“The Incident Near Thaddeus Hall”
A Michael and Marlon Jackson Horror Story By:
MJsLoveSlave
Spring, 1970
The small, rural village of Fernsby, situated about one hundred and fifty miles north of metropolitan London was the type of place that had barely changed in the six centuries since it’s formation.
Over the years, yes, the buildings had transformed from small, thatched roofed huts, to more modern, brick and wooden structures, but that same, ease of life, walk-don’t-run sort of mentality hung over the village, numbering about seven hundred.
Ideally, Fernsby was the type of place one would not want to rush through…it was a town as picturesque as any landscape painting. Lush, rolling green hills, wildflowers in every shade of the rainbow pushing forth from the fertile grown and turning their multicolored petals towards the warm sun. on the outer edge of town, lambs, hens, turkeys, geese and cows grazed peacefully, none knowing that one day they would decorate a dinner table as the centerpiece.
The center and heartbeat of Fernsby, as it had been since the year 1802, was Thaddeus Hall, a prestigious all-boys academy that had been turning some of the most prominent and well-educated young men into English society for over a hundred years.
And two of the boys attending this school were brothers Michael and Marlon Jackson, ages twelve and thirteen, respectively.
Any one even caring to give the twosome a passing glance noticed immediately that the two boys, for all their sweet temperedness, charisma and joking charm, were quite different from all of their counterparts at Thaddeus Hall.
Of the two hundred or so young boys at the school, the Jackson brothers were the only ones not born of British blood.
Michael and Marlon, were the sons of Joseph Walter Jackson, an African-American millionaire, who had made his wealthy through shrewd Wall Street investments and his wife Katherine, a lovely homemaker noted for her tea parties.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Jackson stressed the importance of a good education, especially to Black boys who would grow into Black men, and held it above all else.
Mr. Jackson had sought for years to have his children study abroad, learning how to immerse themselves and acclimate to a different culture entirely, a skill that would be quite valuable as he expected his boys to follow his footsteps on Wall Street.
And the reputed Thaddeus Hall was all that the boys’ father had dreamt of and more for the international connections it could potentially offer his sons.
(The Jacksons’ two sisters, Janet and Latoya were also abroad in England, in the neighboring village of Nottingham, attending the Rosewood Academy for Girls.)
Though Michael and Marlon were the only Black children attending Thaddeus Hall, there was no sense of backlash as would have most likely befallen them had they enrolled in an all-White American prep school, instead.
Michael and Marlon fit in quite well and were well-liked by all those they encounter.
That bright, flower-perfumed Friday morning was no different for the boys.
Michael and Marlon, on the steps of their dormitory, Rancifer House, were pacing back and forth, Michael on the second, wide brick laid step, and Marlon four steps up.
Both boys were still slightly uncomfortable in the “warm-weather” variant of the Thaddeus Hall uniform: a dark grey blazer over a white oxford shirt, a hunter green and grey striped tie, grey shorts, green knee socks--Marlon always seemed to forget his cocoa butter and thus his knees were forever ashy--and sensible black shoes.
Over thick, perfectly picked afros, Michael’s a stark black, Marlon’s tinged a deep natural auburn, were the green caps with the schools crest emblazoned on it.
It was the same thing every blessed school morning.
Michael and Marlon would rise, as did the other students and take breakfast in a wave of matching green quilted robes, and then rush off to wash and dress in an effort to make it to class on time.
And Marlon and Michael would have made it, if there wasn’t one little obstacle in their way:
Oliver Culler, IV.
Oliver, known as Ollie to all, descended from a long like of Cullen men who had patronized Thaddeus Hall since it’s inception. And for all the elite and moneyed blood pumping through his veins, young Ollie was always as tardy as any child could be.
Much to the distress of his closest friends, it was always a photo finish to get them to class on time.
“What the devil do you think is keeping him today?” Marlon groaned, holding a hand over his light, golden hued eyes and staring at the clock affixed to the face of the main building, showing the time as ten minutes to eight.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Michael shrugged, removing his cap and scratching at his head, dark eyes closing in glee as his nails raked his scalp. “You know Ollie, he gets sidetracked so easily.”
