Mr Wilmott Gets Old School

by Katherine Hayton

  As Peanut grew restless, demanding more attention, Emily closed the laptop and placed it on the floor. She lay on the sofa, stroking the back of her ghost cat until he purred in ecstasy.

  Given that the last change to Stoneybrook took place decades before, it made it most likely the body was related to the current business.

  “I hope it was an accident,” Emily whispered to the cat, who laid back his ears and paid full attention. “I’d much rather they find out a drunk fell in a hole and accidentally had concrete poured over him than find out somebody hid a body there on purpose.”

  For a body to be found under a patio didn’t offer many explanations outside of wrongdoing, but she could still hold out hope. After being heavily involved in the last murder to take place in Pinetar, Emily had no wish to become entangled—even peripherally—in another one.

  With the hour growing so late that even Peanut yawned, Emily switched the comforts of the sofa for the softness of her bed. The moon was a tiny sliver in the sky, barely casting any light, but the street lamps along the street made up for the lack.

  She lay back, thinking of the bones and who they might belong to. As her mind wandered into a dream and out again, her ideas of how they might have got into the retirement home garden became ever stranger.

  Emily drifted off to sleep, skeletons forming and dissolving before her eyes. Just as she embarked on a dream adventure, a hideous cry pulled her straight back out of sleep.

  “Who the hell is that?” the ghost of Cynthia Pettigrew cried, pointing across the bedroom at a man, his shoulders hunched, his face wrinkled with age.

  “Forget who he is, what are you doing here?” Emily sat up in bed, clutching the sheets to her chest and experiencing a strong sense of deja vu as the ghost glared at the new arrival.

  “I pop back sometimes,” Cynthia admitted. “Just to check on Peanut and see things are still ticking along okay.”

  Peanut ran over to his old mistress, his motor revving into a loud purr as she stroked his back and pulled his tail.

  “Anyway, I’m allowed to visit. What I want to know is where you found your new friend?”

  The male ghost didn’t seem upset the two were discussing him without involving him in the conversation. He wavered back and forth on his feet, reminding Emily of herself when she grew tired.

  “Hello,” she said, pulling the bedclothes back and dragging her dressing gown up off the floor. “Who are you?”

  The ghost didn’t answer, just kept staring at Emily as though he’d never seen a woman before. It made her uncomfortable enough to double knot her robe.

  “Don’t be so rude,” Cynthia said, causing Emily to burst into laughter. She was one to talk! The ghost was the rudest woman she’d ever met, and she’d faced down some stiff competition.

  “Are you from Stoneybrook Acres?” Emily tried—an easy guess. “Did we uncover your bones?”

  The man still didn’t answer, though his attention turned toward the window, a change that Emily greeted with a sigh of relief.

  “Hey, you.” Cynthia snapped her fingers. “We’re talking to you and the least you can do is answer.”

  Still no response. Emily felt the drag of tiredness hit her. Too much happening with too little sleep.

  “Well, if you’re not going to talk, would you at least do me the courtesy of going through to my lounge and waiting there till morning? No offence, but it’s bad enough having this one”—she gestured at Cynthia—“paying me a visit at night. Having a man staring at me while I’m asleep is just a bit too creepy.”

  Peanut wandered closer to the new ghost, patting the man’s foot with his paw.

  “Mm,” he said, the first sound he appeared to have uttered for a long time considering the croak. He whistled a short tune and Peanut stared up at him in wonder.

  “Stop courting my cat.” Cynthia had her hands on her hips and now tilted her head to one side. “I really do think you owe us some information before you start playing with our pet.”

  “I’m guessing that you two don’t hang out together in ghost land, then.” Emily moved toward the door, silencing a yawn with the back of her hand. If her night was going to be interrupted so rudely, the least she could do was make herself the treat of a hot drink.

  “No,” Cynthia said, following Emily into the kitchen. “I have better things to do with my time than hang around with a mute.”

  “I do wish you ghosts would choose a better time and place to appear than in my bedroom in the middle of the night.”

