Whispers
By JJ Beazley
In the village of Great Danesby stands a delightful example of a rural English church. If you choose to explore the churchyard, stay clear of the massive yew tree, and do not listen to the seductive whispers on the wind.
St Andrew’s Church in the village of Great Danesby, Derbyshire, is as delightful an example of a rural parish church as you could hope to find anywhere in the English countryside.
I use the word “delightful” rather than “fine”, since it is a typically small north country church and lacks the opulence of the big “wool churches” to be found in the southern and eastern shires. What it lacks in form and size, however, it more than makes up for in character and history. It is also not, strictly speaking, “in” the village; but stands detached and apparently disinterested on a triangular plot of ground a quarter of mile beyond the perimeter.
The main body of the church is in two distinct sections: one Saxon and one Norman. The tower at the west end and single transept on the south side, are Tudor. Most of the exterior is constructed of well-dressed limestone blocks, but those forming the lower portion of the Saxon middle section are irregular in size and made of rough-hewn sandstone. Set in a herringbone fashion, they stand uneasily against the square set, later stonework around them. The windows, too, are curiously inconsistent in style, many of them being replacements that bear little or no relevance to the antiquity of the walls in which they are placed. Add to that the lopsided appearance produced by the single transept, and the whole effect is one of an ancient and mellow eccentricity that I found irresistible the first time I saw it. It struck me as being redolent of some elderly and slightly mad uncle who remains aloof from the rest of the family but is the object of their tolerant affection just the same.
I made some enquiries as to the history of the place and learned a little from a young woman who had once researched it for a school project. The reason for its being so far from the village is a familiar story. The local squire had, at some time in the eighteenth century, deemed it expedient to demolish the whole village and move it away from the valley and onto a nearby ridge. His reason for uprooting the unfortunate population and moving them and their homes a quarter of a mile away was simple enough: he wanted to clear the valley for the deer to run unimpeded so as to improve his hunting. For some reason — ethical, religious or financial, I don’t know — he left the church where it had stood for nine centuries. Perhaps the risk of offending God caused him rather more concern than incurring the ill will of his tenants; or maybe he was aware that early churches were usually built on old pagan sites and felt that he should exercise caution.
Whatever the reason, there it still stood; isolated, aloof and serenely peaceful, four hundred yards down a narrow lane that ran south out of the village, passed the church, and then petered out into a farm track just beyond the old mill.
Since moving to the village I had studied the building often and spent many an interesting hour reading the headstones in the graveyard, some of which went back to the mid-seventeenth century. I loved piecing together the relationships and stories they related. Some were dramatic and some mundane, but most gave fascinating glimpses into the earthly passage of generations of Great Danesby people who had lived out their little lives and were now rounding them with a sleep. There was, however, one thing I still hadn’t done.
I was working as a freelance graphic designer to several companies in the area and the majority of my work was done from home. I had always promised myself a break in the busy round of deadlines and telephone calls by taking a packed lunch to the churchyard and spending a peaceful hour in the quiet company of the ancient, eccentric old structure and its community of resting souls. One gloriously sunny day in the middle of June, I finally got around to doing it. At 12:30 I switched off my computer, put a selection of appropriate foodstuffs and a bottle of spring water into a carrier bag, locked the door and headed off down the lane.
The expression “Flaming June” had never been more appropriate. The sun shone almost vertically out of a mid blue sky, with white cumulus clouds scattered here and there to break up the monotony. A gentle breeze eased the fierce heat of the midsummer sun and the air carried the heavy, disinfectant-like scent of cow parsley which grew to a height of six feet in places along the hedgerow. The many and varied shrubs that had been trimmed back the previous autumn had grown strongly through the spring and now rose to a height that made it impossible to see over them to the fields beyond. Although the glory of the May blossom had died away, the delicate, lace-like elder flowers still made splashes of white at irregular intervals and were joined here and there by the gentle pinks of dog rose and wild honeysuckle. The walk to the church was the most delightful stroll through a corridor of rich and vibrant new growth. I marveled at the beauty of it all and was reminded of my intense distaste for a culture that thinks little of uprooting hedgerows, poisoning the land with chemicals and burying it under endless new road and building projects.
