Mistaken Identity

Steve sits in the window of the local café eating his breakfast of greasy bacon, fried eggs, baked beans and chips, the brown sauce dripping down his chin, down onto the plate congealing with the grease and egg yolk, but his doesn’t care what people think. His life isn’t complicated, as long as he can enjoy his food, he’s happy.

It doesn’t matter to him, that he is homeless, the fact that he is even eating today is a bonus because someone noticed him sitting on the wall and dropped some money into his grubby worn tired hands. His dirty clothes hang on his body like rags, now so tatty and torn, once belonging to a person twice his size. He had rescued them from the recycling skip after he had seen some posh guy dropping them in and not closing the lid properly.

Sitting there he mopped up his egg and sauce with the last slice of bread that had just a smearing of butter on, enjoying the last mouthful, as he didn’t know when he would get to eat his next meal.

Standing up, scrapping the chair across the tiled floor, he tipped his hat to the lady on the counter, he waved at the rest of the people sitting eating, and stumbled drunkingly out the door.

He gave a cheery smile to passers by, but today Steve felt so utterly lonely, as he walked the streets of Uttoxeter  the noise and hustle and bustle of  all the Christmas shoppers, usually cheered him up and he liked watching families enjoying themselves. But on this cold December day as the bitter slant of the rain, the crying moaning wind created a creeping chill within him, his mood became sombre.  Taking out his only one prized possession, a gold hunter watch, a reminder of his working days, he was saddened to see it had stopped.  This completed his discomfort, not that there was any real necessity for him to know the time he wasn’t going anywhere, but it irritated him to know that he couldn’t, and this dampened his mood further.  As his took off his hat and shook of the rain he could hear a church clock striking in the distance, the sound muffled by the noise of the rain yet he was still able to hear and count the whole of the chimes? Strange how we do that, count the chimes. He carried on walking towards the station. There at least he could sit under the shelter in the dry.

He knew it must be almost noon, one, two, three, the sound of the bell did not diminish as he walked through the rain, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, the bell rang on. What was it? As he walked on the rain lashed down harder, and still on and on the bell rang, still distinct, yet growing louder, ringing more slowly.  It sounded like a passing bell or a toll for a funeral.  It was uncanny!  Still on and on it rang.  Would it never stop?  Was it reality or was he dreaming.  Sitting down on the station bench Steve stuffed his fingers in his ears looking around to see if anyone else had noticed the clock chimes, and were bemused by the sound. But the few people that were about were just standing around, as if nothing was different. He pressed his ears harder and involuntarily closed his eyes. ‘Now I can no longer hear it’ he thought. He sat there on the damp bench for a few minuets then with some hesitation he dropped his hands, hearing the bell no more. But as he opened his eyes, he was no longer on the rain soaked railway station, but sitting in a dimly lit railway carriage and he was not the only occupant.

Opposite him sat a stout bright eyed little man, who was gazing intently at him. He looked pallid with cold, though wrapped in a heavy wool coat, and Steve could only see a portion of his face, as his neck was swathed in a monstrous scarf. His eyes fascinated Steve; they glowed so bright, and looked straight at him piercingly. How had Steve got here, what or who was this man? He didn’t remember hearing the train pull into the station, let alone climbing into the carriage.

He wondered if he could be dreaming, he sensed the rumble of the train as it moved over the rails, the window beside him reflected his face against the blackness of the night yet it was still daylight after all it was only just after noon when he sat at the station. He reached up and touched the glass, somehow imagining his hand for go straight through out into the cold air. Steve was surprised that the only thing he noticed was the iciness of the glass, and the mark left by the warmth of his hand on the pane.

Snow was now beginning to flutter past the window, eerily like ghosts floating through the dark.

‘It is a cold night, Mr Shore, is it not?’ He said softly addressing himself to Steve.
How did he know my name?
He was – frightened to reply, something he didn’t care to admit.
‘It is cold.  Don’t you wish you were warm by the fire at Peddleton?’
‘It is cold.  Don’t you find it so?’  he repeated
‘Very’ Steve finally answered in a whisper
His bright eyes sparkled as he noted Steve’s trepidation.
‘Nearly as cold as that winters night when we were lost on the fells and were only just found in time to save your life, eh?  You remember that?’

Remember that how could Steve forget.  But, how did this man know about that, it was years ago, when he was a young man, yet this stranger seemed to know all about it.

