Christmas Stalkings Read online

  Christmas Stalkings

  Ten Tales of Literary Spirits

  Todd Pettigrew

  Scott Sharplin

  Ken Chisholm

  Jenn Tubrett

  Editors

  Sherry D. Ramsey | Julie A. Serroul | Nancy SM Waldman

  Third Person Press

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Christmas Stalkings: Ten Tales of Literary Spirits

  Introduction

  A Chat with the Master

  Joyce to the World

  The Ghost who came to Visit for a Spell

  No Place Like Home

  Life Writing for the Lifeless

  Bucky's Ghost

  Ken's Tale

  The Great Geisel

  Hark the Harried Angels Sing

  The Ghost of the McConnell

  The Authors

  Gaudy Nights at the McConnell Library

  Afterword

  About Third Person Press

  The Books

  First Published in 2016

  Compilation © Third Person Press 2016

  Cover © Sherry D. Ramsey 2016

  Additional image credits: MementoMori (deviantArt), Atelier Sommerland (BigStock), Jason Gillman (Morguefile)

  Interior Illustrations © Nancy SM Waldman 2016

  Copyright in the individual stories remains the property of the authors.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of Third Person Press, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author/contributor or third party websites or their content.

  This book contains works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, entities or settings is entirely coincidental.

  Third Person Press

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: thirdpersonpress.com

  Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada

  Christmas Stalkings

  Print Version ISBN: 978-0-9936325-2-5

  Electronic Version ISBN: 978-0-9936325-3-2

  This book is dedicated to

  the staff of the McConnell Library,

  and the rest of the

  Cape Breton Regional Library family

  for their unflagging, enthusiastic support of all local writers.

  And to the attendees of Gaudy Night

  for sharing evenings of fellowship, fun and celebration of

  the spirits of those who laid beautiful prose to paper and inspire us all.

  Also from

  Third Person Press

  THE SPECULATIVE ELEMENTS SERIES

  Undercurrents

  Airborne

  Unearthed

  Flashpoint

  OTHER TITLES

  To Unimagined Shores,

  Collected Stories by Sherry D. Ramsey

  Grey Area, 13 Ghost Stories

  Introduction

  In the fall of 2010 I was approached by staff at the McConnell Library in Sydney, Nova Scotia to see if members of my department at Cape Breton University might be interested in speaking to their seniors’ book group about any of the various authors they intended to study. I myself was not expert in any of the writers they mentioned, but it did occur to me that the group might appreciate the works of one of my favourite novelists, Robertson Davies—an author I could speak about with some confidence. Alas, it turned out that funds were limited and there was no chance of buying new copies of Davies’ novels.

  Hearing this, it occurred to me if money was tight, what was needed was a fund raiser. Since the fifteenth anniversary of Davies’ death and Christmas itself were both approaching, it occurred to me that a reading of Davies’ Christmas ghost stories, collected in his book High Spirits, might be just the thing. The library agreed, and so it was. Every year since, the library has hosted an enchanted evening of spectres and spectacle, and hundreds of dollars have been raised to support the seniors’ book group.

  But even as the annual event had success, it became apparent we were going to run out of Davies’ stories and that, in any case, it might be fun to create stories of our own. And so gradually, the Davies stories were replaced by original tales.

  A selection of those tales is included here. We hope you find them as amusing as the original audiences did.

  Todd Pettigrew

  Cape Breton University

  2016

  A Chat with the Master

  Todd Pettigrew

  It was my firm intention to read to you tonight one of the delightful stories from Robertson Davies, as has been our tradition here at the library the past few years. But last week I had an experience that forced me to reconsider.

  Now, those who know me know that I am not a superstitious man. In fact, even my friends might put me a little too far to the side of reason if it came to that. Cold is a word that has even been applied to my mental faculties—rather uncharitably in my opinion. But I digress.

  I mean only to suggest that until last week I had regarded the stories we have been reading as the merest fancy. A winter’s tale for a long night, as the Bard would have said. Humbug, to use a term appropriate to the season. And any attempt to cast a pall of truth over them was merely a rhetorical flourish to enhance the thrilling effect of the fiction.

  Or so I thought.

  It happened a week ago Tuesday, as I sat alone in my study—my then wife, as she frequently was, occupied elsewhere with her roller derby league. I was looking over my chosen story for the evening, a wonderful yarn called “The Spirit who Wouldn’t Circulate,” set in the Massey College Library—a chilling narrative even by the standards of Robertson Davies—when I heard a noise downstairs.

  Now my house is populated, if not to say infested, with cats, so strange sounds on a dark night are nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, I normally become nervous only when the bumps in the night cease. In that case, I worry that my feline companions are planning a household mutiny.

  But this sound was not of the cat variety.

  This was the sound, strangely loud, of turning pages. And while I have known the cats to chew the corners of books and even to fold down the corners of pages, they have never been great or methodical readers.