Ollie was the kind of boy who could start to brush his teeth and somehow end up laid across his bed, elbow-deep in a comic book, without a care in the world.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to be sent to Headmaster Higgins again for being tardy, Mike.” Marlon replied, balling his fists and shoving them into his pockets.
The last thing either of them wanted was to have to stand clapping erasers after school, again!
“Well what you wanna do?” Michael wondered, fiddling with the buttons on his blazer.
“This!” Marlon exclaimed, before leaping off the steps onto the sidewalk.
Cupping his hands around a thick-lipped mouth, he bellowed,
“Ollie! Hey Ollie! What’s the holdup, man! If you don’t come here now, you’ll be walking to class alone!”
Above them, on the third floor, a window opened.
And out of it, hung half of a pudgy body, topped by a bright white, freckle laden face and a shock of even brighter red curls.
“Hold your horses, mate! I’m coming! I’m coming!” Ollie declared, agitated and disappeared from the window.
Moments later, the rather large boy huffed his way out onto the front steps, holding a couple of notebooks and textbooks under one arm.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve Marlon Jackson!” He grunted coming down the steps and bending over to catch his breath. “You know I have to trot down two staircases, while you and Mike live on the first floor!”
“So?” Michael chortled and patted his friend’s extended belly. “It’s not like you couldn’t use the exercise!”
Rolling large, green eyes at his friends, Ollie fell in step with the Jacksons, the three destined for the other side of campus for their classroom.
“Did…did you fellas finish the math assignment?” Ollie wondered, once his lungs had calmed to where he could breathe normally.
“Yeah…” Marlon cast a sneaky glance. “Did you finish that essay on Queen Victoria?”
“Uh-huh!” Ollie bobbed his head and automatically, assignments were appearing and being exchanged.
“One of these days, you’re gonna get caught pulling that stunt.” Michael warned coolly, secure in the fact that both his math homework and essay had been done by his own hand.
“Not if you keep your trap shut.” Marlon simpered the three of them coming to the center courtyard.
“Hang on a minute guys…” Michael, mind off of the cheating going on under his wide nose, was wandering off of the cobblestone walk and into the grass where a multitude of flowers were shining with morning dew.
“Gotta get some flowers...”
As he stopped and began plucking some of the brightest pink buds, Ollie questioned, a knowing note in his accented voice,
“Might those flowers be for the lovely Miss Gastrell?”
“Might those flowers be for the lovely Miss Gastrell?”
It was no secret that Michael Jackson was cuckoo, bonkers out of his mind in what he thought was love with their teacher and never failed to bring her a bouquet of flowers--when the weather permitted--each morning before class started.
There was no better feeling than to see his blooms displayed on the left corner of her desk in a small, lead crystal vase for all to see.
Michael incredulous, slim behind in the air, snapped back,
“Naw, I’m picking these for Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose!”
Marlon, hands on his hips, tossed his head with arrogance and teased,
“You give that woman so many flowers, Mike, she can open up her own florist shop!”
As Marlon and Ollie cackled, Michael red-cheeked with embarrassment, with about a dozen flowers in his hand, picked his way back over to them.
A scowl crossed his babyishly handsome face, and he murmured,
“Well, pretty ladies need pretty flowers.”
“Yeah! From kinky-headed little boys who are about fifteen years too young for them!” Marlon hooted, giving his brother a playful punch to the arm and Ollie dropped his books he was laughing so hard.
Dark eyes narrowing, his shame mottled with anger plain on his face, Michael grumbled,
“Let’s get to class, huh?”
A few, jog filled minutes later, the three boys emerged on the east end of campus, at the five story, classroom filled building that had just a touch of the medieval in its red bricked architecture.
Once inside the building that smelled heavily of old books and yellow chalk, it was to the third floor and down two corridors before they found their way into Miss Gastrell’s classroom.
While Marlon and Ollie rushed to their seats in the second row, Michael’s seat was left vacant between them.
Michael, instead, was ambling over to the woman who stood, back turned, writing the date on the board in a fine script.
Flaming all over, breaking out spontaneously in goose pimples, and feeling a flutter in his chest, Michael stared up at his teacher, eyes growing as though it were the first time he had ever set them on it.
