Father had always told Uri that if he didn’t get a good trade behind him, he would die alone in a pauper’s grave. But today was his long-awaited chance to start the family trade and he could barely eat breakfast as his stomach twisted and turned in anticipation.
The door leading into the Ghost Merchant’s shop was on the other side of the dinted breakfast table. A door that Uri had not been allowed to access under threat of death, dishonour, and going to bed without supper.
Morning after morning for eighteen years he had sat at this table, in a room with little decoration aside from worn shop castoffs, and stared at the forbidden door. It was almost like his father had placed the door to taunt him.
His sister, Ana, noticed his excited stare. “You probably would have been allowed in there a long time ago if you weren’t so messy.”
“I’m not messy,” said Uri calmly, although his hands clenched the table so hard his knuckles turned white.
“Father let you look at his telescope once and I had to clean it up.” Ana sighed for dramatic effect. “It took me hours.”
“I was five! I’ve not had toffee since.”
Ana chuckled at her brother’s discomfort, then placed a kind hand over his. “It’s not as amazing as you dream of. Dimi down the road gets to drive a cart all over the country to deliver wine. That sounds far more interesting.”
“You think driving a smelly cart down country roads is more interesting than selling actual ghosts?”
“You’ll see.” Ana shrugged. Then she stood up, leaving half her breakfast, to grab her bag. “I have to go to class.”
Uri watched his sister’s exit and shook his head. Walking away from the only ghost merchant in York to go to some crumby university full of books felt like such a boring decision. But it wasn’t without benefits. It meant Uri could steal the rest of her cup of tea before work. The food was still beyond his nervous belly.
And as the clock chimed, Uri walked across to the door that had haunted his dreams since he could remember. He grasped the door handle and entered with a shiver.
Uri had hoped for illumination. Instead, he flinched at the brightness of the lights.
Once Uri stopped blinking, he saw luxurious red velvet carpets running from wall to wall between black walnut cabinets with dimly lit candles behind them and lush red silk to showcase the fine figurines of the ghosts. Beautiful swirling-coloured figurines wrought by magic his father guarded closely.
A magic that would soon be his.
There were no customers in the shop, just Uri’s father. He stood behind a green leather countertop with an expression that made it hard to know if he hated customers, or was annoyed at the lack of them. He had gaunt cheekbones with large hollow eye sockets that made him look one missed meal away from his stock.
Father’s thin lips barely parted as he growled, “What are you doing here, boy?”
“It’s my first day, Father,” said Uri, shuffling nervously under a chandelier dangled from the distant ceiling, festooned with candles. In the polished little mirrors around the room, they looked like the lights of a shoal of deep-sea fish.
“That came about quickly ,” said Father. Eighteen years hadn’t been quick for Uri, especially the years delivering milk, but at least Father accepted it was time. “Can I see your hands?”
Uri stifled a groan, but offered out a pair of hands red raw from repeated washing.
“Acceptable, but you should cut your nails. We need to set a good impression.”
“Yes, Father.” Uri nodded, despite having cut them this morning. “I need to set a good impression to sell ghosts.”
“We do not sell ghosts,” said Father, glowering darkly. “We are purveyors of the finest spirits to the distinguished and discerning customer. The only paranormal instigators in Northern England!”
“Yes, Father.”
“We have the finest stock and we will only sell to proper customers. As is our right as members of The Sorrowful Guild of Master Ghost Makers,” said Father. He peered at Uri and frowned. “You can see ghosts, can you not?”
“Yes, sir.” Uri bowed his head. “There was a ghost teacher at Rev. Shackley’s school I used to talk to at lunch. It made him happy. Although the other children thought I was just pretending.”
“Hmm,” said Father, stroking his chin. “I will have to investigate that. We can always do with additional stock. Selection is good for business, as is diversity.”
“Do you struggle to find ghosts?”
“We find an adequate supply,” said Father, slightly too quickly.
“Why are there so few ghosts? Why aren’t they everywhere?”
