Her name was Carly, Carly Richardson and Ricky had never seen anyone so beautiful in his, as yet, short life. At five feet seven, with dark brown hair and a smile that could charm the birds out of the trees she was everything that he imagined a woman could possibly be. Her eyes were like pools and he would willingly have drowned in them. She was twenty-two to his twenty-three and it had seemed as though they were destined for each other. She hailed from Springfield, a smallish town just outside of Nashville and Ricky had used that as the ice-breaker, asking her how Homer and Marge were doing. It made her laugh although he imagined she’d heard it all before.

Ricky Madison was a Chicago boy born and bred who lived and died with the White Sox in summer and the Bears in winter. He loved his job at Mullins Motor Mechanic in Lincoln Park and could strip down and rebuild the engine of most cars you’d care to name. He’d been there since high school and although the older guys sometimes gave him a hard time, he knew that they were only kidding. Had to keep the new kid on the block under control didn’t they? Hell he’d been there almost six years but to the rest of them he was still a baby.

He’d been out with his buddies one Saturday when Joey, his best friend, had suggested the trip to Orlando. Why they hadn’t thought of it before was a mystery, but by the end of the following week all the arrangements were in place and they were on American Airlines Flight 714 out of O’Hare for a week at Disney World. It was a place he’d wanted to go since he was in short pants, but mom and dad never had the money. Now he was earning for himself things were different, and it wasn’t like he had a family to support.

They’d spent the first few days messing around on the rides, eating too much, drinking way too much and generally acting like some stupid bunch of kids, when they bumped into a group of girls out on a similar vacation. The numbers were equal and a pairing off was almost inevitable. Joey had smiled at Carly but her eyes had been fixed only on Ricky. There was an immediate chemistry between them and Joey slapped him on the back, winked and strolled off arm-in-arm with one of the others. Moving around the theme park during the daytime, the group split up after dinner to go off in pairs. Ricky and Carly ended up at the beach, just holding hands and staring into each others’ eyes. Strange – all alone with a girl and all he could do was gaze into her eyes, her beautiful eyes, so beautiful that he’d never noticed their colour until right now. They were brown, dark brown, no………not dark brown, almost black.

The holiday was over too soon, and on the day they all packed up to go home Ricky and Carly exchanged addresses and telephone numbers promising to keep in touch. Realistically, he told himself, that never happened. She would go back to her boyfriend and their meeting would be nothing but a dim and distant, albeit pleasant, memory. He smiled as he and his buddies got off the plane back at an overcast and rainy O’Hare, shook the thoughts from his head and resigned himself to the daily grind back at the workshop.

The phone was ringing when he got to his flat at the end of that first day back at work, and usually it was his mom ‘just checking that he’s gotten back alright’. Sometimes he wondered if she wanted to know that he’d changed his underpants each day.

“Hi mom, how’re you doin’?”

There was a silence at the other end before the voice he hadn’t expected cut in and sent his mind reeling back to Florida.

“’Mom’? “ She laughed and he could feel his face starting to burn with embarrassment. “Ricky, it’s Carly. Don’t have to clock in do you?”

“No, no……..” He stalled while his brain caught up with his mouth. “She does this all the time. Hey, it’s you.”

“It’s me…………..I missed you.”

“Me too.” Jeez he could feel the treacle in his throat with the way the conversation was going. “You got back ok then?” Ugh, what a bummer of a thing to say.

They talked forever about everything and nothing as he sat on the floor with his back up to the wall. The coat he had taken off was still in the hallway where it had fallen from the rack, and the rest of his daily kit was just inside the door. Her voice was like a summer breeze and blew away all the disappointment which comes with the first week back to work. She did take him by surprise however, by suggesting a trip to The Windy City in a couple of weeks. She had some more time due, and as her aunt in Rockford had been asking after her for a while; she could kill two birds with one stone. Ricky agreed without thinking, now sensing that something special was on the horizon; maybe there was no boyfriend after all. A rainy day just got a whole lot brighter.

