Granddad was my best friend. When he lived near to Mum's house, we'd take his dog out for a walk every morning, before I went to school. I treasured those times, not only because he was good company, but because wherever he went, something out of the ordinary would always happen. He attracted trouble and excitement like iron filings to a magnet. I'll give you an example: One morning, he knocked on the front door with his customary rhythm; I answered it, greeted him with a smile, and put my coat on as I stepped out.
It was cold that morning. I remember the frost on the grass crunched under my feet; it looked like my hair after I'd gelled it; spiky and hard to the touch. When I breathed in, my lungs hurt with the cold air, but I loved this time of year, and so did my Granddad. His dog licked my hand as I reached out to touch it. Its tongue was rough like wet sandpaper. He was a collie, and named (rather predictably) 'Lassie'. His coat wasn't the same colour as the Lassie from TV; it was black and white, and my Granddad used to tell me it was because he couldn't afford a colour one. I fell for all his stories; it wasn't really lying; he abhorred lying. It was just his sense of humour, but I took him very seriously.
Anyway, my Granddad had this habit of walking wherever he wanted, regardless of whose property he was on. Today, he decided to investigate what Mr. Phillips had done with his front garden. Whenever he did this, I was acutely embarrassed, but also quite excited; it was illicit, after all, and so quite inviting for a child. Having an adult with you was almost like permission.
He ambled round Mr. Phillip's front lawn as if he was strolling around Kew gardens. He made it look as if he had a right to be there; as if he'd paid for a ticket. Of course, this didn't deter Mr. Phillips from coming out of his front door with a red dressing gown on, and a face to match.
'What're you doing?' he asked.
Granddad quietly smiled. 'Good morning!' he said, 'I was just admiring your charming front garden.' I especially like what you've done to the flowerbed here. Most unusual!'
Mr. Phillips was temporarily stymied by his reaction. He stammered a few errs and ahhs, then finally found his tongue. 'You're on my property,' he stated.
'So I am!' exclaimed Granddad, 'and what a lovely, well-kept place it is! Good morning to you!'
And with that, he calmly strolled to Mr. Phillip's front gate, with Lassie and I tagging along behind him, not daring to look Mr. Phillips in the eye.
So you can see why granddad was my best friend. Not like a granddad at all. Consequently, when he died last year, I was devastated. That was a period of my life I wouldn't want to revisit in a hurry. Everything stressful seemed to happen all at once. We moved house, and then so did Granddad. I'll never understand quite why he moved out into the middle of nowhere, but I think it was so he could enjoy a kind of solitude. He'd become somewhat distant since Nan had died. He even told me once that he knew the date of his own death. He was quite a spiritual man, but he had a religious irreverence that shocked people. At Granddad's request, I played the organ at his funeral, but I didn't receive the sheet music until the morning of the event. This didn't help my nerves, not only because I had to sight-read it, but also because the piece had been hand-written by Granddad, and clearly meant for the piano. As I started to play it, I recognized the tune. He had often whistled it. There was only one page and it stopped mid-phrase. I had no option but to return to the beginning and play it again. It continued seamlessly. Granddad had composed an endless piece of music. I grinned. As practical jokes went, this was his swan song. Where could I stop playing? Then I noticed the title: 'Ouroboros': The symbol of eternity; the never ending circle.
Nice one, Granddad.
I think I told you that we'd moved house just before my Granddad's death. Well, this was quite an upheaval; I'd lived at our house for all my life. We moved because Dad changed jobs. Making new friends was hard, but shortly after Granddad's funeral I made a new friend. His name was Andy. I met him walking to school one day, and we immediately clicked. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn't quite understand what it was. Maybe that's just the feeling you get when you make a new friend that shares similar interests to you. Whatever it was, I was glad of the company. Being an only child, life can get quite lonely, especially with Granddad out of the picture.
Andy came round after school one day, and I told him about Granddad's final joke. When I mentioned the title of the piece that I'd played, he looked intrigued.
'Ouroboros?' he asked. 'That's that symbol with a snake eating itself, isn't it?'
I was surprised he'd heard about it. Not many people my age have. Of course, I'd learnt about it from Granddad. He was a bit of a sage on the side. He had me fascinated by mythology and all that ancient stuff.
'Your Granddad knew about that?' asked Andy.
'He knew a lot of things,' I said. 'I only wish I could've shown you some of his illustrations. He was an incredible artist.'
'What happened to it?'
'He burnt it all a few weeks before his death. Said it was no good.'
'I can relate to that,' Andy replied. 'I think most of my artwork's a pile of pooh.'
'You do artwork?' I asked. 'Me too!'
'Yeah, I know,' he said, 'I saw your work up in the art room today.'
'I wish he'd given me some of his work,' I said, suddenly feeling an overwhelming sense of loss. 'It would've been nice to look at it every now and then.'
'Tell you what,' said Andy, 'I'll do you a piece. I'll draw you an Ouroboros.'
'You're on,' I said, smiling again.
Granddad would've liked Andy.
A few days later, a package came in the post. I opened it, and inside was a letter and a manila envelope. The letter was from my uncle, who thought I'd like a memento of Granddad. When I opened it, there was a map inside. It smelt of old grass and damp air. It creaked as I opened it up, fold by fold, its edges torn and slightly gnawed, as if nibbled by some sort of rodent. Wherever it had been stored, it had been exposed to the elements in some way. When I saw its contents, I knew that Andy had to see it. Granddad had drawn a map of his cottage and the surrounding area. It was definitely his work; his style was unmistakable. What intrigued me most, however, was the familiar symbol he'd drawn in the woods.
