Eleven New Ghost Stories

by David Paul Nixon

  It happened first one night as I’m coming back from the pub. I’ve had a couple, not too many, on my best behaviour ‘cos I could still get sent back inside. The street’s empty, totally quiet, you can’t even hear the wind or sound of traffic from the A-road. You could hear a pin drop’s echo, that’s how quiet it was.

  And I’m just walking down the road, on my way home, minding my own business, when I feel it – this great big hand slapping down on my shoulder, just like it were some mate of mine.

  I almost jump out of my shoes. I spin around, expecting to see some geezer behind me. But there’s no one there. No one there.

  The street’s empty, but in my head, there’s one face I can see; it’s Terry Coles, he’s just put his hand on my shoulder to express his deep fucking sympathy about my son being a poof. There’s no one there, but I can’t get that image of him out of my mind. His stupid big eyes and phony, friendly grin.

  I run home, I’m that scared shitless.

  Next day, I just put it down to the drink. You have a few and you can get strange ideas. I try not to think about it cos it freaks me out. But that next day I promised to take Lisa’s eldest Candice up to Hanley for some clothes shopping. That’s if you can call ‘em clothes. There weren’t enough fabric on ’em to blow your nose on.

  So I’m walking around with her on a wet Saturday as she goes in and out these shops, none of which I’ve ever heard of, and then we’re heading back to the bus station, and I’m walking down the end of the high street.

  It happens again. Great big hand slaps down on my shoulder. I go ice cold and I spin around and I look at all the people and none of them are looking at me. No one’s right behind me, they’re just walking past me, wondering “What the fuck’s wrong with this guy. He’s mental.”

  And I’m going mental, I’m looking at all these people and I start shouting: “Who touched me, who was it? Which one of you put your hand on my shoulder?”

  Candice is dying of embarrassment; she don’t want me there in the first place. She asks me what I’m doing and I point right at her and shout “Was it you?” She says “Fuck no,” – foul mouth she’s got – “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  So I’m stood there looking like a bloody lunatic because I know, I know, that Terry Coles is there and that he’s watching me. Laughing at me.

  It was hard that first year. Any place, any time. Terry hasn’t changed much; he knows just how to get under your skin…

  Like when you’re at the checkout, just as you’re about to hand over your money. The woman behind the till will say to you, “That’s nine-sixty dear”, and the hand’ll slap down on your shoulder… It’s like getting ice-water down your back. It totally knocks the wind out of you. I used to drop me money, spill it all over the floor. He’d do it just then to make me look like an idiot. He likes to make me look stupid.

  His other favourite is to do it when I’m playing a game and winning. Whether it was pool or darts or cards, that slap on the shoulder and I’d lose it. The game would be over, I’d be fucked. Couldn’t hit a ball, couldn’t hit the board, couldn’t make a bet…

  Bit by bit he started to ruin my life. Can’t go for a pint without a slap on the shoulder, and then my pints all over the floor or I’m losing it in front of strangers and kicking off. I couldn’t work because you can’t drive when some fuck decides to pay you a visit from beyond the grave. I’d be driving and then he’d slap his hand down on me and I’d lose control.

  There was this crash, I went off the road. I only took out some hedges, but the cops saw me. Then a few weeks later I stop on the motorway, couldn’t help it – he put his hand down on my shoulder and I slam on the brakes. Car goes straight into the back of me, some guy gets whiplash and concussion. Probably lucky there wasn’t a pile up. But I lose my license and I lose me job.

  It got so fucking bad I couldn’t leave the house for a while. Council put me in this dingy flat once Lisa and Nev-ille turfed me out. But I stopped going out, you see this hair, this hair was brown like wood before I went to prison – now look at it: I got fucking old man’s hair.

  It’s the dread of it happening that’s the worst. You don’t know when it’ll happen, you don’t know when he’s gonna put his hand on your shoulder. He picks his times, he knows exactly when to time it. This one time he even did it when I was taking a piss. Knocks me cock out of my hand and has me piss all over my trousers right before a game.

