Goblins and Ghosties (7 page)

Next thing most of us knew, she was haring back towards us with some long, white thing trailing behind her, so they said. I just heard her yelling.

‘Open the door!' she cried. ‘Let me in!'

As soon as she was back inside and the door locked fast behind her, we saw that she'd been as good as her word. That long, white thing was a shroud, right enough. You could tell by the smell of it. Fair stank the place out with its graveyard smell.

Then,
from outside, came a sound like bones rattling and a voice: dry, rasping and angry. ‘Give it back, Molly. Give me back my shroud!' Then it was pleading: ‘Give it back, Molly, I'm begging you. I'm naked without it and cold – so cold.'

I felt sorry for the poor creature. ‘Give it back, Molly,' I said. ‘Just hand it to him out of the window.'

Molly shook her head.

The ghost, ghoul, zombie – whatever it was – went on rattling and pleading.

‘Go on, Molly,' I said. ‘Go on.'

But she wouldn't.

So I took the shroud out of Molly's hand, opened the window and thrust it outside.

‘Here, take it,' I said.

The creature wouldn't take it. ‘I must have it back from her own hands,' it said.

‘Here, Molly,' I said, offering her the shroud.

She didn't want to take it, but she saw the faces of the men standing round, the ones she'd called cowards and babies, all watching
to
see what she'd do. So she took the shroud from me and held it out of the window.

And, would you believe it, the creature still wouldn't take it. ‘You have to hand it back in the same place where you took it from me,' it said.

Then it turned away and walked back across the churchyard, its naked bones rattling with cold every step of the way.

‘Go on, Molly,' I said. ‘You'll be doing him a kindness.'

‘Go on,' they all said. ‘Go on, or we'll be stuck here all night.'

‘Go on, Molly. We're right behind you.'

So off went Molly with the shroud in her hand, while the rest of us stood and waited.

When she came back she was as pale as death. She walked straight past us without a word, went upstairs and took to her bed.

I never had time to call the doctor, for she was dead by morning.

We
buried her there in the graveyard.

Now they do say there are two ghosts haunting the graveyard and I'd say that's very likely, for Molly never could stand being idle.

That's a good yarn, you say. But it's true, every word of it, sure as I'm standing here. If you wait a little longer, sir, the lads will be in soon. They'll back me up. Ah, well, if your friends are expecting you for dinner down in the village... if you take the shortcut through the graveyard opposite, you can be there in half the time. I wouldn't chance it myself, not at this time of night, but you being an educated man... I'll just stand here and keep an eye out till I see you're safely across.

The Ghost's Peso

Colombia

Juanita knew when she married Manuel that they were never going to be rich. He was smart enough to find work and he'd work hard till he'd earned enough to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Then, he'd take things easy for a bit. So there was never anything put by for a rainy day.

When that rainy day did come – as rainy days have a nasty habit of doing – and she lost her job cleaning up at the hacienda when
the
family shut up the house and moved to the city, they soon fell behind with the rent.

The manager left in charge of the estate was still hiring men, but at such poor wages! ‘You pay peanuts,' said Manuel, ‘you get monkeys. I'm nobody's monkey.'

But there was no other work around. Not men's work anyway.

Juanita did what she could: a bit of sewing, a bit of ironing, an evening dishwashing at the cantina. It was never enough. First Manuel borrowed money here, then a little more there so he could pay the first lot back and have enough left over to keep them going till pay-day. Soon he owed money here, there and everywhere.

Bit by bit they sold off everything they owned, till they were sleeping on the floor and eating nothing but watery soup straight out of the single cooking pot they'd got left. Still the creditors kept coming.

‘If only we could pay them off,' said Juanita, ‘we could move away from here. Start a new life.'

‘
There's only one way to stop them,' said Manuel. ‘If I die, my debts die with me.'

‘But I don't want you to die,' said Juanita.

‘Nor do I,' said Manuel. ‘But if they think I'm dead…'

‘Ah!'

They sold the cooking pot to buy a coffin.

There lay Manuel in his coffin in the church, a single candle burning by his head. ‘It was all we could afford!' sighed Juanita, the grieving widow, making all the creditors feel guilty. ‘I know he died owing you money,' she told them. ‘It was worrying about it that killed him. His heart, you know.'

