Competition Twenty-Five Winning Flash Fiction: Ghosts In The Holloway by Joanna Miller
Summer’s ending brought shorter days, lazy sunrises and painful, precious anniversaries. Royal colours jewelled the hedgerows, berries replaced blossom, and on the purple moor, the hinds and stags were gathering. She tried to shake off the season’s tugging sadness, but its melancholy settled and wrapped around her, unyielding. Now on her morning walks, everywhere was blowsy, ragged, spent.
“Go,” she said, letting the dogs off their leads.
She followed them down the side of the barley field and into the cool shade of the lane. Here, in leaf-filtered patches of sun and tangled roots, the holloway stretched and descended, hushed and timeless. Its ghosts, indifferent, leant nonchalantly against elephant-grey tree trunks, cigarettes between their fingers, feet up on the memorial bench, reading books, playing cards in a clearing, kissing under the shiny holly. They turned and watched her with wry ‘been there, done that’ expressions, the people whose stories had already been told.
In the silent trees, she heard the soft whinnies of the packhorse ponies, their stumbling hooves, the shout of the jaggers, and, in the dense canopy of branches, a nest of memories stirred, floating down around her like early falling leaves. In that instant, he was back with them. The dogs barked, running to welcome him, sitting at his feet, making dust clouds with their thumping tails.
“Where have you been?” she said, “We’ve missed you.”
He smiled and closed his hand over hers, “I never left”.
Joanna lives in Derbyshire with her partner, three dogs, and a sweet cat. She writes flash and short stories.
Photo by William Robinson
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I feel you. I feel him. Excellent. I could read this again and again.