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Short Story From A Local Author - Ghosts

Published on Thursday 22 December 2016

Local Author Neal James has kindly provided us with another one of his short stories, Ghosts written in 2014

Find out more about Neal on his profile page

Now sit back, relax and enjoy the story :)


Ghosts they call us, those who do not know. They fear us out of ignorance, and fail to realise what we truly are. All attempts to communicate our existence have, so far, met with almost complete failure. The truth is that we need them, but are unable to convince all but a few that we really do mean them no harm. If only there were a way…

 

 

“Molly!” Sarah called from the bottom of the stairs. “You should be asleep by now. Put out the lamp, please.”

Molly Williams was three years old, bright, and the only child of Sarah and Alex. Ahead of her peers in the skills of reading and writing, she was a constant source of frustration for her parents in the late nights she kept with her bedroom light on.

“But Mummy, the lamp is off; I’m not reading; honestly.”

Sarah paused; there was definitely light coming from her daughter’s room, but they had taught the little girl from an early age of the unacceptability of lying. She instinctively felt that her little girl was telling the truth. She had ascended half the distance up the stairs when the light went off. Feeling the anger stirred by her daughter’s statement, she hastened up the remaining stairs and stood, arms akimbo, just outside the open door.

“Molly Williams!” She exclaimed. “There was a light on in this room, and you just turned it off.”

“But mummy,” she said, her bottom lip beginning to tremble, “it’s true; the lamp was off.”

“Alright,” Sarah said, stepping into the bedroom. “Just where was the light coming from?”

The reply, when it came a few seconds later, froze Molly’s mother to the spot. There was no way that the little girl could possibly have known details about the source of the brightness which had illuminated the room, and Sarah was lost for words at the pure innocence of her daughter’s assertion.

“Grandpa.” She smiled. “He comes to see me sometimes, and we talk.”

“Grandpa?” Sarah sat down at the bottom of her daughter’s bed as her legs gave way. “What did he say, sweetie?”

William Martin, Sarah’s father, had been dead over ten years, and she had been very careful to keep his existence a secret from the little girl. The mere thought of what happened to him still send a shudder through her, and although Jack, Sarah’s husband, was aware of the circumstances surrounding William’s absence from his wife’s life, he was the only one with whom, she had shared the facts. Fifteen years earlier, when Sarah had been a mere child of eight, Martin had sunk into the bottom of a whisky bottle after losing his job – it was a place to which he became quickly accustomed. From that time on, all monies which found their way into his pocket, be it legally or otherwise, ended up in the tills of a selection of the pubs in town; he became a figure of fun for those drinkers of a more sober nature, but with the passage of time he sank into depression. An extended association with Alcoholics Anonymous had stabilised his particular ship for a time, but despite the attempts by Sarah’s mother, Audrey, to help him through the suffering, she came home from shopping one day to find him dead.

The family, such as it was, moved across the country to escape the worst of the shame that they felt, and until this very moment Sarah had believed that the memory of that day had been left far behind. She, fortunately, had not been with Audrey on the day in question, but that in no way lessened the pain she felt. Despite his faults, she loved William dearly, and missed him with an ache which the years done little to dim. She had thought that the worst was over – now it seemed to have returned, and this time through the innocent nature of her own daughter.

“Mummy?” The voice of Molly snapped Sarah back to reality. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“Just something in my eye, sweetie.” She replied, pulling out a handkerchief. “What did Granpda say?” She fought hard to keep down the tide of emotion.

“Oh, just that he loved us all and to tell Grandma he’s sorry.” Molly smiled innocently. “What does he mean?”

“Is Grandpa here right now?”

“No, Mummy, he left when the bright light disappeared. Maybe you scared him.”

“Does he come to see you often?” Sarah moved up the bed, closer to her daughter and pulled the little girl in closer.

“He’s only been here for a few days.” She smiled up at Sarah. “He wants to talk to Grandma, but he says she isn’t listening. Shall we tell her?”

