mond means 'red moon' in German. May or may not be significant.”

Sam and Betty stare at Jock open-mouthed. Pete again feels the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

“How d'you know that?” Sam's question explodes out of his mouth like the staccato of gunfire.

Jock looks at the young farmer for a long moment without answering. A slight blush colours Sam's sallow complexion.

“Sorry, dinna mean to snap. Jus' dinna ken you knew stuff like that.”

Jock nods in acquiescence to Sam's mumbled apology. “Aye, I was stationed in Germany during the Great War. Learning the lingo made things a tad easier with the locals there.”

“Man, you've had some experiences in yer long life, Jock Merriman.“ Sam says impressed, hoping his tone makes up for his earlier attitude. “Tell us a bit aboot it.”

As Jock begins to talk Pete cocks his head to one side. He can't make out the sound. Is someone waiting at the reception desk? It can only be the new guest he thinks as he goes to see. The entrance hall is empty, but he has the distinct feeling that it wasn't a moment ago. An ambient sense of a gust of wind having passed through, leaving behind a rush of outdoor scents.

Pete opens the front door and looks up and down the street. It seems deserted, but he can't be sure. Several of the street lights in the vicinity of the hotel have blown in the storm. The ghostly orb of the full moon washes everything in a grey-green veil of shadows. Why is this sometimes referred to as the red moon? The thought steals unbidden into Pete's head and he is glad of the light coming from the hall behind him. But then he notices something. As he watches, the moon slowly appears to drop lower as though let down by an invisible string. The light from the hall appears reflected in its white centre, growing ever brighter while slowly seeming to change shape, as though being sucked up through the eerie darkness. After a minute or two more, a shudder of unease clawing at his spine, Pete goes back inside.

What he observed can only be the product of his wired imagination, but the sense of having witnessed something otherworldly doesn't stop the goosebumps rising along his arms as he returns to the bar. Pete half expects something to have changed in the short while he was gone, but everything is the same as always on Monday nights shortly before last orders.

“We were garrisoned in an old, deserted farmhouse in a small village about a hundred kilometres north of Berlin. The family that owned it long gone, most likely taken captive by infiltrators,” Jock is saying as he watches Pete pouring himself a dram. It could be an illusion of the dim light and the number of whiskies he's had himself, but he is almost certain the hotel owner's hand is trembling as he holds the bottle. 

“They had left nothing of any use to us. Nearly all the rooms were bare, with wooden floorboards that creaked all the time even when no one was walking about. Local rumours abounded that the house was haunted. Others said that a witch had once lived there. Can't say, we ever encountered either, but then we were all young men, boys really, who didn't believe in all that supernatural stuff.”

Jock pauses before continuing. “Only one thing actually freaked us, though none of us would openly admit it.”

Stopping again, he rises, going to the bar for a last dram; 'one for the road', as he calls it. The others know better than to rush him into continuing his story. Jock notices that Pete's hands still aren't entirely steady as he refills the old man's glass. Jock guesses it isn't drink that is to blame, but that something happened when Pete went to check about the sound he heard in the hotel reception.

Taking his seat again, in a high-backed wicker armchair that, over the years has become known as 'Jock's chair', the veteran sips his whisky, slowly rolling it around his tongue, before swallowing. The 'water of life'. He makes a sound that is at once appreciation of the golden liquid and a ploy to heighten the suspense amongst his small audience.

“In one of the bedrooms there was an enormous wardrobe. Woodwormed, with nothing inside. No rail, hangers or drawers. It looked as though it had stood there for centuries. Except ….. “

Jock pauses again for effect. Sam's fingers twitch with impatience on the dark polished table in front of them. Betty, eyes tight shut, head back on the sofa, snores softly through her open mouth. Pete is pulling up a chair to join them. Jock thinks his face has turned an unnatural grey-white colour, though the hands are still around his glass.

“On the outside of the wardrobe door hung a woman's dress. Long and red, cascading down the door like a waterfall. It seemed to have taken on another identity, somehow. 'A river of blood', one of the boys called it. It looked as if it had only hung there a short time before we arrived, so clean and crisp. Not all dusty and covered in cobwebs like the rest of the house. Uncanny, it was, quite uncanny.”

“Whose dress do you think it was? What was it doing there?” Sam has waited so long, he wants a more satisfactory conclusion to Jock's tale.

Jock shrugs, “Belonged to one of the last occupants, who left in a hurry, I suppose. We never found out. There was something about it though, something humanistic you might say, that just made us leave it where it was.”

When, in the morning, Pete takes the breakfast tray up to Room One which Anna Rotmond had requested as she checked in there is no response to his knock on the door. He knocks again, louder this time, and sets the tray down outside the door. An hour and a half later the tray is still where he left it, untouched. A new tingle of unease creeps along his spine and his chest tightens uncomfortably. Something isn't right. He knocks again, even louder than before. The sound echoes up and down the passage in a way he has never noticed before: Not there, not there, oooh. He goes back downstairs for the master key. 

Another knock, Not there, not there, oooh, meets no reply. Palms slightly damp now, Pete slips the key into the lock and turns it.