Father shrugged. “Not everyone leaves a ghost behind. Some ghosts stay longer than others. That’s why we do not see caveman ghosts running around. If they do not receive attention, they just slowly fade away. We ensure that ghosts are remembered forever.”
Remembered forever, Uri knew, as long as people paid an almost reasonable fee. “How do you find them?”
“Ghosts can be anywhere. But the best spot is currently the graveyard. The last person buried in a graveyard stays behind to keep watch over it. We take those cemetery guardian ghosts every time, so there is a steady supply.”
“Like the grave robbers?” asked Uri, his voice brimming with excitement about the men who were all over the papers with their exploits. Making off with jewels, running from the police.
“Those are ruffians and charlatans who steal from their betters for a living.” Father’s eyes flashed with anger before he took a deep breath. “We are preserving the noble heritage of our ghosts.”
“Yes.”
“Just delinquents who are probably covered in tattoos,” said Father with a sneer. In his ever loud opinion, just another kind of scar from needless violence. “But anyway, to business.”
Father walked to the shelves and Uri followed, gazing at the figurines resting upon them, their colours swirling in mesmerising patterns as they wrapped around the non-corporeal remains. They glowed a strange silvery-blue light, like reflections from liquid mirrors.
Some of the memories escaped as they walked by, forming brief pictures in front of Uri before the page turned, and then went flying and fading into the distant, dark corners of the room. There were snatches of sound, too, of laughter, tears, screams, and, for some reason, a brief burst of xylophone music that caused him to pause for a moment.
Eventually, Father stopped in front of a ghost and pointed. The little figure was a wash of orange blurs and green swirls. When Uri stared at it deeply, there was a vague outline of a man, lying down on the floor next to a chisel.
Uri shuddered as he saw his father staring at him from inches away. “You see it, but can you hear it?”
“No.”
“You must be quiet. They are not noisy by nature.”
At first, Uri didn’t hear anything. Then the dim sounds of someone talking in another room came through. He caught his breath, not daring to exhale, and then he heard it. A pitiful mewling like a wounded cat. “I can’t see. I can’t hear. Where am I?”
Uri was horrified, not that he could let it show. He was far from an expert on ghosts, but they had projected sheer, abject misery. The idea of being trapped forever in these little containers with nothing to look forward to sounded monstrous.
“You’re handling it better than your sister. That is why we sent her to the academy.”
Uri could only nod. Ana was the smart one, she’d have understood the horror straight away and realised she wanted no part of it.
“But you don’t need to worry about any of that. Your first job is very important.”
Uri puffed out his chest as best as he could given he could hide behind a stick with a toast rack attached partway up.
“Polish the brass.”
“What?”
“Polish the brass.”
“I thought I was here to sell… to purvey the finest spirits?”
“You are. And we cater for a high-class clientele who enjoy, amongst other things, highly cleansed surfaces. So you will polish the brass, wipe the counters, and await further instructions.”
“Yes, Father.”
As Uri learned the true meaning of the phrase, ‘If you have time to lean, you have time to clean,’ a customer entered. Father sighed and put down his newspaper. He didn’t rush, though. There was a lot to look at in the shop. Sometimes, he had told Uri, he even had to cough to attract the customer’s attention. That being said, sometimes Uri had to cough to attract the attention of his reflection when he was shaving.
“Good morning, sir,” said Father in his best Sunday voice, the clipped and polished tones so finished you could shave with them.
“I’m Mr. Gellar,” said an enormous man, pink and shiny-faced, with a few strands of hair teased across his head. Despite the opulence of the carriage outside the window, he stood in just sweat-stained shirtsleeves and braces, with a huge cigar dangling from his mouth.
“How can we help you?”
“We bought a house in the country. Rose gardens, coach house, you know the type.”
Father nodded as if that was where he spent most of his time, and not wearing a battered pair of slippers in the rooms upstairs while resisting lighting a fire until ice formed on the inside of the windows.
“But it doesn’t have a ghost.” His cigar shifted from one side of his mouth to the other. “I’m not bothered, but the wife tells me it’s the done thing.”
