BE MY GHOST
BY ALAN EDWARD

The following short story by Scottish novelist Alan Edward was published in Koinos magazine, Amsterdam, issue 9, 1^st Quarter 1996, pp. 22-26. The drawings accompanied the original article.

It was as high as a cliff, as wide as a palace, and as old as the century. In front was a broad terrace, a great pillared entrance with stone steps and, on either side of the entrance, a double row of tall windows - twenty-eight of them. I should know. Nearly every morning when I was a boy I’d counted them lazily, still half-asleep, as I lay in bed and looked across the valley at the Big House opposite.

In those days too there would be tremendous comings and goings even from the early morning - all fascinating to a curious youngster - servant-girls pulling back shutters, brushing the steps, shaking dusters out of upstairs windows - then the arrival of a succession of tradesmen’s vans, and sometimes of mysterious closed carriages that drove swiftly into the back yard with a clatter of hooves and chime of harness, and which I never saw coming out again.

The big house stood due west of us, so that nearly every morning the early sun struck all the windows and sometimes made me think of the old tale I had been told when I was little - the tale of The House with the Golden Windows. About how a boy had been intrigued every morning by the wondrously gold windows of the house on an opposite hill and how that at length he had struggled all day long across a deep valley to reach this miraculous house, only to find, to his bitter disappointment, that its windows were glass like any other. But then how, happening to look back, he had seen the windows of his own house caught in the setting sun and flooded with the brightest gold he had ever seen. There was, I recall, some kind of moral attached to the tale - other than that the boy in question was presumably half-witted - but I can’t remember what it was.

That had all, of course, been some years before the summer in question. By the time I went off to college in the big city the house had been empty for three or four years, no-one knew why. All the rooms were deserted, some shuttered, and although the windows naturally still caught the sun each morning the gold had faded now, as the panes were grimy, several were broken, and all were shrouded with ivy and creeper.

And, of course, it was haunted. Well, have you ever heard of an old and empty house that wasn'’? The village boys used to scare each other witless with tales of mysterious lights and figures, headless monks, strange wailings and knockings. And there were dares to go in after midnight, to spend the night there - but you know the kind of thing.

I really don’t know what took me across to the old house that morning. It had been a gloriously hot August, and it was still high summer. But that day there was a light wind, with a few wisps of cloud chasing across the sky. And it was when I was standing on the terrace in front of the house, and the sun again went in, that I glanced up, then stood utterly motionless. There it was, standing squarely behind an upstairs window. I have to admit - and it took even me aback - that I knew a moment of sheer, primitive terror - my guts spasmed and froze, slivers of cold ice arrowed all through me, the hairs stood up and prickled all down the back of my neck. But I continued to stand there - probably I was unable to do anything else - and gradually took in what I saw. The figure was that of a child - a boy of perhaps twelve or so, dressed in a long white robe and holding a tall candle or taper from which a flame flowed steadily upwards, though the room behind remained dark. The face was one of unearthly loveliness, the complexion fair, almost translucent, the eyes blue as the Provençal sky. Blond hair floated around the cheeks, light and delicate as thistledown, ends flickering as in some mysterious breeze. The figure didn’t look at me, didn’t seem aware of me - but what terrified me most of all, somehow, was that the eyes were fixed steadily on my house on the opposite side of the valley - even, I fancied, on my window. Looking, but somehow not seeing.

The sun came out for an instant, flashed on the window-pane, and when it was once again obscured, the window above was empty, and the room behind it pitch-black. I really can’t describe my thoughts as I stumbled down into the valley towards my own house - or the night I passed subsequently, starting at every creak in the house, making honendous presences out of every shape and shadow in the room. Yet it was mainly that face - and this is the only word - that haunted me, all that night and all the next day. And that “haunting” was far from unpleasant. Because - well, during the college term I’d often watched the schoolboys going to their classes in the rue de Rivoli with their neat uniforms and combed hair - very comme il faut, of course - and I admit that my eyes had from time to time strayed in the direction of some blond pixie or hazel-eyed elf. But I’d never seen anyone who looked like that - ever.

In the morning - as I fancied myself something of an artist - I even took out a pad and pencil and tried to capture those luminous eyes, those curved cheeks and wind-blown locks, but it was hopeless. There was only one thing for it - which of course I had known all along. So at precisely the same time on the following day I was again on the stone terrace, looking up at the old window, my heart bumping again, my skin prickling in anticipation.

Alas, the room remained empty and dark - as did all the rooms, although I walked to and fro for an hour or so. Then, just at the angle of the building, I stopped short. In a stone wall alongside the frontage a small wooden door, leading into the rear garden, stood slightly ajar. I hadn’t noticed it before. Well, there was nothing more to be seen from where I was, so I very gently pushed the gate open and went in. The overgrowth and decay evident in front of the house was nothing to that at the back. I had to push my way through a heavy curtain of thorns and briars even to advance a short distance, and indeed, I almost gave up. But then the space opened out a little, and I found myself in a kind of shrubbery, set around a wide shaggy lawn with a ruined fountain in the centre, water still dripping down on the greening stonework. Through a gap in the bushes, light reflected from a hidden lake, half-covered with weed and water-lilies.

I stood still, uncertain, for a moment. Then the bushes rustled; I turned and, to my embarrassment, actually shouted out with shock. The Face was only a short distance away, the eyes now fixed on me, those eyes of the luminescent blue. The head protruded through the bushes, then the bushes rustled again and - I had company again. But what a difference! This time there was no white robe, no taper. The child wore nothing but a pair of brief, torn shorts, the blond hair was tousled and speckled with leaves, and the face and body were grubby and mud-streaked. But - oh, it was the same - and even my most delectable fantasies of the night before hadn’t quite matched this, or come anywhere near it.