“Good morning, Miss Gastrell” Came his weakened and nearly girlish greeting past trembling lips.
At the mention of her name, his teacher set down her chalk and turned to him.
Miss Gastrell, only twenty-seven years old, was a tall, and slim creature, with a complexion like that of fresh milk. Her hair was a contrasted it, dark brown with natural golden highlights, it was parted down the middle and heightened, making her thin face appear longer. Deep, wide green eyes, without a touch of hazel, unlike Ollie’s, and framed by thick, black lashes fluttered as she looked down at her pupil.
The chic, hunter green dress, a few shades deeper than the school uniform, made her eyes a shade of emerald that was causing the adolescent boy to swoon on his feet.
“Good morning, Michael.” Her voice, accented, high pitched and mild, was something like that of the British royalty. Slightly affected, elitist and on other people could have read as inwardly snobbish. On Miss Gastrell, to the ears of Michael Jackson, denoted the gates of Heaven opening and harps playing.
Sheepishly, the flowers were thrust out and delicate hands, manicured in a light pink that reflected the coloring of her pouted lips, Miss Gastrell took the flowers.
“Oh Michael, how very pretty. Thank you. Such a lovely bouquet.” She commented and just as she did each morning, she walked over to that small crystal vase, placing them in the awaiting cool water and arranged them to look their most attractive before returning to the boy.
“Thank you.” Taking his little brown face in her small, tender white hands, those sweet, pale painted lips pecked Michael’s scorching cheek.
“You may take your seat.”
Michael, huge, goofy grin on plastered on his face, turned and was stumbling towards his desk, causing several of the other boys to snicker at him.
“Look at that fool!”
“I bet you ten pounds he’s gonna ask her to marry him before the term is over!”
“Way to go, Mike!”
“He’s gonna be Mr. Gastrell!”
“Hahahahahaha!”
“When’s the honeymoon, Michael?”
“Boys! Boys! Boys!” Miss Gastrell, was waving her hands. “I must have order and silence if you intend to learn today!”
Michael, deaf to the teasing and jeering as it died down, sank into his seat, eyes on his love as she began scribbling on the board.
“Today we will begin examining England’s role in the Second World War and how, with the help of the American and Canadian Armed Forced defeated Adolf Hitler and National Socialists, that‘s the Nazis for those who are unfamliliar…”
(Author’s Note: My father served in the Second World War, and I am quite knowledgeable on the subject, thought my father fought in Germany, rather than in England for the US Army.)
Even thought Miss Gastrell was speaking of one of the worst manmade disasters to befall the country in recent history, Michael Jackson heard none of it and was instead envisioning his teacher perched on a balcony, reciting Juliet’s speech to his Romeo…
Marlon and Ollie, knowing that faraway, come find me expression, exchanged glances and muffled their laughter.
While most of the Thaddeus Hall boys took their lunches in the large formal dining hall, Michael, Marlon and Ollie took their meals to go, to spend the two hour break, walking around the village and goofing off.
Smacking loudly on his cheddar and pickle sandwich, bottom lip stained with mustard, Marlon waved his meal at his brother and advised,
“If you’d sit and take notes like me and Ollie do, instead of pretending Miss Gastrell is in the nude, you’d know what happened in class, silly!”
“I do NOT pretend Miss Gastrell is nude!” Michael, horrified at such a notion, nearly choked on his sandwich.
Miss Gastrell was far too kind and saintly to Michael to be thought of in such a déclassé manner.
Spinning around and walking backwards on the dirt road, Michael looked to Ollie, lagging a few feet behind them, biting into his third bacon on toast sandwich.
“Ollie, can I copy your notes, since Marlon doesn’t want to help his own flesh and blood!”
“I don’t care…” Ollie was much too involved with his meal to care either way.
“Thank you!” Turning back to Marlon, licking at his finger tips, Michael pointed to the rotund Ollie,
“He doesn’t mind helping me! He’s a real pal--a true friend!”
“Aw kiss my royal jewels.” Marlon growled, removing his cap and bowing deeply as they passed an elderly peasant woman on the road.
“Take a flying leap off the Tower of London!” Michael shot back, opening a bag of crisps (potato chips) and nibbling one.