“No!” Sarah’s exclamation made the little jump, and she cleared her throat and began again, quieter this time “No, Molly. I don’t think that would be a very good idea; Grandma wouldn’t understand.”

“But why?” Molly frowned, her head on one side.

“Well, grown-ups can’t see things the way children can, and she might think that you’re teasing her. She loved Grandpa very much, and he died a long time before you were born” Sarah paused for a moment. “How did you know that it was him, sweetie?”

The sudden thought of an intruder in their house tightened Sarah’s chest like a vice and she moved to the window to check the lock – it was secure. She turned back to see Molly holding something out to her.

“He gave me a picture, see?”

Sarah’s hand was shaking as she took the photograph from her daughter; it was a holiday snap taken at Bournemouth in 1990. A man standing on the sand with a little girl astride his shoulders – he always carried her that way when she was tired.

“Is that him, Mummy?” Molly’s eyes widened. “And is that little girl you?”

 

 

We have been here for hundreds, no thousands, of years but time is running out and this may our last chance at saving ourselves; there is nowhere else. We take what is no longer of any use to them- the souls of their dead; we can only use those who come over to us willingly and, sadly, it is very difficult to persuade these last vestiges of individual humanity to release a hold on what is no longer theirs – life.

 

 

“What did you tell her?” Jack asked Sarah. They were sitting in the kitchen an hour later after Molly had finally given way to tiredness.

“What else could I say but the truth?” She replied. “We’ve always told her not to tell lies – I couldn’t do any less.”

“She really believes this was your dad, and not a dream?”

“She says he was there, and where else would she have got that photo? I hadn’t seen it in years, and the last place I did see it was at Mum’s before we came to live around here.”

“What about your mum? Are you going to tell her?”

“God, no!” Sarah’s eyes widened. “It’d scare the living daylights out of her. The last time she saw him he was slumped in a chair with a bottle of whisky on the floor and an empty bottle of pills in his lap.”

“What now, then?” Jack reached out and took his wife’s hand in his own. “What if Molly has another ‘dream’. You did persuade her that it was a dream, didn’t you?”

“I think so, but I can’t be sure. You know what she’s like once she gets an idea into that pretty little head of hers.”

Molly Williams could indeed be very persistent when the mood took her, and was very advanced for her three years. Sarah and Jack had been surprised on more than one occasion by the way in which their daughter had an uncanny knack of knowing when something was about to happen. They had considered seeking medical advice, but dismissed the idea as being over dramatic.

“So, what do we do? Wait?” Jack sounded exasperated.

“There’s nothing else for it.” Sarah replied. “The light, though; I definitely saw it.”

“Maybe this was her first attempt at one of those little white lies – you know how much she loves to read.”

Sarah shook her head; there was more to this than her daughter pushing the boundaries. What if it was her father, William? How could that be? She had never been a believer in life after death, and had certainly never had an experience such as the one Molly told her of this evening. They finished the drink which Jack had made and went to bed; It was some hours before Sarah finally gave way to sleep.

The morning, being a Saturday, brought a surprise visit from Audrey, the aforementioned widow of William Martin. Jack smiled as she drifted past him and into the lounge; he frowned – the usual mischievous grin and sly dig in the ribs was missing, and that bothered him. There hadn’t been a day since their first meeting when she hadn’t taken advantage of his good nature; it was a contest he enjoyed, and today he felt cheated in some way. Not to be outdone, he followed her into the room and closed the door behind him.

“What’s up, misery guts?” He teased, expecting the usual sharp retort.

She was sitting on the sofa, and seemed very distracted. Looking up as he came nearer, she smiled a very weak smile and sighed. She was about to speak when the door opened again and Sarah came into the room.

“Mum.” She beamed, the events of the previous evening temporarily forgotten. “What a pleasant surprise.” This too was a tease, and usually drew out a witty response.

The silence was deafening, but lasted only a few moments as the hurricane which was her granddaughter burst through the door and hit Audrey like sledgehammer.

“Granneeee!” The little girl screamed.

