Scary Stories - Twist in the Tale Series

Uncle Pete's Knife

I used to lovegoing to Uncle Pete's. It involved two buses for one thing, whichfor me, at seven years old, was quite a big thing. It was alwaysan adventure travelling what to me seemed such a vast distance. Iwas the great explorer setting out into the unknown to discoverstrange new lands.

The best thing was, Mum enjoyed the day out as much as me. It wasso rare to see her happy in those days. I would sit by her side,always on the upper deck so I could see the worlds I'd come toconquer, and she would chat away to me like a little girl insteadof the grown woman she really was.

Then we'd arrive at Uncle Pete's, and of course everything isn'tall perfect even when you're only seven. I never understood whyMum cared so much for her sister, my Aunt Brenda. To me she wasthe monster from every scary story I'd ever heard. She wasenormous; nothing like Mum at all who was small and neat, you'dhardly believe they were related. I swear the ground shook whenshe moved and she would glower at me with piggy eyes almostburied in a round, bloated face. I was terrified of her.

Mum loved her though. As soon as we entered the house they wouldrush to embrace. I was always petrified she would crush Mum inher massive arms. Luckily, she never seemed to have the desire tocuddle me. Then they would begin to talk and it was like theyhadn't seen each other for a lifetime. It was as if I wasn'tthere anymore. Mum would forget all about me. I didn't mind toomuch though. As I've said, it was unusual to see Mum happy inthose days: times were hard then. And there was always Uncle Pete.

Now my Uncle Pete was two people. I don't mean he was split downthe middle or anything like that. It's just that in the house hewas in Aunt Brenda's domain and he couldn't be the real UnclePete. Instead he had to be this quiet little man who sat in acorner, hidden behind a newspaper, never speaking. He wouldhowever, sometimes sneak me a sly little wink if he thought AuntBrenda wasn't watching - which she usually was. Then she wouldwither him with her piggy eyes. I learned pretty early on in lifethat there are some women who hate men, even when they live withthem.

There was always tea and sandwiches. An ordeal in itself. UnclePete was allowed out of his corner and we would all sit at thetable. Woe betide me if I made any crumbs. Aunt Brenda wouldnever say anything to me, she would carry on chatting merrilyaway like an overgrown schoolgirl with Mum, but she would look atme. That's when I first learned the meaning of the expression 'Iflooks could kill.' Aunt Brenda definitely didn't like children,especially if they happened to be boys. Uncle Pete had no suchproblem. He had long ago mastered the art of eating withoutmaking crumbs. I don't know how he did it. Me, I could nevermanage it.

After an age the meal would be over. It was then Aunt Brendawould look at Uncle Pete and it was as if a mental communicationwas passed. She didn't speak - now I come to think of it, I don'trecall Aunt Brenda and Uncle Pete ever talking to each other -yet an instruction had been given. It was time to get out of theway so that Aunt Brenda and Mum could get down to some reallyserious gossiping of the type that men aren't allowed to hear.

Uncle Pete would stand up and look shyly at me; I would look atMum, who would smile her permission after a quick glance to checkwith Aunt Brenda (again, all this by some weird telepathy), andoff we would go. Like a pair of schoolboys let off unexpectedlyearly from detention; not gleefully running because they areaware that the schoolmistress is watching and might call themback, but as quickly as decorum and dignity would allow I'dfollow Uncle Pete down the long back garden to his shed.

Uncle Pete's shed was right at the bottom of the garden, tuckedbehind a hedge. It was ancient and dilapidated - I was alwayssure to shut the door gently behind me for fear the whole thingwould come down on our heads. It was messy, dirty and untidy andthe spiders were monstrous, but it was all Uncle Pete's. It wasthe complete opposite to the neatness and cleanliness of thehouse where Aunt Brenda reigned supreme; this was Uncle Pete'slittle kingdom and it was here that, at last, the real Uncle Petewould appear.

I was being serious when I said Uncle Pete was two people. In theshed, in his own space (as the current idiom as it), Uncle Petewas an entirely different man from the one who cowered beforeAunt Brenda. He somehow grew and became indefinably stronger andmore confident. Best of all though, in his shed Uncle Pete was ahappy man; not someone who raised pity in even a seven-year-old,as was the case when he was in the company of his spouse.

He would sit in his rickety old armchair and I would sit at hisfeet on the comfortable little stool he'd made specially for me.First he would light the pipe he never smoked in the house, theone he'd made himself, then he would take up his knife and apiece of wood and start to carve. Though I've never smokedmyself, to this day whenever I smell tobacco I am transportedback to that old shed. Puffing luxurious clouds of smoke to thewarped ceiling, his knife whittling and shaping, chips of woodfalling to the already littered floor, Uncle Pete would begintalking in his soft voice.

How he would talk! His eyes focused on some far-distant point, hewould tell me in vivid and picturesque detail about all hisadventures; about all the marvellous and exciting things he hadseen and done. In that draughty, tumbledown shed Uncle Pete toldme stories that made my heart race and my imagination fly.Stories such as of the time he was exploring the Arctic when apolar bear attacked him and how he'd single-handedly fought it toits death, skinned it and made a coat from the fur. How he'd beenthe captain of a submarine when a giant octopus suddenly appearedand wrapped its tentacles around the craft in an attempt to crushit, how he'd put on a diving suit and gone out to face it aloneand how he'd left the creature helplessly tied in knots. He toldme of the time in India when he'd saved the life of the daughterof a rajah who was being savaged by a man-eating tiger; how he'drefused the rajah's gift of his daughter's hand in marriage andenough riches to make him the most powerful man in the world.

