Village of Ghosts

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “Come on, Freddie,” Agnes said. “Looks like it’s up to us to see everything runs smoothly.”

  “Yes, Aggie.”

  Agnes lit a cigar and steamed out of the pub. He started after, but paused at a shuffling sound. It was necessary, Agnes said, that everyone on the Ghost Tour witness as many manifestations as possible, no matter what. While Pettibone agreed, at least in theory, he was a native of Little Wyvern. As such, he knew the folly and danger attached to annoying ghosts or venturing too deep into their world. Like every scion of Little Wyvern, raised to believe spectres walked all around and through them, Pettibone was thoroughly terrified of ghosts, but feared Agnes more…everyone did.

  “Come, Freddie,” she snapped. “Don’t dawdle. We must watch over our investment.”

  Pettibone heard the shuffling sound again. He silently voiced an apology to Patience Worthy, useless gesture though it was.

  “Freddie!”

  “Coming, Aggie.”

  Though he had imbibed heavily before his appearance at the Blithe Spirit, Simon Jones’ performance as guide to Little Wyvern’s haunts was flawless. From station to station, from cottage to cottage, he regaled the tourists with tales of sorrow and bloody revenge. They listened raptly, heedless that they were far behind schedule. Agnes had assumed Jones’ choice to let that Madeline creature cling to him was evidence of his rampant carnality. Now she saw what a brilliant choice it had been. She had never before seen a woman more impressionable or given to hysteria. Better yet, she spread panic to the others like a carrier did typhoid. She was a highly strung fiddle that Jones played like an impresario. Agnes only hoped a string did not break before the night was over.

  As pleased as Agnes was about Jones’ performance in the role for which he had been hired, she was almost ecstatic about the way the ghosts were cooperating. Getting the villagers to work with the goals of FOG had been an uphill battle, but Agnes, aided by Sir Phineas’ reputation and money from their hidden benefactor, had made most residents see the light. Fortunately, Little Wyvern, like other Hammershire villages, had seen an influx of outsiders over the decades, mostly pensioners. Unlike life-long residents, who knew better, these newcomers of twenty years or so could be convinced to bang a pot, drop a log or utter a scream at just the right moment.

  Unfortunately, all the cottages with the bloodiest histories were occupied by lifetime residents. They looked the other way when it came to FOG’s antics, influenced by desperately needed cash, but not for lust or money would they anger a ghost or let outsiders into their homes. Agnes knew it was only a matter of time before they, too, were won over and fell into line.

  “As we approach St Barnabas Church, keep your eyes and ears open,” Jones said as they neared the end of what had been a nearly flawless tour. “Spirit lights and shrieking apparitions have been seen and heard in the church itself for more than a thousand years. It is constructed on the ruins of an old Druid temple, which itself was built over the blood-soaked ground of a Palaeolithic site for human sacrifice and ritual rape. Many troubled spirits roam that church in search of peace or revenge.”

  “Simon, are we going in the church?” asked the drunk whose wife had the sharpest elbow in the world. A skinful of booze and a few well-planned frights had made Simon Jones his best friend. “I could really go for a good ghost orgy.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not possible due…” Jones started to say.

  “No, you cannot!” A black spectre, tall and lean, rose behind the wall separating churchyard and lane. “Sacrilege! It is forbidden. Hell will claim those who violate this holy ground!”

  Madeline screamed to make a banshee envious. Others were infected by and propagated her scream. The rest surged back. Jones held both his ground and Madeline.

  “And who the hell are you, my dear fellow?” Jones said.

  “You have no say in this, Reverend Allen,” Agnes proclaimed, surging through the crowd. “We have permits.”

  “God forbids it.”

  Jones leaned forward, squinting for a better look at the figure beyond the wall. “So, you’re the vicar, are you? Aggie’s told me all about you, a man who believes the only ghost is the holy one.”

  The vicar stepped back.

  “Simon Jones is the name, Vicar,” he said. “I am your guide to a world unseen, unsuspected by many, unbelieved by most.”

  “A guide…” The vicar’s voice turned whispery.

