On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 176, of 240 so far.

The Hands Remember

I remember my grandfather. He was a tall man; tall like a tree. On clear days, when he was beside me, he blocked out the sun.

His face was lined, but every line seemed to be from a smile, or the side-effect of one. He was straight up and down, standing there as solid as a door, and even when he was bent over his workbench, he never hunched. Just folded like a good hinge, smooth and quiet.

A lot of the time he didn’t really know what to make of me, I think. We were two generations apart, but my mother had me a little later in life than was the average back then, so really it was two and a half — and they were times of great change. He was born not long before the First World War ended. By the time I came along, there were basic home microcomputers. He saw a lot of history in a single lifetime.

Or maybe he didn’t.

I don’t remember ever seeing him watching the news, or reading a newspaper — at least from the front, instead of the sports section at the back. He would often read a novel, or watch some drama or a documentary on TV, and he would play chess from time to time. but mostly he would work with his hands.

He had a workshop of a sort. Really it was something between a storage shed and the external access to the boiler. It was dark, and the window let in the wind. It smelled damp, but not in the unhealthy way; more like the dampness of cut grass when you took it out of the mower. It smelled like the garden outside, and like wood, and like dust and metal and oil. It took me years to realise that those smells were of separate things, and not just the combined fragrance of my grandfather himself.

His big hands were rough, and impossibly strong, and even as a little boy I knew that it thus meant more that he was always gentle. My grandmother was gentle by default, and her hands were small and soft. For my grandfather to be gentle, it took care and intention.

There were a thousand tools in that place, and all of them seemed to be at least as old as my grandfather himself. I had no idea what most of them were, but looking back through the lens of my memory, I can identify many of them now. Chisels and hand-drills, rasps and gimlets, planes and face clamps and spirit levels and squares. Then everything electrical. Then everything for plumbing. Handsaws and hacksaws, spanners and screwdrivers, and hundreds of miscellaneous fasteners and hinges and latches and miscellaneous hardware. So much metal, all in one place, and so much of it mysterious and alluring.

It was all used, too. None of it was new. Wooden handles were worn shiny and warm with use. Blades had spots of rust and marring. Housings had scratches and scuffs. Nothing pristine, no packaging, and no instruction manuals. Like my grandfather himself, there was no tentativeness or uncertainty or inexperience about those things. If the tools had hands of their own, their palms would be as rough as my grandfather’s. They worked for a living, and had no time for idleness.

He played the piano, too. Quaint, bittersweet old songs that were on the verge of being forgotten, voiced by his big fingers on the yellowed white notes and the greyed black notes, on a tatty-looking upright whose varnish was patchy and whose brass lid-lock was scratched extravagantly. But still in tune, and still resonant. Its music filled the little house, and I was always amazed that a man like my grandfather could coax and finesse such delicate melodies from it.

It was the same, in a way, as when he was in his workshop doing something or other, and I’d be perched on a little stool — a footstool, really, but a regular one for me — watching his every move. He’d think for a moment, then reach for some obscure tool I’d never noticed before, and he would inspect it for a moment and then immediately make it do whatever he needed it to do.

It wasn’t the actual task I was watching; the repair or the assembly or whatever. It wasn’t even his down-to-earth craftsmanship. It was the deftness, no matter what implement or instrument he had chosen. The movements were all different, and the outcomes were diverse, but there was an underlying thread of similarity that I was old enough to perceive but too young to fully grasp, or give voice to. The great frustration of childhood is to have thoughts that you’re not yet capable of articulating.

I asked him once, with my small chin resting on my small hands, elbows perched on my knees, how he did it. It took my grandfather a few moments to glance over at me, once he’d finished doing something on the makeshift workbench. He asked me what I meant.

The way he could use any of these tools, I replied, and make them do whatever was needed, without even thinking about it. So many different skills must take a whole lifetime to learn. How did he always know what to do?

He smiled and came over to me, placing a large hand on my head as he periodically did. It draped over my skull like a hat, and he ruffled my hair. I could smell oil, and metal, and even a hint of his soap. He said that he didn’t always know what to do, but he’d done it all before, so all he needed was to pick the tool up. That was the trick.

I didn’t understand, and I said so, and he smiled again, looking into my eyes.

The mind forgets, he said, but the hands remember.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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