The Word Ghost

by Christine Paice

  The names on them were mostly overgrown with moss and impossible to read. The air took a sudden cool turn, the light seemed to dip a little and I glanced up, expecting rain. There was nothing but a long band of grey sky.

  I was starving. I turned to go and was surprised to see a boy perched on top of one of the headstones. He was about the same age as Maggie, and he was just sitting there, looking around, dressed in a shirt and trousers held up with braces, wearing a battered old straw hat, one leg swinging backwards and forwards like a pendulum. The sun burst out from behind the clouds and a shaft of sunbeams lit him up sitting there like that. I recognised something about the light.

  Algernon? Is that you? Wearing different clothes? Aren’t you going to say hello then?

  The boy lifted his hat to Flora. You could see it was a really well worn straw hat, the type old Farmer Field might have worn years ago, brushing birds and spiders from the brim.

  Flora Shillingham looked like she knew him. He stared at her and neither of them spoke for what seemed like a long while. It was an odd silence. The air felt heavy, like it does sometimes when you can almost see the atoms of the sky. When the sky is so blue you feel you can reach out and touch something that isn’t really there. The boy stopped swinging his leg, hopped down from the grave, stuck his hands in his pockets, pushed his hat back on his head and walked off, whistling a tune.

  ‘Who on earth is that?’ I asked Flora, thinking that now there were strange things round every corner.

  ‘Just a local, dear. Nothing to concern yourself about.’

  The boy disappeared between the rows of graves and the whistling turned to birdsong and the churchyard was exactly the same as it had been seconds ago, minutes ago, years ago.

  ‘There you are, dear. Just a boy. From around here.’ Flora tugged at her sleeves.

  My stomach rumbled. ‘I really need breakfast.’

  ‘Five minutes more, dear, then you can go home for your eggs.’

  I followed Flora between the graves until she came to a white upright headstone that had a carved angel standing at the side of it, with the inscription:

  Here Lies Thomas Lark

  Gone to His Maker

  Aged 22 years and three months

  Dearly Beloved Son of Alice and Stanley Lark

  May He Rest In Peace

  ‘He was very good at cricket. A bowler, good with the ball, but could bat if needs be. We played sometimes.’ She nodded towards the village green. ‘In the summer. My brother didn’t think he was any good for me. He always bowled him out. I was seventeen. People married at that age, it was normal then.’

  ‘Thomas Lark?’

  ‘Yes, dear. He lived at Brightley Common with his mother. Alice. Just the two of them. My father said his prospects weren’t bright. At least he missed the First War. His father was killed. He never knew him. So many men of the village were taken in that war.’

  ‘Couldn’t you marry him anyway?’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t have much say in things, but my father was right. In those days you had to have something to offer. Poor Tom. He was killed in the Second War. All those brave boys marching off and never coming back. His name’s on the war memorial.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Flora.’

  ‘No point being sorry, dear. Being sorry doesn’t bring anyone back. Anyhow, he’s here now.’ She tapped her chest. ‘Always will be. Some of them do rest in peace, but some haven’t quite finished.’

  I remembered the words. Awake forever in a sweet unrest. ‘What haven’t they finished?’

  ‘Whatever it is they need to do. When you’re young, you’re restless—and some of them died so young. They don’t want to sleep. They don’t all rest in peace. They want to keep going.’

  She peered into my face intently. She must have seen something there.

  ‘How can they keep going?’

  ‘They have their ways,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.’

  CHURCHYARD, BRIGHTLEY

  Carefully over the graves.

  I do not much like them.

  There is Thomas Lark, I told him

  Go on, Thomas, take heart,

  She is dying to see you—

  Which he found reasonably amusing,

  As anyone might in our situation.

  Carefully over the graves.

  Searching for my dear one.

  Remember now, Miss Budde is mine.

  O Come! Dear One, Come!

  The light does not belong to me.

  Is that you behind the tree?

  Gingerly, gingerly over the graves.

  Your darkened self I cannot see.