  Rising from my work, then, I cautiously took a few steps down the hall and stood at the top of the stairs. There it was again! A distinct—eerily distinct—sound of rustling paper coming from...the dining room?

  Yes, I thought, the dining room.

  I should here point out that the room that my wife and I call the dining room is so crammed with two lifetimes’ worth of books, that it is not so much a dining room as a small, badly-organized library with a dining table in the middle.

  After a long moment’s deliberation, I decided that it was unlikely a potential murderer or even burglar would pause in the dining room to catch up on The Hunger Games (my wife’s, of course). And so I bravely headed down the stairs, thinking perhaps a university colleague, Dr. Christie, our drama specialist, had taken the liberty of consulting my copy of a Dictionary of Stage Directions in Renaissance Plays.

  But as I reached the foot of the stair, I knew that this was no professor visiting. Or, at least, no ordinary professor. For the whole of the lower floor of the house was bathed in a warm, yet strangely cool, golden glow.

  As I passed through the living room adjacent to the
source of the mysterious light, my heart skipped a beat. Or, possibly two. Who has the presence of mind to count at such a time? For there, in my very own dining room library, sat none other than the Master of Massey College himself. The page-flipping noises—mysteriously amplified as only the sounds of other-worldly spirits can be—were generated by the ghost rifling through a Folio Society edition of The Deptford Trilogy.

  Now, I have a skeptical bent, and therefore never rule out anything altogether, but before that night, I would have rated the possibility of finding Robertson Davies sitting at my dining table reading a volume of Robertson Davies a definite long shot.

  Davies did not seem to notice my entrance. Or if he did, he cared not at all. He sat and read, and chuckled and nodded, until finally I felt like some introductions were in order.

  “May I help you?” I asked, immediately regretting it, for it sounded simultaneously rude and unsuitably pedestrian for the occasion.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you have at least one volume of quality in this drafty little house,” he said, his fiery eyes finally looking up to meet mine.

  Now, I pride myself on my humility. If, for instance, one is to point out that I run a little to the heavy side, or that the pitch of my voice can sometimes rise to an unmanly alto, I simply chuckle and say “too true” and am no worse for it. And I am certainly not known for my steely resolve in the face of the supernatural. But no one, whether of this world, or the next, comes to my house and belittles my collection of books.

  “No doubt, it is meager by your standards,” I said levelly, “but what you see here is merely a portion of the Pettigrew collection. Besides, if you had bothered to look for anything besides your own picture on the dust jacket, you might have concluded differently.”

  At this, the Master stood up violently, knocking over the chair upon which he sat and rising to his full height—his full immortal height, that is, of at least eight or nine feet by my reckoning. This was impressive, given the seven-foot ceilings in my house. Perhaps he shrunk me at the same time.

  “And what,” he boomed, “have you to boast of lining these flimsy shelves?”

  Somehow my soul held firm.

  “The shelves may be modest,” I retorted, “but if a fool judges a book by its cover, only a great fool judges a book by what it sits upon.”

  For a moment I fully expected the spirit of Robertson Davies to destroy me with a blast of flame or a bolt of thunder, but he stared at me for a moment, and then began to laugh. The laugh was good-natured and hearty—so much so that it shook the house to its foundations.

  “Well said,” he replied, and strolled out of the dining room and into the living room where the Christmas tree glowed and a fire burned steadily and low in the wood stove.

  “Ah,” he said, regarding the stove wistfully, “a Yuletide fire is the one thing that still makes me long for mortality.”

  Then his smile faded, and he turned to me with a countenance that had become stern once more.

  “I suppose you wonder why I have come to you like this?”

  “The question did make the agenda,” said I.

  “My message is simple and easy to understand.”

  I grimaced at the implication that I would not be able to follow a more complex message, but this time I held my tongue.

  “I simply mean to tell you that you must cancel next week’s event—this so-called Gaudy—and its readings.”

  “You want me to cancel a reading of your stories?” I asked. “But why?”

  “Why?” he said. “You answer your own question. Those stories are mine.”

  “Well, yes,” I countered. “And we have credited you fully. You appear quite handsomely on the posters.”

  “Still, they are mine and you did not so much as ask my permission to read them.”

  “Permission? But, with respect, I would have supposed that you were, well, beyond asking.”

  “All the more reason to let my stories be. Let them rest in peace, like their author.”

  “Their author has not extended me the same courtesy,” I mumbled, glancing at the clock.

  “What was that?” said Davies.

  “Uh,” I said, “their author could now extend that same courtesy.” I thought I saw where this was going. “Professor Davies, I would hereby like to formally request your consent to read publicly from the volume known as High Spirits at this gathering and at subsequent similar gatherings. In short, sir, may we have your permission?”