Uri stared at his father, impressed with his reserve. Only if you knew to look for the wringing of the hands, the stiffness of the back and the tilt of the head would you realise just how apoplectic he truly was at customers he felt beneath him. “Yes. A high-quality house ghost can be what truly showcases a high-class home from a jumped-up pretender.”
“Apparently. Put your best ghost in a box and I’ll be on my way.”
Uri saw his father about to explode with rage, and stepped forward. He had read the flyers and the catalogue every day for years. “What can we interest you in, sir? We have a wide array of ghosts, with a wide array of effects. This can range from but is not limited to, a lingering burning smell in rooms, unsettling wails, knocking objects over or even spectral sightings when one is alone. Which is a popular one to impress visiting houseguests.” Uri smiled, and realised that a ghost with a burning smell would have competition with Mr. Gellar as he lit a new cigar off of the old one.
“Sightings sound good to me. What the hell is the point in having one of the buggers if you can’t even see it?” Mr. Gellar shrugged. The new cigar shifted in his mouth. “How much we talking?”
“Well, our entry-level ghosts can start at—”
“Two hundred crowns,” said Father, recovering enough to double his prices on the spot and stand on Uri’s foot at the same time.
Mr. Gellar nodded. “And the premium ones where you can see what you get?”
“I think we have the perfect ghost for your wife just down here. Four hundred crowns. She was a laboured artist, a misunderstood genius, who died trying to steal just a little more burnt umber for her masterpiece.” Father walked the customer to the other side of the store and sent Uri a wink.
It stopped Uri dead. He hadn’t been sure his father was capable of such an action. The fact his own Father was a walking, talking person who committed human actions was such a revelation that Uri had to sit down and watch his parent work.
He sat in a chair between the shelves, surrounded by dark light and the thoughts of ghosts. They didn’t seem happy to have any living people close. It was mostly just the moans and aches of ghosts wanting to move, but finding themselves unable to.
After Father had arranged payment and finished his rambling post-sales pitch, Uri carefully nestled Mister Gellar’s ghost within the velvet lining of a fine rosewood box and whispered to it that it was going to a nicer place. It would soon be free to haunt and stalk across the halls of a fine home, albeit one that if Uri’s coughing was any judge, would be full of smoke without the need for spectral effects.
After the customer left four hundred crowns lighter but one ghost heavier, Father came back across. “Good work, boy. I wasn’t sure about you coming into the business, especially with how your sister turned out, but you showed me right. And to think I thought you were just a simpering mother’s boy. It’ll take a lot of work, but I’m sure you can be useful.”
“Thank you, Father.” Uri wasn’t truly sure if he’d been complimented or not, but he was aware it was the nicest thing his father had told him in some time. In fact, he hadn’t talked to Uri until he was twelve, believing prep boys should be neither seen nor heard.
“I just wish you had a better type of first customer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Once we dealt with real class. But this, they tell me, is the modern day. Now it seems that, as soon as a man opens his second sandwich shop, he insists on calling himself a gentleman.” Father sneered, as if just saying it made him feel unclean. “Butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. What a drop in standards.”
“Isn’t it better that we have more people to sell ghosts to? And you did charge him double.”
“You’ll understand when you’re older, boy,” said Father with a stern nod. “The type of customer we attract reflects on us and our reputation. Do you want to be associated with the lords and ladies of the chattering classes, or a greasy man elbow-deep in sausages?”
Uri nodded. He hoped he would understand. Especially when the sausage man was able to pay a lot more money than the chatty lords. He had always presumed his father was a master salesman who didn’t play games, but he was starting to question that. Alongside just how well he knew his own father.
But for now, he had a far more important question. “What if ghosts don’t want to go with them?”
“Who cares?”
“Well, I imagine the ghosts might?”
“My boy,” said Father, in the way that signalled the end of the conversation was nigh. “We are doing them a favour. They get remembered, the lords get a party piece, and we get a modest fee for arranging it all.”
