Wragg watched the tail lights of his wife’s train receding from Cruxton station, taking her on the first stage of her journey to visit her aunt in Edinburgh who had been unfortunate enough to suffer a mild stroke on Hallowe’en.
He tugged on the lead. “Come on, Spike, old boy. All lads together for the next couple of days, what?”
Spike reluctantly disengaged his nose from a particularly interesting smell on the platform wall, and trotted along obediently enough. With a smile, Wragg let him jump onto the front passenger seat of his elderly Ford. His wife loathed dog hair on the passenger seat.
“Trick or Treat, Mister?” a passing ghoul called to him as he walked around to the driver’s side. Wragg felt in his pocket and fished out a glacier mint, brushed the fluff from the wrapper, and passed it over.
“Urgh!”, said the ghost. “I can’t stand those!” He threw flour over Wragg’s car.
“Bloody Trick or Treaters! Get lost!” snarled Wragg, waving his fist at the rapidly departing spectre.
Luckily the night was a dry one, so he brushed the worst of the flour off the windscreen, and decided to let the slipstream do the rest. The vehicle was scarcely in pristine condition, anyway. Unlike the vehicle behind him, who did not much appreciate being enveloped in a cloud of white dust as Wragg accelerated away from the station.
Wragg grinned, and even Spike sniggered. “There are a thousand more valuable ways of spending your time than washing your car!” said Wragg, to nobody in particular, though Spike didn’t look as though he disagreed.
He lost the fuming driver behind at a roundabout, and was soon out in the country lanes on the way to Cruxton Abbey, where he lived in the gatehouse lodge these days. The Abbey had long since become the property of the National Trust, since Wragg’s grandfather had lost the family money on wine, women, and song.
He rounded a corner, and braked sharply, eliciting a yelp from Spike.
“Sorry, old boy,” apologised Wragg, “I thought I saw someone in the road. Girl in a purple dress. Must have been a trick of the light.“
He drove through the gateway, and parked next to the lodge. Spike leaped out, and stood by the door, tail wagging furiously. It was high time for his dinner.
His master unlocked the door, but instantly Spike stopped wagging and started whining instead.
“What on earth is the matter, you silly mutt?” But, as he entered, he immediately found out what was troubling the dog. It was freezing cold inside.
“Bloody boiler must have packed it in.” He flicked a light switch. Nothing.
“Aha. No power. No wonder the heating’s not working. Best check the fuses.” He pulled out his phone to use as a torch. And then very nearly dropped it again in shock.
There, sitting at the kitchen table, were four women. But as they turned to look at him, he found himself looking into empty eye sockets.
Skeletons, in women’s clothing. One wearing red, one mustard, one blue, and one wearing an exotic purple silk dress fastened over her bony shoulders.
Wragg instantly knew who they were. He could not imagine how they came to be there, but he knew bloody well who they were.
“J-Jasmine?” He could barely stammer out the name.
The skeleton in the purple dress nodded.
“Helena? Rebecca? Cassia?”
Each skeleton raised a hand in greeting.
“You’ve… all lost a bit of weight since I last saw you.” Wragg had never attempted small talk with ghosts before, but one has to try to be civil.
The four of them stood up and advanced silently towards him. Despite the plethora of bones on offer, Spike whimpered and retreated through the open door.
“Well done! Good trick or treat jape,” Wragg still attempted light-heartedness. “Who’s put you up to this? Was it that scoundrel, Jollyrei? Wait till I get my hands on him! Anyway, look here, Mrs Wragg left me a very nice fruit cake in that tin over there, if I could just cut you a slice each?”
He took one step, but Cassia blocked his way. If she was an hallucination, Wragg should have been able to walk right through her, but she was all too solid. She spun him round, and then she and the other three surrounded him.
Bony hands linked together, encircling him.
Wragg cried out in dismay as the darkness of an English October night was replaced by a blazing hot Mediterranean afternoon. A voice called out in warning and he threw himself out of the path of a horse-drawn farm cart passing at some speed, sprawling full-length in the process, and cracking his head on a very solid piece of timber.
