Family History: Ghost Detective Short Stories, #6

By R.W. Wallace

In French cemeteries, "perpetuité" only lasts for a hundred years. If the deceased's family wants to keep their dead buried, they must pay the rent. 

If not, the municipality will excavate the tomb to liberate the space for a new family.

After the latest excavation, Robert and Clothilde find themselves faced with a ghost much older than themselves — along with the daunting task of solving a century-old mystery.

Is it still possible to find eternal rest for their new friend?

 

Family History is also available in the collection Unfinished Business, Volume 2.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Varden Publishing
• Release date: Feb 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9782493670106

R.W. Wallace

R.W. Wallace writes in most genres, though she tends to end up in mystery more often than not. Dead bodies keep popping up all over the place whenever she sits down in front of her keyboard. The stories mostly take place in Norway or France; the country she was born in and the one that has been her home for two decades. Don't ask her why she writes in English - she won't have a sensible answer for you. Her Ghost Detective short story series appears in Pulphouse Magazine, starting in issue #9. You can find all her books, long and short, on rwwallace.com.

Book preview

In the Ghost Detective Universe

Ghost Detective Novels

(best read in order)

Beyond the Grave

Unveiling the Past

Beneath the Surface

Piercing the Veil

Ghost Detective Shorts

(all standalone)

Just Desserts

Lost Friends

Family Bonds

Common Ground

Till Death

Family History

Heritage

New Beginnings

Far From Home

Severed Ties

Eternal Bond

Harsh Expectations

Dull Expectations

Ghost Detective Collections

Unfinished Business, Volume 1

Unfinished Business, Volume 2

Family History

A Ghost Detective Short Story

R.W. Wallace

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Varden Publishing

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Also By R.W. Wallace

About the Author

Copyright

One

Our cemetery is a small one. I haven’t actually counted, but there can’t be more than three hundred tombs total and at least ninety-five percent of those never became ghosts.

The ones who did have all found their peace and moved on—present company and Clothilde excluded.

The people of our little town don’t fall dead like flies or anything, but little by little we’re running out of space. Some years ago, the municipality gave us a neighboring lot, but even that’s already half-full.

The new section is not as fun to walk around in as the older parts because nobody can afford—or are willing to part with large sums of money for—the huge stone constructions with statues and seatings and columns that were in favor a century ago. Today everybody goes with the classic tombstone, a short inscription, and possibly a plaque with a picture of the deceased. And let’s not forget the plastic flowers.

The new tombs in the north section are arranged in neat rows with straight, clean paths, whereas the oldest section to the west has winding paths, overgrown passages, and some graves that have completely disappeared beneath overenthusiastic weeds.

There’s no such thing as an eternal resting place, of course—not in a graveyard like this, anyway. It’s possible to buy your lot "à perpétuité," for all eternity. Except in the French graveyards, eternity means one hundred years.

Lately, the church or municipality or whoever it is who’s responsible for the graveyards have been digging up the old graves where the hundred years are up and there are no descendants to pay to keep the lot, in order to free up space.

In a couple of cases, the descendants were found and decided