The Angry Ghost and Other Stories

by Peter Spokes

  After some struggling I got the coach moving and we continued with the journey – as far as Old Bob’s stomach would allow.

  But finally, I arrived and was free of the coach, and Callahan’s – the inn recommended to me – was just across the road.

  Then a strange thing occurred, for as I started towards the inn, I was suddenly grabbed by the collar and pulled backwards with a surprising amount of force. I turned swiftly with my fists clenched to beat off the miscreant that I had supposed was attacking me, when a large horse-drawn cart raced past, missing me by inches.

  I looked after the departing carrier with some puzzlement and not a little anger. The way it was rocking I could see it losing one or two of the sacks that appeared to constitute its cargo.

  Then I looked around at my attacker – newly upgraded to rescuer – now releasing my collar. Rather than a brawny arm, possibly tattooed with something anarchic or rebellious, I found myself gazing at a slim, delicate one at the other end of which an equally slim and delicate figure was attached.

  “Were you never taught to look before crossing a road?” she asked.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You’ve got quite a grip there – fortunately,” I continued, breathing heavily and massaging my throat where the clasp of my cape had dug in.

  I noticed a small dab of blood on my finger.

  The lady was surprisingly handsome; her curly night-black hair cascaded around her shoulders in abundance and was held by a silver circlet. Despite the heat, not a bead of perspiration marked her visage.

  “That clasp has cut you,” she said licking a small handkerchief that had materialised from her cuff and dabbing at my throat.

  My natural manliness prohibited me from making anything of it.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, sounding even to my own ears not unlike a western hero that had just taken a bullet.

  I was about to ask if I could buy her a cool drink when she looked up at the night sky behind me and said suddenly, “I must go,” and with that, she turned, and hurried away along the road.

  I turned and looked up at the full moon and smiled to myself. Despite her seemingly dramatic one-liner, I considered the probability that she would become something hairy, howling, and gifted in the tooth department, at the low end of the reality scale – which gives me a convenient opening to mention some things important to me.

  I should probably lay out some of my beliefs – or lack thereof – and interests for you to perhaps better understand my attitude and reactions through my narrative.

  Scene 2: Beliefs

  People can – and do – have many beliefs. Beliefs can keep them honest or give a comforting feeling that someone is watching over them. That is fine but as for ‘ghosts’, ultimately, and to my mind, there are no such things; we die completely – that has already been proven to me as I had spent a long time, many years ago, wanting to believe in them.

  If, however, it is found that the thought of being reacquainted with loved ones brings comfort and succour, then I certainly would not object or discourage that mode of thinking despite my opinion of scepticism. But if I hear that ghosts are apparently terrorising a small village somewhere, then I need to visit – not to vanquish any wayward spirits – but to explain to the villagers that something odd, or apparently unexplainable, should not be put down to such nonsense.

  There is – has been – and always will be a rational explanation to such ridiculous stories of apparitions.

  In my current investigation, I also had the matter of the note, signed Mairead, that I wanted to explore.

  At a risk of repetition, ghosts do not exist; I know this as for a long time I had hoped, and prayed, that they did.

  I had so much wanted to see my sister again, if only to tell her that I was sorry, and never wished to kill her. But as I’ve grown older, and wiser, I’ve finally relegated that nonsense and my utterances attributed to it, as one might do regarding Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

  To be open to fair judgement – should that be felt necessary – I was put on medication which was prescribed to me many years ago, which has helped and enabled me to see things objectively and reduce some paranoia that I’ve suffered in the past.

  I still take the medication and only occasionally have small doubt how much of the world around me is the truth, and how much is warped by its constant usage. I still felt, however, that at the end of the day proven and judicious thought will rule the day.

  Some may consider my mind blinkered and perhaps even controlled by my medication, but they would be wrong. The loss of my younger sister, when I was twelve years old, created a strong and almost irresistible need to believe in the afterlife. Also, the loss quickly knocks your thinking out of kilter with the romantic and rather sanguine idea that ‘everything is done for a reason’, and ‘we are not to question the Lord’s ways’, etc., etc., etc.

  I certainly questioned His judgement at that time and I haven’t spoken to Him since; something that is probably mutually amicable.

  As a young lad, in my naivety and wanting, I had spent many hours lying awake in my bed talking to an imagined ghost of Rosie, whom I envisioned standing beside my bedpost. Sometimes I would talk for so long that the glow of the first light of dawn would creep under the curtains. I would discuss school and tell her what her friends were up to, and how much they were all missing her.

  Unfortunately, the conversation was always very one-sided and I soon realised that faith and reality are so very different. I had so much wanted to believe that ghosts existed and that I could see Rosie again, but I had to finally concede that ghosts were as tenuous and insubstantial as their apparent form – and the medication only re-affirmed it.

  There was rarely a day go by that I didn’t think of Rosie’s smile – a smile far too serious for a nine-year-old child – in a gentle face, encircled by a cascade of auburn ringlets and curls, the ends of which she would often be seen chewing. I remembered fondly how I would bring bluebells back from the field; not because they were her favourite flowers – which they actually were – but because they made her sneeze!

