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It had all started with unexplained noises in the middle of the night.
There would be slow, careful footsteps on creaking floorboards when no one roamed the corridors. The Captain searched for the culprit each night with a frown, dragging himself along the floor with his socked feet and the dressing gown he’d thrown on over his striped pyjamas, carrying a candle to light the way since the electrics were unreliable, and he didn’t want to risk disturbing the other soldiers.
It was followed by scratching at the walls when no rats or mice could be found – come the morning, the traps lay empty with crumbs of cheese that hadn’t been touched. The scratching would come slowly, to begin with, long and drawn out like a child wandering past and dragging a stick along the garish, faded wallpaper. Then, it would become louder, faster, and more desperate, like an animal trapped in a shed, trying to claw itself out. When everyone had gotten out of bed to find the source of the noise, it would disappear like smoke, and silence would reign.
The soldiers would trudge back to bed, yawning, grumbling, pulling their dressing gowns tighter around their bodies, complaining the house was as old, creaky, and defunct as The Captain.
Sometimes, they’d be woken in the night by smashing glass, only for one or two cadets to find their glasses of water shattered on the floor, the edges of their bedsheets cold and damp. Once, the Lieutenant had sworn he’d seen a teacup fly off the kitchen cabinet and smash against the opposite wall.
After eight consecutive restless nights, the cadets were difficult to rally, and The Captain needed more energy than he had to get their attention. Still, he held himself tall despite feeling small with his hands behind his back and smiled. He hoped it would make him look pleasant and approachable, unaffected by the strange happenings. Instead, all the smile did was accentuate the dark circles under his eyes and make him look more miserable than he was since the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“I know it’s been difficult as of late,” he said, holding back a yawn. Not even the morning jog around the grounds of Button House had managed to revive his spirits, and physical exercise had never failed him before. It was a constant in The Captain’s life. Tired? Go for a walk to clear your mind and get your heart rate up – see how many types of birds and trees you can find along the way. Restless? Go for a run to exhaust the body and encourage a better night’s sleep later. Lonely? Cricket in the park will always alleviate that symptom of life.
But somehow, the jog had reminded him how exhausted he was and, perhaps, had tired him out before it was supposed to. If he could curl up under the covers, cuddle his pillow, and hide there until the strange occurrences stopped, then he would.
“But all your shrieking, wandering about the house, and talk of ghosts and poltergeists isn’t helping matters,” he continued, bouncing on the balls of his feet. His smile was slipping already – too tired to bother keeping it. And telling a group of people off with a smile felt unnatural anyway. “This is an old house, and there will be perfectly reasonable explanations for everything happening. Unfortunately, I believe someone in this room has been pulling nasty pranks and being a nuisance just for something to do.”
He let his words settle over the room, and all he got back were a few slow, cat-like blinks and half-hearted laughter. The Captain’s jaw tightened, and he cleared his throat, the laughter ringing in his ears and making his breath quicken.
“And when I discover who’s responsible, they’ll get a good thrashing and a court-martial for intentionally damaging public and service property and for the misuse of public property.”
The briefing ended quickly, and the cadets filed out of the room, stifling more laughter. As they left, one cadet muttered under his breath to his friend, "Yeah, because threatening us is really going to make the ghost disappear."
Their response was swift. “Maybe it’s not a ghost after all. Maybe The Captain's a chronic sleepwalker, and that's what's been causing all the trouble.”
The Captain sighed, unable and unwilling to call back the culprit for being insubordinate, and instead, turned to the window, watching the leaves and branches of the trees in the field flutter and wave in the wind.
It was peaceful, and for a moment, he forgot where he was as he watched the sparrows dancing through the mild air.
Perhaps it was the threat of a court-martial that turned the cadets against their captain completely?
It was a thinly veiled threat – they knew that. The Captain found it challenging to put his words into action – he was all hot air and no flame. His bravado fizzled as soon as someone did as much as snicker, whisper, or look at him with pity, like he was a child trying to play soldier. No matter how much he demanded to be taken seriously, it only served to do the opposite.
The idea of The Captain following through on a court-martial was as laughable as him being the captain in the first place, and it seemed the soldiers were intent on making this fact even more apparent to him than it already was.
He started noticing some of his personal belongings going missing or moving. The book he swore he left on the nightstand was shoved roughly under his thin mattress, and the watch face on his wrist clock had been cracked. His boots, always kept at the end of his bed of an evening, had been swapped over, so he immediately shoved his left foot into the right boot.
One morning, he couldn’t find his Sam Browne and turned his room upside down to find it. When it wasn’t forthcoming, he stumbled towards his door in a confused daze, calling for the Lieutenant.
“Have you seen my belt?” he asked, hiding behind the wood panel of the rough door as though he were trying to cover his modesty despite being fully clothed. “I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”
The Lieutenant looked back at him with a raised brow, his mouth quivering and eyes shining brightly. The Captain watched as two other soldiers strolled by them in the corridor – they stopped talking to stare at The Captain and Lieutenant on the way past and then dissolved into fitful giggles as they turned into the next room.
The Captain thought he heard one of them say, ‘useless walrus.’
“No, Sir,” the Lieutenant said, pressing his lips together. “I can’t say that I have.”
“Oh,” he answered, shoulders slumping. “Never mind. Thank you, Matthews,” he added, dismissing the Lieutenant with a curt nod.
After The Captain closed the door, he heard Matthews laugh with the two cadets watching from the corridor. The Captain later found his belt thrown over a branch in the willow tree by the lake, the leather scuffed and muddied.
Havers had felt sorry for the poor fellow after that.
The Captain seemed like a pleasant enough bloke – he reminded Havers of a boy, Bennett, at his boarding school, all knobbly-kneed, snotty-nosed, and melancholy. He did his best to make people believe he was worth talking to by spouting facts about 17th-century art, but if anything, that sort of behaviour made the kicks to his ribs come harder.
William followed The Captain around the house – he wasn’t sure what else to do. After all, he was a Lieutenant, and without a Captain to assist, his time in the house had felt relatively meaningless. That was until The Captain and the rest of the cadets turned up.
