Four More Ghost Stories

These four stories round out the pieces of fiction that are going to appear in the core rules section of The Ghost Hack 2nd ed. It's been a blast writing these. You can read the others here and here.

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Stain on the Floor

How long has it been since anyone visited?

Kamala is supposed to come round on Fridays to do a bit of tidying up. We usually chat and drink tea. I open a tin of biscuits. It’s been ages since she was here. There’s dust everywhere. There’s a big stain on the floor. I don’t know how it got there.

Or Jack and Ruth, they pop round with the twins, showing me their new phones and all their fancy apps. Where are they these days?

I need Jack to take a look at the door. The lock’s no good. People walk right in.

The young man from the letting agency is here. He walked in, bold as anything, so I hid in the kitchen, waiting for him to leave. There’s a young couple with him. She’s pregnant. He has those horrible tattoos.

“I don’t know about this place,” the woman says, shivering. “I heard what happened to the previous occupant.”

I wonder, who can she mean? The occupant before me was an old lady named Lucas who went to live with her family in Perthshire.

“The police caught the man responsible,” the young man from the letting agency tells them as they leave. “It really is a low-crime neighbourhood.”

I creep out once they’ve gone. She never mentioned the stain on the floor. It’s sticky. It must have ruined the carpets. Where are the carpets?

I look around in alarm. Where is the sofa? The bookshelf? Where’s the TV?

I run across the bare floorboards to the window. I shout out, Help! I’ve been burgled! But the passers by pay no attention. You’re invisible, when you’re old.

Except to the lady across the road. She’s always in her garden, with those shears. She straightens up and waves to me. I don’t wave back. The tenants in that house are noisy students and have been ever since the woman who owned it died, years ago it must be: the twins were just babies when she had that fall.

No curtains to close. No chair to sit on. Just the stain on the floorboards, glistening red. Like a bloodstain on my floor.

It’s like somebody died in here.

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Voice of My Complaint

I worried it might rain on your funeral, but the rain held off. Somewhere, a bird sang. I thought, a wren? Spring was coming.

Margaret snivelled beside me. Always the sentimental one, though never about you and me. ‘Why-oh-way?’ was her catchphrase. But now, at the end, these tears. People were surprising.

The vicar droned on: “Remember not the sins and offences of my youth…”

There had been sins, I suppose. My jealousy. Your work. That bitch Susan at your office. Something had been going on there. But what did it matter now? Your mother stood opposite me, childless as well as widowed. My mother comforted her. Perhaps they would be close, at last. If only there had been children: something they could share.

The vicar was saying something about “everlasting arms” and I thought of your arms, around me, strong. You carried me like I weighed nothing, from the wreck to flashing blue light. Then, later, they became so thin, your skin like glass. I watched the blue veins, mutinously doing the bidding of your unreliable heart.

Singing, but it was a hymn I didn’t know, something about “the voice of my complaint,” so I moved my lips out of idiot-respect.

The vicar started his reading and my excitement mounted.

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

I wanted to laugh, but it felt wrong, with Margaret bawling beside me.

“It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.”

I stepped forward to look into the grave. Corruption stole your youth, your strong arms, your wise laughter. How I longed to see them again, now, uncorrupted.

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

The service ended. Flowers, ashes, dust to dust. The families drifted away through the bird-infested trees, Margaret to the bar, our mothers arm in arm, grieving for a daughter and now a son too.

I remained. “Where are you?” I shouted, then, “I waited, after the accident. I watched you, over the years.” And softly, “Why aren’t you here too?”

But the grave and the senseless wren made no answer.

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Under the Bed

There was a monster under the child’s bed.

The child knew that, if he cried really loud, his father would come, angry with sleep, and turn on the light. Monsters hate the light. But his father would scold him, telling him what time of night it was, how old he was now. His father would make good on his threat to take away Mister Wally.

The child clutched Mister Wally, stroking his fluffy head and tracing his button eyes. Under the bed, the monster’s nails scratched and scraped. The child pressed Mister Wally to his cheek, inhaling his comforting scent of soiled fabric.

The monster tugged at the quilt, yanking it towards the floor. The child gripped the quilt, ready for the nightly tussle. The monster released its pull. The child wrapped the quilt around him like a snailshell, no corner over the mattress. This was how sleep was earned.

Mister Wally had gone.

Not under the pillow. Not inside the quilt. Sleep was impossible without Mister Wally.

The child peered over the edge of the bed. Mister Wally lay half under the bed frame in sliver of street light from where the curtains didn’t quite meet.

The child reached down, fingertips towards the upturned button eyes.

The monster caught his wrist.

The scream brought the child’s father, blinking furious sleep from his eyes. Light pounced on the room like a cat on a rat.

“Was it a nightmare?” the father asked.

The child sat in bed, his quilt neat, shielding his eyes from the light with a pale hand.

“Not any more,” the child replied.

The father smiled at the child’s mannered tone. He picked up the fluffy doll on the floor.

“Here’s Mister Wally.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You are getting a bit old for Mister Wally.” He shoved the doll into a drawer. What a helpless expression was in those button eyes. Almost pleading. He slammed the drawer shut. “Shall I leave the light on for a few minutes?”

“No,” said the child. “I like the dark now.”

The father reached for the light switch but hesitated. Why did he suddenly fear the darkness that would follow, with that still figure sitting in his child’s bed, watching him with unkind eyes?

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Uncle Duppy

Best Caribbean food in Harlesden. My uncle used to come here back when it opened, in the Sixties. Douglass ‘Duppy’ Dupree. You know? The gangster, yeah. He was class. Mohair suits and a porkpie hat, lovely cravats. The women loved him. A gambler. Never touched drugs. Hard man, though. You wrong him, he wrong you back, but twice as hard.

He died in the London Infirmary, making all the little nurses laugh. He gave my Dad this telephone number before he passed and said, proper serious: “Just make one call and say his name, the one who wronged you, and I’ll know.”

Not that my Dad needed that. In the Eighties, he stayed away from them Yardies selling coke and shooting coppers. He opened a nice little business on the Portobello Road and made big money when it went upmarket.

I wasn’t that smart. I was fourteen when I phoned Uncle Douglass’ number. No one answered, but I knew someone was there. Someone who’d been expecting the call. I just said the name: Dale Perry. Dale, he threatened me and I was scared. That night, Dale went out of a seventh floor window. Splashed across the car park. Nice one, Uncle Duppy.

I don’t feel good about it now. Or the other names. Dwayne Mitchell, hit by a truck. Job done. Kelvin Franks who narked on me, proper carved up he was, just bits left. Even Caryne, God help me, who cheated on me. Or I thought she did.

All in the past now. Monica sorted me out. No more drugs. I’m respectable, like my old Dad. Two pretty girls. Pictures on my phone: see, that’s them. Love them up big. Would kill for them.

“I’m respectable now,” is what I told Eddie. But he said, “Do some with me, for old times!” But it’s stronger stuff than I remember. Next thing I know, I’m all lit up, thinking I can do anything, proper belted. I tell Monica, “Let me drive!” I’m driving too fast. Monica’s screaming at me. The girls are sobbing in the backseat. I turn to shout at them…

The funeral is tomorrow.

So I made that phonecall. Just one name.

My name.

But you knew that, didn’t you? I didn’t expect you so soon.