It would be another two weeks before she could make the trip, and each day seemed to drag like someone had tied a concrete block to his feet. Back in the workshop he’d been working on an old Mustang when he had to pull out from underneath and go get a wrench from the tool rack. Whitesnake had been blasting out of the radio at top volume; heavy metal was the order of the day at Mullins and you either listened or ignored it. He kind of liked the beat, and ‘drummed’ his way across the shop as Chris Frazier went into one his solos. The crackle that greeted Ricky’s arrival at the rack where the Hitachi hung had heads turning all around the work room, and from out of nowhere the sound of two voices in close harmony ‘oozed’ across the airwaves.

“On a weekend pass I wouldn’t have had time

To get home and marry that baby of mine…”.

“Madison!” The raucous holler of Steve Kelly, the foreman, split the air like some thunderclap “What the hell is that?”

Ricky turned, hands spread out at shoulder height in a gesture of innocence and shook his head in bemusement.

“I didn’t do nothin’ Steve.

“Goddamn it! Put that back on to rock or I’ll have your ass on a plate!”

Ricky’s turn was rendered irrelevant as the radio crackled once more before returning to the popular dose of thunder and lightning which was the trademark of the group fronted by Dave Coverdale. He stared at the Hitachi and frowned; where the hell had that come from, and who was it? He shook his head, walked slowly back to the Mustang and gave the radio one more look before sliding back under the chassis.

Ricky had consigned the incident with the radio to the back of his mind when, on the very next day, he was in Weston’s Electricals during his lunch break. He’d decided that his old TV was past its best and had been looking around for a while. Standing now before a 28” Sanyo HD flat screen he was pondering over the price tag. All the set displays flipped from their individual channels and played out a grainy black and white image of two young men singing to a couple of guitars. Everyone in the shop stopped what they were doing and gazed around.

“So I went to the chaplain and he authorised

Me to send for my ebony eyes.”

The store manager was out of his office in an instant to fix what was clearly a problem with the shop’s receiving equipment. Ricky replaced the price ticket in its place on the shelf and moved away – in that instant all TV sets returned to their original stations. The manager had not noticed his retreat and making his way to the door, Ricky turned once again and frowned at what had just happened. He had no idea who the two singers were, but now that he had seen them on the screen he was going to find out.

Deciding to ask for the afternoon off, he pleaded the onset of a cold as the reason. Steve gave him one of his famous sideways looks, but since the job on the Mustang had been completed Ricky was allowed to go. He smiled; he wouldn’t want the young man to know how highly he thought of him and good hands were not easy to find right now. Ricky headed down town for one of the ‘old’ back street music stores – no point in asking any of the new ones about a song as old as this one seemed to be.

The shopkeeper was in his late fifties Ricky guessed, and frowned in concentration as the younger man tried to describe the song and the singers. He shook his head sadly.

“That could have been any number of folks in the fifties or sixties, son. Got anything else?”

Ricky took a deep breath. He was not a good singer and restricted all that kind of stuff to the privacy of the bathroom. Nevertheless, with no other option and straining to remember words he had only heard once before, he came out with a reasonably close approximation to the song.

“Well, that’s the Everleys! Don and Phil. Big shots in the late fifties, and boy could they sing! The song’s Ebony Eyes. You want a copy?”

Ricky nodded and paid for a cassette of their greatest hits. Lucky he still had a player on his radio at home. Now to find out what it was all about. Once would have been unusual but twice was definitely more than a coincidence. As if to ram home the point, on the bus back to the flat a youngster had a radio blaring out the latest Kaiser Chiefs track, much to the annoyance of other travellers. Ricky took the only available seat right behind him and almost immediately the set crackled and went quiet. A round of sarcastic applause was soon silenced by a fresh burst of sound.

“On a weekend pass I wouldn’t have had time

To get home and marry that baby of mine

So I went to the chaplain and he authorised

Me to send for my ebony eyes.”

