The Guardians

Phil checked his picture in the webcam and clicked the “Join meeting” button.

“Good morning, Mr O’Dowd.”

“Call me Phil.”

“Ok, Phil, how are you today?”

“Good, thanks.”

“Thank you for joining us this morning. We’ve got your CV and references; everything looks great. Are you ready to start, or do you need any more time?

“No, I’m good to go”

“Right, can I dive in by asking why you want to be a property guardian?”

“Well, as you can see from my CV, since I moved south I’ve worked in hospitality, kitchens and pubs and the like. I was a bar manager when the pandemic started. But as you know, that has all dried up now.”

“Are you currently employed, Phil?”

“No, I was furloughed for a bit, and since then I’ve been made redundant.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“So I’m looking for something that will tie me over until things get back to normal.”

“I can appreciate that. Do you understand what the responsibilities of a property guardian are?”

“Yes, keep the building maintained and clean. Inform you if there are any problems. Hopefully prevent and, at the very least, immediately report any break-ins or vandalism.”

“Yes, that is all correct. Not much to it, just common sense really. Just look after the place like it is your own. You fit the profile we are looking for, and we can add you to the waiting list.”

“Waiting list? How long will that take?”

“Oh, the average is about four to six months-”

“I can’t wait that long...I need something now, like...”

“Is there anyone you can stay with while you wait? I’m afraid demand has been very high with the lockdown.”

“No, no, nothing like that.” I can’t move back in with my Dad. I just can’t, Phil thought.

The agent paused, “Well, there is this one place, but it hasn’t proved popular.” The agent sighed “Have you ever been to Dunstable, Phil?”

“No...”

“Lucky you, it’s a crap town in Bedfordshire, next to Luton. There is this pub that’s closed and being done up. Gonna reopen as a tapas bar. The Saracens Head, the Sarees as it’s known locally, not the most politically correct of names, but it’s an old coaching inn.”

“A pub? Sounds like my kind of thing.”

“Well, exactly. Sorry, Phil, but I have to ask this...you haven’t had any mental health problems, have you? Anything like that?”

“No,” Phil lied. Best not to mention his time in hospital.

“Looks like the last two guardians were, well, let’s just say flaky - they didn’t last there long”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

“Good, probably what the place needs is a down-to-earth bloke like you. Just one last question, I know this sounds silly, but you don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

“I’ve poured a lot of spirits in my time but never seen any ghosts.” Phil joked awkwardly.

“That’s it...I’ll send through the contract and details of the property.”

Phil stepped off the bus at the Asda, slung his rucksack on, and removed his mask. Walking through the town, he found it dull and deserted - it wasn’t the affluent Home Counties burgh full of history he was expecting from the Wikipedia article. Most of the shops, apart from the odd Polski Schlep, estate agent or charity shop, were boarded up and looked like they’d been that way long before the pandemic. Woolworths and Blockbuster were long gone, but their signs still hung above vacant premises.

The centre of the town was still a crossroads - two ancient highways meeting - the Roman Watling Street and the much older Icknield Way, both now lost under the modern tarmac and A-road designations. Near to the crossroads was a plaque marking the site of the town’s stocks and whipping post. Phil wondered what kind of community would raise funds to gleefully commemorate such barbarism.

Exploring further, he found the Priory, an imposing medieval church, its oaken doors still scarred by musket balls from the civil war. Doors he found as barred to him as they had been to the Cavaliers - the Priory was closed due to COVID.

Phil made his way across the priory garden towards where his phone marked the Saracen’s Head. Across the playing field, a group of lads in hoodies yelled abuse at him. Just like home, thought Phil as he kept walking

Turning a corner, he found himself at the rear of the grand old inn, The Saracen’s Head. Clearly very old - early eighteenth, maybe even seventeenth-century whitewashed with black wooden beams, but the windows were blocked with ugly modern metal covers.

At the back gate, Phil located a small external key safe; he rotated the dials in sequence and to his relief, it clicked open, revealing a big bunch of keys on a ring. Unlocking the padlock on the gate, he swung it open, revealing what would have been the stable yard. Where bewigged travellers would have stepped down from their carriages stood a skip full of rubble and junk. Opening another door, Phil entered the bar. The floor of the room was sunken and lower than the pavement out front; the road had risen above the inn over the years.