  “It’s hardly midnight, dear.” Cynthia gave a sniff and bent to pick up Peanut. The cat eyed the kitchen bench with enthusiasm, though it had been a long time since he’d been able to eat. “These days, you can barely make it to nine o’clock.”

  “How long have you been keeping tabs on me?”

  Emily felt out of sorts and not just due to the interruption. Since she’d helped Cynthia track down her killer, she’d thought the ghost had moved onto a better place. To find out now that she’d hung around the whole time, just staying out of sight, made her feel violated.

  “Just once in a while,” the ghost said vaguely, leaning forward to rub her nose into Peanut’s fur.

  “For goodness’ sake,” Emily said, annoyed. “He’s not a handkerchief!”

  “I just like the way he smells. It reminds me of the good times from being alive.”

  “You’ve never told me about any good times,” Emily said with a sniff. “From what I remember, you complained constantly about how terrible everyone and everything was.”

  “Well, perhaps you weren’t paying attention. That’s part and parcel of having a brain injury, isn’t it?”

  As she spooned out a few naughty sugars on top of her Chai tea bag, Emily suppressed a smile. Although loathe to admit it, she’d missed the verbal sparring of her old companion.

  “Here he comes,” Cynthia said as the male ghost shuffled into the room. “Full of energy and laughter, aren’t you, chum?”

  The ghost hovered in the passage between the kitchen and the lounge. Not wanting to walk straight through him, and sure asking him to move would be met with the same vacant stare, Emily drank her cup of chai in the kitchen, standing up. Not her favourite position to do anything.

  “What are we going to do with you?” she asked as she rinsed out the mug. “If you can’t communicate, then I’m not sure I’ll be of any help.”

  “Why don’t you call on Crystal Dreaming, then?” Cynthia said with a snide smile. “I’m sure she’ll have an endless bounty of ideas.”

  “Don’t be rude about my business partner.” Emily stacked her cup in the dishwasher before covering her face with both hands. “And, yes, she might have some clue of what to try.”

  Crystal Dreaming was Pinetar’s premium psychic. She couldn’t actually communicate with the dead—at least so far as Emily could fathom—but she had great instincts, great insight, and a great customer base that the true ghost-seer had been glad to share.

  Even though Emily didn’t have control over which spirits visited her, she’d had some limited success with helping out frustrated townsfolk with their persistent ghosts.

  Well, if a person’s idea of limited was twice.

  “Unless you have a better idea,” Emily said, passing the buck straight back to Cynthia.

  “You took me to my grave. It didn’t help me out any, but perhaps that’s worth another try?”

  Emily glanced at the frail elderly gentleman. Yes. She was sure he belonged to the bones found earlier at Stoneybrook. She gave a long sigh before nodding. The idea was worth a go.

  Chapter Five

  The streetlamps outside Stoneybrook Acres didn’t cast their light far into the retirement home grounds. But their meagre light would have to do since Emily refused to drive her car up to the door. It was bad enough to have Cynthia yapping in her ear. She didn’t want anyone else to find her in the grounds of an illegal burial site at night.

  By the third time she tripped over s
ome unknown object in the dark, she’d changed her mind. A pity it was too late by then.

  “Keep up,” Cynthia snapped, floating over the uneven ground without a care in the world. She’d been reluctant to leave Peanut back at home but finally did at Emily’s behest. It appeared she intended to take that out on her at every step.

  The male ghost trailed along behind. He might not be able to talk or express himself in any way, but he seemed happy enough to follow.

  “It’s quite nice, you know,” Cynthia said. “Having a man stay silent for so long. When I was alive, it felt like one was always in my face, mansplaining something incorrectly.”

  That tickled Emily’s funny bone, and she held the smile until her foot hit against a tree root or a rock and she stumbled, placing far too much weight on her sore hip. The jolt of pain slammed into her like a dagger, causing tears of pain to spring into her eyes.

  “Careful,” Cynthia said.

