Man-Weasel (Part Two)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

Joan refrained from joining her husband, the day was young, there were a million things to do and she was too busy to waste time on what would probably turn out to be a wild goose chase. John, the young lad from the village who worked for them part time, had just arrived; they had eggs to collect and over two hundred slaughtered fowl to prepare for market, and then she had to clean the kitchen and put the dinner on.

She didn't know what to make of Lloyd's story. He was a practical, hard working, down to earth man and he wasn't prone to flights of fancy, and if he said he had seen something unusual he was telling the truth. A gigantic ferret like creature that whistled snippets of classical music took some believing, though, however reliable the source..... Joan was puzzled; apart from an odd slate coloured fox that Lloyd had shot a few years back, an animal that had killed a number of their hens, neither of them had seen anything out of the ordinary on or around their property before.

Joan had spent her entire life on the farm. She and Lloyd inherited the place from her parents a few years after they married, and they had celebrated their twenty fifth wedding anniversary just a few weeks back. Their twins had grown and fled the nest, and neither of them were interested in agriculture - Alan was training to be a veterinary surgeon in Leeds and Janet, the oldest by almost fifteen minutes, was in Birmingham studying psychology, she hoped to work in forensic science.

The afternoon passed without incident. Lloyd skulked around with his shotgun for a while and though he claimed to have heard the creature whistling the same tune on a couple of occasions it had apparently grown shy, because he saw neither hide nor hair of it. When he tired of his fruitless hunt he took over preparing the fowl with Alan while Joan did the other jobs that needed seeing to, and then she went back to the bungalow to catch up with the household chores.

While she was peeling carrots and potatoes she heard a noise. It was music, but it was so faint it was barely discernible. Neither the radio nor the TV were on, their nearest neighbour was almost a quarter of a mile away and Lloyd and Alan were almost a hundred yards away in the new meat processing unit behind the barn, up to their elbows in chicken guts, no doubt, and Joan had no idea where the sound could be coming from.

As she walked into the cluttered hallway the music grew louder. She recognised it straight away; she had studied music at school, and when she was a teenager she was an accomplished cello player, though she hadn't played for years. It was a Strauss waltz, someone was playing The Blue Danube on the stereo system in the bedroom, and the same someone was whistling along to the music. Lloyd must have slipped into the house while her attention was diverted and switched on the radio, she concluded, because she hadn't got a copy of The Blue Danube even in her father's old records – but Lloyd very rarely whistled.

She opened the bedroom door a crack. The duvet was thrown back to air the bed as it usually was during the daytime, but it was mid-March, it was a bit nippy outside and she was sure that she had closed the window earlier, but now it was wide open. The music was coming from outside, there was no doubt about it; she could see the stereo from where she was standing and it wasn't plugged in. Beyond the bedroom window was the vegetable garden, and it was completely empty.....

As Joan stepped into the bedroom she saw a long, lithe yellowish brown creature between the pillows at the head of the bed. It was sitting on its haunches facing the window, its cheeks were inflated like Dizzy Gillespie playing the trumpet as it whistled, and it waved its naked little hands back and forth as it conducted its invisible orchestra. The music stopped in mid note, the thing turned to look at Joan and it grinned a big old grin. To her horror it had a foreshortened, mostly hairless face, a human like nose and huge blue eyes that seemed to bore straight through her.

“All right, cock!” the creature said in a comically high-pitched voice. “How are you on this fine afternoon? I've already met your husband, my love, but I had to keep my distance because he was carrying a shotgun and he had blue murder in his eyes. My name's Jeff, by the way, J-e-f-f, pleased to meet you.” Joan felt dizzy and involuntarily she stepped backwards; she wanted to turn and run, she wanted to run as far away as possible, but she was unable to take her eyes off the intruder. “Wassamatter, babe, don't you like Strauss? Fancy a bit of Ragtime piano instead? How about if I dig up Scott Joplin, prop him up in front of a piano and cajole him into playing one of his memorable ditties just for you?”

The window was filled with blinding light, and as Joan averted her eyes she saw a shadow on the far wall of a man sitting before a piano, his hands moving rapidly as he played the mournful but exquisitely beautiful opening notes of The Maiden's Prayer. Reaching behind her for the door handle to steady herself was the last thing she remembered before the world turned black.