‘Nearly as cold as winters night,’ the other guy went on, ‘when you went out to catch the poachers in the Valley, eh! You remember that’

Steve didn’t remember that. He had never to his knowledge gone out to catch poachers in any valley, but thought he would humour the man, ‘Yes, it is’ but was this all about? Where was he? Was it all a hallucination?  Steve couldn’t understand what was going on, was he dreaming, had he fallen asleep on the hard wooden bench, or had the eggs in the cafe been bad, or was he simply going mad? He closed his eyes and opened then again, but the guy was still there, and they were still sitting in the railway carriage. The guy sat upright staring at Steve across the small darkly lit space, yet he could feel his piecing smiling eyes. They seemed to sparkle with suppressed merriment as he watched his preys’ bewilderment.

For Steve was bewildered and amazed.  What was this strange being who had mysteriously appeared, who thought he knew about my past?  Creepy tales that Steve’s nanny had told him when he was young flashed across his mind.  Tales of goblins and, ghosts, and all nameless horrors, and then – that horrid tolling bell! Of that, the story goes, is said it means death to the hearer.

Steve tried to laugh and shake off the horror that was fast paralysing him: what a mockery of a laugh!  His lips were dry, his teeth chattered, the hair seemed to be creeping on his head.

The eerie little man laughed again as he watched Steve’s terror, and his eyes twinkled some more.

‘Do you recall’ the stranger asked ‘the haunted room with the oak panels and heavy oak door at Peddleton?  Do you remember the night you spent there?, before they closed it down – when you saw or thought you saw, all manner of strange things, and how you roused all the house with your screams?  Do you remember how you used to sit and dream in the woods all day, thinking that you would become a poet, and make the world echo with your songs?  How that dream turned sour when all you became was a lonely old bachelor, with only the thought of success of fortune to console you, no more illusions of fame eh?’

Steve could stand no more: I must get away from this man, with his piecing eyes, but the train was not a corridor one, you stepped from the platform directly into the carriage. There was nowhere for him to go. The noise on the tracks seemed to get faster, or was that Steve’s imagination too.

Jumping up Steve opened the window, death lay that way. A miserable choice, death or the --- well, Steve knew he had little choice.

“Oh do shut that window, my dear sir, I will perish of the cold”

Shutting it, and sitting down again, Steve huffed to himself.

You are anxious to get to the destination, by the by, can you tell me the time?

Destination what was the destination, Steve wondered, for he shouldn’t even be on the train, let alone, worry where he was going to. He didn’t answer the stranger.

“You seem somewhat disturbed, you look almost afraid of what? Of me? Surely you are not afraid of me?”

How the stranger chuckled as he asked me if I was afraid of him, how could I be I don’t even know him reflected Steve, yet I am, scared of him, but couldn’t understand why. He knew so much about me, yet! So little.

“Afraid of me, He! He! He!, My dear Steven, you wouldn’t have been in the old days. I distinctly remember you bullying me upon many occasions.”

As Steve mused over this remark, I didn’t know what he was talking about, I never bullied or tormented anyone at school, if anything I was the one who was bullied, but as he spoke and laughed, his shallow hollow laugh, something seems to click in my mind. Something seems familiar about his persecutor.

Me, Steve gasped, Bullied you!

Yes, me, me, Walter Worthew,
Walter Worthew, tell me, how did I, you, get here, on this train, all this must be a dream. I was sitting in the station but didn’t step onto the train,

“A dream, NO! A reality of course, you were asleep, at the station, you must had walked there, confused by the rain, and wind. I asked you to join me, for a drink as you were alone, and we boarded the carriage waiting at the platform as it was warmer. You sat in the corner and promptly fell back to sleep, and I have had a very amusing time bemusing you. I’m your old chum from school.

But how do you know me, I mean many years has passed by, and we have both changed.

Pointing to the bag, which was now stuffed in the corner of the seat; the name on it although scuffed and worn still read Stephen Bennett-Shore.

A comedy of errors, as this bag was with the clothes Steve had retrieved from the skip, not my bag, but the rich guy with his expensive car.

Steve didn’t enlighten the bright eyed stranger; he simply picked up his bag, tipped his hat, and got off the train, at what he thought was the next stop. Leaving his intimidator, smirking, thinking he had exacted some revenge. Only the train hadn’t moved at all, it was still there at Uttoxeter Station.

Steve also had a chuckle to himself. Well as least I made his day, he thought.