The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1619 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

That night I couldn’t sleep. As usual my problem didn’t affect Simon who snored like an angry lawnmower. I lay there for ages feeling my elbow was bruised after bashing his ribs so much. I tossed and turned then finally, fed up with Simon’s impression of a chainsaw, I slipped out of bed and after pulling on my dressing gown over my lilac coloured winceyette with purple bunnies–don’t, they were a present from Julie–I went downstairs.

The house was quiet apart from the sound of the fridge and the snoring coming from my room and Tom’s. I quickly made a cuppa and took it with me into my study where I snaffled a couple of my favourite biscuits. I was wide awake so I did some work on the mammal survey. My collation was coming together quite nicely and the recent mention of a dormouse in a Lyme Regis teashop–did it come from one of the teapots–a la Alice in Wonderland/down the Rabbit Hole. I doubt it but quite whence it came, no one seems to know. It’s hopefully safe now in a rescue place in Devon.

I didn’t use it as a record except as an eccentric entry, besides which Dorset seems quite reasonably populated as do parts of Somerset. I sipped my tea and felt a cold draught behind me. Goose pimples rose on my arms and I gave an involuntary shiver. It felt as if the door had been opened and cold air was coming in.

Given I’d been at a funeral that day and thinking about the recently deceased relative, I immediately chided myself for my superstition–there are no such things as ghosts or whatever, except in dreams, where obviously they could be my unconscious mind trying to sort things in symbolism or metaphor or whatever it used to file my thoughts and experiences for the day.

Besides if it was Great Aunt Una, I knew she’d never hurt me so I had no reason to feel fear. See, just rationalise these things and they go away. I went back to my cuppa and my survey–could I really get all this together in another year or so and offer it for my doctoral dissertation. The difficult bit was going to be correlating climate change with populations of different species and making predictions based upon that change. I’d been using some software for modelling things, my main subject being the dormouse but I was also going to be doing some stuff on harvest mice and the brown rat–how’s that for a contrast?

The black rat–Rattus rattus, the one blamed for spreading the black death–yeah it entered via Weymouth, so they say–so the Olympics will be the first time anything has happened there since the thirteenth century. Anyway, the Asian or black rat is a relative rarity here, it’s the larger brown rat, Rattus norvegicus which we have in surplus, like most European countries. They say, you’re never more than a few yards from a rat wherever you are in England–I expect they mean the brown variety of Rattus rather than the two legged sort which seem to be on the increase.

They carry all sorts of bugs including leptospirosis or Weil’s disease which is a very nasty bug indeed and can wipe out your liver and kidneys. Ironically, the latest idea on the black death is that it wasn’t carried by rats or their fleas because it spread to quickly–so it was probably human to human contact. So give a rat a bad name and...Bugger, that cold draught was back again. It felt as if someone had opened the back door or something.

I turned round but my door was closed, but just in case one of the outside doors was open–though I don’t know how or why it should be–I thought I’d better check–if one was open, who had opened it? Were we being burgled–bugger, my mobile was upstairs in my bag. I eased the chair away from my desk and stepped on tip toe to the fake grate I had and picked up the poker that was leant on the hearth–it wasn’t fake–the poker I mean, the hearth was. Holding it firmly, I quietly opened the door and almost silently walked along the hallway towards the door which exits from the extension to the back yard/garden. I could see in the moonlight that it was closed and a quick check showed it was locked.

I stole back along the hallway and into the kitchen opening the door as quietly as I could, now it felt very cold and my heart started to thump rapidly in my chest, the pounding in my neck and ears almost deafening. This could be the door that was open–I flung open the kitchen door and switched on the light, brandishing my weapon, a pound of Sheffield steel. There was no one there, yet the room felt cold, unusually cold.

I walked through and checked the back door, it was locked and bolted as well. I looked at the temperature display on the fridge, which gives the ambient temperature as well as the fridge and freezer. It was registering five degrees–that was colder than the forecast had suggested. I shrugged and turned to go and finish my survey stuff and close down the computer when I was confronted by a figure in the doorway.

For a moment it seemed as if the bunnies in my jammy trousers might need to do some coprophagy so great was my surprise. I froze and stared at the person before me. She, yes it was a female, stood about five feet ten and she looked keenly at me as if she was examining me. She was wearing some sort of long dress, it looked very old fashioned and had some sort of pattern on it but her skin looked very pale, deathly pale and her eyes had no sparkle in them and were a very pale blue.

She seemed to look me up and down and I wondered what the hell was going on, I seemed unable to move, although I could feel my fingers gripping the poker so tightly it was hurting them. A cold sweat formed on my brow and on my lip–it was so cold, yet my Aga was working I could hear it.

“Aye ye’ll dae,” she muttered to herself and her speaking seemed to break my trance.

“I’ll do for what? What are you doing in my home?” I asked in a voice which was barely above a croak, “Who are you?”

She looked at me calmly and smiled, “Ye’ll dae,” she said and faded before my eyes. I shook myself and dashed to the hallway, there was no one there. I switched on the lights and tore up and down the hall, then realising my children were upstairs I raced up the stairs and into their bedroom, then into Danny’s room and finally up to Julie’s. I could find no intruder anywhere.

People can’t just disappear–physics doesn’t allow them to–yet she seemed physical, albeit rather pale. I ran down to the kitchen and the temperature was sixteen degrees, much more like it.

I switched on the kettle and made myself a drink, as I was doing so Tom lumbered out and I nearly brained him with the poker.

“Whit fa are ye daein’ oot here, d’ye ken whit time it is?”

“I couldn’t sleep and came down to do some work, I thought I felt a cold draught and wondered if we had a door or window open, came into the kitchen and as I was about to leave I saw an old woman standing pretty well where you are, Daddy. She said ‘Ye’ll dae,’ and then she disappeared.”

“Whit d’ye mean, she disappeared?”

“She faded before my very eyes.”

“Whit’d she look like?”

“She was about five ten, wearing a long dress, quite old fashioned looking, very pale skin, blue eyes but they looked dead–you know, no life in them.”

He chuckled, “Soonds like ye’ve seen the White Lady o’ Stanebury.”

“What? Don’t be silly, Daddy. Stanebury’s four hundred miles away.”

“Aye, but fro’ whit Henry telt me, she can appear anywhere tae Cameron lassies.”

“That has got to be the biggest load of haggis droppings I’ve ever heard.”

He roared with laughter and I had to ask him to be quiet or he’d wake the children. Then he asked me to make him some tea and we sat at the table and talked about my recent experience. I had to admit his explanation was as feasible as any I could think of, I’d speak with Henry when I got a chance. I wondered if Stella had seen her. I’d have to ask her tomorrow.

I cleared up, switched off my lap top and went off to bed where Simon’s warm body felt really good to cuddle against, and within a short time I was asleep.