Tag: Ghost Story

The Orchard

~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

A ghost story

Photo by the author

I don’t remember why I wrote this story. Possibly it’s one I entered in a contest on the Vocal website. Like Medium, Vocal is a site where writers can publish stories and collect a few pennies when people read them. I wasn’t successful there and finally closed my account once I reached the $20 minimum to cash out. I won’t mention how long it took to earn that money.

And that, dear readers, is one example of why I don’t recommend trying to make a living writing short stories.

This one’s a ghost story, but it’s not too scary.

The Orchard

Mae Emery returned, as she had each year since childhood, to her Aunt Judy’s orchard. The sultry dog days of summer gripped Pennsylvania, but Mae couldn’t get warm. She wrapped her body in bulky sweaters and stiff jeans, clad her feet in heavy boots. Workman’s clothes.

“I’m so glad you’re here. Your mother would want you to be with family.” Aunt Judy pulled her close as soon as Mae stepped from her car. The last of the season’s blossoms swirled around their feet like snow.

“It’s good to be back.” Mae studied the older woman, searching for some sign of the breast cancer her aunt had survived years ago. They didn’t talk about things like that back then, Mae’s mother had told her, as she herself lay dying from that same disease.

That summer and into the fall, Mae worked in the gift shop alongside her aunt. The orchard had been in their family for generations, passed down at last to Mae’s mother’s older sister, Judy. Less than a hundred miles from Gettysburg, the farm attracted tourists and local families both. As the pears ripened, the orchard filled with workers. The bell above the gift shop’s door chimed as customers flooded in, searching for trinkets and t-shirts. Mae forced a smile upon her lips while her hands dished out pies, jars of pear butter, and doughnuts warm from the fryer.

Evenings, Mae retired to her tidy room above the store, scented with cinnamon and the sweet smell of candles in the gift shop below. Snuggled underneath a faded quilt, she slept beside a view of the trees from her window. Aunt Judy had offered Mae her mother’s old room in the main house, but Mae could not imagine resting there. At night, the house settled with creaks and pops like footsteps on the wooden floors.

Below her window, at the edge of the orchard, the orange flames from the pickers’ campfires glowed. If the wind blew from the right direction, it would carry their soft conversation. Mae could pretend their words were those of the ghosts rumored to haunt the orchard.    

One night, when the full moon cast its glow, Mae dressed and strolled barefoot among the trees. The leaves rustled like restless spirits. The grass on the ground as familiar as the rug beside her bed. This was the one place she thought might melt the cold center of dread and sorrow she carried.   

She found the canteen, propped against a trunk, as though someone had dropped it there. Worn wool cloth covered the rusted tin container. She tipped it over the grass and a stream of dry soil spilled from the spout. A flash of white drew her gaze. Mae froze. Something drifted out from the trees at the end of the row. Mae drew in a breath. A boy’s pale face appeared in the moonlight. He wore a jacket, long trousers, and a flat-brimmed hat, the colors muted by the dark.

“Hello?” Mae stepped toward him.

His eyes were blank as pennies. He stared past her, alert, as though watching for someone else to come through the trees. A snap, a heavy step on a twig, sounded behind her. A brush of cold flicked against her neck. Mae spun. The row was empty. When she turned back, the boy had disappeared.  

Clutching the flask to her chest, Mae jogged back to the gift shop. When she reached her room, she slammed and locked the door then collapsed against it, panting and shaking.

The next morning, before the shop opened, Mae brought the canteen to her aunt. “I found this last night in the orchard.”  

Judy turned the flask over, her fingers tracing the circles stamped into the tin. “This is very old,” she said. “Things turn up now and then. Civil War stuff, mostly bullets. Metal lasts longer.” Judy handed the canteen back to Mae. “What else did you see?” she asked.

“There was someone there, a boy.”

“Dressed strangely?” Judy asked. When Mae nodded, Judy said, “A spirit. I haven’t seen him in years.” She brushed the hair back from Mae’s face. “Sorrow calls to sorrow,” she said.

That night, Mae studied the canteen. How had it come to be there, in the orchard? Who had left there it, for her to find? Soft notes of guitar music drifted in through the open window from the pickers’ cabins. Mae carried the canteen outside.