Uri looked to the shelves and shuddered. The idea of being trapped forever in the shop blind and unable to move for all eternity was monstrous. Being a party piece at some castle where the people didn’t care about you didn’t feel like much of an upgrade either.
Father didn’t see it that way, though. From his perspective, he was rescuing these ghosts from oblivion, fading away unremembered and unloved. Was that wrong?
Uri thought about it for a second. If what he saw was the result, then it was wrong. They weren’t preserved, they were trapped like a bug in a jar. He couldn’t think of a more depressing fate.
If he noticed any hesitation, Father didn’t give any indication. “But you’ve done well today. Tomorrow will be more impressive.”
“What do we do tomorrow?” asked Uri. “Sell two ghosts?”
“Very droll,” said his father with a face like a bulldog licking urine off a nettle. “Now there was a burial today, so that means we have a new guardian ghost to acquire.”
“Should we not get them now?”
“No need. Today was productive and I now have some errands.” Father patted the register, and Uri suddenly had a lot of questions about where that money ended up. It was a year’s salary for a labourer, and yet Uri saw precious little riches around the house. While the shop was plush, the home upstairs had carpets and blankets so worn they could have been used as fishnets. “And I have the lists. There are no scheduled burials tomorrow.”
Before Uri could respond, Father took two pounds out of the register. “Enjoy that as a bonus. Don’t spend it all at once.”
“Thank you,” mouthed Uri. That was two weeks’ wages for his friends who worked at the docks. But his father had already gone, to wherever it was he went. Uri just hoped his father wasn’t taking the purse for a bout of horizontal refreshment on Threadneedle Lane.
But Uri knew where he needed to go, the graveyard. To free the ghost before Father trapped it forever.
Right after dinner.
Mother was a good cook, although she tended towards what Father preferred. In her own time, or while he was away, she would prepare delicious, delicate things to be savoured. However, Father was a man who measured culinary achievement by the amount you got on your plate. It might not taste astonishing, but you went to bed full and that was what mattered.
Tonight’s dinner was a stew to use up old leftovers. Somehow, there seemed to be more leftover meals than regular meals. There was mutton floating in Uri’s giant bowl of stew, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had seen mutton in an original meal.
Uri was given a second buttered roll of bread, a rare sign of favour. His mother added, “A working man needs his strength.”
After dinner, and Mother left to read a novel in the parlour, Ana looked at him. “How was it?”
“It was awful.” Uri shivered. “He’s trapped them for eternity. It can’t be right. They don’t want to be there.”
“They don’t. They want to pass onto wherever ghosts go on the other side.” Ana shrugged. “I did tell you, little brother.”
“I hate you.”
“Don’t be silly, you love me.” Ana tossed Uri’s hair, the way she had done when they were little. “You can always come to university with me?”
“Could Father afford that?”
“Of course, he can. Do you know where all of his money goes?”
Uri shook his head, Father had never been keen to answer questions on that. And suddenly Uri didn’t want to ask anymore.
“He goes to the Yorkshire Club. A poncy gentleman’s club where you pay a king’s ransom to be allowed in. He thinks it’ll help elevate his station.”
“Is it helping?”
“Nothing has ever come out of it. He just loses money at cards and gets annoyed when they let rich merchants in. Says it shows the drop in standards.”
“Is that where he is now?” asked Uri, his mind already heading back to the ghosts.
“Of course. He’ll be losing silly money on playing baccarat with people who don’t care about his existence when he could be buying houses to rent out.” Ana shook her head. “For what he’s paid over the years he could own half the street.”
“How interesting,” said Uri, swallowing his feelings hard like he had a throat full of nettles. He had entered the day thinking his father was a genius, but he was just a man sycophantically chasing the tailcoats of bluebloods like a dog with a cart. Father kept the family in near squalor chasing his goal, something that sickened Uri so much he didn’t want to talk to the man.
Suddenly the idea of freeing the ghost before Father could capture it had more than just altruistic motivations for Uri. “On that note, I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.”
