FLASHed

24. Black Metal

Ben Reily was ten years old when he saw the ghost. He was sitting alone at his grandmother's dining table after a family meal when the bird began to fly around the old metal candelabra. It wasn't a living bird, just the shadow of the bird running upon the white, ornately plastered ceiling like a lot of those old houses had. It flew around and around mesmerising the young boy. Once his mother came in an asked him why he was staring at the ceiling.

Twenty years later, Ben recalls the bird shadow as if it were flying yesterday, and thinks about the incident often. Perhaps that was why, one day driving home from a librarian's conference for work, he decided to take a detour off the M1 and stop by the village where grandma had lived. She had died many years ago, and the cottage sold quickly. Yet, here he stood. Outside of the old front gate that was wrought from iron in the same style as the candelabra. He wondered if the old light fitting would still be there today. 

The sandstone cottage with its slate tile roof looked as quaint and inviting as he remembered, but the black metal of the gate was cold as he gripped it. As he pushed the gate inwards, the hinges cried in deep strain.

A woman with neat grey hair answered the knock, her eyes peered quizzically through thick glasses at the stranger before her. "Yes, how can I help you?"

"Um, I'm sorry, this is highly irregular, but this used to be my grandmother's house and I was in the neighbourhood--"

"Ah, Mrs Smith?" The woman smiled, "You're her grandson, aren't you? You won't remember me, but I used to work at the village store before it closed all of those years before. You and your sister would come in for sweets."

"Yes, I remember." He was encouraged, "You would give us extra milk bottles because they were our favourites."

"You must have some fine memories of this place."

"Yes." One memory in particular. "I was wondering, would you mind if I visited the dining room?"

"Of course, come in!" She pulled the old door shut behind Ben who glanced at the rustic old black metal doorknob and lock that he would have used a thousand times as a child, but it was like this was the first time he had ever seen it. It shut with a solid 'click!' just as he remembered.

Beyond the old door fittings, the house was nothing like his grandmother's home, that was once filled with antiques carried down through the generations. He was faced with modern furniture that sat upon fresh carpets. At the dining room, the old candelabra was gone, replaced with an elegant down-light; the fancy plasterwork had also been removed; the place looked bigger. He glanced at the ceiling, half expecting the shadow to reappear before him after all of these years. Pointing to the light, he asked, "Do you still have that old candelabra that hung over the dinner table?"

The woman creased her forehead in thought, "That old thing. No, I'm afraid Francis, my late husband, pulled it down when we moved in."

"Oh, I'm sorry to bother you then. Thank you." Ben turned to leave.

"But, it might be in the shed. Frank hardly ever threw anything away. You're quite welcome to look for it. If you find it, take it, you would be doing me a favour."

"Thanks, that's very kind of you."

She led Ben through the house to the back garden. The cottage garden had never looked better, he recognised his grandmother's roses and their smell as they passed the big bush of red blooms that grew at the door of the shed. The old stone outbuilding was likely the oldest part of the property, grandma used to call it the smithy. He had always thought that was because her name was 'Smith', but, with all of the hand-forged ironwork around the place, he felt foolish that he didn't make the connection with blacksmithing before.

As children, they were never allowed into the smithy; it was strictly off-limits for them. His only memory of it was the big green door with its oversized hinges.

"You won't mind If I don't go in with you? That place has always given me the creeps."

"No, that's fine." Ben placed his hand on another black metal doorknob. The door was smaller than he remembered.

"Okay then, you have a good look around, and I'll make us a cup of tea."

"Thank you."

The old building was full of junk, everything from discarded nineteen-nineties homewares to objects that would date from even before his grandmother's time. He pushed his way through the smell of dust and dense clutter and began to recognise some of the items. His eyes rested on an old go-cart that he used to ride with his sister, Sam, down the hill that met the river bend. It was like when he had discovered his childhood stamp album that had been sitting neglected on a shelf at his parents' house for the whole of your adult life. Then, the deep memories associated with each stamp seemed to have flooded back with a king tide of past delight. Ben considered the time that had passed since they played with the cart. What have you been done with your life since then?

Ben travelled deeper into the shed, into the shadows, into family history. At the back of the room he could see what he first thought was a large fireplace, but on closer inspection, discovered that it was a stone forge, long ago cleared out of coal. Giant bellows, grey with cobwebs and dust stood up against the wall guarding the forge. The candelabra was nowhere to be seen. He turned to leave, but his arm knocked aside a pile of junk that had been sitting atop a nineteen sixties steel ironing board. He lifted up the board to reveal an anvil. It was ancient and the blackest of black metal, its shiny face, untouched by rust, undulated as if it had been made from soft butter and punched with a fist. Ben placed his hand on the cold metal, it was solid, its surface moved only by time and a million strikes. On the side of the anvil, he found hammer and chisel marks in the design of a crow.

A sepia photo lay on the floor, it must have just been dislodged from the pile of junk he had knocked over because it was fresh looking for its age and free of dust and dirt. A man, the smith, judging by his leather apron and the hammer resting up over his shoulder. He was thick bearded and stern, having the look of a wolf about him; a visage that contrasted deeply with the sweet face of a little girl holding his hand.

Close by Ben spied a big hammer that could have been the same as from the photo. Without thinking, he picked the weighty thing up and taped it lightly on the anvil's long beak.

The painful flash blinded him. He blinked and blinked, but it was painful as if his eyelids had become full of sand. Through the blur, the man from the photograph stood standing by the forge, looking at him from the deep shadows of empty eye sockets.

A sharp scream came from the house and Ben rushed out, noisily scattering detritus about him as he left the smithy. Inside the house, his vision had returned, but he wished he could unsee the scene that confronted him in the dining room. The kind old lady was sitting back in her chair, a stream of blood ran down her cheeks from each of her eyes. Eyes fixed staring to the ceiling where, all those years before, Ben had seen the shadow of a bird flying in circles. The woman was dead.

Ben ran from the house, jumped into his car, and didn't look back, praying for one hundred miles that the old smith hadn't followed him home. He cringed when, later that evening, he discovered that the photo of the old smith and the girl had somehow found its way into his pocket.

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