For a moment he was stunned by the blow, but he opened his eyes to the realisation that he was laying with his head in a pool of blood.
His blood? Gingerly, he felt his head, then examined his hand. Dry. Not his blood.
“Oh, God… no! Surely not….”
He sat up, and looked up.
At Jasmine.
Exactly as he had imagined her, and exactly as he had portrayed her in his story on the Crux Forums.
Except much, much worse.
Here, there was the smell, the stench of excrement, of sweat, and of fear. Jasmine’s body was covered in weals, from the beating she had taken as she had carried her cross here, worse than he’d shown them. Her body twitched and trembled, her indescribable agony all too apparent from every gasp, every effort-filled breath, every line of pain etched into her previously beautiful face.
Eyes wide with shock and wonder, he looked around. There was the South Gate, and there was Cassia, hanging beneath a crudely-daubed sign: ‘CASSIA - SEDITIO’
He heard a tortured moan from behind him, and turned to looked at Rebecca, blonde, slim, nude, and fighting a losing battle with four incredibly savage looking shards of iron that transfixed her wrists and heels to unyielding timber.
And Helena, desperately attempting to beat her head against her cross in a futile effort to bring an end to her appalling suffering. And then, giving up, she screamed, a hopeless, helpless wail of agony, despair and injustice that struck ice into the depths of Wragg’s soul.
“Noooo!” wailed Wragg. “This isn’t happening! This didn’t happen! This is all a figment of my imagination. There is no shred of evidence that any of you ever existed! Spike? Spike? Where are you, Spike?”
There were plenty of spikes, sixteen of them, fixing four terrified and tormented women to four crosses, but there was no sign of his dog.
Jasmine murmured something unintelligible, and then there was a roar from the battlements of the wall. A Roman was yelling something at him. Wragg did not understand one word of the speech, but the gesture was clear: ‘Get away from that cross!’
Wragg took a hurried step backwards. Something felt odd as he did so, and he looked down to see that his coat, trousers, and shoes had gone, and now he was wearing Roman clothing, some kind of smock, and sandals.
What in God’s name was happening here? How had he got from his home to this nightmare from his own imagination? Worse, a de-sanitised nightmare. Gone were the attractive, model women posing on their crosses, chatting away about their situation, replaced by these shitting, bleeding, suffering wretches who may have once been attractive but now most definitely were not.
“Jasmine! JASMINE! I’m sorry! Okay? I should never have dreamed up this fate for you! Now, please! Let me go home!”
Jasmine recognised her name, or at least, the anglicized version of it that Wragg uttered. Gradually, painfully, her head moved around, until her eyes locked onto his. Her lips moved, and some words came in a barely audible whisper:
“Fuck…. you… Wragg!”
He stifled a sob, and then, struck by a thought, he ran to the next cross.
“Cassia! Listen to me! Have courage! This evening your father will come, with troops, and you will be rescued! Look where the sun is! You have less than two hours to hang there! Your father is on his way at this very moment!”
“He isn’t, you know.” A voice, behind him, spoke.
Wragg whirled around. There stood a beautiful young Roman woman, her dark hair beautifully tied back, and her right shoulder alluringly left bare by her fine dress. Dark brown eyes gazed into his.
“Alice?” stammered Wragg.
“Not ‘Alice’. ‘Josephine.’ Remember?”
“Yes, I remember!”
Wragg looked at her in alarm. She’d be on a cross by sundown, Cassia’s cross, and she would die there! What should he say to her?
“I know what you’re thinking, Wragg!” She laughed, happily. “Don’t you worry, I shall enjoy my party tonight. It is Cassia who will die up there, not me!”
“But… but… Bobinder will be devastated!”
“Don’t you worry about Bobinder. I’ll look after him when his time comes, Lord Jollyrei will see to that. As for you - lesson One, Wragg. You can dream your women onto crosses, but you can’t dream them back off them again. Crucifixion is permanent. There’s only one way off a cross. Look at those nails! Do they look as though they are coming out, any time soon? Cassia’s father is not a Tribune, he is a merchant. He’s away in Hispania. Her mother is with him. Nobody is coming to get her. She, like the others, has no hope.”