  Early Night

  ‘Gosh, you’re off to bed early, Rebecca,’ said Mum. ‘It’s only seven thirty. Must be all that walking in the fresh air. Still, an early night always does you good.’

  ‘Yes and don’t disturb me.’ I glowered at Emily. Emily was reading her beloved Jackie magazine which, okay, I used to sneak a look at from time to time.

  I wasn’t entirely sure how much good an early night would do me, but I was willing to find out. I had a feeling my bedroom was becoming a curious place to be.

  ‘Mum, I’ve read a poem—one from the book Dad gave you. “Bright Star.”’

  ‘Ah, the eternally sad Mr Keats. What do you think of it?’

  ‘The words are lovely, but I don’t really understand it.’

  ‘Keats is one of my favourites, but I have to be in the right mood for him. Your father prefers spy novels these days. Poetry grows on you. Give it time. And Rebecca?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Now we’re here, in Brightley, I do want us all to be okay.

  I know it’s been hard for you, but try to be in a nicer mood tomorrow, won’t you?’

  ‘Stop talking, I’m trying to read.’ Emily scowled at me from behind the pages of her magazine.

  ‘Good night, Rebecca.’ Mum gave me a huge hug. I knew she loved me.

  Pyjamas on. Jumper. Dressing gown. Warm socks. I was ready now. There was a rustling sound, as if my eiderdown was being dragged back over the floor, which it was.

  ‘Hello, Miss Budde.’ A shadow spoke softly from the corner of my room. ‘Do not be alarmed. It is me, Algernon. Are you alarmed?’

  I sat on my bed. ‘You’re here,’ I whispered. ‘I am not alarmed.’

  Algernon stepped from the darkness. There was a faint silvery glow around him but nothing like the last time. One half of my brain was still struggling to understand exactly what I was looking at and the other half was quite happily saying, Oh yes, it’s him again, of course. He wore the same clothes, which shouldn’t have surprised me. He’s like Flora Shillingham, he never needs to change his clothes. But in those early days of Algernon, everything surprised me.

  ‘Hallo. Again.’

  ‘Good evening, Miss Budde.’

  ‘Algernon, whoever you are, I saw something weird in the churchyard today.’

  ‘Graves, angels and flowers,’ said Algernon.

  ‘Graves, angels, flowers and ghosts, perhaps?’ I said. ‘Do you know someone called Thomas Lark?’

  He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Let me consider this.’ He put his hands to his shoulders and pulled an imaginary pair of braces up and down and doffed an imaginary hat.

  ‘Exactly. So how do you know Thomas Lark when he’s been dead for thirty years? Ha!’

  ‘Ha? That is an unfamiliar term.’

  He sat on the floor with his back against the radiator. ‘Mr Lark and I share certain similar characteristics,’ he said, staring at my bedroom light. ‘A clever device.’

  ‘The light?’

  ‘The energy that feeds the light,’ he said.

  ‘So what characteristics, exactly, do you share with Thomas Lark?’ I wanted him to spell it out, to say the words. I wanted to know who he was and why he was here. ‘If you know Thomas Lark, and Thomas Lark is dead, does that mean you are . . .?’

  He spoke softly. ‘My name i
s Algernon Keats. I live here in this room. If you can call this living. My bones on this floor. Against this delicious thing. This Purveyor of Warmth.’

  ‘You’re here because of the radiator?’

  He stood. He rubbed his hands up and down his trousers and sparks flew around the room. ‘Do you think I mean you harm?’

  I shook my head.

  His long thin hands reached into the pile of books by my bed. He picked up the thin grey book, Poems by Keats. ‘How long it has been?’ he said, holding the book in front of my face. ‘When I first read these I was just sixteen, and at once I wished to write poems like these. Poems as moving. And as bright.’

  ‘Algernon, I don’t even know these poems. I haven’t read them. And I don’t want to read them. Not now. Not yet. Maybe never. Anyway, you’re not sixteen anymore are you? How old are you then, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  He sighed. ‘Twenty-four years of age. But let us not think of that now. Come,’ he said ‘let us go into the night.’

