He reached out a shaking hand towards the door handle, mentally pushing out the disquieting memories that stealthily encroached on his mind, and pulled the door towards him. The small bell chimed as the door swung outwards. The ringing sliced the air making it seen even quieter than before whilst the ringing echoed in the back of his head. The shop was empty of people. It was very small and appeared to get smaller as the walls slowly closed in around him. They were stacked with dusty shelves upon shelves, which were laden with large jars containing multi coloured sweets. Were they sweets? Or were they animals, pickled animals in jars of formaldehyde. Carl Gunstone squeezed his eyes tightly shut and opened them again; no, they were sweets. Even so, he couldn’t shake free the idea of how much the liquorice snakes looked like worms writhing in amongst each other and how the rainbow coloured gobstoppers looked like bloodshot eyeballs packed tightly in the jar.
‘Can I help you?’ A deep, husky, elderly woman’s voice croaked from the doorway. He didn’t know how long she’d been there, watching him. Her question did not sound impolite but at the same time it did not sound altogether friendly. She had probably watched his eyes darting over the sweets, suspiciously eyeing the vibrantly coloured wrappers; which were now fading into duller forms of their former selves. The dust particles danced in the air before mournfully falling back towards the ground as the woman’s feet disturbed them from their years of rest. She slowly shuffled towards the counter; which was situated just beyond him. Her feet barely left the ground as she tediously travelled from the doorway. The brown apron that covered her faded plain black dress moved gently, not with her movement but with the light breeze that seemed to squeeze through the cracks in the walls. The low squeaks from the rusted sign were still audible from inside although now they were slightly muffled. The sickly smell of sweets hung in the air choking and suffocating.
The woman now stood behind the counter; she leaned against it wearily resting her arm on the old fashioned till. Now she was out of the shadows he turned to look at her, out of curiosity and politeness. Her grey hair was tied back but wisps fell lifelessly around her face, which was small and shrunken as her loose wrinkled skin clung to her bones as if in order to stay on. She was not thin though, he could see from under her apron she was not completely segregated from indulgence, but what was expected from someone living in a sweet shop? It wasn’t like there was anything else to do and it was miles from nowhere; he presumed she lived there. Her eyes were directed down towards the counter as if examining something extremely interesting that she had never noticed before. Carl Gunstone looked down to see what had caught her attention; he couldn’t see anything so looked up again. As his eyes were rising her gaze caught his, her cold, hard, stare making his body go cold and at the same time taking his breath away. Her eyes were clear and bright, piercing blue, as if someone had taken a young inquisitive child’s eyes and placed them in the sockets of an aging decrepit woman.
‘Can I help you?’ she repeated, carefully sounding each syllable so he would understand. Her stare had disorientated him so her question took him off guard.
‘Um, no, yes, sorry yes. Well I hope you can.’ His blustered, fumbling words left the woman unphased, she just continued looking at him waiting for him to explain, not wanting to waste her own words on prompting him.
‘I’m lost.’
‘Oh,’ she replied with her same expressionless face. He relaxed slightly with relief thinking she understood and hoping she would now co-operate with him, but she did not care to expand on this, so after a few seconds he carried on.
‘You see I was out driving when…’
‘You don’t get a lot of people around these parts. Middle of nowhere you see…’
‘Yes, yes I do,’ he continued, agitated at being cut off mid sentence and irritated by her irrelevant comment. ‘And now it is getting late and I told the people I am staying with I would be there before dusk.’ He said this quickly trying to avoid her stopping him again.
‘No, they mustn’t worry…’ her gaze moved to fix on the shelves behind him and her mind drifted with it.
‘I have a map, if you could just point out where…’ he said, stopping as a strangle strangled laugh began to unexpectedly drone from the old woman. He looked at her puzzled.
‘You won’t find this place on a map,’ she said smiling with the laugh still slightly in her voice. He was now even more puzzled. ‘Just follow the road and you’ll get to a motorway.’ Then she began walking to the door she had come from. He turned around to thank her but she was already disappearing through the doorway.
He turned and walked out the front door of the shop, too scared to exhale a sigh of relief at leaving that shop although he had never been so scared of being in a sweetshop, since the last time he was in one. He physically shuddered at the thought. Carl Gunstone got back into his car and continued down the old, unmarked road.
