Ghost writer

Clara Cleaver was not in the least bit excited about the move to the country, unlike her parents who were literally bouncing with joy in the front seats of their car.
"Why can't we stay in the city? I like it there," moaned Clara as she snapped her book shut and threw it on the seat beside her.
"Darling, we've been over this more times than I can to count," her mum said, curling herself round the passenger seat to address Clara. "Your father and I have always longed to return to Derbyshire. It's where we both grew up. Now that we have the money to do it, we are."
"But why can't I stay with Uncle Mike?"
"Because he's not your father. I am," snapped Clara's dad. "Besides, you'll love it when you get there. Fresh air, trees, hills, rivers. You can't beat it."
Clara huffed. Unless the town had a multiplex, ice rink, shopping mall and her friends, she wasn't interested.
"So what's the town called we're moving to?"
"Little Hampton. And it's not a town. It's a village," her mum said.
"A village!" Clara blasted. "But that's so boring. It'll be filled with old people."
"Oh don't be silly. I'm sure there'll be kids your age there."
As they pulled into Little Hampton Clara stared out the window hopefully. There were only a handful of houses scattered over a wide expanse of hilly nothingness and from the looks of it the village appeared deserted. There was no hussle, there was no bussle, just quiet. Clara realised, with a heavy heart, that there would be little chance of seeing any kids there, let alone ones her age.
"We're here!" her mum trilled.
Clara got out of the car and leaned against a damp, mossy wall whilst her mum and dad dragged suitcases from the back of the car. She stared up at her new home and sighed. There really was no going back.
The cottage was old and grey with thick ivy on one side that was slowly creeping round the corner, a dark green wooden door, a short wall that encircled it and a green gate that was hanging on its hinges. Clara sneered. She wasn't impressed.
"How are we all supposed to live in that?" she said pointing to the house. "It's only got one floor? Where are the bedrooms?"
"The bedrooms are on the same floor as the lounge," her mum said as she returned to the car to retrieve another suitcase.
Clara grabbed her bag and book from the back seat and trudged inside.
Beyond the front door there was a long corridor that led down to what looked like the kitchen. To the left there was a lounge and dining room and on the right there were the two bedrooms. Clara pinched her nose at the smell inside. The air stank like rotting grass and hundred year old dust, and what's more is was freezing. Clara shivered.
"I'll fire up the generator in a minute Clara while we wait for the removal trucks."
That night Clara got no sleep. She shivered, she was surrounded by stacks of unpacked boxes and trunks and she was kept awake by strange noises; lots of creaking, groaning, moaning, and grumbling noises. When she told her parents about them the next day they merely laughed it off.
"It's an old house, Clara. This is something you have to get used to. There's a lot of history in these walls. Sometimes they talk," her dad said.
"Well they talk too loud. They need to be quiet, or I'll never sleep."
"Ask your mum to give you earplugs. They might help."
They didn't. In fact the noises seemed to be getting louder and were peppered by a faint wailing. As she lay awake one night, staring at the ceiling Clara wondered if there were ghosts in the house. She'd read plenty of stories about them, both fiction and ones that were supposedly true but had never actually seen a ghost. Could that be what was causing the noises?
The next day Clara challenged her dad.
"Who lived in this house before us?" she asked over breakfast.
"A young woman I believe. But that was some time ago. I don't know where she moved to."
"So the house has been empty?"
"Yep. She had a real problem selling it. I can't imagine why as it's idyllic. Although that does explain why we got such a good deal on it," he said
"I think there are ghosts here. I think that's why she couldn't sell it."
Her dad laughed.
"I think you're letting that overactive imagination run away with you. It's far more likely to be mice or birds than ghosts, Clara."
Clara wasn't convinced. So she vowed to stay awake all night and listen to the sounds. She wasn't scared by the idea of seeing a ghost, she was intrigued. With her knees tucked up against her chest and a torch in her hand she sat and waited. When the moon was out, shining yellow-white, and the sky was dark the groaning started.
"Awrrrrr," it went. "Ohhhh, whooaaa. Whoooaaahs meee."
Clara's eyes flicked open.
"Is anybody there?" she said.
"Whooaahs meee," was the reply.
"Whoever you are, you sound sad. Perhaps I can help."
"Noooaahhh. Awwrrr."
"Are you a ghost?" she asked.
There was no reply.
"If you can tap twice for yes and once for no," she said. "Are you a ghost?"
"TAP"
"Well if you're not a ghost I should be able to see you but I can't."
There was no reply, but from the corner of Clara's eye she saw something hazy emerge from the empty bookcase. She spun round and shone her torch at the apparition. Hovering above her yet-to-be-unpacked boxes was the faint outline of a man. He was wearing, from what Clara could see, a soldier's uniform and had a tin hat on his head.
Clara was so dumbfounded that all she could do was gawp and wave at him.
He waved back.
When she finally composed herself, and got over the initial shock of seeing something she wasn't really sure she believed in, she said, "You don't know you're a ghost, do you?"
The hovering figure looked down at himself and then back at Clara. He shook his head.
"I think you died," Clara said solemnly.
The figure floated to Clara's bedroom window and looked out at the starry sky.
Clara climbed out of bed and stood at his side.
"Do you remember your name?"
"Pri-vate Samp-son," the ghost whispered. "El-more Samp-son."
"Nice to meet you Mr Sampson. I'm Clara, Clara Cleaver. I'm ten and about to start school here. I'm guessing you're a soldier. Were you in a war?"
Elmore nodded. "The Great War."
"Was that the first one or the second one?"
Elmore looked puzzled by her question. "Second?" he asked.
"You don't know there were two world wars?"
Elmore shook his head and gave a despairing sigh.
"So you were in the first one then. Where did you die?"
"France," Elmore whispered.
"Is that why you're sad?"
"Yes...and no. Yes I'm sad I died, but no that's not why I'm sad now," he began and floated over to where Clara had stacked a pile of her books waiting to go on the bookcase. He stared down at them and gave a longing sigh. "I wish I could write. I used to, in the trenches. I wrote a lot, to pass the time and so I didn't have to think about shells and guns."
"Is that why you're sad? Because you can't write?"
Elmore nodded. He reached a wispy white hand down to a pencil that rested on top of a box and tried to clasp it, but the pencil just cut straight through his hand.
"Ohhh, you can't physically write. I see," she said.
Elmore sat down on the box and sank right through it. All Clara could see of him was from the chest up.
"What do you want to write?"
"Stories," Elmore said.
"Ah, well you're in luck Private Elmore Sampson because I happen to love stories," Clara said, climbing on top of the covers of her bed. "How about I write your stories for you?"
Elmore stood up. A smiled graced his youthful but transparent face, and he nodded.