Within minutes I reached the church that stood within its tidily kept graveyard on the rising ground to the left of the lane. I unlatched the creaky wooden gate, walked in and closed it gently behind me. I made my way around to the south side of the church where most of the older graves were located. Close to the path, between the tower and the corner of the transept, was a wooden bench and I was soon settled and enjoying my lunch in the full glory of the June sunshine.
I marveled at the view that lay before me from a position that was now elevated enough to see clearly over the lane and hedgerow. Beyond it, a meadow ran down to a tree-fringed stream that meandered along the valley bottom. It is not uncommon in that part of Derbyshire to see the land left to produce the sort of richness that only nature can generate, and the meadow was a wonderful example of the old-fashioned partnership between man and the natural cycles. It had not been sown with some monocultural strain of herbicide-resistant grass, neither had it been treated with chemical weed killer or subjected to the grazing of animals or the mowing of machines. The result was a rich mixture of wild grasses and flowers in which the vivid, deep yellow of the buttercups mingled with the rusty reds and greys of the grass seeds; all about to replenish the land in readiness for next year before being mown for hay later in the summer. Beyond the stream, the land rose again, through a patchwork of hedged fields, to a dozen or so farms and cottages that made up the hamlet of Little Danesby high on the ridge.
This was the stuff to inspire poets and painters; but I was neither. I was content merely to sit there in the sultry heat of the midday sun, eating my crusty bread and cheese and rejoicing in the beauty of the scene. The only sounds were those of a blackbird singing its tuneful song in a nearby tree and the cooing of a wood pigeon coming from a small copse away to my left. For half an hour I was fully content in this quiet rural retreat. Peace and harmony reigned supreme and I began to feel drowsy.
But then a sudden and unfamiliar noise startled me; a noise that was strangely out of character with those I was used to hearing in the depths of the countryside. It sounded like someone whispering, but only briefly, and seemed to come from behind me. I turned sharply and scanned the churchyard. There was nothing in sight to explain it so I put the effect down to some trick of the breeze and returned to my sun-baked reverie. A few minutes later it happened again: a distinct whisper, apparently of four syllables. Then more silence.
I shivered slightly despite the heat of the day, and stood up to get a better view of the land around me. As far as I could tell, the churchyard, at least on that side of the building, was empty. There was no one to be seen in the lane, the meadow beyond, or the paddock that climbed the slope to the side of and behind the church’s land. I scanned the area within my vision several times until I began to doubt my own senses. Then I heard it again, louder this time and a little more urgent. There was no doubting the four distinct sounds, and now I could make out a phonetic pattern of long syllables that sounded like
ooh-ooh-ah-oh
I admit that the sound made me uneasy and could only think that some practical joker must be concealed somewhere and playing a trick on me. Slightly annoyed, I walked up the rising ground of the churchyard, around the eastern end and down the other side of the church. From there I could see clearly to a small group of trees about a hundred yards distant, much too far for a whisper to carry at that volume, and there was nothing in between except the remaining part of the paddock that surrounded three sides of the churchyard. I continued around the front of the tower until I arrived back at the bench. I looked up to the belfry windows. Someone could easily conceal themselves up there and I was tempted to conclude that I had found the most likely explanation. Then the whisper came again, quite clearly from the opposite direction. I swung around and followed its apparent course.
Ahead of me, in the south east corner of the churchyard, stood a massive old patriarch of a yew tree. I had paced out the span of its branches on one occasion and found it to be fully sixty feet. The circumference of its gigantic trunk was in direct proportion and nothing grew beneath its massive crown. Those headstones that had been placed just beyond the spread of the branches three centuries earlier were now in almost permanent shadow and devoid of any adjacent vegetation to soften their austere lines. The deep shade and dark brown earth made the area look dense and uninviting. I walked into the gloom and across the carpet of dead leaf needles that covered the ground. I stood for a few minutes listening intensely. Eventually I was rewarded, and severely startled, when the whisper came again. It was loud and distinct. This time I heard clearly what it said:
Two truths are told.
I rounded the trunk quickly, suddenly aware of the fact that it was quite big enough to conceal a person sitting on the other side and realizing that I hadn’t looked there before. I fully expected to see some local wag enjoying the effect he was having on me. There was nobody there; just more dark shadow and another ancient headstone.
