My first ghost story, ‘The Last Post’, was available  in an online publication, the journeyman.co.uk Issue 5. this appears to be no longer available. So here’s the story.

The Last Post

 

My boots crunched on the gravel as I hurried towards the entrance. Gasping for breath, I thrust my donation, ten euros, on a trestle table.

‘Madame, nous sommes fermés!’

I glared at the custodian, shrouded against the autumn chill in a thick woollen overcoat. I matched his scowl with a frown of my own.

‘But it’s only twenty to six… Il est six heures… moins vingt.’ I excavated some long-buried schoolgirl French, and pointed to a dog-eared notice on the table. Assuming that the French words written above the English said much the same, I recited, ‘Last visitors admitted a quarter of an hour before closing.’ Fingers splayed, I added, ‘Cinq minutes!’

He considered. Pushed a hand, rusted with age-spots, through oily strands of greyish hair, snorted, relented, then replied in halting English.

‘I … close …at six o ‘clock.’ That same gnarled hand covered the coins whilst the other dangled a large key. He nodded.

Still panting, thanks to the half-mile sprint from the car park, I hastened through the soon-to be-locked-metal gates to the grounds beyond and there I paused. For this particular mission, the scene before me was picture-perfect. While the sun bled scarlet across the evening sky, a first wave of fog advanced over the top of the surrounding wall, creeping along the neatly mown grass and smothering distant stone slabs. An eternal sadness emanated from this regiment of marble monuments. I shivered, from both a surge of emotion and a sudden intense cold that now permeated the dank air. Before me were five hundred gravestones, serried ranks embedded in furrows of soil, forever home to sons, brothers, husbands and fathers. Yet this, The Lancashire Cottage Cemetery, was one of the smallest graveyards of World War I.

The urge to linger, to reflect, was as strong as various websites indicated. “Take your time; a rushed visit will not suffice.” But these few minutes before closing were exactly what I needed. Solitude. A moment to fulfil a family promise, one which my late father had requested that I carry out on his behalf. Glancing at a crumpled plan, I calculated my bearings and began to count the white headstones as I walked down the path. And there it was, my grandfather’s grave: Private Spencer Knight, 8th Border Regiment, a member of the Kendal Pals. With gentle fingers I extracted a fragile envelope from my bag and sank to my knees. Once more, I scanned my surroundings to ensure that no one could see what I was about to do. Would the War Graves Commission frown upon my actions?

Damn! I sat back on my heels. Someone was watching me. At least, that was my impression. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Although too distant to see his face, I sensed the power of his scrutiny. And more, he wore uniform. I muttered curses that I’d chosen the same time as a soldier to visit.

I checked my watch. Ten minutes, that’s all I had. I had to do it now, I’d driven six hours just to carry out this assignment. Surely that soldier couldn’t really see what I was doing? I looked across at where he had been standing. My heart now pounded its own military tattoo. I leaped to my feet and spun round. He’d vanished. How could he possibly have walked the length of the cemetery to the gatehouse without me seeing him?

Taking a deep breath, I told myself to get a grip. If tiredness caused me to imagine things, the sooner I finished, the better. Back on my knees, I opened the envelope and poured out its contents: hoarded grains of soil and fragments of a crushed flower.

My father had long treasured a diary that housed this envelope. It nestled by a page bearing the date “September 30th, 1916.” I remembered the stark inscription: “Army Form B104-82 received today. Spencer killed in action.”

Two days later, my grandmother wrote, “I have preserved a rose petal and a little soil from our garden. One day, the child I am bearing and I will place these on Spencer’s grave and…” But she never made her pilgrimage. My father’s health also floundered before he could carry out this undertaking. Now he, too, slept in the earth and the duty fell to me. I prised open a penknife to carry out stage two of the request. This was essentially a swap. I had to extricate a slice of Flanders’ soil, to sprinkle on Grandmother’s grave in Kendal.

I looked over my shoulder for the other visitor, but my only companion was swirling, yellow mist. Thrusting the blade into the narrow rectangle of damp soil, twisting, slicing, I freed a narrow column of dense mud: this I scraped into the envelope. Satisfied that I had accomplished a promise made long ago, I took a deep breath, only to become aware of a fragrant smell hovering in the icy tendrils of fog. Violets. How strange, I thought, that a perfume I would forever associate with my grandmother should linger by her husband’s grave. I gazed at the earth, committing the moment to memory. And then, a sixth sense, as urgent as any bugle call, warned me that I wasn’t alone. For several seconds I held my breath. Fear and curiosity battled within me. Curiosity won. I had to look. The soldier stood behind my grandfather’s memorial, his head bowed as if he, too, studied this one grave. The smell of violets grew stronger, its delicate fragrance now cloying. I stood up, forcing myself to resist the urge to flee from my companion’s brooding presence.

‘This was a promise made long ago,’ I whispered. ‘My grandmother’s last post.’

The soldier raised his head. At first, I thought the peak of his cap had cast a shadow across his face, for all I saw was darkness. But that darkness persisted: there was no face.

A hand grabbed my shoulder. My brief scream shrilled through the fog, shattering the silence of the graveyard.

‘Pardonnez-moi, Madame. Je veux maintenant fermer.’

‘Qui … est-il? Le soldat?’ I pointed beyond my grandfather’s grave, at the mist, at no-one.

‘Madame, le soldat garde les graves. Vous êtes le privilège de le voir.’

I nodded, more or less understanding, but disagreeing that what I had just witnessed was a privilege. I stumbled towards the gatehouse, relieved that I had completed my task. Darkness was falling and I had no wish to linger by the graveyard, but as the custodian locked the gates behind me he said, ‘Madame, n’ayez pas peur- do not be afraid. Le soldat persécute…’

He hesitated and licked a globule of spittle from the corner of his mouth as he searched for the words. ‘The soldier…persecutes …only those… who damage graves… les vandales.’