Curfew
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Curfew
You can hear the bells ringing, sounding out across the town, shattering the calm of the dusk. The clocktower is just visible across the red tiled rooftops. Just past eight, a strange time to sound.
“Curfew,” says an old guy by the door, sipping on his pint. A quiet courtyard behind a pub, wrought iron chairs and tables, trees that had half-heartedly shaded the place now casting strange shadows across the darkening sky. “Used to be they’d close the town gates every night. Lock everyone in the town.”
There was an argument that sounded well-trodden, about the night-rider street and the postern gate. You though are considering this. What of those caught here when the gates close? They would have to stay overnight. A boon for the innkeepers, unless they chose to sleep in the streets.
Which they wouldn’t. “With the gates shut people would let their pigs loose into the streets. To eat up all the rubbish that had been thrown out.” The old guy winked. “Eco-friendly.”
“That’s why you need to shut your doors. And your gates to your garden or the pigs will come in and eat you out of house and home.”
There was a rattle at the gate to the alley and conversation stopped. It opened and in spilled half a dozen people, holidaymakers laughing at finding the pub here at the end of the dark footpath. Everyone turned away.
They left the gate open. They don’t close the town any more at eight o’clock, they don’t let the pigs out. The curfew bell is just tradition, the town charter won’t be revoked by the king if they don’t ring it. We all know that, all of us who live in the town.
So no one is looking, except you, when the ghost of a pig noses it’s way into the beer garden, looking for ghost rubbish to eat.
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