This was too much, and as Ricky got up to get off the bus, the offending radio skipped back to the original station leaving its confused owner and the rest of the passengers staring in amazement.

Back at home the cassette was loaded and the correct track selected. Ricky played it through a number of times wondering what it all meant. There was no doubt in his mind that he had been the cause of whatever electrical interference had resulted in the song being played. It was not until later that night when he was talking to Carly that he began to get the first inkling of a concern. She had made all of the arrangements for the forthcoming trip to Chicago, and was clearly very excited at the prospect of their meeting up again. She would, she said, be travelling with American Airlines out of Nashville on Flight 1203. Ricky froze.

“Ricky, you there…………..? Ricky?”

“Yeah, I’m here Carly. What was that flight number again?”

“Twelve Oh Three. Why, that a problem?”

“Don’t know. Look let me call you back. Just want to check something out.”

Fast forwarding to the start of the song once more, Ricky listened intently to the lyrics until the middle of verse two. He stopped the tape, rewound it and played it again. No doubt about it, there it was.

“My ebony eyes was coming to me

From out of the skies on flight twelve oh three….”

He ran the rest of the song. The lyrics told the story of a serviceman sending for his girlfriend so that they could be married. She never made it. The plane crashed killing all passengers. Now Carly was travelling on a flight with the same number, and he had heard that song three times in very strange circumstances. Ricky had always rubbished the whole idea of premonitions in the past, but with no credible explanation to the events of the past day or so, he would have to call Carly and warn her, but how? How could he do it without sounding crazy on the one hand, or like a heel on the other if he put her visit off? Anyway, what about all the other passengers? He would have to call the airline to warn them first.

The American Airlines customer services desk at Nashville was sceptical to say the least. Staff told Ricky firmly but as politely as they could in the circumstances, that all of their aeroplanes underwent extensive and detailed pre-flight technical and mechanical checks prior to take off, and that it was virtually impossible that there could be anything wrong with them. Despite persistent and protracted attempts to alert the airline he was getting nowhere and slammed the phone down in disgust. Now for Carly, if he couldn’t stop the plane the least he could do would be to warn her.

“You did what? Are you crazy? What did they say?” Carly was not overly impressed with what she perceived to be a cheap way of getting out of the date.

“Listen to me, you’re in danger. That plane is going to go down.”

“And you know this because some faulty electrical equipment told you so!”

“Carly I’m serious. You have to listen to me……………please.”

“Forget it Ricky. All you had to say was that you didn’t really want me to come. At least that would have been honest. Guess I’ll just go visit my aunt instead, at least she’ll be pleased to see me!”

She was gone and the line went dead. Ricky cursed; there had to be some way of stopping that flight, but short of taking a trip down to Nashville himself he didn’t know what else to do. Maybe if he made enough fuss in person they’d have to listen to him – he couldn’t just let all those people die. That was it, the only solution; he could get there in time for the flight to be delayed and then everyone would thank him. Carly would see that he had been right and they’d be happy again.

Flight 1203 was due for take off at 6.30pm Central Time and Ricky used the excuse of his ‘worsening’ cold to travel down to Tennessee. He was on the outskirts of the city when his Ford blew a gasket and ground to a halt some five miles short of the airport A cab was now his only alternative and it seemed an age before it showed up. Diving into the back he gave the driver the destination and told him to step on it.

Pre-flight checks for the departure to Chicago O’Hare were well advanced and passengers had commenced boarding the 747. All would be completed within fifteen minutes and the airliner would commence its approach to the end of the runway. Technical Supervisor Rod Brewer was still scratching his head as the work sheets were handed back to him by the maintenance crew.

“Damndest thing!” He said to Charlie Mason, the last of the crew “Anyone get the name of that kid who reported this in?”

“Nope” Charlie spat out the taste of the aviation fuel. “Guess they just thought he was some kinda crank.”

