A Ghost To Watch Over Me

By Geoffrey Sleight

Living alone after sorrowfully parting with his wife, an unearthly presence wakes Gary Belmont in the night and draws him to an old chest stored in the loft. Inside he discovers a secret letter. The revelation it contains leads into a trap of deceit, corruption and violence, threatening not only him, but also the new woman who has entered his life. Now dark forces are moving in to eliminate them for knowing too much.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Geoffrey Sleight
• Release date: Apr 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224477340

Geoffrey Sleight

I worked for 30 years in journalism and later pursued a career in acting. I've also scripted audio dramas for CD and written short film screenplays. My favourite genres in reading are an eclectic mix of thriller, paranormal, mystery and historical dramas, and my own writing style is paranormal mystery/thriller. I’ve loved writing for as long as I can remember, and penned my first ‘novel’ at the age of five. Okay, it was only a couple pages in large print, but the spirit was there! Between then and now I’ve worked on newspapers, in corporate marketing and publications and spent a number of years as an actor on stage, in independent films and as a TV extra. I live in Buckinghamshire, UK with my wonderful wife Jenny. We have a son and daughter, and two amazing grandchildren. My other paranormal works to date are: THE ANARCHY SCROLL THE SOUL SCREAMS MURDER A GHOST TO WATCH OVER ME MORTAL TRESPASSES Please feel free to contact me at: [e-mail] Or on Twitter: @resteasily

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE TAPPING on the ceiling started again. This time it was loud, summoning. Gary Belmont sat bolt upright in bed, the shadowy darkness all around. His heart racing.

He’d heard tapping on the ceiling for several nights and put it down to mice in the loft. It was something he planned to deal with at some point.

But tonight it sounded like there were giant rats living above, or perhaps creatures even more sinister. The tapping was rapid, as if someone was urging him to come.

The bed felt warm and comforting, but he was uneasy. He wouldn’t be able to rest again until he’d checked the cause of the disturbance.

Gary had lived in the house for three years and never heard any disturbance like this until his mother Sylvia moved out of her home. He’d transferred some of her more prized possessions to his loft for storage. She suffered from dementia and had now reached the stage where she needed 24-hour care in a nursing home. It saddened Gary deeply to accept this inevitable decision.

He knew she would probably never see those possessions again, but he could not let them just be discarded. So they were stored in the loft, and that is when the strange tapping began.

Gary switched on the bedside light, hauled himself out of bed and put on his dressing gown. On the landing outside he pulled down the loft ladder and ascended. As he entered the enclosure about to turn on the light, he caught sight of a woman standing at the far end, seeming to glow in the darkness. He almost lost his balance from the shock, stepping precariously backwards towards the opening.

She smiled at him. She was wearing clothes that appeared to belong to a different era. A white blouse and a dark pencil skirt. Her hair blonde and wavy. Her face soft and beautiful.

She bent down and seemed to be pulling at something, desperately trying to open it. The light from the landing was seeping into the loft and Gary could just make out the object of her frantic attention. It looked like a small chest. It had come from his mother’s house. He needed to find out what the woman was doing there? How she got there? He flicked on the light switch about to speak. But she was gone!

The loft was empty save for his own stored odds and ends, and the boxes containing his mother’s ornaments. He stared at the chest which the woman seemed so keen to open. Gary had wondered what it contained when he brought it from his mother’s house. It was padlocked and his mother had lost the key. He had planned to find a way of opening the container another time. However, now his interest was piqued, and his mind racing to make some sense of what he had just seen. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but was coming to terms with the fact he may have just seen one.

He descended the ladder and went downstairs to the kitchen, half wondering if he’d been dreaming. But he knew he hadn’t. He made a cup of coffee thinking about the strange encounter. He couldn’t deny it had unsettled him. He finished the drink and was resolved to investigate further.

Cautiously, he climbed the loft ladder again peering inside, wondering if the woman would re-appear. His nerves were on edge. The tall, wooden cross-beams supporting the roof creaked randomly, as if heralding another presence. He had never felt uneasy in his own loft before.

