Tales from the Twilight Zone , livre ebook

Austin Macauley Publishers - B. Pritchard Joan

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67 pages

English

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There are many shadows on the pages but you'll soon appreciate their problems and how they find solutions. The characters are real and their stories will reach right into your heart. You'll find people here from your past, present and even future and they will accost your senses and become your friends.

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Short story

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers
Date de parution	28 février 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528966825
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0175€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Tales from the Twilight Zone
Joan B. Pritchard
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-02-28
Tales from the Twilight Zone About The Author Dedication Copyright Information © The Lass of Lincoln’s Inn Arthur Is Real House of Secrets I Belong Inside Linda Did It Murder Mystery Hotel The Boy in the Box Any Face Will Do The Seventh Daughter A Special Treehouse
About The Author
The author is now retired from her life’s work, and finds she needs another challenge. Busy all her life, she has raised a family and now finds there is some spare time to indulge herself – and in writing, she has done exactly this. She likes getting lost in her own worlds and the Twilight Zone stories allows her to do this. She lets her imagination run free.
Dedication
Dedicated to all my family and friends – old and new – who have helped me through difficult times. Also, to my late husband, with whom I shared a wonderful life.
Copyright Information ©
Joan B. Pritchard (2020)
The right of Joan B. Pritchard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528931816 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528966825 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
The Lass of Lincoln’s Inn
The small child sat on the stone doorstep. Between her fingers, she held a broken piece of bread which she crumbled into smaller bits. She made the breadcrumbs last as long as possible, chewing them thoroughly before she got to the burnt, hardened oats. She’d found the bread in the corner of the stairs and picked it up carefully, keeping some back in her pocket. If she ate slowly, her hunger was slower in coming – something she knew was important, if she was to live.
Everything around her was black and ash lay in small piles around her feet. The building opposite had tumbled into the street and great boulders lay scattered around the road. Burnt thatch lay everywhere and wooden planks were peeling from the timber-framed houses. There were no people around at this time in the morning, but she knew they were there, resting or sleeping behind any of the walls that still stood. The Great Fire of London was over at last and Pudding Lane, where she was sitting, didn’t resemble the lane as it had once been. She’d lived here with her father and her little brother but the boy had died in the fire and she didn’t know where he was now. Her mother had died the previous year – died in the Great Plague of London, as it came to be known. She and her father just had to carry on with the work, the girl taking on all the chores her mother had once undertaken. Her father had disappeared the night the fire had started and she didn’t know where he was. She felt like an orphan, which she may actually have been for all she knew. She would go on looking for her father who was quite an important man and would be missed for a time. Being the king’s baker who made all the bread for the palace and the court, the lack of every day bread would affect everyone.
Her name was Rosie – Rosie Farynor – and she was twelve years old – at least that’s what she thought she was. She’d always worked in her father’s bake-house and hadn’t even considered attending any form of school. She seemed to have been working since she could walk and suddenly, in the early hours of a morning – the second of September 1666 – everything she’d known came to an end. She’d woken up to an acrid smell of smoke and then shouting in the street. Everyone was going mad and her little brother was crying. There were burning tufts of hay falling from the ceiling and everywhere it landed, a new fire started. When she ran out into the street, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Every property was on fire and the people were throwing what they considered valuable, into the street. She found a little corner of the bake-house and pulled her brother inside – but he just kept struggling and managed to get away from her in the end. It had been a long, hot summer and the oven was still smoking, although it should have been dead by this time. She wondered if that was where the fire had originally started. No one really knew nor would probably ever know.