Audrey hugged the precious little bundle tightly to her, and Sarah saw for the first time the tears cascading down her mother’s cheeks. Molly, too excited to notice anything out of the ordinary, ran out of the room and back up the stairs to her room. Jack and Sarah were too slow on the uptake to intercept her as she returned to the room – the photograph was in her hand, waving in the ait as she came back and sat beside her grandmother.

“Look what I got!” She beamed.

“Let’s see, Molly girl…” Audrey’s words froze in her throat at the sight of the picture.

“It’s alright. Mum.” Sarah tried to think fast. “I found it a while back at your house and Molly must have brought it home with her.”

“No, Mummy!” Molly said indignantly. “IT’s the one that…”

“Come on Mol.” Jack said, picking his daughter up under her arms. “Let’s go feed the birds.”

Molly’s protestations faded as the two of them made their way through the kitchen and into the back garden where Jack’s homemade bird table stood. Audrey watched them both in silence until Molly was well out of the way. The silence between mother and daughter stood like the barrier of the coffee table; neither seemed to want to make the first move, but it was Audrey who spoke first.

“You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”

 

 

We offer a new form of existence – an eternity of relative youthfulness in return for a part of their essence. The ones who come over have no further use for this small portion of what they call ‘spirit’, but it is essential for us and the continuity of our race; without it we are doomed.



Sarah turned to the window and gazed out into the front garden. How could she tell what she didn’t really understand? Had she actually seen anything?  There was light, it was true, and Molly’s explanation, strange as it seemed, could not have been fabricated with so much detail. Audrey sat in silence, waiting for her daughter to answer.

“No, I haven’t, Mum.” She replied, acutely aware that this truth would not stop the flow of questions.

“When did he come?” Her face was set; it was an expression Sarah had not seen since her childhood, and had been reserved for her father when the drink took him from them for days on end.

“I don’t…”

“It’s Molly, isn’t it?” Audrey’s eyes widened. “He’s spoken to her.”

Sarah knew from the tone – almost a whisper – that her mother had the bit between her teeth, and was now unlikely to let go until she knew the whole story. She sat down, took a deep breath, and tried to smile.

“Yesterday evening.” She began. “Molly had been reading and I told her to turn off the light. I should have known then that it wasn’t the bedside lamp. It was just too bright, not the yellowy colour I’m used to. It went out as I climbed the stairs.”

“What did Molly tell you?”

“Just that he wants to talk to you.” Sarah stood up and laughed nervously. “Look, this is stupid; what are we thinking of; a ghost? The spirit of my dead father some back to right some old wrong? I just can’t believe that sort of thing.”

“There are many things about your father that you don’t know.” Audrey’s eyes wandered from her daughter’s. “Things that you were too young to understand; he was not an easy man to live with.”

Sarah had never heard her mother talk in this way before, and the tone of Audrey’s voice was no longer that of an assured and confidant woman. Licking her lips nervously, and interlocking her fingers as she sat, The older woman took  deep sigh and looked back into the puzzled face of her daughter.

“When the drink got a hold on him, William was no longer the loving father that you knew. He kept this side of his personality out of your gaze, but it was I who took the brunt of his temper.”

“Temper?” Sarah looked at her mother in amazement. “What are you saying? He beat you?”

“Just the odd slap at first, and he was mortified when he was sober again and remembered what he’d done. He apologised and said that it would never happen again.”

“They all say that!” Sarah snapped. “How long did this go on?”

“Until he left. He was always careful after the first time, never to hit me where it would show. I suppose it lasted around six months before I summoned up the nerve to tell him to go.”

“But he never left us.” Sarah said.

“No, and I think I tipped him over the edge. It was shortly after the final row that he killed himself.”

“So, now this is his way of trying to right the wrong that he did to you.” Sarah paused. “Has he been trying to contact you?”

Finding herself cornered, Audrey had no option but to tell Sarah the full story. Molly’s ability to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ her dead grandfather were not traits which had come to her in some random way. Sarah had not inherited her mother’s psychic abilities, but the little girl had, and William must have realised it.

