The Night of the Grey Lady

Donald Maston was in a good frame of mind as he drove from the business meeting in Swindon. Had not the Vice-chairman himself said that he, Maston, was sure to get the promotion he was chasing? He had. Now as he drove home through the quiet Wiltshire countryside he hummed along to the tune that was being played on the car radio.Zeke, his bull terrier, lay on the seat beside him his head resting in his forelegs and his eyes closed in the shallow slumber peculiar to dogs. Now and then, perhaps as the car lurched around a bend, he would open his eyes and look up at the smiling atures of his master.Maston nursed the car through a series of bends just south of Devises. Soon he would reach the right hand turning on to the B3098 that would take him over to the Warminster Road and home. Kathy, his wife, would be pleased with the news he bore. This promotion would mean a few extra thousand per annum. That alone would bring joy to her heart if the thought of bettering himself did not. Not that she did not want him to get on. She did of course, but her mind was not of the calibre to understand the way he struggled ambitiously up the ladder of promotion.He swung the big car into the turn-off with a slight squeal of the tyres. The minor road was empty but he kept his speed down in the fifties as dark clouds scudded across the black sky obliterating the crescent moon. Rain began to spatter the windscreen as thunder rumbled and echoed close by. He had heard the thunder earlier but had mistakenly taken it for artillery fire on Salisbury Plain, which was not far away where sound was concerned.By the time he reached Edington the wipers were struggling to keep the windscreen clear so he turned into the car park of a small pub. He had deliberately refrained from drinking at the business meeting so felt justified in having one on the road. Besides, he excused, the rain might have eased by the time he was ready to leave again. These April showers rarely lasted long.The pub was warm, steam soon fogged his spectacles. He polished them on his handkerchief as he strode to the bar where a buxom barmaid served him with a Scotch and soda.. It was already ten minutes past ten. He had just enough time for a couple of drinks before he would have to leave. He put a match to his pipe and puffed until he was satisfied that it was burning evenly. He pulled himself up on a bar stool and surveyed the locals who sat in groups.He was mid-way through his second drink when he overheard some people at a table nearby discussing someone they referred to as the Grey Lady. It was a hobby of his, collecting stories and legends, which he hoped one day would make a book. He enquired of them who she was."Oh she's been haunting these parts for two hundred years or more. If you're going up towards Westbury you'll likely see her. Tonight's the night of the Grey Lady," explained one who looked like he might be a farmer."Why tonight?" asked Maston."She always walks on the fourteenth of April on account of that was the night her boy was killed by the Squire's coach and four.""Aye. Drawn by the best matched horses you ever did see. And jet black each of them. Like devils," offered a stout woman who could have been his wife."Sometimes you can only hear it. The roar of the wheels. The pounding of the phantom hooves and the snorting of the beasts," said an old man excitedly as he realised his audience was attentive. "Others have seen it and lived to tell the tale. But not for long."Maston listened enthralled by the tales they had to tell of those who had seen the apparition and died violently either there on the spot or later at home. He suspected the tales were embroidered for his benefit but listened just the same, finding them highly entertaining.He left the snug hospitality of the little bar rather relunctantly and ran to his car through for the deluge if anything had increased. As he climbed in his faithful companion merely opened his eyes, cast a bored look at his master before returning toits former position on the seat. Maston started the car on his journey home. He tuned the radio into a talk-in programme and soon forgot the fanciful tales he had heard in the pub.He was forced to drive at a snail's pace as the visibility was reduced by the glare of his own headlights reflecting off the torrential rain. He contented himself that once he reached the main trunk road at Westbury the going would get better and he would soon be home.He had barely gone a couple of miles when the headlights picked out the stooped figure of an old woman walking on his side of the road towards Westbury. He saw through the curtain of rain that she was hobbling and that the shawl covering her head and shoulders was saturated, as was her skirt which clung to her bony frame. He slowed and stopped alongside her before the tales he had heard in the pub flashed like a warning in his mind.He heard the old man saying, "Tonight is the night of The Grey Lady."He grinned sheepishly at the sensations that were conjured up by his imagination. It's ridiculous, he thought as he leaned over the dog and wound the window down."Can I give you a lift? Where are you going?"By way of an answer the old woman pointed to a road sign behind her while struggling to keep he head bowed against the onslaught of the weather. Maston looked up and saw that the sign said Westonbury three miles."Get in, love." He opened the rear door but had to grapple with Zeke as he let out a terrific howl and lunged at the old woman as she scrambled into the car. Maston was instantly aware of the cold, damp smell as he closed the door behind her. A sharp command from him and the dog ceased struggling though he would not lie down but sat facing the woman growling fiercely, his top lip curled in a vicious snarl.Maston glanced over his shoulder to reassure the old woman that she was safe but he saw that her head was bowed as though asleep and her shawl completely covered her face."Where shall I drop you?" he asked as he drove the car forward. He received no reply. "They said nothing about her being deaf and dumb," he muttered to himself then bit his lip when he realised how unkind he was being. Grey Lady indeed. All ladies would be grey in this downpour. Zeke continued to growl at the huddled shape on the back seat.They had not travelled far when the smell of damp decay emanating from the old woman became so strong that he was forced to drive with the window wide open. He was beginning to regret picking her up. He glanced in the rear-view mirror out of curiosity but the woman was still in the same position with her face hidden beneath the shawl, yet Maston had a spine tingling sensation that she was watching him.A mile further up the road he saw two faint lights heading towards them on their side of the road and flashed his main beam. They had the look of coach lamps but this coach was travelling like the wind. As it drew nearer he was able to make out the shapes of the four black horses, lathered and straining at their bits. The hideous coachman, a skeleton wielding a whip, lashed at the wild looking horses as they ran directly at the car.Then it all happened at once. The dog let out a loud chilling sound that was neither bark nor growl and launched itself at the two skeletal arms that encircled Maston's body, holding the powerful car on a collision course with the phantom coach and its driver.Zeke tugged and pulled at the bones in a frenzy. Maston stared, mesmerised by the grotesque face behind him. The wind coming in through the open window blew the shawl away to reveal the grinning skull of the old woman.The Grey Lady.Her eyes, the only flesh left in the yellowed skull were dark and piercing. Her bottom jaw dropped open in a wild inhuman and grating laugh; her head was thrown from side to side by the wild erratic motion of the car.Maston's eyes bulged in their sockets. His face had already taken on the cold grey pallor of the dead, his lips pale and bloodless, stretched back over his teeth and gums in terror. A hysterical sob issued from deep in his throat, all that his fear sickened mind was capable of. No longer was he master of his own actions. He had tried to apply the brakes but his legs would not move to obey him. He fought a losing battle to retain his sanity as the car and coach drew together. At the last moment the hold on his body was gone; the Grey Lady had disappeared. He wrestled with the steering wheel as the car swerved. He had a brief glimpse of the ghostly coach as it sailed over him then the car going into a skid, mounting an embankment before smashing into a gnarled oak tree.The next morning, as the mist began to evaporate into the air, a passing police car stopped to investigate. They found Maston slumped over what remained of the steering wheel. One of the constables leaned into the car. The smell of whiskey was still on the lips of the dead man."Another drunk who should never have driven," he muttered with the cold-heartedness that years on the force had left him with."Shame about the dog though, said his colleague. "He was enjoying that bone when it happened."