  Emily turned, ready with a retort, then saw her friend was gesturing to the flapping police tape. She’d almost walked straight into it.

  “Hey, mister,” Emily whispered to the male ghost. “Do you recognise anything around here?”

  He stopped walking forward, but that was his only response.

  “Boy, this is a creepy place at night, isn’t it?” Cynthia moved closer to Emily, her eyes darting around the large building. During the day it had sprawled but, in the darkness, it hunched down like a large animal ready to pounce.

  “It gets worse when you consider this poor bloke’s grave is just a few metres away.” Emily couldn’t see the outline of the hole in the gloom but could feel it as a physical presence. The draw of death and destruction were palpable in the night.

  “There aren’t that many things I’m grateful for about dying young, but not ending up in a cage like this is one of them.”

  Emily shot Cynthia a sharp look that she probably couldn’t see. “They’re not cages. The rooms are very nice, although a bit on the small side.”

  “Boxes, then. Does that make it better?”

  Emily’s gaze moved to Agnes’s window, just a glint of reflected moonlight to distinguish it from the old brickwork. No, it didn’t make it better. The fear of ending up in this place, or one like it, crawled up the back of her throat.

  “Imagine if they’d put a nice hotel here, instead,” Cynthia mused. “Wouldn’t that be so much better than this awful place?”

  “It was a hotel of sorts.” Emily grinned as she thought of the disappointed expressions on the faces of any tourists unlucky enough to book a room here. “Just not a successful one, from what I can tell.”

  “No kidding.” Cynthia floated farther along the lawn, angling toward the dense blackness of the wooded edge. “I remember the trouble I had with Nathaniel’s house, it being so old. The first six months after I moved in, we had construction crews there every day trying to turn it from a damp brick box into something light and liveable.”

  Emily took her shoes off and followed behind Cynthia, letting her toes sink into the damp earth. The grass was much kinder to her feet than the tight leather of her mules. Even the most sensible footwear had nothing on a nicely kept lawn.

  “What’s your man doing now?” Cynthia asked, pointing back toward the taped off section.

  He was shuffling forward, past the hole where his own remains were buried—or might even be excavated by now—and straight through the yellow tape barrier on the other side.

  About three windows down from Agnes’s room, the ghost stopped and bent to place his hands flat on the ground. He whistled a short tune. Even though he didn’t say the words, Emily heard the echo of a thousand children’s games in her mind. Olly olly oxen free.

  The whistle was so discordant with their current location that Emily’s scalp prickled. She ran a hand through her curls, itching the skin beneath gently with her nails. She didn’t want to release a drift of dandruff snowflakes.

  Cynthia shook her head, her upper lip curling. “You really lucked into a mental case with this one, didn’t you?”

  “It seems to be the pattern,” Emily agreed, enjoying the slight gasp her friend made as the ramification set in.

  “Hey, mister,” Cynthia called out. “Do you mind working out who you are a bit quicker so we can get out of here and go someplace nice? You’re getting boring.”

  “Getting?” Emily raised an eyebrow. “That’s generous of you.”

  “I’m not a harridan all the time.” Cynthia sniffed. “Just a lot of it. How’s Peanut doing?”

  The change in subject took Emily a second to catch up with. “Okay.” She frowned. “Although, from what you said before, you’ve been checking up on him yourself. The next time you visit, please wake me.”

  “I was being kind, Scarface. It’s obvious you need your rest.”

  “It’s not restful, knowing that somebody comes and stares at me while I’m asleep. I’d rather stay awake while you’re in the house, and doze late the next morning.”

  Cynthia gave a snort of amusement. “I wasn’t the one staring. It’s your new boyfriend who was doing that.”

  Emily’s mouth pulled down at the corners. “Really? I could’ve done without knowing that tidbit of information.”

  “You’ll know it soon enough if he can’t tell us who he is,” Cynthia pointed out. “It was hard enough finding out who killed me so I could move on. With mute man, it’ll be a miracle if he finds the light.”

