The Mists of Time

I will never forget Friday the 14th of September, 1990. That was the day my life changed forever.

It had been an unseasonably hot morning for early autumn and the seagulls swooping over Brodick Bay just outnumbered the occasional fluffy clouds that were silhouetted in brilliant white against an azure-blue sky. Unfortunately, my dark mood that morning was hardly in keeping with the peaceful ambience of my surroundings.

Yet again, I had woken up sweating and yelling to the same recurring dream. That same awful dream, the one in which the hideous old woman with the many folds of yellow skin and rows of rotten teeth was screaming a torrent of abuse right in my face. Every morning for several days now, that horrific dream had wrenched me from my slumbers like a dentist’s pliers on a rotten molar, to the point where I now actually dreaded going to sleep at night.

But who exactly was the old hag who had suddenly decided to invade my subconsciousness with her vicious spital-laden silos? And more to the point, why?

Frankly, I had no idea, not the faintest clue, because despite the garish vision of her crumbing teeth and layers of decomposing loose skin, for some reason I could never quite make out her eyes. All I knew was that the whole thing terrified me and contrived to shroud my morning moods in terrible anxiety.

And thus, it was in such a state that I sat fidgeting and fumbling in my car at Brodick pier that morning. I never enjoyed leaving the island of Arran at any time, but I especially hated doing so on a beautiful day when I could have been walking my border collie, Sam, along Cladach beach, or lying sunbathing in my back garden in the little idyllic village of Corrie, a mere stone’s throw up the road.

However, I’m not sure that my boss would have seen it quite that way if I had failed to turn up in our Glasgow head office for the company’s quarterly review with the external auditors. After all, I only had a few years left before I could pick up my pension and tell them to shove their job where the sun don’t shine, so I sure as hell wasn’t going to screw it all up now.

As the cars at the front of Lane 5 in the queue began to creep slowly forward towards the gaping mouth of the MV Isle of Arran ferry, I switched on the engine and checked my ticket for the umpteenth time.

Mr. Andrew Ferguson
Ford Sierra C137 KDS
Brodick-Ardrossan 14 Sept 1990, 11.05 (Booked)
Ardrossan-Brodick 14 Sept 1990, 18.00 (Booked)
£12.50 vehicle return / £2.35 passenger return
Total £14.85 – Paid (Amex)

Don’t ask me why, but I always check and double-check my ferry tickets before boarding, and as thoroughly as if I were attempting to extricate myself from a hostile communist state. It’s something I’ve always done and I’ve never once lost or even misplaced a solitary ticket. So, each time my wife Mary has nagged me about it, I just ask her if she’d prefer to be married to an incompetent buffoon. Anyway, Mary wasn’t gracing me with her considerable presence on that fateful day, so I knew I could check the damned things as often as I liked.

Even at this hour of the morning, it was starting to get pretty hot inside the car, so I wound down the window as I rolled my Sierra closer to the head of the queue. Eventually, the boarding officer-on-duty, a fellow Corrie resident and near-neighbour called Hamish Welsh, waved me forward with a ‘safe journey, Andy’ and I drove off the concrete linkspan into the bowels of the ferry’s cavernous vehicle deck, where I was directed by another boarding officer to my parking space.

I grabbed my suit jacket and briefcase from the seat, locked the car door and made my way up the stairs towards the ship’s cafeteria, by which time a long snaking queue had already gathered. I made my decision in an instant. Breakfast would wait.

I climbed the next flight of stairs, the one I knew would take me up onto the big oval deck of the MV Isle of Arran, where instead of tucking into a ‘full Scottish’ breakfast feast, I sat down at the bow of the ship to get a bit of sun, or ‘a few rays’ as the youth of the day might have said. The bow was always my location of choice anytime I sat up on deck on my outward journey towards the mainland, because I hated sitting at the stern of the ship and watching my beloved island fade into the distance behind the huge V-shaped wake.

Once settled, or at least as settled as is possible on those dreadfully uncomfortable plastic chairs, I rolled up my shirt sleeves and leant my head back to wallow in the full glare of an ‘Indian summer’ sun. The last thing I remember before I fell into a deep, deep sleep was the sound of the ship’s mighty engines firing up, that and the familiar sensation of the vessel pulling away from Brodick pier and gathering speed.

Almost immediately, I had descended into one of those same vivid, recurring dreams that had been haunting me recently. This one, though, really did take the biscuit.