  ‘Why do we have to go anywhere? All right then, the poem you read to me is wonderful—maybe. I was half asleep when you read it. Also, I thought you were a weirdo about to kill me. Are you really twenty-four?’

  ‘Come now.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Out through the window and jump.’

  ‘I’m not bloody jumping from the balcony. You can do that, not me.’

  He opened the bedroom window which, for once, didn’t stick at all, and beckoned to me. There were a few odd leaves and twigs stuck to his sleeves. We climbed out onto the balcony. The light from the living room shone on the lawn. Above our heads stars swung effortlessly in the night. He held my hand and despite the cold I could feel a thin trickle of energy flowing through my skin. From him to me.

  ‘Here they are,’ he said. ‘Myriad bright stars.’

  ‘Yes, they are beautiful—lovely, in fact—but, Algernon?’

  ‘Is it not enough for us to behold this brilliance?’

  ‘Not really. Tell me. If you are a ghost, and not some figment of my mind, which I still think you might be, how come I can feel you?’

  ‘Those who see me, feel me. Those who touch me, know me. Those who know me, do not fear me.’

  ‘Is everything a riddle with you, Algernon?’

  He gazed into the night. ‘Miss Budde, where is there the greatest mystery?’

  For some reason I knew it was all right to lean against his shoulder and feel his thin light bones, the worn velvet of his jacket on my face. The ludicrous lapels and mad high collar turned up against the cold. I had never seen so many stars glittering above my head. His cold hand in mine, somehow alive again, here with me. Algernon. Call me Rebecca, won’t you?

  He kept gazing at the night. His eyes fixed on a point I could not see.

  Algernon. In some way I did not understand, he wanted me.

  WHILE SHE SLEEPS

  I wait for her to find the words

  I have not written.

  And I wait for her to find them.

  And I see the substance of her soul

  Shining in the beauty of the night.

  And I wait.

  Pitch-Black, Freezing Cold, Still Only Autumn

  I accepted Maggie’s imminent departure. I accepted the lack of mystery in daylight. I accepted pubs, glasses, publicans and postcards. Bowater Castle came my way postmarked Wye on Thames with a first-class stamp. I rejected the silence of the phone. I had been praying for the phone to ring but now at least I had something from the boy I loved. Maggie reminded me that we had been living in Brightley for one whole month and Dave had not called me. Not even after Simon had driven me home. Not once. As usual, Maggie put me straight.

  ‘Dave only liked you because you threw yourself at him.’

  ‘I did not. Look, what do you think this is?’ I waved the postcard at her.

  ‘If he wants to speak to you, he’ll call. If he doesn’t, then you’re better off without him.’

  ‘But he’s written to me.’

  ‘A postcard. Abes, you made it so easy for him. Come to the pub with me tonight. My last weekend. Meet some people.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Rebecca Budde finally leaves her bedroom on a Friday night. Unbelievable. Abes, you are a big pudding. He either calls you or he doesn’t. Now get ready for the pub. Dad’s coming. He’s meeting his flock over a pint.’

  ‘I’ll give it five minutes and if I don’t like it I’m coming straight home.’

  Scrawly familiar handwriting.

  Dear Budde,

  How’s it going? Mum told me you called in. Sorry I missed you. Busy! How’s your mum? Still making stuffed cabbage? Every time I walk past your place I think of you. Will call you soon!

  Love,

  Dave

  P.S. New David Bowie single, ‘Sorrow’, out soon!

  Sorrow. Brightley. Pitch-black, freezing cold, still only autumn.

  ‘Ready?’ said Dad, pulling on three coats and two pairs of gloves.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I just need to pop in and get my notes from the vestry before we hit the Dog, as Maggie says.’ Maggie had gone ahead as usual.

  We left the house, silence thickened as we walked. My father swung his torch everywhere. Up into the oak tree branches that hung over the road like pale dismembered limbs. Village pond on our left, full of mud, no water.