What stories! There didn't seem to be a corner of the world UnclePete hadn't been to, no amazing exploit he hadn't performed. Isat rapt and spellbound while he told me of ever more daringadventures, all the time the scent of tobacco and bared woodblending in an exotic mix while he smoked and carved.

Far be it for me to suggest Uncle Pete was a liar; yet at timeshis stories stretched even my young credulity. I didn't then havethe cynicism the years since have given me; but even so Icouldn't help noticing little, shall we say, anomalies.

For one thing: at the time I'm talking about Uncle Pete was nomore than middle-aged. Even at the tender age of seven it struckme that he had done well to cram so many experiences into arelatively short span. Another thing is that Uncle Pete wasn't...well, what you would call a big man. Nor was he, as the modernterm as it, very macho. In fact, to borrow another uncharitablemodernism, it might be said he was a bit of a wimp. Remember,this is a man who lived in fear of his wife. At times it taxedthe imagination to picture him tackling a full-grown crocodile ora twenty-foot snake. Perhaps all those years living with AuntBrenda had shrunk him?

Nevertheless, I loved his stories, and I loved Uncle Pete. Whatmatter if his tales were whoppers? Not that I'm saying they were,of course.

Another little clue as to the veracity of his stories was when heretold them... as he inevitably did. Perhaps he had a bad memory,but with each retelling little details would change. The site ofthe underground cavern where he encountered a lost species ofgiant sub-humans might have been in Borneo in one recounting,while it would switch to Peru in another. The assassin from whomhe rescued the famous MP might have been armed with a gun in oneversion, in another a knife. Little inconsistencies like thesewould keep creeping in. Strange to say, though, the one storythat never changed, no matter how many times he told it, was howhe came to own his knife.

I won't repeat the entire story - Uncle Pete tended to go on abit. Briefly: he was in Africa when he came across an old nativebeing set upon by several members of a rival tribe intent onusing him as the main ingredient in their cooking pot. It goeswithout saying Uncle Pete rescued him. The ancient native turnedout to be a powerful witch doctor who was so grateful he tookUncle Pete to his hut. There, after performing an elaborateritual accompanied by much dancing and chanting, the witch doctorpresented Uncle Pete with a knife that he insisted was imbuedwith marvellous powers. It was this very knife that Uncle Petealways used to carve with.

Now I'm not saying there was anything special about that knife.It was fairly ordinary looking; though it did have some strangesymbols on the blade, which Uncle Pete maintained were magical.The handle was bound with a greasy, black leather-like material.Uncle Pete told me this was human skin. Apart from these featuresthe knife looked much like any other. It was what Uncle Pete didwith the knife that was special.

I don't know how to describe how fascinating it was to watch thatold knife in Uncle Pete's hands as formless pieces of wood turnedinto works of art before my eyes. You name it - he could carve it.Animals, insects, people, buildings - his shed was full of hiscreations. They were all perfect in every detail, and the onlytool he ever used was that knife.

I don't want to keep using the word magic; but sometimes, as Ilistened to Uncle Pete's stories, my eyes glued to whatevercarving he was working on, I swear that Uncle Pete's hands hadlittle to do with the process. He hardly even watched what he wasdoing himself; his eyes would be staring off into the fardistance of whatever story we were both lost in. Yet, there infront of me, as if somehow conjured from the wood, wouldgradually appear a perfect miniature. I know the imagination canrun a little wild when you're young, but to me it always seemedas if the knife was doing the carving; not Uncle Pete. It was asthough it had a life and a mind of its own and it was the knifethat controlled Uncle Pete's hands - not the other way round.Maybe the confined atmosphere of the shed and the thick tobaccosmoke combined with Uncle Pete's quiet, gentle, hypnotic voicemade my impressionable young mind more susceptible to believingalmost anything - I don't know. What I do know is that even afterall the years that have passed since then I can still see thatknife chipping and paring away and another marvellous objectslowly forming. I can still also see Uncle Pete's hands,strangely out of sync with what the knife was doing.

Just one more thing about that knife. The only time Uncle Peteraised his voice to me was one day when I went to pick it up.He'd put it to one side while he relit his pipe and my curiositygot the better of me. I never saw him move as fast: he grabbed itbefore I could even touch it. His face went livid and he shoutedat me never to do it again; no one else but he could ever touchthe knife. He soon calmed down when he had the knife back in hishand and grinned shamefacedly at me. He said he was sorry; hehadn't meant to shout at me, it was just that he was worried formy safety. He went on to say that the old witch doctor had put akind of spell on the knife that meant that as long as he lived itwould always protect him and itself and it was very dangerous foranyone to try to take it from him. Just another of Uncle Pete'sstories.

I could go on for much longer about the happy times with UnclePete, but I would only bore you. Anyway, all happy times come toan end at some point.

The carving would be finished, and another perfect elephant orTower of London would rest in Uncle Pete's hands. It was like awhistle signalling full-time had sounded. He would look up as iffrom a trance, blink his eyes, stop talking and put the carvingto one side with all the rest. I don't think he ever botheredwith them again once they were finished. Then he would get up,give me one of his sad looks, take my hand and lead me back toAunt Brenda's realm.

Once back in the house, he would revert back to the other UnclePete and go sit in his chair in the corner. It was as though heceased to exist from then, and I must confess to my shame that Iignored him just like everybody else. The magic was over. Soonafter, Aunt Brenda and Mum would kiss and embrace, much to mydisgust. To my eternal gratitude Aunt Brenda never kissed me.Then would begin the journey home.

Like I said, all good times come to an end. Suddenly there wereno more trips to Uncle Pete's.

Mum cried a lot. It was a long time before she told me what hadhappened. Even then, I don't think she told me the full storyand, after all this time, it's still vague to me.