Standing to his full six-foot height in the middle of the A-beam enclosure, he made his way to the black metal chest. It wasn’t large, no more than a couple of feet by one, but it was very heavy. Then he noticed some faded initials impressed on the lid - F.E.M.

Gary thought for a moment. It dawned on him they were his grandmother’s initials, Florence Emily Morrison.

Gary only remembered his grandmother as an old, infirm woman who died when he was aged 11. That was twenty-five years ago. She’d been suffering some disease, perhaps it was Parkinson’s, he couldn’t recall.

He took hold of the handle, and pulled the chest across the floor to the loft exit. He planned to examine the contents downstairs in the living room, where he’d feel a bit more comfortable in homely surroundings. After a struggle, in which the heavy chest nearly unbalanced him as he manoeuvred it down the ladder, he hauled it into the front room.

Since he didn’t have a key to the padlock, he took a hammer and chisel to the fixings, prising them away in an act which made him feel like a vandal damaging a family heirloom. But he was determined to discover what lay inside. Why did that fleeting apparition seem so keen to open it? Or was she guiding him to it?

As he opened the lid he realised why the chest was so heavy. It was filled with old newspapers and magazines. Gary picked up a paper, browned from age but still perfectly readable. It was the Daily Mirror dated February 16th 1942, with the headline ‘Singapore Lost: Churchill Warning’. Mixed with the newspaper stack was a Life Magazine dated April 19th 1943, showing on the front a photo of a uniformed soldier kissing his girl. They were all Second World War publications.

They looked interesting, but nothing more than a window on the world in the mid-20th century. Then, as he gradually delved further into the chest, Gary saw a buff-coloured folder. It was bulky. He opened it and inside was a bundle of letters and another smaller folder with a set of black and white photographs tucked inside.

He looked through the photographs, groups of people he didn’t recognise smiling at the camera. Couples dressed in their 1940s finery posing before the photographer. In the centre of one group he noticed a beautiful woman with a friendly, radiant smile. She had blonde, wavy hair and was wearing a white, long-sleeved blouse and dark pencil skirt. Gary’s blood ran cold. It was the woman he had seen in the loft!

He turned over the photo and in faded ink was written: ‘Florence with the gang at the annual Spring Fair – April 1942’. The realisation that he had seen the apparition of his grandmother in the loft, struck him as hard as a physical blow. But it was not the grandmother he remembered when he was a boy. This was her, he guessed, probably in her mid to late twenties, a far cry from the sick, old woman he knew in his childhood. Though he hadn't known her that well. She had chosen in latter years to live remotely in a small village in Yorkshire, and family visits were infrequent.

Another photograph showed her standing outside a pub with two women on either side. The sign over the door to the premises displayed The Red Deer.

Gary picked up the bundle of letters and piece by piece opened and read them. They were from people he’d never heard of, writing to Florence about the everyday events of life at the time, the war, rationing and the children. There was nothing that seemed anything more than a historical account of people’s lives during that dark period. Gary was tired and decided he’d try to get some rest and return to his search in the morning. That is until he picked out another letter for a last look and saw the introduction ‘Dear Doris’. This was a letter his grandmother had written rather than received, dated June 8th 1944.

It started with usual comments about the weather, how rationing was making it difficult to get anything decent to eat, then the next words drew Gary’s complete attention:

'We settled into East Winds at Marswell comfortably enough, but our time here has became difficult. It’s the nature of the work. You must know what I mean. Robert and I uncovered a complicated ring. It will never come to light, not for years, but the locals suspect we have some involvement in it. My name has been blackened. There are rumours I had an affair, but none of it is true. We were confronted and we had to do what we had to do. Robert is hoping we will get another posting soon. I hope so, feeling here is running very high.

'However, that isn’t the worst of it. We discovered that our own people are working on a project that could have disastrous consequences for mankind. The Americans are well advanced on it. We’re a bit behind but getting there. I deeply fear for our future and the dreadful thing they are doing here. No-one knows if it’s safe. Will tell you more when I see you next. Sylvia is fine. She loves it by the sea.

With love, Florence.'