“I ignored him; time after time he tried to get through to me, and I knew it all along. It had been going on for over six months, and suddenly last week it stopped. I thought that he’d given up, but it looks like he realised that Molly could hear him; now that she can also see him, it looks like I have no choice but to listen to what he wants.”

           

 

We weaken with each of their years which passes, and have no means of escape from the dimension in which we are currently compelled to remain; no means, that is, without the co-operation of those who come to us.

 

 

Audrey say uncomfortably as her granddaughter came down the stairs and into the lounge. She and Sarah has decided that the only way around the current problem was to ask the little girl what her grandfather has aid to her.

“Molly.” Sarah smiled. “Grandma wants to ask you about Grandpa’s visits and what the two of you talked about.”

Molly’s lip began to quiver, and she remembered the harshness of her mother’s tone the previous evening. She looked at the two grown-ups, and tears began to cascade down her little cheeks. Sarah pulled her in close and kissed her forehead.

“No-one’s cross with you, sweetie.” She shook her head gently as she looked into her daughter’s eyes. “Just tell Grandma what he wants.”

“You don’t listen to him.” Molly began, uncertainly. “He’s not got very long to talk to you, he says, and then he’ll have to go away forever.”

“Can you tell me exactly what he said?” Audrey asked.

“Well, that was all he told me, except that he wants to talk to you himself, and that I won’t understand what he wants.”

Audrey asked Molly when her grandfather was going to come and see her again, and the little girl explained that he would be coming again that evening. “He can’t go outside my room, though, they won’t let him.”

“They?” Sarah looked at her daughter, puzzled. “Who are they, sweetie?”

“The people looking after him, but they can’t stay either, and this is the last time that I’ll see him.” Her lip quivered again, and Sarah hugged her once more.

“Then we’ll have to sit in your room until he comes, won’t we?” Audrey held her granddaughter’s hand, and smiled.

The day passed slowly until it was time for molly to go to bed, and with Jack making himself scarce, ‘too many cooks’ he had said, the three of them sat nervously in the room as the time approached for William to make an appearance.

Apart from a slight chilling of the temperature, neither of the two women noticed anything odd until Molly pointed in the direction of her wardrobe, put a finger to her lips, and said “Shssh”

The room was dim – the only source of light being from the bedside lamp – and from the corner where the wardrobe stood, a faint shimmering halo began to take shape. An outline appeared, framed in pure white light, and from its centre a man’s figure emerged. William Martin stood very still as he came face-to-face with his wife and daughter for the first time in many years. He looked across the room, pointed a finger at his granddaughter, and then approached the bed. Sarah and Audrey turned to se that Molly had fallen asleep.

“She’s alright.” The echoing voice of William assured them. “She won’t hear a word of our conversation. I have only this evening, and then I have to go. They need me, and this is part of the deal I have. Normally, when we pass, only one visit is permitted and that is to say goodbye.”

“Daddy?” Sarah’s voice trembled. “Is that really you?”

William smiled. “What’s left of me, yes. I had to come back; there’s something I have to say to your mother, and it just can’t wait any longer.” He turned to Audrey. “You weren’t listening, and I know that you could hear me. That’s why they let me try so many times - they knew as well; they have the same senses as you do.”

“What do you want?” Audrey’s voice had hardened, and Sarah looked at her in surprise. Surely if her dad had come to apologise, her mother would have been more accommodating.

“Answers. That’s all; just answers.” William replied, cryptically.

“What are you talking about?” Sarah looked from one to the other. Then she said to her father. “Didn’t you come to apologise?”

“Apologise? Me?” His surprise shook Sarah, and she now looked to the silent figure of her mother.

“What is he talking about?” She frowned. “After what you said to me I thought that it was exactly what he wanted.”

“What precisely were you told, Sarah?”

There followed an uneasy silence as the three of them stood, expectantly, waiting for an answer. Audrey finally looked up from her shoes, where she had been staring intently since this phase of the conversation had begun.

“Mother?” Sarah said. “What about the way he’d treated you? The beatings.”