She gave Uri a look which said, ‘I can read your mind, even the small print,’ and then gazed around the room again. “I know you, you love to try and fix problems. Don’t you dare turn up at the club.”
“I promise I won’t. I don’t even know where it is.”
“Opposite Theatre Royal, but don’t.” Ana winked, then left.
Uri didn’t rush. He didn’t want to raise his mother’s suspicion. Or, by proxy, his father’s, who would certainly wonder tomorrow why he wouldn’t find a ghost at the graveyard. Instead, he washed, read in his room and laid quietly until his mother went to bed. Then he snuck downstairs.
On the way out, Uri grabbed Father’s seal for remit and a lantern. The lantern was to help him find a ghost, and the seal was in case anyone stopped him.
He wasn’t convinced how much his father’s papers would protect him, but he supposed a thin paper shield was better than no shield.
He left the fine candle-lit cobbles of Merchantgate for the badly paved area near the city walls and then finally headed to the slums outside of the walls where the roads weren’t paved at all. Where little shacks hugged each other for support and made garden woodpiles look well assembled.
Uri pulled his coat to his chin, and kept going. Through the slums, onto the mud of the private road and onto the graveyard just outside of town.
A neck-high metal fence surrounded the two acres of dimly lit graveyard. The fence was so encrusted with vines that it was almost completely green. A tall wrought-iron arch marked the entrance, guarded by a pair of stone lions which looked so depressed they must have been close to the grave themselves. They guarded a gate that was very much locked, no matter how much Uri rattled the handle.
He turned to see if any guards were keeping a lookout, but if they were then none were in sight. Although it probably wouldn’t have stopped him if there were. In York, their job was to give up by the second corner, out of breath.
Uri used the vines to get over the fence and lit his lantern on the other side. It would be a long walk to the fresh graves, where he presumed the new ghost would reside. Although, it now occurred to him that he had no idea how to find it. He should have asked his father for more details while he had the chance. The best idea available was to walk around and hope.
The plots on either side of the path were marked by fading marble headstones or the rare mausoleum for the richer families. Everyone ended up forgotten in this graveyard eventually, Uri noted, but some were certainly doing it in style.
As Uri walked his head kept turning towards the thin shadows from the lantern in the corner of the yard and under the grave markers. They were simply shadows, haunted by nothing more than dust and spiders.
But Uri didn’t like it. When he thought of ghosts, he thought of his father’s shop. It seemed so much warmer and more welcoming than the dark. Ana’s cartography studies were looking better by the second. He didn’t think he would be going back to Father’s Shop. He would free this poor ghost and then make a new path for himself.
As he got to the fresher graves, the first thing he noticed was a ghostly pang in his head, the feelings of fear, upset, and loathing hitting him with the subtlety of a gorilla with a brick.
The second thing he noticed was a small cart with a funeral parlour logo that had two people arguing next to it.
“This is stupid. We need to hit the mausoleums, that’s where the good stuff is.”
“Yeah, but rich people notice if their shit goes missing. Especially out of a big stuffy room where people are expected to visit.” The larger of the two shifted. “People in graves don’t get visitors. You could take the damn body out of it if you wanted, and no-one would notice.”
“Because there’s nothing worth noticing in them. Who cares about some old baker’s Sunday best shoes? Or a wedding ring with the gold content of seawater?”
“Evening gentlemen,” said Uri, much to his own surprise. Perhaps it was the pain of the fresh ghost he had come to free, perhaps it was the anger at Father, but something about the grave robbing put words in his mouth. “How are you?”
“None of your goddamned business,” said the smaller of the two, jerking round and hoisting a shovel up.
“Cal, calm down,” said the larger of the two, then he turned to Uri and flashed him a smile. “Now I’m sure our friend here in the graveyard at night also has his own business to mind that we would hate to question.”
“There’s a lot worse people with shovels than us,” said Cal with a cackle. “So why don’t you be on your way, and we’ll be back to our job.”
