by Penny Thomas
You didn’t tell the writer about the woman with the yellow buckets in her shed.
‘I know, apparently I was running out of word count. I’ll tell her the next time she comes. Now shove over a bit, I’ve hardly got any bed.’
Yeah, but you’ve got all the duvet.
‘Remember how we laughed at the double beds we slept in on holiday? God, they were huge. You used to say we needed to be tied together with a rope or you’d lose me in them.’
Night night, she says, love you. I reply by putting my arm around her, tucking in close. ‘Am I on the wrong side of the bed again?’
You are never on the wrong side of my bed.
‘Martha!’
Whisht, I’m asleep. What?
‘It was meant to be a ghost story; I didn’t get around to telling the woman about her either.’
Ghosts
Pam Clatworthy
‘That’s it then.’ Tom the general handyman locked the door of the empty tearoom and handed the key to Kezzie. He looked around the Tudor knot garden, there was not a soul in sight.
‘Seems strange to see no one here.’
Kezzie picked up the last remnant of litter, a salt and vinegar crisp packet, and fumbled in her overall pocket.
‘I nearly forgot this, Tom, your share of the tips. Mrs. Proctor sorted it out last night. The visitors have been really generous this year and we’ve had so many of them, all due to the Haunted Houses and Gardens series on TV, I suppose. Surprising what a bit of ghostly publicity can do. The “most haunted country cottage in Wales” certainly brought them in. We should do even better next year.’
Tom looked at her.
‘I don’t really believe in ghosts, but lots of the visitors said they’d seen something. Are you sure you’re going to be all right here alone until we open again next Easter?’
Kezzie laughed. ‘We’ve only funny, quirky spirits haunting us here, they never speak or shriek or groan and they do nothing harmful. I’ll be fine, Tom, thanks. Now off you go and have a bit of fun before going back to college. You deserve it. See you next year, I hope, and thanks for all your help this summer, you’ve been so good with even the most difficult of old dears.’
The late autumn sun was blazing red behind low western clouds when Kezzie finally threw her boots in the corner of the kitchen and filled up the kettle to make tea. The water pipes grumbled as usual and loud cracking noises in ancient woodwork filled the room as the pipes expanded. Out of the corner of her eye Kezzie fancied she spotted a pale wraith making for the door.
‘Come back Mabel, please don’t get so upset,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m only making myself a cup of tea. I’ve told you over and over again, Mr. Bartlett has gone forever. He’s been dead for nearly two hundred years now. I know he was a bad master and because you murdered his prize bloodhound by feeding it rat poison, he threw you down the well. I can understand your fear of water it must have been awful for you, but please let bygones be bygones so that I can have my tea in peace.’
Kezzie’s plea seemed to do the trick. Mabel hovered around a few minutes more before disappearing into the wall. The sudden loud scratching at the ancient door that led from the kitchen into courtyard was no surprise to Kezzie and always made her smile. For whenever Mabel disappeared, Rufus the red hound was always anxious to manifest himself.
‘Come in, Rufus. She’s gone so you need have no fear of being poisoned tonight.’
A large bloodhound moved towards Kezzie. The dog’s transparent body stood in front of the old green Aga, his white ribs superimposed over an oven door. Kezzie thought she could feel the draught from the animal’s whisking tail, he was so real to her. She put out her hand and tentatively stroked where she imagined the dog’s high domed head would be.
‘You are a superior ghost,’ she crooned to the nearly non-existent beast. ‘A perfect pet. No barking, no drooling and no need for exercise. I’ll miss you when I go skiing over Christmas, but I promise to come back as soon as I can.’
The dog sat obediently at Kezzie’s command, then stretched out in front of the fireplace where he fell fast asleep, his body absorbing the dusty colours of the old rag rug. There were only three more ghostly inhabitants to go after the dog appeared. Kezzie knew that two of them would manifest themselves as soon as she turned the television set on and right on cue they appeared, standing behind her as she stretched out on the overstuffed chintz-covered sofa.
‘Good evening gentlemen. I’m watching The Adventures of Robin Hood tonight,’ she said, knowing how much they enjoyed that particular adventure story. ‘Please sit down and join me in the viewing.’
