The Wind Waif of Weald Hall

“You’re not having a bike so don’t keep on about it!” “But Mum…” “Did you hear what I said?”

She didn’t want her last-born son to ride a bike, oh no. She was aware that at 9 years old in 1954 the boy knew how to mount on two wheels and steer but she was afraid to let him out of her sight because of cousin Albie. “Our Albie” had been a last-born, too. He had entered the world forty years before and had left it not ten years later, head smashed against the chrome-domed snout of a Bull Nose Morris while riding a bike. Witnesses to the event feared the work of the devil. When they had found him, Albie’s feet were firmly trapped in the spokes of the back wheel of his bicycle and rivulets of blood hissed and steamed as they met the car’s scalding hot radiator. The driver of the vehicle was never found and when a police tow-vehicle came to collect the Bull Nose it was no longer there.

So, no bike for her son. Thus it was that one day, out of sight, a friend’s big brother’s discarded bike was wheeled out from a garden shed. Surreptitiously past a bed of red-hot pokers, warily past a wet-nosed dog at the limit of its chain, then carefully down the path between two houses and then out beyond the thick hedge and into the world outside. Furtively the bike was side-pedalled to the top of the lane where, impregnated with the smell of creosote and rotting apples from its former abode, it was stood up and momentarily admired. Once turned the corner into the main road, the fear of discovery by maternal eyes receded. The thrill of misdemeanour gripped the fresh-fleshed boys and bore them forward.

Something, somewhere, stirred, as if alerted.

In a crumbling mansion five furlongs from there, the shadow of a shadow flickered momentarily behind a blank window, a kind of empty eye-socket betwixt Doric columns, two stories up and cold. The shadow emitted a half-heard hiss then shifted with graceless pace through shards of shattered glass. A pair of rotting wood shutters hanging crooked on arthritic hinges flew open in startled pain to let it through, then spat and scowled at the receding darkness. The formless shadow slid over nettle-beds and across a gravel path, sucking in light from all it passed, and thence on down to a clump of purple-headed rhododendrons, inside which it hid and wept. 

The boys’ elation turned to apprehension as the rusty Raleigh reminded them that it was too tall for legs in short trousers. The last-born stumbled and as he did a breath of mildewed air passed overhead and stole its way towards the mansion, bent on betrayal. The boys caught each other’s eye, seeking reassurance that did not come. The world felt different here. 

What now, go on or turn back? It was too late, they decided, to return home so onward to cross the main road they went. The boys drew back sharply as an out-of-breath single-decker bus in faded brown livery struggled by, laboriously building up speed for the straight mile ahead. Soon it would be passing within praying distance of Bentley Church where, on this fine day, white-ribboned babies were having the wispy hair atop their tiny heads tousled by baptismal water, watched over by smiling parents all a-drool. It was a flowery hat type of church, made out of flint and never locked. A cocoon of safety settled all around it and extended over grassy alleyways planted with forget-me-nots, along which the congregation dispersed, a-billing and a-cooing over their babies and their pocket bibles. All, it seemed, was well.

In those days the entrance to Sandpit Lane was guarded by a whitewashed five-bar timber gate although the boys had never seen it closed. Once through, they mounted their bikes and pedalled on, the rusty Raleigh eventually on an even keel after a wobbly start. Through a thicket of trees astride the road, then past a brass-knockered cottage to their left and on through fields of wheat and cows.

The woods of Weald Park stood and brooded ahead and thickened to their right. A mother’s words rang in their ears, “don’t dally there, run away as fast as you can if you should see a strange old man!” What, they had often wondered, did she mean by ‘strange’? Or was ‘dirty’ the word she had used? “Don’t let him touch you!” she had warned.

Turning off to the right from Sandpit Lane the boys entered the park by the east gate,  along a muddy track through chestnut trees and bramble banks. Here the friends dismounted and approached a wooden stile and saw a slug sliming there. A stick they found and moved it on. Next they boy-handled their bikes over the stile, and set off south. Soon they came to the wreck of a wartime tank. Half buried in earth, one set of tracks missing, the machine lay rusting, engine gone. Temptingly though, turret and cannon were still intact, so ten minutes of fun was had.

Across the parkland, had they looked, they would have seen, beyond the lakes where kingfishers lived, a low hilltop coppice of darkish green and amidst its boughs the crumbling masonry of a big old country house, Weald Hall, now in partial ruin. And out of sight, down a slope from the foot of the house, a brooding bank of purple heads. And lurking amidst those anaemic blooms, the shadow of a presence, crouched waiting. Unseeing eyes would have seen, inside the dark, the black ghosts of unwilling spiders spinning the shadow of a gossamer rope.

Once again, the fetid wind was out gathering news. It stirred the thin charred leaves of an ancient oak, not long dead. The wise know that nothing survives the mighty incandescent blow of a thunderbolt. The wind circled the chestnut trees and espied the pink knees of the boys, not far off. It flew on, no need to dally. Their fate was sealed.