“No! That’s not what I wrote at all!”
“Read my lips, Wragg. She has no hope. And neither, I’m afraid, do you. You made this hell for yourself. You will remain here until all four have died. When the last of them stop breathing, who for your information will be Cassia, the whole cycle will begin again. You will see Arthurius crucified,” she waved at a dead body behind Cassia’s cross, being picked at by crows, “then Helena and Rebecca, exactly as you described it, only worse. After another couple of hours, Jasmine will arrive and be nailed to her cross, and finally Cassia. You’ll watch them die again, then be crucified again, die again, be crucified again, over and over for the whole of eternity.”
Wragg gaped at her.
“Don’t look so dumbstruck, Wragg. Isn’t this heaven for you? Come on! You love to see nude women on crosses! You’ll have them for company for the whole of eternity! Aren’t you a lucky sod?”
With a toss of her head she turned to leave.
“Goodbye,” she said. “Old boy!”
“Josephine! No! Wait! Don’t leave me!” He raced after her as she passed through the gate, and hit an invisible but very solid barrier. He bounced back and ended up sitting in the dust in front of Cassia. Josephine turned, laughing.
“Sorry,” she giggled, “I’d love to invite you to my party, but as you see, your world ends just here. And about the same distance in any direction.”
Wragg sat in the grot at the side of the road. For a bit, he felt sorry for himself. So he was stuck here for ever. He gazed up at Cassia.
She was struggling to breathe, her breasts rising and falling as she fought for air.
He thought back over the various stories he’d written. Hell’s bells, he’d crucified Barbaria for four centuries, once!
‘Hey, Wragg,’ he said to himself, ‘you know what? Josephine’s right. It could have been a whole lot worse! I could have been crucified for eternity! Instead, I get the company of these four girls for ever! Cheer up!’
He went and got himself a drink of water from the bucket near the gate, and rested back against the wall and surveyed the scene.
‘Yes, indeed. Could’ve been much worse. Cheers, Jollyrei!’
His slightly manic laugh merged with the moans and screams of the crucified girls, as the sun continued its inexorable journey towards the western horizon.
THE END
Happy Hallowe'en, everyone!
He tugged on the lead. “Come on, Spike, old boy. All lads together for the next couple of days, what?”
Spike reluctantly disengaged his nose from a particularly interesting smell on the platform wall, and trotted along obediently enough. With a smile, Wragg let him jump onto the front passenger seat of his elderly Ford. His wife loathed dog hair on the passenger seat.
“Trick or Treat, Mister?” a passing ghoul called to him as he walked around to the driver’s side. Wragg felt in his pocket and fished out a glacier mint, brushed the fluff from the wrapper, and passed it over.
“Urgh!”, said the ghost. “I can’t stand those!” He threw flour over Wragg’s car.
“Bloody Trick or Treaters! Get lost!” snarled Wragg, waving his fist at the rapidly departing spectre.
Luckily the night was a dry one, so he brushed the worst of the flour off the windscreen, and decided to let the slipstream do the rest. The vehicle was scarcely in pristine condition, anyway. Unlike the vehicle behind him, who did not much appreciate being enveloped in a cloud of white dust as Wragg accelerated away from the station.
Wragg grinned, and even Spike sniggered. “There are a thousand more valuable ways of spending your time than washing your car!” said Wragg, to nobody in particular, though Spike didn’t look as though he disagreed.
He lost the fuming driver behind at a roundabout, and was soon out in the country lanes on the way to Cruxton Abbey, where he lived in the gatehouse lodge these days. The Abbey had long since become the property of the National Trust, since Wragg’s grandfather had lost the family money on wine, women, and song.
He rounded a corner, and braked sharply, eliciting a yelp from Spike.
“Sorry, old boy,” apologised Wragg, “I thought I saw someone in the road. Girl in a purple dress. Must have been a trick of the light.“
He drove through the gateway, and parked next to the lodge. Spike leaped out, and stood by the door, tail wagging furiously. It was high time for his dinner.
His master unlocked the door, but instantly Spike stopped wagging and started whining instead.
