Page 41 of The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales

But there was something moving, swaying in the breeze, something hanging on one of the gravestones. My jacket. I walked forward, then leant down to take it from the headstone. Forced myself to read the inscription, though I feared what it was going to say.

MARY STARR

3rd OCTOBER 1931 – 27th OCTOBER 1951

IN GOD’S CARE

Bill tells me they found me there in the morning, clutching my jacket to my chest. I had a slight fever, a chill from spending the night out of doors. I wasn’t ill, but not quite right either.

A local had seen my car still parked in the square, remembered me asking for directions to the Starr’s house and put two and two together. It wasn’t the first time, you see.

Bill came to fetch me – his number was on the map still lying on the passenger seat of the car. I stayed with him for a few days until I felt well enough to drive back to town. He told me the whole story. Mary had been seen before, always on the same stretch of road, always on the anniversary of her death. A local girl, Mary Starr, killed on Harting Hill ten years before. Hit and run in the days before there were such things. Or had she simply lost her footing and fallen? No one was sure. A sweet girl, innocent, who had gone for a drive with a local boy and without her father’s permission. When the boy wouldn’t take no for an answer and put her out of the car, Mary had no choice but to walk home in the worst storm they’d suffered for years. He raised the alarm when rumours spread that Mary had never arrived. Rain and mudslides, flooding on the lower roads, her body not found for days.

This happened some time ago. And although I was haunted by thoughts of Mary lost on the hillside, the memory of that night and my role in bringing her home is less troubling now.

Several years have passed. I married again, happily this time, and we have a wonderful daughter. Bright, charming, works hard at school. My wife says I am overprotective, and perhaps I am. From time to time, when we drive down to spend a weekend with Bill and his wife, he teases me about it too, though he understands.

I don’t believe in ghosts, never did. All the same, each time I pass through South Harting, I stop at the church. To lay flowers on the grave of a girl I once met.

Author’s Note

This story, written for the collection, was inspired by an experience I had more than thirty years ago.

I was driving home to Chichester, in Sussex. It was late at night, I hadn’t long passed my driving test and as I went through the village of South Harting, The Specials were singing ‘Ghost Town’ on the radio.

When I turned to go up Harting Hill, a mist descended. I allowed myself to become completely spooked and started to worry what I’d do if the car broke down and I was stuck there on my own. This was 1981 and there were no mobile phones.

The car didn’t break down. The mist lifted. Nothing happened. But I’ve never forgotten that journey and the illogical sense of threat in the darkness.

THE PRINCESS ALICE

Deptford, south-east London

September 1998

The Princess Alice

The bosun pipes the watch below,

Yeo ho! lads! ho!

Then here’s a health afore we go

A long, long life to my sweet wife an’ mates at sea;

And keep our bones from Davy Jones, where’er we be

from the ballad ‘Nancy Lee’ performed

aboard the Princess Alice, September 1878

The girl was crying again. A desolate sound of great grief, devoid of any hope, a child abandoned.

I sat up in bed, trying to identify where it was coming from. Somewhere nearby. I couldn’t bear to hear it and do nothing.

I leant over and shook my husband’s shoulder.

‘There,’ I whispered, ‘she’s here again. Can’t you hear her? The same as before.’