She was always careful to speak in the most courteous manner to the old gentlemen who were used to the formality of mediaeval court life.
There was a flurry of excitement as the two burly Knights Templar pushed their way to sit down next to her, they did enjoy watching television. She moved over a little to give them room.
Kezzie had no fear of any of the strange spirits that thronged the house. Harmless creatures all. Even the two Crusaders had been peacefully sleeping in what was the old hunting lodge when a midwinter gale had brought the heavy, oak-beamed roof down on top of them. They had been on their way to the Second Crusade when tragedy struck and had been previously been shriven by the local priest before they left home, so they had both died a holy and sinless death. Now, the two sat peacefully and silently together holding hands, enjoying the cut and thrust of life in Sherwood Forest. Kezzie thought it shame they couldn’t enjoy the chocolate that she would have been quite willing to share. Being well trained in good manners and chivalry they departed as soon as the final credits appeared on the screen, walking up a non-existent flight of stairs which had been removed during alterations in Victorian times.
At eleven o’clock, she made herself a bedtime drink. The old water pipes thrummed and as Mabel scooted around the kitchen in a frenzy of demented activity, Rufus made his departure through the locked door, not wishing to be re-poisoned by the simple creature, even though his death had been due to a mistaken use of the arsenic bottle in place of the worming cure, caused by misreading.
Kezzie’s bedroom was under the eaves, it was warm and airless tonight. She flung open the casement window and as she leaned out to see if she could catch a glimpse of the sickle moon, she breathed in the sweet scent of the Albertine roses that flopped against the gnarled, split oak, window frame. They were truly the last roses of summer – a sudden frost would kill them soon, beautiful ephemeral flowers with such a short lifespan. Unless, she thought, they too would reappear as ghostly ephemera once the old house was left to sleep and all humans had departed for the winter. It was a strange thought and Kezzie shivered for a second. Perhaps taking all the ghosts for granted was making her a strange creature. Indeed, the thought that she might be a ghost herself came into her mind but she shrugged it off. Would a ghost be capable of managing a haunted house, dealing with staff wages and tax returns? Not in a million years. Suddenly, a firm hand around her waist told her that the last and most joyous ghost of the evening had appeared in her room. A tall man stood beside her. He said nothing but he smiled and kissed her neck. She did not know who he was, where he came from or if he really was a ghost. She really didn’t care. There was no explanation for his appearance; he had turned up one night in early Spring and had come again every night since. They never spoke, she never asked him questions. They just enjoyed each other. She turned to greet her lover and smiled at him, holding him close. His young, naked body felt warm to her touch and she knew that this was going to be the most perfect night in the most haunted cottage in Britain.
The Girl in the Grass
Caroline Clark
Emmie-May stood eye-deep in the ocean of grass. From above, her hair was only a patch of sunlight on its waves. Far out she watched two riders ploughing and leaping like dolphins. Their horses shouldered through, urged on by the riders’ desperation, but plunging wildly in an effort to see their way. To Emmie-May they
seemed haloed in a golden mist of pollen and midges wherever they broke the surface. The leading horseman passed; his red shirt was dark with sweat between the shoulders. He urged his mount forward without pause but his companion sometimes turned to stare along their wake. Emmie-May saw her white face whipped by her dark, braided hair, saw the tautness of her arms as she struggled to keep up.
Emmie-May moved towards the line of churned grass so that her figure appeared in the gap almost under the hooves of a third horseman whose tall, foam-flecked mount reared up and lunged sideways. He hauled it back, cursing then calming the beast. His weathered, work-seamed hands mastered it with skill, not brutal strength. He leaned down to peer at this sudden, impossible child.
Her coarse woollen dress was slicked with dew and grass-seeds, her fine blonde hair drifted like spider-silk around her. She showed no fear of the panicking horse or of his own fury but said, in a tone more puzzled than plaintive, ‘My Mom won’t wake up.’
‘What in Hell are you doing out here, kid?’
The man’s head jerked up as sounds of his quarry carried to him but the child’s need compelled him.