  Big fucking laugh, eh? Sometimes I think I can hear him laughing. Splitting his fucking sides cos he’s so funny!

  I ended up on benefits; council thought I was agro-phobic – is that what they call it when you can’t go outside? Had to go to see a psychiatrist, what a fucking joke…

  It had to stop then; I was no fun if I stayed at home. He couldn’t humiliate me if I was indoors. No, he had to leave me alone for a while. Let me get my shit back together, let me think maybe he was going to leave me alone.

  He left me alone for a long time, maybe six or more months without a touch. He let me get my life back on track. I got a job with a cousin of mine, helping him run his betting shop. I knows my games and my odds and numbers. I get the council to come over and paint my walls get the dingy flat looking a bit brighter. I even talks to my kid a few times. He’s happy, so I suppose that’s something.

  But it wasn’t long before he decides to let me know he hasn’t forgot about me. This time it wasn’t to humiliate me or wind me up. I was just shifting some stuff downstairs from my flat to my storage cupboard on ground floor. I was unlocking the door when his hand came down on my shoulder...

  It wasn’t a big too-friendly slap like it used to be. It was just this slight touch, just a reminder that he hadn’t done with me yet. And I didn’t take it like I used to, didn’t go ice cold. I was expecting him, if not then, but sometime. I know how this prick’s mind works. I knew he’d be back. Pricks like Terry Coles can never leave well alone. That probably annoyed him; I’d got over it a bit you see, there’s worse things in life than being tapped by undead wind-up merchants.

  I should’ve pretended, played along. ‘Cos now he knew that he had to up his game.

  He was quiet again for a while, let months go by before he has another go. I’m at Stoke station, waiting to catch train down to see City away. I’m on my own, cos most people stay away from me these day ‘cos they think I’m a nut job. But I’m still going to matches... Fuck the lot of them…

  I’m stood on the platform waiting and I see train coming in from the distance. So I pick up my bag ready for when it arrives.

  Then, just as it’s pulling into the platform, I feel that hand on my shoulder. I go stiff, cold, that’s normal – but then that hand pushes me. Shoves me right off the platform.

  I land on the tracks, just an inch away from the electric line. The train’s coming towards me and people are screaming and shouting and I can see it coming for me and I cover me eyes and I scream, very nearly pissed my pants – no joke.

  But Terry, he knows what I don’t. That this ain’t the long train; it’s just a short one, four carriages instead of six. It’s already stopped well ahead of me. I’m there screaming on the track like a bloody girl when it’s already stopped still.

  Fucking hilarious, eh?

  That’s our new game. He’s trying to kill me, but he hasn’t decided when yet. So he’s toying with me, waiting till I let me guard down. Last week it was the tram – I’m in Manchester for the away game and he gives me a shove just as the tram’s coming into stop. I’m out the way fast enough before it can hit me, but if I wasn’t on me toes it would’ve taken me down. Driver has a right go, people are laughing, saying I just jumped out. I don’t rise to it; what’s the fucking point?

  He’s had plenty of goes. I can’t walk down stairs if there’s no bannister. Can’t walk down the middle, have to have my hand on the rail; he’s had a go at me on stairs more than once.

  Can’t walk on the road-side of the pavement – he might shove me off. Got to be c
areful in the kitchen to. You see that? That’s what happened when he pushed me against the cooker that one time. Treatment in hospital for second degree burns. Hurt to even wipe my fucking arse on the toilet for weeks.

  One day he’ll get bored and have done with it. I won’t help him, but you know what? I ain’t gonna put up that much of a fight either. I mean, what have I got? I got no friends, my family doesn’t want me near them. I’m out of work again ‘cos my stupid cousin fucked up his taxes. I got no friends and no boozer. No pubs around here will have me in them anymore. I’m trouble, a nutter, a fucking killer!

  They only have me in here ‘cos they think I’m funny. Fucking students. Crazy Carl, it’s all such a fucking laugh to them. Buy Carl a drink and he’ll tell you about the ghost that taps him on the shoulder. They have goes sometimes; creep up behind me and touch me on the shoulder to see if I go mental. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.