An older man, face creased and lined by days spent in the sun, sat next to a dying campfire. He nodded hello as she strolled by. Mae had known many of the regulars, the pickers who returned season after season. She’d taken turns working the trees, her back aching at the end of the long day, bent from the weight of pears.

Most times, her mother stood at the bottom of the ladder, steadying it and pointing out the ripe fruit. High in the green of the branches, Mae couldn’t see every side of the fruit, but together, they saw all the pears. This was the first year she hadn’t worked among the trees.

With the canteen tucked under her arm, Mae crept through the orchard. The guitar music faded, and not even a whisper of wind moved the leaves. This was her world—the pears, the trees, everything around her constant and comforting. If she belonged here, then so did the boy.

“It’s okay,” she said. She lifted the canteen, an offering.

Then, all around, spectral figures wafted through the trees. They passed by Mae, the stream of ghostly men parting as they flowed around her. Soldiers. Ghosts, filled with fear and sadness, but with courage as well. They marched forward, unseeing. In the distance, a drum beat a tap, tap to their steps. Mae waited as wave after wave of blue-coated foot soldiers appeared.

She spotted him. He marched, beating the drum strung at his waist. Mae held out the canteen. The boy’s icy fingers brushed hers as he gripped the container and it faded to transparency. Canteen slung over his shoulder, the boy took up the drumbeat and joined his company. The soldiers passed—mounted men silent except for the creak of their saddles, foot soldiers gripping their rifles, cannons mounted on caissons whose wheels did not disturb the grass. Mae lifted a hand in a half-salute and stood watch until they faded and broke up like mist over the ground.

THE END

The Homecoming – A Scary Story

~ mstturpin ~ 1 Comment

500 word flash fiction

Photo by the author

This story is one I wrote last year for the NYC Midnight Scary Story contest. The judges liked it enough that I advanced to the second round in that contest. One of the prompts that had to be included was a character that was a nomad. I don’t remember the other prompts. The story also had to be 500 words or less, a real challenge when you have to include specific things.

I’m not entering any NYC Midnight contests this year. They have been a good incentive to stretch my creativity, but I’ve put off writing a novel for too long and now is the time to concentrate on that. For now, I hope you enjoy this little tale. It’s a ghost story of sorts, but not too scary.

The Homecoming

Every October, Evangeline was drawn back to the place she had known as home. No matter how far she traveled, like a bird she returned, drawn to dark mysteries in the East Texas house.

She parked the RV in the weed-filled drive and waited as the witch came outside. The old woman’s name refused to rise in her recollection, but her face was one Evangeline could imagine as her own reflection, twenty years forward.

“You’re here,” the witch said. “Come inside.”

Evangeline left the motor home, with its collage of bumper stickers from places pinned on a map. Never settling, lest she mistake familiarity for forgiveness.

The porch creaked with her steps, the wood gone soft and gray. Beside the house, laundry hung on a line—cotton dresses and sheets that snapped like sails in the wind.

She followed the old woman down a hallway with portraits on the walls. A young man in a soldier’s uniform, a bride in an oval frame, a family of stern-faced folk. Last, a photograph, colors faded to blue-green, of a mother and child. Broken glass hung in the frame. Someone had carved out their faces, taken a sharp edge to the paper. Evangeline trailed her fingers across the clinging shards of glass. A carmine drop of blood bloomed on her thumb.

Inside the bathroom, water dripped into a claw-footed tub. The scent of mold and rain-damp leaves, of things left to rot, drifted out. Evangeline covered her face to hide from the room.

“Sit.” The old woman pointed at the kitchen table. Scattered across the surface were dried herbs, a hen’s egg, a black candle, and a clump of clay molded into the shape of an infant.

After lighting the candle, the woman grabbed Evangeline’s hand and squeezed a drop of blood into the flame. A clock chimed three times.

“Hurry.” The witch pushed a wicker basket at Evangeline.

Outside, dark clouds threatened. She raced to save the wash. When she tried to return the basket, the witch blocked her. “You must face this.”

Evangeline shivered. The bathroom door creaked closed, hiding what waited inside. No giggling play, no splashing. Only drip, drip, drip.

