The Crossing Keeper's Cottage

A short story

Malcolm Colman looked at his phone in dismay. Yet another text from his editor. Malcolm didn’t need to open it to know that Tom Asquith was enquiring, with pained politeness, just where his manuscript was. The book was three months overdue, could Malcolm give him a revised date for delivery? No, Malcolm couldn’t. His thumb hovered over the inviting little waste bin icon that would delete the email. No, in all conscience, he couldn’t do that either.

He switched the screen off and shoved the phone into his pocket. He could, after all, do what he’d been doing for weeks, and simply ignore it. But that wasn’t going to make the awful obligation go away. He had committed to doing the book, and taken the publisher’s shilling (and, he sniggered to himself, it really hadn’t been much more than a shilling). He’d done the research, he’d put together the first draft, and now he simply needed to make the revisions, do some dusting and polishing of passages here and there, and hand the damn thing over. What was stopping him? He could hardly claim overwork. The university had given him a sabbatical for the year, and expected a nice chunky book on his CV in return.

He wandered into the kitchen, as he always did on these occasions, and started to make himself a cup of coffee. What he needed, he decided, was a change of scene. Somewhere out of town, without distractions, where he would simply have no choice but to buckle down and get it done. If he really focused, he could get the book finished and ready to send off in three weeks. Resolute, he fished his phone out and opened up Tom’s email. I’ll have it with you in a month, he wrote, and signed off with a smiley emoji.

Bollocks! He’d done it now. He couldn’t not meet that deadline, so the next question was, where the hell could he go that would be quiet enough for him to get the work done? Coffee mug in hand, he wandered back into his living room. There, on the table, unwrapped but still unopened, lay a copy of The Author. They always had classifieds of places to rent for writers to go and write in. Perhaps there’d be somewhere in there.

It hadn’t taken Malcolm long to find what he was looking for, pack his clothes, the few books he would need and his laptop. He’d decided to travel by public transport - he didn’t want the ease of making a quick getaway by car if this final push to finish the book got difficult. The journey didn’t look too tiresome. Train most of the way, then a bus, and finally a taxi for the last leg. Locking the flat door behind him, Malcolm felt a jolt of excitement. He was off on an adventure.

The journey had been just as easy as he had anticipated, and it was still only early afternoon when Malcolm turned away from the departing taxi, and keyed in the code to the front door. Stepping into the main room - the one and only room apart from the bedroom and tiny bathroom according to the floorplan on the owner’s website - he saw a large bunch of moon daisies arranged in a vase on the dining table, and next to them a booklet setting out details of the house and its workings. “Welcome to the Crossing Keeper’s Cottage” it said in bold gothic lettering across the front cover. Malcolm decided that, before reading through it, he would unpack the carrier of provisions he’d brought with him, and make himself a decent cup of tea.

That afternoon passed peacefully and productively. Once he’d strolled around the cottage as he drunk his tea, Malcolm had settled down at the dining table with his laptop and books and started on the final revisions to M.R. James, Medievalist and Ghostmaster. He’d been fascinated by James’ ghost stories since he was a boy, and once he became a historian of the late medieval period in England, he kept on coming across flashes of James’ distinctive brilliance as a medieval scholar. Three very academic books later, which had sold as well as academic books could be expected to, and Malcolm had managed to persuade his university and his publisher that a literary biography of Montague Rhodes James would be an appropriate use of his time and their resources, and so he was finally able to give free rein to his passion.

He’d worked his way through the Introduction and the first two chapters before he realised he hadn’t moved from his chair for hours. He needed a break. And he needed food. Before daring to use the cooker in the kitchen to heat up his M&S steak pie - one of his favourite treats - Malcolm decided to pour himself a glass of Rioja (he’d brought four bottles with him, just in case) and read through the instructions the landlord had provided in the booklet. It all seemed quite straightforward - microwave, cooker, water heater, central heating all methodically dealt with, emergency contacts clearly laid out, with a small sketch map of local footpaths at the end. On the reverse of the map, on the very last page of the booklet, was a message from the landlord to his tenants:

“Being so close to the railway line, you may occasionally be disturbed by passing trains. You may also sometimes notice odd sounds around the cottage, particularly at night or in cold weather. The cottage is over two hundred years old, and the timbers creak as they settle. It is nothing to be alarmed about. Enjoy your stay.”