Rosie pushed open the door of the bake-house. The floor was still quite warm and there was no ceiling inside. The sky was all the ceiling there was. She saw broken bits of bread lying around the floor, black and burnt. She needed a drink of water but the pump was twisted out of shape with no water to be seen. She went back outside and asked a passing man if he had any water, but he pushed her away and told her to go about her business. She sauntered further down the lane – Pudding Lane, it was called – and found a gutter with some running water still there. Scooping the water and splashing her dirty face, she cupped the water and drank as much as she could. She turned back towards the bake-house – as she still thought of it as her home – and went back into the shattered house. She fell asleep then beside the oven and wondered what she was going to do next. Too tired to think properly, sleep was a merciful release.
Alas, medieval London was no more. In days to come, it was common knowledge that almost 70,000 homes were lost and 80,000 people made homeless. The army had delivered hundreds of tents to an open area of ground – at Lincoln’s Inn – and set them up as temporary homes for the people who had no place else to go. It covered an enormous area and although a God’s send to the homeless people of London, the tents were far from the most comfortable of places.
After a couple of horrible nights at her father’s bake-house, Rosie ended up in one of the tents at Lincoln’s Inn. She shared the tent with a family of four and had very limited space; she couldn’t even lie down to sleep, but had to sleep sitting up. The other people in the tent ignored her completely – they weren’t friendly. She went back to the bake-house every day – it felt as though she was going home – although, of course, there was no home there. One day, she began to search through the burnt rubbish and to her surprise, found a large pot still intact. It was cracked and very black. Once she’d scraped off the ash, she found it contained some sort of honey. It had been boiled in the heat and looked more like candle wax. Tentatively, she scooped a finger full of the substance and touched her lips with it. As it worked past her lips down into her mouth, she was delighted to find it tasted wonderful. A very distinctive taste, so welcoming, it actually hurt her stomach. She covered the pot and began to search further. A box of burnt oats emerged from behind the oven – and she placed it beside the honey.
A thought began to form in her mind and she wondered what the things would taste like if they were mixed together. She went back to the gutter that held water and brought some back in an old cracked cup. A twisted bucket lay in the lane outside and she brought it inside, first filling a hole with a small pebble.
It was a week after the fire had been put out, and Rosie continued to look after herself by finding broken and wasted bits of food lying around the bake-house. She had successfully mixed together oats and honey and gelled it together by using the water. In the twisted oven, she had baked it in an old tray, and amazingly, it looked and tasted okay. She couldn’t say it tasted lovely – but it was sweet and crunchy. She took a tray to Lincoln’s Inn and sold pieces to the tent dwellers – who became quite greedy for it. She only sold it to those who had money – and gave it away to those who had none.
Rosie heard some people talking about a man called ‘Lucky’ Hulbert who was a watchmaker. He had confessed to starting the fire, and before he knew what had happened, he was arrested and executed as an arsonist. What was amazing, was that it was proved subsequently that he couldn’t have done it as he was not in England when the fire started. What a sad story, she thought, just someone who wanted to be famous and who paid the penalty for his vanity. She chewed on a piece of her oaty crumble and smacked her lips.
Her fame was spreading and Rosie had to search more thoroughly through the rubbish for utensils to use in the oven. Obviously, the oven worked quite well as there was plenty fuel lying around, but it certainly wasn’t the best for baking. Rosie continued to take samples of her work to the tents at Lincoln’s Inn and people actually began to queue up waiting for her arrival. One day, she came a little later than usual and saw there, a circle of people sitting around a fire. There were townsfolk there and some soldiers. There was one very tall man with jet-black hair sitting with the soldiers. He looked in charge but he was just laughing and talking with the men in a friendly manner. She approached the circle with a box of her honey biscuits and held out her hand for the pennies. Lots of people bought the goods and told Rosie she was a wonder.
She got to the dark man with the long, black hair and he held his hand out for a biscuit. Rosie pulled the box away and said, “No, no, sir, I need a penny from you first and then I’ll let you taste my wares.” The man looked perplexed as though he didn’t know what money was.
The soldiers laughed and the man told Rosie, “Well, maid, I’m afraid I have no money.”
“That’s a pity, sir, as then you can have no goodies.” Rosie smiled.
“Ros