Across the fields it sped, over the Rose and Crown and then along the Ongar Road. Two breaths from there it swooped down in front of the Black Horse, where it raised an eddy of dust then rose again. It passed at fifty feet over Patrick’s Shop, unconcerned that here were sold sweets from jars and blackjacks four a penny, alongside the best home-made ice cream in all of Essex. It crossed back gardens, making dogs bark and chickens run. Down it swooped in Orchard Lane, drawn by a woman’s worried words, “have you seen my son?”

The boys grew bored of the tank. Back on their bikes, they headed for the lake. Of the multitude of things they did not know, not least was that it was Capability Brown himself who had placed the trees they saw and planted the copses that sculpt the undulating landscape of this 700-year old estate.

The last-born had explored it all. He had traced the stream that fed the lakes and located the boggy spot at which it rose, pockmarked with the hoof-prints of Friesian cows and festooned with clouds of midges, dancing in the damp. He knew a secret entrance, accessible only from Coxtie Green Road. You got to it along a muddy lane across the way from the blood red-brick house with towering chimneys, where lived a club-footed man who rode a chestnut stallion around those parts.

Broad paths criss-crossed the sparkling grass of the mini-downs of Weald Park. Heifers were grazed here and cowpat-hatched greenbottles thrived and careered noisily in the sun. Had you stood here in September 1940 you would have seen the night sky alight, with a clear view of the sunset of death as London was blitzed. Oblivious to this, the boys propped their bikes against a tree, the roots of which served as a homestead to a colony of red ants. Stick-stirred and angry, soldier ants emerged from their mound and went on the attack. Anything crawling within six feet of the tree stood no chance.

Elsewhere, the black spiders had finished their work and lay dead in the dust. The shadow pulled taut different lengths of the gossamer rope to test its strength. “It will do” it whispered under its breath in a voice like burning paper.

The fetid wind wound itself round and around the spire of Bentley Church, trying to break the spell. It found a weak spot by following a jackdaw and once in, whispered along a path and entered a tomb. From there it followed a hidden burrow, took murky turns through dripping chambers and emerged beside a disused wood-framed Essex barn, overgrown with deadly nightshade and intertwined with white-belled creeper, somewhere off Mores Lane.

Once by the lake, the boys took the bulrush side and stopped to see what lived amongst them. Striders dimpled the water’s surface here and there, then zipped away. Three-spined sticklebacks snapped at them then themselves fell prey to redfin perch with lidless eyes. If a leathery-featured man in the Black Horse was to be believed, a giant pike lay unseen in the reeds and preyed on water fowl. A muddy causeway at the head of the lake took the boys across to the other bank. Then up a hillside meadow they pushed their bikes, rather wishing they had left them at home.

The sun hung hot and stilled the air as the boys approached the dark green copse. Penetrating within, the friends found the sound of the insects muffled but put it down to the trees. They approached a clump of rhododendrons, twice as tall as them. “Let’s go inside”, said one.

The wind in Mores Lane went in through the rotted weatherboarding of the ramshackle barn and settled between the work of spiders that filled the dark. The soughing stirred a whiff of ancient grease and motes of dust and rust. Through a parting in the flimsy drapery of a canopy of dirt-laden cobwebs, decades thick, could just be seen, the sulking shape of a forgotten thing, a sleeping snout. Chrome-domed, with dry blood about.

The shadow shivered leaves and lengthened as it went. Around its black fingers creeping slowly out it held a gossamer thread that sought a tender neck to curl about. “I don’t like it in here!” cried the last-born’s friend, “quick, let’s get out!”. The shadow hissed and withdrew, it had been too good to be true. No matter, it would capture the child in the manner in which it had first intended.

Emerging from the rhododendrons, the friend said “there was something evil in there, didn’t you feel it? It was trying to get you.” The last-born shivered. “I should not have come,” he rued.

They found themselves at the foot of a steep incline. Their eyes followed a snaking path up and up, until they alighted upon the half-intact façade of a ruined house. Grey stone columns supported a massive pediment and the flat roof bore heavy finials like the knobs on the posts of a brass bedstead. One wing was broken, rubble strewn all about. Two rows of windows were either broken or missing. The rooms inside were black and bleak and they sent forth a stench of stale urine and regret. A group of noisy sparrows squabbled and swirled and chased each other to perch and flick their tails on a window ledge and got sucked in.

The boys pushed their bikes up to the balustrade in front of the building and looked back down the hill. Set out before them was a tempting ride for tired legs; the thrill of speed beckoned them. “First one down!” cried the friend. With that he pushed off on his bike and flew down the slope. 

The last-born son did likewise and imagined he was skiing the slopes of mighty Mont Blanc, the highest spot in Europe his teacher had said.  Blond hair in the wind, the friend ahead was soon down at the foot of the hill.  The last-born hardly noticed, because for him time was frozen still. A shadow was passing across his path, a silver thread uncoiling in its wake. His eyes followed the thread back to its source and saw it fast bound to a silver birch. He was fast-approaching now, but it felt as if he were floating along on a film of inevitability. He knew what was about to happen to him.

