Ghost Stories

I'm working on an ambitious 2nd edition for The Ghost Hack RPG. This includes starting each section with a piece of short fiction: a ghost story in 350 words. Writing 350 word ghost stories is incredibly addictive. I need to write dozens. Here are the first three.

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Walking the King's Road

The grave stones are old now. Time has pitted them. The weather has smoothed away their sharp angles. The names they commemorate are obscure lines in the stone, shallow and smudged.

I look for my own name. I can still make it out.

They brought flowers, once, and laid them around this monument. There were weeping women and sorrowful children. It was a good burial. I look back fondly on it. My memory is as crisp as my gravemarker is faded.

It was a long time ago.

No one brings flowers to this gravestone any more. The little statues are unpainted and made shapeless by the years. Were they once cats? Or owls? I think they were cats.

There are visitors still. They pass the stones and monuments with ignorant curiosity. The gravestones of strangers are, after all, just symbols of mortality. The passersby sense the vast ranks of the dead who have gone before them and then flinch away from the insight. They hurry on. There is a gift shop to visit.

My coffin lies behind glass, bare to the world, like a strumpet’s modesty. But it is better this way. Better here, under the alien lights, than under the sands, in the oven of the earth, like my mother and daughters, made nameless by cruel history.

I turn away. I pass the turnstile and the girl who sells tickets. I look up at the images on the walls, celebrating the grandeur of my tomb Even now, after all these centuries, my works endure. Look upon them, ye mighty, and rejoice.

I pass through the streets and the Living walk past me and beside me and through me, with their sightless eyes and birdlike voices, always singing. The vendors sell bright fabrics, robes worthy of princes and queens. I like this place. They call it the King’s Road, a name familiar to me from my living years. I trod the Royal Road once in sandals of gold flanked by slaves and courtiers. I tread it now barefoot and alone, yet the Royal Road stretches on, with years as its milestones, into the vast desert of the future.

And I, once a king, must walk it forever.

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Show Your Face

Why won’t you show your face?

I feel you, watching me, when I’m with my friends. They laugh at old memories and I laugh too, to show them I’m OK. That I’m getting over it. But when my eyes slide away to the window, you’re outside in the dark, watching.

But you don’t show your face.

Why doesn’t your smile appear at the glass, or your frown. Or your unspoken recriminations? Why does it show only sky and faraway stars?

I forget to laugh and my friends notice my searching eyes. They gather close. Do I want to talk about it? No. Do I realise there was nothing I could have done? Yes, I realise that. Am I recovering? Yes, yes I am recovering. Every day, I feel a little better.

You watch me lie to my friends.

It’s time to go. Home. Empty house. Empty bed. Unopened letters with your name on them. Cards with my name on: Deepest Condolences.

You wait for me in the street, somewhere outside the splash of street lamps and the roving car headlights.
Do I want to share a taxi? No, I want to walk. It’s not far. I like to walk.

I like to hear your footsteps following.

But when I reach the end of the street, you’re so close that I turn, looking for your face, but find only shadows. I shout out, “Where are you?” but you don’t answer so I call, “Show your face!”

Teenage girls at the bus stop opposite shriek with delight. A window opens. A voice calls out. Do I have any idea what time it is?

Yes. It’s time to go. I know it’s not far.

It’s not far, up the stairs, hearing them creak behind me under your tread.

Not far from the stairs to the bathroom, where your shape curls in the rising steam.

Not far from the heart, to the arm, to the wrist and onward, through darkening waters, to where you stand watching me.

Until we are face to face again.

---

Mother's Room

How different Mother’s room looked. The big bed had crowded it. The dusty carpets, the heavy curtains and that hideous wallpaper! She used to bang her stick on the floor: BANG BANG.

Now there were bare floorboards, bare walls too, open windows: light and air chasing away cigarette ash and the scent of gardenia. That scent! It clung to the walls.

I closed the bedroom door on a weekend’s hard work. With the funeral behind me, the days waited like unopened gifts. Where to go? I was unused to the act of choosing. So many years spent waiting for the summons from Mother’s room.

BANG BANG.

I stopped. Had I really heard that? The imperious rhythm was unmistakable. I returned, re-opened the door, expecting to find a wounded bird or adventurous cat making this racket. The room was as empty as before, though the scent of gardenia was stronger.

A strong tea calmed my nerves, which were shredded after Mother’s long illness and many demands. It was time to leave, to get out.

I was detained at the front door.

BANG BANG.

An impossible knocking from upstairs. Surely it was noisy pipes. Subsidence. Shrinking timbers. I set off down the crunching gravel path.

BANG BANG from the upstairs window overlooking the gate. Then again, but with fury:

BANG BANG. My keys fumbled in the lock and my feet pounded on the stairs.

BANG BANG from behind the bedroom door.

The bare room waited – sweet air shivering in the growing shadows. The day was slipping away.

The night drew on too soon.

BANG BANG. Roused from half-dreams of Mother’s sobs, her pain, her drugs.

BANG BANG. Hurried from the shower, from the untasted meal, the unread book. The scent of gardenia on my clothes.

BANG BANG.

They can be demanding, the ill, but we mustn’t grumble. We must not complain. There will be other times to go away. It upsets her, to be left alone, all alone in this house, this empty house. Phone off the hook. Letters unopened. Food untasted. Waiting for the summons from Mother’s room.