  She would laugh uncontrollably – between sneezes – as much as I.

  But back to the present; my ghosts and ghouls do have a place in my life and that is in entertainment; in the films in the picture houses. I’m an avid fan of the ‘horror’ genre and take great enjoyment in its atmospheric stories – although I’ve always been disappointed by the rubber puppets flapping comically masquerading as vampire bats.

  I’ve enjoyed, in particular, the recent films like The Wolfman where Lon Chaney Jr. would look up in terror at the full moon as he slowly sprouted hair.

  No – ghosts and goblins are great but are the stuff of fairy tales and entertainment and have no place among grown-ups in the real world.

  I started across the road – again – and stood before the front door of Callahan’s public establishment and looked down for a few moments. I was hot and my head was thumping. This was the longest heatwave for thirty years when in 1910 the cattle were keeling over in the fields. But despite the heat, a mist was drifting along the road towards me – odd as I was aware that there were no rivers or canals nearby. It rose in swirls and coils and yet there was no decrease in temperature to the night air. It was dark now too and I so wanted a bath… but the entry door was locked.

  So here I was, and here I am; and the door was locked.

  I looked at my pocket watch. It was only 9.30 pm.

  I was about to knock when I heard a light clicking or tapping, and out of the corner of my eye, I thought I glimpsed someone approaching along the road, but when I looked directly, he or she was gone. I figured the vision for another swirl of the fog and perhaps leaves blowing along the road but for the fact that there was no movement of air.

  Despite the heat, the mist challenged the visual senses to see clearly.

  Attributing ti
redness to the tricks my eyes were seemingly playing – and ears hearing – I dismissed it and returned my gaze to the door and knocked several times.

  As I waited, the tapping started again and I looked, squinting into the gathering miasma, and I saw a young child dancing along the road towards me. I noticed something swinging from her hand as she skipped along.

  Rather late to be out, I thought, but not exactly alarming.

  I returned my attention to the inn door.

  Scene 3: Father Ardal Fitzpatrick

  After much clicking of locks and jingling of chains, the door was opened by ‘Gale Sondergaard’, or at least someone who looked strikingly similar.

  For those unfamiliar with today’s great actresses, Gale Sondergaard – despite a most attractive countenance – was probably best known in her later years for playing the part of the sinister, rather disquieting servant of an equally sinister and disquieting old and dark house.

  She currently wore a black pashmina with a plethora of tassels giving her the appearance of a rather large spider.

  “Hello,” I said. “Are you open? I have rooms reserved.”

  I rather hoped that she would respond with something along the lines of: ‘The master is resting’ or ‘We don’t get many visitors after dark’.

  I wasn’t disappointed.

  “Yes, we are open but we lock the door when darkness comes,” she said eerily.

  As I raised my foot to step across the threshold, she held up her hand suddenly and pointed down. I paused in mid-step following her finger downwards past my raised boot and noticed what appeared to be a white crystalline substance spread in excessive abundance across the entrance.

  “It wards off those from the… other side,” she said with all the pleasantry of a fortune teller heralding an imminent passing.

  “The other side of what?” I offered with some flippancy.

  “The veil …” she said.

  I simply nodded.

  I stepped carefully over the white substance and ‘Gale’ closed the door behind me. She began returning its security attachments to their locked positions.

  Though I was reluctant to enter into anything even remotely passing as communication, I asked her what the white substance was.

  “It is salt,” she said. “Its purity protects us.”

  “O… kay,” I said, feeling it was time to terminate this particular banter, and so after looking at her for a few disbelieving moments and making a mental note never to find myself alone with her, I retreated slowly to the bar area where other creatures of another form of spirit world appeared slumped across tables.

  Each step I took sounded as though I were walking on broken glass; I guessed that several of the clients had not completely stepped over the salt.

  Most of the occupants were male, quite elderly and straight from a scene from Basil Rathbone’s most recent Sherlock Holmes film – The Scarlet Claw.

  The first person, I thought, to roll his eyes, look at me askew, and suggest I ‘stay clear of the moors’ or ‘not go out while there’s a full moon if I were you, sir’, will see my prompt exit to another public alehouse.

  It’s probably clear that my love of the old movies is matched only by my over-active imagination, which probably accounts for my sensitivity to things that cannot exist.

  Then I saw the object of my visit – Father Ardal Fitzpatrick.

  He was sitting near the back of the room but now he carefully raised himself on his stick and gingerly walked towards me – crunching as he came.

  “Hello, hello, quite remarkable, it’s very queer that – you won’t believe me but – I’ve very much been wanting to speak to you, and here you are walking into our very alehouse,” he said squinting through his pince-nez eyeglasses sitting precariously, and I thought rather tightly, on the end of his long nose.

  I pondered on two things for a moment; that clearly the father had forgotten that he had sent me a communication requesting my presence relating to the most urgent ‘ghostly’ matter; and how on earth he could breathe through his nose.