Centre stage again was the old haggard witch standing over me. This time, though, I couldn’t make out any of her facial features, because she was holding some sort of torch or lantern in front of her and its bright beam was shining straight into my eyes. I could feel its warmth, and it felt good because I just instinctively knew that when I woke up again, the fading tan on my face would have deepened again ever so slightly. However, the light was hurting my eyes and preventing me from seeing that awful face.

However, this time she actually spoke and that was when my dream immediately graduated to nightmare proportions. Her voice was shrill and grating, like that of an angry chimpanzee about to launch a furious attack on the reinforced glass protecting an unwelcome observer in Edinburgh zoo.

‘You think you got away with it, don’t you?’ the voice hissed.

Something about that voice sounded familiar. I tried to ask her who she was, but although I could feel my lips moving, no words would come out.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ she sneered, letting out a gravelly laugh. ‘You still really think you got away with it, don’t you? Well, Mister Andrew Ferguson, I’ve got news for you. I lost thirty years of my life in that hellhole, thanks to you. And now it’s your turn to pay for your sins.’

The voice sounded even more familiar now, but to whom did it belong, I wondered? I needed to see her face, especially her eyes, only the glare from the light was blinding me. Once more, I tried to speak, but still no words came out, only frenetic inaudible whispers from a pair of dry twitching lips.

‘My ordeal is over at last,’ the same voiced rasped, anger escalating to rage. ‘But believe me, yours is just beginning.’

Near-catatonic and totally unable to move or even speak in this nightmarish trance, I could only watch in silent terror as the light began to fade, completely unaware that in the real world all around me, the sea mist had begun to descend like a shroud over the ship’s deck to obliterate the sun. As the light continued to dwindle, the old woman’s features slowly began to come into clearer perspective. Again, I tried to ask her who she was, but all I could manage were a few anguished groans.

Her features grew sharper and sharper in focus, until the penny eventually dropped like an anvil. I gasped at the awful sight of a gaunt, yellowing face that had once been beautiful. Now as wrinkled as a decomposing prune, wispy strands of greasy hair hung lifelessly over a pair of manic eyes protruding from deep dark sockets, and the old woman’s facial expression was one of pure unadulterated madness. But it was the eyes that gave it away.

It was her, no doubt about it. It was Laura.

‘Lau … Lau …’ I moaned, still hopelessly unable to form a single word.

‘Yes, Andy,’ came the smirking, grating reply, her eyes ablaze with fury. ‘Would you like to know what I did today? Well, watch this.’

By then, the light had been all but extinguished, which helped the image before my eyes to present itself in twenty-twenty vision and glorious technicolour, so vividly that it was like watching a Broadway show from the very front row.

The ethereal theatre set had now developed into the form of a small prison cell comprising three concrete walls, the fourth constructed of metal bars, and all lit by a single searing-bright overhead strip-light. A solitary chair sat in the corner of the cell and a rope with a noose hung from the ceiling.

I stared paralysed in horror as Laura pulled the chair over the cell floor and stepped up onto it, before slipping the noose around her neck.

‘This is all for you, Andy,’ she growled through gritted teeth. ‘Thirty years in this hellhole, and now it’s your turn to suffer. I hope you rot in hell, you bastard.’

The moment Laura kicked the chair away, I screamed, ‘No!’ and this time it came out full-blast.

‘Are you all right, mate?’ asked a young man, tapping me on the shoulder.

And that was when I realised that it had all just been a nightmare, a horrible nightmare. In fact, the worst nightmare I had ever had in my life.

I looked up at him, still hopelessly disorientated and trying to extricate myself from my dreamlike trance back into reality. A thick fog had by now completely enveloped the bright sun which only a few minutes ago had been bathing me in the last of the summer’s heat. I could hardly see a yard in front of me, but I noticed that the young man was wearing a skin-hugging t-shirt and jeans so tight that they reminded me of the ‘drainpipe’ trousers of the early 1960s and his arms were covered in tattoos. I had never seen anything quite like it in my entire life, but I couldn’t have cared less because I had just escaped from that awful terrifying nightmare.

‘Yes … yes, I think so,’ I replied to the lad, a tad shakily. ‘I’m fine. Just a bad dream, that’s all.’

I rubbed my eyes and tried to compose myself, then jumped when the ferry’s hooter gave an almighty blast to warn off any smaller seafaring vessels that might potentially be stumbling into its lumbering path in the thick fog. I shivered and put on my suit jacket. I thought of going back inside and grabbing a late bite of breakfast, but the nightmare had really unsettled me, so I decided to stay put.

Laura Miller? Where the hell have you just come from, I asked myself? And why?

