Short Story | Horror | Humour

Jimmy Vinter, Dragon Rider: Tale at the Elleray Pub

A/N: This was written for the following prompt -

“I heard a strange whistling sound coming from outside my window. When I looked out, I saw an eerie figure dancing in the wind. Its eyes seemed to be staring right into my soul.”

It was taken from the following 5 set of prompts as posted on Prompts Galore -

~~~~

Windermere, Cumbria, UK

“Say, Jim?” Sam said as we were eating lunch.

The sound of normal lunchtime activity at the Windermere Dragon Academy surrounded us and I was busy forking great mouthfuls of stuffed peppers between my lips.

“Yeah, Sam?” I asked distractedly before I shoved another mouthful of food into my mouth.

“You going to Andy’s birthday party tonight?” Sam asked. “I know Andy told me he was going to ask you but I still don’t know whether you are or not.”

Andy Cook was one of our classmates at the Dragon Academy and it was his nineteenth birthday that day. The friendly New Zealander had asked me — and presumably several others from our class — to the Elleray pub in the village of Windermere for a celebration.

I just grunted and nodded as my mouth was too full to answer my friend properly. Sam didn’t seem to mind, however; instead, he seemed quite amused.

“I’ll take that as a yes then, Jim,” Sam said with a smile.

He waited until I’d swallowed my current mouthful.

“You can and he did,” I finally said before I cleared the rest of my mouthful with a swig of my drink. “I told him I’d come.”

“Good!” Sam said and he seemed genuinely pleased by that fact. “I can’t believe we’ve been invited to a party!”

“It’s like you’ve never even been invited to a party before, Sammy,” I said with a slight laugh.

“I haven’t! Well. Not many at any rate,” Sam said with an amused snort. “It’s probably only because of you that I’ve been invited.”

His face fell once he’d finished speaking and I frowned in response.

“Hardly. Why the hell would you even think that? I just think Andy likes you,” I said with a brief frown. “Hence why he asked.”

“Yeah, but you’re the darling of the Academy, aren’t you? Everyone loves you,” Sam said and the return of his usual cheekiness brightened his smile.

He knew I hated talk like that even though he was only teasing. Although it was true that I got on well with the coursework but I never considered myself any better than anyone else.

“They’re probably scared of the bayonet I keep under my pillow,” I replied with a snort.

“But only I know about that bayonet, Jim. That excuse won’t wash,” Sam said with a sudden laugh.

I grinned at his retort; of course, only me, Sam and the principal of the academy knew about my weapon but that fact had not been the point of my observation. The point of it had been to make Sam laugh again and I had achieved my objective.

“Made you laugh though, Sammy,” I murmured as I forked another mouthful of food between my lips. “You’re getting too maudlin again anyway. You know I told you about that.”

“Maudlin? I’ll have you know I’m never maudlin, sir,” Sam said mock-indignantly.

I merely smiled and continued eating. Sam watched me for a while before he turned back to his own lunch with a smile.

****

Later that evening, Sam and I arrived at the Elleray Pub in Windermere and sat down at a vacant table. Nearby, Andy sat with some of our other classmates and he waved at us. He then threw a couple of packets of pork scratchings and another couple of packages of nuts onto our table.

“On the house, fellas,” he yelled.

Both Sam and I thanked him yet neither of us touched the pork scratchings — Sam because he was vegan and me because I was Jewish. We ate the nuts though and Andy soon arrived at our table with a couple of glasses in his hand.

“Beer for you, Sam my man,” Andy said as he handed a pint glass to my friend. “And a vodka for the Ukrainian in the house.”

He gave me a grin even as I rolled my eyes good-naturedly at Andy; the New Zealander’s response was to laugh and wink at me. Sam also laughed and watched as I sampled the vodka.

“Not bad,” I said with an amused smile up at Andy. “Better in Ukraine though.”

“Everything’s better in Ukraine, according to you, Dmytro,” Andy said and walked away with an uproarious laugh.

I just grinned at Andy’s retreating back and did not bother offering up a retort. Instead, Sam and I settled back in our seats and resumed eating our nuts.

We found ourselves listening to various pub tales — both from Andy himself who’d had plenty handed down to him by his father and from those more regular pub-goers in Windermere. One tale stood out in particular which had been handed down by the locals for generations — or so it was told to us.

“There’s a creature around these parts that some say doesn’t exist,” an old farmer said with a distinct twinkle in his eye. “Others say that it plainly shouldn’t exist at all.”

“Oh! I’ve heard this tale before,” Andy said with an amused grin.

“But we haven’t,” Sam retorted with a good-natured grin.

The farmer watched us with an amused look on his face but didn’t immediately carry on with his tale.

“What is this creature, sir?” one of the Sarahs in our class said as she leaned forward to stare at the farmer.

“That creature, young lady, is known as a tizzie-whizie,” the old farmer said as he turned his kindly smile onto the young girl.

I snorted in sudden laughter which drew the farmer’s attention to me. He at least looked amused instead of offended by my response.

“I see you laughing there, young man. The tizzie-whizie is no laughing matter,” he said and winked at me. “Some say that if you rest your ear against the ground and hear a squeaking sound, then that is the first sign you’ve been visited by a proper Windermere tizzie-whizie.”