“I have a writ that says I am allowed to be here,” said Uri. Then, without thinking, he added, “Do you?”
“If by writ you mean a large man with a shovel, then yes we do.”
The larger man sighed, but he started circling round to Uri from the right, as the smaller man came straight towards him.
“You shouldn’t loot graves like that.” Uri flinched as he heard spectral screaming right next to his ear. The ghost was riddled with outrage and disgust. “It’s not kind. These people have passed on, and should be respected.”
“That’s nice.” The large man looked to his friend and said, “We’ll lock him in the mausoleum. Someone will find him in a day or two.”
“I’ve seen your faces, I have seen your cart with the funeral parlour details and as I am here on work. My father is expecting me.” Uri stood as tall as he could and did his best not to tremble. He almost succeeded. “In fact, he will be here to pick me up soon.”
“Look, kid.” Cal closed the distance, causing Uri to back up to the open grave. “Your father ain’t coming here. Don’t feed us that. You got two options. You can leave now and forget you ever saw anything. Or we can beat the living hells out of you, and then you can leave.”
“I can’t leave,” started Uri. “I need—”
“Twat.” Cal punched Uri in the gut, hard enough to make him cry. The pain was immense, enough for Uri to stumble back, lose balance on the grave and hit his head awkwardly on the stone.
The next thing Uri knew was he was lying in dirt, looking up at walls of mud all around him. Just above the mud, were the two men. Uri tried to stand up and get out of the hole, but all that happened was he waved a hand weakly.
“Shit the bed,” said the big man. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“I was trying to scare the lad. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
“Punching him is a funny way of showing that.” The big man shook his head. “Lot of blood down there, let’s get him out.”
“Did you hit your head?” asked Cal, waving his hands in front of his partner’s face. “He already wanted to call the guards. What do you think he’s going to do now? And he’s seen our faces. Next time we go to The Old Star, he’s going to clock us.”
“Well, he’ll be going there now. But we can’t just leave him?”
“Who said anything about leaving him,” said Cal, hoisting a shovel into the air.
Uri tried to say something, anything to plead his case, but nothing came out. Just strange garbles, and the warmth of blood dripping from his head.
Dirt started to trickle in, a small flow at first, as if the pusher was unsure, and then shovelfuls followed.
“Cal, you can’t do this.”
“It’ll be easier this way,” said Cal, another shovel of dirt punctuating his words.
Uri struggled, but it did nothing. More dirt came flying down. It hit his feet, his chest, and finally his face. He tried to hold his breath, but before long his lungs screamed for air and he had to open his mouth. Then he got a mouth of dirt, and neither breathing nor screaming were options available to him anymore.
The men were still talking, but their voices were too muffled through the soil to make out. There was another sound, like a drum being beaten, and Uri realised it was his own heart thumping in his ears.
He tried to breathe, but found nothing but soil. Then he stopped trying at all.
Uri awoke blind, unable to feel his hands or feet. It was just so cold, so very, very cold. The air around him was filled with sobbing, screaming, and the crying of strange people.
For a second, Uri joined them. And then he heard his father. “As you can see, your grace, the colours on this one have come out even finer than I could have imagined.”
“Very good, very good. The Duchess will love this, it will complete the East Wing. Is there a story attached?”
“Of course. He was just a boy who followed his father to the graveyard, staying by him every night until grave robbers put an end to it.” Father breathed out one of his fake sighs. “Very sad. Very tragic.”
“Perfect. Have it sent across,” said the Duke, then Uri heard footsteps.
“Father?” asked Uri.
The footsteps stopped and a door shut, then Father said, in the most cheerful voice Uri had ever heard him use, “Don’t worry, my boy. You’re going to a much better place. You’ll love Castle Howard.”
Rick Danforth is an author from Yorkshire, England, where he works as a Systems Architect to fund his writing habit.
His short fiction can be found in Hexagon, Translunar Traveller’s Lounge, and many other places. Two of his stories have been shortlisted for BSFA awards.
He one day hopes to introduce himself as an author without feeling awkward about it.