Page 1 of The Prestley Ghost

The Prestley Ghost

By K.L. Noone

A ghost had appeared again in the churchyard of the village of Prestley, at sundown, on a cool night full of bonfire leaves and rustling branches.

This time it had startled an elderly woman beside her deceased husband’s grave, and reportedly winked at her and given a distressingly flirtatious wave, before vanishing in a swirl of mist and a flutter of cold wind and old-fashioned greatcoat.

Everyone in the village agreed that ghosts, whether handsome young men or not, ought not be allowed to frighten kindly old widows, particularly kindly old widows who made the best apple cider in the county, and therefore something ought to be done.

A self-selected delegation accordingly consulted with the new rector, upon a cloudy autumn-scented afternoon.

The new rector in question, having acquired the livings of Prestley and Marinborough only a month previously, was young and serious and bookish and determined to do his best; he therefore offered, “Tell me any details about the apparition?” while his brother poured another cup of tea, and put extra sugar into it, with the air of a man preparing fortifications.

“It can’t be permitted,” explained the mayor of Prestley, with self-importance swelling from his expensive waistcoat.

“We do not want it,” agreed the glove-maker, waving an expensively clad finger. Prestley, aside from the legendary apple cider, was known for luxury items of a delicate nature: gloves, lace, underthings, sources of wealth and guarded trade secrets. “Ghosts are not good for business.”

“And,” said Miss Primrose of the Select Academy for Young Ladies, “ghosts are unseemly. Particularly this one. Apparently he dresses in the fashions of fifty years ago and once kissed his fingertips in the direction of Miss Eisley, and she fainted!”

“Was Miss Eisley horrified by his flirtation or his fashion choices?” murmured the rector’s brother, not really under his breath, and cheerfully ate the last ginger biscuit without even offering it to a guest. His brother sighed, “Charles…” and moved the plate of biscuits away.

“The heart of the matter,” the mayor said, meaningfully, “is that we cannot have a flirtatious, poorly dressed, interfering ghost in Prestley.”

“But a well-behaved fashionable ghost would be acceptable?”

“Charles.”

“In fact,” put in the schoolmaster, “ghosts truly ought not to exist, if one follows rational principles; the natural sciences would suggest that they cannot speak without the organs to do so, and the mathematics of instantaneous vanishing seem implausible at best.” Everyone regarded him with some sympathy, at this dour distress; he gave up and concluded, “Therefore it ought not to be here and something should be done about it,” and gulped tea, rapidly.

“Very well,” said Charles, with a glance at his brother, which John returned more sharply, with an expression like a warning-sign, “what would you like us to do about it?”

“You are the resident experts upon the supernatural, the ungodly, the extraordinary powers, are you not?” Mayor Mirrison folded both arms and scowled at his supposed supernatural experts across the tea-table, in the overcrowded sitting room of the rectory.

Bare tree branches rustled outside like dry bones, making a literal point.

“You are meant to be of use in laying spirits.”

“Quieting the restless,” offered the glove-maker.

“Silencing the undead,” agreed Miss Primrose.

“A ghost is, by definition, more or less dead,” observed Charles.

“Just to clarify.” Miss Primrose had, like much of Prestley, over the past four weeks occasionally thought him handsome, with that perpetually ever-so-disheveled dark brown hair, those bright green eyes, those cheekbones; but he had returned no one’s interest in any detectable way, and in any case at the moment she was finding him exceedingly irritating.

“So,” John said, with another quick glance at his brother, “you want us to…handle your ghost.”

“It is your duty. Even more: your responsibility. To Prestley. To this parish. To, I dare say, the world!”

“The world,” Charles murmured. “Good heavens. As it were.”

“Do you recall,” John retorted, “that time I put flour in your favorite hat? Behave.”

Everyone paused again to consider their new rector’s propensity for practical joking and retaliation. John sighed. “I do agree that we can’t have the people in danger. And if the ghost itself is unhappy, something ought to be done. For it, for the village.”

“Indeed, Mr Hayward,” huffed Mayor Mirrison, “indeed, it should. As you see, now, so clearly.”

John ignored this. “Charles. What are you thinking?” And his voice was different, too: less scolding, more a question, or even concern.

