Spinner's End

Chapter 1

Raven adjusted her chin on a large ceramic piggy bank that she was currently using as a chin rest. The young woman sat on a very old sofa that alternating seemed to smell of goats and dust to her. She was facing towards the back of the sofa with her chin resting on the piggy bank, which was somewhat precariously balanced in the windowsill of her front sitting room window.

Raven sighed out loud. She knew that she was just feeling sorry for herself. Usually she would rouse herself out of such a state of sorrow and go out and do something or try to clean the large, dirty, old, house in which she lived.

Her predicament started over a year ago when she had met the man of her dreams. She had known that he was the one and only man for her. Only apparently the man, Byron, did not exactly feel that he was the one and only for Raven. They had been living in Las Vegas, Nevada when they met. Raven had been impressed with how kind and generous and seemingly caring Byron had been. She was ecstatic when he had asked her to move back to London with him. It was her dream come true when they had gotten married. The service was small at a tiny church in the country. They had moved to a posh high-rise flat over looking the Thames. Raven lived in positive bliss for just past three years. Raven had so many plans for their future together.

Only Byron, it seemed had other plans in which he did not include Raven. The biggest plan was taking up with an older, buxom, botoxed, blond. The next plan that Raven seemed not to have much decision over was Byron throwing about half of her clothes into a big ugly brown trunk and shoving it and Raven out of his flat door. As she sat in the hallway on the trunk dressed in an athletic sweat suit and tennis shoes she pondered her next move. She knew that she was not in a good predicament at all as she hauled the trunk and herself out of the high-rise building onto the sidewalk. She had felt lost that day. She felt like she was no longer an American yet not British either as the people in the posh neighborhood stared at her odd clothing and the big trunk she pulled along behind her.

She had immediately set about finding a place to live. Fortunately she had been working part-time in a bookshop for a short while and she did have a very small amount of money saved up. As she looked for a place to rent however, she discovered exactly how small amount of money she actually did have. She discovered that rents in London were very pricey. She had finally found a place that she could afford. The house she could afford was actually quite a distance to the north of London. She told the man over the phone that she’d take it, sight unseen.

She used the instructions to given to her by the man at the leasing agent’s office where she paid the first months’ rent to find the house. She had gotten off of the bus in a neighborhood she knew was a large step down from the elegant high rise in which she had been living. She walked up the road and turned onto the street, which would be her new home.

Spinner’s End the sign proclaimed, to her it seemed a sad and dismal name for a place to live. She dragged her trunk onward down the street. Some of the windows in the houses were boarded up. There was trash in the street and at least one car that looked like it hadn’t been moved in a year. Yes, Raven thought, this is a dismal place to live. But in her mind she always tried to see the good side of everything. She figured that it was at least a place to stay and it was very reasonably priced. The landlord would take the rent month to month and if she wanted to paint or do any repairs she could just send him the receipts for the items purchased.

As Raven neared the end of the street, it dead-ended in to an old abandoned factory, with a huge sort of smoke stack or chimney, which seemed to hang over the street, casting it in shadow. Raven went up the steps to her new house. In America it would be called a ‘row-house’ or perhaps a ‘town-house’ as there were several houses all attached together, hers was the last on the end, next to a fence surrounding a large deserted weed choked area, containing a deserted factory with the huge chimney.

As she fitted the key into the door she thought that if the giant chimney fell over, one way or another, she’d be the first to know at least. The doorway of the house entered into a sitting room straight through the sitting room was the kitchen. Off of the back of the kitchen was a small stone patio type area which could have been a nice little place to sit and have tea, had it not been someplace for drug dealers and users to hang around or for the oppressive feel of the huge chimney. The upstairs area consisted of a large closet or small bedroom, Raven wasn’t really sure what the room was, a regular sized bedroom and a bathroom. Trying to look on the bright side the plumbing worked, the electricity worked and she had a roof over her head, which only leaked in the small closet room.

Raven again adjusted her chin on the piggy bank. It was true, she did have a roof over her head, for which she was glad, especially since even though now it was summer time, the weather was rainy, damp and cold. Raven was fortunate that the bookshop she had been working at in London had a second location here where she was now living. Raven had been working at the bookshop in a part time capacity while she also had another job working in a small restaurant as a waitress. Only two weeks earlier she was able to quit the waitress job and start full time in the bookshop. For that she had been glad. As the two part time jobs had many more hours involved than the full time job alone and in addition, she would now have the benefits associated with working full time. One of those benefits was more time off. But as Raven sat on the smelly old sofa she wondered if the extra time off was such a good thing. She had no telly and really hadn’t made any friends yet. She had taken to watching out the front window for entertainment. To her it was quite boring though. Being at the end of the street, the most excitement was an occasional passerby and a few stray cats.

