HAUNTED WIRRAL: The witch in the red dress

In this week's tale, Rory has a bewitching experience.

IN May 1963, not long after 25-year-old Rory Pritchard asked the new girl in his workplace out, some very strange things began to happen.

The Tranmere lad was tall, blond and athletic-looking. In the past six months he'd had three girlfriends, but expected too much of them and now he was single.

Upon seeing the new girl at the Jackson & Blackledge Bakery in Bromborough, Rory thought his bachelor days might just be coming to an end.

Her name was Jemima Aitken. She was beautiful and well-spoken and to Rory, seemed too intelligent to be baking loaves.

Rory had a thing about brunettes, but Jemima was a blonde, and yet he found he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Most girls around Rory seemed in awe of him, but Jemima was so cool and laid-back in his presence, as if he was just some average guy, and this aloofness the girl exhibited made her even more attractive somehow.

On the day Jemima started at the bakery, the two other lads who worked with Rory – Jim and Tony, couldn’t take their eyes off her, and straight away Rory sneered at their ogling, saying "Forget it - she's way out of your league."

"She's like an ice maiden, Rory," remarked Jim, "I don't even think you could end up with her on your arm."

"Oh, I will, Jimbo," said Rory, and he pulled out a flick comb and looked in the mirror in the canteen, but saw he didn't need to adjust his hair; he thought he looked perfect.

"Slowly, slowly catchy monkey," he said to his reflection, and Jim and Tony smirked at their colleague’s self-assured attitude.

The boss, Mr Blackledge came into the canteen and said to Rory: "Hey, you, tell your ex-girlfriend to stop calling this bakery.

"She keeps telephoning and asking to speak to you. She might be blocking the line to important orders."

"I'll tell her, Mr Blackledge," said Rory, and then the boss walked away and Rory smiled at Jim and Tony and said: "Even my ex-bird can’t leave me alone; I'm in demand; not fair is it?"

His two workmates grumbled something inaudible and Rory said: "I can't help it if you two gents are virgins living at home now, can I?"

During the afternoon coffee break, Rory sat next to Jemima at a table in the crowded canteen and asked her what book she was reading. "In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust;" she replied, then added, "the French edition."

Rory, being lost for words, raised his eyebrows and did a mouth shrug. "Can you speak French as well, like?"

"Bien sûr, je peux," replied Jemima, and Rory said: "Always wanted a bird who could speak French."

As Jim and Tony watched from another table, Rory asked Jemima if he could take her to the pictures, and assured her there’d be no funny stuff, and to his surprise, the girl said: "Have you ever heard of Fellini?"

"Sounds familiar," fibbed Rory and Jemima said he was an Italian film director and his new film, 8½ was on at a small local cinema.

"I'd love to see it – with you, like," said Rory, and Jemima smiled and said: "Okay. I think there’s a showing tomorrow evening at eight."

"So it's a date, then?" Rory asked, excitedly, and the eavesdropping Jim and Tony felt sick. Jemima smiled faintly and said: "Yes, but not that kind of date; just a friend's night out."

"Oh yeah, just as friends," said Rory, and at the end of the coffee break he smirked at Jim and Tony, then went back to work.

That night at his Tranmere flat, Rory dozed off around 11:15pm and kept seeing a beautiful brunette in a short red dress, and she was glaring at him.

He woke up several times and went back to sleep and the dreams of the unknown young woman continued.

Then something odd happened when Rory caught the bus to work the next day - the brunette in the red dress boarded the bus and gazed at him.

She smiled and Rory wondered if she just looked like the girl in his dreams, but he couldn't rationalize it - this seemed like the very girl he'd dreamed of.

At one point in the journey Rory glanced back at her, and the girl had gone.

That morning at 11am in the canteen, Rory saw her again - wearing that same red dress, and she was gazing at him as he sat next to Jemima.

He wanted to point her out to Jemima but was scared she'd think he already had a wandering eye.

Then, when he went to the little cinema with Jemima that evening, he tried to watch the Fellini film but found it incomprehensible, and he happened to look to his left, and there was that girl in red again!

She was following him.

Rory normally liked female attention but this was creeping him out.

After the film had ended, Rory noticed that the eerie admirer had gone.

A few days later, Rory took Jemima to Blackpool for a day out and the couple had their fortunes read, and the fortune-teller told Rory: "A girl in red is watching you - beware; please beware, I don't know what to make of her. She is very peculiar."

"I don't know any girl in red," Rory told the fortune teller, and glanced guiltily at Jemima, who eyed him suspiciously.

The following day, Rory and Jemima were on the 80 Bus after a visit to his auntie, and as the vehicle was travelling through Hamilton Square, Rory happened to glance through the window when he saw something which convinced him he was dreaming: that girl in the red dress was flying overhead.

She was barefooted and had her arms outstretched as she sailed through the blue sky at treetop level.

Rory and several people witnessed this incident, but Jemima saw nothing. "She must be a witch," Rory muttered to himself, but clamped up when Jemima asked him what he was talking about.

That night, Jemima stayed at Rory's flat in Tranmere, and at precisely midnight, the door to the veranda burst open, and in flew that lady in red.

"She's a witch!" Rory told Jemima, "And she's after me!"

"No, it's her I want," said the witch and she took hold of a smiling Jemima's hand and the two young women flew out that window.

Rory never saw Jemima again.

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