“You know you were drooling over Miss G.” Marlon nudged Michael in the gut and helped himself to a crisp smacking on it loudly. “If it wasn’t for me and Ollie, you’d have failed the term long ago and Dad would have taken a transatlantic flight to hang his foot in your ass!”
Looking into the brightly grinning face of his brother, Michael’s head dropped, knowing he was right. Painfully, sorely right.
Michael was constantly distracted by his instructor’s haunting, pale, and prim beauty. He should have failed out and if it weren’t for the help of his brother and friend, he would have.
Ollie, mouth greasy, bacon hanging from it, called,
“Hey, we got about fifteen minutes you blokes!”
“Okay, you bloke! Cheerio and all that rubbish!” Marlon called back, squinting at the clock on the tower in the distance and feigning a poor cockney accent.
Laughing joyously, Marlon went to elbow Michael again to share the laugh.
Marlon Jackson got an elbow full of air again.
“Mike?” He questioned, and spun in a circle.
He spotted his sibling off on the other side of the road, standing at a low, weather beaten stone wall.
“Mike?” Marlon jogged over to his brother’s side. “Hey, don’t you hear me talking to you?”
Michael, seemingly captivated, looked to his brother as Ollie joined them, polishing off the last of his sandwich.
“Marlon, look…” His voice sounded like an echo he was so awed lifting a long hand, pointed.
A few yards beyond the old wall, a small chapel stood, surrounded on all sides by a sizable cemetery, which wasn’t an unusual sight in England.
“Yeah, it’s a church.” Marlon shrugged, the significance lost on him and Ollie.
“Don’t see all the flowers you pothead?” Michael threw his head back and whined.
Surely, all around the church and dotting the crumbling cemetery were what had to be hundred of fully bloomed, huge, white English roses.
“I’ve never seen such pretty flowers, I…I have to pick some for Miss Gastrell.”
Tossing what was left of his ham and cheese on the ground, Michael was lifting a skinny leg to cross the wall.
Just as he was to drop on the other side of it, something caught his arm and was tugging him back.
It was Marlon.
“What do you think you’re doing Mike? Ollie just said we have fifteen minutes to get back to school! You know it’ll take us that long to walk back!”
“But the flowers!” Michael struggled against Marlon as he was dragged back to the road, in the distance, Ollie was scampering away.
“But nothing, I ain’t clapping erasers because of YOU! Come on!” Holding Michael by the hand tightly, Marlon was doing a full sprint, Michael staggering and stumbling most of the way.
It was quite a while before Michael Jackson could claim a moment to himself again..
Following classes, there were three hours of mandatory study period, before dinner promptly at six p.m. He’d have skipped it to go pick the roses, if it hadn’t been Friday and he simply couldn’t miss his favorite meal: Roast mutton with roasted parsnips and mashed potatoes and Yorkshire pudding. It’d have been criminally insane to miss that feast.
He then wasted another two hours in the general area of the dormitory with a few dozen other boys, sitting and watching as Marlon played poker with some of the upperclassmen, effectively winning the equivalent of thirty-five American dollars in British currency.
Now, the time for bed was swiftly approaching, and all that was on Michael’s fevered mind was those flowers.
How Miss Gastrell would adore them, and how she’d kiss him and proudly show them off on her desk. How lovely the white would pop against the dark wood and beige painted walls of the classroom.
How they would compliment Miss Gastrell’s colorless complexion.
Sitting on his bed, he watched as Ollie and Marlon, in their pajamas, reclined on Marlon’s bed, sharing a comic book.
Michael still wearing his uniform rose and began pacing, an antsy feeling taking him.
Stopping at the foot of Marlon’s bed, where the two other boys laid in peaceful laziness, he declared,
“I want to go get some of those roses.”
Marlon’s head remained down, reading and ignoring his flighty brother, but Ollie’s came up and twisted with annoyance.
“Land sake’s Mike, why do you have to get them tonight? You’re not even going to see Miss Gastrell tomorrow! Can’t they wait until after we come back from seeing Beneath the Planet of the Apes at the cinema tomorrow?” He questioned and Marlon, head still down, chimed in,
“The flowers and Miss Gastrell will still be here tomorrow, I’m sure!”