As Heather and her parents sat at the breakfast table, Havers couldn't help but overhear their conversation. When Heather mentioned that she would be moving out to make room for temporary residents from the armed forces, Havers perked up his ears and listened intently. Although few and far between, new residents in Button House were always a great source of entertainment for the ghosts.
The mundane flow of morning conversation was quickly broken when Fanny began to speak. After three decades of the afterlife with the 60-year-old Edwardian noblewoman, Havers had found that complaining about things as soon as they made themselves apparent was Fanny’s second nature.
"About time this place was put to good use," Fanny said with a sneer. "None of this shell shock nonsense this time around. They are real soldiers with real guts. No more raucous riff-raff to clutter the place, unlike those who stayed at Button House during The Great War.”
Havers felt a pang of anger at Fanny's words. "We were not riff-raff," he said firmly. "We were injured and sick soldiers who needed help. This house provided us with a safe place to recover."
Fanny rolled her eyes. "Oh, I know all about it," she said dismissively. "But that doesn't excuse the way some of you behaved. Screaming and carrying on like a bunch of lunatics in the middle of the night. Sleep was impossible for months."
Havers gritted his teeth. "You don't understand what it was like," he said, his voice low and strained. "The horrors of war, the constant fear and anxiety...it was too much for some of us to bear. At least you could escape the terrors when the war ended. Not all of us were so lucky."
Fanny huffed. "Well, it's not like you're the only ones who have had to deal with hardship. I've had to put up with this awful floral tablecloth for decades. Heather is twenty-six, a woman! And yet her taste is grotesque. She must have gotten that from George.”
Havers couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You’re telling me that the horrors of war are comparable to unappealing home decor?"
Fanny shrugged as if to say she agreed with his statement.
Havers shook his head. "You don't understand," he said quietly. "You can't understand. None of you can."
There was a tense silence as the ghosts stared at each other. After what felt like a millenia (but only a Thursday morning to the Buttons), Heather spoke up. “Another world war,” she said with a downcast wistfulness, tutting as she smacked her boiled egg with a silver spoon. “Can you believe it? The Second! They said the last one was the war to end all wars….”
Perhaps his ears had deceived him. Havers blinked hard, his palms itching and his eye twitching at the corner. “Another what?” he said absently. If he had blood that pumped through him, his skin might have flushed red. “Another world what ?!” He said again, looking at the others with wide eyes.
“Another world war,” Fanny said, raising her voice impatiently as if Havers were a simpleton. “Are you deaf as well as ignorant?”
“There can’t be another world war!” Havers had cried, stamping his foot against the ground. Seated to his left was Heather, whose face contorted into an expression of concern.
She lowered her fork. "Did either of you feel that just now? I think I felt the ground move."
Her parents looked at each other in confusion, then shook their heads. Her mother lowered her bouillon spoon into her bowl.
"What are you talking about, dear?"
"I don't know; it was just a strange sensation. Like a tremor or something." Heather looked out the window again, scanning the sky anxiously. “Nevermind. Maybe I'm just on edge with everything that's been going on. War's a terrible business.”
Havers felt a cold sweat on his brow. "This can't be happening," he muttered to himself.
Fanny scoffed. "Of course, it's happening, you fool. It's already begun.”
“Because if there’s another world war, it means that I…” he trailed off, holding his trembling hands before him. “It would mean that I had…. I’ve died-'' he cut himself off, shaking his head. “And it was for nothing! It didn’t make a damn difference!”
As Havers stared at his hands, his mind drifted back to the war. He remembered the blood that had stained his hands, the weight of the rifle in his grip, and the screams of his comrades ringing in his ears. He had killed and spilt blood, all in the name of fighting for his country. But now, as he looked down at his ghostly hands, he felt a profound sense of despair wash over him. It had all been for nothing. All those lives lost, all that bloodshed, and for what? Another war, just as senseless and destructive as the first.
He closed his eyes, trying to block out the memories of the war, but they persisted, haunting him like a ghostly apparition. His breaths came in short gasps, and his fingers curled into fists. He felt a sudden urge to lash out, to scream at the injustice of it all.
Like being struck by a lightning bolt, he opened his eyes, his gaze remaining on his hands. They looked so frail and insubstantial, yet they had once wielded a weapon of death. Then, he remembered Lady Macbeth and how she had obsessed over the bloodstains on her hands. He stared at his own hands, wondering if they, too, would forever be stained with the blood of his past.
He slammed his fists onto the breakfast table. The force of the tremble was strong enough to push a hideous floral teacup off the equally awful floral tablecloth. It smashed against the kitchen tiles, spreading lukewarm tea across the floor and collecting in the grout.
As Heather and her parents stood to clear up the mess and wonder how on earth that had happened, Havers continued his tirade, stomping towards the window and striking it with his fists, his knuckles refusing to break and bleed even when a crack appeared in the thin pane of glass. The wind began to whistle through it like a boiling kettle.
He would’ve torn down the curtains and screamed loud enough to crack all the windows of Button House if it hadn’t been for Robin gently touching his shoulder and looking at him with sage, understanding eyes as Fanny ranted and raved about Havers being a violent undesirable. No amount of private education he’d had changed her view of him as a base and crude hooligan.
“I see much war in my time,” Robin said to Havers in a gruff yet gentle tone. “War always come. War always go. But war not fault of soldiers. Soldiers only follow orders. Some soldiers want to fight. Other soldiers, was forced to fight. Do not blame them for what war bring. Not their fault. They do what they can to survive.”
“But I didn’t survive, did I?” Havers pointed out. “Neither did the other five and a half million Allied soldiers who died. Neither did the four million civilians. How many more must die before the world is satisfied, Robin? I can’t have those soldiers here. I will not have them here,” he added resolutely, a dark flicker of a shadow crossing his eyes. Even Fanny took a step back. Robin remained where he stood.
Robin nodded, a look of understanding in his eyes. "Sometime, anger can be useful tool," he said. "But do not let it consume you."
