It was an unusually quiet evening in The Squid and Teapot. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to ascribe this to the raging storm that rattled the windows of the inn, sent waves battering the rocks, and kept spoonwalkers cowering in their nests, safely banished from the cutlery drawer.
“Normally,” Philomena Bucket said, “weather conditions like this would not be enough to stop the customers from coming in. Tonight, though, there is an added reason…”
She stared mournfully through the window, peering deeply into the darkness beyond.
Reggie Upton looked up from his book, resigned to the fact that this statement was meant to elicit a response from him; something along the lines of: “Oh, and what would that be?”
“Oh, and what would that be?” He dutifully enquired.
“It’s the ghost of the last lighthouse keeper, Talmadge Chevin,” she replied. “He’s out and about, and moaning again.”
“That’s balderdash,” Reggie said, dismissively. “It’s just a bit of wind blowing through what’s left of the lighthouse. We’ve got enough spirits wandering around this island without you inventing new ones, m’dear.”
“Oh, he’s real enough, believe me,” said Philomena. “In fact I can see him now. I wonder what bee has got into his ectoplasmic bonnet this time?”
“This time?” echoed Reggie, as he eased himself out of his seat and followed Philomena’s gaze. Sure enough, a hazy figure shimmered in the darkness. It appeared to be pointing towards the old lighthouse.
“There’s always something annoying him,” said Philomena. “Last summer it was Seth Washwell taking away some of the stones to build a privy, and a couple of years before that a few of the older boys from the Pallid Rock Orphanage managed to make him really angry.”
“Ah, they didn’t steal stones to make a privy as well, did they?” asked Reggie.
“No, they just used the lighthouse itself as a privy,” said Philomena. “You know what boys are like.”
Reggie was just about to launch into an amusing anecdote concerning the digging of latrines in the Transvaal, when Philomena was unexpectedly spared this by the figure of Norbert Gannicox bursting through the door.
“Ah, a customer at last,” she said gratefully. “Your usual sarsaparilla, Norbert?”
The owner of the Gannicox Distillery had been strictly teetotal ever since his father drowned in a barrel of vodka years earlier, prompting his cousins at the Ebley Brewery (home of the much-loved Old Colonel Ale) to regularly make Norbert a batch of root-beer.
“No, thanks Philomena,” said Norbert.
She suddenly noticed that his face was ashen, and clutched in his left hand was a sack.
“What’s in the bag, old chap?” asked Reggie, casually.
Norbert, not normally lost for words, stood in silence. Eventually he said, his voice shaking:
“I was looking for driftwood, and found this on the beach.”
He hesitated, as if reluctant to continue. Slowly, with trembling hands, he unfastened the sack, and unveiled his discovery: it was a human skull, grinning up at them with an unwholesome enthusiasm.
“That’s a Chevin,” declared Philomena.
Reggie eyed her quizzically.
“I can tell by the chin,” she said, then added, by way of explanation, “or, more to the point, lack of chin.”
“You’re right, now you come to mention it,” said Norbert, who had recovered some of his composure. “It’s got the Chevin teeth, as well.”
“Put it back in the sack, Norbert,” said Philomena, urgently. “I think I can guess which Chevin we’re talking about. Talmadge wants his head back.”
“Well, I can’t imagine why it isn’t buried with the rest of him,” grumbled Norbert, rolling the skull back into the sack. “Unless somebody, or something, purposely dug it up… but why?”
As if in answer to his question, Drury bounded into the room and thrust his bony nose into one of the skull’s eye sockets. Then he looked up triumphantly, with the air of one who had just found something that they had misplaced, and without further ado grabbed sack, skull and all, and hurtled off into the night.
The spectral figure outside slowly turned, and with an unearthly moan and malevolent glare, pointed an accusing finger towards The Squid and Teapot.
“He’s not a happy ghost,” commented Norbert. “Do we really have to turn out in this weather and rescue his skull from Drury?”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere tonight,” said Philomena. “Unless Drury brings the skull back, which is unlikely, Talmadge can stand outside and moan away until daylight as far as I’m concerned.”
And with that she drew the curtains.
—————–
By the next morning the storm had blown itself out, leaving the island to the chilly, dismal fog, which was familiar to all.
As expected, Drury had lost interest in the skull he had exhumed on the previous afternoon. Finding better things to do, he dropped it on the beach, where it had been picked up by the morning tide and was, by now, bobbing about in the Atlantic and making its way to the mainland.
And what of the restless spirit of Talmadge Chevin? The ghost of the last lighthouse keeper decided that, without an audience, there was no point in hanging around moaning all night. In the scheme of things, he didn’t really need his skull; after all, his corporeal form had ceased to have anything to do with him years ago.
“Still,” he reflected as he retired to whatever place it is that dead lighthouse keepers inhabit, “there’s no harm in keeping an eye on the lighthouse – and I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow every young upstart to come along and desecrate my old home while I’ve still got a haunt or two left in me.”
Then he laughed to himself. What was he saying? He was damned anyway!
