Landlord And Ghost

[uk666]

Landlord And Ghost

A cold, bitter wind was blowing across the deserted moor. Clouds were scudding past the full moon like wild mares. The autumn's mummified leaves scraped noisily across bare rock as the wind shrieked and sighed alternately.

Inside the isolated pub, the shutters could hear rattling as the clock struck twelve.

The landlord and his wife were busy stacking newly-washed glasses in the overhead racks - it had been a long night and now the customers had left, they sat down to relax in the light of the candles they'd left burning.

Suddenly, they felt a coldness washing over them as they became aware of a mysterious. keening wailing. Something they couldn't feel set the candles guttering; some of them went out for no reason at all.

Then, they saw an apparition, a glowing, ghostly cat with no tail was stalking along the bar. It wasn't a Manx cat, as they saw from the gnarled, cruelly cut stump that was all that remained of its tail.

The landlord and his wife jumped at the sound of glass smashing. As the cat continued along the bar, glasses jumped off the racks. shattering in a million pieces on the floor.

Full, gin bottles, whisky, rum leapt out of the optics to burst, bomb-like on the stone floor tiles. Bags of crisps ripped open as the cat passed by them; packets of peanuts split, their contents rattling onto the top of the bar.

All the time, the cat held them with a fixed gaze, while its thin, tortured wailing continued, like the cry of a lost child abandoned in a storm... The landlord and his wife felt an icy chill running down their spines.

The landlord gave a start as his wife clutched at his arm - he could feel her trembling... He drew a deep breath... "Well, puss, he said, you seem very troubled, how can we help you?"

In a voice that seemed to come from the very pit of Hell, the cat replied, tremulously, "I am the ghost of Mr. Whiskers. On a night such as this, I was run down by a car and killed. But as the wheel snuffed out my life, I saw that my tail had been torn off."

"And when a cat loses its tail, the cat continued, he can no more enter Heaven than a Viking warrior without his sword can enter Valhalla."

"Without my tail, I am doomed to wander like this every night, in search of my tail."

A tear ran, glistening, down the cat's cheek as its lower lip trembled with emotion. In a piteous tone it said: "Can you please help me, please, please?" It raised its little paw as it begged.

The landlord choked back a tear and said:

"I'm sorry sir, we can't retail spirits after midnight."