Havers let out a deep sigh and turned to face Robin. "I just can't stand the thought of more death, Robin—more pain. More destruction," he said, his voice tinged with frustration. "I thought coming to Button House would be a way to escape it all. But I was wrong. I can't escape it, even in death." His eyes remained fixed on the meagre crack he’d made in the windowpane. If Havers couldn’t stop the war, he could at least make the soldiers coming to them flee in fear. Send them on their way so he wouldn’t have to wander around the house and grounds hearing about the war, unable to escape it.
Fanny was not one to hold her tongue. "Havers, you need to calm down," she scolded. "You can't just go around breaking things and scaring people."
Havers shot her a withering glance. "I'm not scared of you, Fanny," he retorted. "I'm scared of what's coming. I'm scared of the soldiers, the bombs, the gas. I'm scared of what I might become if I have to relive it all over again."
Havers couldn't bear the thought of soldiers coming to Button House, where he hoped would be free from The Great War. He couldn't escape it, even in death. He needed to do something, to take action.
"I can't have them here," he muttered to himself, clenching his fists so tightly that his nails dug into his palms. "I won't let them ruin this place like they ruined everything else."
Havers felt a knot tighten in his stomach as he stared at the crack in the window. He couldn't help but feel a sense of despair wash over him. This was supposed to be his refuge, a place where he could escape the horrors of war, yet it seemed that even in death, he could not escape it.
Havers knew he couldn't stop the war, but he could at least make the soldiers coming to them flee in fear. He was glad his anger could manifest into the realm of the living. Finally, it was about to become a helpful tool.
And for the first time since his death, he felt truly alive.
He watched the soldiers file into the house, mentally counting them with the other ghosts at his side – Humphrey’s head watching him with a sideways glance as William’s hands balled into fists. William wondered if, because he could break physical objects and touch them, he could land a solid blow against a soldier in the right circumstances. He could barrel into this new Lieutenant with all the force he could muster, knocking the wind from his lungs, or go around each room, yanking the soldiers from their beds by their ankles. If they refused to leave or be sufficiently frightened, he could always attempt to choke them out whilst they slept.
Almost as if she could hear his thoughts, Mary shot a horrified look at Havers before following the soldiers out with Kitty, giggling as they eyed them with interest. Mary added a lewd comment or two under her breath that made Fanny tut, but she quickly followed them under the guise of chastising them for inappropriate behaviour.
Bringing up the rear was The Captain. He closed the wooden door behind him and leaned against it, casting his sapphire eyes over the space. He took in the stone columns to his left and then raised his face to the ceiling, his moustache twitching beneath his nose as he spotted the spiderwebs collecting in the right-hand corner.
“You can do this,” he told himself, taking a deep breath. “This is your chance to prove you’re worth something, so do it properly. You’re a Captain now…you’ve almost got everything you’ve ever dreamed of.”
“They’ll eat that one alive,” Humphrey quipped from his place on the sideboard.
Havers ignored him and found himself stomping towards the Captain, barely aware his feet had started to march on. “What do you mean you’ve got almost everything you’ve ever dreamed of?!” he raged, his dark brows furrowed. “No one dreams of this life. No one should be aspiring to this!”
He reached out to punch the wall by the Captain’s head, but as he did so, the intruder peeled himself away from the door with a spring on his step after his little pep talk, naïve of the slight reverberations echoing through the wall.
The first few days were uneventful.
Havers decided to let the soldiers settle in first, make themselves comfortable, and let their guards down to give them the biggest fright. He followed them around the house, watching them go about their daily tasks, trying to take back his swagger stick from The Captain when he found it down the side of his bed one day. William couldn’t remember dropping it there, nor how long it had been there. But he was equally confused as to why The Captain was clinging to it like a comfort blanket.
He noted the soldiers’ schedules as he followed them through the grounds – lights out were at 22:00 hours, so Havers decided that 01:00 would be the perfect time to begin his antics.
He cackled when he tapped on the windows and rattled the door handles like he was Jacob Marley rattling his chains. He laughed as the soldiers sat bolt upright in their beds, clutching their bedclothes as they tried to make sense of the noise. When Fanny caught him scraping at the walls with his fingernails like a wild beast, she reprimanded him for being childish, which made him give her the middle finger and then scratch harder.
“They think I’m a bloody mouse!” Havers had cried one day, storming into the room where the Captain was preparing for his morning briefing; Mary and Robin engaged in a stilted conversation about agriculture on the chairs in the centre of the room. “ You think I’m a bloody mouse!” he added to the moustachioed Captain, his nostrils flaring. “Well, can a mouse do this?!”
Havers used his long fingers to tap on the glass of the sun-warmed window. He drummed rhythmically against the pane, initially slow but increasing in intensity like the beginning of a rainstorm. The Captain looked up from his notes with a frown, staring towards the window with suspicious, darting eyes, but he shrugged it off and continued his work.
Undeterred, Havers began to pound on the glass with the side of his fist, but the noise was drowned out by the other soldier’s footsteps and chatter as they trooped in for the meeting, and Havers let his hand fall away from the window with a frustrated groan.
Fine , he thought. I’ll stay and see if I can make this meeting hell for everyone instead.
He sat at the back of the room on a sideboard, smacking the heels of his feet against the dark wood and pushing the bone china ornaments across the tabletop beside him. Nobody noticed him – they were all facing the wrong way, and The Captain was too busy admonishing the cadets with an intensity that didn’t quite suit him, like a greatcoat that was two sizes too big.
“I know it’s been difficult as of late,” he said, his breath hitching as he told himself not to falter as the soldiers stared back at him blankly. Havers was too curious about how this would play out to start pushing things off the table like a cat and instead eyed The Captain intriguingly, wondering if he could pull this talking to off.
“But all your shrieking, wandering about the house, and talk of ghosts and poltergeists isn’t helping matters,” he said defiantly, lifting his chin. “This is an old house, and there will be perfectly reasonable explanations for everything happening. Unfortunately, I believe someone in this room has been pulling nasty pranks and being a nuisance just for something to do.”