Stories I had heard about graves that speak to those alone in churchyards filled me with disquiet. For a moment I wondered whether the old grave before me could be the source of the whispering voice. The thought was quickly dispelled when I heard it again; behind me this time and clearly coming from the tree itself.
Two truths are told
it repeated, but then added another statement:
in sunny hollow .
I looked up into the branches, straining my eyes in search of some telltale incongruence that would betray the presence of a practical joker. I was still seeking some rational explanation for the harsh and mysterious whisper that spoke English and uttered coherent but apparently meaningless phrases. There was nothing to be seen there either and I was satisfied that I was the only living person in the churchyard. I walked slowly back to the bench, trying to work out some explanation for this singular and unnerving phenomenon. The peace of my rural idyll had been shaken. I was both fascinated enough to want to hear the voice again and chilled enough to want to be far away from the yew tree.
I put the remnants of my meal into the carrier bag and descended the steps to the gate, looking back in the hope of seeing somebody pop out from some hiding place that had escaped me. No one appeared and my search for a mundane solution remained fruitless.
I found it difficult to work that afternoon; my mind was forever going back to that inexplicable whispering and its strange message. I vacillated between a certainty that I had heard what I had heard and an equally strong conviction that such things just don’t happen. I kept telling myself that it must have been some curious trick of the wind or a mental aberration brought on by the heat.
But the words were so distinct. The first four were familiar enough. “Two truths are told” is a quotation from Macbeth. I’d never heard of “sunny hollow”. I was still swinging back and forth between my two mutually exclusive certainties when I went to bed that night.
The following day I was tempted to go back to the churchyard but didn’t. I had a lot of work to do and a deadline to meet. By four o’clock I had amassed a small pile of mail that needed to catch the 5:30 collection, so I walked up to the village shop to buy some stamps. As I stood at the counter, I glanced at the pile of local newspapers in front of me. My eyes widened when I saw the banner headline that dominated the front page. It read:
SUNNY HOLLOW MURDER — MAN HELD
I scanned the relatively small amount of explanatory text that accompanied the massive headline. It said that police had been called to a domestic altercation in the garden of a house in Sunny Hollow, a development of modern detached houses on the edge of the nearby village of Branley. They had arrived at the premises to find a woman with severe head injuries lying in the rear garden and a man, who was thought to be her husband, sitting nearby. The woman had been pronounced dead at the scene and the man taken to Derby police station for questioning. No one else was being sought in connection with the incident.
Mrs. Ball, the proprietor of the shop, saw me reading the account and must have noticed the look of surprise and horror on my face.
“Terrible isn’t it?” she said, obviously unaware of the real reason for my reaction and preparing to tell me more. “I know a woman from Branley. She came into the shop at lunchtime and told me all about it. Everybody knows what happened from the neighbor who saw it going on and called the police.”
“What did happen?” I asked. Mrs. Ball warmed to the task of relating the best bit of gossip she would probably have in the whole of her life.
“Well” she began with thinly disguised enthusiasm, “apparently the wife had a bit of reputation for — well, you know — entertaining men during the day. The only person in the village who didn’t seem to know about it was her husband. At about five o’clock last night he came home, went into the back garden where she was sunbathing and began to accuse her of having an affair. One of the men at work had told him something and he wanted the truth. She started shouting back and told him he was useless and had never been any sort of a husband — that sort of thing — so what did he expect? She said yes, she was having an affair, and she was going to carry on having them whether he liked it or not. He went berserk and started hitting her. At that point the next door neighbor, who’d been in her garden and heard the row going on, got worried and called the police. She went back out just in time to hear the woman yelling at her husband that it wasn’t the first affair she’d had and that their little boy, who’s about three, wasn’t his either. The neighbor said he went quiet for a few seconds and stared at her. Then he let out a howl and started calling her all sorts of things I wouldn’t like to repeat. She said he was like a wild animal, pushing and pummeling her. Then he picked up a rock from the rockery and started bashing her about the head with it. The neighbor screamed at him to stop but he didn’t take any notice; just kept hitting her until she was a mass of blood. Then he sat down on the grass and sobbed his heart out. The neighbor said she felt physically sick but had been too frightened to try and stop him. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you — a man acting like that? The police arrived, took one look at her and called an ambulance; but she was dead. They took her away in one of those bags and took him off to the police station. Can’t believe it, can you? The things that go on in some people’s lives. And around here, where it’s so quiet.”