The bed has clearly not been slept in, although the duvet shows a slight impression of someone having sat or lain down on it. The cover, a design of impressionist poppies on a white background, is a little less smooth than when he had shown his guest to the room the previous evening. The suitcase is still where Pete had placed it on the luggage rack. As he ponders whether there is anything suspicious in this bizarre situation; whether he should alert the police or leave well alone – for the meantime at least – he hears the front door open and close. Perhaps it's his guest returning from a night out with friends? Who might she know on the island to go partying with? He has no idea. From the top of the stairs he sees a large red bag sitting on the reception desk. His heart misses a beat, although he doesn't know why it should. 

“Morning”, a voice calls up to him. Hot relief courses through Pete's body when he recognises the postman's voice. Aah, of course, the red rucksack on the desk is Robbie's.

“Dreadful day to have to be out delivering mail to folk,” Pete waves a hand at the door to indicate sympathy with the postie's lot.

“Ach, it's not so bad, Robbie tells him, slapping a bundle of letters onto the desk. “I enjoy my job. Much better than sitting in a stuffy office all day to earn my crust to support the wife and kids.”

Robbie is at the door with his hand on the knob when he turns back to Pete, now coming down the stairs.

“Odd thing, last night. Passed that old cottage on Purgatory on me way hame from visiting me brother an' his wife. A dim light came from it, like a candle near the window. Could've been some kind of weird illusion with it being full moon, an' all, but it was a bit creepy, nevertheless.”

Opening the door Robbie shakes his head as though ridding himself of unpleasant thoughts. Pete remains standing at the bottom of the stairs for a moment before going into the kitchen to see about making lunch. 

For the first time in a fortnight the wind drops and weak winter sunshine breaks through the clouds that have lain thick and grey like an old army blanket over the island. Having warmed himself with some leftover steak and ale stew and home-baked bread Pete takes a walk to the beach. During the summer months, when visitors keep him busy in the hotel, he rarely gets the chance to venture out for long to take in the beauty of the place he has come to call home. The winter months hold a special ambience, Pete thinks, that doesn't exist, at least not in the same way, when tourists trample around the countryside, exclaiming their astonishment and asking lots of questions of the local residents they meet. 

The beach road climbs to the highest point of the island before falling away sharply down to the sandy shore below. Pete steps off the road onto the steep embankment beside it. Dirty-grey scrubby grass covers the ground. Damp earth mingles with the scent of seaweed and the hotelier breathes deeply, filling his lungs with the bracing air. He imagines being a newly-released prisoner enjoying his first taste of freedom after years of confinement. This afternoon Pete sees the wild beauty of the island with fresh eyes.

As he stands there, just gazing, breathing, alert to the blood in his veins doing their job of keeping the chill out of his bones, a movement catches his eye. A hundred yards or so from the shore, Pete guesses, something is bobbing on the waves. A small boat? He can't make it out. It doesn't appear to be moving. Is it in trouble?

The sun's low rays hit the water and momentarily blind him. When he refocuses, his glance shifts back to the beach directly below him. A flash of colour penetrates his subconscious before he sees it. Half-hidden from where he stands by an outcrop of rock something red trains his eye.

Before he quite knows what he is doing Pete is running, slithering, stumbling, tripping down the embankment. He lands with a thump on the soft sand a few yards from the rocky outcrop which down here on the beach forms a stony shelter from the elements. His chest is tight and feels as if something vital inside him has burst. It takes him a minute or two to get his breath back and fully appreciate where he is. It's as if his shoreward spill has dislodged his sense of equilibrium. Then, he is up and running towards the hollow.

The pile of clothes is neatly folded. A thick, fire-engine-red hoodie on top of a chunky maroon sweater resting on black jeans, Pete thinks. Something is stopping him from picking up the clothes for closer inspection. A pair of old trainers is placed tidily beside the clothes. Turning slowly, he looks out at the waves rolling in on the rising tide, trying to locate what he saw from the top of the embankment. 

As he searches, the sinking sun reluctantly slinks away to the west like a naughty puppy that's been reprimanded. Locating what he is looking for, a terrible comprehension rips through him. Pete pulls out his phone to call the coastguard and the police. In a trance of disbelief he turns back to the pile of clothes. As though it has gained a life of its own in the rising wind the hoodie is trying to unfurl itself from the rest of the pile. Like a violently shaking head the garment's hood suddenly flips back to reveal the label inside. Stitched on it in crimson embroidery twine are the letters A.R.

There was no body DI Clemmens tells Pete the next day when he and Sergeant Flett arrive at the hotel to obtain a statement from him and search the bedroom Anna Rotmond had occupied so briefly.

“N... no …. body?” Pete feels as though he is falling through space.

The DI shakes his head. "It was a sheet of some kind. An eddy of water had become trapped underneath so that it looked like a body floating. The full moon on Monday night might have elicited some rare tidal conditions.” 

Watching him closely while giving Pete a minute to absorb all this information, the DI asks him whether he might be missing any sheets.