Havers couldn’t help but smirk at that. He sat up straight with a broad, goofy grin that would’ve gotten him a caning at school for being impertinent and held his hand proudly in the air. “Yeah, that’s me!” he called out proudly. “You’re not as stupid as you look, are you?”
“And when I discover who’s responsible, they’ll get a good thrashing and a court-martial for intentionally damaging public and service property and for the misuse of public property.”
Huh,” Havers said with a small smile. “I hadn’t even considered any of this might be a court-martial-able offence if I were still alive. It’s amazing what earthly rules you forget when you’ve been liberated from them for over twenty years.”
The soldiers were dismissed, but they laughed as they walked, muttering nonsense about the Captain’s terrible leadership skills, and Havers watched as The Captain’s shoulders slump. He turned to the window with sad eyes that reminded him of next door’s Labrador, and Havers had the sudden urge to throw a vase at the leaving soldiers.
It was one thing to criticise a captain in private and quite another to do it openly in front of the captain and laugh about it. Did a court-martial mean nothing to those people? He’d seen people punished for far less – Chapman for having slightly too much to drink, Pearce for daring to take a slash in private whilst on duty, Shephard for literally, and accidentally, shooting himself in the foot.
Was this commanding officer so spineless that he would allow insubordination to pass?
“Aren’t you going to do something?!” Havers demanded of The Captain, sliding from the sideboard. “Don’t just stand there looking sorry for yourself. You’re supposed to be fighting in a war and leading these soldiers! You’re the commanding officer!”
The Captain said nothing. He simply sighed at the glass, called himself an idiot, and rubbed his forehead with his square fingers, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Well, if you won’t do something to uphold your status here,” Havers grumbled, stomping away from the Captain, “then I will.”
Havers brushed past Thomas as he made his way to the exit, paying little heed to the poet's protests.
"William, I must implore you to consider the consequences of your actions!" Thomas called out after him, his voice echoing in the hallway. "I cannot concentrate on my verse amidst all the commotion you've been causing!"
Havers stopped in his tracks, his fists clenched in anger that was boiling over. "Commotion? Do you know what's truly commotion, Thomas?" he turned around, his eyes burning with a fiery intensity. "The fact that these bloody soldiers are living in this manor. It means that I died for nothing. All of us who fought in the Great War gave our lives for this country and its people. And yet here we are, ghosts, forced to watch as a new war unfolds in our home. It's unacceptable!" Spittle flew from his mouth.
Thomas looked at Havers with a mix of sympathy and concern. "I understand your frustration, William. But we must find another way to deal with this situation. We cannot resort to violence or scare tactics."
Havers shook his head. "You don't understand, Thomas. These soldiers must be driven out, one way or another. And I'll do whatever it takes to make that happen." With that, he turned around and continued on his way, his mind consumed with a fierce determination to rid his home of its unwanted intruders.
But it was the day when the Lieutenant (a poor excuse for a man and a lieutenant if you asked Havers – he had been much better in his day) and another soldier had stolen The Captain’s Sam Browne and thrown it into a tree that William decided to take a more direct, targeted approach, starting with Lieutenant Matthews.
At 3am, William slipped through the wall of Matthews’ bedroom and surveyed the scene before him. A stack of personal belongings on the nightstand – a book, a clock, a creased photograph of a young woman with frizzy curls that refused to sit right on her head, her tight shirt buttoned up to her neck and a plaid skirt sitting above her knees.
The thin curtains were open to let in the light from the moon, and the window had been left open a crack to dispel the heavy air that had become trapped there during the day. Matthews slept with his sockless foot hanging off the edge of the bed, and William grinned.
Didn’t he know you were never supposed to stick your foot out at night? That was how the monsters got you.
“Lieutenant Matthews, open up at once!” The Captain demanded, rapping his knuckles furiously against the door. “You’ve already missed the morning briefing and have your daily duties to attend to. Unless you are gravely ill, I suggest you open the door and explain yourself!”
The Captain continued to rap for another minute more before the Lieutenant sheepishly opened the door, blabbering some excuse about his alarm clock having been set wrong despite it being perfectly fine yesterday. But The Captain wasn’t focused on his reasons – he was too busy taking in the sight of his dishevelled, dirty blonde hair that was sticking up at all angles as though he’d a fitful night’s sleep, his crumpled uniform, the shirt that wasn’t tucked in properly, and his shoeless feet.
Matthews had a hole in his right sock from which his big toe protruded like a wart.
“Where are your boots, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t know, Sir,” he admitted, casting his eyes around the room as if to search for them. “But they can’t have gone far.”
A crowd was beginning to form on the stairs, and The Captain could feel his squad’s judgemental eyes on the back of his silvering head, and he straightened his whole body as though he were a puppet on a string, lifting himself up limb by limb. He cleared his throat, holding his new swagger stick in front of him and twiddling it between restless fingers.
“Find your boots, Matthews, or you’ll be working barefoot for the next week,” he said with a glare. “Set that clock right or learn to rely on your body clock like the rest of us because you’ll lose your downtime privileges the next time you’re late. Do I make myself clear?”
Matthews stared back at him, leaning against the doorframe with raised brows and a barely concealed laugh, the corner of his mouth quivering. “Yes, Sir.”
The Captain nodded and turned on his heel. If he were more assertive, he would’ve told the voyeurs to get back to their duties, but as he wasn’t, he slipped past them with his head down, lip between his teeth, and ignored the burst of laughter that echoed through the halls as he descended the last step.
The missing boots would later be found with their laces tied together and thrown over a high branch in the willow tree. Nobody would admit to throwing them there, and The Captain was too tired to face any more ridicule directly by sitting everyone down and demanding to know who the culprit was. Instead, he locked himself in his office and sighed with his head in his hands, wondering how he could gain their respect.
His threats were falling flat, and he couldn’t imagine trying to be their friend would help. Trying to be friendly had never worked at school – he’d try to initiate conversation and only be met with blank stares. He’d get pushed and locked into cramped cleaning cupboards for hours and have his chair pulled from underneath him as he tried to sit down during lunch and class.