  A moment later my latter cause to ponder was vindicated, as after a couple of subtle coughs, he sneezed and I thought his nose was going to explode as for a split second it resembled a bullfrog’s neck.

  “Bless you, Father,” I said accepting the offered hand that, only a moment ago, had seemingly stopped the father’s brains evacuating from his cranial cavity – and giving it a shake.

  “Please excuse me,” he said, wiping his nose and retrieving his eyeglasses from the floor several feet away. “Every time the door opens I start sneezing; maybe something to do with the fog. It’s odd that with no rain for several weeks or rivers nearby, we have been getting it each night. It reminds me of when I lived near the fens and…”

  “It’s good to see you again, Father,” I said, aiming to bring him back to the present and with luck imbue me with a good explanation for my being here.

  The father’s eyes refocussed from a time in the past to one satisfyingly back to the here and now.

  He led me back to his table in the rear of the room while behind me ‘Gale’ doggedly continued to secure the entrance with a pair of hands that had sprouted earlier from her many-limbed pashmina.

  Father Fitzpatrick gave a knowing nod to the landlord, who then returned the nod in an equally knowing way, and then nodded to me. Naturally I returned his nod though unknowingly, as I hadn’t a clue as to whether we were making wordless introductions or being initiated into some kind of secret society.

  The landlord acknowledged my nod with another of his own and I then nodded back to the father whose nod – I felt, thankfully – had some nuance of finality to it. Thank God, for just when I was becoming anxious of being caught in some kind of time-loop, the spell was broken and the world began to heave into motion once more.

  The landlord picked up my cases and – with a nod – proceeded to the stairs and presumably my rooms.

  “My, it’s so good to see you after what… thirty years?” Father Ardal said gazing into space for a moment.

  Actually, it had been little more than twenty, but I answered diplomatically. “It has certainly been some time,” I said nodding sage-like, though it might have been the residual muscular spasms from my earlier mute conversation with the landlord.

  “Mmm, yes, you were what, twenty, which must make you…”

  “Forty-three,” I finished. I was certain I could hear the cogs grinding in his head and the answer popping up with an unlikely number, and so to distract him, I brought up the subject of the communication he had sent me.

  “So you’ve all been seeing ghosts,” I said without further preamble.

  Quickly he hushed me – moved closer – and lowered his voice while furtively looking around the room. I too looked. Most of the customers had their beards submerged in their glasses; and that wasn’t exclusive to the men. The landlord had returned and was nodding at a customer – or acolyte – and ‘Gale’ was busy at the door, while other members of the clientele crunched their way to and from the bar.

  Indeed, all looked normal.

  “Please don’t speak so flippantly,” he admonished. “I don’t want it to look as if we’ve lost our minds.”

  I looked around the room again. “There’s no chance of that, I’m certain,” I said with as much seriousness as my still nodding head could muster.

  “When you arrived,” he started seriously, “did you see anything odd in the fog? Something just at the limits of your vision, barely seen or felt, as if a spider were crawling along the nape of your neck?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “There was a young child dancing up the road; a fog is getting thicker and, oh yes! I was nearly bowled over by a horse and cart.”

  Father Fitzpatrick continued to stare at me for several moments before grunting and looking down with apparent disappointment. �
�That would have been young Finbarr. He drops off the salt provisions to the general store but since a small landslide occurred on the country road, he and the other delivery carts have had to detour and loop around parts of the village and up Main Street. It takes him longer and so he rides like the Devil’s on his tail. I’ve asked him to slow down but he says the diversion around the village adds a further fifteen minutes to his day and the more deliveries he makes, the more he’s paid, and his wife is expecting their fifth.”

  “Nevertheless, he may think otherwise if he turns the cart over or runs into a child. I thought he was going to lose a sack or two when he went past me,” I said seriously.

  The father grunted in agreement. “Yes, I think he has lost one or two a while back – some of the contents of which are still being crunched underfoot by our good selves,” he finished.

  “Fortunately,” I continued, “a rather pleasant lady wearing a silver circlet pulled me out of its way.”

  The father looked at me with sudden disdain. “Keep well away from her; she is evil.”

  As I pondered on the father’s words he looked up and announced, “I want to tell you of the ghosts of Kilronan,” he said quietly.

  Scene 4: The Ghosts of Kilronan

  The room seemed to quieten and even the oil lamps appeared to dim slightly in deference to and preparation of the father’s verbal presentation.

  I let him speak uninterrupted by keeping my cynical thoughts to myself and after only a little time – perhaps thirty minutes – he stopped and finally looked up at me; for the first time since he started, I realised.

  “I swear it is all true,” he said quietly.

  Though the father had a reputation for enjoying his drink, he was well-respected and trusted. He had counselled me often when I was a boy soon after Rosie’s death, and I trusted his honesty, but try as I might, I could not see how he could have been fooled by something that seemed to be masquerading as an apparent manifestation of apparitions.

  The rest of the evening was a little subdued and uneventful as the father stared into his ale and I went through his story bit by bit in my head.