As a child, I had stayed at Granddad's townhouse. When he put me to bed at night, he would tell me spooky stories. The thing is; if they were stories set elsewhere about strangers, then I would've taken them for pure fiction. But Granddad told stories about people I knew, in places that were local to me. These stories seemed that much scarier, because I felt as if they could almost touch me. I think granddad knew this, because the look on his face as he saw my reaction when Mrs. Crouch from No. 73 was chopped up and fed to the pigeons was one of delight. If Mum had ever found out that he told me these stories, she would never have forgiven him. Of course, by the time granddad had moved to the country, I was too old to be told stories, spooky or otherwise; I had graduated to reading my own stories. Some of them, admittedly, were horror fiction, but I read many other genres.
I had only managed to visit his cottage once before his untimely death. It was during the daytime, so I hadn't realised just how spooky the woods surrounding it would be at night. Earlier that evening, I had sneaked the keys to granddad's cottage out of the kitchen drawer where Mum had them kept. I met Andy at the bus stop and we caught a bus to the outskirts of Kinnersley, where his cottage was. We walked the rest of the way in the gathering darkness. By the time we reached his cottage it was completely dark and as we walked up his garden path, it started to rain. I let us in, and we turned on the gas fire in the sitting room to warm up. I looked at the framed photographs on the mantelpiece; there was one of me when I was six, and one of Lassie, who had died a year or so ago. There was also one of my Nan, who had died when I was four. Then I heard the clink of glasses, and I turned to see Andy holding out a glass of brandy to me. He had found my granddad's liquor cabinet and poured two glasses of his favourite tipple.
'Chin chin!' said Andy, 'and down the hatch!'
I laughed at this, as Granddad used to say the same thing. I must have told Andy about this previously; he liked to make me laugh, so he would use something like that at a time like this. Then we both drank the brandy in one gulp. The liquid seethed down my throat and I immediately felt warmth flooding through me.
We left the glasses on the sideboard, and walked through into the kitchen. Once there, I brought the map out and opened it up onto the kitchen table.
'Granddad probably drew the map on this table!' I exclaimed.
'Let's have a look then,' said Andy, leaning on his hands to peer at it more closely. He took in the details for a few moments, then straightened himself up and went to the window.
'Turn the light off a moment, will you?' he asked.
I did so, and the back garden appeared dimly out of the darkness. 'I think there's a back garden light,' I said, 'over there by the back door.'
Andy turned it on, and we saw there was a back gate leading into the woods. I picked up the map and we decided to set off into the darkness. We were just through the back gate when the outside light went off, plunging us into the night. It was especially dark, as the tree cover was extensive. We started walking, treading carefully across the rain-soaked ground.
As we walked through the darkened woods, the stories granddad told me started to come true, or so my imagination believed. When your sight is impaired, every snapped twig is a ghoul stalking you. Every owl hoot is a banshee. Every drop of rain is blood. My heart thumped in my tell-tale chest; I thought that Andy must be able to hear it from up ahead.
Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I began to discern my surroundings a little more clearly. Slowly, the rain let up and the moon emerged from the clouds, drenching the two of us in an eerie half-light. I stopped and looked ahead of me; we had reached a clearing in the woods. Andy and I stood next to each other, staring ahead of us. A chill went through me, like a cold electric shock. In the centre of the clearing was a fallen, hollowed-out tree trunk. Ivy hung from its bark, and without a word of a lie, the moon was shining directly onto it. I looked at the map again; this was the very spot the Ouroboros was drawn on. I walked forwards and knelt beside the trunk. Halfway along it there was a hole. Whether it was Granddad's ghost whispering to me at that moment, or whether it was plain old intuition, I don't know. But I knew that something was hidden inside. Maybe even the map had been hidden here at some point. I made a mental note to ask my Uncle where he had found it. I gingerly put my hand into the hole and began rummaging around inside, half expecting something to bite my hand, or crawl up my arm.
'What are you doing?' asked Andy.
'There's something inside,' I said. 'Don't ask me how I know, I just – a-ha!'
I brought my hand out clutching a wooden bracelet, brushed off the moss and accumulated dirt, then held it up. It was an intricately whittled snake, eating its own tail.
'If your Granddad made that,' said Andy, 'then he was a true artist.'
I could feel Granddad close by. I rolled up my left sleeve and slipped the bracelet on my wrist. It smelt of old grass, rotten wood and damp air, but it was beautiful. At that moment, there was a noise from behind me, and I darted round to see what it was. There was nothing there.
'Did you hear that?' I whispered. 'Maybe it was a deer.'
Andy didn't reply.
The moon went behind some clouds, and the woods were thrown back into darkness. I turned the bracelet on my wrist and looked at the snake eating its tail. My thoughts turned again to my Granddad and I decided that it was time to say goodbye to him. I smiled and a tear rolled down my cheek. I looked once more at the fallen trunk. It seemed merely lifeless now, instead of being full of promise.
'Goodbye, Granddad,' I whispered.
Then I turned to look at Andy, but he was gone.
I ran back to the cottage, but he was nowhere to be seen. In fact, there was nothing to suggest that he had ever been there at all. There was only one glass on the sideboard, not two. I thought back to the last few weeks and I couldn't remember one time when my Mum had seen or spoken to Andy. Then I thought of all the things that Andy had in common with Granddad: He was an artist; he knew a lot about ancient stuff like the Ouroboros; he shared the same sense of humour. I brought the map out and spread it on the kitchen table again. I stared at it for a long time, until my vision blurred, and my mind wandered. When I focused again, I was reading Granddad's signature. Andrew. His first name was Andrew. Then I saw everything with desperate clarity. Of course!
Granddad was my best friend.