A Weird winter's tale of lost time, lost hearts and one very long night (30-minute read)

The papers hadn’t said nothing about a blizzard. Then again, the papers weren’t saying much about anything except the war. The ladies who came in the shop that morning for their Christmas goose had been mercilessly eager to talk. How about what the Germans had just done to them poor buggers up north, eh? Kiddies on their way to school when the shells came down, they reckon. And what if the Kaiser should ever think to send them boats up the Thames? Tom hugged his coat more tightly around him and squinted back through the lashing ice, his face sore and rigid.

The snow was a swarm of white stinging hornets.

He tried to make out the tower of Saint Nic’s, the gravestones in the churchyard, the glow of the electric street-lamps along Church Lane, the roofs of the shops along Mitcham Road. But the biting snow and grey mist beyond swallowed everything. If he was somewhere on the empty green behind the church then he would have passed through a gate, surely. He could no longer see even the sparse trees that had seemed to multiply into a forest about him, spreading like a line of playing cards from a trickster’s deck as he puzzled his way between grizzled trunks and low, leafless branches.

Then the wind had picked up all of a sudden and the trees were gone, like the dealer’s hand had scooped them all away and left him staggering across this strange tundra with a furious snowstorm whipping at his back.

It had been bombing it down like this for, what, five minutes? And already the snow had filled his footprints, stranding him in a sea of blank and moonlit white. It was like he’d just appeared in the middle of this wild and wailing nowhere.

Tom yelled yet again. ‘Gwen?’

But again the wind only seemed to rise and shout him down. It had snatched off his cap at some point and the cold was busy hammering a wedge of pain deep into his skull.

He felt more sick than restless now. Where the bloody hell had she got to? Had she run off home? Got second thoughts about that promise of a second kiss? He’d assured Gwen’s old man he’d have her back from the music hall by ten.

She had beckoned him from just inside the church gates. They were late getting her home and she knew a shortcut through the churchyard. The snow had then been nothing more than white dust fading on her knitted scarf, her curls peeking out either side of her flapper’s bonnet, her eyes bright and impish.

Her kiss had been warm, prickled with ice.

“You want another, you’ll have to catch me,” she had said and pulled away laughing. Tom stood a moment, dazed by the sight of that dimpled grin and the plum-pudding smell of her perfume. Then he hurried down the path after her, almost slipping on the frozen flagstones, yelling at her to be careful, the church a wall of good, solid bricks hard to his left.

He turned the corner in time to see her slip between the trees. He followed, but already she was gone. No sign of her out in this snowstorm either. No sign of anything. Was she back among the trees somewhere? Christ, had she slipped and turned her ankle? Perhaps he couldn’t hear her screaming for help over this bastard wind. Or maybe she’d cracked her head. Maybe she was sprawled on a grave somewhere, barely breathing as the snow gently buried her alive.

Tom turned back and finally banged on the cabin door, turning a freezing ear out of the wind and hearing booted footsteps approach from within.

‘Who is there?’ The voice was gruff.

Tom yelled at the door. ‘I need help!’

The cabin door was wrenched open by a bearded monster wielding an axe…

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Text © Alec Worley, 2023