The Very Friendly Ghost of Holloway House

In the town of Ashford-on-the-Hill, where the autumn leaves turned every shade of orange and gold and the smell of woodsmoke drifted through the streets from early morning, there stood a big old house at the end of Conker Lane. The children of the town called it Holloway House, and every single one of them was absolutely certain it was haunted.

The house had tall, crooked chimneys that leaned slightly to one side as though listening to conversations below. It had windows that rattled in the wind like someone tapping to be let in. It had a weathervane shaped like a bat that spun and creaked on windy nights. It had an overgrown garden full of twisted apple trees, tangled rosebushes that nobody had trimmed in years, and a stone birdbath so old and mossy that nobody could quite remember what it had originally looked like. The iron gate at the front was rusty and made a long, mournful groan whenever the wind pushed it. And on dark October evenings, when the mist crept in slowly from the fields beyond the town, Holloway House looked very spooky indeed.

Every Halloween, the children of Ashford-on-the-Hill would gather at the end of Conker Lane in their costumes and dare each other to walk up the front path. Every Halloween, somebody would take three bold steps through the gate, hear a branch creak or an owl call out, and come sprinting back to the group. Every Halloween, not a single one of them ever made it past the rusty iron gate.

Except this year.

This year, a girl named Poppy had decided, quite firmly and with no room for argument, that she was going to walk all the way up to the front door and knock on it.

Poppy was eight years old, had dark brown plaits tied with orange ribbons, and was wearing her best Halloween costume. She was a witch, with a tall pointy hat, a purple cloak that her gran had sewn by hand using fabric from the market, and a pair of black boots with silver buckles that she had chosen herself. She carried a broomstick that was actually a garden cane with some twigs tied to the end, which she thought looked very authentic.

Her little brother Alfie trotted along beside her. Alfie was six, small for his age, and dressed as a pumpkin. His costume was a round orange suit that made him look exactly like a very cheerful vegetable. He had insisted on wearing it, even though it made sitting down quite difficult and running almost impossible.

"I don't think we should go up there," said Alfie, eyeing the gate.

"Don't be silly," said Poppy. "It's just an old house. Houses aren't scary."

"That one looks a bit scary," said Alfie.

"That's only because nobody has tidied the garden," said Poppy practically, and she pushed open the iron gate.

It creaked terribly. Behind her, she heard the crowd of children from her class let out a collective gasp. She could hear her friend Mia whispering her name urgently. But Poppy walked on, her boots crunching on the mossy stone path, her pointy hat cutting a fine silhouette against the enormous orange moon hanging low in the sky. Behind her, Alfie waddled determinedly in his pumpkin suit.

The garden was actually rather lovely up close, Poppy noticed. There were late autumn flowers still blooming bravely in the cracks between the stones, small purple and white ones that nobody had planted but had simply decided to grow there anyway. The twisted apple trees had a few last apples clinging to their branches, small and red and gleaming in the moonlight. A large tawny owl sat on the stone birdbath, watching them with round golden eyes before lifting silently into the air and disappearing over the rooftop.

Poppy reached the front door.

It was tall and painted dark green, though the paint was peeling in long curls at the edges. It had a brass knocker shaped like a fox, the fox frozen mid-leap, its tail curled elegantly behind it. Poppy looked at it for a moment. She could hear Alfie breathing hard beside her, partly from nerves and partly because the pumpkin costume made breathing moderately difficult.

She took a deep breath, reached up, and knocked three times.

The sound echoed inside the house. Then silence. Then the creak of floorboards. Then slow footsteps coming towards the door.

The door swung open.

Standing in the doorway was not a monster. It was not a skeleton rattling its bones or a vampire in a long black cape or anything frightening at all. It was a boy. He looked to be about Poppy's age, perhaps a little older. He had pale skin, the palest she had ever seen, and white hair that stood up slightly at the front. He had the most enormous grey eyes, wide and curious, the colour of a winter sky just before snow. He was wearing a white nightshirt that came down to his knees and old-fashioned lace-up boots. And he was slightly, just ever so slightly, see-through. If Poppy looked carefully she could just make out the shape of the doorframe through his shoulder.

Poppy stared at him. He stared back at her.

"Are you a ghost?" she asked.

The boy looked down at himself, turning his transparent hands over thoughtfully. "I think so, yes," he said, in a perfectly ordinary, cheerful voice. "I'm Edmund. I've lived here for about two hundred years. Well, not lived exactly. Haunted, I suppose, though I've never much liked that word. It sounds rather unfriendly. Would you like to come in? I don't get any visitors. I haven't had any visitors in a very long time actually."

Alfie tugged on the hem of Poppy's purple cloak. "Is he a friendly ghost?" he whispered, at a volume that was not really a whisper at all.

Edmund heard him perfectly and smiled. It was a warm, genuine smile that made his enormous grey eyes crinkle at the corners. "I am extremely friendly," he said earnestly. "I have been trying to wave at the children through the upstairs window for years and years. Every Halloween they gather at the gate and I wave and wave but they always seem to run away. I never quite understood why."