Brewer overlooked nothing, and the call from Ricky had been so prolonged and intense that the Customer Services Supervisor had mentioned it in passing when their paths crossed during a break. She had treated it as a joke, but he was more cautious. Looking up the logs for the plane in question he noticed that it was falling due for routine inspection in a couple of days anyway. He took it out of service and substituted another aircraft. Now flight 1203 would go ahead as planned. The ruptured fuel line had been barely detectible, but when pressure tested had blown apart in Charlie’s face, covering him with the liquid. Had that happened while the flight was in progress there’d be no way of telling what would have happened.

With all passengers now on board, the 747 taxied to its position at the end of the runway to await clearance from the tower. At that precise moment Ricky was approaching the airport in the taxi he had summoned. The tyre blow out took the speeding cab clear across three lanes of freeway into the path of an oncoming semi. With no room for manoeuvre the two vehicles collided head on and the taxi was sent spinning off to the right into more traffic. It was a scene of utter carnage. Emergency vehicles cleared two dozen bodies from the scene including those of Ricky and the cab driver.

The two veteran Nashville cops directing traffic at the scene shook their heads at the devastation as they waved rubber necking drivers away from the pile up. You became hardened to the sight when you’d seen it all before, and a certain dark humour sometimes alleviated the gloom.

“Would’ya look at that?”

“What?”

“Cab number, ain’t that the darndest?”

“What d’you mean Bob? You still taking them pills?”

“No stoopid, look at the cab number. Whaddn’t that the number on that old Everleys’ song? You know…………. Ebony Eyes?..................Twelve oh three?”

There, upside down, and almost obliterated by the force of the collision was the ID number of the Nashville City Cab – 1203. American Airlines Flight Twelve Oh Three landed later that day at O’Hare on time and in complete safety.

"Rose Cottage" is the first of my short stories which I mentioned earlier, and was written in the summer of 2007.

Standing before the little house now brought back floods of memories. They had always called her Aunty Rose despite the fact that there was no family connection at all. She had been a friend of his mother’s and during the long school summer holidays James and Harry had spent many happy hours in and around the cottage. In those days it had a whitewashed exterior with green window frames and doors, a white ‘picket’ fence enclosing a small but well-stocked front garden and a thatched roof surrounding a red brick chimney stack from which emanated a constant thin stream of pale blue smoke. This was always the sure sign that Rose was at home and usually cooking or baking something tasty. There was a rear garden which formed the ‘working’ part of the property and supplied Rose’s needs for the vegetables which she steadfastly refused to buy from the local shops.

Now the whitewash was discoloured and peeling, and the window frames appeared rotten after years of neglect. The front door still looked solid but in need of renovation. The ‘picket’ fence had gone, along with all the garden plants – probably the victims of roaming livestock which now had free access. The chimney stack looked weathered and in need of pointing and the thatch contained some alarming gaps in its structure. It was a shame to see the place in such a state of disrepair, but what else had he expected to find after his years of absence? He dreaded to think what the inside looked like.

James walked up the overgrown path to the front door and tried the handle – locked, but again she should have expected no less, after all Rose had been dead for ten years. Her only son, Robert, was living and working in South Africa and he had not been in England since the funeral even though the place had become his as her only surviving relative. They had fallen out before he left England but no-one seemed to know why and despite a fair amount of speculation, the truth had remained within the family.

He recalled from the past that Rose was in the habit of keeping a spare key wrapped in a plastic sheath and concealed behind the guttering above the front door. Reaching up, his fingers closed around a small package and pulling it down from its hiding place he was delighted to see the well-known implement carefully preserved against the ravages of time and the weather in its protective wrapping. Having excitedly torn away the cover he inserted the key into the lock and heard the satisfying ‘click’ as the mortise catch was released and the door opened at his touch.

