The Leaf Sweeper

Description

‘On the afternoon of Christmas Eve I was walking with a friend, noticing what had changed in my absence, and what hadn’t. We passed a long, large house, once famous for its armoury, and I saw that the iron gates were wide open …’ 

So speaks the narrator of Muriel Spark’s haunting tale, ‘The Leaf-sweeper’, before going on to recount the disturbing and mercilessly witty story of a certain “madman” – Johnnie Geddes, hell-bent on outlawing Christmas – who meets the most terrifying of all apparitions: himself.