They didn’t know the Captain, but The Captain knew them. Or their sort, at the very least. Having spent twelve years in boarding school, The Captain had encountered many like them before, haughty, boisterous, and foolish young men who believed themselves impervious to the hardships of the world. They relished in physical altercations, proudly bearing the scars and bruises as badges of honour. Raised in elite institutions, they had been conditioned to believe in their own superiority and entitlement since childhood. The world was their playground, and they were destined to conquer it.
The Captain couldn’t help but feel a sense of pity for them. Their upbringing had stripped them of any semblance of compassion or empathy, leaving them driven only by their insatiable thirst for power and conquest. Trying to befriend them was a lost cause.
No, being their friend wasn’t going to work. He would simply have to commit and follow through on the punishments. With this epiphany, he took a deep breath and donned a smile for the rest of the day, ready to double down on his threats and follow through with them when necessary.
That was until the Lieutenant dumped a bucket of cold water out the window and over The Captain’s head as he headed for a smoke in the allotment. After the initial shock, the cold seizing his muscles and mind, making him gasp as though he’d been dunked into dark, icy water, The Captain looked up to find the Lieutenant hanging from the window. He still had the tin bucket in his hand, and his face showed false concern.
“I’m sorry, Sir,” he yelled down. “I didn’t see you there! I was just throwing out the water from the privy – I hope it hasn’t soaked you too badly.”
The Captain’s feet seemed to have frozen on the spot, and he began to breathe through his mouth, resisting the urge to lift his arms and sniff to see how bad the damage was. He couldn’t hear the voice telling him it was only water from the sink, and Matthews was lying to get a rise out of him.
“It’s quite alright, Lieutenant,” The Captain shouted back automatically. “Keep up the good work,” he added with a smile he didn’t believe and trudged back into the house, his clothes sticking to his skin and soaking into his shoes.
He muttered to himself as he went up the stairs to his room. “You should’ve given him what-for, you stupid man! You promised yourself you’d punish them properly. You can’t keep letting them get away with running amok and making a fool of you.” He sighed and shook his head. “Who are you kidding? You’re the one making a fool of yourself.”
“He’s just irritated about this morning’s chaotic start and is looking for someone to take his frustration out on since he can’t do so on me,” Havers told him, slipping through the solid door to join The Captain in his bedroom. “You should’ve seen his face when you started knocking on that door – he looked like a whizz-bang had just gone off!”
Havers was beaming brightly as he watched The Captain silently dry his hair with a rough hand towel, but The Captain’s smile was not so bright – in fact, it had disappeared completely. “I really thought he’d stop being such a dreadful shit after I messed with him a bit,” he said with a helpless shrug.
He paused, leaning languidly against the wall as The Captain began to peel himself out of his wet jacket, his shirt sticking to his damp, broad shoulders. Still, Havers’ appreciative eye was quickly drawn away from his back and to the reflection in the mirror of the wetness pricking at The Captain’s azure irises and the resigned, but nevertheless sad, frown spreading across his face like ink on paper.
“You shouldn’t let him get to you,” Havers continued. “You’re his superior officer, and he’s nothing but a childish bully who hasn’t mentally developed since school.” He sighed heavily, partially in disappointment, as The Captain was now buttoning himself into a dry shirt, and Havers was surprised to find he’d been enjoying the view.
The Captain used the towel to blot dry his jacket as best he could, once again muttering his frustrations to himself. “How could you ever think you’d make a good captain? You couldn’t even captain a cricket team properly, let alone soldiers.”
“Your soldiers, and the Lieutenant especially, don’t respect you or your authority because you don’t have much conviction in it yourself,” Havers said decidedly, sloughing away from the wall to step closer. “I’ve seen it all before. It’ll take time, but you’ll get there.”
He tentatively reached out to press his hand to The Captain’s surprisingly shapely back. It sat there for a second – warmth he couldn’t remember pressing into his palm – sending a shiver through them both before Havers’ hand fell through The Captain.
Whilst The Captain attributed this queer sensation to the chill from the water and dismissed it, Havers stared at his hands like he didn’t recognise them. He’d never been able to touch a living before when his anger wasn’t actively bubbling.
Havers shoved his hands deep into his pockets as though he couldn’t bear to see them any longer and shook his head. “Still, if a taste of Matthews’ own medicine isn’t enough for him, then maybe it’s time to start becoming a more vengeful spirit.”
His grin became sly as his mind came alight with revenge plots, but The Captain was just as unaware of Havers’ presence as he was before. Instead, The Captain took a deep breath and steeled himself to face the squad, marching from the room with shaky determination. Havers followed quickly, ready to observe, to take note of the other bastards and snakes who lurked in the house.
“I thought you didn’t like him,” came a voice from under the bed.
Havers stopped to peer beneath the frame, finding Humphrey’s head still lying there from when Thomas and Humphrey’s body played a slightly unfair and energetic football game in the house. Havers dragged him out from under the bed, holding him carefully in his hands which still tingled with the memory of warm flesh and soft linen.
“What?” he said brusquely.
“I thought you didn’t like him,” Humphrey said again shrewdly, raising his brows.
“I never said that!” Havers frowned at himself, clenching his teeth and scrunching up his button nose. “Did I?”
In lieu of shoulders to shrug, Humphrey pumped his eyebrows. “You didn’t want any of them here, you’ve been haunting the living daylights out of them day and night to drive them out, and you think he’s a terrible captain.”
“I definitely didn’t say that!”
“Not in so many words,” Humphrey conceded. “But you’d be right to – he is bloody awful.”
Havers couldn’t help but smile at this – it was a small and fond thing, but a genuine, heartfelt smile regardless as Humphrey continued. “If you don’t want him here, why are you being nice to him all of a sudden? You’re rarely nice to us, let alone to living guests.”
“That’s not true,” Havers said, immediately remembering how, just yesterday, he’d used some extremely colourful language with Fanny at an extremely vulgar volume. In his defence, she had rudely remarked about lower-class soldiers and how uncouth and untrustworthy they were. To Havers, social classes didn’t exist much in the trenches – they were all stripped back to targets and hunters amid war.