‘Oh, poor Manuel!' They shook their heads. ‘If only we'd known!'

‘Consider it paid.'

‘The slate wiped clean.'

All except one. The sum Manuel owed him was tiny. Just one peso.

Juanita shook her head. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I haven't got it. I've nothing left in the world but that candle burning at the head of the coffin.'

‘
I'll have that then,' he said.

‘You can have what's left of it in the morning,' she said. ‘Tonight I need it. You wouldn't want me to watch over my poor husband's coffin in the dark?'

‘I can wait,' he said. And settled himself down in a shadowy corner of the church.

Now if you think Manuel and Juanita were the only people having a hard time of it when the big estate was mothballed, you'd be wrong. Some people had turned to outright robbery. And, as luck would have it, a band of robbers were passing the church that dark night, looking for somewhere where they could see to divide up their loot.

Seeing a light burning in the church, in they went.

‘Who's that?' cried Manuel, sitting bolt upright in his coffin.

The thieves nearly died of fright on the spot. They dropped the stolen money and fled.

The noise they made woke the creditor, who'd been dozing in his shadowy corner of the church. Seeing Manuel sitting up in his
coffin,
he yelled, ‘I knew it! I knew you were faking, you cheat! You shyster! Playing dead just to save yourself from paying the one measly peso you owe me! Give it to me now, or I'll wake the whole village – all the people you borrowed from – and show them how you tricked them. Give me my peso!'

It was just that last bit that the robbers heard when they'd plucked up courage enough to come creeping back for their loot – after all, money is money and they'd gone to a lot of trouble to get it.

‘Give me my peso!'

They looked at one another in horror. The ghosts inside the church must be dividing up the money. Who else, apart from the dead man they'd seen, would be in the church at this hour? And if each of those ghosts was only getting one peso, how many ghosts would that be?

‘How many pesos did we steal?'

‘Dozens, at least.'

‘More like hundreds.'

One dead man walking
they
could probably deal with between them, but a church full of ghosts? No way!

They took to their heels again and this time they didn't come back.

Meanwhile, Manuel tossed a peso from the pile on the floor to his creditor, and then added another for luck.

One hundred per cent interest! The creditor went on his way contented, never suspecting that he'd just helped Manuel and Juanita to a small fortune.

By morning they were long gone, well on their way to the big city. Juanita had the moneybag stashed away under her layers of shawl until she could safely invest it in a little business. A shop or a market stall, maybe even a small hotel. One thing she was sure of. From now on, she'd be the only one to handle the cash.

Jean-Loup

Canada

Old Joachim was the foulest old man you ever could wish not to meet.

Foul-tempered, foul-mouthed and foul-smelling. But he was the only miller within a long day's ride, so he was never short of business.

Day and night the mill wheel turned – even on Sundays, when honest, God-fearing folk shut up shop for the day and went to church.

The only small pleasure Joachim got out
of
life was from playing chess, though he had to play against himself, since none of his neighbours could stand being in the same room with him long enough to get to checkmate.

Late one night, he was sitting over the chessboard, puzzling over a problem he'd cut out of the newspaper (and maybe he would have solved it quicker if he hadn't already been halfway down the bottle on the table beside him) when a knock came at the door.

There stood a young trapper, almost as filthy as Joachim himself, his hair wild and long and his clothes of poorly cured buckskin reeking of some sort of animal scent. Still, any God-fearing soul would have asked him in, since there'd been signs of a marauding beast prowling the area: a sheep mauled here, a dead cow there. It wasn't safe these days to be out after dark.

Joachim was about to shut the door, when the stranger, looking past him at the chessboard said, ‘Do you fancy a game?'

‘You play chess?'

‘
Just a little.'

‘Come on in!'

He turned out to be a pretty good player. Not so good that old Joachim didn't beat him three times in a row, which pleased the old man no end.

‘What's your name?' said Joachim.

‘Jean-Loup,' said the stranger.

Soon, word got around that old Joachim had taken on assistant who was as foul-smelling and foul-tempered as his boss. Not so foul-mouthed, maybe, but only because he didn't speak much. His was more a brooding sort of ill temper. The way he looked at you! Made you nervous of turning your back.