It was now almost two years since I had last seen Laura and it certainly wasn’t an encounter that I ever wanted to remember, that was for sure. We had been seeing each other for about six months by then, behind our spouses’ backs of course. Hotel rooms all over the island of Arran, the odd wrestling match in the back of the car up the Ross Road, that kind of thing, but it was never serious.

At least, not for me it wasn’t, because I ended it as soon as Mary found out and gave me her ‘ultimatum’ … either leave that crazy bitch or the kids and I walk.

It was a no-brainer, really, because I had a lot to lose. My wife and three daughters for starters, and probably the house as well once the divorce came through. So, stuff that for a game of soldiers. And anyway, I had begun to get a bit fed-up with Laura and there were a lot more bored housewives out there to feed my extra-curricular appetite. So, bring it on, oh yeah.
However, the problem was that Laura didn’t quite see it that way herself, apparently because she was madly in love with me. Let’s just say that she didn’t take it too well when I told her we were finished.

I always knew she had a temper, because I had seen the evidence myself when things didn’t go entirely her way. There had been nothing major, though. Well, not really. A couple of flying wine glasses, one of which missed my face by inches, and another slightly more notable incident when she had smashed a hotel receptionist’s nose with a swing of her handbag after he had passed comment on her integrity when she tried to sneak into my room. But that was about it.

So, how was I to know how badly Laura would react to me dumping her? I mean, if she had even had the decency to tell me about her violent past during her adolescent years and the fact that she had a police charge sheet the length of her arm, then I would have seen the red flags immediately and got rid of her.

But for her then to slaughter her husband and two young children with a butcher’s cleaver? Well … what can you say? If you ask me, a life sentence in Cornton Vale women’s prison for doing something as heinous as butchering your whole family was cheap at the price when you really think about it. Anyway, enough nostalgia for one day, especially after an awful nightmare like that.

As the boat approached Ardrossan harbour, the sun started to make its welcome reappearance through the fog and the public address system suddenly sprang into life with its customary announcement advising drivers to return to the vehicle deck. I noticed that it sounded slightly different this time around, but thought nothing of it. I headed for the big metal door to make my way back downstairs, where I was joined by the hordes of departing islanders and returning tourists doing likewise.

I shook my head in disbelief at the number of passengers who were wearing the most outlandish of clothes. Instead of the bog-standard anoraks, loose-fitting walking trousers and Pringle golf sweaters preferred by the masses, those odd-bods were clad in hooded jackets of all descriptions, figure-hugging denims and assorted t-shirts emblazoned with the names and strap-lines of designers I had never heard of. Even their hairdos looked quite ridiculous. The standard shoulder-length locks and frizzy perms seemed to have given way to neatly-cropped hairstyles and even the occasional shaven head, all adorning strangely-suntanned faces which had either recently visited foreign climes or some other artificial facility. It really was most bizarre.

I knew I had a long drive to Glasgow ahead of me, so I made my way towards the toilet, which was in the opposite direction to the pedestrian traffic now spewing out from the public amenities towards the exit doors. Once there, I couldn’t help but observe that it was one which seemed completely unfamiliar, something that just seemed to accentuate the weirdness of my predicament.

As I stood there taking a leak and feeling a bit disorientated, I also noticed that my suit jacket seemed to be hanging down rather apologetically from my shoulders. I pulled up my zip and walked over to the wash-hand basin, where I splashed some cold water over my face and made a grab for the paper-towel dispenser.

When I looked in the mirror, my heart almost exploded.

‘Oh, my god!’ I gasped. ‘Oh … my … god!’

And there staring straight back at me was an emaciated old face underneath a balding head protected only by a few strands of wispy grey hair and a pair of tired old eyes sunk into their wrinkled sockets like escaped convicts in an abandoned cave, with several layers of withering cheek jowls drooping down helplessly towards multiple chins.

I stumbled out of the toilet like a hopeless drunk. Frantically, I asked a crew member where the shop on board this strange ship might be located and he pointed to an area between the licensed bar and the dog-friendly seating area.

I ran into the shop as fast as my legs could carry me and grabbed a copy of the island’s weekly newspaper, the Arran Banner. When I looked at the front-page headline, my eyes nearly burst out of their sockets.

‘Former Arran Schoolgirl Hangs Herself in Prison Cell.’

My eyes darted up towards the date of publication. It was Friday the 11th of September, 2020. Almost thirty years after I had boarded the ship.

Apparently, my screams could be heard from as far away as the ferry terminal.