Switching on the lights revealed a panelled room. A Union Jack behind the bar, a sad glitterball hanging from the ceiling. In one corner was a small pool table and a battered dartboard. The bottles were all gone behind the bar, beer cloths over the taps, and the empty till was open. Chairs were stacked on tables as if it had closed the night before. On the bar itself, like a welcome gift, lay an iron crowbar.

Looking around, Phil was saddened to see this grand old coaching inn empty and derelict. Probably in its latter days it hadn’t been much of a place - all strong continental lager and fruit machines, but still, somewhere you could get a pint. Now nothing. For a moment he allowed himself to daydream of doing the place up and reopening it as its landlord before heading upstairs.

The rooms above were small and cramped, the beamed walls at odd angles and the floor uneven. There was a bed in one room; otherwise, it had been stripped of furniture. Phil threw his sleeping bag on the bare mattress and unpacked his few possessions. Not much but a roof over his head and the history of the place interested him. At any other time, he would have headed to another open pub in the town, had a word with the bar staff to see if there was work to be found and if there was fun to be had, but for now that wasn’t an option. Phil was just glad he had a phone signal, a Bluetooth speaker and a book.

That night Phil fell asleep easily; the journey must have tired him out, but he was awakened in the night by the desperate wail of a cat. In the darkness he was disoriented and took a moment to remember where he was as he groped for his phone. One thirty-three AM in Dunstable, still in the teeth of a pandemic, his foggy mind recalled. And yes, there was again a pleading meow along with a desperate scratching sound, so close it seemed as if the animal was in the room with him.

Turning on the light, the sound intensified, screeching now, the clawing frantic. Phil located the noises - they were coming from a section of the wall between his and the adjacent bedroom. There was no door opening into this space, and so Phil rushed around into the other room. But there again was just a blank wall. The cat sounded in terrible distress, clawing at something so hard it could only have been injuring itself.

On all sides, the wall was sealed; somehow the creature must have fallen or crawled into a cavity space. Phil tapped and heard a hollow sound; yes, definitely there was some kind of void in the wall.

With the crowbar, he was sure he could break it open quickly, but that would mean damaging the property. But he couldn’t leave the cat to slowly die there; there was more pleading mewling and frenzied scratching, and Phil made up his mind. He ran downstairs, grabbed the crowbar and returned to take a swing.

The wall was a mixture of old wallpaper, plaster and horsehair and broke open easily after the second blow. The cat instantly went silent, and the stale scent of old corruption poured out from the hole he had made. Reaching inside, his hand immediately fell upon something. It was furry but the hair seemed matted, stiff and brittle, and disturbingly, it crumbled a little under his fingers. He pulled the object out and let out a yell as the dried corpse of a black cat fell upon the floor. The thing was completely desiccated, mummified almost and had clearly been dead for years. The back of the dead cat was arched, its mouth open in a permanent silent hiss. Confused and shocked, Phil shone his phone light into the space, looking for the live cat he had heard, but inside there was nothing else save an old green bottle filled with rusted nails.

Tasting the bile in his mouth, Phil shoved the dead cat and the bottle into a plastic bag, marched outside into the yard and slung the bag into the skip.

In the morning Phil wondered whether he had dreamt the whole thing and smashed a hole in the wall sleepwalking. But the bag and the cat were still in the skip, so at least that part was real...unless of course, he was ill again...Phil didn’t like to think about that.

Should he report the cat? No, probably not; the whole story was just too strange, and the new owners were hardly going to want a taxidermy disaster. He was confident he could patch up the hole - if the place was going to be redecorated anyway, it wouldn’t need a professional job. But still the whole thing disturbed him, had he found the dead cat and hallucinated the rest? The hole in the wall troubled him, and so he threw his coat over it.

That day he trudged through the grey town to Asda, did his paltry bachelor's shopping in his mask, checked out at the automatic till and spoke to nobody. Pizza, ready meals, sliced bread, coffee and a four-pack of beers.

When he got back to the pub and stepped inside, he dropped his shopping bag. Without hearing or seeing anything, he immediately sensed he was not alone. Moving quietly, he stepped into the bar. Something had changed, but he couldn’t quite place it; nothing seemed broken or taken. He quickly checked the kitchen.

Climbing the stairs, he heard a door slam above him. Feeling uneasy and foolish at the same time, he called out, “Hello, anyone here?” There was no reply. Unthinking, he charged up the stairs and ran from room to room expecting to run into a burglar at any moment. No one was there. Just rooms in an old pub; being alone must be getting to him. He was jumping at creaking floorboards and doors closing in draughts. Laughing at himself, he threw himself on the bed. And then Phil realised what had changed in the bar; the chairs- someone had taken them off the tables and set them up as if the pub were reopening. No, no, that couldn’t be; he must have done that himself and forgotten.