I was too amazed to say anything and merely nodded my concurrence. Mrs. Ball took my payment for the stamps and I walked home in a daze. My doubt that I had heard the voice in the churchyard disappeared. Two truths had indeed been told — the affair and the revelation about the child — and the name of the location appeared to remove all possibility that it had been merely a figment of my imagination. I had no option but to accept the fact that the old yew tree was capable of foretelling the future. I had read stories of oracles in ancient myths but, even though I was probably less skeptical than most people, I had always regarded them as being just that: myths. To find such convincing evidence of one existing on the edge of an English country village was both startling and fascinating.
So what should I do about it? At first I wanted to tell the world: write to the newspapers, call the TV stations, speak to university academics. Then I thought better of it. The reality of modern life and attitudes is such that few people would believe me, and tracking down those few who might would be more trouble than it was worth. Besides, I had business interests to protect and the possibility of developing a dubious reputation was risky. And, even if I could find someone to take me seriously and keep the matter confidential, there was no guarantee that I could prove it. The tree might never speak again. I decided to keep the matter to myself, at least for the time being, but would give the old yew every opportunity to demonstrate that its display of precognitive knowledge was more than just an isolated phenomenon.
I became a regular visitor to the churchyard, making a point of going at various times of the day just in case it made a difference. All summer long I took daily walks to the church, strolling around the old tree and sitting for periods of up to an hour on the bench. I heard nothing save the birdsong, the wind in the branches and the tractors mowing the hay meadows. By early September the visits were becoming tedious and I lost interest. I still had no doubt that I had heard the words the first time, but felt that one message was all I was going to get. A spell of bad weather persuaded me to give up my quest.
And then, about two weeks later, I decided to take a walk to the wood that lay a little way beyond the church. It was early in the evening and the light was beginning to fall as I strolled between the hedgerows that had now exchanged the whites and pinks of summer flowers for the blacks and reds of autumn berries. The wind was gusting strongly and the forecast was for the first of that year’s equinoctial gales. There was no birdsong now, just the harsh rustling of the dry, late summer leaves and a chill in the air that presaged the beginning of the cold season. As I walked past the church I had no thought for mysterious voices. That was history, or so I thought.
I was wrong. I heard it as clearly as before; the strident sound of a harsh, whispering voice coming from the direction of the yew tree. It was quite different from the rustling leaves. It was louder, the pitch was different and the pattern distinct. I walked quickly back to the gate, entered the churchyard and hurried up to the top corner to take up my familiar position beneath the yew tree. My pulse had quickened and I felt a thrill of excitement as I waited for the message. It didn’t take long.
No man is an island
it said, slowly and clearly articulated.
Not Shakespeare this time: John Donne. Whatever intelligence was demonstrating its ability to predict dire events, it liked to speak in classical sound bites. I waited for the second part that would identify the location.
Five fifteen.
I was surprised. “Five fifteen” is not a location. But at least it had given something that I assumed would confirm the veracity of the message. I felt certain that there would be nothing more and left the churchyard.
I aborted my trip to the wood. I had lost interest now that the oracle had spoken again. I made my way home and wondered how long I would have to wait for confirmation of the circumstances to which it was referring. I hoped that they wouldn’t be as tragic as before, but reasoned that I could do nothing about it and so I could afford a disinterested and academic expectation.
The next afternoon I went to the shop and bought a local paper. I scanned the headlines on every page but found nothing that fitted the message. I was hugely disappointed, but then realized that I was a day early. Something that happened at 5:15 wouldn’t make the evening news until the following day. I curbed my impatience and bought another paper the following afternoon. Still nothing. I went again the next day, and the next, and the next. I began to think that the oracle was wrong. Can oracles be wrong? What would be the point? But then, exactly a week after hearing the ghostly, whispered message, my wait was rewarded. The headline in a block on the front page was hopeful.
