Haunted by Alma Alexander

Foreword
    I like
ghosts.
    Or at the very least, I like the idea that
they might exist, and that they still have business with us, the
living. And that the business in question doesn’t always have to be
something that requires scaring us to death.
    Back in the dawn of my publishing career, in
South Africa in the mid-to-late 1980s, I used to write short
stories which got picked up by various local magazines – the sort
of thing that these days might be labeled “chicklit”, light
romances, fiction whose entire purpose was to entertain the casual
reader of a weekly or monthly magazine. I didn’t do a whole LOT of
them, but I did a few, and what do you know, I couldn’t quite make
myself go mainstream, not even then. At least two of my
contributions were ghost stories as well as romances. I just can’t
help myself, you see – I am indissolubly wedded to things that are
not QUITE of this world, and even in what was supposed to be
straight romantic fiction the ghosts manage to make their presence
felt.
    They’re good stories. As far as I am
concerned, they’re the better for the spectral presences that haunt
them. So here they are, my ghosts. I promise, they’re perfectly
safe; come right in and meet them.
    Welcome to the Alexander Triads, Book 3:
Haunted.
    Alma Alexander
    Summer 2011
     
     
    When I was young, before it was superseded by
other and more accomplished tales, this was my Blessed Story. It
was published in South Africa, in the UK, and even in a women’s
magazine in Dubai (how THEY got hold of it I will never know). It
won a writing competition for me. It was one of those stories that
just kept on giving. It’s hard to even think about the fact that
this was a tale which I dreamed up almost as long ago now as I’d
had Wally haunting his cigarette case – but it still has… a
certain… something. Wally was one tenacious ghost. He might have
let his lady-love Alex go to the arms of a real live young man and
live out a bright and blessed life that was of this earth, but he’s
haunted me ever since. See him take another bow, in a new
electronic medium which would no doubt have completely confused him
if he’d still been around today…
     
We’ll Meet Again
     
    I don’t know what made me reach for the
cigarette case, out of the whole pile of junk on the stall.
    “That’s a good piece, Miss,” the stall-holder
said earnestly. “It’s pre-World War Two.”
    Another customer claimed his attention and I
was left to examine the cigarette case in peace.
    It was plain to a fault, made of tarnished
gunmetal. The clasp was still in good working order and I clicked
it open. On the bottom right-hand corner of the lid, just next to
the hinge, a set of three intials had been engraved. I could just
make them out: WCH. They seemed to want to make up for the
plainness of the case, for they were full of unexpected twists and
curlicues.
    Apart from these initials, the case was quite
empty.
    “Not very pretty,” said a youthful male voice
beside me.
    I looked up at met a pair of guileless blue
eyes, set in a smooth and boyish face and rather fetchingly fringed
by a lock of fair hair which managed to flop over his forehead
despite the army-like short back and sides he sported. He smiled,
showing a set of perfect teeth and two small dimples in his cheeks
as he did so. Despite myself, I smiled back.
    “Are you English?” I asked. He had spoken
with the clipped, precise accent no local would use.
    “I am… or I suppose I was,” he said
cryptically.
    “How long have you been in this country?” I
asked, for that is what I took his words to mean – simply that he
had been out of England for a long time, or perhaps had even been
born in South Africa.
    “Oh… some forty years,” answered the young
man diffidently.
    “Now you’re pulling my leg,” I said sharply,
doing a swift double take. He couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20
at the outside.
    “Oh, no,” he said. “Not at all. I’ve been in
this