“And what does this tizzie-thing look like?” I asked, a little sceptically.

“Where are you from, son?” the old farmer asked as he squinted at me.

He obviously couldn’t place my accent and I was grateful that he hadn’t guessed — incorrectly — that I was Russian.

“Ukraine, sir,” I said. “From one of the old strongholds of the Cossacks — Kryvyi Rih!”

The farmer nodded sagely before he said — “You must have fantastical beasts where you’re from, I’m sure.”

“Yeah. Dragons,” Sam said with a sudden laugh before I could say anything. “We’re learning to ride them. Dragons, not Cossacks.”

“Ah! So you’d be from the local Academy then,” the farmer said and he gave us a smile. “Then if you’re familiar with dragons, then you should believe in things like fairies and the tizzie-whizie, then, eh?”

“I suppose. I’ll let you know when I’ve met some,” I replied dryly.

That provoked a laugh from the others and I turned a wink onto Sam.

“I still want to know what a tizzie-whizie’s like,” Sarah said. “Like my good mate Dmytro here.”

She pointed over at me and I just gave her an amused smile in return. Andy just snorted and leaned back in his chair; he had the air of a person who’d heard the tale before and I supposed that he had if his earlier comment was anything to go by.

“A tizzie-whizie will only be seen only briefly, as it whizzes past you with the speed of a bullet,” the farmer said grandly. “The tales tell it that it had the body of a hedgehog, the wings of a dragonfly, the antennae of a bee and the tail of a squirrel.”

Raucous laughter suddenly erupted from those of us from the Academy. Even I began to grin at the description, although I didn’t want to outright laugh for fear of offending the farmer. He’d obviously meant the tale in due seriousness. The farmer was grinning himself however and didn’t seem the slightest bit annoyed by our response.

“You beware, young riders,” he said sagely. “You laugh now but wait till you see one of our curiously shy residents.”

“What do they do exactly?” I asked curiously.

“No one knows,” the farmer said. “Those that have seen them don’t talk about them. They’re too scared.”

I just snorted at the farmer’s sudden cheeky grin. I wondered if he was possibly playing a prank on us; as such, I half-turned away to share a smile with Andy.

The conversation soon drifted away from the topic of tizzie-whizies and more drinks were drunk and more often spilled. I seemed to be the only one who was keeping a steady eye on how much — or rather how little — I was drinking. I had never been much of a drinking man and I wanted to keep it that way.

****

As I came out of the restroom, I noticed Andy speaking with Sam; the New Zealander had a devilish twinkle in his eye, yet Sam looked the palest I’d ever seen him. In fact, I thought he looked downright scared. I frowned yet still approached anyway; I was curious to see what Andy had said to my friend.

When I asked him about it later in the evening, Sam grew jumpy and skittish; he refused to repeat whatever it had been that Andy had said to him. After a few attempts at trying to get the answer out of him, I had to give up.

****

Later that night, I was roused from sleep by a knock at my dormitory door. I initially told whoever was outside to go away as I was asleep yet the knock sounded again — more insistently that time.

“Psst. Jim! Jimmy! Oi! Dmytro!” Sam yelled, finally resorting to my birth name for once.

I sighed and scrambled haphazardly out of bed before I padded over to my dormitory door. I swung it open onto Sam’s frazzled features; although he’d been asleep for a while, he still looked halfway to drunk. Unlike me, he hadn’t kept a check on his drinking intake earlier in the evening and I knew that if he wasn’t already paying for it, he would in the morning.

“What is it, Sammy?” I asked a little irritably.

“Come and have a look at this,” Sam said and he grabbed my hand.

He yanked me back into my room before I had a chance to prepare myself and towed me towards my bedroom window. He didn’t seem as though he wanted to take a no for an answer and short of punching my best friend, I had no choice but to sigh and do as he wanted.

“Look at that,” Sam said as he pointed through my window at the outside.

I sighed again and did as he’d ordered. At first, I saw nothing and then I did. I blinked and stared a little harder as an odd chill suddenly raced through my body. I heard a strange whistling sound coming from outside my window. When I looked out, I saw an eerie figure dancing in the wind. Its eyes seemed to be staring right into my soul.

The sight that I beheld then was that of the tizzie-whizie that the old farmer in the pub had described to us earlier in the evening. I could see its spiky hedgehog body and the wave of its fluffy squirrel tail. Another loud whistling sound cut through the night air as the moon shone down upon the strange creature. Its eyes glowed a sudden red and then blinked out just as suddenly.

“I don’t believe it,” I said as I all but pressed my nose up against the glass.

My breath fogged against the cold barrier and when I wiped the moisture away irritably, I saw that the creature had gone.

“We’re going to die, aren’t we, Dima?” Sam moaned as he clutched the sides of his head.

“No one’s going to die, Sammy,” I said in sudden surprise.

“But that farmer said it was an omen -,” Sam began yet I shook my head at him.

“He said no such thing,” I said a little sharply. “He only told us about the tale of that wierdo creature out there. Nothing about death.”