When Clara woke the following morning she couldn't wait to tell her parents about Elmore. She ran into the kitchen and before her mum could even say 'good morning' Clara launched into her revelation.
"There's a ghost," her mum repeated with wide eyes and raised brows, "in your bedroom. That wants you to write stories for him?"
Clara nodded.
Her mum held her palm against Clara's forehead. "I think you're coming down with something."
"It's true, mum," Clara said, earnestly before looking to her dad for support. "He died in the great war. He told me. He said he used to write in the trenches and now he can't. That's why he's sad."
"Don't look at me, Clara. I'm with your mother on this one. Ghosts, spooks, ghouls, spectres or whatever you want to call them simply don't exist. It's all a load of mind trickery."
Clara huffed, grabbed a slice of buttered toast and stormed out of the house. She was so mad with her parents for not believing her she paid no attention to where she was walking and smacked into an elderly lady on the gravel pathway.
"I'm so sorry," Clara said.
The elderly lady steadied herself and stared down at Clara.
"You're the Cleaver girl aren't ya. What's moved into the Sampson house?"
Clara's stomach fluttered at the mention of the name. "You know Elmore Sampson?"
The lady seemed almost as surprised at Clara as Clara was at her.
"Not personally no. He died before I was born, but I knew his parents. They lived in the house you're in now."
"Where did they move to?"
"They didn't. They died there in that house, about forty year ago. Nobody's lived in it since, apart from some young girl whose name I can't place, but she didn't last long. I think she only lived in it about a month before she left."
"Do you know why?"
The woman shook her head.
"Some tell strange tales about that house. Things are heard."
"Like wailing and moaning?"
The woman didn't answer her. She carried on her way, shuffling down the path. "Mind yerself now."