“Beatings?” William interrupted. “You mean that she told you I’d hit her? Sarah, it was the other way round.” He turned to his widow. “Tell her, Audrey. I came here to ask you why you were so cruel to me. Why don’t you explain these?”

Raising his shirt, Sarah’s father revealed the extent of the bruising that he had suffered at Audrey’s hands.

“Oh, my God!” Sarah exclaimed. “But you’ve been dead fifteen years…”

“Time moves differently over their side.” He said. “Physical injuries remain for much longer than they do here. I’ve been trying to talk to your mother all of that time, but she’s been holding out. When Molly was born I sensed that she had the same abilities, and I had no alternative to get through to you all.”

Audrey, now racked with sobs, capitulated. Once William had lost his job, they were unable to maintain their comfortable lifestyle. When his drinking, and then gambling, took hold, all of their friends began to drift away. Whilst William’s drinking was a form of solace to him, Audrey had no such outlet for her frustrations and started to take them out on him. When verbal abuse failed to shake her husband from his fall into oblivion, it was replaced by increasingly violent physical outbursts.

“I was so angry with you.” She said to William, in between bouts of sobbing. “You weren’t listening to me and any money we did have was finding its way to the pub before I could get my hands on it.”

“But I would never have done anything like that to you. Why did you tell Sarah such lies?”

“I’m sorry, William. I truly am.” She stood now, walking towards him. He held a hand up to halt her progress.

“Stay there. You can’t touch me, and I don’t know what will happen if you try.”

“What more do you want me to say?” She held out her hands, almost in supplication.

“Nothing. I just wanted to know the reason.” He shook his head. “Now that I do know, it’s over and I can move on. I’m running out of time anyway; they tell me that what I promised in exchange for this visit has to be given today.”

“What? What do they want?” Sarah asked.

“When we die, the essence of what we are remains briefly, and a small part of that is the thing that they need to go home. In exchange they offer a new kind of life. Not here, not with those we left behind, but with them, and in a new form.”

“Heaven? Is this the heaven that we were told about in church?” Sarah asked.

“No.” William said. “I haven’t seen anything to suggest that kind of thing.”

The conversation was interrupted by another shimmer of light in the corner of the room. The halo formed again and outline of another form took shape. From the middle of the bright, white light emerged a form, more tenuous than William but humanoid in shape. It spoke, but its words formed in the minds of those present.

“The time is come, William Martin. You must now say farewell to your people. What you set out to accomplish has been completed and you need to fulfil your promise to us.”

William turned back to his family. Sarah held out her arms to the father whose memory had been so badly tarnished by the mother whom she had believed to be so ill-treated. He shook his head; his form had started to fade and, accompanied by the new arrival, he walked back to the corner where the halo of light was still shimmering. He looked back once, smiled at his daughter, and was then gone.

 

 

“You task has been completed, William Martin. It is now time to leave this existence completely.”

“I know; it’s hard to let them go, though – so difficult to realise that I’ll never set eyes on any of them again.”

“Such is the price for what you humans call immortality. For us, it is a matter of much greater importance – the survival of our race. We now have enough of the essence of your uniqueness to enable a return to our own dimension.”

“What if I refuse to come along?”

“That is of no interest to us once we have harvested what you freely promised. What you lose will not affect the being which you will become in our home. Remain behind after we leave, and you will very soon fade. There is nothing left here after your mortal existence has terminated – you simply cease to be.”

“What is life like where you are?”

“That is easier to demonstrate then to explain – we do not have the words in your language. You must make the choice very soon – we will leave is less than one of your days, and thousands of years of searching will be at an end.”

“But there are ghosts and spirits – our history and myths are full of them.”

“You are correct. Some of what you call souls are more resistant than others to the rigours of time in this dimension, and linger where they died. It has been our experience that they are a very unhappy group. Once the choice has been made, we offer no second chance. They are often full of rage at their situation – these are the bad spirits which the human race tells of in all of its racial legends. Do you wish to become one of them?”

William Martin shook his head sadly, sighed, and followed the being as he led the way back across the void into his parallel world.



 




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