  “What’s on the other side of the light?” Emily tried not to glance in Cynthia’s direction. She really didn’t want the ghost to see how much she craved knowing the truth.

  “None of your business. You’ll find it all out soon enough.”

  “Not even a hint?”

  “Don’t be so maudlin.” Cynthia walked away, making a beeline for the male ghost. “You want to concentrate your attention on making this life the best it can be, not worrying about the next one.”

  She tapped the man on the shoulder. He glanced up but just stared blankly at her for a while before returning his attention to the ground. He repeated the whistle again.

  Cynthia shuddered. “I really wish you wouldn’t do that, pal. You don’t know who’ll take advantage.”

  Emily was glad she wasn’t the only one freaked out, but not as glad as she would be to leave this cursed place and go home. “How about we head back to the car and see if he’ll follow? This isn’t doing anything to help.”

  “Let me guess,” Cynthia said, turning. “The next step in your grand plan is to call the town medium. Maybe she can move him along.”

  “Don’t snipe about Crystal,” Emily said as she headed for the driveway. “It’s not her fault she can’t talk to you.”

  “I’m not upset she doesn’t speak to me, it’s a blessing.”

  “Tag!”

  The strange voice caught Emily’s attention, and she jerked around. The tone was young, but she couldn’t see a source except for the male ghost. “Who was that?” she called out, forgetting to whisper.

  “You’re it!”

  Another voice. Again, it sounded young but different from the previous call.

  “Hey, mate,” Cynthia called out. “How about you knock that off, okay?”

  Emily noticed how she cupped her elbows. A scared ghost did nothing to ease her own nerves.

  The male ghost stood up, shaking his legs out and cracking his neck from side to side. He whistled for the third time.

  “Stuff this for a joke,” Cynthia declared, drifting farther away. “If I wanted an episode of the Twilight Zone, I’d stay indoors and watch the telly.”

  A child’s laugh rang out, echoing off the side of the retirement home and bouncing back toward Emily. By now, her gut was churning. Her scalp no longer prickled, it was a swarm of beestings, her hair standing on end.

  “Can I play?”

  As Emily’s throat tightened to a thin straw, a hand popped up through the manicured lawn past the barbeque patio. A child’s hand.

&nb
sp; It felt around in a circle, then pressed its palm flat on the grass, hauling a ghost body out of the ground. The child, or young teenager, got his upper body out, then leaned on his arms for better leverage.

  “Oh, my.” Cynthia’s voice was full of distress. “Who’s your friend?”

  Another hand poked up through the grass, this time the child ghost grabbed hold to pull his companion free of the earth. The two boys stared at each other, then broke into giggles. Their laughter grew and grew until they had to clasp each other by the shoulders to stand.

  Emily wanted to run home. She didn’t care about her decaying muscles or the pain in her hip. As a third hand sprang up from the soil, her lungs felt as though they were being squeezed too tightly to draw breath.

  “How many more do you have stored down there?” Cynthia asked the male ghost, her voice streaking into the upper registers. “A whole classroom?”

  But the man continued to ignore her. His eyes flicked from one young boy to another, a smile of contentment on his pale face.

  “Hey, how about we call it a night?” It took all of Emily’s courage, but she forced herself to take a step forward. The second was harder, her feet stuck in cement blocks buried thigh-deep in quicksand. “We can visit again in the morning.”

  The morning. With daylight. Where each new apparition wouldn’t stun her with fear.

  “That’s a great idea,” Cynthia said in her new, high voice. “These boys look as though they need a good rest.”

  With the way they ran around each other, calling and laughing, it seemed the opposite was true. The man stood in the centre of them, a feature of their game. He spun, tracking the boys as they tagged and wrestled, slapped and tickled.

  Emily closed her eyes, the sight too exhausting to keep bearing witness. “Old ghost man, can you ask your new friends for their names?”

  Another set of giggles rippled through the young teens, rewarding her with smiles of delight rather than an answer.