That night Clara was at the ready: torch, paper and pen.
It had crossed her mind, as she sat there in the darkness, that it might all have been a weird dream and that Elmore really didn't exist but when he appeared at the foot of her bed, she smiled.
"Hi Elmore," she said.
"Clara," Elmore said, tipping his tin helmet at her.
"I have a pen and paper. What shall we write?"
That night Elmore began recounting his entire life as a soldier in the first world war, from how he was conscripted as a seventeen year old boy, to how he ended up in France fighting the Germans in the Battle of the Somme. It wasn't the kind of story Clara was expecting to write but Elmore said that he had to 'purge some baggage' before he could be creative. Clara assumed he meant he had a lot to get off his chest. She didn't blame him. After eighty years of waiting to have a voice on paper she was sure she'd have a lot to get off her chest too.

When Clara showed her parents what she had written as dictated by Elmore they were more than a little surprised.
"Have you been reading about the war, Clara?" her dad asked as he thumbed through the pages.
"No. Elmore told me this stuff."
Her dad and mum exchanged looks of concern.
"It's okay,dad," Clara said resting a hand on her dad's arm to reassure him. "Elmore is nice. He doesn't want to hurt me. He just wants me to write his stories."
Her mum shrugged her shoulders. "If it means she stops complaining about this place she can write what she likes."

Once Elmore had told Clara all he wanted to say about the war Clara decided that she really ought to do something with Elmore's words. She had accumulated two hundred pages of a story that she really wanted others to read. The Great War, as they called it, wasn't so great for the soldiers that fought in it, particularly as many were dragged into it at seventeen years of age. That was younger than some kids are nowadays when they finish school. And the conditions those poor soldiers had to endure made Clara feel guilty for complaining about the lack of luxuries in Little Hampton that she was used to. They endured overcrowding, infestations of lice and fleas, weevils in their bread, trench foot caused by standing in the mud day after day and having to drink water diseased with cholera and typhoid. It sounded unbearable.
So Clara asked her mum to take her to the local town library so she could find out who would publish Elmore's book. After consulting with the librarian who suggested Clara look at a reference book that listed publishers and their addresses, Clara set to work. It didn't take her long to find someone to send it to-Historia Books they were called, and were even based nearby, in Derby.
Clara posted her book with a letter and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. To pass the time Clara and Elmore wrote more stories. Not war stories but adventure stories and ghost stories and fantasy stories. But when two months passed and Clara hadn't heard anything about Elmore's war book she was convinced that the publisher didn't want it. Elmore was not as disappointed as Clara. He was happy enough to have someone write his story for him. Then to Clara's delight, a letter finally dropped through the letter box addressed to Elmore Sampson.
Clara tore it open and skim read the letter inside. As she read the words she leapt into the air and screamed at the top of her voice. "They like it, they like it," she cried.
"Like what, Clara," her mum said appearing at the lounge door with a bowl full of cake mix in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other.
"Elmore's book," she announced with glee. "They want to publish it."

After Clara and Elmore waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and then waited some more, a box arrived at Clara's house, addressed to Private Elmore Sampson and Miss Clara Cleaver.
Clara eagerly ripped the sellotape off the box and gingerly pick up one of the books. It had a glossy jacket that covered the hard back of the book. Clara was so pleased she cried and cried. That night she waited up to see Elmore and when he appeared and saw the book he cried too-wispy white tears.
When he was done he glanced up at her from the book.
"Thank you, Clara," he said and then faded from her sight.
She never saw him again. But she still has his book, and she doesn't complain about living in the country, anymore.