The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

I was not many miles from home now – my village, my new house, my heavy safe front door. The road had dropped low to a humped bridge, and after a moment when I had switched off the engine I could hear the clear quick brown water running deep and noisy below it. I thought, “There can’t have been anyone. I’m drunk.”

I got out of the car and walked about. It was cold. I stood on the bridge. Apart from the noise of the beck everything was absolutely quiet. There was not a light from any house in any direction. Down here by the beck I could see no horizons, not the fell’s edge, not even the sweet nibbled grass beside the road. The air smelled very clean like fresh sheets.

This was the pedlars’ road. For five hundred years, they had walked it with packs of ribbons and laces and buttons and medicines, and a great many of them according to all the stories had been murdered for them or disappeared in the snow in winter – often not found until Martinmas. If my car doesn’t start now, I thought, I shall be very much alone.

Had the woman been asking for help? I wondered whether to go back. I felt absolutely certain – and it is amazing how much even at midnight under only the palest moon the eye can know from the angle of a moving arm – that she hadn’t.

She had been waving kindly. Not afraid. Not asking. Not even beckoning. She had been waving in some sort of recognition.

I had never been so frightened in my life.

“I went to Mealbeck last night.”

“Y’d get a fair plateful there.”

“Yes.”

“And a fair skinful.”

“We – yes. Lovely wine.”

“Wine, eh? And mebbe a tot?”

“I had a lovely time. They’re very nice. Very kind.”

“That’s right. They’re kind. Home boozers. Did you get back safe? They say the police sits outside Mealbeck when there’s entertaining. When they can spare’t time.”

“I’m not saying anything against them.”

“That’s right then.” He – it was the farmer who had the demented dogs and whose wife came from the Danish settlement – he looked satisfied. I could see he had been wondering if I was too fancy to answer back. ‘They’re right. Old Gertie and Millicent. There’s nowt amiss wi’ them. Did you have a fair drive home?”

“Fair,” I said. “One thing wasn’t though. I passed a place—. I saw a ghost.”

“Oh aye. Y’d see half a dozen after a night out at Mealbeck.”

“No, I don’t think it was that. I saw someone at a gate. It was a woman waving.”

“Oh aye.”

“Well – it was nearly one o’clock in the morning.”

“Did yer stop?” He was clipping. The sheep was taut between his legs, its yellow eyes glaring. The clippers snapped deep into the dirty heathery wool.

“Well, no. I didn’t believe it till I was miles past. It took a minute. Then I thought I’d dreamed. Dropped asleep.”

“Woman was it? Dark-haired?”

“I didn’t see the colour. Just the shape.”

“Did yer go on back?”

“No – well. She didn’t seem to be in trouble or anything. I hope I did right. Not going back.”

He said nothing till the fleece of the sheep fell away and the animal sprang out of his clutches like a soul released and slithered dizzily light into the yard.

“Watch now or yer’ll get yerself hiked,” he said as I stood clear. “The Missus’ll have a pot of tea if you fancy it.”

“Was it a ghost?”

“Missus!”

She appeared at the door and looked pleased to see me – this really was a wonderfully friendly country – ‘Kettle’s on”, she called. “I hear yer’ve bin gallivanting at the Hall.”

“Was it a ghost?” I asked again before I went into tea.

“I’d not think so,” he said.

I went back along the road the very next day and at first I could find no sign of the house at all. Or at any rate I could not decide which one it was. The fell that had looked so bare at night, by daylight could be seen to be dotted with crumpled, squat little stone farms, their backs turned to the view, two trees to each to form a wind-break, grey with white stone slabs to the window and only a tall spire of smoke to show they were occupied. It was not the townsfolk-country-cottage belt so that there was not much white paint about, lined curtains, urns on yard walls – and any one of several little isolated farms could have been the eerie one. In the end I turned back and found the bridge where I’d stopped. I got out of the car again as I had before, and walked back a mile or two until I came to a lane going alongside a garden end. All I could see from the road was the garden end – a stone wall and a gate quite high up above me and behind that a huge slab-stoned roof so low that the farmhouse must have been built deep down in a dip.