She did notice that most of people that came by did so to dump junk and old broken items on the grounds of the old factory. In fact the lamp next to Raven’s couch had been compliments of the old factory grounds. Also some of her clothing items had come from there. She didn’t like to think about getting items from there though. Her lamp had been her first item that she had gotten from there. She thought it was a good sign that the lamp had even still had a working bulb in it when she brought it home. However the bulb had burned out just last night and Raven didn’t have the money until tomorrow to go get a new bulb. She still had lights in all of the other rooms of the house though. As Raven pondered her light bulb situation she thought about the house directly across the street from her own house.

She had noticed that the people across the street seemed odd. For one thing it seemed that they were using candles instead of regular lights. She suspected that they might be squatters. She had run into the occupants on a few occasions. The first occasion had been when she was coming back from the factory area with the lamp. It was barely after sun up one morning.

The fence that ran around the factory was missing a section on the opposite side of the street from Raven’s. So she had gone into the area on that side and was returning that way also. She was carrying the lamp when she noticed an ugly little fat man. He must have not heard her coming as when he turned and saw her, he grasped one of his hands as if in pain and started muttering strange unintelligible words as he ran back into the house. Raven felt embarrassed; surely the man would think her odd, coming back out of the factory grounds carrying the lamp. But she had noted that he himself was wearing what looked like a theatrical robe of some sort. It fell almost to the ground, had a hood and one large ornate clasp at the throat. Maybe the man too had gotten his cloak from the factory grounds, to Raven it looked to be a feminine type of wrap.

On the second occasion she encountered the man, she had been trying a short cut, using the alleyway behind their house. She was on her way back from the grocery store late one evening after work, she was trying to get out of the cold, driving rain sooner. As the man noticed her, he acted the same as the time before, grabbing his hand with the other as if hiding something, he again muttered and ran in to the house, this time though through the back door.

She had ran into the other occupant of the house on a cold dreary afternoon again as she was using the alley behind their house. She was walking very quickly and not really paying attention to where she was going, as she rounded the corner she’d let out a yelp of surprise and jumped sideways to avoid a collision with a tall, man coming the opposite direction. He had glared at her with his dark eyes. For a weaker soul, the look would have frightened them or made them shy away. For Raven it only made her angry. After all just as she had almost ran into him, he had also almost run into her. Instead of shying away from his glaring eyes she had simply glared back at him. Raven was only a little over five feet tall, the man was much bigger than her but Raven had recently been through too much to behave in a weak fashion. She was still angry at the world and most people in it. The two had simply passed, each, still glaring at the other.

In the back of her mind Raven had actually thought that the man wouldn’t be so ugly if he hadn’t been scowling and trying to look frightening. His eyes were much too dark for such a pale complexion though and his hair also seemed sort of unnaturally dark. Raven liked the look of his hair though, too long and a little unkempt, he looked like he could be a musician. Raven thought though of their neighborhood and that the man was also living with another man, maybe the two were lovers, although she preferred to think that the taller man was the brother of the strange man. Maybe the strange man was in fact mentally ill and the tall man had to take care of him. Perhaps this predisposed the taller man to having a sour nature or being angry. Raven had usually been a pretty good judge of character, Byron being the exception, and she thought that the man looked intelligent at least even if he was monetarily poor. In the deep recesses of her mind Raven even thought that it might be interesting to get to know the man. Raven had concluded, as she wore and furnished her house with items thrown in deserted factory grounds, she could not, in good conscience, hold herself above another based solely on money. After that she used the alley more often but made sure to pay more attention to where she was going and who might be around her. While she did want to see the tall man, she did not want to meet the shorter man.


Raven was about to go into the kitchen and get a nice hot cup of tea. It seemed strange to be drinking hot tea in the middle of the summer but she was feeling a chill. As she had just moved her head she noticed two dark shapes dashing down the street. They seemed to be following the areas of murkiness left on the street from the few lights that still worked. As they got a little nearer Raven could tell that they were women. It was difficult to tell at first, because they were both wearing large, what appeared to be rain- coats or trench coat type garments complete with hoods.

The two women ran to the house across the street from Raven’s. It appeared that the first lady to arrive knocked on the door. The door had opened just slightly as the occupant inside seemed to be checking on who had disturbed them. The woman then removed her heavy hood. Raven could she a sheet of shining blond hair fall free from the hood. The door opened wider and the two women entered the house. Raven, forgetting the cup of tea, sat very still and watched the house.

Inside the house Raven could see through the window shades the flickering light as that which is given off by candles. Raven adjusted the ceramic piggy bank under her chin again. She knew that she would rather be watching some stupid television show right now but the plans for a television and even a radio were still a few weeks off. Unless she could suddenly find a nice television in the old factory grounds, she smiled at the thought; this was the best entertainment there was for the night.