ROAD DEATH SUICIDE — POLICE
I felt a thrill of excitement and read the article impatiently. The previous day a smallholder, living near a village about five miles away, had gone down to the main road that connected the two local towns and had thrown himself under the wheels of a lorry. He had been seriously injured and had died in hospital a few hours later. Neighbors reported that he had no family and had been depressed ever since the death of his wife a few years earlier. He had lived as a virtual recluse and questions needed to be asked regarding support for people living alone in rural communities. The lorry driver was being treated for shock but was otherwise uninjured.
“No man is an island” was clearly appropriate. We all know that extreme loneliness can drive a person to desperate solutions. But something was wrong. According to the report the incident had happened at lunchtime, not at 5:15. And then it clicked. The road was the A515. Ashamed as I am to admit it, I felt pleased. The oracle was as accurate as before. And the importance of that was immediately apparent: it meant that I could trust it.
But trust it to do what? So far, the whispers had spoken two phrases that had the nature of riddles about them but were transparent enough to be easily applicable to subsequent events. And it had given corroborative statements that were sufficiently precise as to remove any likelihood of the connection being coincidental. It struck me that, fascinating as such a phenomenon is, there is little practical benefit in having prior knowledge unless it affords the opportunity to alter the course of events. I wondered whether the first two utterances were merely demonstrations of its faculty, and that future statements would give me the chance to change something. Perhaps I might save a life; perhaps I might change my own for the better. The question was this: did the oracle speak anyway, whether anyone was listening or not, or did it only speak to an audience? More to the point, did it speak to anyone, or were the messages personal to me?
I began to take regular walks along the lane three or four times a week, but not specifically to the churchyard this time. I had no desire to sit in that state of impatient expectation that had led only to disappointment the previous time. Perhaps it was just my ego, but I felt increasingly that the oracle really was speaking to me personally and that, given sufficient opportunity, it would speak again when it had something to say. I didn’t have quite so long to wait this time.
Late one cold October afternoon, my patience was rewarded. The sun was sinking over the ridge beyond the stream and I was admiring the splendor of the limestone tower. It was bathed in a golden glow that made it stand out in stark magnificence against the slate-grey eastern sky. Suddenly, I heard the whisper as loudly as before. Yet it sounded somehow different: deeper, and with a harsher tone. The word that springs to mind when I recall my impression of it is “demonic.” It sounded urgent and demanding, and I remember feeling intimidated and reluctant to approach the tree. I hadn’t felt like that before. Amazed and a little frightened yes, but not intimidated. This voice didn’t sound friendly at all. I did approach it of course; what else could I do? And its statement was as clear as ever.
Grew the iceberg too
The whispered phrase was spoken clearly and slowly as before. The second statement, however, was spoken loudly and quickly; and had the sneering quality of an order spat out by some cruel bully who knows he has you in his power and glories in the spiteful desire to prove it.
Follow the fox.
My reaction was ambivalent. The sense of rising excitement at having a new message to consider was tempered by the dark and menacing tone of the voice. I walked out from the shadow of the tree and back into the light of the low October sun. It bestowed very little heat that late in the year and the air felt chilled and slightly damp. I left the churchyard and walked back along the lane, considering the latest utterance. I was sure that I’d heard the first phrase before but couldn’t place it.
By the time I reached home I had an uneasy sensation in the pit of my stomach. I suppose I felt disappointed, or even betrayed. It was the sort of feeling you would have if you befriended someone in good faith, only to find later that they had hidden qualities that were deeply dislikeable. The character of the voice had changed and sounded malevolent. I no longer liked or trusted it. And there was something else about the latest message that was different from the first two. The second sentence, “follow the fox,” was not so obviously a corroborative location, but sounded more like an instruction. Perhaps I was right. Perhaps the oracle was now fulfilling the more objective role of giving me the opportunity to change the course of some event. I wondered what it could be and felt a deep sense of anxiety.
Would I recognize the situation when it occurred? Would I have the courage or the ability, or whatever it took, to change it for the better? Would there be danger or pain involved? Would I be faced with choices that carried the risk of possibly making matters worse? How long would I have to wait?