Stereotypes like hers fuelled the flames of political ire that kept war on their doorstep.
He shrugged, resolute in his belief that Fanny had deserved it. But other than that, he was lovely to the other ghosts, practically charming, thank you very much.
“Anyway,” Havers said dismissively, leaving the room and gently depositing Humphrey’s head back into his body’s arms as he blindly groped the walls. “Everyone needs a little helping hand once in a while.”
The Captain was woken by screaming, as was the rest of Button House, judging by the frantic footsteps running along the corridor.
He quickly pulled himself from his warm bed, joining the small throng heading for Lieutenant Matthews’ bedroom. The Captain called for quiet and order, but naturally, this fell on deaf ears as the soldiers were too busy gasping, muttering, and pointing at Matthews’ bedroom wall. Or, more specifically, at the kitchen knife that had stabbed through the photograph of the Lieutenant’s beloved and stuck into the wall opposite his bed.
The knife handle was still jiggling like someone had just let it go.
The Captain blinked hard as if the knife embedded in the wall would disappear once he’d woken up properly. But it remained there, a haunting tableau, and the house was suddenly spinning. The feeling had gone in his limbs, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the knife despite Matthews hurriedly pacing his room, throwing his things into his bag, and spitting feathers about the place being haunted.
“I felt a hand around my ankle!” he cried, tripping over his feet in his rush to get his boots from behind the door. “Someone was rattling on the door handle, and then I felt someone or something,” he paused to scan the shocked faces of his colleagues as he recounted the tale, his eyes wide, sparkling with fear, “hold me by the ankle. There was a tug; by the time I’d pulled away from it, there was a knife in my wall! There’s something wicked in this house, and it’s been tormenting us, and now it’s threatening my Alice!”
The Captain had to take a few deep breaths to centre himself again and close his eyes. The other soldiers were jostling for a closer look; others were scanning the hallways for the supposed perpetrator. The rumours of a vicious poltergeist were buzzing around like fruit flies, and order needed to be restored.
Maybe he’d been wrong? Maybe there was a ghost haunting these hallowed halls? Despite the mean streak in his soldiers, he couldn’t think of a single one who had any cause to torment Matthews like this. A ghost was as good an explanation as any other, but as Captain, he had to be above that assumption lest someone accuse him of being unfit to command.
“Will you all please pull yourselves together?!” The Captain shouted with a voice stronger than he was expecting. He almost stumbled back in surprise, but he felt a hand on his back, keeping his balance for him. “You are soldiers in His Majesty’s forces, not hysterical schoolgirls, and I expect you to all act as such. Button House is not haunted ,” he stressed the word as if it would accentuate how ridiculous a notion it truly was. “Someone is playing pranks, and when I find out who, there will be severe punishment. Everyone back to their beds at once!”
After several seconds in which The Captain stared out at his squad, refusing to look away, the soldiers began to disperse. They muttered and threw looks at him and Lieutenant Matthews over their shoulders, heads bent together in gossip until they reached their rooms.
“I’ve got to get out of this damn house,” Matthews said, zipping up his duffel bag. “I’m going to go mad, or I’ll die here. That thing will kill me!” He pointed to the knife, contemplating whether to take back his photo, but he decided against it, stepping back like he’d been burned. “I have to get out of here.”
“Sit down, Lieutenant,” The Captain instructed. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands without his swagger stick to hold and settled for holding them behind his back. “You’ve had a shock. Sit down.”
“I’m not sitting down – are you mad?!” he answered, red in the face with exertion. “Something is trying to kill me, and I’m not going to sit down and give it another opportunity to attack me!”
The Captain shook his head gently, grinding his teeth and squeezing his hands tightly behind him. This wasn’t a situation the army had prepared him for. “Nobody is trying to kill you…aside from the enemy, of course,” he added nervously, raising himself on the balls of his feet as he tittered.
“I have to leave, or I’ll go mad,” he said again, not showing any sign of having heard The Captain at all. “A ghost is targeting me, and it’s going to kill me, but it’s going to taunt me and torture me until I’m mad first, and then it’s going to come for Alice!”
“You’re not well,” The Captain said tentatively. “Your nerves are frayed, and you need to rest. Get some sleep and see how you feel in the morning.”
“I don’t want to sleep!” Matthews grunted like a child, his fists clenched and digging into his coarse palms. “If I sleep, that’s giving it another chance to kill me!”
The Captain let out a long sigh and nodded, stilted and stiff. “Okay,” he said soothingly. “Okay…let me make a call. We’ll get this sorted out.”
“He had him carted away,” said a soldier under his breath before the morning briefing, casting his grey eyes towards The Captain. “He told them Matthews had a nervous breakdown and wasn’t fit for service.”
The other soldier peered up from his book with a scowl, hissing back to his confidante. “Absurd. Everyone knows there’s something dark and evil about this place. Matthews was perfectly sane – we all saw that knife. It didn’t stab the wall by itself.”
“Did you hear that?!” Havers said, grinning at the other ghosts gathered at the edge of the room, yawning. “They think I’m dark and evil!”
The group muttered in response, rubbing their bleary eyes and covering yawns behind their hands. “They’ll think you the Devil in no time,” Thomas agreed dryly.
Mary’s eyebrows flew up her forehead, and her mouth fell open in a little gasp. “The Devil?!” she whimpered, taking a cautious glance at Havers before fleeing the room, Havers calling weakly after her that it wasn’t true.
“Well done, William,” Fanny said dryly. “Not only have you driven out one of the soldiers, but you’ve also driven out Mary.”
“Well, obviously, that part wasn’t my intention,” Havers pointed out. “But maybe now those men know somebody is watching them; they’ll start being more respectful to their superior. Surely that’s something even you can get behind, Fanny?”
She wrinkled her nose, her hands clasped together at her abdomen and made a reluctant, throaty noise of agreement. “I suppose so….”
“I’m not sure it’s helped,” Humphrey said from under the rows of chairs. “I think they hate the poor guy more than ever.”
