Stanley's marsh

Robert watched as a black car with a square bonnet and large wings over the wheels pulled up. A head topped with a navy custodian hat popped out the window.

‘Scuse me boy, do you know where we might find the home of one Mr Stanley Wittlebur?’

‘Why? What's he done?’ Robert asked

‘That’s what we are here to find out. Do you know or not?’

Sure do. I know Stanley well. Let me in and I’ll give you directions.’

The officer considered for a second before opening the back door. ‘Right get in.’

The car made its way down the bumpy country road towards Stanley’s cottage. Robert hadn’t seen Stanley for over a week. He started to feel a bit guilty, and now the police were interested in him. He hoped he was Okay.

‘That’s the place right there at the end of the street,’ Robert said. ‘Let us come in with you. He was a soldier you know, nurses an injury. He can be a bit difficult.’

Doors opened, limbs climbed out. 'Come on then lad.’

The officers knocked on the door, but no answer came. They waited several minutes but there was no sign of anyone inside. One of them turned the doorknob to find it unlocked, so they stepped inside.

The room was dark, the curtains drawn shut. Robert opened the pair at the window next to the front door. The light flooded in, rays catching the dust that floated in the air. In the centre of the living room, sitting in a recliner chair, a human shape sat.

The men gasped. ‘What is this?’ One of the officers shouted. ‘Isn’t he supposed to be in his 20s’

The body was thin and shrivelled, every millilitre of water sucked out of it. The skin of its face clung tightly over the skull underneath, the hair on its head, grey and brittle. Clothes lay limply over limbs, their muscles withered all away.

‘I’m going to have to call this in. First the two bodies found in the marsh and now this. Where’s the phone lad?’

Robert stared, unmoving, unable to explain the sight in front of him. He looked unwell the last time Robert had seen him, but this... He looked like a desiccated mummy that had lain in the boggy ground or in some far distant desert.

‘Lad! The phone?’

‘Erm, he doesn’t have one. Try the house two doors down. Mrs steeple’s place.’

Robert inched closer to the body. Something was in its hands, resting on its chest. Robert, looked around him and saw that both officers had gone outside. He quickly bent down and unclasped what turned out to be a book.

It was Stanley’s old notebook. He flipped through the pages. They described his days on the Marshes, but as Robert turned them, the writing became messy scribbles before finally disappearing altogether. The last few pages were filled with nothing but hastily drawn sketches of birds: some flying, some feeding, some standing in the water. Each one of them an avocet.

Robert put the notebook down and rushed out the back door. He filled his lungs with the fresh air outside as he crouched down, resting his hands on his thighs.

As he looked out across the old crumbling wall, the marsh in the distance, he caught sight of a white ghost. It stood alone, its head and long upturned beak staring in the sky. The right leg looked lame, and it put all its weight on the left.

Out from the sky a second bird landed. They greeted each other as if long separated, the second one first grooming itself before lightly peaking at the first. To Robert it looked as though they were embracing as they gently rubbed their heads against each other.

They then stretched out their wings, flapping them, testing their own strength before taking to the air. After a hundred years, finally an old sight greeted locals and keen birders. Feeding in its pools and nesting on its scrapes, avocets had returned to Stanley’s marsh.