  “A guide into the ghostly realm, an undiscovered country if ever there was one, a region where all truths are revealed,” Jones said. “Are you going to deny these fine people entry into the House of God? Tell them they are not welcome in…”

  “It is forbidden!” the vicar yelled, dashing toward the church. A crashing sound came from St Barnabas, its heavy door-bar being slammed into place.

  “Well, you can’t keep us out of the graveyard, can you now, Dickie?” Agnes called to the vast and empty night. “It’s public.”

  “The Reverend Dickerson Allen,” Jones announced to the crowd with a flourish of his arms. “Or was he? You saw the way he rose from the boneyard, how he vanished into the night. Was he what he seemed to be? Or was he a spectre, a ghostly avenger seeking to bar the living from the realm of the dead?”

  Madeline gasped at the idea she had possibly been warned away by an actual ghost. A few followed her example, but most had caught the mocking note in Jones’ voice and twittered.

  “Oh, he’s good, isn’t he?” Pettibone whispered.

  Reluctantly, Agnes nodded. She had to admire how Jones took the vicar’s appearance in stride, even working him into the tour’s narrative. They had warned him of Reverend Allen’s antagonistic stance toward the work of FOG, but even she had not expected to see him out this evening. After all, she and Pettibone had assured him they would adhere to the Council’s prohibition against entering the church itself.

  “That man has a lot of nerve,” Sir Phineas said. “I’ve half a mind to take this up with the Council. The bounder, interfering with an economic venture that will benefit every man, woman and child in Little Wyvern. He may be a man of the cloth, but he is still a bounder. I should write a letter to Bishop Price.”

  “Now, Phinney, remember your blood pressure,” Prudence said, rubbing his arm. “Besides, Simon sent him packing, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did,” Sir Phineas admitted. “Good show.”

  “It certainly was not something Simon could have planned for or rehearsed,” Pettibone said. “You really have to hand it to him, being able to so easily go off script like…”

  “Shut up, Freddie,” Agnes whispered.

  Pettibone looked around, afraid he had been overheard, but all eyes and ears were turned toward Simon Jones.

  “As Miss Swanner pointed out,” Jones said, “no one can keep us from visiting the lost and lonely souls in this graveyard, not even a man of the cloth…or was that a shroud he wore?”

  The crowd tittered at the jibe, even Madeline, who still thought they might have seen a ghost. Before the tour, she was uncertain about Ghost Week. Now she planned to stay, clinging to Jones’ arm. When she returned to the City what a story she would have for mates who called her daft for running off to a village no one had ever heard of in a county known for nothing good.

  Jones opened the lychgate, pressing down as he pulled slowly. The added friction caused the gate to groan like the iron gates of Hell. The expressions on their faces were quite gratifying.

  “Come along, dear friends, follow me,” he urged. “Do tread lightly, for the dead are beneath our feet. We do not want them to become unnecessarily agitated. Stay together and follow me.”

  They moved among headstones which poked into moonlight like the fingernails of giants. Jones told the stories shared with him by Agnes. He had been impressed by the efforts of the FOG people, the way they dug up every juicy titbit, threw every family skeleton out of its closet. Usually, when he involved himself in such schemes, he was left to his own devices, had to tell bloody stor
ies on the fly. Despite all the information provided, however, he could not keep himself from embellishing the tales, or making them up from whole cloth. Old habits died hard. Besides, he thought, the outsiders would not know the difference, and even the locals would embrace them in time, make truths of them, as they did every other fiction.

  “Alas, dear friends, the time of parting draws near,” Jones said.

  The crowd groaned in dismay.

  “Ah, but one last thing before we return to our cars, our homes, our rooms,” he said. “One last step into darkness. Choose one of the graves which especially interested you. Approach it boldly and try to speak to the occupant.”

  Expressions ranging from abject fear to outright glee afflicted the tour group. Most looked around for a likely prospect, but a few looked for the exit, though none actually fled.

  “Try to do this out of sight of others, for ghosts are often very shy,” Jones said. “Do not be afraid. Ghosts rarely attack. Off with you now, find an interesting grave. Not all of you will see a ghost, but surely several of you shall. Meet up in the lane in ten minutes for a walk back to the Blithe Spirit, where more than one of you should have a good story to share. Good luck, dear friends, and happy hunting.”