  They ought to have barred me here too, but I think I actually bring the punters in. I’ve become part of the fucking furniture, because I’ve got nowhere else to go.

  So you get it all down… you get it all down for your book so you and your mates can have a good old laugh at Crazy Ole Carl. I look forward to reading about it – I can read you know. Then one day, when you hear about me, how I got mowed down in the road, or pushed off a bridge or drowned in the canal… well, you can have a big fucking laugh then too, can’t you?

  BENJAMIN WENT TO THE WELL

  It’s a shame my uncle isn’t still alive. He told the story best; he always said I made it sound too much like a film. He was more of a man of words; he could tell the legend so it made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. And it’s all true, every word of it, at least as far as we know it…

  It’s become a sort of a family tradition; all of us know it off by heart. We’ve all been down to where the house stood, seen where the well once was… visited the graves…

  My family have owned land here for generations. There was a time when Bullham Brook was a bustling, busy, growing town, but that was when the mine was open. Some people connect the closing of the mine with what happened with the well – all the accidents, though my father was of the mind that it was more to do with corner-cutting and corruption. But superstition might be what’s kept it closed…

  My father was the first in the family to really study the story, try to separate fact from fiction. I’ve got it all here, all his papers and it’s all borne out. Well, most of it... we’ve got death certificates, and parish records, testimonies and diaries. And crucially, the police report. Whether it happened exactly how it’s supposed to have, who can say? But did something strange, awful and wicked take place on that hillside that night? Of that, there is no doubt.

  It was my father’s ambition to dig up the well, see if he could find bones. Of course, the money it costs to maintain the estate meant that he could never get the funds together. There was a time when this estate used to make money, but those days are long gone.

  It’s surprising the story isn’t more well known, but I suppose this is an odd corner of the country, not much here. But now, when we have heritage tourists coming up to the house, the Trust like to wheel me out to tell it every so often. My uncle was the master; he relished a chance to tell it. Milked it for everything it was worth…

  They called him the terror of Bullham Brook!

  From the end of the family estate to the Cliffside tin mine, he ran and roamed, tucked and rolled, tore and trod. He brought chaos to each sleepy corner, to each garden and house from one end of the village to the other. No one was safe.

  Ladies cried his name as their well-kept gardens were trodden through; shopkeepers rushed to prevent the chaos of his clumsy fingers; farmers reached for their forks when they heard the squawks and grunts that signalled the terror was near and their livestock needed protection.

  Yes, Benjamin Morris was a little monster; precocious, hyper-active and mischievous; forever in and out of trouble. But who could blame him? Bullham Brook had so little to offer a young boy with a fertile imagination and energy to burn. The town was so quiet; he had no brothers or sisters to play with, and there were so few children, and fewer close to his age. Perhaps he merely craved attention; his father was always so busy helping old Parson – Zachariah Parson, my great grandfather – and his mother was so fragile, so highly-strung, so vulnerable, and with her spending so much time in her bed, she could hardly care for the boy and see to all his needs.

  Whatever the cause, Benjamin Morris somehow, someway, always seemed to be close to trouble. Yet it must be stressed that Benjamin Morris was not a bad boy. He had not an evil bone in his body. But if it had not been for him, Bullham Brook might be a thriving, bustling town, instead of the ghost town it is today. You can see, if you look down into the valley, where many of the houses used to stand. Though small, this community once thrived. The busy tin mine brought workers, the promise of industry. But within a decade, all that would be undone.

  Benjamin Morris would uncover a secret so terrible, so shocking, that it shook this town to its very foundations. When the tin mine closed, beset by accidents and misfortune, the court records would state it was due to carelessness, neglect and corruption. But for those who lived in the town, every accident, every act of unpleasantness was as a result of what Benjamin Morris discovered. People can be superstitious, especially back then, and over time they would leave and desert Bullham Brook. Which is why today, as a village, it is less than a handful of houses and little else but ruins.

  The year was 1890. Benjamin was a boy of eleven; he was independent, spirited, and an unwilling student. The law required that he should go to school, which was carried out in the village hall – which is still there – adjoining what was once the church, which is not. His father thought his schooling a waste of time, that he should be learning a profession. If not on the farm, with him, in the mine; a good man, but a little backward-thinking.