That evening he played music loud on the speaker, sang along and made the effort to cook himself a proper meal. He ate in the bar as if he were a punter dining off one of the chipped plates he’d found in a cupboard. He wondered what the coach passengers had feasted upon in the Saree’s glory days: a jugged hare, perhaps?

Phil looked up, and a pint glass flew past his head, smashing against the wall behind him. Leaping to his feet, he spun around looking for an assailant. Again, no one - he rushed at the bar looking for someone hiding behind it, but nothing.

Then he noticed the trapdoor in the floor behind the bar; it led down to the cellar, the one room he hadn’t checked yet. And he knew enough about pubs like this that there would be another trapdoor on the street allowing barrels to be rolled down into the cellar. What if someone had broken in that way, perhaps one of those youths he’d seen in the park? The trapdoor wasn’t bolted - that was careless.

Phil was tempted to lock it and put something heavy on top. But his job was to protect the property; he glanced back into the bar room; the broken glass was still on the floor - he hadn’t imagined that.

Now angry, he threw open the trapdoor and switched on the lights, climbing down the wooden stairs. Phil had changed the barrel in a pub many times before, and in happier days he would have thought nothing of this descent. But now, alone and facing a violent intruder, the cellar was a hostile place. Phil hesitated on the top step; perhaps he should call the police? No fuck that, he could handle himself. This was his pub now.

But the cellar was empty, just an old metal keg, a trolley, and some empty wine shelves. The exterior trapdoor was firmly bolted from the inside, with no sign of forced entry. Perplexed, Phil searched the cellar, checking for hidden rooms, but found nothing.

On one of the shelves was a book, dusty with a laminated cover - “Folklore of England”. Inside the cover was an old library card - Bedfordshire County Libraries. The last stamp was October 1989 - some fine to pay on this book then. An old, dried, stiff Post-it note served as a bookmark, and the book fell open on a page with a picture of the blackened corpse of a cat. The photo caught Phil’s attention, and he read the text beneath it:

“In the British Isles, the dried or mummified bodies of cats are frequently found concealed within structures and are believed to have been placed there to protect the building and its occupants from harm. In some cases, the animals are found deliberately posed as if in the midst of attack and often accompanied by witch bottles. It is believed that this was part of a secret folk magic practice that may have come from the Romans to the British.”

Just as he came to the end of reading this passage, the lights died, and the trapdoor above him slammed shut with a loud bang. Alarmed, Phil reached into his pocket for his phone, but it wasn’t there - he must have left it on the table. In the dark, he tried to find his bearings, climbing the narrow stairs, fearing the trapdoor was barred against him. With great relief he was able to push the door open and climb out behind the bar.

The next few days and nights were hard on Phil. He kept the cellar bolted, he patrolled the pub, checking and double checking the locks. In the daytime he went for long walks up onto the downs looking down on the shabby town. Often when he returned he would find chairs piled in corners, plates broken or a row of shot glasses face down on the bar.

“Been busy have we?, ” he’d mutter to himself.

At night he would hear footsteps on the stairs, door slamming and then one night the juke box started up playing the football song Vindaloo. Phil unplugged it the next day.

In the evening Phil used his phone to read more about the cat. He read in the East Anglian Times of walled up cats found in old pubs in Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds, The London Museum website had a picture of a mummified cat found with a mouse in its mouth in a tobacco works.

And then after one particularly difficult night Phil returned to the skip in the courtyard and dug out a plastic bag and took it back inside. He bundled the contents into the hole in the bedroom wall and taped it sealed.

“Hello Phil, thanks for joining us on the call, as mentioned in the email we have these check-ins once a month to see how our guardians are doing in the properties.”

“Hello”

“So how are you getting on? Any problems.”

“No, it's been very quiet here, I noticed there’s dry rot in one of the bedrooms and I’m afraid I dropped a pint glass.”

“Yes you mentioned it in the email - that’s fine these things happen nothing to worry about. Not getting too lonely I hope.”

“No I’ve befriended a local stray cat, keeps me company”

“Well we don’t normally encourage pets in properties but it is lockdown and I guess if it's not causing any trouble - perhaps fending off the mice?”

“Oh he’s no trouble at all - you might say he’s the real guardian of the pub.”