“Hello,” I ventured, not moving. The boy didn’t speak, but smiled, then came over and sat on the grass, hugging his knees. I tried again. “What’s your name?”

“Raoul.” The voice was faint, almost a whisper, and seemed to come from a long way off. But I was encouraged, and sat on the grass near him, though not going too close. I couldn’t shift my eyes from the boy, though, and a most tremendous sense of yearning seemed to possess me. I just ached to hold him, to stroke all of that smooth, flawless skin - every single inch of it - yet somehow I felt that I couldn’t - that it wouldn’t be possible. Then something seemed to communicate itself to me, and I asked on impulse, “Are you lonely here?” Now he nodded, and, for a moment, his eyes seemed to swim.

“Perhaps...not any more?” I ventured. Hesitantly, I reached out my hand. He didn’t take it, though he seemed to nod his head. But then the sun came out again, caught my eyes. I blinked, and he was gone. Where? I seemed to hear a rustle in the shrubbery, see a flicker of pale flesh - but I may have imagined it. In any case, I was on my feet in an instant, and stumbled towards the sound, but when I stopped again there was total silence now, and when I followed to where I fancied I had seen the figure vanish there was only the high stone wall, ancient and ivy-covered, solid from end to end; I went home then, but much more cheerfully than I had come, and as I approached my own house, all its windows shone like ingots in the late afternoon sunshine.

Next morning the sky was still cloudless. At mid-day my father tapped his barometer and said that it was the hottest day of the year so far. The sun blazed down on me as I struggled across the valley, and I longed to reach the cool garden of the old house and splash my face in the fountain or the lake. At the front of the house I looked at the windows again, just to check. As I’d expected, nothing. The small door stood ajar as previously, and less hesitantly today - even impatiently - I pushed my way through to the small space of grass in the shrubbery. But then I stopped, listening. There was a new sound. It came from the direction of the lake, and as, shading my eyes, I looked towards where the sun struck the surface, I saw that the water was strangely disturbed, then that above it hovered.... a thing formed almost of nothing but of water and light, floating, rising tall above the surface, then vanishing, hanging aloft yet again in a spray of broken vapour and sunshine, and once more gone, the air full of its splash and dazzle. Then, though half-blinded, - I gradually saw the iridescence take shape from its centre, at first translucent as a sunbeam, insubstantial as a dragonfly - then forming into slim, threshing arms, naked supple limbs, a slim lithe body - a pale form leaping ecstatically in the cool water - in, out, over and again. At last, plunging and surfacing just once more, Raoul - for of course it was he - swam to the bank, climbed out and came towards me. There were not even the tom shorts this time, but I fancied that the smile was more confident, and this time he came much closer to me before stopping, looking up into my face. I hesitated for a moment, unsure of the protocol of such encounters. Did one shake hands? What I would really have liked to do was...

Any why not? I put my hand on the boy’s shoulders, bent, and quickly and chastely kissed him on both cheeks. The shoulders and the cheeks were alike ice-cold - but then, so probably was the water. As before he sat on the grass and hugged his knees. “What’s your name?” he enquired, as if continuing our conversation of the previous day. I told him.

“Well, you can't help that,” he said, rolling over and lying full length on his stomach. Did a spook make that kind of crack? And...I’d touched him. Yet, they had always said that my imagination was so vivid it would be my undoing. Well, we would see. The little beads of water on Raoul’s skin had almost evaporated, but I saw him shiver slightly; the air in the shaded garden was cool now on the naked youngster. “You cold?” I asked, and he nodded. Here goes again. I started with his shoulders, working vigorously with my open palms, slowly working right the way down to provide an all-over réchauffement that - if he was capable of remembering - he would never forget. Nor would I.

I finally arrived at his feet; then he rolled on his back, and I repeated the process, with even more diligence, if such were possible, not leaving out a single millimetre of him. When I had finished, he unexpectedly half sat up and kissed me, but his lips were still icy-cold. And, when the sun flashed in my eyes again, he was gone.

Well...tomorrow, I thought.

But then events took an unexpected turn. I was not the only person to have seen the apparition in the window. In fact, tales about the big house had spread through the village, not only amongst the children this time and - to make a long story short - the priest agreed to enter the old house and carry out a service of exorcism. Of course 1 attended, and on the appointed day there I was, at the front of the minstrels’ gallery in the main hall, together with a small crowd of the curious and idle. The priest entered in stole and biretta, attended by a cloud of altar-boys, and I remembered the exorcism in The Jackdaw of Rheims and the nice little boys. Here too, in fact, some of the little boys were very nice indeed. And the priest really did have a candle, bell and book. From behind, I watched him proceed to the head of the hall, scattering holy water, preceded by the altar boys two with censers, the leading boy carrying the tallest candle, a tumble of fair locks falling to his slim shoulders.

Then at the end of the hall, as the priest turned, the leading boy turned too, and looked straight at me - looked with eyes blue as the Provençal sky, and I stood as motionless as I had that first day on the terrace. The priest was continuing his incantation.

...that thou, oh restless spirit, do return unto the place whence thou came...

The leading boy remained still, his locks blowing in the faint wind from a broken window, then he slowly raised his candlestick, and the priest struck the floor with his staff.

...and, in the name of Holy Church, I command that thou for evermore depart this place...

From behind the priest, the boy held my gaze again... ...and, only just perceptibly, shook his head.