Sam remained convinced that it was a bad omen, however, no matter how much I reminded him of what the farmer had said. Sam had always been the over-dramatic sort and the amount of alcohol he’d consumed that night made him even worse. Finally, he admitted that it was Andy who’d told him about the death omen. All I could do was stare at him.

“I didn’t know he’d done that. Unless that’s what he was telling you earlier before you went all mysterious and tight-lipped,” I said and waited for Sam’s curt nod before I continued. “He was teasing you, Sam.”

“But he said it was -,” Sam moaned and I shook my head sharply at him.

“No! There’s no death omen. You’re still drunk, Sammy. Go to bed and sleep it off,” I ordered. “You should know better than to listen to the ramblings of another drunken fellow.”

I knew that Andy had been as drunk as Sam earlier in the evening. Sam didn’t seem to want to go to bed and I had to forcibly convince him to do so. Finally, he returned to bed although he was still distraught by the thoughts of death omens.

****

The following morning, I was awoken by the sound of shrill screaming coming from outside my bedroom window. I raced outside my dormitory building with Sam and the others from our lodge in tow. Like me, the others were all dressed in their sleepwear. I was grateful for the fact that none of us slept naked.

We found one of the gardeners, lying sprawled face down on the ground; one of the other students was still standing next to him, screaming in horror. I could just about make out through all the garbled mess that the gardener was dead. It didn’t take me long to realise that the man was lying directly on the spot where Sam and I had seen the tizzie-whizie the night before. Sam gave me a triumphant — if hangover-ridden — glance.

“Told you someone was going to die,” he whispered.

I didn’t remind him that he thought that we were going to die, not one of the staff members. It seemed churlish to state that when faced with a very real death on the grounds of the Academy. I didn’t get the chance to say anything at all, however, as we were all ushered away by a couple of our lecturers. We were all told to return to our rooms until further notice.

****

Later that morning, all of the Academy’s students reconvened in the Great Hall at Principal Vasylchuka’s request.

“As you may be aware, there was a death on the grounds this morning. I want to assure you that Jack, our gardener, died by natural causes,” she said grimly. “I don’t want any of you to be frightened by this or to spread any scandalous rumours.”

When I glanced at my friend seated next to me, I saw that Sam looked miserable at the principal’s speech. I guessed what he was thinking and sighed. I couldn’t say anything to him until we’d left the Great Hall and I nudged him.

“It wasn’t the tizzie-whizie, Sam,” I murmured with an attempt at an encouraging smile. “You heard Vasylchuka? The gardener died of natural causes.”

He didn’t seem convinced yet he didn’t offer an argument.

****

We heard later that day that the gardener had indeed died from a heart attack. That seemed to alleviate Sam’s mood a little yet when Andy laughed his way over to us, I frowned at the New Zealander. Andy was the only one laughing that morning and I thought it a little disrespectful, considering what had happened to the gardener. Sam didn’t look very happy about it either.

“So did you enjoy your little visitor last night?” Andy asked us.

“What little visitor?” I asked suspiciously.

“Ah! I knocked up a quick tizzie-whizie for you,” he said. “I saw you looking out the window at it. You looked frightened as shit, Sam.”

He laughed openly in Sam’s face who looked first alarmed, then shame-faced then truly angry.

“Are you telling me that you made that up?” Sam asked. “The death omens and everything?”

“Well. Yeah. You fell for it, didn’t ya?” Andy asked and he started laughing again. “Told ya all in the pub I’d heard that tale before. I’d knocked that bloody creature up ages ago in the hopes of scarings omeone with it. Got ya!”

Andy gave me a sly look before he winked.

“Dunno about our giant Ukrainian here. You didn’t look convinced,” he admitted and he looked a little disappointed by his own admission.

Perhaps he had been hoping I’d be frightened yet he should have known better.

“I wasn’t convinced,” I confirmed with a laugh. “Didn’t believe a word of it. Don’t forget, I’m descended from Cossacks. We don’t scare easily.”

“And you, my friend, are a smarter man than any of the rest of us because of it,” Andy said sagely. “You’ll make a fine dragon-rider one day.”

“If you start talking like Yoda, Andy, I will be forced to punch you in the face,” I threatened despite my sudden laughter. “Or I’ll ask Daria to eat you.”

Daria was my ragon and still a baby at that; she was far too young to eat anybody. Andy just walked away with another round of laughter.

“I can’t believe I fell for that,” Sam said as soon as Andy had gone.

He looked genuinely embarrassed by the turn of events.

“You were drunk at the time, Sam,” I reminded him. “Could have happened to anyone.”

“It didn’t to you, Jim,” Sam said ruefully.

“Because I wasn’t drunk,” I reminded him. “Can’t say what would have happened otherwise.”

Sam just snorted and rolled his eyes.

“The day you get drunk is the day you decide you’re straight,” he said.

“Ain’t happening,” I said firmly.

Sam just grinned and me and threaded one arm through mine.

“Join the club,” he said and over-accentuated a sashay as we walked towards the Food Hall. “What’s for lunch, anyway, Jim? Do you know?”

The question seemed so banal to me right then that all I could do was follow where Sam led and laugh.

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