Michael, feeling silly, nodded and sighed,
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
And began to undress, his mind for once off his love interest and instead on Sci-fi and a race of intelligent monkey men.
He did want to see that film badly.
And the next day was going to be one that would far exceed any geek’s perception of weird and strange.
“They should have given Charlton Heston a bigger part.” Ollie complained as the trio fell in step on the dirt road.
“Who cares about Charlton Heston?” Marlon demanded, unable to believe that was all his chum could think about. “He got to part the Red Sea in that other movie! I liked this, the fighting was awesome!”
Michael, mind on the white roses since his eyes had popped open that morning, moved ahead of the bickering two, speed walking, destined for the church.
He planned to pick as many of those blessed things as he could carry and present them to Miss Gastrell on the way to church in the morning.
“I wish there was a race of intelligent monkey men…” Ollie was bragging, swaggering, bountiful belly bouncing, beside Marlon. “I’d go fight them off, yes I would!”
“Really now?” Marlon doubled over and clapped. “Because you screamed like a girl every time you saw Dr. Zaius!”
“Aw, shut up!” Ollie grimaced, as the church came into view, the air fragrantly thick with the roses’ aroma.
Michael Jackson made a bee-line and was crossing over the wall, hiking his shorts up to the point they looked like grey brief to ease his climbing.
Ollie seeing the church and graves, wondered worried,
“Are you sure this is alright Mike? I mean picking the flowers--this is holy ground.”
“Don’t go turning into a saint now!” Michael whined letting his shorts fall back where they belong. “I’m only going to pick about a dozen roses. You really think they’ll be missed with all these growing like weeds! I‘m not gonna tear the place down brick by brick!”
“Well, I ain’t scared, unless a priest comes after me with a ruler.” Marlon, poking his little chest out announced and pulling up his uniform shorts started to cross over the wall.
“Cold bricks! Cold bricks!” He cried as his boy bits touched the wall.
The brothers stared expectantly at Ollie, who, not wanting to be left behind and scorned for it the rest of the term, climbed clumsily over the wall, before falling in the dirt on the other side.
“Bloody Hell!” He was left to be helped up by Marlon, as Michael enchanted by the flowers went to work, starting to examine and pluck only the best and biggest blooms for Miss Gastrell.
Marlon and Ollie occupied themselves by sitting on the wooden steps on the side of the church and bragging about the different ways they’d kill the Ape Men.
They quickly rambled through different types of firearms and swords, before growing bored and impatient as most red-blooded, lusty boys did.
“Mike, you gonna take all damn day?” Marlon demanded, forgetting he was in a sacred place and cursing. Ollie, crossed himself just the same.
Michael, about only five flowers in his hand, retorted, “You don’t have to stick around. I’m capable of picking a dozen or so flowers myself!”
At that revelation, Marlon slapped Ollie’s shoulder and huffed,
“Let’s get the hell outta here, Man!”
Ollie standing started to cross himself again and squinting, questioned,
“Hey, isn’t that Miss Gastrell there?”
At the mention his love was somewhere close by, Michael ran up onto the steps and looked.
Sure enough, a few yards away, standing over a grave was Miss Gastrell.
At least she looked like their teacher, dressed in a navy blue dress, and dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. Strangely though, her hair was quite different.
Instead of flowing and brown, it was bobbed short and a light, sheer strawberry blonde.
“That can’t be her!” Michael stated his disbelief. “Her hair doesn’t look like that!”
“Why not?” Marlon, had a hand on his hip. “Latoya had her tips frosted last week, and Mother flipped. Women change their hair all the time.”
“My Mummy does.” Ollie agreed. “Half the time, Father doesn’t know what he’ll come home to.”
“Hey, look.” Michael interrupted them and was pointing.
Two children, appearing close in age to themselves had appeared near Miss Gastrell’s side.
A tall, thin boy with white platinum blonde hair, wearing a uniform similar to their own, and a girl just as tall as the boy, wearing a jumper, also deep green over a white blouse. Long, curly brown hair was held back with a large green bow.
The children, their faces showing their sadness from even that distance, held hands with Miss Gastrell.
“That guy’s wearing a Thaddeus Hall uniform, but I swear to God and Jesus, I’ve never seen him before!” Ollie was scratching at his head, confused.
