The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

moment, her face turned skywards, her eyes closed, enjoying the feel of a soft drizzle wetting her face, cooling after the stuffy heat of the cars blower. She locked the door, an old habit she’d brought with her from her previous home, where, without doubt, if she’d left it unlocked and even glanced away momentarily, everything of value would have been stripped from the interior as quickly as if it had been beamed up by Enterprise’s transporter. Pressing the keys into the pocket of her jeans, she made her way up the rutted track to the lane that ran the length of Farfield; the village nestling snugly between protruding hills, like it was squeezed into the cleavage of a buxom opera singer, where three branching combes merged together before running down to the sea.
    Reaching the lane, Meli turned right, her compressed lips parting slightly as she inhaled the damp earthy air into her lungs. It was exhilarating. Greedily, her eyes devoured the green and mellow landscape, which even in its bedraggled state, the vegetation dripping like a leaky showerhead, still managed to maintain its picture postcard beauty.
    Catching sight of Brambly Hollow farmhouse, set below her in the neck of the valley to her right, her thoughts turned to her elderly neighbour, Elsa Vitty, and her home, both of which could have come straight from a Steven King novel.
    According to the Estate Agent, Brambly Lodge had been nothing more than the crumbling shell of a stone barn until four years ago, when Elsa had had it converted into a three bedded house. The Estate Agent, who seemed to be in awe of Elsa, had gone into great details about her noble lineage. The Vitty family, who had owned the farm since the early nineteen hundreds, were renowned locally for their charitable works, particularly helping the church, and were staunch supporters of the small village community. Based purely on this knowledge, Meli had summed up the Vittys’ as being pillars of society, of good old fashioned stock. She had quickly concluded however, that this rose coloured history was now riddled with black spot, and she strongly suspected that if Elsa’s proud ancestors were watching over their present day descendent, that they would be sobbing into the satin linings of their coffins in despair and embarrassment.
    To say that Elsa, who was in her sixties, was a little eccentric was a bit like comparing Einstein to a muppet. Hunched over her walking stick, she was a regular sight, pottering around her dilapidated empire, muttering incoherently to herself, waving her stick menacingly at her only companion, an emaciated female tabby cat who trailed her everywhere she went, with the unwavering faithfulness of a shadow. Five foot nothing in height, Meli guessed her to be the same in girth. She had teeth like two rows of broken tombstones, a bulldozed nose and small beady eyes, a shade darker than a square of darkest chocolate, and her chin and upper lip sported a yard-broom-like growth of stiff white whiskers - this had been the cause of great amusement and confusion to the twins, who initially could not work out the sex of their neighbour. Where Meli thought of her as a stout wooden beer barrel on stunted, knobbly legs, the boys awarded her the title of Elsa Vitty, Animal Woman. When questioned about this they had explained quite graphically, that she had the beard of a billy goat, hair that resembled the coarse, matted tail of an unkempt cart horse, and which had more bluish-grey and white streaks in it than Buz, Aunt Julie’s old English sheepdog, and a nose that would look more at home on a Pug. Meli had quite rightly rebuked them for these cruel and disrespectful sentiments, while trying to contain the howls of laughter that caused painful stitches to develop beneath both sets of ribs.
    Elsa ’s choice of attire had also been the subject of frequent shock and yes, even distressed hilarity when they first moved in, but they had got used to her imaginative, customized style, which was a cross between jumble sale rejects and cast-offs from old TV dramas and comedies. Nora Batty walnut coloured tights, Barbara Cartland knock-you-out shocking pink twin set, and not forgetting Meli’s favourite, the Bag-lady outfit consisting of mango-chutney coloured corduroy skirt, overlaid with a fashionably jarring lime green knobbly cardigan and a pair of gravity defying canary yellow patent leather court shoes (how she ever managed to squeeze those chubby porkers into these was