Haunted

Alma Alexander

Copyright Alma Alexander 2011

ISBN

Published by Kos Books at Smashwords

Kos Books

A & D Deckert

343 Sudden Valley Drive

Bellingham WA 98229

Cover Photo: Copyright Sean P Jones

Foreword

We’ll Meet Again

Skye Child

The Old Pier

What Reviewers Say

Other Books by Alma Alexander

Contact Alma Alexander

About the Author

I like
ghosts.

Or at the very least, I like the idea that
they might exist, and that they still have business with us, the
living. And that the business in question doesn’t always have to be
something that requires scaring us to death.

Back in the dawn of my publishing career, in
South Africa in the mid-to-late 1980s, I used to write short
stories which got picked up by various local magazines – the sort
of thing that these days might be labeled “chicklit”, light
romances, fiction whose entire purpose was to entertain the casual
reader of a weekly or monthly magazine. I didn’t do a whole LOT of
them, but I did a few, and what do you know, I couldn’t quite make
myself go mainstream, not even then. At least two of my
contributions were ghost stories as well as romances. I just can’t
help myself, you see – I am indissolubly wedded to things that are
not QUITE of this world, and even in what was supposed to be
straight romantic fiction the ghosts manage to make their presence
felt.

They’re good stories. As far as I am
concerned, they’re the better for the spectral presences that haunt
them. So here they are, my ghosts. I promise, they’re perfectly
safe; come right in and meet them.

Welcome to the Alexander Triads, Book 3:
Haunted.

Alma Alexander

Summer 2011

When I was young, before it was superseded by
other and more accomplished tales, this was my Blessed Story. It
was published in South Africa, in the UK, and even in a women’s
magazine in Dubai (how THEY got hold of it I will never know). It
won a writing competition for me. It was one of those stories that
just kept on giving. It’s hard to even think about the fact that
this was a tale which I dreamed up almost as long ago now as I’d
had Wally haunting his cigarette case – but it still has… a
certain… something. Wally was one tenacious ghost. He might have
let his lady-love Alex go to the arms of a real live young man and
live out a bright and blessed life that was of this earth, but he’s
haunted me ever since. See him take another bow, in a new
electronic medium which would no doubt have completely confused him
if he’d still been around today…

I don’t know what made me reach for the
cigarette case, out of the whole pile of junk on the stall.

“That’s a good piece, Miss,” the stall-holder
said earnestly. “It’s pre-World War Two.”

Another customer claimed his attention and I
was left to examine the cigarette case in peace.

It was plain to a fault, made of tarnished
gunmetal. The clasp was still in good working order and I clicked
it open. On the bottom right-hand corner of the lid, just next to
the hinge, a set of three intials had been engraved. I could just
make them out: WCH. They seemed to want to make up for the
plainness of the case, for they were full of unexpected twists and
curlicues.

Apart from these initials, the case was quite
empty.

“Not very pretty,” said a youthful male voice
beside me.

I looked up at met a pair of guileless blue
eyes, set in a smooth and boyish face and rather fetchingly fringed
by a lock of fair hair which managed to flop over his forehead
despite the army-like short back and sides he sported. He smiled,
showing a set of perfect teeth and two small dimples in his cheeks
as he did so. Despite myself, I smiled back.

“Are you English?” I asked. He had spoken
with the clipped, precise accent no local would use.

“I am… or I suppose I was,” he said
cryptically.

“How long have you been in this country?” I
asked, for that is what I took his words to mean – simply that he
had been out of England for a long time, or perhaps had even been
born in South Africa.

“Oh… some forty years,” answered the young
man diffidently.

“Now you’re pulling my leg,” I said sharply,
doing a swift double take. He couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20
at the outside.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Not at all. I’ve been in
this country for as long as that case you’re holding has been here.
And that is about forty years. Yon good gentleman has exaggerated a
bit about its age – it’s not, strictly speaking, pre-war, since it
was brand new when my father gave it to me in 1940…”

“Now wait a minute!” I said, startled into
loudness. “You can’t possibly mean - ”

“But I assure you, Miss, it’s perfectly
true,” the stall-holder said earnestly. He had disposed of the
other customer and was taking my remark, quite understandably, to
be a response to his own earlier words.

“I’m sorry, I was talking to this young
gentleman here.”

“Who?” asked the stall-keeper blankly.

The fair young man beside me gave half salute
which the stall-keeper ignored entirely.

“The young…” I began, and my voice died
agonisingly as the fair boy carried on smiling and the stall-keeper
looked at me as if I’d taken leave of my senses.

Gradually, the horrible truth dawned.

“Would you like to take the case, Miss?” said
the stall-keeper carefully.

“Oh, do get it,” the boy said at the same
instant. “You’ll be doing me a great favor.”

I opened my mouth to say no, but what came
out, despite my best efforts, was, “Yes, I’ll take it.”

Bemused, I scrabbled in the jumbled contents
of my bag for my purse, which, as usual, had migrated to the
bottom. As I did so, a square of white cardboard floated down to
cobbles, coming to rest with the writing uppermost. My invitation
to the local RAF society’s annual Battle of Britain Ball.

“You dropped something, Miss,” the
stall-keeper observed, relinquishing the cigarette case.

“Battle of Britain Ball, what?” the fair
youth said. “Nice to know someone still cares. Are you going?”

I refused to answer. Not in front of the
stall-keeper. I picked up the card with great dignity, restored it
to my bag, in the company of my newly-acquired cigarette case, and
strolled slowly away from the market-place and into the quiet
streets beyond.