  Jones wondered which ones Pettibone would choose. He felt for his flask and looked for a place to spend a quiet ten minutes. He had been given lots to think about.

  “Bollocks,” he muttered.

  He saw Madeline looking for him. He had initially considered a little diddling amongst the dearly departed, but now he wanted to be alone. He crept away.

  Madeline Wallace moved in the direction Simon Jones had seemingly vanished. She did not dare call him. The others would mock her, but, more than that, the ghosts might take offence. Many of the others, she knew, were mockers and sceptics, but not her. She was a True Believer. If only she could persuade Simon of that.

  Five futile minutes passed. She could hear the others. Some of them were drunk. It was so disrespectful! Serve them right, she thought, if some fell spirit were to whisk them down to the House of Dust and Darkness. Then she saw Jones a little distance away, sitting on the edge of a gravestone.

  “Oh, Simon,” she said, her voice small. “I know you said to commune alone with the ghosts, but I had to be with you. I want to be your student, your acolyte.” She moved closer. “Your lover.”

  Simon Jones stared straight ahead, as if looking into another world. She placed her hands on his chest.

  “Oh, Simon, we were meant for each…”

  He toppled backward, hitting the ground solidly. She looked at her hands. By moonlight, the sticky blood covering them was black.

  Madeline screamed till they found her, then screamed a half-hour longer.

  Chapter 2

  His Heart Wasn’t In It

  “What are you looking for, Sergeant?”

  DS Leo Stark turned. “Sir?”

  “Ever since we arrived, you’ve been giving the lane far more scrutiny than the crime scene,” said DCI Arthur Ravyn. “To be blunt, there’s nothing to see.”

  “Well, that’s just it, sir,” Stark said. “Where are the gawkers?”

  “Gawkers?”

  “You know what I mean, sir,” Stark said. “Every time there’s a death you have a gallery lining up for the freak show. The gorier the body, the bigger the queue straining to get a gander.” He sighed. “Or are you going to tell me that the good villagers of Little Wyvern are not as bloodthirsty as their London cousins?”

  “Nothing of the sort, Sergeant,” Ravyn said. “Hammershire was a blood-soaked county even before there was an England. Villagers are more accustomed to violence than your average city-dweller. On the whole, I’d say your typical villager is more blood-thirsty than any city-dweller, and less accustomed to hiding it.”

  Stark gestured at the lane beyond the graveyard wall, empty in the early morning darkness except for police vehicles.

  “Normally, you’re right—quite the social event,” Ravyn said. “Everyone would bring the kiddies and picnic lunches, and we’d have to post constables like pickets to keep people off the wall.”

  Stark opened his mouth to speak.

  “But not for this murder,” Ravyn continued. “No one wants the residents to see them here staring like a crop of sheep.”

  “But the villagers…”

  “Not those residents, Stark.” Ravyn gestured at the overgrown graveyard spreading around them. “These residents.”

  “The other one’s got bells on, sir.” Then Stark realised Ravyn was not amused. “I mean, sir, I know this was billed as a ‘Ghost Tour’ or some such rot, but really…” He sighed. “Really, sir?”

  “Absolutely, Stark,” Ravyn said. “In Little Wyvern, you do not make jokes about ghosts, do not prod, provoke or otherwise annoy the spirits that walk amongst them unseen. Most of all, you do not offend the ghosts of Little Wyvern. To do so is to invite ill luck of all sorts, from stubbed toes to noise-filled sleepless nights.”

  Stark ran his gaze across the graveyard and church to the quiet lanes of the village, the mist-layered river and the stone bridge arching over it. It had been more than two months since his sudden transfer from London to the Hammershire Constabulary and he had yet to inure himself totally against ‘country ways,’ as he put it to his wife Aeronwy, to whom he often grumbled about the depths of ignorance and superstition found in one village or another.

  He winced as he thought of her, probably just now waking and finding the note on his pillow. As if on cue, his mobile chimed, a text coming through. Later, he thought.

  “And the villagers make sure they pay due respect to the local elementals as well,” Ravyn said.

  Stark sighed. “I’m sure they do, sir.”

  “They predate ghosts, you know, even those of the Druids and Celts that haunt the woods hereabouts,” Ravyn added. “Anger an earth elemental and your garden might go all brown and ground-bent, and you do not want to think about what mischief a water elemental can get into with a cottage’s plumbing.”

