The Miasmic Mist

Philippa-September 1967 Philippa turned her Morris Mini onto the minor road that ran from Aston to the tiny hamlet of Shifford. Already fearing the worst the debutante was chain smoking then she uttered, "No, they just broken up." Lady Caroline Feversham had left her parents' home and made for her private retreat in the beautiful remoteness of central Oxfordshire. "I sincerely hope that this is not a Dear John letter," she griped loudly smoking a Rothmans King Size while listening on the Philips car radio to Dave Davies and his solo song "Death of a Clown", "after all that you've put me, and your parents, through, better not be just a Dear John. But then on second thoughts I hope it is just a Dear John." Philippa had deliberately not listened to the news either on television or radio and had totally evaded glancing at any newspapers. She worried for her brother and her friend whose lover was till serving in some far off land that Philippa would have been totally incapable of pointing to on a map; nonetheless, British soldiers were involved in that place and some were losing their lives. The tiny settlement of Shifford boasted a population of about thirty. Caroline owned a property some half a mile from the church, bought as a gift for her seventeenth birthday, and it took the young aristocrat a mere five minutes to cover the short distance out to the rustic estate. The place was silent but for the birds on this early autumn afternoon, golden sunlight was cascading gently through the canopy of the woodland that straddled the eighteenth century construction. Philippa came to a halt, applied the handbrake, slipped from the car, locked it then gazed at the impressive obverse of the building. The solar light reflected from the glass of the upper floor lattice windows and for a startling moment the young socialite deemed she saw the unsightly ashen face of a balding man grinning evilly at her. Terrified, the eighteen year old looked away returning her glance several seconds hence, mercifully the visage was gone, a trick of the gloaming light she concluded. Philippa inhaled deeply then marched through the ajar, bulky oak door and into the house without announcement. The interior was even more silent, a scenario totally unexpected as the young woman tentatively strode into the ample red brick kitchen that lay deserted. There had been a vague anticipation of seeing Elmira, Kinsey and the others of their current "In Crowd"reassuring Caroline that her officer boyfriend was just a ship that passed in the night and she would soon meet a superior suitor to replace him. The reality was dissimilar; instead, an eerie almost ghostly silence hung around like a preternatural mist, a stillness that only the grave afforded. "Caroline," Philippa called out as she nervously and with no small measure of apprehension into the dining room and then the lounge. Both of these reception rooms were empty as were the larger utility room, downstairs cloakroom and even the garage. "Not funny," she muttered, the memory of the chilling optical illusion lying fresh on her consciousness, the atmosphere resembling a thread from the plot of a Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe or Dennis Wheatley novel, Philippa had read works by all those authors and her imagination was now in overdrive. She had recently watched the movie "The Innocents" based on the novel "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James which had terrified her, something the young woman was rapidly becoming and although it was still light, the haunting outlines of dusk were commencing their shadowy, cloaking descent over the county. Philippa was now in two minds whether to cut and run or check upstairs. "You silly bitch," she called herself, "panicked by a dark house when you've been visited by strange things since you were tiny, get a hold and find Caroline." The carpeted staircase was cleared in seconds; the bathroom was void of anything bar some soap and a crumpled towel. Philippa walked slowly into the expansive master bedroom where she could espy the blonde head of Caroline as she sat on the luxurious double bed, gaping emptily at her forlorn reflection in the ornate dressing table mirror. The black mascara had been swept down her face by the shedding of a river of pain leaving amorphous lines akin to bruises sloping down her pale cheeks. She was crying, actually dirgeful, swaying to and fro, sniffing and choking on the volume of tears. There was no effort required in concluding that this was not merely a simple Dear John missive. The few feet to where Caroline sat were circumspectly negotiated in what seemed torturous epochs until Philippa nervously inhaled, she noticed that her friend held a sharp scalpel type knife tightly in her right hand pressing on ,but not yet cutting into, the skin of her left wrist. The young debutante did not speak, she quietly and calmly sat next to Caroline upon which, without any resistance, warily coaxed the blade from her grip before placing it well away on the dressing table. The distraught woman did not even look up as Philippa put her arm around the shoulders, still quivering with grief. "It's alright Carol, I'm here for you, tell me." Caroline turned and pressed her head into Philippa's shoulder and upper chest area and began to wail loudly then sobbed before unsteadily divulging. "He's dead, Pip, David, my valiant Royal Marines' officer is dead, dying heroically in Aden, his mother said, but he's dead, he's never coming home." "I'm so, so sorry Carol, should you not be at home with your parents?" Philippa stroked the golden locks. "No," Caroline sniffed then cried simultaneously, "this is the last place I saw him in, we slept together here, fucked here, I can still smell him around me, this is where I want to be." "That's alright, you be wherever you want, have you some wine?" Caroline pointed at a bottle of Merlot on a table in the corner of the room which surprisingly appeared to be almost full. Philippa unhurriedly stood up, collected two flutes from a glass cabinet and placed them, the wine and an ashtray on the dressing table to their front. Then she lit two cigarettes and handed one to Caroline who took it without response, her stare being an amalgam of shock and glazed unreality being bizarrely how Philippa imagined a zombie may seem. Two glasses were filled almost to the brim, one was offered to Caroline who accepted it without acknowledgement. "You know I saw him, Pip, I swear to God I saw David." "Tell me about it, "Philippa wanted her friend to talk.