Tom Slemen's Haunted Wirral: The man who fell to yesteryear

This week, Rory steps back in time ...

I'VE changed a few names in the following intriguing but strange story for reasons of confidentiality.

It was a typical English summer’s day that July afternoon in 2022; low oppressive clouds threatening rain.

A sprightly 85-year-old Rory Lester from Eastham insisted on going into the bookies on the corner of Wirral Circular Trail and New Chester Road, but his 30-year-old grand-daughter Ella wanted to go and have a look in the Abstract hair salon around the corner.

'Oh hurry up, then,' Rory told Ella, grimacing at the first spots of rain on his face, 'I can't study the form when someone’s looking at their watch.'

'Go and put your bet on, Grandad,' said Ella, gazing at her iPhone, 'I'm only round the corner.'

'No, anyone could snatch you,' the old man said, 'the world’s gone mad. That’s all you hear in the news nowadays.'

Ella gave a puzzled look: 'I’m thirty, not thirteen;' she told Rory, 'and I can look after meself.'

'Look, go to this bloody hair salon,' Rory replied, pushing Ella round the corner onto New Chester Road, and he continued, 'and I’ll have a gander round the Age UK shop. Take your time, I like having a good browse.'

And so Ella went into Abstract and Rory went into the Age UK charity shop to see if he could find any ornaments for his wife, Margy.

However, Rory did a u-turn in the doorway of the shop when he saw an acquaintance he sarcastically named Ray of Hope, a man who talked about nothing but his alleged failing health and his nihilistic outlook.

Ray was leafing through a medical book in the charity shop and didn’t notice Rory's 180-degree turn. Rory walked a few feet from the Age UK shop and had a dizzy spell. He dropped his walking stick and the world tilted sideways.

Next thing he knew, he was laying on the road, and two women in babushka-style scarves were standing over him, and one woman was saying to the other out the side of her mouth, 'Drinking of a day.'

‘Are you two janglers going to help me up or stand there being judgemental all day?’ yelled Rory. The gossipy duo looked at one another with o-shaped mouths, and then one of them said to Rory, ‘The cheek of him.’

Rory grabbed his walking stick and slowly got to his feet. ‘Where’s Ella when I need her?’ he asked with a groan in his voice, and he straightened himself up, noted how old fashioned the two women in the scarves were, then turned – and saw Age UK charity shop was no longer there, or the hair salon, or any shop from 2022.

Instead he saw New Chester Road when it was just Chester Road, and it looked like the 1950s.

The old Irwins store was there, and the National and Provincial Bank, and the Dairy next door to it, along with the pharmacy and other premises Roy had not seen since he was a very young man.

For a moment he wondered if he was still out cold and dreaming it all after the fall, but no, he felt the hot sun on his face, and he saw Henry, an old gardener who planted all the beautiful flowers in the walled off area in the street.

Rory could see those multi-coloured flowers now and could smell them. He grabbed Henry by the arm and said: 'Henry, it’s me, Rory – I don’t know how, but I’ve come back.'

Henry withdrew his arm from Rory’s hand and looked him up and down. 'Rory? Rory who?’

Rory smiled and laughed, ‘Rory Lester, from Bridle Road round the corner you daft thing.’

Henry narrowed his spectacled eyes. ‘You’re not Rory – he’s a boy; what’s your game, eh?’

Rory realised Henry was right – he was not the Rory he knew; he was an 85-year-old man. Rory was confused and turned away from Henry as he muttered: 'I've gone back in time. This is not possible.' 

He heard the two women in the scarves talking to Henry about him, saying he had been lying palatic in the road before and should be reported. One of the women said: 'Inspector Carter will sort him out.'

Rory turned to the women and Henry and said: 'I am not drunk. You won’t believe this but I’ve come from the year 2022.'

The women smirked at one another, and then Henry exclaimed: 'Oh my!’ and then the two women yelped and backed away from Rory.

'What’s wrong?' Rory asked, and one of the women said, 'He's a ghost.'

Rory looked to his left and saw his reflection in the plate glass window of the Irwins store. He was see-through.

Rory looked down at his body and saw he was now semi-transparent – along with the walking stick.

He didn’t experience any peculiar sensation, just a slight feeling of fear because he couldn't take in what was happening.

He looked up at the women and the old gardener – and they were gone, along with the Chester Road of a bygone time.

Ella came running towards him from the doorway of the One Stop shop and asked where he’d been. She threw her arms around him and hugged him, and then she looked up – and saw Rory had tears in his eyes.

'Grandad, what's wrong?' she asked, full of concern, and noticed a graze on his palm. 'Did you fall?'

'I fell into my childhood,' was Rory’s strange reply and he sniffled. 'I didn’t imagine it – I went back; I was allowed back – back in time.'

'Maybe we should get you to see a doctor,' Ella suggested, but Rory closed his eyes and shook his head. He opened his eyes and tears flowed again.

'Ella, I had a fall, but I was alright, and when I got up, I saw my old neighbourhood, and the lovely flowers in front of the shops round the corner, and no one knew me – they only saw an old man, which is what I’ve become.

'Whatever showed me what I’ve just seen is cruel; a lovely world I lost along the way.'

Grandfather and grand-daughter walked away from the place of an unexplained incident, and they both heard a voice behind them.

It was “Ray of Hope”, the depressing hypochondriac Rory had avoided in the Age UK shop. He was wide-eyed and said: 'Rory, I saw you go for a burton before – and you vanished into thin air. You fell, and then you disappeared.'

Ella squeezed her grandad’s hand.

Rory smiled and listened to Ray’s account of the eerie disappearance; this was proof positive that something strange had really taken place and had not been some figment of Rory’s mind. He asked Ray to come with him and Ella to the Montgomery pub.

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