These are obvious concerns that would trouble anyone suddenly faced with the knowledge that something was going to happen which needed to be dealt with, but the details of which are as yet unknown. It gives you no opportunity to prepare. The first step, I decided, was to identify the quotation.
I reasoned that, since the first two had come from classical literature, it was likely that this one did too. I located my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and looked up “iceberg” in the index. The single entry read “silent distance grew the I.” I turned to the page and read the full quotation:
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
Of course; I remembered reading the poem at school: Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain.” It recounts the sinking of the Titanic; reflecting upon the separate and apparently unconnected development of the two players in the tragedy and how they were feted to come together one cold April night in mid Atlantic with the loss of fifteen hundred lives.
This was deeply disturbing. It suggested the possibility of some catastrophic collision and the prospect was not pleasant to contemplate. Again I wondered how long I would have to wait and whether I would be able to handle it. Would there be a collision that would necessitate my dealing with the aftermath in some way, or by “following the fox” would I have the opportunity to prevent it? That sounded the more logical of the two possibilities, but it would necessitate my being successful in dealing with whatever situation presented itself. Failure could cost someone’s life or limb, and that forced upon me a terrible burden of responsibility.
I went to bed that night feeling anxious and wishing that the tree had never favored me with its predictions. But it had, and I knew that I was going to face some sort of trial that I couldn’t afford to fail. Would it come tomorrow? Next week? Next year? The wait could amount to a life sentence. In the event, the circumstances proved remarkably straightforward. And there was no wait: the test was laid squarely in my lap the following day.
At two o’clock in the afternoon I set off to drive to a meeting with a client in Derby. I had finished the presentation that morning and it hadn’t been easy. My concentration had been constantly assaulted by thoughts of ghostly whispers and heavy responsibilities. Nevertheless, I had managed to finish it and was content enough as I drove along the main road knowing that there was a good piece of work settled in my briefcase that should please my client. Ahead of me I saw a white minibus and the gap between us was closing rapidly. The road had few safe overtaking places and I was irritated by the knowledge that I would probably be held up for some miles before being able to get past it.
I doubt that I need to describe my feelings as I closed on the vehicle and saw two logos, one on each rear door. Two circles, containing within each a picture of a smiling fox and the company name — HAPPY FOX COACHES –emblazoned around the edge. This was a lot sooner than I was expecting and I told myself that it could just be coincidence. I knew, of course, that I couldn’t risk such a presumption and that I had no alternative but to follow it.
The ensuing cocktail of emotions was mixed and confusing. Irritation, excitement, trepidation — they followed each other in rapid succession and became jumbled into a mire that made my head spin. I followed the vehicle for two miles and saw that it was full of young children, presumably on a school trip or on their way to or from a sporting fixture maybe. The fact that there could be children involved made my anxiety all the keener.
We reached the junction at which I should have turned off to take the Derby road, but the minibus went straight on and I continued to follow it. A few minutes later its right hand indicator began to flash and the vehicle slowed. I recognized the road that it was about to turn onto. I had been along it once and knew that there was an unmanned level crossing a mile or so further on where it crossed the busy rail line running between Crewe and Nottingham.
I felt that everything was coming together and the pit of my stomach became knotted with apprehension. I could feel a weak, trembling sensation as we approached the railway line. Surely the bus driver would stop to use the signaling phone: he had children on board for God’s sake. He didn’t. Instead, he slowed down almost to a standstill and eased the vehicle up the small ramp until it leveled out. And then it stopped: presumably the engine had stalled. My sense of apprehension leapt to almost panic proportions as I heard the engine being turned over but failing to fire. I had a good view of the track in both directions and, to the left, I saw exactly what I expected to see: a train was coming around a bend at speed and couldn’t have been more than half a mile away.
A collection of thoughts and questions came rushing into my mind, tumbling over each other in their efforts to take precedence. How long would it take the train driver to see the peril? Suppose he was distracted at that moment. When he did see it, would he react immediately or would he assume, just for a second or two, that the vehicle would be driven off the track in good time? How long does it take a train traveling at maybe seventy or eighty miles an hour to stop? And, sitting astride these various matters of detail, was my knowledge that there had been several instances recently of trains hitting vehicles on unmanned crossings. I was certain of one thing: there would be no time to ring the signalman or offload the kids.