‘We live here. Grandpa’s house is over there.’ She pointed across apparently unbroken waves of green. ‘But he died in the winter, and now Mom’s just lying there, and I’m hungry…’
Jo Masterman cursed again, pushed his hat back off his brow to reveal wiry, greying hair as he wiped the sweat out of his eyes. The horse danced side-ways, sensing its rider’s turmoil.
‘Show me. Quickly. You can’t have come far.’
He swung her up onto his thigh; there was no weight to speak of. He urged his horse in the direction she indicated and there, indeed, in a hidden dip, was the roof-ridge of a cabin.
Before he rode down Masterman cast one more fierce glance along the fading track of the fugitives. He looked across to the distant line of posts marking the railroad, then the three of them sank down into a pool of warm silence. As they approached the gateway all their horizon was shining grass.
Jo hitched his horse to the bleached rail and lifted Emmie-May down. She ran ahead of him, pushing the door open. It was an old, patched but not neglected place: bright rag-rugs on the board floor, blue and white china on the dresser. There was an old treadle sewing machine near the window where someone had been hemming a cotton frock. It lay, still tethered, in a flowery heap on a chair.
The child pulled him towards the inner doorway. There, like another abandoned dress, a white tangle of linen lay at the foot of a ladder. As his eyes adjusted to shadow, Jo saw a pale, closed face. He knelt and raised her head. Black blood, long dry, matted the ash-blonde hair. She was rigid and cold as the scrubbed floor.
‘She’s dead, like Grandpa, isn’t she?’ Emmie-May regarded him solemnly.
‘Yes. I guess she fell – sleepwalked, maybe. I’ll just take a look upstairs.’
Jo swung himself onto the ladder, taking care not to touch the woman below. Above, in the roof-space, was first a bunk-bed, tidily settled. The face of a small cloth doll smiled from the pillow. Beyond, a double bed lay open, its pieced quilt tumbled on the floor. An old-fashioned dress was draped across a chair, hairpins scattered on the table where a freckled mirror returned his ghostly image. An ordinary, lonely life had just stopped here – leaving a child marooned.
He heard a strange tinkling tune from below, picked up the quilt and, after a moment’s thought, the doll. Then he swung back down the ladder. He covered the body, then went through to the living room where Emmie-May was curled on the rug. She was turning the handle of a small musical box from which came in uneven waltz-time, the Streets of Laredo.
‘Have you got any folks in town?’
She shook her head. ‘I been to church there though. That’s where Grandpa is.’
Probably the Pastor would know about her. He could take it from there. Jo said, ‘I’ll take you over. Get a drink and a bite, then we’ll go. Do you want this?’
He offered the smiling doll. Emmie-May hesitated then nodded and hugged it tight. The urgency seemed to have died out of him. He ladled a drink out of a half-full pail in the scullery and filled his canteen. The child finished a hunk of bread and stuffed another in her pocket. He wondered whether to ask if she wanted to say ‘goodbye’ to Mom but she trotted out of the door and he thought, ‘Better not’.
Jo latched the door after them, he’d checked the back already. ‘Ain’t no dog here, anywhere?’
She shook her head. He lifted her up in front of him and roused the horse to take them from the close silence of the homestead up onto the whispering plain.
The only landmark was the railroad and he headed straight for the nearest point. He tied his neck-cloth to a post and laid stones in a rough arrow pointing along their track from the house, then he followed the rail-track towards the nearest town. He looked back once but the billowing grass showed only currents of the wind. For a while the girl hummed sleepily then, out of the blue, she asked, ‘Why were you chasing them?’
Jo had been pre-occupied with thoughts of her future and was jolted back to his own concerns, which, an hour ago, had so obsessed him.
‘My daughter,’ he said. ‘She just took off with a guy that’s… Well, he’s no good for her. Good enough stockman but…’ his words ran into sand. He could not feel or even understand his own fury.
‘She was scared. She was real scared. Were you goin’ to whap her? Grandpa Andersen said he’d whap me once – when I took his good knife and dropped it down the well – but Mom wouldn’t let him.’