“What on earth is the matter, you silly mutt?” But, as he entered, he immediately found out what was troubling the dog. It was freezing cold inside.
“Bloody boiler must have packed it in.” He flicked a light switch. Nothing.
“Aha. No power. No wonder the heating’s not working. Best check the fuses.” He pulled out his phone to use as a torch. And then very nearly dropped it again in shock.
There, sitting at the kitchen table, were four women. But as they turned to look at him, he found himself looking into empty eye sockets.
Skeletons, in women’s clothing. One wearing red, one mustard, one blue, and one wearing an exotic purple silk dress fastened over her bony shoulders.
Wragg instantly knew who they were. He could not imagine how they came to be there, but he knew bloody well who they were.
“J-Jasmine?” He could barely stammer out the name.
The skeleton in the purple dress nodded.
“Helena? Rebecca? Cassia?”
Each skeleton raised a hand in greeting.
“You’ve… all lost a bit of weight since I last saw you.” Wragg had never attempted small talk with ghosts before, but one has to try to be civil.
The four of them stood up and advanced silently towards him. Despite the plethora of bones on offer, Spike whimpered and retreated through the open door.
“Well done! Good trick or treat jape,” Wragg still attempted light-heartedness. “Who’s put you up to this? Was it that scoundrel, Jollyrei? Wait till I get my hands on him! Anyway, look here, Mrs Wragg left me a very nice fruit cake in that tin over there, if I could just cut you a slice each?”
He took one step, but Cassia blocked his way. If she was an hallucination, Wragg should have been able to walk right through her, but she was all too solid. She spun him round, and then she and the other three surrounded him.
Bony hands linked together, encircling him.
Wragg cried out in dismay as the darkness of an English October night was replaced by a blazing hot Mediterranean afternoon. A voice called out in warning and he threw himself out of the path of a horse-drawn farm cart passing at some speed, sprawling full-length in the process, and cracking his head on a very solid piece of timber.
For a moment he was stunned by the blow, but he opened his eyes to the realisation that he was laying with his head in a pool of blood.
His blood? Gingerly, he felt his head, then examined his hand. Dry. Not his blood.
“Oh, God… no! Surely not….”
He sat up, and looked up.
At Jasmine.
Exactly as he had imagined her, and exactly as he had portrayed her in his story on the Crux Forums.
Except much, much worse.
Here, there was the smell, the stench of excrement, of sweat, and of fear. Jasmine’s body was covered in weals, from the beating she had taken as she had carried her cross here, worse than he’d shown them. Her body twitched and trembled, her indescribable agony all too apparent from every gasp, every effort-filled breath, every line of pain etched into her previously beautiful face.
Eyes wide with shock and wonder, he looked around. There was the South Gate, and there was Cassia, hanging beneath a crudely-daubed sign: ‘CASSIA - SEDITIO’
He heard a tortured moan from behind him, and turned to looked at Rebecca, blonde, slim, nude, and fighting a losing battle with four incredibly savage looking shards of iron that transfixed her wrists and heels to unyielding timber.
And Helena, desperately attempting to beat her head against her cross in a futile effort to bring an end to her appalling suffering. And then, giving up, she screamed, a hopeless, helpless wail of agony, despair and injustice that struck ice into the depths of Wragg’s soul.
“Noooo!” wailed Wragg. “This isn’t happening! This didn’t happen! This is all a figment of my imagination. There is no shred of evidence that any of you ever existed! Spike? Spike? Where are you, Spike?”
There were plenty of spikes, sixteen of them, fixing four terrified and tormented women to four crosses, but there was no sign of his dog.
Jasmine murmured something unintelligible, and then there was a roar from the battlements of the wall. A Roman was yelling something at him. Wragg did not understand one word of the speech, but the gesture was clear: ‘Get away from that cross!’
Wragg took a hurried step backwards. Something felt odd as he did so, and he looked down to see that his coat, trousers, and shoes had gone, and now he was wearing Roman clothing, some kind of smock, and sandals.
What in God’s name was happening here? How had he got from his home to this nightmare from his own imagination? Worse, a de-sanitised nightmare. Gone were the attractive, model women posing on their crosses, chatting away about their situation, replaced by these shitting, bleeding, suffering wretches who may have once been attractive but now most definitely were not.