  When not in school, the fields and hills were Benjamin’s stomping ground. Where he ran races, hunted rabbits, fished, made secret hideaways, leaped hedges and climbed trees. He had the lay of the land; he could do virtually as he pleased. There was but one rule – he must never go to the well.

  It was his mother’s rule, a rule which she imposed with absolute strictness. He had heard it first when he was only five years old. His mother was taking his father his food for lunch when they crossed the hillside field where the well lay, the only mark on the otherwise unspoiled landscape.

  Already a keen explorer, the young Benjamin ran toward the otherwise unremarkable stone ring, but his mother screamed for him to come back to her. Prone to hysterics, she shrieked at him and made him swear that he would never go near the well, that he must promise to her that he would never, ever, go to the well.

  It was foolish of her. Had she merely warned him that a well was no place for a child to play, then he might simply have never thought to go there again. However, her overbearing insistance that he must never, ever, go near this otherwise ordinary landmark instilled it with a sense of mystique. And although he obeyed his mother, he would never forget that spot and over the years it must have preyed on his curiosity many times.

  But he obeyed; whatever havoc he might have wreaked, he was at heart a good boy. His mother’s warning was severe enough for him to fear the consequences he might face if he were to visit the well.

  He kept his promise to his mother; he kept it until he was eleven years old. As I’ve said, he was not a good student, and at school he was the bane of the school mistress, Miss Claxton, to all accounts a nasty, rather spiteful old spinster. The children are said to have called her Miss Bones because of her emaciated, sinewy frame. She had under her tutelage about 20 pupils, all of different ages, which one imagines would not have made her job simple and might well have contributed to her legendary temper.

  Miss Bones was one of the three people Benjamin hated most in the world. He hated her boring lessons and the way she appeared
to pick on him. But there was one person in class who he hated even more, one person who haunted him and persecuted and bated him more than anyone else.

  That was Penelope Lucinda Revile. Penelope was the daughter of one of the mine owners, a new wealthy breed who had come to town. She saw herself as above the other students in the class and Benjamin particularly, who was roughly her age and therefore a kind of, shall we say, competitor. Now we’ve all known a Penelope at some point in our lives, usually as children; the sweetest of sweet girls – butter would not melt in her mouth. But when backs were turned, a different creature entirely…

  Now, the situation, as told, is that during one of the school break times, the children were playing in the yard. Benjamin was playing alone with a ball and Penelope decided she wanted to play with the ball to. He did not want to, but Penelope insisted and Miss Claxton forced him. But he could not play well enough for her; he wasn’t throwing the ball hard enough or he was throwing it too hard. And Miss Claxton, being well disposed to the spoilt young Ms Revile – perhaps giving deferential treatment to one she saw as being of a better class – kept telling off young Benjamin, though all he wanted to do was play alone.

  Penelope tormented him all through play time. He was giving up too easily; she wasn’t having enough fun with him. He wasn’t responding as fiercely as she’d hoped. So, as the children queued to go back to the classroom, she waited behind Benjamin. And when Benjamin went back into the classroom, she took the ball from his hands and threw it across the classroom, smashing one of the teacher’s potted plants and spilling soil onto the classroom floor.

  “Benjamin!” his teacher screamed – now she’d done it; he was in for it now. The shrill, shrieking Miss Bones decided that his behaviour was so bad, so intolerable, that he must be taken to the vicar for punishment.

  Now Benjamin might well have hated the strict Miss Bones and the brat Penelope, but they were nothing compared to the vicar. Of him, we know a great deal. He had been a soldier before he had become a man of God. He had been in the first Boer war, where he is said to have killed more than 40 tribesmen, although that seems like hearsay. Nevertheless, he was proud of his war service and his rooms were full of tribal relics, animals and various foreign curiosities. He himself was a big hulking brute of a man – there is a photograph in the archive – 6ft tall, with wide shoulders and a slanted face, with a small scar on his cheek and a larger one across his forehead.