The shadow hissed and stood erect, snapped taut the silver thread at the height of the boy’s neck. Spider silk is stronger than steel. Another hiss. “Decapitate him and then…”.

A frantic mother yelled “my boy, my boy!” as she ran from door to door.

The fetid wind blew the barn door open wide. It swept away the cobwebs and flattened the stinging nettles, then returned in haste to awaken the Bull Nose from its slumbers. Out it rolled into Mores Lane and then silently it drove away, egged on by the fetid wind. At the White Horse junction it turned left into Coxtie Green Road, scrunching the stone-dashed pavement under its tyres then ghosting on towards the blood-red brick house in which the club-footed man lived. There the wind and the car parted company and went their different ways. The fell wind sped off to torment the mother while the Bull Nose left the road and glided over the fields to the secret entrance to Weald Park. Soon it stood motionless at the foot of the hill up to the grey mansion and towards it hurtled a last-born child.

The last-born boy put up his arms to fend off the slicing thrust of the shadow’s thread and was thrown heavily from the rusting Raleigh, arms lacerated and left elbow shattered. Snapped bone protruded jagged from the joint and punctured the skin as the boy’s forearm flapped limply at a gruesome angle such that it might no longer have belonged to him. The child fainted but still he hurtled down the slope, his blood-filled skull heading for the chrome-domed snout of the waiting Bull Nose.

Thud! As the boy’s eyelids closed and he slipped further into unconsciousness, he wondered why the Bull Nose felt so warm and soft, he had expected it to hurt.

No more than a few turns of the minute hand before, the fell wind had completed its haste over the Ongar Road crossing. It sped past the corrugated iron mission hall that backed onto Powell’s yard, where stacks of fresh timber and building materials lay, and on up the lane.  It spied the weeping mother in the midst of a gaggle of neighbours gathered around. Down in silence it swooped like a mischievous waif and tore at her hair.

All around the mother the wind waif danced and raised her skirts. “My boy,” she wept, “my beautiful boy!”. The wind waif blew dust in her eyes and shrieked as she wailed “my last-born, what has become of him?” The wind waif paused an instant for breath. “My last-born child!” continued the mother. “Last-born?” mused the wind waif. as the woman went on:“I don’t want him to suffer the same fate as poor Albie. Dear cousin Albie, how we all loved him”.

“Albie?” wailed the wind waif, “Albie?”

“Dear little Albie, how I wish he were here,” sobbed the mother. The wind waif dropped at her feet. “Albie?” he repeated, “cousin Ablie?”. Then suddenly he knew. Up to her cheek he wafted and caressed her ears, “I’m here,” he whispered in a strangled voice, “do not fear.”  “Albie, is that you?” The neighbours saw her delirium and withdrew. “How can this be true? I love you Albie as I love my own son”.

“Thank you, thank you” said the waif, “you have broken the spell! Now I know who I am I can go!” He danced a pirouette and puffed an eddy of dust that spun on its heels before petering out. “But first I must help you, come climb on my back!” The mother did as she was bid and all the neighbours in Orchard Lane assumed she had gone stark mad.

Up and away they sped, past the wet-nosed dog and the garden shed, low over Patrick’s Shop with blackjacks four a penny, rising quickly above the Black Horse and over the Rose and Crown, leaping over the white gate, past the brass-knockered cottage and along Sandpit Lane. Soaring high above the tank, the cowpats and the lake, then with one final gust up the meadow and over the dark green coppice, three times round the finials on top of Weald Hall. Then headlong down the slope, not pausing for breath, hot behind the last-born child on his bike. Alas too late to harry the shadow, but just in time to lower the gossamer thread and parry the blow and now speeding on ahead of the boy! The wind waif chuckled as he set down the mother, right in front of the chrome-dome of the Bull Nose and she stood on the fender. As the last-born flew headlong towards her, she opened her arms and he crashed into her bosom, soft and warm.  “Close your eyes now, she said, “all will be well”. And then she carried him away.

The shadow emitted a thin scream. Where it had darkened the ground now stood an old man, haggard and grey, looking haunted and ill. Seeing himself shadowless he bellowed and bayed. With imperceptible enmity, the Bull Nose set off in silence, creeping slowly towards the object of its ire. The old man shrieked and hobbled away. Up the slope he struggled, making for Weald Hall but it was a mistake. The Bull Nose, in no particular hurry, as if savouring the kill, was closing in on him.

At the top of the slope, between the columns of Weald Hall, a pair of rotting wooden shutters on arthritic hinges flew open, sensing revenge. They beckoned to the flagging old man. It was as he reached the eye-socket opening that the Bull Nose got him. It shattered his skull and knocked him inside then followed him in.  The rotting shutters slammed shut behind and muffled a wail that trailed into ice. Weald Hall shuddered.  A great stone finial toppled and fell to the ground in a mist of mortar dust and rubble. It rolled across the gravel path and down the hill and into a clump of purple-headed rhododendrons, inside which to this day it lies buried and hidden, waiting only for a shadow to come.

[The events related in this tale happened in 1954. However, according to official records, Weald Hall was demolished in 1951]

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