Christmas Ghosts - a short story Read online

Christmas Ghosts

  by

  EH Walter

  Copyright 2014 EH Walter

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  Paranormal Investigations 1

  Paranormal Investigations 4

  Paperbacks available at https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ehwalter

  Coming soon from EH Walter: Snowbound and Paranormal Investigations 5: A Faint Whiff of Wet Dog.

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  Christmas Ghosts

  by

  EH Walter

  In memory of those who served 1914-1918 and those they left behind.

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  Margaret’s eyes were sore from staring at the white. It covered everything. She took a deep breath and continued her strides through the snow, sinking to mid-thigh with every step.

  “C’mon Samson,” she said to the purring cat she had laid around her neck, “show willing.”

  Samson purred. He was used to this strange ritual. Every morning after a fresh snow fall Margaret would put her warm, living scarf about her neck and they would walk up the hills, spotting the tell-tale yellow rings on the snow that told them there was a sheep buried below.

  “Here’s one, Samson,” she said and reached down with her heavily mittened hands. She shovelled the snow to the side until she could feel the sheep buried beneath. “C’mon you daft bugger!”

  Her mother would be horrified with the language Margaret used out on the hills, but then her mother stayed warm inside, busy mourning her husband and son. It was Margaret who had to get out of bed before the sun and do the work of two men.

  The ewe was a large one and Margaret had to use every inch of her wiry strength to get it free until the ewe could scramble the rest of the way for itself. When it got purchase for it’s feet, it leapt up, pushing Margaret onto her backside, and tottered away bleating.

  “Don’t thank me, you bugger!” she called after it.

  The ewe looked back, bleated once, and then proceeded off to find it’s flock.

  “Quite alright,” Margaret told it, “I just can’t abide bad manners. Right Samson, one more field before breakfast.”

  There were two more sheep to pull free in the last field before Margaret left. As she was going, she spotted another yellow ring almost hidden by the side of a dry stone wall.

  “Our work here is not done yet, Samson. Keep dreaming of that bowl of cream waiting for you by the warm kitchen fire.”

  The cat purred.

  Margaret scooped the snow away until she could feel the sheep beneath. It didn’t move. She felt for it’s horns and pulled. The sheep did not help itself. It was either dead or on it’s way there.

  It took a great deal of effort to pull the sheep out by an inch and Margaret had no more strength to give. She let go of the horns and instead began clearing the snow so she could see what state the sheep was in and if the rescue was worth the effort.

  When she cleared the snow from it’s face tears began to spring into Margaret’s eyes.

  “You daft bugger,” she said softly, her fingers stroking the face of the dead sheep. “Why did it have to be you, eh?”

  She put her arm around the sheep’s head and buried her face beside it. She allowed herself two minutes of unadulterated sobbing before Samson’s claws told her it was time to move on.

  Reverently she reburied the ewe’s head in the snow and got to her feet.

  “I know Samson, time for your breakfast.”

  Although Margaret took a circular route about the fields, it was still a forty minute walk back to the farmhouse. This was usually her favourite part. Her job was done and it was her time, time for her to think about whatever she liked. Most times she stopped by the road and imagined leaving by it. There was a dip in the wall where she would rest her hands and she would imagine taking herself off to a great city. North to York or south to Leeds.

  “But not London, Samson,” she would say, “I’m a Yorkshire lass. I have no will to leave it.”

  Once, when she was much younger and before the war that had changed everything, their father had taken them all to York for the day. Her mother had protested and fussed about the farm whereas now Margaret knew her mother just didn’t want to go to a big city where she would feel odd and out of place. To Margaret’s mind it had been a wonderful day. They’d had iced buns from Betty’s (although they hadn’t sat in as they’d not that much money and her mother was already pulling nervously at the frayed collar of her coat as they queued for the buns) and her father had told them all about the Romans and King Richard who was a good Yorkshireman but who everyone else said was a bad king who had murdered his nephews. They had taken their buns to the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey where they had a picnic of sorts on the walls. Then she and Jack had chased each other around, pretending to be the ghosts of dead nuns and monks. It had been the best of days and although it was only a few hours long, for Margaret it had become the outstanding memory of her whole childhood.

  The little farmhouse looked even smaller hidden by the snow. Due to their comings and goings there was a decent path through to the kitchen door, although it was perilously slippy where the compacted snow had frozen over. Margaret took it slowly and only had one small slide before she rebalanced herself.

  There was a small porch before the kitchen where she struggled off with her boots, fingers numb from the cold air. Samson leapt from her neck and clawed at the door impatiently.

  The water outside the farmhouse had frozen over so Margaret had to wash her hands in the kitchen, which her mother frowned at, but said nothing.

  “You took your time,” was what she did say, as she worked a tea towel around a pot.

  “It was a big fall. There were ten to free.”

  “All alive?”

  Margaret shook her head as she dried her hands. She bit her lip. “One dead, the little ewe I called Rosemary.”

  “The ewe you bottle fed last year?” Her mother said lightly.

  Inwardly Margaret fumed. She had bottle fed Rosemary day and night, not giving up on her when everyone else told her to. That was when their neighbour told her she was not for farming - too soft-hearted. How she had delighted in showing him a thriving Rosemary. He had just shrugged.

  “A sheep is a sheep,” he said, “it isn’t worth the hours to make those live that God wants to die.”

  He had fallen silent then, realising what he had said.

  Well, soft or not, Rosemary had been more than a victory for Margaret - she had been a pet, an important part of her life and now she was lying dead under a foot of snow up in the north field.

  She would not cry, not in front of her mother. Instead she drank strong tea and ate luke warm porridge.

  “Will you walk with me to midnight mass tonight?” she asked her mother, “There’s a full moon.”

  Her mother didn’t turn around from the sink. “I don’t think so. You go.”

  “I think I will. It’s an easy walk with moonlight and I don’t think there’ll be more snow. The sky looks clear and the temperature has dropped again. Do you want me to do the hen?”

  “What?”

  “The hen. Do you want me to wring it’s neck or will you do it? I can’t see one in the larder yet.”

  “I wasn’t going to bother,” her mother said, she had been drying the same pot since Margaret got back.

  “But it’s Christmas, we always have a hen.”

  “I didn’t see the point.”

  Margaret opened her mouth angrily but then shut it again. She threw her spoon down on the table and stormed out of the room.

  As Margaret had predicted, it was a good evening. The moon was clear and there was no more snow. When she felt she could bear talking to her mother again she had given her another
chance to walk with her to midnight mass, but she had received another refusal.

  “One of these days I will stop asking,” Margaret said.

  Her mother had shrugged carelessly.

  Margaret felt colder without Samson around her neck, but she couldn’t count on him behaving in church and the rest of the village already thought her odd.

  “Sell up,” she had been advised countless times, “you and your mother could buy a little boarding house by the sea and take in paying guests.”

  Margaret couldn’t think of anything worse.

  It was a very beautiful night. The stars were clear and bright in an almost indigo sky.

  Last year Jack had been with her, insisting on making the walk even with a stick which had been his legacy from the war. Margaret hadn’t minded that the walk had taken twice as long and they’d had to stop several times. They had both pretended it was because they wanted to look at the sky or the shape of the hills against it. She had just been so very grateful to have her