Gary stared at the letter, trying to make sense of the contents. He’d never heard of Doris, the person to whom it was addressed, and it seemed the letter had not been posted to her.

Had it anything to do with the summoning of what appeared to be his grandmother's apparition? What did she mean in her letter? What had she been doing?

The frail, old grandmother he recalled from his youth had suddenly become very interesting. He couldn’t ask his mother, Sylvia, about her own mother Florence. The dementia was too advanced for her to remember anything rationally. Gary had arranged to visit her tomorrow at the care home and would ask. But he didn’t expect much.

******

Sylvia was in her room, settled in an armchair and watching television when he arrived. A TV quiz show was in progress, but Gary could tell from his mother's empty gaze she wasn't connecting with the programme.

The waves in her thinning, silvery hair reminded him for a moment of the waves in his grandmother’s hair, depicted in the photograph of her as a young woman. His mother’s face also had similar features in the shape of the eyes and mouth.

Sylvia had visibly aged in the last few months. Gary wished he could take her out of the place, but her mind was too far gone. Echoes of her former home adorned the room, china ornaments of animal figures and family photographs placed on the dresser, side-table and shelves. And she was wearing her favourite floral dress. Absent was a homely atmosphere.

Gary approached and kissed her on the forehead. She looked up at him unmoved and staring. He knew she didn’t always recognise him, but he hoped she sensed an invisible affinity. He pulled up a chair to sit beside her, asking if she minded him muting the sound on the TV. She didn’t reply or object as he did so.

Sylvia said very little on these visits, largely responding with sentences that bore no relation to what he’d been saying. He told her what he’d been doing at work, managing an international haulage company, and of his watercolour painting hobby. It was nothing earth shattering, though he sensed it comforted her. Then he thought he’d try asking her about his grandmother, although he didn't expect to learn anything.

He told her he’d found a photograph of Florence in the old chest, and had read one of her letters.

Your mother said she was living in a place called Marswell. She was writing to someone called Doris, Gary explained.

Sylvia continued to stare blankly ahead. Then he noticed a change in her eyes, a distant look stirring, as if a deep held memory was surfacing. Gary knew dementia sufferers couldn’t retain recent events in their mind for long, but memories of the past could be vivid.

Sylvia laughed.

I was given a beautiful doll for my birthday and my cake had seven lovely candles on it, she recalled clearly, as the decades rolled away and her childhood flashed before her eyes. Gary was amazed. It was like a miracle had taken place and her mind restored.

I don’t remember a lot, of course, I was very young, she continued. It was a big house and my mother and father were always busy. A lady looked after me a lot. And there was a man who came to visit. He always smiled at me and gave me sweets, but I didn’t like him. He smelled of mouldy things.

She stopped and looked at her son. You remember that don’t you?

Gary had obviously not been born, he was hardly likely to remember. He smiled at his mother affectionately. It would be fruitless trying to point that out.

Then Sylvia looked concerned. I asked my mother about Marswell when I was older. She told me she never wanted to hear mention of the place again. I think she was sad. Daddy died there in a car accident in 1945 when I was eight.

Gary knew his grandfather, Robert, had died while still a young man. However, he knew little else about him. The history of his grandparents had always seemed rather cloaked to him. But now he had made an unexpected inroad into the past through his mother, and decided to press further.

In her letter, Florence talked about uncovering a complicated ring with Robert, and some disastrous project taking place there. Gary paused. His mother was looking at him in horror.

There are powerful forces at work, leave it alone...please leave it alone, she cried, it’ll all end badly if you don’t! She started to lift herself from the armchair. Gary placed his hand gently on her shoulder.

I’m sorry mum, I didn’t mean to upset you.

She sat down and after several moments began to relax. Deep, troubling thoughts that had surfaced in her eyes were receding.

Tell your father dinner will be ready in half-an-hour, she ordered Gary. His father had died three years earlier. Sylvia had reverted back to a happier time in her life.

Yes mum, he replied, rising and kissing her on the forehead. I’ll see you tomorrow. He restored the TV sound and left.

******

The mystery of his grandmother and the place where she had lived was now beginning to nag at Gary. He