Charles waved a hand, possibly as an excuse to pick up the last chocolate biscuit as well. “You know my answer.”

“I do not,” John said, “make assumptions about that. Not lightly. I would like to hear you say it.”

Charles gave him a tiny shrug, mostly eyebrows, and a weightless smile. “Of course I’m agreeing. For the world, naturally.”

John’s own eyebrows had made a dark worried line; but he did not press the point, only nodded. “Then we’ll see what we can do.”

“Your parents,” said the mayor, “would no doubt have been fascinated—they would have wished to assist us, to tidy up the unpleasantness—perhaps an entry in the series of books, a disquisition—not that we wish to be famous for a ghost—well, perhaps for the successful riddance of a ghost—”

“Yes,” Charles said, getting up, a pistol-shot breach of etiquette in the negotiation of tea and biscuits, “thank you, we’ll deal with your ghost, good day.

” He even made a gesture toward the door, in case anyone had missed the dismissal; and then leaned in the doorway after, as everyone trailed out, to ensure that they’d gone.

When he came back, John had also stood up, disregarding the convenient help of the nearby carved stick, and was leaning on the back of the tallest comfortable chair, regarding him with irritating insight. Charles snapped, “What?”

“You didn’t have to bodily throw the entire delegation out. Poor Miss Primrose.”

“Don’t exaggerate. And don’t look at me that way.”

“They brought up our parents,” John said, voice, eyes, more gentle now, sympathetic, “and you—”

“There was no need to bring that up, and it’s none of their business.

” Charles wanted this to be definitive. It was not, because he heard his own defensiveness, and loathed it.

Nevertheless, he could not say everything he was thinking, not to his older brother and that utterly generous forgiving heart; so instead he went to find the brandy on the sideboard, and poured a hearty amount into the tea.

It did not taste particularly appealing, but that was the point.

“It wasn’t your fault,” John said. “It isn’t. You don’t have to—”

“Just tell me what you need me to do.”

“I need you to talk to me.”

Charles downed the rest of the dreadful brandy-tea concoction. “I am.”

“You’re not listening.”

“First you want me to talk. And then listen. Which is it?”

“Charles—”

“I’ll do anything you need,” Charles said.

“You know I will. Every time—at Oxford, at Dean, here—if you tell me you want to protect villagers from a drowning-spot or from stone-throwing angry spirits or just from an apparently unfashionable churchyard ghost, I’ll do it.

You never have to ask. Anything. Is that clear enough?

” He turned from John’s wide eyes, extended hand; from the silent accusation of the cane and the scrape of branches across the window and his heart.

“I’ll go for a walk. And see whether I can deal with this ghost. It doesn’t sound like a difficult one. ”

“Charles!”

He left, without looking back.

* * * *

The wind bit like the fangs of tiny needle-mouthed spirits.

The afternoon crackled toward evening in sharply outlined colors and shapes: gunmetal grey, black lines of trees, the swinging painted signs of village shops, solid rooftops and gold in firegleam from windows.

The air tasted of chimney-smoke and harvests.

Charles shivered, because he had not brought a coat, and his shirtsleeves and waistcoat were not warm enough; still, he deserved that too, so he did not turn back. He kicked a pebble in the dirt of the lane, and then wished he had not, because the pebble had done nothing to deserve that.

He should turn right and cross the lane and head to the churchyard, conveniently near the rectory. He should see about the ghost, which might indeed be a simple task, in relative terms, of course. He should go back and apologize to John.

He should discover a means of moving through time, and ensure that the pain and grief and loss had never happened.

He should tell his younger self to conceal, hide, pretend, so that none of this had ever come to pass, and Eliza and James Hayward would be alive to continue their brilliant folklorists’ work, and John would not require support to walk across a room.

He spun away from the village’s hearth-lights and shops, and went for a rapid walk, instead.

He did not have a destination in mind, as such, but the path meandered over autumn-brittle ground and a deceptively slim but deep treachery of river, crossed by stones.

Charles hopped from stone to stone, slipped, caught his balance, pondered fleetingly whether he should throw himself in.

Might be fitting. Easier. Plainly an accident. No one’s fault.