My reaction was instinctive. I engaged first gear, kept the revs high and rolled up behind the bus to push it off the track. I just hoped to God that the driver hadn’t put the handbrake on. As the front bumper of my car encountered the rear of the minibus, I felt a jolt and heard a crack. But then I was massively relieved to see the big white vehicle ahead of me start to move. At the same time, I heard its engine burst into life. It lurched forward and down the incline on the far side. But then, when it was clear of the tracks, its brake lights came on. I couldn’t believe it, but there they were: bright red lights and a big white obstruction a foot or two in front of me. The driver had stopped, apparently unaware that he had stranded me in the path of a fast approaching train. I had no time to curse or hoot or wonder at the irrational things people do in extreme situations. Neither was there sufficient clearance between the two vehicles to drive around him. I whipped the gear lever into reverse and sped backwards off the track. Within seconds, the train thundered between us, its locked wheels screaming as metal tried to grip metal. I looked to my right to see the train driver looking back from his cab window. I waved to him to let him know that everything was okay before sinking forward to rest my head on my arms lying across the steering wheel. The screaming stopped as the driver released the brakes and the train carried on. I wondered whether that was correct protocol, but he would obviously make a full report at his next stop and I didn’t particularly care anyway. Then there was silence, apart from the thumping in my head and the sharp panting of my breath as the stress was released.
The minibus driver walked across the track and approached me. I was in no state to be angry and it was obvious that he, too, was in shock. I accepted his muttered apologies without really hearing the words, and took the business card he offered in order to contact the company in respect of the small amount of damage that my car had suffered. At that moment, the damage to my front bumper was of little interest to me. I drove home, poured a very large Scotch, and sank into my armchair.
For the next hour I sat and thought about the day’s events and all the circumstances that had led up to them. A dark suspicion began to form in my mind and quickly grew into a near certainty.
It occurred to me that the minibus engine would have started when it did anyway, and that the vehicle would have got clear of the train without my help. So what was the point of the whole event? By “following the fox,” all I had done was to put myself seconds away from a violent death. The whispers had taken the form of lines from classical literature and the first of its utterances came from Macbeth. Another well-known quotation from the same play settled firmly into my brain and shouted at me to heed the lesson:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.
I felt betrayed. I felt certain that, whatever the nature and source of the oracle, it had been playing a hideous game with me. At first I assumed that it had tried to kill me, but quickly realized that, if it knew the future, it would have known the outcome of my adventure. Or would it? Perhaps uncertainty is part of the game, even to an oracle. It made little difference anyway: I wasn’t happy to be toyed with that way. I determined never to go near the yew tree again.
I reconsidered the decision several times over the ensuing days and weeks, and I admit to having had doubts. How could I know that the oracle wouldn’t give me some vital piece of information that would enable me to save someone’s life? By refusing to listen to it, was I abdicating some important responsibility that I should have been honored to accept? I kept remembering the tone of its last message, however, and that made up my mind. This oracle was not a nice thing to know and I stuck with my decision to keep away.
I continue to live in Great Danesby but never walk down the lane since there is no way of avoiding the close proximity of the churchyard. In fact, I avoid all trees whenever possible. My suspicion of them has grown into something approaching a phobia. If the oracle can speak through one tree, why not another? I start when a gust of wind rustles any bunch of leaves that are within hearing distance, and my feeling for trees has become antagonistic. To one who has always loved trees, this is tragic but unavoidable. It seems that I am trapped in some form of life sentence whatever I do.
And, whenever and however death comes to release me, one question will remain unanswered. Could I have avoided it?
“Whispers” is copyright © 2006 JJ Beazley and appears here for the first time with the author’s permission.
JJ Beazley lives in a small village deep in rural England and has been fascinated by all things metaphysical since early childhood. During the course of his life he has done a wide variety of jobs but is presently unemployed. He has been writing speculative fiction for three years, having previously written magazine articles on photography and country walks. To date, ten of his thirty-two stories have been accepted for publication. He is serious about his writing but does not expect ever to make a living out of it. He loves dogs, kind people, and anything weird!