She smiled and hutched into the curve of Jo’s shoulder. He felt her hair flicking against his face and remembered how often he had carried Josie like that – her black hair drifting in the wind.
‘No, I wouldn’t have whapped her. It was him I was gunning for.’
He had said it lightly but he knew that, if he had caught them then, it would have come to shooting. He had been that crazy. For a moment he clung to Emmie-May as if she had rescued him.
After a while the land fell away a little and they could make out a straggle of buildings – a street – a whitewashed church. The Doctor’s new motor-buggy was parked outside the saloon. Jo nodded to the storekeeper, out front with a broom. He wondered what folks would think of him riding into town, dust to the eyeballs and a strange kid in his arms. He hitched his horse by the Sheriff’s office and said to Emmie-May, ‘Just sit here for a while, I’ll tell them about your mom and then we’ll go find the Pastor.’
She nodded and sat on the veranda, cradling the doll.
Jo pushed the door. The office was thick with tobacco smoke but empty except for a grizzled officer, half-asleep under his newspaper.
‘Well, Jo! I haven’t seen you in a while. What’s the story?’
‘I was riding way out on the plain when this kid just popped up under my nose. I never knew there was a homestead out there. Seems she lived there with just her mother and the mother had taken a fall. I went back to the house with her. The woman’s dead – fell from the loft. I brought the girl into town to see who’ll take her. Old man Andersen, died this winter, was her grandpa, she says.’
Sheriff Olafsen scratched his stubble and looked Masterman over.
‘You’d better bring her in, Jo, but I think you lost your bearings out there. There ain’t been no-one at Andersen’s place in thirty years. Last time I rode that way there was hardly a post left. Your little girl’s sun-struck, maybe.’
Jo shrugged and went to fetch the child. The veranda was empty so he went down to where the horse was tethered, looked up and down the street. There was no sign. He called to the storeman who was still sweeping his steps:
‘Hal! You seen where the kid went? The one I brought into town? I left her here sitting as nice as pie and now I can’t see a sign of her.’
Hal straightened his back and peered at Jo.
‘I didn’t see no kid with you, not riding nor sitting. You okay, Jo?’
Jo was already running to the church – th
at was where she would go. He found the Pastor, sickle in hand, clearing an overgrown corner of the churchyard.
‘Pastor, do you know where Andersen’s buried? Died last winter? I brought his granddaughter into town. She’s wandered off. I thought she’d be here.’
‘Andersen? Not this last winter. Not in my time, I think, Jo. The last Andersen I know of is here.’ He knocked down some weeds to reveal a weathered stone. Jo read:
In memory of Kurt Andersen, died December 21st, 1880, aged 75, and his only daughter, Mary, died June 19th, 1881, aged 32.
And the lost shall be found in Christ.
Jo shook his head,
‘Well, whoever she is, she still may come here. Look out for her. I have to go with the Sheriff. Her mother’s lying dead back there.’
But, as he returned to the office, he had begun to doubt that she was.
On the railroad fence-post Jo’s neck-cloth fluttered but beyond it the prairie ocean stretched unbroken, featureless except for ripples of silver as the wind bowed the grasses. Here and there the dint of a ‘cat’s paw’ showed and vanished. If there was a high, soft singing, perhaps it came from the fence-wires that ran above the rails. If Emmie-May danced with her doll through the grass, she left no more trace behind her than did the sunlight.
Ants
Alice Baynton
On the east coast of Northern Cyprus is the city of Gazimagusa. Stretching from turquoise sea through into countryside is Varosha, ghost city, a wide expanse of dead ground that slashes Gazimagusa in two, dividing Greek Cyprus from the TRNC.
The beach is lined with dilapidated tower blocks, each floor a wind tunnel with empty windows, the odd spear of glass still clinging to its frame. The high rise streets soon give way to clusters of hollow homes and rusting cars. Constantly chattering cicadas replace the hum of traffic. Nature has reclaimed this part of the city. Diesel, frying food, hot garbage bins; the olfactory abuse of the city pauses for thought at the fence. This land belongs to the aromas of stone dust, animal waste and fennel.