Malcolm smiled. What a set up! An isolated cottage and strange noises in the night! M.R. James would have loved it! Standing up, he finished his glass of wine and moved over to the kitchen area. Soon the house was filled with the wonderful warm smell of piping hot pastry. Once he’d finished his pie, and a second glass of Rioja, Malcolm settled back down at his laptop, and thought that, before working on the next chapter, he’d check his emails. Ah, there was no wifi. With only mild exasperation, Malcolm fished his phone out of his pocket and set it on the table, clicking to Settings so that he could run it as a Personal Hotspot. It’d eat into his data allowance, but that wouldn’t be a big problem. What was a big problem was that there was no phone coverage. Malcolm smiled again. No contact with the outside world. Perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He’d have absolutely no excuse but to buckle down and finish the book. It was, after all, exactly the peace and quiet he’d been looking for.

That night Malcolm slept well. He had managed to get through two more chapters before he felt dragged towards bed and sleep. Occasionally the trains rushed past, but the cottage stood solidly and double-glazing muffled the sound to an almost comforting whirr. He was pleased to be where he was, and finally getting on.

The following morning dawned overcast but dry, and Malcolm decided to go on one of the walks set out in the booklet before getting down to work. On his return he felt briskly virtuous, certainly virtuous enough to have a glass of wine beside him as he tackled the next section of the book. This was a tricky section, perhaps the trickiest in the whole book, where he was drawing the links between the medievalist scholar whose research led to the finding of the graves of buried monks at Bury St Edmunds, lost since the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the writer of such wonderfully creepy ghost stories as “Whistle and I’ll Come to You”. This was the kernel of his book and he was determined to get it right.

The days passed delightfully, and Malcolm marvelled at how the silence and the isolation were providing him the focus and energy he needed to finally finish the book. He hadn’t gone on another walk, as the weather had turned consistently drizzly and drear. But the cottage was warm, and he had food and wine enough to feel comfortable and at ease.

It was only on the fourth night that he began to notice strange sounds outside his bedroom door. The floor was creaking as though someone was standing on the landing. Too much wine and too many ghost stories he told himself, and buried his head under the bedclothes so that he couldn’t hear anything.

The next night he heard the creaking again. This time it sounded as though someone was walking up the stairs, step by step by step, and then standing on the landing, right outside the bedroom door. It’s an old cottage, Malcolm told himself, the landlord had said it sometimes made strange noises. He burrowed into the bedclothes again, but this time it took him quite a while before he got back to sleep.

On the sixth night that he had been sleeping in the cottage, his bedroom door quietly swung open. He woke up with a jolt as he felt a cold draft brush over his face. He was sure he’d shut the door. Fairly sure, anyway. He had drunk a lot of wine. He was so nearly at the end of the book, and felt he deserved it.

The following day Malcolm was exhausted. He hadn’t really been able to get back to sleep the night before, and he was beginning to long for sound and conversation. But he’d only got one last chapter to check, and then he’d be done. Quite how he’d be able to summon a taxi without any signal on his phone he couldn’t quite imagine. He supposed he’d have to walk until he got a signal, and hope it wouldn’t be too far. The coming night would be his last, he decided.

And it was.

Malcolm was deep asleep. He’d drunk a whole bottle of wine that evening, rather than carry it home. This time he didn’t hear the steps on the stairs, or the creaking wood of the landing, or the bedroom door swinging open. He didn’t see the figure standing over him, and woke only to utter confusion when he felt the pillow pressing down on his face. He struggled to breathe, but no breath came. The darkness was final and absolute.

The landlord wiped the last crumbs of soil from his spade, and restored it to its place under the stairs inside the cottage.

Another one crossed over.

He smiled towards the fresh mound in the field, barely noticeable under the turf and grass he’d laid on top of it. Mounting his bike, he cycled off into the night.

And if you travel from London to Oxford on the Cherwell Valley line, and you’re sitting on the right-hand side of the train, you might glimpse, just outside Culham, a crossing keeper’s cottage, and, if the train is going slowly enough, you might, perhaps, be able to make out small hillocks scattered across the field beside it.