She tugged at the bed-sheet between herself and the musty old couch trying to be sure that she wasn’t touching the couch directly. She brushed at something on the front of the bright red wool jumper she had on over a men’s white tee shirt. The sofa had been inside the house when she moved in, as had been the ceramic piggy bank. The wool jumper was complements of the old factory grounds, which she would never admit, even to herself. The flannel pajama pants that she wore and the tee shirt were from a second hand shop, however, her mismatched socks were complements of Byron. She sat looking out the window, her dark curly hair held in place by a heavy red headband, her green eyes overly intense for the seemingly boring view.

The window curtain from the side of the sitting room across the street seemed to have been opened slightly as a shaft of light hit the ground to the side of the house, as if someone briefly looked out of the curtain and then closed it abruptly. Raven watched this with interest. It seemed that if a person were just to walk to the window and look out they would hold the curtain open for longer than only a second. The movement and the abrupt end seemed to indicate to Raven that the people were fearful of interlopers. Yielding to what she felt was her overactive imagination Raven continued her vigilance of the neighbors’ house.

A few minutes later she observed that the light within the house grew brighter in three successive steps and then abruptly returned to normal. To Raven this seemed very odd as she was sure the people were using candles and the light was almost but not quite like someone turning on one light extra and then another and then another. However, it still did not seem to Raven to be a light given off by any kind of electric light she had ever seen, it seemed to flicker and glow red.

Only a few minutes after the light changes had occurred the door again opened and the two women exited the house. At this time Raven could tell that one of the women had very long dark hair and the other one had the very light blond hair she had seen earlier.
The women did not turn and go back down the street the direction from which they had come, they instead turned and headed towards the missing spot in the fence around the factory. Raven thought this was very odd. She knew that she would not choose to go walking around the old factory at night and especially not knowing if there was another missing area in the fence or from which to exit the other side. Perhaps these women did know though of another exit. They seemed to know where they were going as they walked purposefully into the deserted grounds. As Raven was noticing this, suddenly, the two women vanished. If it had been a warmer night and Raven had her widows open perhaps she would have heard the accompanying popping sound as the two women vanished.

Raven sat up suddenly, her chin stuck slightly in a groove created by the piggy bank. It fell over. She paid no heed to this. Raven got to her feet, still looking onto the deserted grounds, trying to see if the women had fallen or were bent over perhaps looking for something. She thought that perhaps they had suddenly fallen in a hole in the ground. She felt that this could be the only explanation for the disappearances. But she had been in the area several times and she hadn’t seen any holes. She frowned as she wondered what to do. She couldn’t even call the police unless she walked to the grocery store at the end of the block and two streets over.

Raven then kneeled on the couch looking at the empty grounds. She couldn’t decide what to do. She certainly wasn’t going to go out and look for the two in the dark on her own. That, to her, in this neighborhood, was just inviting trouble. She had enough nights walking back from her waitress job to know that she didn’t feel safe outside after dark. Still kneeling on the couch, Raven rubbed her hand across her forehead, as was her custom when nervous, when suddenly the door across the street opened and closed quickly.

Raven looked quickly at the house. It was the larger of the two men exiting the house. He strode quickly onto the deserted grounds. He wore what seemed to be a cloak or coat of some sort though only buttoned part way down, which billowed out behind his quick steps.

Raven watched with mounting interest. She assumed that the women had indeed fallen into a hole and had called the man on their cell phone to come and help them. However, the man was not walking in the same direction that the woman had. Raven watched assuming that the man was going to get a rope or pole or something nearby to where the women were, by which to help them out of the hole. Raven leaned ever neared to the window glass trying to get the advantage of those few inches to help her see into the darkness. The man had not slowed his stride at all, as if searching the ground, which Raven had expected him to do. Instead the man suddenly vanished, just as the women had. Again Raven did not hear the popping sound as the man vanished.

Raven ran to her side window, which faced the ugly old smokestack. She looked into the gloom trying to see where the people had gone. She had been into the deserted area several times she knew that there were not holes large enough for a person to fall into. In fact she had never seen any holes in the area. She turned, walked back to the sofa and sat down.

She knew that it was ridiculous to think that three people had walked out into a flat ordinary, boring, empty field and suddenly fell into nonexistent holes. Raven reached the next conclusion with some difficulty. She concluded that the people really did vanish somehow.

She stood and closed her sitting room drapes going into her sparse kitchen. She decided to have that cup of hot tea finally. She also decided that she was going to find out what the odd people were. She had once watched an old movie from the 1980’s in which some people had come from the future to save the planet, they met a lady in the past and decided to take her back into the future with them. Raven had always envied that lady in the movie. Raven smiled at the thought. The lady in the movie had some unique education or something and that was the reason for them taking her with them. Raven doubted that time travelers would take her with them. She mused instead that they would probably just vaporize her.

Raven took her teacup with her up to her bedroom, more just for the warmth than anything else. As she drifted off to sleep she envisioned a dark eyed man riding on a black steed in Mid-evil times.