“Neither have I.” The Jacksons concurred, with Michael adding, “That girl can’t be from Rosewood Academy. All the uniforms there are burgundy and white--not green! I wonder who they are?”
“They can’t be Miss Gastrell isn’t married and I know she doesn’t have kids!” Marlon’s cap was squished in his hand as he contemplated the matter. “Well maybe they’re her niece and nephew or something. I think she mentioned she had an older brother--”
BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“What the bloody hell was that?” Ollie shrieked as another BOOM, much closer caused the earth to tremor violently again.
“Did something explode?” Michael cried as Marlon tried to get up only to fall again.
“I don’t know!”
Suddenly, as whistles in the air preceded another BOOM, Miss Gaskell was there.
She was shoving the boy and girl with her up the steps and telling them to go into the church.
Those tender white hands Michael knew so well, were pulling him, his brother and Ollie to their feet, and pulling them in tow to the church.
There was a look of pure fear on that pale face, the eyes widened worriedly, mouth tightened.
“Come along. Hurry. Hurry now--do you want to be killed?” She demanded as she flung the doors to the church open and was hustling them inside.
The flowers Michael has so carefully selected and plucked, laid on the walk, a mashed mess of broken stems and torn, bruised petals.
“Killed?” The boys gasped hoarsely..
What was this? What was going on? What was happening?
“Quickly now, get under a pew, each one of you now, go!” Miss Gastrell instructed quietly and urgently, shutting the doors, before lying on her belly underneath a pew herself.
“I…I don’t want to die…I don’t wanna get blown up…please God…” The little girl, tears streaming from large, piercing aquamarine eyes.
Scooting over to the child,, Miss Gastrell tried to shush her.
The three boys laid speechless, unable to comprehend what was going on? Was a neighboring nation attacking?
As it suddenly became silent, the teacher was heard clearly whispering,
“You won’t die, Daisy. Put that thought out your mind. You’ll live a long full life and tell your own children and grandchildren about how you escaped the bombs in a church with your favorite aunt…” At the mention of bombs, the three boys gasped and Marlon sweating, demanded,
“Bombs? Who’s throwing bombs at us?”
And the inquiry, the blonde boy, who had been lying dormant near the altar, sat up and sneered,
“Have you gone daft? You know who’s throwing the bombs at us--those dirty Nazis! They killed my father in London--”
“Oh hush, Liam!” Miss Gastrell advised sharply hugging Daisy as she sobbed harder, “Can’t you see you’re upsetting your sister!”
“Nazis?” The three boys gasped, eyes huge and starting to well with frightened, misunderstand tears. “What Nazis? There aren’t any Nazis! This is 1970! The war is over!”
A closer boom rocked the building, overturning unlit candles on the altar and priest‘s podium, and Liam stuttered,
“You must be mad! It’s not 1970, you imbeciles! It’s 1943!”Nineteen forty-three? How was that possible? How on God’s Green Earth was that possible? It was impossible. It was nineteen seventy! It was April of nineteen seventy!”
“Nineteen forty-three!” Michael and Marlon cling to each other and Ollie’s jaw hangs as Liam cries,
“Aunt Lydia who are these fools! They don’t know what year it is or what’s happening!”
“I don’t want to die! Aunt Lydia, please! Please God!” Daisy pleaded, hear hysteria, eyes huge, and hugging her aunt, her tears never stopped flowing.
“Hush child, please…hush…they’ll miss us. They will…” Miss Gastrell assured the girl, kissing her cheek and holding her.
“Marlon…” Michael gripped his brother’s icy hand in his. “What’s going on, what’s happening?”
Marlon, just as shaken as his sibling, murmured,
““Maybe its part of a lesson…Miss Gastrell was teaching about the war that week…”
“One bloody heck of a lesson!” Ollie simpered as the building rattles again from a particularly loud BOOM. Were the booms getting closer?
“Who throws real bombs?”
Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!
Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!
Covering their mouths, Michael, Marlon and Ollie screamed like girls for dear life.
“It’s the Nazis! It’s the Nazis! I know it is! We’re going to die! Oh my God! I’m only eleven!” Daisy sobbed in a heap on the floor. “Now I’ll never get to marry James Stewart!”