“Jasmine! JASMINE! I’m sorry! Okay? I should never have dreamed up this fate for you! Now, please! Let me go home!”
Jasmine recognised her name, or at least, the anglicized version of it that Wragg uttered. Gradually, painfully, her head moved around, until her eyes locked onto his. Her lips moved, and some words came in a barely audible whisper:
“Fuck…. you… Wragg!”
He stifled a sob, and then, struck by a thought, he ran to the next cross.
“Cassia! Listen to me! Have courage! This evening your father will come, with troops, and you will be rescued! Look where the sun is! You have less than two hours to hang there! Your father is on his way at this very moment!”
“He isn’t, you know.” A voice, behind him, spoke.
Wragg whirled around. There stood a beautiful young Roman woman, her dark hair beautifully tied back, and her right shoulder alluringly left bare by her fine dress. Dark brown eyes gazed into his.
“Alice?” stammered Wragg.
“Not ‘Alice’. ‘Josephine.’ Remember?”
“Yes, I remember!”
Wragg looked at her in alarm. She’d be on a cross by sundown, Cassia’s cross, and she would die there! What should he say to her?
“I know what you’re thinking, Wragg!” She laughed, happily. “Don’t you worry, I shall enjoy my party tonight. It is Cassia who will die up there, not me!”
“But… but… Bobinder will be devastated!”
“Don’t you worry about Bobinder. I’ll look after him when his time comes, Lord Jollyrei will see to that. As for you - lesson One, Wragg. You can dream your women onto crosses, but you can’t dream them back off them again. Crucifixion is permanent. There’s only one way off a cross. Look at those nails! Do they look as though they are coming out, any time soon? Cassia’s father is not a Tribune, he is a merchant. He’s away in Hispania. Her mother is with him. Nobody is coming to get her. She, like the others, has no hope.”
“No! That’s not what I wrote at all!”
“Read my lips, Wragg. She has no hope. And neither, I’m afraid, do you. You made this hell for yourself. You will remain here until all four have died. When the last of them stop breathing, who for your information will be Cassia, the whole cycle will begin again. You will see Arthurius crucified,” she waved at a dead body behind Cassia’s cross, being picked at by crows, “then Helena and Rebecca, exactly as you described it, only worse. After another couple of hours, Jasmine will arrive and be nailed to her cross, and finally Cassia. You’ll watch them die again, then be crucified again, die again, be crucified again, over and over for the whole of eternity.”
Wragg gaped at her.
“Don’t look so dumbstruck, Wragg. Isn’t this heaven for you? Come on! You love to see nude women on crosses! You’ll have them for company for the whole of eternity! Aren’t you a lucky sod?”
With a toss of her head she turned to leave.
“Goodbye,” she said. “Old boy!”
“Josephine! No! Wait! Don’t leave me!” He raced after her as she passed through the gate, and hit an invisible but very solid barrier. He bounced back and ended up sitting in the dust in front of Cassia. Josephine turned, laughing.
“Sorry,” she giggled, “I’d love to invite you to my party, but as you see, your world ends just here. And about the same distance in any direction.”
Wragg sat in the grot at the side of the road. For a bit, he felt sorry for himself. So he was stuck here for ever. He gazed up at Cassia.
She was struggling to breathe, her breasts rising and falling as she fought for air.
He thought back over the various stories he’d written. Hell’s bells, he’d crucified Barbaria for four centuries, once!
‘Hey, Wragg,’ he said to himself, ‘you know what? Josephine’s right. It could have been a whole lot worse! I could have been crucified for eternity! Instead, I get the company of these four girls for ever! Cheer up!’
He went and got himself a drink of water from the bucket near the gate, and rested back against the wall and surveyed the scene.
‘Yes, indeed. Could’ve been much worse. Cheers, Jollyrei!’
His slightly manic laugh merged with the moans and screams of the crucified girls, as the sun continued its inexorable journey towards the western horizon.
THE END
Happy Hallowe'en, everyone!
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