  ‘How’s Dave?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good. Is it Rebecca or Abraham tonight?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Ah, there it is, the famous Budde shrug. All right, Rebecca it is until you tell me otherwise. Well, Rebecca, look at these stars. There’s Sirius, the dog star. Such amazing clarity. I can’t remember skies like this at Wye. Too built up, I think.’

  My father was right. All I could see was stars, stars, stars, the whole sky knotted with them. I wondered what Dave was doing. Busy! Will call you soon! Was Algernon busy too, doing whatever he did around here?

  ‘Day by day, I think we’re all adjusting. These things take time, Rebecca. Agree? Or disagree?’

  ‘I’d still rather be back in Wye.’ I didn’t feel sure of anything. Some stars sparkled, some just hung there.

  ‘Give it a few months—you’ll settle in. We all will. You wait and see.’

  We reached the church gate, the square noticeboard barely visible.

  ‘Wait here if you like, I’ll only be a minute.’

  ‘I’ll come.’

  My father headed for the small vestry door at the side of the church. I left him there rustling through ancient drawers, and wandered inside my father’s church for the first time. There was just enough light shining through the vestry door for me to see. There was the inescapable churchy smell of wooden pews and slightly damp hassocks for the knees. At the back of the church I could see the dim outline of a large stone font.

  A red-tiled floor carried me further in, past the stands for the choir, no doubt consisting of one man, two women and a duck. There was the pulpit which was my father’s Sunday home, and there were the hymn numbers still in place from the previous Sunday. I sat quietly in one of the pews. Church was always peaceful, a quietness apart from the rest of the world. I could hear Dad fumbling around in the vestry. It was too dark to see the stained-glass windows. That was for daytime, but night was different. Algernon? You there? The air grew colder and colder.

  Granny? Is that you? Did you manage to find us here, trailing your roses over the land? Dave, are you still busy?

  The longer you sit, the less comfortable the pew becomes. There were odd sounds coming from somewhere so I walked back along the pew, steadily, steadily, one hand sliding along the polished wood. Then she was there, blocking my way, head bowed, at the end of the pew. She was the girl I’d seen from the bus, only inches from me now, in her long black dress, dark hair brushing her shoulders.

  Smell of the damp earth, of cold unforgiving things. The ends of her hair curled around my hand as if they had a
life of their own, they were touching my face like wet feathers snaking over me. She placed one white hand on the top of mine and I opened my mouth to scream but I could not scream in the middle of church. It silenced me.

  I must have said something, though, made some sound, because my father called, ‘Coming now!’ He turned out the vestry light and immediately the church was plunged into darkness. I heard him shut the vestry door and saw his torchlight bobbing outside the church.

  Dad! Dad, you’ve left me in here with her!

  ‘Rebecca?’ It was my father.

  Stay, she said.

  Let go of me.

  Stay, she said.

  I was trying to wrench myself free, I heard a key turning in the door. I called out, ‘Dad! Dad!’

  A light flashed through the church followed by a pair of pointed boots and a mass of flying hair. One moment! And

  Algernon careered through the blackness around me. The curling hair slid from my wrist, and I saw her briefly for one second, so dark against Algernon’s shining light, her face full of unsaid things. Shadows and strange sounds climbed the walls around me. I just wanted to get out of there.

  Algernon?

  Later, please. I have my hands full now.

  The church doors creaked open and the long shadow of my father strode in with his most blessed joyful torch.

  ‘Rebecca? Sorry, darling, I thought you were waiting outside,’ said my father. ‘You all right?’

  My heart was pounding like a sledgehammer in my chest.

  My father’s gloved hands pulled me along the pew. ‘What are you doing? It’s a lovely old church but you can’t see anything in the dark like this, can you?’

  I hardly knew what I was saying. My legs were shaking. I stumbled from the church. An awful stomach-churning scream was coming from the trees. I wanted to lie down on the ground and weep with fear. ‘Dad, what the hell is that horrible noise? There—up there!’

  My father shone his torch in the direction of the trees as the shriek sounded again.

  My heart lurched into my lungs. ‘Dad, there’s bloody ghosts everywhere! Let’s go! Quickly, Dad—I hate this sodding place.’