  I felt sure this request and its elegant phrasing would resolve the matter. The old ghost’s pride had been wounded and he longed, it seemed to me, once more to be treated like a living author.

  He smiled warmly once again. “No.”

  “But why not?” I cried, for by this point I had more or less lost my fear of the ghost and was speaking to the Master man to man, as it were. “People have really appreciated them. You should have seen the crowd that gathered last year. And it brings joy to people at this most joyful time of year. And besides, the proceeds go to the public lib—“

  I had overplayed my hand, for I knew what the Master thought on this subject.

  “To the library? A public library?” he roared. “I assumed that at the very least this travesty was for the benefit of your local university. “But a man who gets all his books at a public library—”

  “Yes, I know, ought to get all his meals—”

  “At a soup kitchen,” the ghost finished for me.

  “Well we don’t have soup kitchens anymore,” I said, “or not very many. We have food banks. And that position always seemed rather mean-spirited to me. And besides, what do you care? You’re dead. You’re not missing out on any royalties.”

  “It goes beyond that, my boy,” said the ghost. “There is a principle involved.” And he sat down on an armchair, staring once again at the fire.

  “Well, don’t sulk,” I chided him. “It’s unbecoming a ghost of your stature.”

  “Humbug.”

  “And besides,” I said, for I was growing anxious and did not much like the thought of my wife coming home expecting a hot bath in the tub and finding instead a heated phantom in the drawing room. “You are no longer a person. You can’t sue us, and unless you have some powers that you have not shown, you are physically incapable of stopping me from doing as I please.”

  The ghost glared at this outrage.

  “Hell,” I said, “next year we might start into the Marchbanks Diaries!”

  “I may not be able to stop you,” he said. “But I can do worse. I can haunt you!”

  “Go ahead!” I shot back, “My wife is a licensed real estate salesperson and she assures me that a famous ghost doubles the value of any home. It’s better than a swimming pool and sea view combined!”

  “Tactless imbecile!” shouted Davies.

  “Feckless spectre!” I shouted back.

  We continued in this vein for some time. At last, we both seemed to run out of insults.

  “Enough of this,” he said finally. “You are a professor of literature and one of the few who has not subscribed to the hateful post-modern theory that has declared the author dead.”

  “Not dead enough,” I murmured, but Davies took no note.

  “I demand that you, as a fellow Man of Letters, respect my authorial intent.”

  I almost relented. I almost agreed simply to be done with this spiritual fiasco. But then a thought occurred.

  “Is there,” I inquired, “no mechanism in the other realm to resolve such disputes?”

  “Mechanism?” Davies responded with a glint of something that resembled apprehension in his ethereal eye.

  “Yes,” I said, emboldened by this first sign of weakness. “Some sort of arbitration where souls of good conscience, incarnate or not, can resolve their differences?”

  The ghost paled, which I did not think possible. “Oh, now you’ve done it,” he cried. “You’ve called for formal mediation!”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”r />
  “What’s wrong,” wailed the ghost, “is that according to the laws of our world, the Highest Spirits will appoint an arbitrator.”

  “Good,” I said. “Just what I want.”

  “So you say. But the Highest Spirits have a way of choosing the most vexing of arbitrators. I would not be surprised if they sent—”

  Here he broke off as the door of the wood stove flew open and, with a great bellow of flame, smoke, and steam, a massive figure appeared and took form.

  He was an old man and yet strangely familiar. In fact, he looked as though he could be...

  “Hello, Father,” said Robertson Davies, grimly.

  “Hello, my son,” said William Rupert Davies.

  Rupert Davies was, in his day, a famous newspaper man, and was appointed to the Senate by MacKenzie King. This knowledge filled me with joy, for if there is any body in Canada legitimately famous for its efficiency and fairness, it is the Senate of Canada.

  The details of the mediation need not detain us here. As Shakespeare said, ‘tis long to tell and tedious to hear.’ Suffice it to say that Davies the Elder proved a delight. His Welsh-inflected speech was beautifully elegant and he proved himself a much better listener than his son. He took care to understand both sides of the argument and to neither show favouritism to the scion of the house of Davies, nor to chide him too much as a patriarch.

  Finally, the grand old man of the Red Chamber was ready to issue his ruling.

  The stories, he said, did belong, at least morally, to his son. On the other hand, his son had indeed shuffled off the mortal coil of copyright, and the world should not be deprived of the joy that comes from hearing such stories well read.

  “And yet,” said Rupert Davies, “your readings have already consumed six of the fourteen stories in question. You have assigned two more to your fellow readers for this year—thus using up more than half of the High Spirits tales. You would soon be out of stories anyway.”

  Robertson Davies nodded and a smile played over his translucent visage.

  “Therefore,” the old Senator concluded, “I will allow the reading of two more tales at your event this year. But,” he intoned, raising a hand to silence his son, “you may read no more.”