Kay wasn’t surprised when she discovered the husband, Robert, in a corner of Edith’s garden, another friendly ghost. He never spoke, just lifted his cap in greeting. She started to listen out for his faint whistle and quite liked the smell of pipe smoke that drifted over the fence. Besides Kay, the only visitors to […]
Category: Prose
Next Door’s Ghosts Episode 2
Of course, she told her neighbour, and Edith was not surprised. “That’s my cat, Maurice.” She smiled. “He was run over before he was six months old, and we buried him in the garden. But he preferred your garden, it always was a bit of a jungle.” The little old lady in the corner grinned, […]
Giant
I’m trapped between mature queen beeches, beneath the litter of their crunchy mast. Their silver trunks are adorned with stag-horn lichen and bracket fungus, a tiny fairyland. Me, I’m a giant, one of a circle of stones haunting the landscape, a left-over from a long time ago. Sometimes the great bones of my life feel […]
Next Door’s Ghosts Episode 1
It strolled through the back door one sunny morning, a small, grey wisp of a cat like a cloud, and stayed. Kay had heard it mewing and thought it was her own cat, Muffin, so she opened a pouch of his favourite fish in jelly, forked it into a clean bowl, and placed it on […]
The Kind Ghost
‘I knew we had a ghost,’ the writer said from her armchair piled with cushions, feet warming by the fire. ‘How’s that?’ ‘When we moved in, neighbours told me about a soldier who was killed in the Great War but returned to watch over his daughter, to whom he told stories. She became a writer, […]
Ogden’s Extraordinary Observatory
Posters were plastered all over town, filling us with expectation: ‘OGDEN’S EXTRAORDINARY OBSERVATORY – ONE NIGHT ONLY’. We had to go. It’s in an abandoned factory that was closed when we were children, the year my best friend Rachel discovered astronomy. I’m glad I remembered to bring a torch. Ogden is a creepy man, clown-like […]
After the Smog Came
Nobody listened to the warnings, so when it came, it was a shock. The atmosphere was so badly poisoned by toxic smog from burning forests, exhaust fumes and waste, it leaked into space and discoloured the face of the moon. It just disappeared. After a number of years, older children had forgotten about it and […]
A Pocketful of Time
Their childhood pockets were always full of stuff: fluff-covered sweets, stubs of pencils, rubber bands, and tiny plastic figures from breakfast cereal, their currency to trade and play with on a rainy afternoon. That afternoon, when it is over, said and done, it was a time – and there was never enough of it […]
Ghost Cats and Magpies
Will’s eyes followed the shadow while his fingers untwisted the last ribbon. He took off after it, swiftly but stealthily, slipping behind tree trunks and bushes, not once looking behind him to check if everything was as it should be. The shadow was moving away from the green, towards the other end of the village, […]
Luna and the Blood Moon
Luna was hunting. She had left the house before twilight and was waiting for her namesake to give her a sign. She had already feasted on a vole and a field mouse. Magic was in the air. Grandmother’s grimoire had promised freedom from her feline form. The words were indelibly burnt in her memory: When […]
writing in north norfolk 