“You don’t even know James Stewart, Daisy!” Liam declared
Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!
“Marlon…are, are we going to die?”
Marlon shook his head violently, determined not to give into the ruse,
“No! She’s taking the long way around, but this is some kind of lesson!” Ollie hearing this inquired deeply,
“If it is, then where’s the rest of our classmates? Why is it just us? There’s fifteen boys in our class! Why just us?”
Marlon had no answer for that. He could only press himself into the polished wood floor as more of that Rat-a-tat-tat!, rang out, bullets pinging and ricocheting off the bricks and wooden beams.
“I don’t know what kind of lesson this is…” Ollie blubbered crawling over to his friends and hugging them under the pew. “But it’s going TOO FAR!”
Once more, there was sheer, deafening silence, as it seemed both the gunfire and bomb droppings had been halted.
“Is it over Aunt Lydia? Is it--”
Daisy’s mouth was covered with a delicate hand to quiet her. A few feet beyond them, Liam cowered on the floor, hands clutching his platinum blond locks.
Somewhere a lone bird tweeted.
No one spoke, eyes sweeping back and forth, each wordlessly begging the other, was it indeed over.
Was whatever this was…had it passed them over?
Maybe it was finally over--
The doors to the church sprang open and through them came something only the Jacksons and Oliver Cullen, IV had read about in their history books!
Three Nazi officers, each in a dark grey uniform, with polished black jackboots, gleaming silver-plated swastikas gleaming all over their jackets.
Long, double barreled rifles were up and poised to be shot.
“Aunt Lydia!” Liam, with tears on his red and inflamed cheeks ran to the open arms of Miss Gastrell who hugged them tightly.
One of the Nazis, noticing the other three boys beneath the pew aimed for them.
“Don’t shoot us! Don’t kill us! No! I ain’t even English! I’m Black! I’m a Negro! Holy God!”
Marlon, Michael and Ollie all sputtered, their own brief lives flashing before their tear-stained, soggy eyes.
Across the room Miss Gastrell put up a trembling hand.
“Please, spare the children! Kill me! Shoot me! Not them! They’re babies!”
Her words and tears seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the Nazi in front who never took his gun off of her.
Lips curling over yellowed teeth, he spoke, unfeelingly in his native tongue,
The fearsome boys could only cover their eyes and shriek as gunfire filled the small church house.
Dozens upon dozens of bullets riddled the bodies of Miss Gastrell and her niece and nephew, and both were clearly dead, before their lifeless bodies slumped onto the blood spattered floor.
The boys in a state of shock stared, Michael hit the hardest as most of the bullets had passed through what had once been Miss Gastrell’s unspoiled face, now a bloody, unrecognizable stump.
His heart unable to take the treacherous sight, Michael’s own body went limp as consciousness began to leave him.
The last thing he remembered hearing, was Marlon and Ollie screaming to God for help and more of that gunfire.
He also heard Marlon crying that he loved him.
Desperately, he fondled himself all over, expecting to feel nothing but bullet holes all over himself.
There wasn’t a mark on him, have for the scar left behind on the back of his hand, that was caused by a fish hook, during a mishap on a fishing trip in the summer of 1968.
For the first time, Michael took note of his surroundings. He was no longer in the church at the scene of a heinous multiple murder.
Instead, he was in what looked like a simple, country room, with pink and white rose covered wallpaper, that boasted a small table and simple arm chair near a window where the curtains were drawn.
Looking over, Michael noticed he was in a large bed, with frilly pink bedding, and nestled beside him were Ollie and Marlon, sweating, but sleeping peacefully.
“Hey! HEY! Wake up! Marlon! Ollie!” He shook them hard and eventually they came around.
“Am I dead? Am I in Heaven? Are Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and my pet goldfish Shiny here?” Ollie wondered drowsily, before his eyes snapped open.
“Mike! Marlon! You’re alive! I’m alive! By Golly, Sweet Jesus!” He cried and was hugging them fiercely.
“Oh Mike…” Marlon embraced his brother and for the first time since Michael could remember, his brother kissed his cheek.
“Marlon!” Michael was so overjoyed, tears were in his eyes.