“I … I don't think so” Pete is almost too stunned to speak. His voice sounds as though he has breakfasted on iron filings.

She came to the island, because she'd had an inkling. She had told herself that she would make it her mission to find the boys again – one day. Of course they would no longer be boys. They would be old men now – if they had survived the wars at all. Even if they had been fortunate enough to escape the Great War with their lives, some of them might have fought in the Second World War and not come through it. She had lost her supernatural powers by then, so she didn't know. 

Going through the narrow door beside the reception desk into the bar she feels like Alice stepping through the looking glass. The chill of the hall is immediately replaced by a warm ambience, soft cosy lighting, dark furniture and comfortable seating. A faint scent of alcohol permeates the air.

She spots him as soon as she enters, his long frame folded into a high-backed wicker chair wearing that confident, relaxed air she remembers so well. The years have been kind to him. He must be in his nineties now, she guesses, the hair white, but still thick – a little wild – probably due to the stormy weather outside. His eyes have not changed, as she knew they wouldn't. They hold the same vivid blue sparkle of half a century ago as he gazes at her in surprise. He doesn't recognise her, as he obviously wouldn't. He had been her favourite of all the boys and seeing him again still makes her heart skip a beat.

She had seen him before. When she had stayed on the island nineteen years ago she'd watched him going about his business: his tall figure, unusually erect for a farmer, striding about with a confidence that she thought was rare in his line of work. Back then he had grazed his sheep on Hell, and she had observed him from the window of the cottage next door which she'd rented for a few months. The previous owner had died in mysterious circumstances, allegedly, and no one had wanted to live there since. The local folk seemed to think that the plot being called Purgatory had somehow been a portent to what had happened.

Almost as soon as she closes the bedroom door on Pete, the thought seems like a decent man half-formed in her mind, she is overcome by the familiar weakness. Like a balloon loosing air she feels the energy being sucked from her body, feels drained of thought, a slight headache forming behind her eyes. She lies down on the bed with the duvet cover of red poppies. If she didn't know it's merely coincidence she might think they are a sign. 

Her head clears a little, like haar slowly lifting from the landscape after a few days in a row of warm weather. She will go and check on the wee cottage on Purgatory she thinks. See whether anyone lives there now and what state it's in. After all this is the last time she will ever visit the island. She has found him. She has seen him, even if it was only for a moment. Her mission is complete. 

Her eyes droop. She feels weary. She will allow herself to rest for half an hour before braving the November night again. She sits up suddenly. She can't rest. This time it feels different. This time the sensation, the call, is more urgent. She must do it tonight. Before it is too late. 

She pulls casual clothes out of her suitcase and quickly changes into them. That's better. Now she looks more like a jogger or someone going for a casual walk. She folds up the dress as small as it will go and pushes it into a nylon gym bag, drawing the straps over her shoulders onto her back. Quietly she opens the bedroom door, looks out, sees nobody about, and on silent feet runs to the top of the stairs. Swinging herself onto the polished mahogany bannister she slides down and lands without a sound. Her stomach flips as the doorknob squeaks slightly under her hand. She slips out and runs into the velvet night. 

There is no sign of life at the cottage. She lets herself in. No one locks doors on the island. The rooms are bare. Except for an ancient wardrobe all the furniture has been removed. The old wooden floorboards creak eerily as though in heated debate with the gale outside. She lights the candle she has brought – for old times sake – stands at the window for a minute or two staring out at the forbidding night. Then, the tingle rushing through her, alerts her that she does not have long. 

Removing the dress from the gym bag she shakes it out and draping it onto the only hanger left behind on the floor of the wardrobe hooks it to the top of its door. 'A river of blood'. Isn't that what one of the boys had called the red cascade of shimmering taffeta?

She has never forgiven herself for being unable to save her daughter, her husband and their children from the terror they endured when the Russians arrived in the small German town that icy January morning, thrashing all the humble homes and farms and taking the inhabitants away to God knows where. The dress Emil had given Maria for Christmas was all that she has left of her family. She, who had been taken away from them by scarlet fever, had been able to send back her spirit to look after them, give them health and bless their crops, but it had not been enough when the Russians came.

She knows her daughter had felt her presence. Maria had often told her husband, “I can feel Mother's ghost in the room with us.” Emil would smile at her benignly and shake his head in mock exasperation. She would leave the dress in the cottage. Perhaps one day when Jock was thinking about the old days he would come here, find the dress and remember …..

Extinguishing the candle she leaves the cottage and discarding the gym bag into the refuse bin by the gate she walks along the road to the highest point of the island. She's not been here for nearly two decades, but the full moon shows her the way. She must hurry. Tingling, like shocks from an electric fence, ricochets around her body. She has but moments before transmuting into ghost-form again. If she doesn't make the water by then she'll be unable to return to the Other World. Leaving her clothes in the shelter of a rocky outcrop she races into the sea.

Anyone walking along the beach at that hour, on that stormy November night, would have seen a blinding flash of white light and been instantly petrified into a standing stone, unable to tell anyone what they had seen.

© Carola Huttmann, March 2017

(4,592 words)