The fair youth, hands in pockets, kept
pace.

“Look, who are you anyway?” I said
crossly.

“Oh, I am sorry, didn’t I introduce myself?”
He sounded contrite. “Walter Charles Hawke at your service. But you
can call me Wally. All my friends do.”

“I’m not your friend,” I informed him.
“Besides…”

“Oh, I know we’ve only just met, but I can
assure you that I think of you as a friend already,” Wally said
with the same endearing smile that had captured my attention
earlier. “After all, you do hold my immortal soul in the bag, so to
speak.”

“I – what?”

“The cigarette case,” Wally supplied
helpfully. And then, when I gazed at him with blank
incomprehension, he sighed. “I can see I’m going to have to explain
from the beginning.”

“I would be much obliged,” I said
sarcastically. “But I absolutely refuse to walk around town talking
to a piece of thin air. Enough people already think I’m crazy – I
don’t need to add to the number.”

“Oh,” Wally said, in all seriousness. “I can
probably solve that. Give me a moment.”

If I’d had any doubts, they vanished now.
Before my eyes he sort of flickered, disappeared, then formed
again, causing one startled passer-by to turn and gape after us,
probably doubting his eyesight. After all, he had just seen a man
materialize out of nothing. And a man, as well, who was dressed in…
I gave a squeal of indignation.

“Are you really going to walk around Cape
Town wearing what I presume is a World War Two uniform?”

Wally looked down, as if this was the first
time he’d noticed that he was wearing anything at all.

“You’ve got a point,” he conceded. “Give me
another moment.” He faded again.

Scarlet with embarrassment – another man had
stopped to goggle – I turned and studied a nearby shop window. In
its reflection, I saw a shape form in the hitherto empty space
beside me, and Wally popped into existence wearing jeans and a red
T-shirt with a jersey tied loosely round his shoulders. His hands
were still stuffed into his pockets.

“Will this do?” he inquired hopefully.

I glanced around. Nobody was paying us any
attention. A jeans-clad youth was not an unusual sight, and anyone
who had seen this particular youth appear out of nothing had
already hurried home to take two aspirins and call the doctor.

“Now, about the case…”

It transpired that Wally’s father had given
him the cigarette case when he had joined the RAF in February 1940.
And then, towards the end of August in that same year, he had
scrambled with the other pilots in his squadron to a warning of the
approach of enemy planes.

Wally’s plane was hit at the outset of the
battle. It plummeted and exploded into a ball of flames…

“They didn’t find much,” Wally said sadly.
“Only bits and pieces. The case got flung free and they never found
it.

“It was discovered three weeks afterwards by
a local urchin who sold it to a pawnshop in town. And from there it
was bought by a man, left on a train, picked up by another man,
lost again... and so on for a year or so.

“Then some chap chucked it into the cases
when he was packing for his trip to South Africa. Found it when he
got there and wondered why he’d brought it. He got rid of it… and
you picked it up off the stall in the market.”

“Well-travelled case,” I commented. “Do you
mean to tell me that you haunt a cigarette case? I thought that
ghosts always lived in grand old houses and rattled their chains
around four-poster beds and floated down wide staircases with their
heads in their hands…”

“Well, the truth is, most of such places are
actually already occupied,” Wally said. “Besides, I’m a bit young
to be toting chains… there you go again. What’s so funny?”

“You really are one of the most unorthodox
specters I have ever met… not that I’ve met many, of course.”

“I can see that,” Wally said, aggrieved. “I
got left behind on earth when I died, and I had to get attached to
something, and this case was the only thing that survived the crash
more or less in one piece. All right?”

“OK. I am sorry. The truth is, I don’t quite
know what to make of you. Or what you want of me.”

“Just send the case back to my family,” Wally
said plaintively. “Tell them what happened, and if they can bury it
where they buried what they could scrape together of me, well,
maybe then I can finally go and rest in peace.”

“A ghost in the post,” I said, and fought
valiantly with another attack of hysterics.

“What?” Wally said.

“Never mind. All right, I’ll send it. Does
that mean I’m stuck with the pleasure of your company until I do
get rid of it?”

“Well, you don’t have to…” Wally began,
affronted, and his edges began to blur.

“No! Wait!” I said, flinging out an arm.
“Don’t do that to me again! And besides, I must admit, I quite
enjoy having you around.”

He firmed again, and grinned. And you’re
nice, too. It’s a pity I didn’t meet you back in 1939.”

“That would be a fine thing,” I snored. “My
parents were toddlers then. By the way, how old are you?”

“Forever nineteen,” he said, with infinite
sadness. “That’s when I stopped growing old.”

I did some mental arithmetic. “Well, you’re
younger than my grandparents, but not my much,” I said. “It’s hard
to think of you as a grandfather.”

“I don’t want to think of myself as a
grandfather,” he retorted, “especially not yours. I wish I could
take you to dances, not dandle you on my knee!”

“I wish you could, too,” I sighed. Too
deeply. He looked up.

“What’s the matter?”

“Read my mind?”

“Don’t be silly, we can’t do that,” Wally
said with asperity. “To take a good guess, though. I would say it’s
to do with dances and partners. To take it a guess further, I would
hazard the dance is the Battle of Britain Ball, and the problem is
that there is no partner around.”

“You’re too astute.”

“You’re too kind,” he returned. “What’s with
the fellows around here? Haven’t they eyes in their heads?”