A simple farmer receives a horse from the gods, a man sells ice creams named after missing schoolkids, the demolition of a hotel brings an old horror to light, a wounded soldier finds the real enemy is in his own camp, a family inherits a peculiar r...
Mr. Green's disappearance was reported two days later. The police came over and interviewed Quint. He told them he last saw Mr. Green walking to his car after finishing his round. He didn't mention Smith. Mr Green had played the round alone, and nobody else had been on the back nine that day.
He overheard the policemen laughing as they walked back to their van. "Did you see the size of that lad? Probably ate him."
Quint quit Royal Durham a week later, after stealing some records from the old trophy room. He figured nobody would miss them.
There was a newspaper article detailing a club championship held in 1935, which had been decided in a playoff between Royal Durham's owner, Lord Angus Durham, and a heretofore unknown golfer by the name of Daniel Smith. Both men had played brilliantly. Smith had taught himself how to play golf in a field behind the caravan where he lived with his family. At his wife's behest he had gambled their savings on the entry fee for the championship, in the hope that he would win the first prize of a thousand pounds. The playoff ended in a draw. The judges disqualified Smith on a technicality.
Quint had found a photo of Durham and Smith. It had been taken just before the start of the playoff. They were standing in front of the clubhouse, shaking hands.
After leaving Royal Durham, Quint became a regular feature at the local public library and town hall. He joined the local historical society. He frequented online genealogy forums. When his parents asked him about it he would just shrug. This was enough to head them off, usually. Parents only ever wanted to know if you were taking drugs or having sex (in Quint's case he only needed to convince them that he wasn't taking drugs). In any case, after a month his obsession appeared to wane.
He discovered that Lord Durham had been in serious financial trouble leading up to the championship of 1935. The championship was probably a sham. The entry fee and prize money were both abnormally high, and he had stacked the judging panel with friends and associates. If this had been his intention, it worked: he was able to pay off his creditors and retain ownership of the club. It made little difference though: he had died of a heart attack 6 years later, while playing the back nine.
Daniel Smith was harder to track down. He had been arrested for poaching shortly after the championship, claiming that his family were starving. They had quietly left England while he was out on bail. Quint traced them to Czechoslovakia, where their names were recorded in registers which were later used by the Nazis to round up the Romani and send them to concentration camps. Quint suspected Smith and his family had perished in such a camp, for he could find no record of them after 1939.
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I hope you enjoyed this story. I wrote it in the year 2000 for a university creative writing subject. It went over like a lead balloon there. I like to imagine there's a creative writing course in the afterlife where golf bag monsters are taken seriously.