Poppy thought about this. "It might be because you're slightly see-through," she said kindly.

Edmund considered this. "That is probably fair," he agreed.

Poppy stepped inside. After a moment's hesitation, Alfie waddled in behind her.

The hallway of Holloway House was dusty but beautiful in a faded, forgotten sort of way. There was a grand staircase with a carved wooden banister, each post carved into the shape of a different woodland creature, squirrels and rabbits and foxes chasing each other up towards the landing. The wallpaper was dark red with a pattern of climbing ivy, peeling slightly at the top but still rich and warm looking. There were portraits on the walls of people in old-fashioned clothes, ladies in wide dresses and gentlemen in tall hats, all of them looking very serious in the way that people in old portraits always do. There was a chandelier overhead draped in long curtains of cobwebs, which in the light of the moon coming through the tall window actually looked rather magnificent, like silver lace.

"This is beautiful," said Poppy, looking all around her.

Edmund looked surprised, then pleased. "Do you think so? Nobody has said that in a very long time. Most people who come inside, which is not many, tend to scream and leave quite quickly."

He floated slightly ahead of them, drifting a few inches off the floor without seeming to notice he was doing it, and led them through the winding corridors of Holloway House. He showed them the old library, where leather-bound books lined the walls from floor to ceiling and a sliding ladder on a brass rail stood waiting to reach the highest shelves. He showed them the music room with its grand piano coated in a soft layer of dust, the keys yellowed but still beautiful. He showed them the ballroom, a vast echoing room where cobwebs stretched between the ceiling rose and the tops of the tall windows, and where Edmund demonstrated, to Alfie's great delight, that he could float all the way up to the ceiling and back down again without any effort whatsoever.

He showed them the kitchen, which was enormous and stone-floored and had a great iron range along one wall. Edmund told them, with considerable embarrassment, that he had once tried to bake a Victoria sponge in that very kitchen, approximately two hundred years ago, and had managed to get flour on every single surface including the ceiling.

"How?" asked Alfie.

"I am still not entirely sure," said Edmund.

Alfie laughed so hard he had to sit down on the kitchen floor, which was difficult in a pumpkin costume but not impossible.

They sat in the dusty drawing room after that, on old armchairs with faded velvet cushions, while Edmund perched on the windowsill and told them stories about Ashford-on-the-Hill from long, long ago. He told them about the great harvest festival of 1843, when someone accidentally tipped an entire barrel of cider into the village pond and all the ducks behaved very oddly for a week. He told them about the famous escaped pig of 1851, which had got loose at the market, run the full length of the high street, pushed open the door of the schoolroom, and sat down firmly in the teacher's chair, refusing to leave for three hours. He told them about the winter of 1867 when the river froze solid and the entire town skated on it every evening by torchlight, even the vicar, who was not known for his grace but made up for it with enthusiasm.

Poppy listened to every single word, absolutely fascinated, her chin resting in her hands. She thought that Edmund was probably the most interesting person, or ghost, she had ever met. He had watched two hundred years of life in this town through his rattling windows and nobody had ever thought to come in and listen to him.

After a while she became aware that it had grown quite late. The moon had moved across the sky. She could hear her friends still calling her name faintly from the lane outside. She stood up slowly and smoothed her purple cloak.

"We have to go home for supper," she said. "But Edmund, I want to come back. Not just on Halloween. Any time. We could come after school, if you'd like."

Edmund floated a little higher off the armchair, which Poppy had already come to understand was his way of showing he was happy, the ghostly version of jumping for joy. "I would like that more than anything in the world," he said quietly. "More than anything in two hundred years, actually."

At the front door, Poppy turned back and looked up at the house. "You know what you should do? On Halloween, when the children gather at the gate, you should come to the upstairs window and wave properly. Not just a little wave. A big, friendly wave. I'll tell everyone beforehand that you're nice. I think they'll wave back this time."

Edmund looked uncertain. "You really think so?"

"I know so," said Poppy firmly.

He drifted up the staircase, his white nightshirt floating around him. A moment later his pale face appeared in the large upstairs window. He raised one transparent hand and gave a slow, careful, hopeful wave.

Outside on the lane, the crowd of children in their costumes stood staring up at the window. There was a long, breathless silence. A skeleton costume, two vampires, a fairy, and several witches, all frozen on the spot.

Then Alfie, standing at the gate in his round orange pumpkin suit, lifted both arms and waved back with enormous enthusiasm.

One by one, slowly at first and then all at once, the other children waved too.

Edmund pressed both pale hands flat against the glass. Even from the garden path, even through the old dusty window, Poppy could see that he was smiling the widest, most joyful smile she had ever seen on any face, living or otherwise.

She walked back through the rusty iron gate, her trick or treat bag swinging, her pointy hat slightly crooked, the great orange moon riding high and bright overhead. Alfie reached up and took her hand as they walked back towards the warm lights of home.

Behind them, the upstairs window of Holloway House glowed softly in the dark.

And for the first time in two hundred years, it did not look spooky at all.

It just looked like someone was home.

*The End.*