“The spell didn’t work. I don’t remember,” Evangeline lied.

“It was an accident. Forgive yourself.”

Before she climbed into the RV, Evangeline kissed the old woman’s cheek. “I’ll see you next year,” she said. “Goodbye, Mother.”

THE END

The Message

~ mstturpin ~ 1 Comment

A Short Story

Photograph by the author

I wrote this story for the NYC Midnight Fiction Contest way back in 2021. The genre had to be “Ghost Story” and I decided to set it at the Excelsior Hotel in Jefferson, Texas – rumored to be haunted. I published a copy of the story on the Medium site but it didn’t get many views, so here it is again, for anyone who didn’t read it back then.

The Message

The day before her twentieth wedding anniversary, Doreen Clark traveled alone to the Excelsior Hotel, where ghosts were rumored to roam the halls. The hotel, built in the late 1800s, had wood floors that creaked and moaned at night, as though the place were filled with spirits burdened by ghostly pains.

“Welcome,” the chipper clerk greeted her. “Have you stayed with us before?” The woman wore black cat-eyed glasses around her neck, suspended on a rhinestone studded cord.

“Years ago.” As the clerk confirmed her reservation, Doreen stepped over to study the photographs arranged on the lobby wall.

“Fascinating, aren’t they?” The clerk gestured to a gilt-framed photo of a seated woman garbed in old-fashioned, dark, mourning clothes. A translucent figure, a man with a drooping mustache, hovered behind the woman, one hand resting on the carved wooden back of her chair. “Are you familiar with the history of spirit photography?”

“Oh yes,” Doreen replied, “my husband was an amateur photographer. He loved the stories behind the photos.” Spirit photography dated back to the late 1800s, when enterprising photographers used long exposure to create ghostly images transposed onto the pictures they captured. The enterprise proved profitable, as grieving relatives longed to see their beloved again.   

“They’re interesting, but I feel sorry for the folks who believed they could connect with their dead loved ones.”

Doreen smiled and shrugged. “I’m sure they got some comfort at least, the true believers.” If she told this woman the real reason she’d journeyed back to this particular hotel, on this date, Doreen wondered if the clerk would pity her or think her crazy.  

After she dropped her bags in her room, Doreen texted her daughter, then carried a book to the courtyard, to warm herself in the late October sunshine. Fragrant crimson roses climbed the brick walls. Had there been roses back then? The novel, a gaudy romance, couldn’t hold her. A nap would suit her better.

She woke at dusk and rose, wishing for a candle. Houdini’s widow, she’d read, kept a candle burning for him every night for years. Doreen placed her palm on the frosty glass of the French doors, looking over the courtyard. Something moved outside, a wisp of white that could have been a bit of gauzy cloth batted in the wind.

She remembered her wedding day, so many years ago. They had danced in this courtyard, Doreen’s white lace dress sweeping the cobblestones. What are ghosts? Doreen believed them to be the echo of memory, suspended in air like motes of dust. When Houdini died, he promised to contact his beloved. His widow waited years for that signal.

Her fingers clutched her phone as she unlatched the door leading into the courtyard. The modern equipment lacked the romance of the long exposure on glass photographic plates, but maybe it would do. Lifting the phone, she centered her image in the screen and focused on the wall of roses behind her. She snapped a shot, then another, and another, turning to capture all of the courtyard until she felt faint and dizzy.  

Back in the room, Doreen scrolled through the digital images. The phone’s camera had done a fine job of capturing the splash of red roses and the moss-dotted stone of the courtyard, even in the fading light. Nothing else. No outline or familiar face, no time-worn hands resting on her shoulders.

Leaning forward, her lips a finger’s width from the panes, Doreen breathed on the cold glass of the French door. “Oh Bill, I miss you so.” The pane fogged, and she lifted a finger to scrawl a heart. She turned her back to drop the phone on the bed’s quilted coverlet. All those photographs -they couldn’t all be fake, could they? She vowed to return next year, and every year after that, as long as it took.

On the courtyard side, a shape appeared on the pane then quickly faded—the imprint of a kiss, as though tenderly etched on a photographic plate.   

The End