‘Arnold, could you wheel me to the corner? I want to see the angle of the cloister noted by Peasbody.’ As usual his brother had a tome balanced on his wasted legs while Arnold wheeled him round the ruins of Burnley Abbey. He’d have to listen for another hour to that infuriating whine, citing historical sources.
Arnold couldn’t explain what happened next. Perhaps he had cut the corner in his frustration? Perhaps he had released his grip, a little? The wheelchair had twisted as it fell, throwing Archie out of his seat and hanging by one leg from the leather safety strap. Agonisingly slowly, it had fallen two floors to the turf which now covered the monks’ refectory.
Naturally, ten years later, Arnold was not enthusiastic about re- visiting the Abbey when his nephew, Fletcher, pestered him. His sister, anxious for a Fletcher-free afternoon, had argued he should ‘face his demons’.
Climbing the steep staircase to the second floor, Fletcher kept turning and yelling, ‘When we going to see the headless monk, uncle?’ With a shock, Arnold noticed how similar Fletcher’s voice was to Archie’s. ‘Headless monk’ echoed and re-echoed round the spiral staircase sounding very like Archie’s ghost.
Arnold had just reached the top step when an apparently headless figure sprang towards him, whining, ‘I’m the ghost of Burnley Abbey!’
Before Fletcher could pull his shirt off his head, Arnold stepped back into space. His ghostly screams echoed as he fell, senseless, to the ground floor.
Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK. Her work has been widely published in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean,and Australia.
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