  Stark thought he caught the faintest quiver of a smile from the guv’nor, but could not be sure and probably did not want to know. Ravyn was Hammershire born and bred, but how much he shared the beliefs of others Stark had no idea. He made a pretence of rubbing sleep from his eyes and yawning.

  “I suppose old ways die hard here,” Stark said. “That’s the way of things in Hammershire generally, isn’t it?”

  “Are you going to read your wife’s text?” Ravyn asked.

  “No need, sir.” There was a tightness in his tone.

  “And none of my business, of course,” Ravyn conceded. “As long as your domestic problems stay at home, you know I am not one to pry. Private lives should remain private.”

  “I appreciate that, sir.”

  “And I appreciate that she has neither called nor texted in the past several weeks,” Ravyn added.

  Aeronwy Stark had previously bombarded Ravyn with multiple texts and messages, necessitating not only a change in his mobile number but a change in the Stark household.

  “Aeronwy is adapting to our situation, the realities of my job,” Stark said. “She’s regaining a social life to replace the whirl she left in London. I think living in the Smoke was harder on her than me. Just a Welsh girl in a world she was ill prepared to handle, that’s what she was. New interests, counselling sessions, admitting her problem—all that’s helping her get a grip. But finding out she was pregnant was what really turned her around with the drinking.”

  Ravyn nodded. “Very good. But keep in mind, police work is very hard on marriages, so I’ve observed. Many a good copper has resigned because of a crumbling marriage, and many more marriages have been shattered by the job. I don’t give you criticism when I warn you to tread carefully, just advice.”

  “Chief Inspector?” called Dr Lena Penworthy, poking her head outside the screening tent. “May I speak to you?”

  “Certainly.” Ravyn nodded for Stark to follow.

/>   When Ravyn turned, Stark glanced at his wife’s text. He was surprised. There was no acidic comment about his sneaking off, as would have been de rigueur as recently as two weeks ago, but a mawkish note telling him he was missed, he was loved. He rapidly tapped a quick reply telling her where he was, and that, if possible, he would be home on time. He jammed the mobile back into his pocket and rushed to catch up.

  They were a study in contrasts, DCI Arthur Ravyn and DS Leo Stark. Ravyn was medium height and a little stocky, with dark hair greying at the temples, and always looked as if he had just come out of a Seville Row tailor shop. Stark was tall and reedy, with dirty-blond hair, and always wore clothes that looked as if they had been chucked out the rear of some charity shop.

  Their natures and speech, however, set them apart most. Ravyn met Stark’s impulsiveness with patience and tended to view with wry irony everything that drove Stark to distraction. Ravyn spoke with the measured pace and broad vowels marking a Hammershire accent, but made an effort to exclude from his conversations with his sergeant many local idioms and phrases. A child of the East End, Stark never set foot outside London till his posting to Hammershire. His speech, terse and clipped, branded him an outsider, a barrier between him and those who had dwelled for uncounted generations in Hammershire’s insular villages.

  Stark shrugged on the protective plastic suit given him by a CSI boffin and entered. The interior of the nylon enclosure was well lit by powerful standing lamps.

  This was the third time Stark had seen the body of Simon Jones, sensationalist writer, self-proclaimed ‘ghosthunter general,’ and old lag. First was when he arrived a few minutes behind Ravyn, then again when he had to grab some hysterical bird and keep her from flinging herself on the dead man. When the white screening tent went up, he was glad to leave the late Mr Jones in Penworthy’s care. He had seen myriad ways of death, but never death by having a still-beating heart ripped out of some bloke’s chest.

  It came as no surprise when a record search revealed Jones had form, dozens of charges for larceny, fraud and blackmail. After all, Stark thought, a man who would feed off the gullibility of others was a villain if there ever was one. It was hardly surprising he had come to a bad end. What was surprising was that despite all his villainy, Jones had been successfully prosecuted only once. That had not been so much a triumph of justice, Stark realised as he read the summary on his tablet, as much as a lesson not to gull an MP’s wife during the commission of a crime. But even that had only put him away for six months, three with exemplary behaviour.