Havers tilted his head and watched The Captain say good morning to each soldier as they entered the room, but they made no gesture or sound to acknowledge his existence. The Captain pressed his lips tightly together for a moment, then pulled on a smile that wavered at the edges, nodding at his squad in greeting. One of the soldiers shot The Captain a nasty look that made him drop his pleasantries and hold his swagger stick so tightly all the joints in his hands turned a thin, milky-white.
“That’s fine,” Havers said quickly with a shrug. “That just means more fun for me. What happened to respecting and following your Captain? Captain Thompson would never have withstood that behaviour from me, and I wouldn’t have dared to be so brazenly rebellious. The world has changed a lot in twenty years, and it’s time that those horrible bullies were put back in their place. They’re all supposed to be on the same side!”
Kitty was fiddling with the bows on her bodice, swaying from side to side. “It’s going to be hard for him to have everyone on the same side if you’re haunting them out of here, isn’t it?”
“And now he doesn’t have a Lieutenant to back him up,” Thomas pointed out. “Not that Matthews was particularly good at working with The Captain in the first place…but metaphorically speaking, there’s no one on his side now. It’s him against the braying masses.”
“Don’t be so dramatic and wilfully inaccurate,” Havers said playfully with a half-hearted scoff. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a Lieutenant, and I’m on his side. He doesn’t need anyone else when he’s got a guardian poltergeist looking out for him.”
“What you do?” Robin asked. “Moustache man cannot see or hear you.”
“Yes, you can hardly be a lieutenant to him when you can’t communicate with each other,” Thomas added through a laugh.
Havers waved a nonchalant hand. “That’s a minor detail,” he said. “Besides, I have something the rest of you don’t.”
“And what’s that?” Fanny asked,
“Physicality,” he said proudly, smoothing his palms smartly over his uniform and straightening his jacket. “If I can pick up a knife and stab it through a photo into the wall, and if I can pull on people’s legs and stop people from falling off, then with a bit of practice, there’s every chance I can summon the energy to write a message.”
With that, he sauntered off to The Captain’s side, giving him an encouraging pep talk he couldn’t hear.
Humphrey tutted. “I have a feeling all of this will end in tears.”
“Well, that would be the ideal ending,” Fanny decided. “He’s already broken some of the windows and my best china. Tears would be a blessed relief.”
“Don’t forget the books he threw around the library,” Thomas said. “Though, one of the books he ruined was one of Byron’s, so maybe it’s not so bad after all.”
Kitty pouted, still gently swaying as if on a boat, nodding. “Although…” she said tentatively, “he is scary sometimes…I think tears might be for the best too.”
The ghosts glanced towards Havers. He didn’t look back at them. He was too busy standing at The Captain’s side, whispering words of encouragement as The Captain began the briefing, his hands flapping behind his back, swagger stick under his arm.
Havers was torn between looking at the soldiers with an intense dark glare and at The Captain’s profile with a soft gaze they hadn’t seen on him before. He looked gentle, hazy around the edges. Like he hadn’t ripped portraits, smashed vases, or pulled curtains from their hooks in his life. Or death.
He didn’t even notice when the ghosts left the room, fetching Humphrey’s head as they went.
Hushed whispers and mischievous titters echoed down the corridor as The Captain approached the stairs. He paid no mind; they were always laughing at things he didn’t understand, usually at him. If he ignored it, he wouldn’t fan the flames of whatever they were laughing at.
A soldier dipped into a nearby room, followed by the resounding creaking floorboards. The sound of hushed laughter and snorting followed. The Captain raised his chin against the derision and imagined he was laughing at something Douglas had said and was doing his best not to disrupt the peace settling over the house like a cloud.
Since Matthews had left, there had been no more knives in the wall. There were fewer scratches on the walls, and far fewer mugs and plates cracked on the hard tiles as they tumbled from shelves and tables.
There was the occasional loss of personal property and soldiers tripping over nothing: Sometimes, the windows would rattle when there was no wind, but other than that, the house almost felt normal again. But The Captain couldn’t help feeling he was holding his breath as he went about his days, waiting for something to happen. Although he liked to assume that he knew what might happen, he had the overwhelming feeling that not all was as silent and simple as it seemed.
As usual, the Captain had his swagger stick under his arm as he descended the staircase. He heard footsteps above him as he continued, ignoring the continued titters. He should have stopped, looked up, marched back up the stairs, and told them to return to work, to stop skulking around the place like criminals and do something useful.
But he didn’t. Instead, he put one foot in front of the other until his foot slipped on the stair. The wood was slick with something he couldn’t see, although he paid no mind. The Captain wasn’t the sort to look where he was going because walking was so simple that one needed not to look at themselves whilst doing it. It was like breathing, frowning, or opening your mouth to speak. The repetitive movements that came with walking down the particular steps of Button House had ingrained themselves into his muscle memory. Sometimes, The Captain thought he could do it with his eyes closed. It wasn't until he was tumbling down, and the sun through the window made the slippery substance shine, that the unknown slick made itself visible.
The Captain tried to grasp for the handrail but found his hand slipping past on smooth wood. He could feel his heart falling into his mouth as he went down, and something that felt like fingers tugging on the back of his jacket, but nobody was there. He could see no one except the careless expressions of the oil paintings on the wall as the world spun and twisted beneath him.
As he fell, his head smacked against the edge of the steps, and his back and knees groaned and whined as they were twisted into unnatural shapes. The impact of his fall was loud and painful, and he landed at the bottom of the stairs with a sickening thud. His head smacked against the wood with a crack like one of the china plates on the kitchen floor.
The Captain's head throbbed like there was no tomorrow, the pulsations in his skull blocking his ears and drowning out any other sounds. He lay there momentarily, stunned, as he tried to regain his bearings. Something warm and sticky was oozing from the back of his head, hot and thick like rich drinking chocolate. It was warm like cocoa too, no, it was more like the sun on sand, and for a moment, he basked in the heat with a gentle smile, imagining grains of sand sticking to his hair and flowing between his fingers. But when he remembered he was sprawled on floorboards and not sinking into the sands of a white-hot beach, he tried to lift his hand to check what the warmth on his head was. He didn’t have the energy to complete the action and let his hand fall limp and heavy back to its position on the floor.