“Where the devil are we?” Ollie wondered, scratching at his disheveled red head. “This doesn’t look much like a Nazi prison, unless Hitler is fruiter than I ever figured!”
“So, you sleepyheads are finally awake!” A cheerful voice announced and jaw dropped all around.
Coming through the open door of the room, a tray with three steaming bowls balanced on it, was Miss Gastrell.
She wasn’t dead! She hadn’t been killed in some alternate universe, by Nazi officers!
There she was, just as beautiful as ever, in a red dress, her hair once more long dark, and flowing.
“You’re alive!” Michael gasped, hands to his face as she went over to the table and set the bowls down.
“Come eat some soup boys, it‘s curried parsnip. And yes, I’m alive, though when I found you three, you were slipping away from it.” Miss Gastrell replied as the boys slipped from the bed and each took a seat around the small table, starting to spoon the hot, spicy and fresh food into their mouths.
“How did you find us?” Ollie wondered slurping loudly.
“Yeah?” Michael and Marlon wanted to know how they had gotten from that horrific scene to now, and what appeared to be their teacher’s house.
“Well…” Miss Gastrell sighed and placed hands on her hips,
“I was in the cemetery of the church on Old Mill Passage, paying my respects, when I heard this God-awful screeching and caterwauling and crying coming from the church. So I ran to see what was the matter: imagine my shock upon finding you three passed out cold in there. I then ran and called Dr. Lindsay, fearing you were ill with something. He said you didn’t appear to be ill, but had suffered some sort of a severe shock that knocked you out. I offered to have you brought here--it’s closer than the school.”
Her eyes took each boy in turn,
“What DID you boys see that caused you to faint?”
Not wanting to relieve such a strange and odd episode, Marlon instead wondered,
“Who were you paying respects to in the cemetery, Miss Gastrell?”
What their teacher said next, knocked the kinks out the Jacksons’ hair and made Ollie’s curls go pin straight.
“I was visiting my mother’s grave. Believe it or not, my mother was murdered in the very same chapel I found you boys.”
Gulping audibly, Michael pushed,
“Was it the Nazis?”
A look of complete surprise came to his teacher’s face and she replied sadly,
“Why yes…it was the Nazis who killed her, Michael.”
Going over and sitting on the edge of the mussed bed, she begin to relay a story that none of them would soon forget,
“It was on a day much like this one, that my mother, Lydia, lost her life.”
The boys exchanged incredulous and bewildered glances.
“It was the spring of 1944, I was only a few months old at the time, barely six months. My mother had her hands full. My father was off in Japan serving with the Royal British Navy, and in addition to a newborn baby, she had my older cousins, Liam and Daisy who came to live with us after both their parents were killed in a hospital bombing in London. They had been a doctor and a nurse…”
At the mention of Daisy and Liam, spoons fell with clanks into china bowls.
“My mother had taken my cousins to lay flowers on their parents grave--they’re buried in the same cemetery--when nearby, bombs began falling. That came as a complete surprise to not just them but everyone in town. No one had thought the fighting would go past London, there had been bombings and fighting there for so long…”
Miss Gastrell sniffed and tossed her hair off her shoulder.
“Mother, and Daisy and Liam took refuge in the church, I guess under the belief that they wouldn’t be hurt in a sacred place….but it didn’t help. The…the Nazis found them…and…and shot them.”
Looking from the boys, partially to hide the fact she was crying, she added,
“If mother hadn’t left me in the care of a neighbor before going to the cemetery, it’s a certainty I would have been killed myself. Just a baby, a little infant.”
She then said something that didn’t fail to stun Michael, Marlon and Ollie to their very cores.
“Everyone says I’m the spitting image of Mother. The only difference is Mother was a redhead, and my hair came out dark like Papa’s…”
She continued speaking, but none of the three at the table heard her.
The boys had been through something, experienced an event that would last with them until they drew their last breaths on Earth.
They had seen something, a terrible event to their favorite teacher…and could never tell her about it, lest they open a fresh and already aching wound.
That warm, brisk spring day, they had witnessed, first hand the slaying of Miss Gastrell’s own mother. They had seen it, felt it, heard it, nay, even smelled it.
And it was tattooed to their memories.
Forever.