He stood on the threshold for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. The cottage had that musty ‘chapel’ smell of properties not regularly inhabited by people. He remembered his grandmother’s front parlour carried a similar, not unpleasant, odour which stemmed from the fact that the room was only used on ‘special’ occasions. He stepped inside and had to remind himself that Rose had been dead for ten years – there didn’t seem to be a thing out of place, and apart from a thin film of dust which covered all of the surfaces it was almost as if she had just popped out for the afternoon. There was even her tea cup on the table, turned upside down on the saucer as she always left it in readiness for a fresh ‘mashing’ when she came back in.

He started to fill up and had to steady himself against the door frame leading to the kitchen whilst he composed himself. He supposed that Robert had no interest in the cottage and had simply returned to South Africa after the funeral, probably leaving the property in the hands of some local estate agent. It surprised him that no-one had snapped it up as, apart from the obvious cold and damp feeling, the structure seemed sound and he always remembered it as a warm and welcoming place to be in. He couldn’t leave without having a good look around, and memories of Rose, his mum and Harry came flooding back in wave after wave of nostalgia.

Moving from room to room, both downstairs and on the upper floor, he could almost see images from the past and he seemed to be like some alien observer moving around in the time and space occupied by another race of beings. The minutiae of the daily lives of the inhabitants were laid bare for him to see, analyse and mentally note some of the things which he had forgotten over the years. It was all becoming a little too much for James and he suddenly felt the need for some fresh air, descended the stairs, unbolted the back door and stepped into the rear garden.

Like the front garden, this too was overgrown and neglected. He could still make out all the cold frames at the side of the cottage where Rose grew her lettuces and cucumbers together with summer plants ‘hardening off’ before being transplanted in the front. There were the remains of the old greenhouse too. Rose had stopped using it when she said she had become ‘too old’ and had left it to James and Harry to use for their own plants. They had spent many hours inside it with pots and compost, lemonade and midday sandwiches and regarded it as their den. There was a kennel on the other side of the building which was the summer retreat of Bob, Rose’s dog. She never left him out at night – she was too soft with animals for that, but he used it during the day as a kind of summer house.

James turned once more and went back inside the cottage, bolting the back door after himself. The figure in the middle of the room was cast in shadow as he had come inside out of the bright sunshine of the back garden, and he couldn’t make out any features. He couldn’t remember being followed on the way here, and certainly hadn’t met anyone going the other way. He therefore assumed that some neighbour or passer by had noticed the front door open after he had arrived and had come in to see who was about. Perhaps this could be a potential purchaser sent by the estate agent although he hadn’t heard any car pull up outside – he should make his excuses and leave, but the figure seemed to be barring his way to the door.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” he said as it came forward to meet him.

“No, James I think it’s more a case of what I can do to help you”

He froze as the familiar tones of Aunty Rose’s voice came from the now lightening face as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. There she stood, exactly as he remembered her, even down to the crocheted shawl she always wore and the mules she invariably had on her feet. The smile on her face brought a warmth to his heart and they met in the middle of the room in an embrace that melted the years away.

Cold realty then gripped him, and he held her away at arms length with a puzzled frown on his face. Aunty Rose was dead, she died ten tears ago – this was just not possible, it must be a dream. As if reading his thoughts she smiled at him.

“You’re not dreaming, I’m really here James and I’ve come to help you”

“Help me, how and with what?”

She smiled again and sadly shook her head – she used to do that when she knew something that you didn’t and it had always been used in the past as part of a game to keep Harry and him guessing, and it drove them up the wall.

“You need to come with me now, James. It’s been a long time and I’ve been trying to call you but you weren’t listening. You always did that when you didn’t want to do something”

“I have to go now, Rose”

“No James, come with me and I’ll show you”

She led him out of the front door and down the garden path to the gate. They turned around and the sight of the cottage shook him, the roof was gone, as were the window frames and the exposed brickwork was black and crumbling. It was a burned out shell and he looked at her in complete astonishment.

“It was the fire, don’t you remember? We all got caught in it and the place went up like an inferno. It was all over very quickly. You’re dead James, like Harry and me. I’ve been trying to reach you for years, but now it’s over and you can rest. Come along with me, Harry’s waiting and it’ll be just like old times.”