His head smacked against the edge of the steps, and his back and knees groaned and whined as they were twisted into unnatural shapes.
The Captain landed at the bottom of the stairs, his head smacking against the wood with a crack like one of the china plates on the kitchen floor. His head throbbed like there was no tomorrow, the pulsations in his skull blocking his ears and drowning out any other sounds. He didn't know when the laughter stopped, but the silence made him feel like he was floating on a river.
Something was oozing from the back of his head, hot and thick like rich drinking chocolate. It was warm like cocoa too, no, it was more like the sun on sand, and for a moment, he basked in the heat with a gentle smile, imagining grains of sand sticking to his hair and flowing between his fingers. When he remembered he was sprawled on floorboards and not sinking into the sands of a white-hot beach, he tried to lift his hand to check what the warmth on his head was. But he didn’t have the energy to complete the action and let his hand fall limp and heavy back to its position on the floor.
His vision pulsed in and out, slowly, hazily, in brief, momentary lapses, and the figure of the man drew closer and closer with every interval. The man's identity evaded him; his features blurred together, shrouded in obscurity. In one moment, the dark-haired man stood at the Upper Landing, and the next, he re-emerged at the foot of the stairs.
"Are you alright?" the man asked, his voice lilting, concerned, and well-mannered.
The Captain tried to open his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. His vision went black. He didn't know for how long, but it couldn't have been more than a few seconds because when he pulled them open again, the man still stood there, watching him.
"Oh good, you're awake," he said with a smile that showed off the dimples on his cheeks. "Those idiots greased the stairs with butter and soap. Can you believe it?" He tutted and glanced up the stairs with a snarl. "Wasting rations like that to cause intentional injury to a commanding officer. You ought to throw the book at them."
The Captain blinked slowly, barely able to take in the words. He slowly pulled himself upright into a sitting position, the ache persistently throbbing in the back of his skull and showing no signs of stopping.
"Are you the new lieutenant?" he asked, looking the stranger up and down with narrowed eyes. The man frowned and stepped back, and the Captain looked at him closer, mentally dissecting him as if he were a science project.
The stranger was built like a stick insect, long and thin, with short dark hair neatly combed. But he looked wrong somehow. He opened his mouth and didn't say anything, just stared at The Captain still on the floor as though waiting for orders.
"They sent you sooner than expected,” The Captain continued, getting unsteadily to his feet. There was a small dark stain where his head had hit the floor. "What's your name? Sorry, I haven't been sent your details yet."
The dark-haired man raised his eyebrows and held his hands behind his back, shoulders squared. However, he seemed to be holding back a smile or a shout as his throat bobbed like he was swallowing something. "Havers, Sir," he said. "William."
"Your uniform looks about twenty years old, Havers,” The Captain said. "Get yourself cleaned up and meet me in my office in twenty minutes for a briefing." The world turned again, nausea welling up in his belly, and The Captain had to hold on to the bannister.
"I think you ought to see the medic, Sir," Havers said. "It was a nasty fall, and I'd wager you're more injured than you realise."
The Captain straightened his body but leaned against the balustrade for support, his eyes swimming. Nothing in front of him was in focus, and he tried to focus his attention on the lieutenant's feet to stop himself from falling down again. "Don't fuss, Lieutenant. I'm perfectly fine."
Havers sighed, but not impatiently or unkindly as Matthews had. Instead, it sounded like an acceptance. "Very well, Sir. Though I suggest you rest briefly, at least. You don't look well. I know someone who lost his head with more colour in his cheeks than you."
“You were told about the previous lieutenant, then?” The Captain said. He finally reached for the back of his head - it was sticky with blood, matting his hair, but the injury looked worse than it was. Cuts to the scalp always bled so unnecessarily freely. “It was unfortunate what happened, but he wasn’t fit to continue work here.”
“He was blathering about poltergeists and evil spirits, right?” Havers asked, tilting his head with interest, a small smile playing at the edge of his mouth.
The Captain nodded, blinking away his dizziness. “Yes, that’s right.”
“He might not have been entirely mad. In fact, I’m confident he was right.”
“Don’t you start, Lieutenant,” The Captain said wearily, rolling his eyes. “I’ve had enough of that with the rest of them.” He turned to move upstairs, but his feet slipped on the sabotaged step, and he turned away with a grumble, deciding to lie down in the library. “Would you mind helping me to the library, Lieutenant? I hate to ask, but I’m not feeling particularly stable.”
Havers grinned but hid it behind his hand in the guise of scratching his nose. “I’m not sure I’ll be much help on that front, sir. Or any front, for that matter.” He held out his arm and nodded towards it. “Take it if you can.”
The Captain nodded and did as asked, looping his arm around Havers’, only to find it falling through him as though he wasn’t there at all. When he looked up at him, blinking hard again to try and make sense of it, Havers looked back at him apologetically.
“Yes, no real physical body, I’m afraid,” Havers explained, wrinkling his nose. The Captain just stared at him blankly, his face draining of its remaining colour. “Let me introduce myself properly,” he added brightly, flitting through the outside wall. He walked through the solid wall like it an open door frame, and The Captain’s mouth fell open.
“Hi,” Havers said, coming back through the wall to stand in front of The Captain, his hand outstretched. “I’m Lieutenant William Havers, resident poltergeist here at Button House ever since my untimely death in 1918."
Havers leaned closer as The Captain reeled back. Their eyes met, and The Captain couldn’t bring himself to break their gaze. He told himself this man couldn’t be dead, despite having seen him pass through the wall. His eyes were too sparkling with life for him to be a ghost. They were warm and rich like freshly brewed coffee, not lifeless, cold, or empty as his grandmother said they were.
When The Captain had said nothing for several long silence, Havers smiled kindly and dropped his hand. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, barely above a whisper. He spoke softly as if coaxing The Captain to trust him. “I won’t hurt you,” he promised. “In fact, I think we’re going to be exceptional friends.”
That was when The Captain fainted.